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.

Embrace the Recession And Grow

For the first time in over 12 years our economy is shrinking. That means there is a new generation of leaders at the helm of Canadian businesses who, for the very first time, are being confronted with making choices and feeling professional pains that they have never before encountered.

These leaders are going through a series of stages while dealing with the realities of operating their businesses in a weak economy. And, only those who capitalize on the opportunities at each stage will emerge stronger, professionally and personally, at the end of this economic cycle than they were entering it.

Stage One: Prepare

Business leaders, for the most part, do everything they can to keep on top of current economic realities because their day-to-day operations are dramatically affected by sudden shifts in customer purchase behaviours, cash flow and long-term investments. That’s why the first stage that leaders take, although reluctantly – is to prepare for a weakened economy. Earlier this year, I described how leaders can prepare for a soft economy by recession-proofing their business. Specifically, I outlined four steps that leaders can take to build and strengthen an infrastructure that recognizes and rewards customer retention. Since successfully retaining customers is essential in a softened economy, taking these steps strengthens any business’ foundation.

Stage Two: Accept

In the last few months, local and international indices have clearly revealed that consumers and businesses alike are indeed spending less than projected. And, once a company’s revenues are affected, leaders truly accept the onset of a softening economy. During this stage, leaders can optimize several opportunities for success, for example: (i) target recession-proof industries – i.e. those that provide essential products/services rather than luxury products/services; (ii) only target segments that are the most profitable; (iii) focus marketing messages on cost-savings and reducing inefficiencies; (iv) renegotiate vendor contracts; and (v) outsource more marketing activities.

Stage Three: Embrace

During the most recent economic downturn – known as ‘the bursting of the dotcom bubble’ – ThinData consisted of a handful of dedicated professionals. With few assets to risk, we did something that was unheard of: we actually embraced the recession. That meant taking unconventional but well-grounded actions. For example, we took the opportunity to find and hire talented people who had been displaced. At the same time, we recognized that our former competitors were not marketing aggressively. That provided a rare opportunity to build name recognition, positive associations and new relationships in a ‘marketing vacuum’.

By successfully growing stronger through these hard times, the valuable lessons we learned about how to prepare for, accept and embrace weakened economies continue to shape our innovative approach to operating and building a sound business and vibrant culture.

Optimize Your Mix: Five Lessons from Email Marketing

I am frequently approached by senior marketers – from across industries – who confide in me that they are grappling with how to achieve an optimal ‘marketing mix’ in light of all the available new media and traditional media. They want to build on their history of success in one medium or technology platform (e.g. mobile, print, web) and leverage all marketing media.

As someone who has seen many marketing and technology trends over the last 13 years, I have identified some consistently powerful lessons that, while drawn from permission-based email marketing, can be applied to improve marketing results across all platforms. These five lessons include:

1. Always Deliver Relevant Content and Segment

Technology has progressed to the point where recipients can choose key components of the marketing information they are to receive – including method of contact, content, timing and frequency. When customers and prospects have control over what marketing information they want, when they receive it and how it arrives, they are dramatically more likely to act upon a marketing campaign’s call-to-action.

2. Collect Your Customers’ Permission: They Demand It

Because gathering permission helps marketers build a positive brand experience and engage with customers, it has become a fundamental to all marketing campaigns – online and offline. The Do Not Call List is another demonstration that securing customer permission is every marketer’s obligation and responsibility. Furthermore, Canadian privacy legislation (PIPEDA) mandates permission is gathered.

3. Test. Measure. Test. Measure.

There are four key lessons regarding measuring and testing:

• Campaign metrics need to be tied to specific business goals at the onset of any campaign. For example, ‘brand reach’ can be linked to the number of new subscribers and successful initiatives to build referrals.

• Use campaign-specific and company-established benchmarks in addition to industry-wide stats.

• As technology and campaigns progress, the meaning and importance of metrics evolves. For example, at one time, email open rates had been held out as the key measure of campaign success. However, with image-blocking software and the popularity of preview panes, the focus has switched to achieving specific conversions.

• As marketing technologies have evolved to allow for variable delivery options, so too has the ability to test several component parts of each marketing campaign. In email marketing, that means the ability to test subject lines, copy, personalization and the specific offer.

4. Focus on “Relative Time” Rather Than on “Absolute Time”

Marketers have long recognized that timing can make or break a campaign. The challenge however is the tendency to seek a ‘perfect time’. Throughout the year, email marketing studies are published that point to a particular day of the week and/or time-of-day as ‘the best time’ to reach out to customers and prospects.

However, because marketing is about establishing, nurturing and enriching relationships, choosing the right times to optimize a campaign’s results involves addressing several items such as: when the previous communication was delivered, the nature of the communication and the time-sensitivity of the message.

5. Integrate with Business Applications

Whether you are leveraging call centres, point-of-sale tracking or any other media, integrate the flow of appropriate data into business applications so that the effectiveness of each campaign can be tied to key metrics such as revenues and acquisition costs. One of the reasons that email, for example, is poised to become an even more powerful marketing tool is because it can be easily integrated into business platforms such as Customer Relationship Management systems and Content Management Systems.

As senior marketers, we are all working towards one common goal: creating and sustaining a positive experience to acquire and retain customers. These lessons, drawn from permission-based email marketing, allow every marketer to harness and optimize their marketing mix.

I welcome hearing any lessons that have helped you optimize your marketing mix - share here on the CMA Blog, or feel free to contact me directly at president@thindata.com.

Employee Retention: The Leader’s Unique Role

"Chris how do you consistently maintain such high employee retention?" That’s one of the most frequently asked questions I get whenever I chat with leaders – regardless of the size, industry or geographic location of their business.

Now that highly-skilled, highly mobile and highly-sought professionals are a company’s lifeblood, I find that leaders are showing more interest in equipping themselves with the tools and knowledge to keep their most precious assets – i.e. their professionals. This newly found enthusiasm for employee retention is natural given that, according to the CMA’s President & CEO, John Gustavson in June’s 2008 e-Communicator, there is currently a talent crunch.

Below, find some of the key lessons about retaining enthusiastic and engaged employees that I’ve gathered over the years of building a thriving leading-edge company from scratch. One theme is common throughout: the smartest investment a leader can make is in ensuring that their team of employees succeeds. Make this your mantra and your employee retention will always be something of which you can be proud.

Lesson 1: Take a hands-on approach to employee orientation

Sustaining a corporate culture that encourages on-going innovation is the best path to achieve business goals. Leaders can play a critical role in shaping their culture during orientation – recognized as one of the most important times for setting a strong foundation with new employees. For example, leaders can:

Establish a bond with new employees. Within the first 10 days of new employee joining your company, spend time with them to understand their background, skills and future career aspirations.

Share the company’s vision. Within the first 20 days of a new employee joining your company, repeatedly expose them to the vision – and make sure they understand how their work contributes to achieving that vision. This can involve a one-on-one discussion, team discussion or company-wide presentation.

Acknowledge unique contributions. Beyond having the ability to function on a day-to-day basis, an employee only becomes truly oriented to a company when they feel as if their unique contribution is acknowledged. Within the first 30 days of a new employee joining your firm, recognize their contribution. This also becomes far more meaningful when done in a team or company-wide setting.

Lesson 2: Apply marketing skills to employee retention

Successful leaders know how to engage important audiences. And your team of employees is your business’ most critical audience. Bring your skills as a marketer to actively engage employees:

Anticipate future needs. Pro-actively develop plans that capture the imagination of what is important to your employees. This could involve modifying benefits plans, updating training programs or bringing other perks that align with your employees’ desires to grow personally and professionally.

Maintain an on-going dialogue. Since every successful dialogue begins with listening, establish a schedule of social and business events throughout the year where you can engage with your team of employees. These are terrific opportunities to learn about what projects and processes are exciting and/or frustrating your team. A natural extension to this on-going dialogue is establishing training and/or mentoring programs – identified as a possible retention method in the CMA’s recent study, Cultivating Market Talent: Overcoming the Obstacles.

Watch for reduced involvement. Just as you monitor clients for signs of disengagement, watch for employee behaviours that suggest that they are losing interest in their projects or their teams. Often, employees are looking for new challenges and opportunities to innovate within your company. Make sure your company can truly harness that energy and enthusiasm.

Lesson 3: Quantify employee retention in terms of contributions

All too often the rationale for tackling employee retention is framed in terms of cost-reductions. With that focus it is easy to overlook the unique contributions to your company’s effectiveness and productivity that result from retaining committed and engaged employees. Some of these measurable benefits include:

• New opportunities for business associated with developing new products/services
• The ability to take on additional work because of a “strong bench” of professionals
• Client retention and loyalty
• Time and cost-savings when existing employees train new employees

By quantifying and tracking these retention benefits, leaders are in a much better position to prioritize the resources required to retain employees.

Finally, by integrating all of these lessons into your regular schedule, you can have a positive and dramatic impact on your employee retention while building the foundation for future leaders. That, in turn, will provide you with an increased ability to meet the challenges that face your company now and in the future.

I welcome hearing any suggestions that you have for ways to help leaders retain employees - share here on the CMA Blog, or feel free to contact me directly at president@thindata.com

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.