Skill Up in a Downturn

It's that time of year again. In case you've been ignoring all those new year notions of self improvement for a month or two, it might be worth checking out the ADMA Certificate in Digital Marketing (of for that matter, it's original sire, the Certificate in Direct Marketing). Both are related, and having been through each of them I can honestly say both are worthwhile.

With all the hoo-hah about the technology, people often forget that digital is really just a pure form of direct marketing - the same basics apply. (As Phil Smith from IdeaGarden pointed out in last semester's course, all digital is direct, just not all direct is digital...yet..)

I also caught up with Phil's business partner Jenny Williams (p.s. the ideagarden blog is worth a read) at the ADMA board meeting in sunny Glenelg last week where part of the focus was on building on ADMA's strength in the digital space. Much is often made of industry bodies being very Sydney-centric, but I think the fact the meeting was here in Adelaide is testament to the association's commitment to supporting members and marketers from around the country.

And back to the education focus of this post, both Certificate courses start next Wednesday and run for 14 weeks if anyone is wanting to make their marketing dollar a little more accountable!

Media planners twitch over new publically accessible stats tools

A few years ago I brought to the attention of a certain Media Agency the growth in online media buying in the US and Europe, allowing advertisers to access inventory on tv, radio  and in newspapers  and magazines.


Now digital publisher, Social Times , has released a new tool that allows you to look at the demographics of Facebook users in real time across countries.

Just a few minutes playing with the tool you can see the power of open accessibility to statistical data, made easy through a simple interface design.

Information overload? It may be your fault...

If your like me and you don't know how you're going to get away from the fact that your email inbox is just never going to empty itself, and your blog posts need responding to, and your Twitter feeds need a read, and your Facebook status needs an update, then you'll be delighted to hear from Clay Shirky, Author of "Here Comes Everybody", as he addressed the Web2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week. (Lance Armstrong also spoke of his pending return to cycling)



Using some terrific personal anecdotes from acquaintances experiencing the dilemma of the blurring of the lines between public and personal life in the Post-Facebook world. He identifies that it is not the overload of information that is the problem, moreover the failure of the various systems, (technological or human), that lead to information overload.



With a philosophical approach to describing the evolution of the publishing model since Guttenberg, Shirky highlights that information overload is not fixable by putting a linear publishing model solution onto a non-linear (Facebook) publishing world.

The reason why it is popular is because it offers something new.

The old guard need to recognise that now new solutions need to be found.

More from the summit via BlipTV here. (Australian bandwidth limitations considering).

More on Clay here .

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."