Phil Lauterjung

A number of years ago I remember approaching my boss, our president, about starting an email newsletter for our customers.  He wasn’t exactly what you would call web-savvy, and predictably said something like “why would we do that?”  I explained to him that we could keep our customers better informed at less cost (now I had his attention!) than mail or fax; and, we could incorporate images and graphics.  After I presented him with a sample and a budget he reluctantly said to go ahead.

A few months later, after sending out a Christmas-themed newsletter, he asked me how I had done something that looked so good and was themed for that time of year.  He also commented that he had received a number of compliments from some of our very good customers.  I did the politically correct thing and told him to take full credit with our customer for having made that decision.  We were also able to clear out some obsolete inventory through a promotion we ran in one of the newsletters.  That seemed to help his attitude toward the project as well.

Now, doing something like that seems rather antiquated.  Yet a recent survey by PROMO magazine indicates that there are still about 25 -30% of marketers that don’t use that time of tactic in their marketing mix.  A chart is summarized below by eMarketer:

A couple points also worth noting beyond the use of email.  There have been significant increases in marketers use of corporate blogs, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Social Network promotions, Viral (not a disease) campaigns, and video.

The question some might start thinking is – yeah, but where’s the ROI?  Top management isn’t going to spend a dime on the latest shiny toy without showing some sort of ROI.  The discussion of how to do that is beyond the scope of this posting, but here’s another chart from that same survey which indicates what those respondents said in terms of the profitability of Interactive vs. Traditional Marketing.

As you can see, there is a large increase of those that project interactive marketing to be more profitable in 2009.  The category that is most troubling is the “Do not know” marketers.  It appears that they might be having trouble defining their goals and measuring results.  The “Less profitable” category while up slightly is still a very small percentage.

Here’s a question for you – actually a couple of questions.  What plans do you have for interactive marketing initiatives for 2009 – 2010?  What tactics do you plan to use?  And, how do you plan to address the ROI issue?  Would you like to see more info on how to calculate ROI for interactive/social media?

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