Custom Facebook Fan Pages and Emall Marketing

I get a number of email "circulars" from companies like Best Buy, Macy's and others. Their width resembles the new size restrictions now in place for Facebook tab pages. What if, when companies create an email piece, they were to replicate it as a custom tab on their fan page? Think of the advantages:

• Technology - From a technical standpoint, it would be relatively easy to deploy, as the CSS/HTML would likely translate very well without recoding being called for (minimal amount if so).  The biggest issue is one of width. Email versions are wider than the 520px allotment by Facebook.
• Marketing - From a marketing standpoint, it's certainly worth experimentation. Links would need to be tagged appropriately as to source, of course. 
• Design - The design of email campaigns are often very apropos for use in Facebook.
• Content - It's repurposing content that has already been created. Create once, publish twice. 

Regarding the last point, whoever said custom Facebook fan pages should remain static. My friend Pat Kitano put it this way, "Facebook fan pages are the new Sunday circular." Why not routinely update them with fresh content? If your company regularly produces email campaigns with regularity, using them for your fan page only makes sense. 

How about email sending platforms like Constant Contact, Vertical Response, Exact Target, Mail Chimp and others tackling this from an app development standpoint. All of them are clamoring to stake a claim inside social media, but most of what I've seen from their efforts include little more than social sharing options or subscription forms. To take an actual email campaign and plunk it down inside a Facebook Page, now that's something really useful. 

Look at these examples of email marketing pieces, re-imagine them as Facebook tab pages sitting inside a fan page, and tell me what you think of the idea. (In fact, I copied the source code, did some minor tweaking, and created a couple of Facebook versions which you can link to below. Mind you, they are not perfect, but there just to help you get the picture.)

(See Facebook version)

(See Facebook version)

Comments

[Jon Burg]

The real value of circulars in Facebook is going to come along with a very flexible redesign of the platform. Ideally, every item would be sharable/likable and be comment enabled. This should be the case across both the Facebook App/Tab and the brand site (possibly post log-in).

Eventual s-commerce in this environment would also be wicked.

To your point, there is a lot of opportunity and this is where the space will go. What do you think is holding this back? I'm sure we're not the first people to have this discussion.

[Paul Chaney]

Thanks Jon for weighing in with some excellent points. I'm probably over-simplifying what it would take to make a transition from email to FB, but still think it's an idea worth considering. Perhaps when fan pages support iframe technology, the idea would be simpler to deploy.

Regardless, there is some exciting stuff taking place within the social commerce sector. It's a cool space to watch for sure.

[WebMarketer]

When I think of social media as a converstaion rather than shouting across the room to people at a gathering, I wonder of the effectiveness of these types of advertising tactics.

I believe that to be effective with social media the messags have to be more personal or will be discarded as one more intrusion.

It isn't enough to have an offering but more important to listen to what is being discussed, and then offering a response--build trust in the act of listening first and responding later, wouldn't you agree?