Back to school.  Back to work.  Back to internet marketing.

The Seattle Direct Marketing Association is kicking off the 2008 season of networking and educational events with a topic of great importance to all direct marketers- Search Advertising. 

We expect James Colborn, of Microsoft, to deliver an insightful presentation for direct and internet marketers who are either buying or selling advertising in the search marketing space.  Colborn develops the go-to market communications strategies for Microsoft Advertising, and probably has an insider’s tip, or two, of value to share with us.   

Would you like to know where industry insiders think the search advertising market is heading? Need to get a feel for how your search advertising budget compares to your competitors? How about a general boost to your internet marketing plans? Well, then you need to come to this event. 

As usual, there will be time for networking before the dinner and presentation.  This is a great chance to catch-up with colleagues you may have missed over the summer and to network with other direct marketers in the Seattle area. 

The Search Advertising event is Wednesday, September 10^th, from 5:30 to 8:15 PM.  Networking starts before the event, and Mr. Colborn will end the evening with a Q & A session. (So, bring notes about the search advertising questions your marketing organization is facing, as you may be awe struck and forget what you wanted to know! Like visiting the doctor.) 

The event will be in downtown Seattle at the beautiful Hotel 1000.  As of today registration is still available, but some events do sell-out, so be sure and sign-up today.

More information and a registration link available here.

I enjoy receiving email marketing, but as a marketer, I’m not really normal.  I like to analyze the subject lines in my Hotmail and give them ratings, and peruse them for any indication of today’s social or political climate. You can learn a lot about what’s going on by the email marketing you receive. For instance, if you always forget about Mother’s Day or Election Day, just sign up for a lot of email newsletters, and you’ll get plenty of reminders about important upcoming holidays and spending opportunities.

When there are few “natural” reasons to communicate with subscribers, direct marketers have to generate other reasons to send intriguing email marketing.  And, when this is done on a regular schedule, it can grow challenging to the creative mind.  Recently I received an email from 24-Hour Fitness that I thought was quite clever. (No, not the “take your mom to the gym for a free workout” one.  That, not such a hot idea!) The one I liked was the “24 years. 12 million lives.” campaign.

It is mathematically pleasing, with tying in the name of the company to the years, and then having a nice, round half-value for the second part. So, I clicked to see what this more subtle than usual sales pitch would be.

As a marketer, I found it interesting that their email campaign is driving visitors to their own “social media” site, where users can read inspiring stories, enter their own stories, and comment on others’ stories. 

There is a smattering of regular guy testimonials mixed in with a few super star athletes, in case we were to forget that it’s a big-budget Internet marketing campaign. The writing is also a mix of professional marketers as well as comments that I can only guess are being made by the real users. Or, very clever marketers disguising their persuasive abilities in bad grammar, punctuation, and notes about how hot one particular lady is in her jogging picture.

The first time I visited the site, the links were a bit buggy, with many of the home page stories going to error messages, but that appears to be fixed. One other non-user friendly programming issue is the links to the user profiles.  They take readers to a truncated version of the story, without indicating that it is not the real story, which makes the writing just look bad. If you are not persistent enough to keep clicking around, you may never see the actual story, and most consumers will not wallow in our direct marketing propaganda for long. No matter how ingenious the design team believes it is.

Overall, I give one check in the plus column for a good use of combined email and Internet marketing for this direct marketing giant.  Maybe I’ll check on FaceBook to see if they have a group there, and see how seriously social these guys really are!

Click here to see for yourself   

At a recent Seattle Direct Marketing Association networking and learning event, representatives of the Parnassus Group presented on how to use social media in your Internet marketing mix. One of the topics they covered was how to monitor your organization’s coverage in the vast, vast Blogosphere. 

Due to a technical snag, attendees at the event weren’t able to view this part of the presentation.  But, our friends in marketing at Parnassus have created a quickie tutorial that can be viewed at their web site.

If you are a direct mail or email marketer, or any other kind of communications manager, and are not monitoring the Blogosphere because it seems too complicated, then this is good new for you!

These are easy-to-follow directions that can get you set-up to monitor any direct marketing (or other) news you want to follow in just a few minutes:

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