Secure Connection

Lead data should be transferred in an encrypted format in order to comply with all laws and ensure the security and privacy of the data. Sending data over secure connection encryption at least 128-bit SSL encryption (through HTTPS web services, etc) is recommended.

Real-Time Lead Delivery

Lead data should be transferred in real-time. The amount of time that elapses between the prospective student submitting the request for information and that new lead record arriving in your CRM should be no more than a couple seconds. You can’t follow up on a hot lead if your provider is waiting until the end of the day to batch deliver them.

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As an avid Google fan, when I started seeing commercials for the new search engine Bing by Microsoft, I can’t say I wasn’t intrigued. The commercials were catchy, the name was different, the site layout appeared to be organized and sophisticated, but all these factors still haven’t been enough to get me to try out the new engine.

Search engines are an important part of the advertising world. What sites are consumers using? What areas of a site have the most traffic flow? Where will we be best able to reach our target audience? Out of the 763 adult Internet users surveyed, about 70% have not changed their search engine activity. It seems to me that although a few people are checking Bing out, our best bet is going to be continuing to use the well-beloved Google search engine.

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My personal Twitter account was hacked last week. For three days, I was tweeting about my supposed 182 IQ and $500 shopping sprees. And of course I found out my account had been hacked via a wall post from a friend on Facebook: “Your Twitter account has been hacked. siiigh. Oh yeah, and call me.”

The concept of privacy has been a reoccurring train of thought for me recently. Technology has enabled our world to become more connected than ever before, but it has also presented us with the unprecedented capability to know more about people than we could ever dream. We have access to the private lives of celebrities (31 million U.S. viewers of Michael Jackson’s memorial service, anyone?). We can find old friends/acquaintances/enemies by simply typing a name into the search engine of any major social network. And we can even discover things like who was recently booked in jail by checking the arrest reports of any jail or prison website online. 

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As I was reading through Advertising Age Daily News Report, I came across this article about the first mobile marketing vehicle.  It was a very interesting and quite comical read, and I thought I would share it.  Doug Melville is a college graduate, who scored his first big job out of college driving a Wienermobile.  He was chosen along with 18 other people to drive the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile for one full year.  Doug, along with two other people who traveled inside the Weinermobile, got to spend 400 days traveling throughout the United States, doing plenty of press releases and volunteering at many events.  When people asked Doug what his title was, he told them with pride, “I am a hotdogger!”  Training was called “Hot Dog High” and consisted of marketing, PR, events, expenses, and how to handle the general public.  Once graduated, hotdoggers were sent off in their Weinermobiles doing interviews and local press releases for Oscar Mayer.  

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When you hear the term “creative” within a conversation related to advertising, most people think of the visual representation that includes images, copy, etc. I think “media creative” is often overlooked and is something our agency is currently focusing on. Interestingly enough, following an internal meeting we had regarding creative media, we attended a local Ad Club session discussing the very same topic. Media Buyers and Planners are constantly facing the challenge of how to “cut through the clutter” and I think it takes a collaboration between the media and creative departments to come up with both creative visual representations and creative placement ideas to achieve results. Creative media placements can range from homepage takeovers, owning the units on a page, wall paper to roadblocks and expandable banners. Rich media enables the creative department to further enhance the creative by synchronizing road blocks or adding an interactive element to the banners. The recent Mac synchronized roadblock on the NYTimes.com is a great example of creative at its best. I recently read an article on iMedia regarding rich media, written by the VP of Strategy and Marketing at PointRoll and was surprised that only 5% of online ads include some form of rich media. I understand there is an additional cost associated with this type of placement, but if interaction rates are going to be significantly higher why not work the creative costs into the existing budget? There is so much opportunity online to be creative with the placement and visual execution, perhaps if we all do it right we can add value to the sites we are running on. There is a fine line between being creative/engaging and intrusive which is why it is vital for planners and buyers to focus on relevancy and implement frequency caps to ensure a good user experience.