I remember being impressed with the brilliance this obvious yet often neglected idea represented. It was only after I repeated the line several times that I was finally informed the quote was originally attributed to “The Great One” himself: Wayne Gretzky.

Good thing I never told a client it was my line.

Fast-forward a number of years and that quote I fell in love with back then still holds true today. Even more so for the marketing niche called “CRM.” Whether you define CRM as Customer Relationship Marketing, Customer Relationship Management or even call it something entirely different (like CLM — Customer Lifecycle Management), the acronyms all mean the same thing.

At the end of the day, everything comes down to delivering the right message to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. The direct mail and email channels alone have made trillions of dollars for companies in the past based on these fundamental practices.

Now place those practices within the context of the social media explosion. Facebook has over 600 million users (although, with duplicate Facebook accounts relatively common now, I wonder what number are actual “unique” users). Twitter is expanding its influence by exploring ways to inject ads and turn profits. Even Google and Microsoft are working towards “a more social experience.” Yet I’m surprised so many of these social media efforts are seemingly missing the point.

It’s not about creating the perfect social program or platform. It’s about using those programs or platforms to deepen customer relationships and build the perfect CRM program.

CRM is channel-agnostic and customer-focused. It drives revenue that’s easily attributable. It also needs social media just as much as social media needs it.

Let me back up and define my theory. Earlier I mentioned the “trillions” of dollars generated by direct mail and email. The brilliance of both channels is the direct line of customer communication they represent; a mailing or email address serves as a pipeline into the customer.

Marketers could do more than hope a customer saw a 30-second TV spot, scanned an FSI or drove by a billboard. You were guaranteed the customer would see a subject line or read the outside envelope of whatever communication you sent them. That was powerful and it still is today.

But incorporating social media advances CRM to levels only dreamed about years earlier. Now we’ve evolved from a generic household or email address towards a more holistic customer profile. This profile represents “metadata” and, for a CRM guy like me, gets me excited because I realize the future of our industry is being written right now.

Metadata is the engine that makes marketing work harder. Now we can know what a person “tweets” about, who they follow online, how often they post or retweet. We know who they like, how many friends they have and what they talk about on Facebook. In other words, those generic addresses can now represent real people who laugh, love, complain, explore and dream.

That’s not just metadata. That’s solid marketing gold.

Now the message, the timing, even the method of communication can be crafted to be more relevant and personal. Not only does this make the marketing more appealing for the consumer but it makes marketing more profitable for our clients.

So if you look ahead, you’ll see the puck is headed towards the intersection of CRM and social media. Will you be there or be skating to catch up?

But sometimes measurement can inspire you. I know a guy who is a competitive runner, but he hates races. He competes with himself. If he runs a segment in 9:03 one day, the next day he’ll go all out to run it in 9:02 or better.

I believe marketing agencies have to become more like my runner friend and a lot less like those little kids we used to be (or still are — don’t make me call you out).

Because we can measure and interpret all kinds of results beyond the classic results of calls, clicks and sales using sophisticated statistical models, we’re able to see such things as the relationship between the timing and message of, say, the placement of an offer in an eNewsletter and its changing response over time. The more we’re able to reliably measure in a variety of ways, the more we’re able to figure out how to execute better — which leads to continuously improving results at lower cost for our clients.

I see some skeptical faces out there. So let me regale you with a real-life example.

eNewsletter: Analysis is the heart of the data

One of our longest-running projects is a monthly eNewsletter that has the mission to entertain, inform and sell. Now, it’s a tough proposition to keep an audience interested and engaged over the course of years. It’s an even tougher proposition to increase the interaction with that audience from month to month, but that’s what we’ve managed to do. That’s also why we’ve managed to keep this account.

There’s no magic here. There’s just the careful analysis of as much data as we can get. Sure we have the usual calls clicks, and sales (and never discount the value of the usual suspects). But what else do we have? We have, among many other things, time data — the delay between people receiving the eNewsletter and actually opening it and then clicking through. There are always hints and relationships in this kind of data. Certain subject lines result in shorter lag times to open the communication. The placement of various pieces of information on the page affects the time between open and click-through.

Further, we’ve instituted quick mini-surveys and respond to them using dynamic content so that recipients get what they want. But that’s not enough either. We compare what people say in their surveys vs. their actual clicking behavior. They may say they want X, but their history proves they choose Y more often.

What have we found? Nothing works all the time. You can’t just build a template of the perfect way to do something and repeat it forever. You’ve got to constantly evolve, based on what you learn from that latest data.

The tiny improvements you make every month add up over the long term into significant aggregate results. Our overall results, measured by the classic calls, clicks and sales, are roughly double industry average. There was no “Aha!” moment that got us there. It was the simple hard work of taking the measurement every single month and using it to incrementally improve our execution for the next month.

From micro to macro

That eNewsletter example is the microscopic picture, the daily grunt work it takes to generate genuine and lasting improvement. But now let’s get a little dizzy and pull back to a big view.

What if we had data and analysis that would let us apply the same kind of grunt work mentality to not just a single project, but to the entire marketing investment of a complex corporation? What if we were able to know that people who received our eNewsletter and who had viewed our DRTV spot within the last 18 hours and who had seen a mention of us on Twitter within the last two hours were, say, six times more likely to buy our product? How might that change your execution?

You see where I’m going. We’ve gotten way beyond the old-school ways of direct marketing and graduated into the new-school ways of what we call enterprise spectrum marketing. It’s precisely the same mentality and process we use for managing that eNewsletter project, but we apply it to everything the corporation is doing to market its goods and services.

Working this way makes me feel like my runner friend. Every day, we do everything we can to beat the results we got from the day before. Pretty soon you look around and realize all those other kids are way behind you.

Why? Because the CMO’s teams are constantly battling each other for attention (and budget).

It doesn’t have to be this way, of course. But human nature seems to dictate that we go through the meeting wars stage before we finally do what’s in the greater good. Meanwhile, the poor CMO is toast.

Before we look at a way out (yes, there’s a way out), let’s imagine a very real scenario. The CMO just learned she has got to cut her budget by 20 percent without sacrificing sales.

So she calls her trusted advisers — employees, vendors and consultants — into a conference room to hash out what to do. Almost instantly, the posturing begins. The Agency of Record (a brand agency, don’t you know) is first up with a 98-page PowerPoint that proves beyond their lack of reasonable doubt that, surprise, mass advertising must be saved at all costs.

Then it descends into a free-for-all of self-justification. The social media guy gives six reasons in ALL CAPS why social networking is the most important communication tool since the invention of movable type. The director in charge of bus wrappers pleads the overwhelming value of branding via mass transit. And finally the consultant stands up and recommends that a solution be found (through an in-depth analysis by the consultant, of course).

What’s the CMO to do? If she’s been around as much as a year, she’s starting to approach the average tenure of CMOs. She’s feeling at the end of her rope while we behave like schoolkids arguing over the rules of a game we just made up.

A Painkiller for the CMO

So I want to call my fellow marketers to put our heads together to formulate a painkiller for the CMO. I propose two ingredients: the customer’s perspective and a way to measure exactly what activity delivers the most sales and what doesn’t.

The customer, most likely, doesn’t care if you cut the TV budget or wrap another dozen buses in your brand. But believe me, they care about how you can save them time and money, and whether you bother to communicate with them in the style and channel of their choosing. Consumers’ eyes are everywhere these days, from social media to highway billboards to kiosks in the mall.

So where should we be to get their attention? Only where it helps make sales — which means where customers notice you and respond.

How do we know which channels and activities get the most action out of customers? That’s exactly what we should be working on together. The way we build a comparable metric to answer this question will help solve everything.

There is, and will continue to be, lots of discussion about how to (and even if you can) accurately measure the sales results of marketing, especially for channels outside direct response. I can’t defend or even argue that because I’m not an analytics guy. But I’ve been repeatedly assured by my friends and colleagues who are masters of statistics and decision support that a comparable metric is not only possible, it’s proven. Ignoring this guarantees that our favorite CMOs remain in agony.

Creative Fun Moving the Metric

What interests me most is how a comparable metric changes the behavior of those of us who advise CMOs.

Budget allocation meetings quickly become quieter and less antagonistic. Once channel advocates understand the new rules, the meetings change from skirmishes to brainstorming sessions: “What if we test this program?” “What if we combine these three media channels and test a campaign?”

Suddenly, everyone is focused on the bottom line, rather than on preserving their departmental budget allocation. It’s no longer the loudest advocate who wins, it’s the one who can come up with the best ideas, the best scenarios, the one who has the most creative fun moving the metric.

When that happens, the slow-burning pain of the CMO will stop and she will start smiling. And believe me, those of us who depend on CMOs for our livelihood will burn less and smile more too.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

When CMOs and top marketing decision-makers speak, what has become their loudest and most common refrain? They want to know which marketing and advertising programs are most effective. The CEO and the CFO are nagging endlessly about cutting the marketing budget without killing sales, and the CMO is squirming in his seat.

What do we in the marketing and advertising industry offer him? We give him clicks and calls and impressions and open rates and survey results. No wonder the poor guy sits there with that pinched look on his face. It’s like a customer who is dying for some chocolate ice cream, and we hand them raspberry because, well, it’s what we’ve got. It’s not our fault. Hey, raspberry is good, right? I mean, we like it.

Well, I say STOP! Just stop. Think about what we’re doing here.

We are becoming our own worst enemy. If we’re an interactive shop, we pitch the CMO interactive ideas. If we’re an advertising agency, all we talk about is advertising. If we do direct mail, then the USPS is the gateway to success. How many times do we see marketers (and even their clients) get caught up in a channel and the metric for that channel? As if that’s all they need to know. As if that alone is enough to keep the top line from collapsing.

It’s time we pull our heads out of the sand — permanently this time. All that CMO cares about (read: bonus is tied to) is sales. All the CEO and CFO and even the client’s shareholders care about is sales (and cutting redundant and overlapping expenses). You can argue until you’re raspberry-red in the face that what your metric measures is a precursor to sales, or builds relationships that result in sales, or softens resistance to sales.

While all that may be true (and probably is, to a degree), the CMO is not impressed. Until you can say, with confidence and a track record of proof, how many dollars of sales come from each dollar of marketing, you are missing the opportunity to make that CMO smile and, more importantly, solidify your place in his budget for years to come.

Your Silo or Mine?

You know what it feels like when you come out of a basement restaurant or bar and it’s still daylight? You blink and blink and realize the world is a big, bright, shiny place. You’d forgotten because you got used to the cave you were in. It’s the same thing that happens to us in marketing. When we sit around all day thinking up super-cool interactive ideas, we tend to be aware only of interactive customers. Well, let me tell you, there ain’t no such thing.

Real-world customers live in a hearty soup of out-of-home ads, email, direct TV, word of mouth, direct mail, radio, viral — everything all mixed together. The last thing they notice before they take action may be any one of these, but without the total effect of the whole communication mash-up, maybe they wouldn’t have taken any action at all.

All of us know this because we’re consumers too. But we forget that everything a customer is exposed to is what builds to the crescendo that actually makes them buy something. We get stuck in our constructed worlds of measuring clicks and calls and impressions and so forth rather than doing the hard work of figuring out how much we really contribute to making that ultimate sale.

Transformer Power: Single Comparable Metric

So how do we get out of this mess? Conceptually, it’s easy (yeah, I know, everything is easy in concept) — we must create a single comparable metric that will show, with proven certainty, how many dollars of sales are generated by each dollar of marketing spend. Think about it. No really, think about it! This will transform what you do and the way you sell it to the CMO. (For more insight, see the iMedia Connection blog, One Metric to Measure Them All, by my colleague Satnam Singh.)

Do I have to spell it out for you? Never mind, I will anyway. Think about these (they are just examples, so don’t get caught up in the actual numbers here):

- 1MM banner impressions … is transformed into a 3.5 Comparable Metric (CM), which means that $3.50 is earned in sales for each $1.00 in marketing spend.
- 35k clicks from an email … is transformed into a 2.1 CM.
- A 2.3MM reach for a radio spot … is transformed into a 1.7 CM.
- A minute-and-a-half viewing time for a viral video … is transformed into a 1.1 CM.

This transformation applies to the entire marketing spectrum. The single comparable metric will give the CEO and CMO exactly what they wanted, and needed, all along. And if the CEO and CMO are happy, then everyone is happy.

Is it risky for you? You bet, but only if what you sell consistently has a CM of less than 1.0, meaning more is spent on your program than it generates in sales. As long as you generate more sales dollars than dollars spent, you’ll almost certainly be welcomed to the party. But before you blast me with hate email, understand that any good CM system must be sophisticated enough to recognize the value contributed by almost every marketing activity.

The larger goal is to find what value your particular expertise really brings, and then monitor and improve it. Because even if you have a low CM, by showing the true value and then learning to improve your growth curve, you’ll still be allowed in the marketing-mix club.

Really, though, we have no choice. The CMO is an 800-pound gorilla who is screaming for chocolate ice cream. So stop plugging your ears, hide that raspberry and start scooping chocolate as fast as you can.

– Express your opinion, comment below.

Few things strengthen an online campaign like a strong brick-and-mortar experience. Whether we like it or not, the brand transcends all mediums, and most customers glean information from every source available, including good old-fashioned shopping. To position our companies or clients to be the most successful, we must create satisfying customer experiences regardless of where they have them.

Think about it in the opposite way from how the issue is usually posed: Imagine how powerful Amazon.com would be if it had as many retail locations as Starbucks.

Fortunately, I’ve been able to work with a lot of clients who have grappled with how to turn the intersection of the physical world and cyberspace into valuable territory. Some have been forced by the economy and consumer preference to understand it (automotive), others use third parties to do it for them (beverages) and still others have learned internally how to bring it all together in amazing ways (the U.S. Air Force — I kid you not; take a look).

Each of these has, in their own way, learned the importance of giving the customer the same kind of value online as offline. And from my work with clients, I bring you my own three areas of paramount importance to give customers a compelling and complementary experience both on and offline.

Immediate gratification: In this age of Twitter and iTunes, you’d think a brick-and-mortar solution would provide anything but instant gratification. But when you’re dealing with the physical world, there’s always that annoying lag time between placing your order and actually getting the thing you want. So going to a retail location and not having to wait for delivery could make all the difference when you want it now. And even if the customer just wants to see or touch it now, but buy it later online, giving them a “VIP/Red Carpet” retail experience could clinch the sale. Think of it as the 21st century version of the now obsolete full-service gas station.

A face to the brand: When customers are going through their consideration process, a friendly face can give them the confidence to finalize their purchase. This is especially true of the baby boomer generation. By having a live human validate their online research, answer any new questions and provide the assurances they’re looking for, boomers are more likely to become customers for life. And beyond the human face, make sure customers see the same signs, slogans and brand images in your stores that they see online. It’ll build a strong basis for trust and repeat business.

The right touch: No matter how impressive the online experience, it will never compare to reality. We can have virtual tours, endless reviews and lots of comparisons, but in many cases, especially with larger purchases, it won’t matter. Some consumers still want to see and feel exactly what they’re getting.

In these cases, online becomes the feeder and retail closes the sale. It’s your own version of internal and external sales. Online provides the product information and brick-and-mortar confirms it. And if by chance one of those retail browsers shows up at the retail outlet, a multichannel brand becomes even more important. The customer has come to you first, so this is your chance to give them a reason to buy — regardless of price or anything they might find on the Internet.

As your online presence gets larger, a lot of things will go by the wayside, but retail won’t be one of them. There’s too much benefit for both the business owner and the customer in having that vital, relationship-building interaction.

Retail may not be dead yet, but retail that ignores interactive — and interactive that ignores retail — will certainly be the first to crumble in this age of financial uncertainty.

Michael Radigan is Vice President of Interactive for Javelin Direct.

Javelin Direct (www.javelindirect.com) is a next-generation direct marketing agency that offers direct, interactive, CRM, marketing strategy and analytics services. Javelin’s unique set of “accountability solutions” drives integration, ROI and continuous process improvement across the marketing spectrum.

Search. Facebook. Twitter. iPhone. Blackberry Storm. Blogs galore. The list goes on and on. You name it, customers are out there. But who are they talking to? If you want to grow your business, then the answer should be you.

The value of providing meaningful, relevant content has already been established (look no further than Wal-Mart’s lame social networking attempt two years ago). However, this year the buzzword will be “access”.

When I say “access,” I mean access to the right customers — not just slapping some banner ad on a site with the right demographics. Consumers have more and more ways to access your content. But the important question is: How and where are consumers interacting with your content, products and services?

So where do we begin? Well, once you know how and where to access your customers, you can tailor messages accordingly. Thinking about that, I put this question to some peers recently: “How can you give your customers a platform to communicate with you? And just as importantly, how can you communicate with them where they are, instead of just hoping they’ll find you?” After a few hits and misses, I found the right answer. It’s about listening to people.

So many times, advertisers turn marketing into a monologue, but a successful campaign has to be a conversation. Times have changed, and there has to be a certain level of intimacy. You have to give the customer a reason to part with their time, their thoughts and their money. So how do you do that?

Step 1: Realize that while you must listen to your customers, you also have to apply appropriate filters and business models to it. There are plenty of “great ideas” out there, but often they aren’t feasible, aren’t able to be produced or simply aren’t of value to enough people.

Step 2: Realize that your customers want a solution. Ultimately, they just want their problem to go away. And because you have a two-way dialogue going on, you can offer up a solution that solves their problem and works for you.

So, let’s take stock. Rough economy: check. Need access to current (and new) customers: check. Need access to their desires and beliefs: check. Need access to their wallet: double check. Once you get all of your ducks in a row, you’ll realize that advertising isn’t just about demographics, it’s all about how you listen to the customer. Figure out where your customers are, pay attention to how they are interacting with your brand and then meet them halfway with a message that resonates. Do that and you might just break through the clutter.

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The latest hoop to jump through, of course, is sending emails to mobile devices — be they Blackberry, iPhone or other smartphones. That means, once again, we email marketers must reevaluate (and rework) how we develop and deliver email messages.

According to a recent Marketing Sherpa report, nearly two-thirds of key decision makers view their email on mobile devices. While the design of the email is crucial to getting these high-value users to respond, an equal or even larger issue is what happens when these people do what we want them to — click a link in the email.

Let’s imagine a scenario that, if you people are doing your jobs, haunts you:

A smart and creative email is sent to your corporate email address — but you’re in a meeting. No worries, your handy smartphone will let you view it. Wait, though — unless you’re an iPhone user or you have a newer device, the email you are viewing is either a TEXT version or the HTML is probably not looking too slick. Still, no worries. Your handy smartphone does its best to render the email and you see an interesting link about a timely topic. So you click the link (hey, the meeting is boring, right?). And voila — after waiting an excruciating two minutes for an unreadable Web page to load, you jump to your feet in the middle of the meeting and start screaming wildly at the company that sent you the email.

Congratulations. You’ve not only alienated a prime potential customer, you also helped get them reassigned to the snail mailroom.

Sorry. I know how much that little scenario hurt. I don’t even want to admit how often I wake up at night with those kinds of scenes freight-training through my head.

But we can prevent this career-killing situation from happening. In three simple steps, you too can be a mobile device-ready email marketer.

1. Evaluate the best type of email delivery for your content. If you’re sending a simple alert or update, it may be best to send TEXT only — sure it’s old school, but when you can do simple, I say do simple. But if you’re sending something with high design value, a newsletter for instance, then Multipart HTML is probably what you need (this ensures your message gets through no matter what — it’ll look good if the mobile device can render it, yet the basic message will get through even if the device is so old and gray it can barely rasp out a few ASCII characters). Resorting to HTML only is forevermore unacceptable! If your email service provider can’t do Multipart HTML, then get a new ESP.

2. Place a “sniffer” on your pages to check if a user is coming to your site through a mobile device. There are a handful of ways to do this — check with your favorite Web developer to see what best suits your needs.

3. When your sniffer detects a mobile user, redirect them to content that is specifically set up to be readable on their device. There are third-party tools that can do this for you (Google, IYHY.com, MoFuse). But if your development team is worth its salt, it should be able to do this sans a third party.

Even this isn’t enough, however. There’s still one more basic step you should take — and that is get yourself a smartphone so you can check out your own email messages. There’s still no better quality-control test than a real-world check.

Because email marketing is a proven sales-driving tool and the technology that it lives on is constantly changing, we as professional marketers must adapt appropriately and quickly to make sure our messages get through no matter what. Just think of it as a way to keep our best potential customers from going out of their minds when all they’re asking is for us to help them get through another boring meeting.

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They  just don’t get it

Whether you’re on the client side or the agency side, you know something’s screwy with the relationship if you almost always come out of meetings and people start grumbling, “Those guys just don’t get it.” It’s like one side of the table has suddenly started speaking Swahili or something. Everybody’s frustrated. Problems pop up everywhere. New campaigns or projects die on the vine.

One quick way to handle this is for the client to fire the agency or the agency to resign the account. If nobody on either side is willing to put in the effort to figure out what’s causing the problems, then opting for divorce may be the most merciful thing in the long run.

But boy that would spoil the holiday spirit.

There is, of course, a better way. Think of it like marriage counseling. The worst thing you can do is ignore what’s happening. You need to sit down, draw a circle around the relationship and say, “We want this to work, agreed? So what can we do to keep this circle intact and make us strong.” Yeah, sounds kind of mushy. But believe me, it’s not.

Warning: Stay away from accusatory phrases, like “you always” and “you never.” That gets naughty real fast. Instead, remember back to when times were good and clearly describe what made those times good.

What I’ve found is that little unspoken things often build up into big problems. Simply talking them out often does wonders for nudging the relationship into the nice column.

Don’t get no respect
 

Nothing makes me seethe more than the lack of respect thing. Yet it’s critical to the client-agency relationship — as well as all your professional and private relationships. (Stay with me, this one isn’t as mushy as the last one. And besides, if you can’t handle a little emotional stuff this time a year, then bah-humbug on you.)

What does this look like? Clients who treat their agencies like lowest-price commoditized vendors. Agencies that turn their noses up at clients’ marketing or creative ideas. Any hint from either side that “we’re experts and you’re not.” Oh, boy. Sounds like grade school, doesn’t it?

Please, the solution to this one is easy. Whenever you feel that everyone else should just shut up and listen to you — do the opposite. Shut up yourself and listen to them. It’s amazing what you’ll learn. I have found this to be the secret to solving most respect problems. I’ll shut up myself after I talk about the next one.

The heart is there, but the wallet isn’t

The saddest client-agency relationship of them all is when the client “gets it,” treats your agency like a partner and is ready to go — yet they don’t have the capital to implement.

These can be gut-wrenching. If you’re not careful, your agency can start resenting clients like this. You start thinking they’re stealing your time and even your soul. You tell yourself they’re keeping you from working with more profitable clients.

But I encourage you to put yourself in their shoes. Be charitable. And get creative. Maybe you can come up with some kind of venture-marketing plan in which you forego your marketing fees in exchange for a piece of the resulting profit. Risky? You bet. But it puts you in the same boat as your client — a client that loves you. If you help them grow, then you will grow too. Think of it as an investment.

At this time of year and in this economic climate, a little charitable investment all around could ultimately keep us all from sliding helplessly onto the naughty list.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

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We all know how tantalizing video shoots are — they make us feel like junior Bruckheimers and Speilbergs — but the reality is that traditional spot TV does not work on the Internet.

But wait, there is hope for us! Video does work, you just have to be smarter about it.

Every ad exec knows you wouldn’t repurpose a magazine ad for the direct mail channel. Both are print, but with very different strengths and uses. Same holds true with TV and online. Both have screens, but TV only allows for a passive viewer where online requires an active one. Marketers need to give into the online user’s need to participate with our brands and step up the game of online video.

In today’s world, visual language is evolving faster than the spoken or written word. Just look at the iconography of iPhone apps, the coverflow of iTunes, share/add this icons or even user ratings of products. Even new search engines (checkout www.viewzi.com) deliver images or videos for your keyword searches instead of content blocks. Online is the place where words and pictures do work well together and conversations can evolve. With the social media shift, why not use the Web to drive conversations with your customers, and why not do it with smart video?

Regurgitating 30-second spot for online consumption doesn’t lend well to conversation. They are mass marketing “at” the customer, not a means to talking “with” the customer. Sure, slapping your commercial on YouTube gets you quick and free feedback that used to take weeks in surveys and focus groups, but what does it drive the customer to do if they are already online? Rethink the use of video in the online space. It needs to be entertaining, interactive, tell a story and have a strong call to action.

Here are three key tips to get you started:
Storytelling

Forrester Consulting reveals in its “Watching The Web: How Online Video Engages Audiences” study that engaged viewers (those who watch more than an hour of online video a week) make up nearly 40 percent of all online video viewers and watch nearly 75 percent of all online video.

Making video ads compelling stories will make these engaged viewers more likely to watch the video all the way through and have a greater ability to recall the ad. And for less-engaged viewers, great storytelling will be just as engaging, the only difference is the play time tolerance will likely be less than that of an engaged viewer. The more active the mindset — the more action will be taken.

Interactive

Vendors are working to create social online ads that allow for ratings and user-generated feedback. Rich media ad units have been moving toward enticing the user to interact with the ad by placing games, booking engines and watching trailers inside the ads. Why would a video ad be any different?

Giving options for the user to explore your brand or offer within the ad unit or on the page the video appears only engages the viewer more. It gives them control, plus it implies there is post-click value for their participation.

Strong call to action

According to a recent Online Publishers Association report, 80 percent of U.S. online video users have watched an advertisement in an online video. Of those people, 52 percent took action after watching that video. A new form of online ads are taking shape — Direct Response Online Video. Just like DRTV and DM, DROV will make a hard sell to the user to take an action. The key will be providing an easy and seamless post-click experience to successfully complete the required action.

First video killed the radio, now it’s gonna hijack the TV? People have been speculating that the Internet will replace TV, but now some argue that anything you can do online you will be able to do through your TV one day. Obviously it comes down to the user’s goals and convenience needs. Either way, ads will need to work harder for brands and be more interactive for viewers.

Let’s stop being lazy and get some practice making online videos for the active viewer.

For someone like me, marrying the direct marketing world with the interactive marketing world while integrating UXD principles can be tough. So, to help myself and you, my brethren, I’ve developed “Four UXD Commandments for the Interactive/Direct World” (I know, I know, the title needs help).

#1: WWTCT: What Would The Consumer Think?

The first rule of thumb when developing a product or a campaign is to ask WWTCT (what would the consumer think?). The perspective from and the quality of the user’s experience should be the gauge for most everything a company produces.

Think through the needs of the consumer and how your brand can meet them: Apple didn’t create the iPod to sell iTunes — it was the other way around. Storing and downloading music was the issue they solved for us average Joes — there were other MP3 players out there, but no legitimate/legal music organization purchase tool. Enterprise Rent-A-Car will pick you up. Southwest Airlines not only offers fun, low-cost freedom, but they conveniently DING us with deals. All are brilliant products that asked WWTCT about the user’s perspective and honed in on their needs in order to sell a unique brand experience.

How we ever got away from WWTCT in the first place is, well … understandably embarrassing. We were like kids with toys in the beginning days of the Internet. We learned html and the next thing you knew everything was bold or italics or indented (or all three). Then it was, “What else can we make it do?” But now that we’ve grown up and have kids and everything, it’s time to start thinking about who we’re doing this for and why we’re doing it.

#2: Email: It’s not just direct mail in electronic form

When the client requests email as part of a campaign, it isn’t a matter of building the DM in electronic form; the interactive teams have to design, write, build and track with a different type of user in mind.

Does the user have the preview pane on? Are images blocked? Is the subject line telling the right story? Are we going straight to their junk folder? Just delivering an email isn’t enough anymore. Open rates are even in question due to the use of preview panes. Click-through and conversion rates are still deciding factors of success, which make the subject line, call to action, design and after-click experience key factors in success.

Even beyond the technical issues is the fact that email as a channel for acquisition is not strong, especially compared to many other channels (SEM, DM, DRTV, etc). Email is a relationship-building, cross-sell and up-sell workhorse, but thinking that direct mail principles transfer over and will work seamlessly is nonsense.

#3: Direct mail is not dead. Say it with me, “Direct mail is not dead.”

I know what you are thinking, “Making a DM piece interactive seems a little oxymoronic.” I’m not talking Mike Teavee Wonkavision style — just about adding a digital component to the DM medium. And no, that doesn’t mean sticking a CD to the piece, but rather finding a digital way to engage the reader. These are a few methods I’ve seen used to ramp up interactivity:

QR Codes
The new mobile trend in Japan (that will make its way here eventually) is the use of QR Codes. QR stands for quick response and is really just 2D barcodes. With this innovative technology a user can simply download QR software to their mobile phone, take a picture of a QR Code and automatically receive a text message or a URL to their handset.

PURLs (Personalized URLs)
Personalized printing using variable data isn’t anything new — but combining PURLs with a personalized mailer is. Typically, the PURL contains the user’s name in the URL and can offer up personalized pages or microsites, hence calling it a personalized URL.

Decoders
One feature to facilitate an analog-to-digital relationship is with a decoder. The user logs onto a site, holds up the special decoder piece to their monitor and a hidden message is revealed. It is a fun way to get the user to go online where you can provide deeper-offer content or ask for their feedback or information. Check out the demo of how it works.

Convergence, convergence, convergence — more and more marketers are beginning to see real results by intelligently merging “offline” and “online” worlds. Whether it is intelligent usage of mobile “short codes,” or modeled offers delivered via a personalized URL, direct mail is continuing to expand its solid, results-driven potential.

#4: Where the heck is what I need? Making websites useful

Peter Morville is a UXD guru who says the seven key features to keep in mind when designing a website for the best user experience are: useful, usable, desirable, findable, accessible, credible and valuable. Each addresses, from the user’s lens, how the site/content will be approached as a solution to their problem. How will they use it, how will they search for it and within it, how can we organize and communicate to them in a clear, easy way so that they will interact/buy? Balancing the business goals with the users’ needs is no longer a nice to have — it is a must-do.

Without the customer/user, none of these tactics hold value. We must listen to our customers to ensure that our products and sites maintain relevance in today’s rapidly changing environment. Providing an area on the site for customer feedback or conducting surveys or usability studies can help us find out what makes our customers tick and what they are thinking.

All in all, understanding the user’s needs, goals and perspective help us, as accountable marketers, create good work that works. Every step along the way, remember to ask yourself WWTCT. We are all users, consumers and humans who need and experience things differently — that’s what makes life and our work so much fun!

So as the electric guitar god Mr. Hendrix said, “If you can just get your mind together … I think they’re callin’ our name …” — when it comes to UXD, the process is simple, the execution is tough, but the rewards for you, your brand and your customers are unlimited.

Good luck and remember: WWTCT!