A new report from MailChimp shows that Gmail users are more likely than other webmail users to open and click on email messages:

Open rates varied from a low of just over 20% for e-mail sent to AOL users to a high over nearly 31% among Gmail users. The click rate on e-mails sent to Gmail accounts was more than 7.4%, compared with rates between 4% and 5% for Yahoo!, AOL and Hotmail users.Messages sent to Gmail accounts also had the lowest hard bounce rate, though other data indicates Gmail’s spam protection may be so stringent that messages disappear without producing a bounce.

The author’s concluding assertion that Gmail users may be friendlier to marketing messages than users of other webmail services completely misses the point: it is the very ability of Gmail’s spam filters to remove such marketing messages in the first place which results in its users’ comparatively high open and clickthrough rates.

via Who Is Most Engaged with E-Mail? – eMarketer.

Ahhh, the Interwebs. You just have to love the power of genuine conversation– especially when it concerns your company’s products. Honda recently launched a Facebook fan page for its new Accord Crosstour, and the early response from Facebook users has been unmistakeable:

It looks as if all those fans have nothing but hatred to spew about the Crosstour. Wall comments are flooding in, and Facebookers agree — Honda took the wrong fork in the road with the Crosstour’s design.

The Crosstour Fan Page reads more like a hate page, with no shortage of commenters voicing their dislike of the design.

Sample opinions include:

Now that Honda has a clear idea of what people make of the Accord Crosstour, the question is: what will it do with such information? Hopefully, it will take a cue from Chevrolet, which demonstrated major social media savvy by resisting the urge to pull the plug on its 2006 Tahoe promotion, despite overwhelmingly negative user response.

via Honda Accord Crosstour Damaged In Facebook Hit and Run.

In an interview with BrandWeek, Jose-Alberto Duenas, Kellogg’s Marketing VP of Ready-To-Eat Cereals, discusses the impact of social media on familiar brands like Special K and Pop-Tarts.

It’s worth reading in full, but the following passage jumped out as being particularly insightful:

BW: So, you can’t just take any brand and put it in social media?

JD: You have to start from a really strong base. You can’t, in a way, start from scratch with social media, especially because consumers have to have a certain level of engagement with the brand. With Special K, we know the brand already has that level of communication and emotional engagement with consumers, so we’ve given them a new way to interact with the brand. That was the right first step. [With Pop-Tarts], we were building off a very strong, already established relationship with kids. Kids have been using digital media, but Pop-Tart’s [foray into social media] also opened up [the brand’s] target in terms of having a conversation with teens and moms, which came later.

This simple idea is so often lost in the scramble to “get social”: you must have something which makes people want to engage with your company. It might be the strength of a brand, like Pop-Tarts. It may be terrific content. In the end, you must have something more exciting to people than simply announcing that they can follow you on Twitter now.

via How Special K Became a Social Media Star.

According to a new report from eMarketer, customers are increasingly engaging with brands in social networking forums:

Common wisdom over the past few years has been that people are interested in interacting with social network friends, not marketers. Not so, according to Anderson Analytics’ May 2009 survey—52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social networking Website—double the percentage who had said something negative (23%).

While the search for clear metrics that link brand endorsement to increased customer profitability remains elusive, this report shows that consumers are quite willing to praise — or slam — brands online, rather than limit their social networking actions to their friends. The opportunity for companies is clear: would you rather be unaware of these conversations about your brands, or have a voice in the discussion? via Social Network Marketing Expands Sphere – eMarketer .