Never Forget Your Past – Integrating Old School and New School Marketing Solutions

Back in 1994, I had the pleasure of working at Sprint TeleMedia. We spent our time selling the Sprint FON network to Marketing Executives at large Fortune 1000 companies. Notice that I said Marketing Executives, not Telecom Managers. It was a very cool and creative job. I recently dusted off my old two inch V.R.U. University binder to take-in some nostalgia. Sprint TeleMedia’s service brand was called FONMagic, a play on their Fiber Optic Network (FON) brand name. FONMagic utilized the Sprint FON network to develop custom, interactive tele-promotions. Examples of some of these campaigns were Keebler’s “Brings You the Shadow” promotion, Coca-Cola’s “Monsters of the Gridiron” promotion and the Pepsi “Cool-YA” promotion. All these promotions used an interactive toll-free number found on product packaging that “called on” (no pun intended) the consumer to dial a number for a chance to win. I’m simplifying it a bit, but that pretty much sums up the campaigns. These campaigns captured a combined 30 million calls over the length of their promotions. Not too shabby. What was great about these promotions was that they provided quantifiable ROI metrics; a challenge even in today’s hi-tech marketing environment.

Fast forward to 2009. Coca-Cola has been promoting their “My Coke Rewards” promotion for a couple of years now. Where the old school, “Monsters of the Gridiron” was a promotion for new customer acquisition, the new school, “My Coke Rewards” promotion has been used mainly for customer retention purposes. The development of both these campaigns required a similar process to launch. The difference was in the new school automation using digital ones and zeros. The old school method required a bit more analog and often manual processes. Today with the growth of Voice over IP, these processes might be able to move into the “modern age”...and then some.

The point that we often forget in today’s hi-tech marketing age of Internet-based, cross-channel, integrated and unified marketing campaigns is that many of the old school solutions and concepts can still work and should be utilized in our marketing campaigns. We get so wrapped up in the latest and greatest technology that we forget what worked in the past. We need to utilize technology and automation to merge the old school with the new. Radio is not dead! Television is not dead! Print is not dead! Social networking and web to print solutions are not an ends; they are a means to gain positive ROI. We simply need to leverage our new school processes with the old school mediums. Until then, remember the past successes in marketing promotions and campaigns and elevate them with all the new school technology and processes.

Adam Edelman is the President of Refined Technology Solutions and can be reached at 443-310-8777 or via email at adam@refinedtechnology.com.

Making Email Relevant

There's an up and coming "digital" company out of Baltimore called Blue Sky Factory. They have a fantastic email marketing engine called "Publicaster". It's been around for a few years. They recently launched a new feature-set of Publicaster that is very interesting. Not from a technical mind-set, but more from a social networking point of view. The feature, called Share With Your Network (SWYN), allows email subscribers to share email content with their social networks. Using a code snippet, email marketers can choose to give their social community the option to share their email message with friends on a variety of popular social media engines, including: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg and MySpace.

Up until now, stand alone email engines have not really played in the same sandbox as social networking. SWYN changes all of that. I'm curious as to what the next "angle" Blue Sky Factory is going to launch into the websphere. I'm sure it will be productive and very cool.

Marketers Need Metrics to Integrate "Old School" and "New School" Media

I saw a great article on the eMarketer web site. A joint study was done by the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers. They found that only 7% of US marketers were very satisfied with their progress integrating "Old School" (traditional) and "New School" (digital) media.

There seem to be several obstacles preventing further adoption of "New School" media. According to the study, the first and largest hurdle to overcome, is the need for solid metrics. The second-biggest obstacle is lack of understanding of "New School" media, followed by hesitation by company executives to "expand their horizons" and the infamous silos that prevent the different organizational entities from, "getting on the same page".

The study found that both customer and agency marketers agree on how to increase the acceptance of the integration process;

* Become as educated as possible on "New School" media.
* As always, set clear goals and business objectives.
* Understand what the customer needs.
* Test and retest (and retest, again).
* Commit to detailed metrics and analytics.

Of course, none of the above matters without a way to measure campaign ROI. The real challenge many marketers face is that the necessary data to measure ROI is often decentralized across the multiple marketing "engines". Data sets and terminology are not standardized.

A strong solution to this challenge would be to utilize greater Marketing Automation. This integration of marketing and technology would allow companies to centralize and standardize their "Old" and "New" school media channels on one platform, thus allowing for a smooth integration of their marketing efforts.