Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Database Marketing at NIU

Accoriding to a recent ebook, the U.S. Educational system is failing in terms of the demand for skilled workers and there is predicted to be a 1.5 million shortfall in terms of the number of workers that can anlayze data and make effective decisions. Here at NIU we are working to bridge that gap and help our students be productive in the workforce.

As the semester ends I want to say how proud I am of each student in database marketing class at NIU this year. The students stepped up to the plate and learned a great deal in terms of how to prepare data for analysis and various statistical modelling techniques. Their final project was to find patterns in real-life company data and build a valid model around that data. They used regression, logistic regression, clustering and other techniques. More importantly, they learned how to recognize what technique to use and in what context. Whether they become modelers or not, and most won't, they have a rich understanding of how these techniques are used in the workplace and I have a real sense of pride in their accomplishments. Anyone looking for undergraduates to train in this area can look to our Interactive Program.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Using Screenr for class demonstrations

I teach database marketing and marketing technology in the spring and plan to use http://screenr.com to create simple demonstrations of how to use statistical procedures and aspects of google adwords. I think this will help the students learn the material as they can easily look up the keystrokes after class. Here is a sample of my first effort. I am NIUIMPROF on screenr and a youtube channel is next!


Wednesday, October 26, 2011

NIU's Interactive Marketing Program Career Panel

We had a great career panel last night in Barsema Hall with three outstanding former students. We asked them how they found their job, how long it took, the process, did they have any advice for new grads and a number of other questions. They all took advantage of NIU resources to find their jobs and emphasized the projects from their classes in their job interviews. I was so proud of our recent grads and all they are accomplishing in their careers.

All of these companies are looking to hire recent college grads for entry level positions.

Kevin Cunningham, Marketing Solutions Consultant, 2011: works for Covalent Marketing a boutique consultancy working for the Fortune 500 and has done social media scans and database work. Kevin found his job through networking with a frat brother. From the ELC project where students act as junior consultants he learned he did not want to be pigeonholed and to be a liason between IT and business. The Interactive Marketing Technology course MKTG 470 and the Restaurant.com project were key to his obtaining his job and he wishes he had taken more coding, html or SQL.( COMS 359 is a good fit for learning HTML and the more technical aspects of web design). Kevin constantly learns and uses the netvibes.com dashboard site to organize his information.

Will Johnson, Advertising Specialist, 2010: works for Uline, a b2b shipping supply company in internet advertising, moving to catalogue area and a DM focus and is searching for a replacement so he can move up. Will found his job through 'Meet the Firm' night in a way because he had met the company at that event and when he applied they remembered him. Will delayed graduation to take a search internship at Zebra Technologies and then parlayed the experience into an offer at Uline. Will recommends the OMIS database applications course OMIS 352 for an understanding of how to put databases together from a technical view and how to learn SQL. He found the Google Adwords challenge classroom experience helped him in interviews as well as following up and getting some of the Google certifications. All the guests panelists stressed the importance of looking at data, knowing, how to understand, manipulate and speak intelligently about the company information.

Thorne Washington, Search Specialist, 2011: works for Leapfrog Online, an affiliate marketing, SEO firm that is moving toward agency model. Thorne is a Search engine specialist on the automotive side and writing ad content for Mazda and AutoNation, soon, Kia. He got his job through an Email through the IM Program listserv. Thorne got two offers this way and Leapfrog was a better fit. What really helped Thorne in interviews was stressing the projects he did in his classes; everyone who interviewed him was really interested in the Restaurant.com project and his having had a chance to apply marketing technology tools to a real business. The direct marketing project and its emphasis on Excel was also a help as Thorne manages very large, 8,000 plus rows, spreadsheets for keyword bidding. Thorne has done the Google Adwords certification and pursued that on his own, which impressed his future employer that he was the extra mile and had a passion for the field. Both Thorne and Will read the Google Analytics blog to stay up to date and Thorne has also pursued the Adwords certification on his own.


Thursday, October 20, 2011

Zynga Direct means Direct is Social

Social gaming company Zynga recently unveiled Zynga Direct as a way to distribute games directly to players on computers and mobile devices and not just on Facebook. "It’s a platform for a direct relationship with consumers whether on the web, or on mobile, to give you a whole sandbox and create socialness about the games and not just within the games,” Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus said this month at the company’s Unleashed event in San Francisco. This announcement shows that direct marketing is more relevant than ever. Social media applications are wonderful ways to monitor conversations but savvy marketers will use social media to reach out to a customer base. Zynga will learn who its customers are and be able to make more relevant offers to them develop relationships. We recently renamed our Direct Marketing Course Direct and Multichannel marketing to reflect this continued trend.

Tip of the Day: Collect information from your customers on your Facebook page. Make an offer and in exchange collect an email address.


Thursday, October 13, 2011

What is modern marketing?

Here is the list of topics from Vivastream that were covered at DMA 2011 in Boston. Vivastream is aa neat application that let show attendees see what topics were covered and participate in conversations about them as well as get more information on the sessions and otehr atteendes, Direct and Digital are truly merged I think. I am studying the language of marketing for another project that is not limited to Direct and Digital. Is this what your marketing life is like?

Acquisition Advanced Advertising Affiliate Marketing Affiliate Programs Analytics Android App Applications Apps Attribution Augmented Reality B2b B2b Marketing Behavioral Behavioral Targeting Blackberry Blogging Blogs Bookmarking Brand Experience Brand Marketing Broadcast Media Buying Business Analytics Business Insights Call Centers Campaign Strategy Catalog Cognitive Advertising Compliance Consumption Content Content Marketing Copy Copywriting Coupons CPA Networks CPS Creative Creativity CRM Cross-Channel Culture Customer Acquisition Customer Data Customer Experience Customer Insights Customer Intelligence Customer Value Customer-Centricity Data Data Breach Data Governance Data Integration Data Management Data Mining Data Optimization Database Marketing Deliverability Design Development Device Id Devices Digital Direct Direct Mail Direct Marketing DRTV Dynamic Content Ecommerce Email Marketing Email Prospecting Facebook Free Content Fund Raising Gamification Gaming Green Highmark Human Behavior Triggers Inbox Influencer Information Overload Inserts Insights Integrated Marketing Interactive TV IPhone KPIs Lead Generation Lifecycle List Rental Local Search Location Location Based Services Location-Based Loyalty Mail Market Research Marketing Database Marketing Definition Marketing Mix Modeling Media Media Convergence Media Mix Message Recall Metrics Mobile Mobile Apps Mobile Commerce Mobile Coupons Mobile Loyalty Mobile Marketing Mobile Web Modeling Multi-Channel Multichannel Marketing Multivariable Testing New Media Offers Online Online Advertising Online Display Online Recognition Payment Processing Predictive Modeling Print Privacy Process Productivity Profiling Purchase Data QR Codes Real-Time Real-Time Execution Real-Time Marketing Recency-Frequency Recognition Regulation Renewals Retail Networks Retention Renewals Retail Networks Retention Revenue Growth Rewards ROI Scoring Search Search Engine Marketing Security Segmentation Sentiment SEO Share Of Wallet Site Visits Small Business SMS Social Social Business Social CRM Social Listening Social Marketing Social Media Social Media Data Social Metrics Social Networks Social. Mobile Spend Data Structured Data Structured Unstructured Data Tablets Targeting Television Testing The Marketing Funnel Trends Trigger Triggered Communications Twitter Unstructured Data Value Optimization Video Walled Gardens Website Usability Website Zero Moment Of Truth

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Third Edition Internet Marketing Text by Roberts and Zahay

I was flattered earlier in the year to be asked to co-author one of the leading texts in Internet Marketing. My co-author MaryLou Roberts and I learned that the ISBN for the 3rd edition of Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies, Roberts and Zahay, is available. ISBN 9781133625902.

There's a nice site for the new edition

The site contains a detailed Table of Contents that should help people plan courses. We cover the strategic use of internet and its direct marketing roots as well as a number of different acquisition and retention strategies such as search, social and email as well as measurement and future trends.

Shipment for the book is early/mid January. If that's a problem for any instructors, let me or MaryLou know and we will see what we can do for you to help you with your class.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

NIU IM Student learns about social media firsthand

Tyler Miller, an Interactive Marketing senior student reports on his social media internship and says , "Over the summer I interned at an experiential marketing agency in downtown Chicago, Legacy Marketing Partners. They are currently on Event Marketer Magazine’s “Top 100 Agencies”. While there, I worked alongside their social media guru and aided her in developing projects for clients.

My work consisted partly of online research into what trends were and who the top influencers were on social media for particular interests and industries. The clients I worked on projects for were all major national and multi-national brands, ranging from alcohol brands to appliance brands to quick service restaurants. During my time there I helped develop ideas for how social media could be used to enhance real world events, as well as programs that would take place entirely online. I was afforded the opportunity to help with projects for current clients and for potential business.

I learned a lot about all the work that goes into a social media campaign and how social media campaigns tie in with those in other channels. I was well prepared for this experience through my classes at NIU where we had already had some exposure to social media marketing and had worked with a social media tool. However, in my internship I also learned a lot that can't be taught in the classroom, such as the dynamics of an agency, how agencies run, how they work with clients, and how they often work with other agencies."

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

NIU's Interactive Marketing Program Update

At Northern Illinois University, we have had our Interactive Marketing area since the early 00's and graduated our first students with a certificate in Interactive Marketing in 2007. The program is both online and offline channels and includes direct (where we teach email as a direct channel), imc, database marketing, Internet marketing (search, social, web design, etc.), and marketing technology where they drive traffic to a live web site acting as affiliates for Restaurant.com with two channels of their choice (10% of traffic is then donated back to charity). This marketing technology course is also taught as part of the Google Adwords challenge.

Forty students a year receive our certificate on their transcript and work for a variety of companies. Marketing Majors get a traditional major and then take four out of five courses in this area. We teach the managerial and strategic side, but students learn ExactTarget, Alterian's SM2, SPSS/Modeler and a variety of other technologies.

Let me know if you are interested in hiring our graduates for internships or full time positions or in joining our advisory board and helping us chart our direction.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Students work to beat benchmark cluster


This semester in Database Marketing we had the unique opportunity to work on some real-life data from Restaurant.com, a generous sponsor of our program. Here is a picture of my students working on a unique two-step cluster model to try to create a segmentation scheme better on some variable than the one that was presented by Restaurant.com. The students have a number of variables to choose from to create their clusters and I have a picture above of their hard work...is that steam I see coming from their heads or is it just the promise of extra credit?

I just came back from the DMEF/DMA conferences and a lot of other educators cannot believe what our students can do in analytics at an undergraduate level. After great preparation in our Marketing Research class, the students are able to analyze augmented customer databases and solve real-world problems using SPSS as a data analysis tool. Many of our students have gone to work at Nielson, Millward Brown and others and the analytical preparation they received has helped them on the job. Let us know if you need recent grads with these skills.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Email still a powerhouse in internet marketing

Email as promotional activity has exploded in recent years, and most forecasters believe that its growth is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. A recent survey by Strongmail showed that email marketing was the top area of business budget growth for marketers, with 65% of marketers surveyed planning to increase their spending on dmail marketing. Why this continued growth from what has been termed the ‘granddaddy’ of internet mediums? After all, email started many years ago and focus tends to be on new media like social and mobile.

Email offers marketers a fast, flexible and highly controllable format. Email is essentially direct mail on steroids because the customer is contacted directly and different offers and methods of engagement can be tested to find the most effective means of communication.

Interestingly, email has proven to be a more powerful retention tool than an acquisition too and according to the same StrongMail 2011 marketing Trends Report mentioned above, increasing subscriber engagement tops the list of important email marketing initiatives. The Direct Marketing Association reports that about 73% of businesses are focused on Customer Retention with their email program, versus, 27% who are focused on customer acquisition. However, as the Pew 2009 Spam report notes, many users are having less problems with email and are becoming more sophisticated in dealing with spam; 71% use filters offered by their email service or employers to block spam.

So don't rule out email as a powerful retention and engagement tool; email will be around for a long time to come.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Social Media Value


On Wednesday, May 18th, Dr. Lauren Labrecque spoke to a group at NIU’s day-long Interactive Marketing conference about the value of social media. Social Media continues to be a “hot topic” in interactive marketing and it doesn’t look like this will change anytime soon.

Lauren writes "As echoed in the CADMEF’s IMC Roundtable discussions, oftentimes marketers want to jump straight into tactics instead of focusing on developing strategy. This is especially true for social media, as companies act quickly to keep up with its rapid evolution. Before racing onto the next trend, marketers should sit back and ask themselves, “What am I trying to accomplish?” and “What value am I offering to my customers?” The “build it and they will come” mentality doesn’t cut it in social media. Companies need to offer something of value to consumers– create unique experiences that make them want to connect with you again, across different channels.

A strong social media campaign should consist of three steps- (1) listening, (2) planning, and (3) engaging.



Social Media Planning Stages
For the listening stage, marketers should conduct a “brand audit” in order to gain insights into consumers’ perceptions of the brand.

I highlighted a number of paid and free tools that can help marketers achieve this goal. Popular paid tools include Alterian SM2 (which I’ve used in my Internet Marketing Class), Radian6, and Meltwater Buzz. These tools offer a historical look at the brand– for example Alterian’s SM program has a historical database storing around 4 years of social media data.

Marketers can monitor peaks in brand mentions and attribute these events such as advertising, new product launches, etc. Sentiment analysis offers marketers the ability to see what words are frequently used in conjunction with the brand. I gave the example comparing the sentiment and themes around Skechers Tone-ups versus Reebok Easy Tones. When looking at the word cloud for Skechers, negative words such as “pain,” “discomfort,” and “ugly” appear, while these words are noticeably absent from Reebok’s word cloud. Reports can also provide information to help identify heavy brand influencers, along with demographic and geographic profiles.

Much of the same information can be glistened by using free tools; however, the marketer faces a challenge in bringing all of this data together since none of these free tools offer all of the features available with the paid tools. Therefore, marketers will have to conduct several analyses with different tools. Also, the majority of these tools lack the ability to view historic data.

Some free tools I discussed include:
Brandtags http://www.brandtags.net/
Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts
Social Mention http://socialmention.com/
Tweetfeel http://www.tweetfeel.com/
Backtype http://www.backtype.com/
TweetPsych http://tweetpsych.com
Twitter Advanced Search http://search.twitter.com/advanced
Social Mention http://www.socialmention.com/
Blog Pulse http://www.blogpulse.com/


Information from the listening stage can provide insights for planning and ultimately engaging with consumers.


Consumer Motivations for Using Social Media
For the planning stage, marketers should focus on understanding consumer motivations for engaging in social media. I identified the 4 C’s of consumer motivations– create, connect, control, and compete– and gave examples of successful social media campaigns that tap these motivations. Again, the key is to make a reason for people to engage with your brand on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, or one of the many other social media channels. One classic example that speaks to all of these motivations is the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign. In this example consumers are able to create their own Doritos ad, which allows them to connect with the brand and other fans and compete for votes from other fans. The online community, not the brand, controls the selection process and the lucky winners see their ad on the Super Bowl (and may even win prize money). Other examples I discussed include the Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign, Mt. Dew Democracy, and the BlendTec “Will it Blend?” series.

Although I discussed each of the steps (listening, planning, and engaging) in a linear process, each stage should be revisited throughout the campaign. Don’t execute your strategy and stop listening, instead keep your eyes and ears open for more feedback to improve your relationship with your customers.

Lastly, use social media in synergy with other channels. For examples, include incentives for customers to opt-in to receiving email communications or provide coupons for discounts at your ecommerce site. Try to continue the relationship through these different channels by informing customers of new products, specials, and news."

Thanks Lauren. For more from Dr. Labrecque, follow her blog.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Dr. Zahay-Blatz on Web Site Strategy




I just wanted to share with you some of my comments on web site strategy from last week's "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing" seminar at NIU Naperville. There I am above having a great time telling it like it is!

My Ph.D. was in both marketing and strategy and it was a pleasure when I went back to school in 1996 after so many years of industry experience to study strategic concepts and understand how they can be used to explain and predict what is going on in business, even in what appears to be a turbulent time of discontinuous change, like ours.

We first looked at basic concepts like core competencies and the positioning map (sometimes called a perceptual map), where you take two dimensions and put them on a simple grid formed by two perpendicular lines. We used the web portal business and looked at the dimensions of providing general information and being a trusted news source. Both Yahoo and AOL have been struggling with their identities lately and AOL recently merged with the Huffington Post and has been developing the local news site 'patch' to become a trusted news source.

However, more people actually get their news from Yahoo than any other source, including CNN! AOL aspires to Yahoo's actual competitive position but is acting confused as to its role right now. I think Yahoo needs to pull out the tried and true positioning map and take a look at its true competitive edge. I suggested that Microsoft buy AOL to get a uniqueness in the marketplace (which I forgot to mention it actually tried to do a few years ago..think that AOL would be more open to acquisition now?) Here's the link to the ebizmba listing of the top web news sites for May 2011.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/news-websites

We then looked at the generic positionings such as low-cost, differentiation, both and stuck-in-the-middle and mapped these positions to Walmart, Target, Kmart and Nordstrom and looked at their web sites to see if the basic positioning was being conveyed. Why don't you take a look at let me know what you think? I think too often the web site gets taken over by the technologists and not the marketers and doesn't convey the company's strategy. Branding is becoming so important on the web because of the transparency of the internet in terms of pricing and product features. These generic positionings, reinforced on the web, can help the customer remember what our product is all about.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Joel Book on Interactive Engagement




We had a great time at "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing" at NIU's Naperville campus yesterday. We spent a full day with some great guest speakers that I will be highlighting in my blog (hopefully a few of the participants will help out as guest bloggers for the sessions that I missed). Food and facilities were great also so Thanks to our support teams at NIU Naperville and NIU Outreach. Keep following us on the hashtag #niunet on twitter.

Folks really enjoyed Joel Book (@joelbook, http://www.linkedin.com/in/joelbook) from Exact Target's presentation on innovative brands and how they are using interactive marketing to attract and retain customers. That's Joel in the picture above 'engaging' with two of my colleagues from NIU Outreach. Joel said that successful brand are using a triangle offense of email, social and mobile to engage customers once they have come on board. He said that 58% of consumers begin the day with email, which aids the buying process, improves service and maximizes retention for customers. Those who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than non-readers of email.

Best Buy stays connected with its customers via email after the sale and so does Scott's Turf Builder. Johnston & Murphy personalizes its offers based on customer information. Multi-channel interaction is a must and the true challenge is to manage the customer conversation in both inbound and outbound channels. Exact Target is working to become an Interactive Marketing Hub where the audience and content can be managed and reported on centrally. Campaign management certainly needs some help as our students learned managing just two channels in their live project for Restaurant.com this semester.

Some other Joel Book gems include "Serving has become the new selling" and "Think it through, not just think it up." I am sure that we will all be quoting Joel on these and many more gems from his talk. I am so glad that we have a relationship with thought leader Exact Target and have been using the tool in the classroom since 2004. More on the conference to come!

Monday, May 16, 2011

Mixing, Matching and Messing With the Push and Pull Marketplace: Don Schultz tells it like it is in IMC on May 18th

Don Schultz, internationally known consultant and emeritus professor at Northwestern University will speak at our 'Hot Topics in Internet Marketing' conference on Wednesday May 18th at NIU Naperville on "Mixing, Matching and Messing With the Push and Pull Marketplace." Don is one of the leading experts on IMC and essentially created the field a few years back. We are excited to have him at the conference. I have had a chance to get a sneak peak at Don's slides and I think you will really enjoy the message he has to present.

Don will talk about how the traditional marketer's toolkit, the 4 p's and mass communication, has become obsolete and what we need to do as marketers to operate successfully in the new world of integrated marketing communications. Don always has provocative comments and I just heard him speak to an academic audience on Friday about what we can do to cope in this time of discontinuous change. I don't want to give away the whole store but I do want to invite you once again to attend our "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing Conference" on Wed. May 18th at NIU Naperville. There is still time to register and to get 33% off the full price of $399. Thanks so much for your attention and I hope to see you there. TO REGISTER: http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Jennifer Veesenmeyer from Stratigent to talk on 'web analytics sins"

Jennifer reports that she will speak at our "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing Event" May 18th at NIU Naperville on the following topic.

"7 Deadly Sins of Web Analytics

Web analytics can be a powerful tool for driving your organization forward, but for many organizations, the reality falls far short of the promise. Instead of using data to improve websites and campaigns, those organizations are drowning in useless data. Jennifer will identify the seven deadly sins that prevent organizations from achieving the promise of web analytics. Then she will share her best tips for extracting actionable insight, designing dashboards, establishing a data driven culture, and incorporating multichannel metrics (such as social and mobile). Learn practical ways to overcome common obstacles so you can unleash the full power of web analytics."

I agree with Jennifer from my years in database marketing and my research in the area...most organizations don't fully understand how to mine their data and that is particularly true of web data. Do you agree?

There is still time to register for the event at http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Projects drive success of Interactive Marketing Program

We just completed a successful project with Restaurant.com in which our students in the advanced course Marketing 470 (Interactive Marketing Technology) worked in groups and acted as affiliates to Restaurant.com and used two marketing channels to drive traffic to their own landing pages. The students chose their own channels and measured and reported the results.

The channels chosen included email, google adwords, facebook advertising, twitter campaigns, facebook fan pages and contests and some offline channels such as campus-wide flyers and ads in our campus newspaper. Overall, we drove almost $8,000 worth of traffic to the site in the form of new Restaurant.com certificates in a four week period, 10% of which will be donated to a charity of the students' choice.

Students in this project got to compare channels and see the synergies in both. It was a great opportunity as a professor to coach them through the challenges and rewards of a real-life marketing campaign. This project is unprecedented in terms of interactive marketing education in its design and scope and in the level of involvement of the project company. Students had to work with Restaurant.com to get their plans approved and implemented and learned about project management and how to get things done in a company as well as about channel strategies and channel synergy.

Students learned about the legal aspects of marketing as one group had planned a campaign around "March Madness." When they learned it was a trademarked term, the group switched to "Buzzer Beater" as the tag line for its offers. This integrated campaign using emails and adwords advertisements around certain themed events and holidays performed well.

We used Omniture reports and Google Analytics to report the results and also some of the analysis tools from Facebook and other sources as appropriate.

Another advisory board member, Alterian, donated the use of its SM2 software in our classroom, which is a social media monitoring package. This tool was also invaluable in our project as we used the tool in conjunction with the keyword tool in google adwords to find out how people talk about Restaurant.com so we could refine our marketing campaigns. One group used twitter and facebook exclusively to drive traffic to the site and also blogged on influential sites as identified by SM2.

We also used Alterian's SM2 product in the Marketing 370 (Internet Marketing) course taught by Dr. Lauren Lacbrecque. Students chose a particular company and monitored the social media buzz and made recommendations for improving the company's social media buzz.

I am reminded of other successful student projects over the years in our program for Marketing 370:

2009-2010: Students participated in the Google Adwords challenge on a national basis and helped drive traffic to ten web sites that had not used Adwords in the past.

2009: A viral video campaign helped our interactive and sales programs and a startup firm rise high in the google search rankings. We were noted for our success improving our search rankings for our program through this this campaign in Aaron Goldman's book, "Everything I know about Marketing I learned from Google." I love talking to people who read the book and find out about our program that way.

2006-2008: Students also did live campaigns comparing two media channels and most of the groups helped raise money for charity. We raised over $10,000 for charity over three years, primarily for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (supporting my, Dr. Zahay-Blatz's, triathlons for that effort. Students were required to use email (Exact Target, which is also provided for use in our classroom by board member Exact Target) and one other channel and got to also got purchase lists and send out mailings or use social media, viral techniques and point of purchase and compare channel results.

2004-2005: Students worked on a variety of projects for industry including web site redesign efforts for major firms such as Careerbuilder, Teradata, Restaurant.com and Smurfit-Stone.

In our database and data mining course, Marketing 455, students have since the year 2005 been using data provided by the Direct Marketing Association based on real-life company datasets to analyzed marketing problems using statistical software and make suggestions based on the results.

It has been quite a journey from our first projects to this latest, most sophisticated real-world experiences that we provide our students. I know they are well prepared to begin their careers in interactive marketing.

If you want to get a taste of what we do in the classroom, come to our May 18th "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing Conference" http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu. It's a lot like our classes except no grades or exams!!!

Monday, May 2, 2011

Joel Book from Exact Target to speak on May 18th

If you have not heard Joel Book of Exact Target speak, you really should! He always has wonderful examples about how companies can use email marketing alone or in conjunction with other media to boost reponse rate and foster relationships over time.

On May 18th at our NIU Internet Marketing Conference, "Hot Topics in Internet Marketing" http://www.internetmarketing.niu.edu. Joel will talk about
"The New Dynamics of Customer Engagement"

To engage today’s empowered and influential consumer, smart marketers are effectively leveraging digital media to generate leads, aid the customer’s buying
process, and develop powerful communities of brand evangelists.

In this session, Joel will show several of the country’s top brands and companies are using Email, Mobile, and Social Media as the “Triangle Offense” otheir multi-channel strategy to accelerate marketing and sales performance.

What Attendees Will Learn

•Why Email is not dead or dying, and why it has become the most effective channel
for “business getting” and “business keeping.”

• How top companies are using Email + CRM to nurture leads, aid the customer’s
buying process, and improve sales force productivity

• How to use Social Media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to attract new
customers and expand your database of email subscribers

• Why mobile has become vitally important for selling and serving customers, and
what you need to know to effectively leverage smart phones and tablet PCs

Examples of Digital Marketing Innovation Will Include

BtoC
• Scotts Miracle-Gro
• Papa John’s
• Belk Stores
• Crocs
• Baxter Pharmaceutical

BtoB
• Volvo Construction Equipment
• Hitachi Data Systems
• Milwaukee Electric Tool
• Genworth Financial
• Microsoft

Use the code mktg33 to receive 33% off early bird pricing by May 6th.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Google shares management insights with students

One of the groups in Maketing 470 reported on the Okner symposium they attended this semester: "As part of the group that attended the Okner Symposium at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, we had a thoroughly enjoyable time. The keynote speaker from Google, Kristin MacGreogor, provided great insight into what makes a strong company. For example, she referenced how Google allows its engineers to use 20% of their time—roughly one day each week—to work on any project they want. Many great Google products, such as, Gmail and Google Earth, were borne of this free time. She also spoke of how Google doesn’t wait until a product is perfect to release it. They simply do it well and then continue to tweak it once it’s gone to market.

In addition to the keynote speaker from Google, we had a great time at the roundtable discussions. We had the chance to sit in on the roundtable with Warren C. Lillund, the Vice President of Consulting with Hunter Business Group, LLC. He discussed the ways that students can leverage social media sites like LinkedIn to get jobs. We also had a chance to sit with Chris Remington of Trivera Interactive. At his roundtable, we learned about where interactive is going and how it’s being currently used in industry.

We also enjoyed the interview with NIU alum Will Johnson. Getting to hear firsthand accounts of a recent graduate of NIU was great. From that we learned some things to do and not do in a job search. The most beneficial takeaway was simply not to settle. Find something you love to do and do it.

Overall, the Okner was a great day and we were glad to have been a part of it."

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Students rock ROI; Razorfish helps to explain why

We went over this week how to calculate Return on Marketing Investment, ROMI, in the simplest sense. For our project each group got $200 to drive traffic to the Restaurant.com web site. Most groups have made back their money, for a positive ROMI of dollars made/dollars spent of 100%, with some groups making over a 600% ROMI. I told them to put this all on their resume as employers would like these numbers.

Of course these calculations are also just marketing acquisition numbers and don't tell the story in terms of customer lifetime value. I heard a presentation yesterday at the CADM luncheon from Razorfish (Chad Maxwell and Teresa Caro presenting) on their work on marketing segmentation by communications preference and the engagement expectations by channel (http://liminal.razorfish.com/).

In our class, our Students have to pick two communications channels for their project Our groups in class using email have done quite well and individual email and the company web site are still the most valued communications channels in terms of customer's engagement expectations, according to this research.

The goal once the customer has been acquired is to keep them around and keep them engaged. Razorfish, working with Virgin Airlines developed four customer segments based on engagement preference. In spite of the fact the company is quite a savvy online marketer, not all of its customers were socially savvy (only 22%) and those who were traditionally engaged and like email newsletters for example (11%) of the sample, were also among the most profitable for the company.

I will talk to the students next week about engagement now that we have spent a semester on customer acquisition, and had some fun to boot!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

NIU grad is walking testimony for 'networking'

Kevin Cunningham, who graduates in May of 2011 with our Interactive Marketing Certificate and an undergraduate marketing degree reports:

"I came in contact with an alumnus of the fraternity that I am a part of as I knew that he was in the marketing field. As I became more and more familiar with what he did, I became more and more intrigued with the position available at Covalent Marketing.

Since that Covalent Marketing is such a small company, my first interview was with one of the two partners who is also the CTO. After that, I moved onto interviews with the CSO and the CEO. I was soon offered a position as a Solutions Consultant; things move so quickly and dynamically in a smaller company! The primary clients of Covalent Marketing are Fortune 500 companies and higher.

Covalent Marketing consults in the areas of the interactive marketing department taught here at Northern Illinois University: SEO, SEM, social media, web analytics, and email marketing are all "hot topics" that I will have the chance to learn more about and ultimately impact clients with immediately in the business world. Covalent Marketing also uses many business intelligence (BI) programs and marketing resource management (MRM) tools to help solve client needs.

Established in 2007, Covalent Marketing began when its founders started talking about the state of database marketing in today's CRM (Customer Relationship Management) world. Very quickly, they agreed there was a major void in how many organizations conduct their long-term marketing strategies. In today's marketplace, where the ‘marketing awareness' of the individual has progressed, so have the ways in which organizations can communicate with customers. The founders deeply believe that the next evolution of database marketing resides in building better, stronger relationships with your customers. Needless to say, I am extremely excited."

Congratulations on your new position Kevin!!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Brad Kleinman from OMI shares Facebook Marketing tips with NIU Students


Brad Kleinman Director of Education from OMI (Online Marketing Institute/Online Marketing Connect) spoke to an overflowing room of over seventy students last night on the nuts and bolts Facebook marketing.

One of the things that I think is relevant to our class project in driving traffic to the Restaurant.com site is the concept that you can't 'set it and forget it' in Facebook (or any online marketing). In a three week project like this one, we need to check the progress of our campaigns every day. In terms of Facebook marketing, post and update frequently.

I also thought that Brad did a good job of articulating the benefits of a fan page versus a group in Facebook. In talking about the advantages of ability to customize, add in applications, have a vanity URL(if you have over 25 fans) and access Facebook Insights capability which will tell you page metrics, Brad really made the case for using the fan page.

Brad also talked about measuring both fan size and interactions and quality and quantity of posts to develop an intelligent understanding of how the fan page is benefiting your organization. Brad also suggested a variety of ways to keep your page fresh and update frequently. These suggestions included:

Publish informative pieces of content such as interesting articles and videos
Post and tag photos of customers, business associates, co-workers, and customers
Upload and tag video clips of your organization in action or a program in session
List an event for an open house or a social event for your prospects
Write a note about upcoming programs or success of a recent event
Ask a question through a poll or survey about how you can help
Reward your fans with giveaways, sweepstakes, or coupons
Keep your Facebook page up to date with RSS

There was a lot more in the talk so if you attended the event, check out the slides I just sent.

If you are just interested in learning more from Brad, contact him at: Brad@OnlineMarketingConnect.com







to posts from fans



Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Restaurant.com project in full swing at NIU

This semester in Marketing 470 we are doing something quite unique. The students are learning campaign management 'on the job' by acting as affiliates and driving traffic to the Restaurant.com (the company that sponsors my professorship) website. The students have picked two media channels, such as email, adwords, twitter, social media and blogs and have planned their campaigns and are now implementing. They will track the progress of their campaigns through landing pages and promotion codes that can be linked to their groups and get an idea of what it is like to run a campaign first hand.

This week I shared some of my project management tips with the class. Follow through, follow through, follow through is the main thing that my father always taught me and this principle really applies to project management. The students need to get information from personnel at R.com and are learning to follow up to make sure they meet their project goals. I emphasized that they need to complete the project in three weeks and although I put some 'slack time' in the schedule, another project management concept, they need to make sure they begin this week and then can measure the results of week one and make changes for week two, etc.

I also emphasized the importance of proofreading and checking the facts of every campaign. We had a guest speaker earlier in the semester that told us some 'war stories' about when things are not correct in marketing campaigns and the problems created by mistakes and how costly these mistakes can be. I encouraged each group to check their landing pages and make sure they look correct. Looks like the teams are up and running to a good start. Any other advice for our grads?

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Okner Symposium highlights IM grad's success

I talked a few months ago about Will Johnson, who is an Internet Marketing Specialist at Uline, managing several major search campaigns. Dr Labrecque and I attended CADMEF's Okner Symposium at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater last Friday with our Internet and Marketing Technology classes and were delighted that Will was featured on the career panel for recent graduates.

Upon reflection, I think what distinguished Will in his job search was that he was focused and directed and that he explored all possibilities. Will did not just look online. He attended job fairs and networking events and contact targeted companies he thought would be a good fit.

Will delayed his graduation by a semester to take an internship at Zebra Technologies which led right to a job a Uline. Will knew that he wanted search as an initial career and at the end of his internship targeted companies that he thought would be a good fit. Will also remembered meeting Uline at a Meet the Firm night last year and, upon investigating further, saw there were some search jobs open. He was honest and said he had some experience at Zebra and then some experience from our Google Adwords Challenge last year but did not exaggerate. His focus, perseverance and integrity won out and Will is started on an excellent career. Not bad for someone who graduated two months ago. Congratulations, Will and stay in touch!

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Alterian's SM2 hits the NIU campus!

This past week and a half we have had Alterian in our classroom twice in Marketing Technology to learn about how to analyze social media data. We learned some general background on social media and then learned the SM2 tool for use in the class project. What I learned is that it is important to look at not only frequency of mention as well as sentiment. Those companies that were ranked highest in mentions for the Super Bowl were not necessarily those that ranked highest in terms of sentiment.

Using SM2 I also realized how much of an art as well as a science these tools are. Looking through the social media postings for a particular topic I got a good feeling for the company I was researching in terms of their major competitors and how people think about the brand. As a quantitative researcher I was worried about how representative the sample was and how to really quantify some of this 'squishy' data. Still, SM2 is helpful in understanding how people think about your brand and we have emphasized the importance of technology for brand building in our class.

Is social media monitoring 'squishy' or valuable?

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Interview Tips from Meet the Firm Night at NIU

I heard the following panel speak on career advice for new graduates on Monday, February 7 at NIU's Meet the Firm Night:

Drew Butts, Enterprise Holdings, Matt McClusky, Aerotek, Erin Quinlan, McKesson Pharmaceutical Group, Jerry Keyes, White Lodging

The panel gave some good advice for new graduates and said some things I have noticed myself. One, they said that students on their resumes need to indicate how they can help the company, not what the company can do for them. The panel also said to be careful asking about time off, salary and vacation until the company brings these things up. Asking these questions too soon makes it seem like you are only interested in benefits and not benefiting the company. Finally, I noticed that the panel did not appreciate job candidates that do not do research before the interview. It is great to go in with a problem and possible solution to show that you know what you are talking about and understand the company. Lynn Hazan is coming this week to talk to our students so we hope that she will give us some other great ideas. Feel free to post other interview tips.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Yahoo and AOL jockey for brand positions

We have been talking in class about the large web portals. Yahoo and AOL are struggling to create a unique, differentiating brand positioning and losing users compared to Google and Facebook. In class, we suggested that Yahoo could beef up its emphasis on media but it looks like AOL is planning take that brand positioning with the recent purchase of the Huffington Post. I heard in a podcast by The Economist today that AOL hired more new journalists that any other media outlet this past year, about 700. So what's left for Yahoo?

Yahoo's number of unique users rose last year but the amount of time spent dropped by 10 percent. Facebook's time spent increased by 79 percent and Facebook also boasts some of the most loyal users in the business.

In class we talked about another possible positioning for Yahoo being extending the 'My Yahoo' concept and this week the Wall Street Journal this week (February 7th) reports that Yahoo is seeking to beef up the site's personalized content, particularly for mobile iPhone and Android applications, creating online mobile magazines unique to each user. Will this approach work?

Students learn Google Adwords this week

We are moving into a phase of the course where we will be preparing our project plan for the Restuarant.com project and some students may choose to run a google adwords campaign. So we delved into adwords as a program in a bit more detail this week, I thought the most interesting aspect of the adwords videos we looked at was the notion of having ads that are specific and include what we would call in 'direct marketing' a 'call to action.' For example, for a Valentine's Day ad include specific information on the ad, like free shipping on roses if you click now, rather than just posting an ad for a florist shop.

Keywords selected that are tightly tied to the ad are also likely to improve quality score. It always amazes me how many advertisers still don't adhere to these good principles, particularly using a destination URL or landing page to track their campaign. Here is a link to one of the videos with some good tips for adwords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djjN9zZNkYI&feature=channel

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Defining Direct Marketing in an Interactive Age

Ron Jacobs of Jacks & Clevenger asks us to define Direct Marketing for our new world of multichannel, interactive media in the latest copy of CADM's ADMARKS. I like the DMA definition because it includes multiple media, a database and our old DM friend, measurability. Any Comments?
An organized and planned system of contacts
Using a variety of media
Seeking to produce a lead or an order
Developing and maintaining a database
Measurable in cost and results
Expandable with confidence (DMA)

I think that this definition does not include some of the aspects of interactive marketing such as collaborative social media tools that are not in total control of the marketer.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Marketing Automation is the next phase of internet marketing

Tuesday in class we talked about maketing automation. We looked at an example from Allstate where they are using marketing technology to improve their lead capture and demand generation process.

I said that I had watched internet marketing evolve from static banner ads, to email marketing, to search engine marketing, to interactive and well-placed contextual advertising, to social media marketing and now to the point where marketers want to track and measure the results of all their efforts on an integrated media 'dashboard.' We will have Acton software demonstrate their solution and have also looked at some material from Marketo. We analyzed Exact Target's stated positioning statement from their web site and see that that company also wants to be an integrated marketing solution.

I then asked a discussion question for next Thursday: What would a dashboard for your Restaurant.com project look like? Do you agree that marketing automation is the next phase in the evolution of the internet marketing?

Mktg Tech Class learns salesforce and salesgenie interfaces

This week I reviewed the class sales genie assignment. The assignment was to search salesgenie and download not more than 100 leads of companies that might be of interest for a career search.

Although some had trouble with the search interface to begin with, students were favorably impressed with the amount of information that could be downloaded in a short period of time. Almost everyone said the biggest challenge was figuring out what they wanted to do, what kind of company they wanted to target, not the tool itself.

We have been talking about strategy in class regarding marketing technology and I would ask you to think about yourselves in this context as you enter the job market. That is to say, what makes you unique and what can you offer?

There will be some more sales genie sign up times as we work on the project. Let me know if you want to do some more searches. You have a unique opportunity to use your salesforce.com login to manage your job search this semester. We loaded the salesgenie leads into salesforce and you can add others manually or through the uploading process.

So what makes you unique?

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Restaurant.com project

Restaurant.com is a web-based ecommerce site that sells discounted gift certificates to local restaurants and we are doing a project with them. We will act as affiliates and drive traffic to their site. A portion of the proceeds will be then donated to charity. Restaurant.com uses most of the media channels we have talked about in class in driving traffic to its site.

In the project we ask you to plan, implement and measure the results of two media channels. What types of media channels are most effective today? We will see next week that companies are working to integrate information across channels so marketers can measure more effectively.

Salesgenie.com and salesforce.com

This week we used both salesgenie.com and salesforce.com to pull down leads (salesgenie) and upload them into a contact management software (salesforce). Leads can be purchased or just acquired through natural interaction. I meet a lot of people and save their business cards so I can contact them later. I talked about how in my program I then transfer information into Exact Target, send emails and track back to salesforce.

These types of marketing automation programs often require transferring files in CSV (comma separated values) and we showed how to create those files in excel and work with them. This process may seem like a thankless task but is often how we get set up to do the marketing programs that we need to implement. Is there a better way?

Demand Generation

Marketing has evolved from just a few media channels to many and the customer is the focus as marketers move from push to pull. Demand generation refers to getting high quality leads into the top of the sales funnel. Leads may come from search, social, trade shows, in other words, a variety of marketing channels. Effective demand generation fuels growth.

In B2C, Dreamfield's Pasta uses SEO, PPC and WOM to attract customers and then uses email and social to continue involvement. The result has been growth in what might be considered a commodity product line, pasta.

B2B buyers are increasingly using search and word-of-mouth to make their purchasing decisions and involving the sales force at the end of the sales process. In this type of scenario, it becomes Marketing's responsibility to nurture the leads via multiple interactions and get the 'ripe' lead to the sales person at the right time. Sales and Marketing must work closer together than ever. How can companies overcome the traditional rivalry between the two groups?

Branding and positioning to create value

Marketing has evolved from mass to direct to interactive communication. However, the future is definitely in collaborative interaction with customers. Customers are interacting with us in many new and different media channels, which makes the issue of branding even more important to marketers. Customers search first, interact and then purchase and are more likely to work with a brand that they know or hear about from frineds. Companies that are going out of business today are those that most likely have not been able to demonstrate a clear point of difference. Think Circuit City vs. Best Buy or Kmart/Sears vs. Walmart.

The best way to make money is stil to offer new/existing benefits by which we are differentiated fromt he competition and offer benefits that are valued by the consumer. Branding positioning is the specific, intended meaning of your brand in the mind of the customer and we looked at a specific format for the brand psoitioning statement: To the Target Customer, our brand is the Category that Point-of-Difference. Although both low-cost and differentiation are ways to position a brand, low-cost is hard to sustain and even Wal-Mart appears to be moving away from that strict low-cost positioning.

We looked at four retail web sites, Wal-Mart, KMart, Nordstrom and Target and analyzed if the web site was consistent with their brand positioning. Do you have any other examples of web sites where the brand positioning and the web site are in synch?