Content Marketing Goof Up: Why Isn’t the iTunes eNewsletter Showing Me the Love?
Rare Apple Misstep Sends Weekly News about Music You May Hate
If you are one of the millions of iTunes fans, you appreciate the brilliant work they do in aggregating music creatively. This includes pre-constructed sets of music from different eras, different artists or different styles in the iTunes store. In November, it launched the ‘Genius Bar’ which enables you to create new playlists from your stored music or to discover new tunes that you’re likely to love based on a song that you have chosen from your own iTunes collection.
The iTunes folks excel at enabling you to choose,to organize, and to discover all sorts of music that you love. Of course, you’ve probably bought quite a few more iTunes selections than you should have thanks to their terrifically targeted musical content. iTunes is brilliant at offering you what you don’t even know you want.
That’s why I’m astonished at how far off the mark they are with their weekly new music eNewsletter.
Their eNewsletter throws targeted content marketing right out the window.
The iTunes content machine should know exactly what I like because they have assessed what I have bought and what I have loaded on my computer. My musical taste is eclectic and wide-ranging. It includes everything from Bach to Benny Goodman and from Asleep at the Wheel to Andre Watts. Nonetheless, each week they send me a newsletter about music in which I have either no knowledge, no interest or both.
Here’s a sampling from this week’s iTunes eNewsletter:
- Guns N’ Roses–I know who they are. I have no idea what they sound like and I’m not interested in learning.
- Kanye West and Ludacris–as far as I know they are rappers and I consider rap music an oxymoron.
- Killers–I have no idea who these people are. And the eNewsletter doesn’t give me a clue.
- Coldplay–another group whose name I know but in whose music I have no interest.
- Akon Holla Holla (featuring. T-Pain)–what kind of music is that? Is T-Pain a song or person?
Of course, you may love all this music. Then, you would have appreciated the eNewsletter. But, for me, the new music eNewsletter is a nuisance. With all their marketing money, they could have and should have done much better in segmenting the recipients of their weekly outreach to customers.
The Number One Rule of Content Marketing That Apple Forgot: Understand What Is Most Important to Your Audience!
You may have a limited marketing budget that would amount to a rounding error for Apple. Nonetheless, you can do a better job of targeting your eNewsletter by understanding what is most important to your customers and providing truly relevant information in each newsletter edition. You may not have the sophisticated technology tools that iTunes can bring to bear, but you can probably create two or three different iterations of your outbound content that matches the differing information needs of your customers.
The misguided iTunes eNewsletter makes me feel as unappreciated as the hero of the classic country lament by David Allen Coe, “You don’t have to call me darlin’, darlin’. You don’t even have to call me by my name.”
And I could not resist including this YouTube video in case you love or want to discover Mr. Coe and his outlandish Texas-style country music.
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Comments [2]
I totally agree but realize that I had never thought about that before. I find myself deleting the iTunes newsletter with maybe a quick scan or maybe without even opening. And of course they can target it. They know what I like and I would appreciate finding new artists to my taste.
On the Genius sidebar. It’s OK but sort of predictable. Has not effectively found me a lot of new stuff. I mean if I like Ryan Adams of course I like Wilco.
And Newt. You should really get into The Killers.
It seems to me that Apple is just being lazy. “Let’s slap together the newest offerings that all the kids are listening to, regardless of genre, and send it out…no time for targeting!” Kind of like waitstaff at a restaurant pushing certain entrees – “push the GnR and Ludacris – we’re overstocked!” C’mon Apple – get with it!