Chris Carder

Chris Carder is co-founder and CEO of ThinData.

Working with Canada's leading brands to manage their email marketing campaigns, Chris and his partners have built ThinData to a thriving team of 60 e-marketing professionals. ThinData's email strategies and technology are employed by organizations such as: Aeroplan, Air Canada, Blockbuster Canada, BMO, CBC, Canada Savings Bonds, Delta Hotels, Direct Energy, MSN / Sympatico.

Chris is also Co-Chair of the International White Ribbon Campaign's Board of Directors, having helped that organization grow to more than 50 countries worldwide utilizing his online strategies and technology.

He is also a two-time Canadian New Media Awards winner for Employer and Volunteer of the Year.

Recession-Proof Your Business: Focus on Current Customers

Every CEO, President and Senior VP that I speak to emphasizes building processes, technologies and expertise for acquiring new customers. And yet, common marketing wisdom tells us that customer retention is where longevity and profitability truly lies. Because of the emphasis on customer acquisition, it makes sense that many companies spend less time and effort on truly maintaining their customer relationships. That could be a serious challenge in the months ahead.

Whether or not we accept the doom and gloom predictions of the severity of the impending recession, one thing is certain: for most businesses, things are going to get a lot tougher. Customers – across industries and across segments – are going to have fewer discretionary funds and that means the competition for every dollar is going to heat up. As a result, now is the time to focus on building retention infrastructure. But, to do this effectively requires elevating the value of retention in each company’s day-to-day practices. Senior VPs of Marketing & Sales can accomplish that by taking the following four steps:

1) Recognize publicly the important contributions that retention makes. For instance, retaining customers demonstrates:

• The ability to overcome the day-to-day challenges – project and interpersonal – associated with working with existing clients;

• The ability to adapt to clients’ unique corporate cultures, evolving demands and changes in personnel;

• The ability to build trusted and valued relationships.

2) Attribute the same high status to client retention usually accorded to securing new customers. For example, customer acquisition typically:

• Is held out as a significant accomplishment – and rewarded at bonus time; and
• Serves as an exciting or unifying rallying point for a team.

3) Establish and track specific retention targets. Just as with customer acquisition, build customer retention into all sales forecasts. Regularly monitor retention targets and provide appropriate skills training.

4) Identify valued customers who are consistently demonstrating signs of disengagement. For example, customers who:

• Are spending less on your product/service than they have in the past
• Have stopped referring business to you
• Don’t pay their bills
• Have gone to tender for business that they would normally bring to you

Reach out to these important customers to determine why they have attributed less value to your product or service.

While few companies will escape the impact of a deep recession, taking these steps now can help any senior marketer and sales professional better weather the impending economic downturn.

I welcome hearing any suggestions that you have for ways to help companies recession-proof themselves. Send your insights to president@thindata.com or share with us here on the CMA Blog.

Marketing Campaigns Integrate:How to Make them Great!

I really get a charge out of attending marketing industry events. It’s a great opportunity to meet up with friends, colleagues and clients. At a recent outing, there was one topic that everyone was talking about – in the formal presentations and during informal discussions. The buzz was ‘marketing integration’.

Now, if you’ve been in this industry as long as I have, you too would find this curious; it’s extremely rare that the digital marketing industry achieves complete consensus on any topic. So, I took the time to discuss some specifics on how to successfully integrate marketing campaigns.

Here’s what I concluded after hearing what other industry leaders had to say: there is indeed consensus that the growing complexity in planning, implementing and measuring online/offline marketing campaigns has caused agencies and in-house marketers alike to seek ways to work together ‘smarter’. Specifically, marketers in all industries are looking for ways to:

• Simplify campaign/program administration and coordination;
• Ensure consistency of messages and brand throughout campaigns; and
• Ensure compatibility of evolving online and offline technologies.

All of these goals are laudable (and worth striving for) because they help businesses control their marketing costs and achieve/improve measurable results.

But, integration – i.e. trying to bring all campaign-related suppliers ‘under one roof’ – isn’t required to achieve all of these goals, nor is it a panacea. At ThinData, we have successfully achieved these same goals by taking an approach that can be best described as establishing respected-partnerships. Some of the critical elements of this approach include:

• Strong Project Management. This is one of the cornerstones to success. Clear, concise, and updated instructions that are regularly communicated between suppliers help to prevent confusion and conflict.

• Focus on the Client. Keeping clients actively involved and at the centre of the campaign helps to ensure that their goals – which naturally evolve – remain relevant throughout short- and long-term projects.

• Creating a Safe Learning Environment. Marketers in different agencies have different biases and skill levels. Bringing out the best performance in everyone requires jointly establishing practical ground rules for meetings, communications, acceptable standards and dealing with unexpected contingencies.

Here are some metrics that you can use to determine if integration is working for you and your clients:

Project Metrics – Projects are on time, on budget and run smoothly.

Business Metrics – Reduction in costs and risks regularly associated with project disruptions.

Interpersonal Metrics – Shared enjoyment working with respected partners and jointly discovering opportunities to innovate.

Client Metrics – Clients express their appreciation for working in collaboration throughout projects and regularly contract with you and your respected partners.

By adopting this disciplined approach to integration – as opposed to applying a more traditional method to integrating suppliers – you, along with your clients and respected partners will successfully address campaign complexities and truly thrive.

If, as a member of the interactive and digital marketing community, you have struggled with or overcome the challenges associated with marketing integration, I would be interested in your insights. Send an email to ceo@thindata.com or share with us here on the CMA Blog.

Re-Thinking the Need for the 'Next Big Thing': 6 Success Principles for 2008 That Transform Sorcery into Science

Every year around this time…as we edge up to a new year, I am always asked the same question: “So, Chris, what’s the next big thing?” It’s a question that is also a regular theme at conferences and events throughout the year as well – including at the CMA Digital Conference in October where I had the opportunity to sit in on a breakout table about ‘the future of digital platforms’.

Over the last 15 years, we’ve all seen concepts, processes and technologies compete for the next big thing spotlight. For example, this year was the year where ‘social media’ captured the marketing world’s imagination. In 2006, the crown came to rest on ‘search engine optimization’ and, in 2005, viral marketing was all the rage. Prior to that, businesses were looking for ways to reach Gladwell’s ‘tipping point’, strive for Collins’ ‘great’-ness (from goodness) and raise their ‘emotional intelligence’. Meanwhile, ‘mobile’ has faded in-and-out as the ‘latest and greatest’ repeatedly from 2005 through 2007.

There will be no shortage of predictions and new crazes aimed at capturing the insatiable imagination of the digital marketing community as 2008 unfolds.

But I think striving for the next big thing reveals something about the digital marketing industry that we need to work on…as a group: an unhealthy dependence on finding ‘instant breakthroughs’ that are supposed to revolutionize how business and marketing in particular, is approached and conducted.

We love to talk about the latest and greatest social media site, widget, podcast, tool, gizmo, blog… but sometimes we do so to the point where obsession with the leading-edge means the industry spends little time transforming the newly discovered ‘sorcery’ into a proven science. That was something we heard repeatedly at the CMA breakout session on ‘the future of digital platforms’ – a call for the industry to spend time perfecting the existing technologies and techniques that are on the table. We also heard that marketers are growing overwhelmed with all the ‘latest and greatest’ things they are supposed to adopt into their plans.

It’s been my experience – and that of many of our partners and clients – that rather than waiting for the revolutionary innovation associated with the next big thing it makes much more sense to bring a disciplined approach to evolutionary innovation within our own businesses. Achieving this type of innovation can be achieved by adhering to some key principles:

1) Know Yourself Better Than Anyone. Clearly articulate what it is you do, what it is you do well, what you want to do better and your core operating values.
2) Stay the Course. Develop well-founded plans and then stick to them.
3) Measure Today and Always. Dedicate time, resources and processes to determine your success and opportunities for improvement.
4) Adapt. Anticipate and integrate modifications in work processes, staff and programs.
5) Link-In. Monitor trends related to your customers, prospects, competitors, relevant technologies, social demographics and similar industries.
6) Nurture Creativity. Develop work processes and a culture that truly encourages and rewards innovation.

By adhering to these principles with a dogged-like discipline, each company’s marketing will evolve in ways that will have a dramatic impact on the digital marketing industry – all without relying on the next big thing.

How do you create and sustain evolutionary innovation throughout your marketing programs and your company? Let me know by sending an email to ceo@thindata.com or sharing with us here on the CMA Blog.

The Hunt for Interactive Talent: Call to Action

We need to act. And, we need to act now.

Earlier this week, I was participating at one of the Market Yourself Smarter conferences. Those who attend MYS events appreciate them because they are consistently topical and practical.

The topic of the day was Employers Who Walk the Talk. A few messages came through loud and clear during the presentations and group discussions:

• To succeed, companies must tap into the passion and creativity of their employees
• This generation’s workforce has new expectations from its employers
• Leadership means effectively understanding, anticipating and responding to employees’ needs and expectations

As I was listening to discussions about the employees’ ideal work environment it struck me that if there ever was a group of stakeholders that relied on leading-edge skills from the current and next generation of talented workers, the interactive and digital marketing community is it.

Other CEO’s and Presidents at interactive agencies, web developers and e-marketing shops often ask me how we (at ThinData) are able to consistently attract and retain top talent. They all say the same things: the hunt for talent is consuming much of their time; the talent pool is thin; and, they are spending growing amounts of money on recruiting talent.

And yet, I am not hearing a great deal from the interactive and digital community – the independent firms or the digital arms of the big ad agencies – about this fundamental resource challenge that needs to be addressed with a long-term vision.

There needs to be a plan; one that is developed, monitored and updated.

The interactive and digital marketing community needs a plan that engages universities, colleges, associations and businesses. All of these stakeholders need to work together to identify the skills that are needed now and in the future as well as to methodically and substantially grow the pool of talent.

We need to sit down as a group and identify innovative ways to cultivate the required skills while fulfilling the expectations and demands of a new generation of employees who expect new types of working relationships.

If we, as a community expect to keep pace of growth as we look to 2009, 2010 and beyond…we need to start treating the development and growth of talent as an industry priority. We need to take lessons from other industries that have successfully developed formal apprenticeship and training partnerships with educational institutions across different levels.

If, as a member of the interactive and digital marketing community, you have ever found yourself struggling to find or keep the right person, you have a stake in this issue.

Let’s discuss it in more detail. Shoot me an email at ceo@thindata.com.