Many Happy Returns (on Investment)

With the growth in Social Networking, widgets, onlinePR and the search behemoth, many pundits have predicted the death of email as a marketing tool.

Not so, according to the latest economic impact study from the Direct Marketing Association in the US. While Email ROI seems to be slowly declining, the DMA estimates that marketers earned $45.06 for every dollar spent on email marketing in 2008. And while this might drop to $43.52 next year, its still so far in front of the rest of the pack that you can understand why most marketers are fighting tooth and nail to keep the CFO's hands off the email marketing spend in the current economic downturn. An article from Direct magazine comments further - you can read the rest of it here.

Even if email remains the holy grail of DM, its not without its challenges. Email Service Providers once relied on relationship management with the major ISPs to make sure their servers (and their client's email efforts) stayed off the spam blacklists, but the proliferation of web-based email accounts with auto spam feed back loops (FBL) and the automation of the spam reporting process, means that deliverability has become a bigger challenge than ever.

Sender Reputation (find out your email server sender score at www.senderscore.org) is now the biggest challenge to email deliverability, and it gets more complex when the different ISPs and webmail providers use a different mix of content and reputation scores to decide whether to deliver the email.

So just when you thought email was easy, think again. . So, read blogs, download reports, talk to your agency and work hard at keeping your content fresh and your list current. Email marketing will be an ongoing - sometimes fairly labour intensive - process of improvement. But at $40-odd dollars back for every buck you spend, the rewards look worthwhile to me.

Digital Marketing Course in Full Flight

We're just over half way through the ADMA Certificate in Digital Marketing course, and after last night's great chat with Shai Coggins of B5Media fame, it struck me that we've been pretty fortunate so far.

Our small class allows for a pretty interactive (pun?) session each Wednesday, and the guest lecturers we've shared the boardroom with read like a who's who of new media.

Shai has just returned from BlogWorld Expo in Vegas, and is a global expert in the development of communities (and commerce) through blogging. We had Lee Hopkins take us through managing corporate conversations online, as well as the subject of both his PhD and his passion - Second Life. Our own Anthony Coles made sense of the myriad paid media channels available online, and ex OgilvyOne MD Phil Smith held sway on the topic of Digital Strategy. Next week we've got Kevin Wohling from search technology leader eChannel, to be followed by ex Fosters senior marketing exec Georgia Rasmussen's guidance on database and CRM strategy.

Only 6 more weeks to go, and with some of the shared insights from the sessions so far I'm expecting some pretty good strategic campaign plans as part of the student assessments (they get to take a fictional product launch and make it a household name through the - well argued - use and execution of digital marketing strategy).

Heaps of healthy debate, lots of lessons learned, and expert opinions a-plenty. Now I'm starting to wonder what next semester's course will hold.

When marketing goes full circle.

Planes are great to force you to read things. Whilst sitting on CX104 on my way to Hong Kong, I managed to eat up Geoff Livingston's Now is Gone  in which Executives and Entrepreneurs get a primer on Web2.0.


The foreword was written by Futureworks CEO Brian Solis, who highlights the evolution of communications that we are going through, and indeed the Darwinian, "Survival of the Fittest" regarding changing skillset of marketing professionals.

They have Podcast  a few of their discussions, but what struck me the most about his observations were how similar they were my mantra to our guys that:
Listening is marketing
Participation is marketing
Media is marketing, and
Conversations are marketing

Markets, like the flourishing Farmer's Markets, ARE conversations.

The growth of new SOCIAL media are just an evolution in democratising our markets so that We The People are in control.

Blog smog

I'm forever adjusting my radar between the global phenomenon of inter-connected conversations facilitated by the Internet, and the microcosm that is the South Australian marketing community.

The tsunami of change has to eventually crash upon our shores.

Our isolation and ignorance is not a unique phenomenon though, as new findings from the Technorati "State of the blogosphere" report highlights.

I remember it was only a couple of years ago while I was doing some consulting for Starcom that we had a representative from Google in to share with the planning team some of their products and services offerings.

"I never click on links on Search Engines", was the defensive cry from the room.

Well someone does.

Business Week this week just published its Top 25 "Web's Most Influential People " report, and although they're only No 5., they talk about their key task managing the breakneck growth of the company, now comprising more than 18,000 employees and expecting $16.2 billion in sales this year - up 53%. 


Even the declining economy has not yet seemed to slow its dominance in Web search and search-based advertising. 


But that very success is creating challenges, namely a backlash against their increasing power online from competitors, advertisers, and government regulators. Now, their main job will be convincing the world they mean it when they spout their informal corporate motto, "Don't be evil."

iMedia Brand Summit distant memories

Wow, a week goes fast these days.

This time last week I was cramming to get jobs out the way before I rushed off to the Blue Mountains for the iMedia Brand Summit. My last post was about the presenters from Tuesday morning, and its now Monday after already.

I loved Jenny Williams' summary of the greatest challenges for the industy - motivating change.

It is however still all about the creative idea and with the lines blurring between media, creative and strategy, that idea can come from anywhere - its just about the conversation that helps we service providers gets to the core of the business challenge.

The challenge for many marketing service providers today though is that despite the "20+ years" in the industry, they don't have the same value proposition in the fast-changing digital media landscape.

Jenny provided a great example of a simple stone-masonary business leading the charge with his use of web 2.0 tools to grow his business beyond the yard he's working in and into Education, (for those that haven't seen it, he's using Ning as a platform - something we've used on a few solutions this year).

And as a great Jedi once said, "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the Dark Side". It is certainly time for clients getting advice on this space from traditional agencies to look around for more qualified help.

The Summit format offered many opportunities for conversations with peers in the Australian Digital Marketing industry and I had a great chat with Christian Bartens from Datalicious in the break. A very clever dude doing some amazing things with data and analytics.

Sat in on a few 'spotlight' sessions after lunch.

Fionn Hyndman from DGM gave a tannin-impared presentation on customer acquisition strategies. Their speal is that they are a wholly owned subsidiary of Deal Group Media Plc UK. To quote the website, the company's principal activity is the provision of online marketing services through the mediums of performance based marketing, search engine positioning, optimisation and marketing services, including the provision of competitive intelligence gathering services.

Ian Gardiner from Viocorp showed the crowd why their business has doubled in size in the last 12 months. Their tools are driving some of the best examples of integrated video content in Australia.

Nice to be representing them West of the Blue Mountains.

Trolling through my notes from the Summit, there were many "Nuggets" that I hoe to share over the weeks ahead.

More iMedia moments

"Stay relevant" said Dave Cormier from StrongMail. Stay relevant, test & monitor, keep things in balance and add a sence of urgency to your email.

"Grow or go" said Mehrdad Baghai of Alchemy Growth Partners in an awesome presentation that highlighted the elevated discussions of the corporate strategists considering "Where to compete", vs the day-to-day dilemas of most marketing practicioners worried more about how to execute. Granularity of growth a great book if you want to purchase.


"Know your customer, digitally" professed Anthony Goldman of NextDigital. A challenging thought for those of us not skilled in proctology. Pretty good overview for his Ten Commandments for digital strategy. The 4 P's have become 10 P's in the uber-complicated digital world.

Ed Smith from News Digital Media cracked open the 2nd day with his inspiring presentation on the global trends from his recent visit to Cannes. Whopperfreakout and HBO Voyeur campaign blowing people away with its scope and breadth.

And wrapping up Tuesday morning was Jenny Williams from IdeaGarden nailing the need for internal organisational change and a commitment from industry to bridge the skills gap.

Awesome crew.

iMedia Brand Summit is all action

The iMedia Brand Summit kicked off in the Blue Mountains last night with Mark McCrindle from McCrindle Research giving a very entertaining overview of the changing social landscape, and how that is fundamentally affecting how brands connect with consumers.

Of note were the key trends of a post-life stage, post-structure, post-linear and post-rational society.

Shifts from the drawing to Tradition to a drawing to Innovation. From Reputation to Recommendation. Sit and Listen, to Try and See. Long-term needs to Short-term wants. Content, to Process. Authority, to Authenticity, and from Tech IQ (a given), to Emotional IQ.

These changes best reflected by an observation of a friend of his trying to offer a Gen Y-er a job. Highlighting the generational gap the Boomer saying "You're ignorant and Apathetic", to which the Gen Y-er said "I don't know what you mean, and I don't care"...

Good luck to us all.

Some interesting downloads from his site.