Top Research Priorities in Interactive Marketing?

I recently became Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Research in Interactive Marketing. Our mission is, according to the web site, " to address substantive issues in interactive, relationship, electronic, direct and multi-channel marketing and marketing management. With its origins in the discipline and practice of direct marketing, the journal aims to publish progressive, innovative and rigorous scholarly research for marketing academics and practitioners."

I recently created a word cloud of the topics covered in the last two years and wonder if we are hitting the mark? I see little research in search optimization, email marketing, multi-channel management, video marketing, b2b lead generation, online branding or other issues relating to that are of relevance to marketers according to my discussion with practitioners and other analyses that I have done of leading issues in Interactive Marketing by analyzing email subject lines. Notably absent are the measurement issues which seem to plague all marketers.

Help me develop the best journal possible by providing insight to the issues in practice that you would like to see researched in a rigorous manner by marketing academics. Provide comments to the blog or email me at zahay@niu.edu. Thanks in advance for your help.

Andrea Mulbrandt's IM Career

Andrea (Andi) Mulbrandt recently wrote me about her experiences in IM. "My first job out of college was selling radio advertisement. I learned a lot in three months at the radio station. I wasn't happy selling just radio to clients. I was always an advocate of an integrated marketing plan that pulled from all types of medias. I was limited in radio to truly advise my clients accurately. I met Kim, the Imagin8 Maketing sales rep, while I was at the station.

Kim approached me in October about an assistant position at a rapidly growing marketing firm. I was thrilled once I found out more information on Imagin8 Marketing. Imagin8 Marketing was created to help companies, organizations and even individuals to help promote themselves by using integrated marketing strategies such as blogging, email marketing, networking, reputation management, social sharing as well as traditional medias. The firm also specializes in website design and SEO. My position was to be an assistant and social media coordinator... It quickly turned into office manager, project coordinator, social media coordinator, and much much more. Imagin8 Marketing has grown rapidly since I started in October of 2011.

Jim Tome, the owner, had been running this firm in his basement since 2008. He was very comfortable with his small, one man business. He brought Kim on as a his first partner. Kim was so great at bringing in business, that they quickly needed more staff. Which led to me being hired. In less than a month after I started, we had an office space in downtown Sycamore and four more employees. We hired two designers, a blogger writer and a programmer.

Imagin8 Marketing is continuing to grow rapidly. We are expanding into all types of industries; medical, home builders, flooring, collegiate sports, etc.

Now, you asked me for my job title; each employee/partner of Imagin8 Marketing has a unique title. This is just another avenue to demonstrate our creativity. The owner, Jim Tome is "The Man Behind the Curtain." The sales rep, Kim Lamansky is the "Social Butterfly." The designers, Meagan Schoenrock is the "Creative Pantoner" and Laura Smoltich is the "Design Hipster." The blog writer, Joeye Davidson is the "Ghost Writer." My official job title is "Trusty Sidekick."

This is a very busy and exciting time for us at Imagin8 Marketing. We have our ribbon cutting tomorrow and open house next week! I appreciate your help in finding quality interns."

Social Media from the Trenches

We are using a lot more social media marketing to promote our Internet Marketing Conference this year on April 19 at NIU Naperville. Social media helped us get the word out last year but this year we have subscribed to Hootsuite and are able to sent the same information out to multiple locations, including all the groups I am a member of in linked in (without posting to each separately and are able to schedule posts in advance).

We have created a fan page in Facebook for our IM program and created an event under that page an also have a Linkedin event and a separate Twitter account for the event. Heather Baker, Contract Recruiter, and my grad assistant Alex Eddy have been helping us out, with guidance from board member Jen Brady, President and CEO of Fred and Associates.

We are also using direct communications and have 23 registered from an initial email sent out from me personally to past attendees and board members, so we are well on our way to our goal of 100 attendees. (Twenty six of our students will attend also as guests of our program to enhance their personal learning).

One person from social media (Linkedin) has said they will register and one firm from Facebook said they were interested in sponsoring. So while for an event like this there is no substitute for a personal, direct appeal I expect a lot of interest from social media. We are expecting that our partners econsultancy.com, PMA, CIMA, the BMA and CADM will also promote on social media.

We are using our own internal social media network, Vivastream, to promote interaction among the conference speakers and attendees.

We are just getting started. I tend to look at social media as a bit more like advertising and PR than direct marketing, so the consequences cannot always be measured. I will keep monitoring and keep you updated.