ERA’s annual convention emphasizes multichannel marketing with new educational content, the Moxie Awards, and more

Content Is King

Educational sessions continued the omnichannel theme throughout the show, providing the many attendees with direction for future marketing efforts. On the first day, ERA offered three Direct Response 101 panel discussions to cover the basics of offline, online, and omnichannel marketing strategies. ‚“Omnichannel is the new ecosystem,” said Elliott Segal, senior vice president of International Production for Guthy-Renker, LLC, and immediate past chairman of ERA. ‚“We need to understand what touchpoints people are engaging with throughout the day.”

The ultimate answer to creating an effective conversion funnel is for marketers to be everywhere at once, panelists said. ‚“Content is king,” said Dawn DuMont-Perdew, president of the DuMont Project, in ‚“Direct Response 101 (Part 2), Online: Your Direct Response E-Commerce and Digital Strategy.” ‚“When people want something, you have [to] make yourself visible and available to them.”

But the reality is that there are no longer people who can be considered native to a particular media; most consumers connect to several traditional and new-media channels every day. ‚“Your consumers are bouncing between messages,” said Erica DePalma, vice president of Digital Marketing for Media Horizons, Inc. ‚“Make sure you have a consistent, branded presence, because it is very important that the messaging and the offer are aligned across exposures.”

For as many data points that the Web and mobile add to the marketing mix, however, online strategies have allowed marketers to test campaigns faster and cheaper, panelists added. Additional sessions discussed monetizing Facebook, email marketing, and other online strategies.

Day two moved educational sessions to the D2C Think Tank and Learning Lounge on the show floor, where speakers and panels continued to concentrate on Web 3.0 (a.k.a. ‚“social commerce”) topics. ‚“If you’re going to do online video, you’re going to want to think a lot about strategy,” said Charles Voloshin, digital marketing manager for Portland, Ore.-based Wacom, in ‚“Five Things You Need to Know about Online Video.” The company primarily uses YouTube videos to sell its high-end drawing tablets, he said, and Google Analytics to view the purchase funnel. ‚“We can actually see when they bought.”

ERA also organized a last-minute session to help marketers understand and address one of the most pressing issues facing the industry: Operation Choke Point. Manatt’s Linda Goldstein and Venable LLP’s Ellen Berge and Jeffrey D. Knowles talked about the regulatory initiative and its chilling effect on payment processing.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) started increasing scrutiny of support businesses at the start of the Great Recession, Knowles said, and has accelerated its actions since. ‚“The FTC is using its authority to go after not only merchants, but also payment processors [it alleges] are either aiding and abetting the actions of merchants or helping merchants facilitate mass fraud on consumers.”

Negative option marketers are at especially high risk from FTC, Department of Consumer Protection, and Department of Justice action, since they often have high chargeback and refund rates. FTC can hold payment processors responsible for the ‚“entire consumer injury” or entire processing volume of a product it says employed fraudulent marketing practices‚Äîin other words, everything it earns. ‚“The whole risk model is changing,” Knowles said.

Day three featured more networking on the show floor, additional sessions including a special ‚“State of the Industry” talk featuring Media Analytics CEO Jeff White and ERA’s Julie Coons, and the conclusion of the InventHelp-INPEX New Product Showcase and Pitch by the Pros. This year’s winner? Sean Forhan and his Ballroom Dance Fitness program.

Throughout, marketers brainstormed ideas on the show floor, and in the conference rooms and lounges of the Wynn. ‚“Every year, I come in trying to find one or two innovative ways people are doing things, and this year I’m coming out with handful,” said Tim Pearson, senior vice president of Direct Holdings Global. ‚“People are getting smarter about how they control their data. There are some pretty sophisticated models on the numbers side. In the past, it was entrepreneurial courage; now, it seems like fewer companies are using calculated ways of going to market.”