This month, I’ve decided to point our donation efforts to Ms. Hogan’s class at Century Park Elementary School in Southern California.   Ms. Hogan’s class is filled with excited third graders with big imaginations that often state dreams of becoming astronomers or astronauts.  These dreams need to be met with resources to fill them with the fundamental knowledge of the solar system.

Being a huge astronomy enthusiast myself, I’m finding it more and more disheartening that American space programs aren’t being funded quite like they were in previous decades.  Enabling a scientifically literate generation to dream on an unfathomably large scale is not only great for them, but great for our economy and civilization.

I hope that Ms. Hogan will be able to enable America’s next generation of dreamers, the same way that I was by my teachers.  I’ll leave you with the words of my idol, Neil deGrasse Tyson:

Please check out our support for other Donor’s Choose Projects:

Reading FUNdamentals

Maps, Our Window to the World

The post Donors Choose: Beyond the Stars appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

My interest was piqued by Simonite’s strong opinion; I wanted to see what the new format was all about and how it might affect a user’s interaction with promotional marketing emails.  

Choosing the new configuration is quick and after a few seconds of loading everything is re-organized and easy to access!

The system has the built-in categories Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, or Forums, from which a user can select which to include in her inbox.  Primary emails are emails that have come from a person and anything previously starred.  The Social tab contains correspondence from all of the social networks to which the user belongs.  Promotions contains incoming marketing emails.  The updates tab includes auto-generated emails with receipts, bills, statements, and confirmations.  Lastly, the Forums tab includes correspondence from online groups, discussion boards, and mailing lists.

Mr. Simonite is concerned that this new configuration could present another hurdle for marketing emails to reach consumers, but, after interacting with it, it is likely this format could produce the opposite result.  With a dedicated place for promotional emails, they no longer obstruct a user’s view of personal correspondence.  Additionally, he or she knows exactly where to find an offer when they are ready to use it.

As a regular near-expert shopper, I am always looking to score the best deal when I hit the mall.  I stopped looking at promotional emails, however, because they got lost among all of the other correspondence in my inbox and I often missed out on a lot of good deals because of this.  Now that they have a dedicated inbox location, I am aware of their arrival and can quickly browse each one’s content.  Additionally, when I am ready to hit the mall or book a weekend travel adventure, I know just where to look in my inbox to view my favorite retailers’ weekly promotions and new merchandise.

The market will always be evolving, making the most successful companies those that can embrace and adapt to change. Instead of spending time worrying about new hurdles, marketing professionals should embrace this new configuration and thank Gmail for giving marketing emails a prominent place in the inbox.

If you enjoyed reading this blog post, you may also like:

Google Glass: Boon or Bane

Forget Windows 8

The post Gmail’s New Inbox: Friend or Foe? appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

Whenever I can I try and spend time volunteering and tutoring students in the Twin Cities area. I spend a lot of time with high school students, either trying to get into the college of their dreams or trying to just make it to graduation day. From my time with them, I understand the importance of building a strong foundation. It is both easier and more effective to build from this foundation than to go back and repair it down the road.

Mrs. Jacobson feels that building this foundation will help prevent her students from being vulnerable to the gangs nearby and the self-destructive perspective they create. I want her students to start on the best possible path in kindergarten, and learn to embrace literacy and love reading. I hope that Mrs. Jacobson’s goal for strong literacy skills will empower her students to stay in school, and become good role models for this community, a community that I also live in.

The post DonorsChoose: Reading FUNdamentals appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

1. Order your kit
2. Provide saliva and send it back
3. Log in and learn about yourself

For the price of $100, you have the ability to learn health risks, drug responses, conditions, traits, ancestry composition, and many other genetically derived facts about yourself.  This information at your fingertips, combined with a collaborative research effort, is primed to flip the medical industry on its head.  Additionally, Mashable has just posted about other organizations that offer similar services.

Surveys and research snippets can be taken/answered by 23 and Me members; this information helps the scientists/analysts behind the scenes to make new medical discoveries due to correlations between your DNA and your medical history (and environment).  Being the largest genealogical DNA database in the world, 23 and Me researchers now have a vast amount of potential to make scientific deductions.  On top of these features, you have the ability to find relatives and build family trees (and yes, there are many privacy functions – all of which are easier to understand than Facebook’s).

My biggest question is, how long until we are bringing in these reports to discuss with our doctors?  The sooner, the better.  Family history and environment have long been part of the rigors of going to the doctor’s office – but never before have we had the ability to present the known data to our doctors in such an easy way.  And, just like the flu shot, the more people who participate in this, the more beneficial it is to everyone.

In marketing, most of us spend our days working with data.  We want to simplify data access and analysis to improve marketing.  Many times, it’s a problem with critical mass and adoption.  It’s fine to talk about the possibilities that 23 and Me have (as well as your marketing DB), but until it is used by a large enough group of people, it simply isn’t feasible.  This begs the question, are you a lone wolf when it comes to using your data?  Or, are you pushing for adoption of your systems in order to gain larger amounts of data that can lead to real business insights?  Your aim should be that critical mass, that moment when you have enough users to drive ROI.

Other posts you might enjoy:

Automated Life Outcome

Pull on Your Cowboy Boots, We’re Going to Nashville

The post Data Share for a Healthier World appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

Reading the May 2013 Trend Briefing was the leap I needed to go from a conventional to a practical tactic. This briefing covered the concept of Pretail; consumers are using crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, to search for the cutting edge of consumer innovation. This is the power of letting consumers decide on what they want through personal financial backing and social sharing.

If you are unfamiliar with crowdfunding the concept is simple: An idea is submitted to a site like Kickstarter with details about the idea and how much it would cost to get up and running. Anyone is able to visit the site, take a look at ideas, and donate (if they choose to) to the ideas that they would love see succeed. Current Kickstarter projects looking for funding fall into the following categories: arts, comics, dance, design, fashion, film and video, food, games, music, photography, publishing, technology, and theater. Innovation through ‘the crowd’ goes all the way up to new product innovation through sites like Quirky, where brilliant ideas are submitted, selected, and developed for the market by anyone who wants to join the conversation.

Take a look at BrickPi. The concept is Lego bricks with a Raspberry Pi brain. As told directly from Kickstarter:

BrickPi is a system that converts Raspberry Pi into a robot. The project is a board and case that connects LEGO® Mindstorms Sensors, motors, and parts to turn your credit card size computer into a robot. The BrickPi allows you to connect up to 3 NXT Motors and 4 Sensors. It has a 9V battery power source that powers the motors, sensors, and Raspberry Pi, un-tethering the Pi from the wall. Finally, it has a sturdy case with holes that snap with LEGO parts. The brains of a Raspberry Pi joined with the LEGO building system.

What is mind blowing about this project is that it got 1620% of the funding needed in only 7 days! This is the power of crowdfunding. By getting 1620% of its funding, not only are they going to be able to take this idea further than they imagined, they were overwhelming told that YES, this is a project that consumers want.

Crowdfunding has also been used beyond taking an idea from concept to reality. Recently crowdfunding helped to save the former laboratory of Nikola Tesla. Individuals donated and continue to donate to save the land and build an interactive museum dedicated to Tesla.

After reading Trend Briefing and The Oatmeal posting about Tesla, I began thinking that this may work for innovation idea management within marketing departments. When you move from crowdfunding to the sourcing of ideas, this is called crowdsourcing. The distinction is where the funding comes from. When an organization is asking for ideas in which they will personally fund, that is crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing for innovative ideas is already happening within companies. Proctor and Gambles has their Corporate Platforms to actively ideas for innovation. Mashable recently wrote an article on how this is happening within the White House’s Office of Science and Technology. Organizations of all sizes and types are realizing that innovation is how problems get solved. Not only that, that innovation comes from anywhere.

Since ideas can come from anywhere, why not start Innovation-Sourcing within your organization. I have concepts on how to build and manage what I call Innovation-Sourcing, but I believe how it is set up all depends on the internal workings of individual companies and really that is simply the HOW. When considering a new internal initiative, I believe the WHY is more important. There will be short term benefits with innovation idea management, yet, with innovation the long term benefits are more important to consider. Benefits are easy to spot, and include:

• Harness the power of your team: Often times we search outside our own talent base to help us with innovation. We justify this by thinking that since “Ed” is a Senior Data Analytics team member that is the extent of the value he can provide. However, unless we ask, we will not know what Ed can provide the team. Without a forum with which Ed to share through, his ideas will go untapped.
• Idea Management: It is normal for strategic planning to happen like this: Take last year’s plan, update a few things, deliver to a higher up to read/approve, then store it on an internal server, and never look it at again. I speculate that is happening because there is very little in the strategic plan that is causing excitement and a reason to track against it. Having an Innovation-Sourcing repository is an excitement resource. Marketers can use this to harvest new ideas, and as a source for inspiration.
• PR: Proctor and Gamble and the White House are publicizing the innovation that they source from the outside. There is nothing wrong showing it off. Say to the world, “Look at how cool we are! We love the innovation that comes from our employees!”

Innovation-Sourcing will be a combination of team building, increasing moral, and just fun. Moreover, it is a way to harness the intellectual power of your employees. This will drive productivity, and increase revenue. If your company currently has a method to innovation idea management, we would love to hear it. With the ever changing face of marketing, this is an important competency to master.

The post Crowdsourcing for Marketing appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

To read more about this, please click here.

The post Goodbye Streetlamps, Hello… Glowing Trees? appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

IBM has a quote on the SCGS website that states the following:

“Today, the Chief Executive Customer is calling the shots, competition is fierce, and word-of-mouth spans the globe in an instant.” 

As marketers and customers, I don’t think any one of us would argue against that quote.  I sat and thought about it, and remembered a blog post I recently read by Seth Godin titled:

“Urgency and accountability are two sides of the innovation coin”. 

It’s relevant to the conference because he talks about how organizations find it more difficult to innovate as they achieve a greater level of success.  We know innovation is extremely important but that comes with failing, and as our organization grows our fear of failing tends to be greater.

Seth goes on to describe two symptoms that contribute to the inability to move an organization forward (i.e. innovate): urgency and accountability.  As you succeed the sense of urgency an organization once had is gone and people within it don’t want to be held accountable for failure.  With this combination of symptoms you have excuses, more meetings and wasted time that results in a resistance to innovation.  Can you relate to this within your own organization?  Seth provides an easy answer:

“You don’t need more time, you just need to decide”

Did you decide to attend the SCGS to learn how to solve the challenges our customers present?  Marketing innovation (enabled by technology like IBM’s) is an imperative and CMO’s know it, that’s why attending the SCGS is so valuable to the growth and success of your organization.  IBM put this in simple terms that echo Seth’s message:

“You know this – you’ve lived this.  Now it’s time to say, I’ve got this”.

With solid strategy and processes in place it’s time to make that decision to invest in your organization’s future success.  Marketing technology is a major part of that success and with IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit next week, you still have time to make that decision.

I hope to see you there!

-Ryan

We get a lot of inspiration from Seth Godin, check out some of our other posts based on his wisdom:

A Weird Talk With My Kids, Thanks To Seth Godin by Liz and New Year, New Resolution by Debbie

The post Advice For Attendees of Smarter Commerce Global Summit 2013 appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

The Unica MIS is no longer active and now the Unica brand is being phased out, but don’t fret.  The vision and innovation of IBM’s EMM marketing technology is more exciting than ever!

We have hit a maturity in our industry where marketing technology is no longer niche or departmental. It has become so important across the enterprise that most organizations can’t seem to grow or succeed without it.  For that reason, and a few others, I look forward to be attending this year’s IBM Smarter Commerce Global Summit (#SmarterCommerce) in Nashville on May 21 – 23.

My focus this year will be learning more about how customers are leveraging IBM’s Digital Marketing Optimization solutions.  This solution consists of Digital Analytics (formerly Coremetrics) and a new offering called Marketing Center (Digital Marketing with Analytics).  This is an area of growth and focus for Covalent Marketing.  By combining our long history and expertise in traditional offline marketing technologies like IBM Campaign (a.k.a. Unica Campaign) with Digital Analytics/Marketing Center, it’s a very powerful solution.  This integration of technologies will allow marketers to better understand and serve their cross-channel customers more effectively.

Sample dashboard in IBM Digital Analytics

What is bringing you to this year’s Summit? Planning for an upgrade?  Expanding marketing technology capabilities?  Please share with us in the comments!

I hope to see you there, make new friends, and hear about your Digital Marketing Optimization’s experiences!

-Ryan

To learn more about IBM Unica, click here to check out Jasper’s post on which version to upgrade to.

To learn more about our experience at Smarter Commerce Global Summit last year, click here.

The post Pull On Your Cowboy Boots, We’re Going To Nashville appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

Nothing illustrates this better than a recent arrival in my personal inbox: an *astounding* discount on the ever-so-necessary piece of lunchbox hardware – the Banana Bunker. That’s right, a protective plastic sleeve that will efficiently shield your fruit from bruising even after you fend off an attacker using only your lunch bag and then sit down for a rewarding banana to say “job well done.”

The Banana Bunker. You can’t make this stuff up.

I am willing to bet that the average banana eater did not know that their lunchtime fruit was in such peril of bruising as the Banana Bunker (and yes, it does look just as awkward as it sounds) implies. Many would think that after growing several feet above the ground, being ripped off a tree, thrown into a box, shipped several hundred miles, and arranged in a heap in the grocery store, it had basically run the gauntlet of potential injuries. But here’s the thing: somebody had an idea that bananas were in trouble.

This is the kind of idea consultants, managers, and directors need to keep an eye out for in the course of changing with full company inputs. They are well-meaning ideas, aiming to make the world easier and safer, and processes more satisfying. The outcomes, however, can be a lot of time spent on Banana Bunker ideas: time, resources, and clumsy design to create something that fixes a problem that isn’t the true issue.

In redesigning process, our focus can’t be on creating a bunker for different types of fruit (or marketing technology inputs). We instead try to find the root issues and then decide if a bunker is needed at all. If people are regularly beating assailants with their lunch bag, a different route to work will solve a lot more than banana well-being. Similarly, if users of a system are regularly having to resubmit requests because vital information is outdated, disabling the copy button is a smoother solution than inserting three extra review steps to check the info.

We never want to discount the concerns and ideas behind Banana Bunkers, but rather dig down deeper through questions and observation. When facing a possible Banana Bunker, start by analyzing the idea from a few different angles:

• How much does this affect the whole audience for the process/system?
• How much time or how many issues will this save or prevent?
• If you were to watch the user who proposed this user, how many times will it be utilized over one week/month?
• Is there a simpler solution?

It may be more time up front, but this kind of solutioning is vital in everyday work as much as consulting analysis. Finding out which ideas will give the most benefit for the least amount of change energy will save you and your company time, money, and peace of mind (at very little risk to bananas, trust me).

If you enjoyed reading about the usefulness of Banana Bunkers, you may enjoy our post on Bubble Umbrellas.

The post Scope Creep -or- You Probably Don’t Need Banana Bunkers appeared first on Covalent Marketing.

When I first became a Unica architect in 2007, my philosophy was simple: Upgrade to the latest and greatest version of Unica  and be done with it. Now that I’m a few years older and armed with more insight into what companies truly need, I have changed my way of thinking when it comes to upgrading sophisticated marketing products, like IBM Unica.

Above all else, your organization’s Marketing Technology comfort level needs to factor in to your decision making. It’s all about the path of least resistance. In my experience, organizations tend to take the path leading towards the best user adoption and ease of meeting IT system requirements first, before taking notice and advantage of new software features.

If your organization is in need of an IBM Unica upgrade today, you have three version options to choose from:

IBM Unica suite version 8.5

IBM Unica suite version 8.6

IBM EMM Suite version 9.0

Sometimes there’s not enough hours in the day to look at mountains of documentation so here’s a quick and easy synopsis of the routes I recommend, a cheat sheet for the Directors of the world if you will.

If you’re on version 6.x – 7.x and don’t want to be early adopters of 9.0, then upgrade to:

If you’re on version 8.0-8.2, and are of the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” culture, upgrade to:

If you’re one to embrace the latest and greatest, upgrade to:

Choosing the IBM Unica upgrade version for your organization doesn’t have to be a painful process.  Most marketing organizations have good instincts, and should factor in more than just key new features.  They should keep in mind the ultimate goal of user adoption. This is a strong driver; what’s the point of upgrading to a version that people will not easily accept?

These are just the big brush strokes, and there is a lot more information that makes these upgrade options the best fit for a marketing group to select.  If you’d like to know more about any of this, please feel free to contact me or any of my friends here at Covalent Marketing.

If you enjoyed reading this post, you may also enjoy Farewell ActiveX, Hello Dojo

The post The IBM EMM/Unica Suite: Which version to upgrade to… appeared first on Covalent Marketing.