I was traveling last week and recieved a really shocking email campaign from a resort hotel client. The email took me by surprise, but as I always read client emails or txt messages before any others, I started to read the email which began with: "Our spring online advertising promotion has performed fantastically well, and has returned a revenue to us of 15x our advertising spend!".  Of course the reason that I was shocked is that our goal is to deliver a 3x ROI minimum for our hospitality clients and this one really surprised me. Actually what we have been doing that is quite successful is using a proprietary formula that we devised for online campaign effectiveness.  Notice I did not say "efficiency" since that takes on a whole new meaning from the standpoint of the agency... we want the campaign to be effective no matter how much hard work goes into it.  Our previous campaign for this client returned a 8 to 1 ROI, so this campaign really shocked me... I was hoping for the 8x return : )

Good news is that the economy has caused companies to shift advertising dollars online and they are realizing the effect of the shift. The caution is that not everything works well online and today, more than ever before, it takes deep experience and constant optimization to maximum an online campaign in this economy... especially when you are measuring effectiveness against actual revenue booked from the campaign, as we do.

One more interesting thing... the recent consumer brands caught up in online social faux pas in the past couple of weeks has been interesting to watch. From a marketer's perspective these companies should not only be monitoring the blogosphere and social messaging, but they should contribute as well. Waiting till the last minute to comment can spell real trouble.  This is some interesting reading... http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-twitter20-2009apr20,0,2701874.story

till next time

Leah