This is what I like to see. Really broken down. This is not a topic anyone can just say, Hate/Love. It has grey areas of etiquette. I totally support and use auto Welcome DM’s, mine says-
Yes, I confess, this is an auto Welcome! But! Plz don’t hesitate 2@me anytime! I Luv 2connect w/u! Tweet Up! Blessings!

Seriously! I am not going to send that out manually every time!
Great post/stats.
Noelle

I loathe auto DMs, no matter if they are hawking wares or just saying thank you. Is an automated “thank you” really a sincere thank you? I don’t think it is.

I love this data, thanks for putting some numbers in front of us!

Auto-anything can get slippery. I was nervous when I set up my first website to create an auto-response for emails, but it was nice for people to get that, “I got your email” note right away.

I still fear banking issues with the plethora of auto-withdrawals on my checking account.

I do like to know there is a real person typing on the other end of a tweet, but I’m OK with an auto thank you (at least now that I know they exist: the first time you find out it isn’t a special DM sort of hurts).

Anyway, thanks in advance for following! http://www.twitter.com/tweric

While it’s nice to be thanked for following, auto DM’s have the opposite effect on me.

I’m a big art fan and recently started following a bunch of museums and galleries including the Getty Museum. Here’s what they sent me:

“Greetings Peter, Thanks for following our tweets, delightful to have a Mattapoisett-based sea fever entrepreneur in our flock. Interesting concept! Look forward to your tweetback.”

My interest, respect and enthusiasm for the Getty which was already high went up even more. Like life, building relationships in social media takes effort not auto DMs ala junk mail.

Thanks for posting this and for leading the social media revolution!

Fair Winds,
@petermello / @weeklyleader

The automated message that I send out not only is focused on the follower, but I frequently get Thank You’s from my followers.

It’s not really a marketing message, but it is. We are a Internet radio station that focuses on original music world wide,

We are always wanting more listeners and artists.

In short they are happy for us to give them links to the live internet stream and ask them to submitt their original music.

@KCcafeRadio (edit: I updated & linked this Twitter address -LJF)

I pretty much dislike all automated DMs. At first, I didn’t really mind the occasional “Thank you” if it didn’t have links in it. But now, I feel that if a person sincerely cared that I was following, he or she would take the 20 seconds it takes to actually DM me something personal and/or worthwhile. If I don’t have something personal to say to a new follower, I don’t send a DM right away. Simple enough concept, no?

Not that I think this will deter the growth of automated direct messages, but thanks for posting these survey results. Definitely interesting! ~ Erika

Auto DMs are a pet peeve of mine. No matter what the content of the DM, if its auto generated then its impersonal. Social media is just the opposite. It real, its personal, and requires real participation. Its not about auto tools and texting robots. Auto DMs have a negative effect on me. I don’t like them.

I don’t do automated DMs, although I don’t mind ones that are pleasant and tell me something new about the originator. Clearly, the most objectionable are those that offer some kind of “free” download or similar. (My favorite line is the one that tells you how to get your own automated message generator!)

I personally contact some new followers with a thanks if I feel like I have something to say relevant to their interests.Otherwise, I assume that a conversation can begin later when one of us tweets something to start it.

@rogerdooley

Everybody claims to hate pop-over, fade-ins, and exit pop-ups in order to drive email list sign-ups, too. The problem is they work like a mofo. So if you wanted to engage in email marketing and list-building, you could choose not to do that because “everybody hates it” or you could choose to use these tools because of the undeniable proof that they work.

If everybody hates, them, how can they possibly work? Apparently, people don’t hate them enough to not use them.

Now let’s bring this back to Twitter.

If you follow someone and they auto-DM you, do you unfollow them? I bet you don’t. I bet most people don’t. People can’t click on a link that isn’t there, so including the link means it will get clicks. (And when I say “you” I mean it in a general sense, not anyone specifically.)

We may have another clear case of something that “everybody hates” but which doesn’t matter because it works.

You might think I’m defending my own actions, talking like this, but as of now, I do not use auto-welcome DMs on Twitter.

Thanks for putting some effort into the research on this. Very enlightening stuff!

http://twitter.com/remarkablogger

Thanks for pulling this together Laura! Very interesting data!

Happy New Year.

Greg

I have no issue with automatic DMs. I use them. I think they’re better than sending nothing and when you get a large number of followers, it would take up a lot of time to reply to each one personally. On the receiving end, I never see them as I’ve got it fixed that way. I don’t miss them nor do I expect to get them. Certainly if my followers object, I can simply not send anything. I think it’s much ado about nothing. But I do appreciate the individual going to the trouble of the survey and graphs and would welcome more scientific study on all of these issues that seem to bother people. With the economy crashing and the war on terror and the ills of the world, I find worrying about automated DMs rather asinine.

I have a bot that auto-DM’s, but it’s only to provide usage instructions. Otherwise I FULLY hate them.

Great contribution to the convo, Laura–thanks!

I want to ask Susanna…or anyone else who reads her comment and knows the answer–how do you “fix it” so you never see the DMs sent from bots?

Seems to me that the option to kill those would be something maaaaaany people (including me!) would use, but I’ve never seen such an option in Twitter.

I always send a “thanks for following me” response, but it’s always hand-typed and I try to say something personal about checking their website, or that they have a nice Twitter background. It never crossed my mind that just saying “Thanks for following” could be irritating! I thought it was just polite. I never include a link, and don’t much care for the ones I get that include a link.

Very interesting survey - thanks for sharing!

How many times do “pop-over, fade-ins, and exit pop-ups” actually work because someone accidentally clicked them? I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve closed a link without engaging because I was tricked into clicking, and I remember that, and I avoid sites that use them profusely. I can’t imagine there are stats that say I’m in the minority.

As for autoDM. It’s about my time. I may not appreciate it, but I don’t mind until it becomes an an annoying habit on the sender’s part.

@Deb - to specifically answer your question about accidentally clicking on the forms: it depends on what’s on it. With mine, it’s not possible. The only thing to do with the form is enter a name and an email or close it. Nothing accidental can happen to inflate numbers or create false responses (other than a person deliberately enter in fraudulent information). The form only appears once per unique visitor ip address. I get sign-ups every day, and it even says right on the form that I will sell them stuff, and to not sign up if they don’t want to receive marketing messages. People still sign up. From where I’m standing, that doesn’t much look like “hate” to me.

In all of this, simply building up numbers to throw disposable sales attempts at people is not a very smart long-term strategy. The point in driving sign-ups is to provide immense value to the audience (whether it’s email or Twitter, doesn’t matter). If you do it right, when you are actually selling something, it’s really just another form of value you’re providing. That is where most marketers fail. Nobody complains about the people who are really succeeding at this, because nobody’s mad at them.

I hate those auto-DMs, too. If people are too busy building their list to send a personal thank you, don’t send one. I use Twitter to build relationships, and if the person sends me an auto-DM, it’s clear that we are not on the same page.

You didn’t cover the people who send out DM ads. I have UNfollowed several people who, once I started following them, sent me DMs every day - pretty much duplicating what they tweeted, or inviting me to their blog or website. Hello - I’m following you on Twitter. If I want to see what you have to say, I will check my timeline, or go to your page.

I don’t mind a message but I hate a sales letter or link…. It just seems like it is disingenuous - and I want to connect with genuine people.

Great article

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