On a blustery November morning, nearly 400 MIMA members and guests convened at the Depot in downtown Minneapolis for the monthly presentation and networking event.

It was standing room only; the crowd buzzing with conversation beforehand, listening intently during the program (and laughing together at the speakers’ humorous comments) then asking thoughtful questions before departing. And if this kind of participation continues to increase, the nation’s largest regional Internet Marketing Association may need to start reserving larger venues – a la convention centers or sports arenas.

7:30 am comes pretty early for most peoples’ schedules. At that hour, what could possibly bring together so many marketers, innovators, entrepreneurs, creatives, new media types and others who are curious about latest developments in the interactive space where technology and business intersect?

In addition to the quality of the content, it might be the opportunity to share ideas and inspiration – over coffee and a tasty breakfast – with leading thinkers in our industry. If you have attended events before, you know. If you have not, make a point of attending a future event to see for yourself.

This month’s program, the Constant Challenge to Acquire and Convert, served up some classic marketing strategy with a heavy emphasis on contemporary interactive tactics. The information was presented by John Barton, Vice President of Creative Services of Sight Marketing and Tom Masterman, Associate Director, Earth Collaboratory Initiative for the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

Far from being a boring theoretical lecture or a dry technical discussion, John and Tom made their presentation equal parts education and entertainment. Effortlessly switching back and forth between the roles of straight man and comedian, it was like watching the Smothers Brothers* talk about what’s going on in the interactive world instead of current global geo-political affairs.

Indeed. Interspersing smart marketing ideas with smart aleck commentary made a fairly content-heavy presentation stream by effortlessly. And they wisely provided key take aways and practical “how to” ideas you can take back to the office and begin using right away. All in all, an excellent way to start the day.

Take away number one: Measure everything – don’t accept unfocused targets or unmeasurable social media.

Associated action item: Go to wefollow.com or twazzup.com and listen.

Take away number two: Be organized – coordinate tactics, separate measurement (drive traffic for each tactic to a different URL, use different key code, etc.) and plan for data-driven relationships.

Associated action item: List campaign elements and expected outcomes, then make sure you can isolate what is driving results for each.

Take away number three: Get personal – know the story for each individual … so you can write the next chapter.

Associated action item: Take your customer service manager out to lunch, and your sales manager out for drinks, and ask a lot of questions that will help you gain insights into your customers’ relationship with your products, services and brand.

For more details, please review the take away slide they provided.

* Cultural reference for the younger crowd: The Smothers Brothers were a popular comedy duo in the late 60s known for liberal politics and championing social causes. Look them up on YouTube. You’ll laugh at more than the turtleneck sweaters. And you might think about what is happening in today’s news.

On August 12, about 200 MIMA members and guests gathered after work at the Metropolitan Ballroom in Golden Valley to sip cocktails, snack on hors d’oeuvres and network. And a fine evening was had by all.

Our guest speaker for the evening was John Dames, Design Director at CoolFire Media who traveled up the Mississippi from St. Louis to share his experience as a designer who has “done it all.” From print design to motion graphics to commercials, and now, most recently, iPhone applications.

John’s philosophy is simple. “My goal is now and has always been to make stuff. Not talk about it, write about it or think on it. But find a way to get it done and execute.”

Sounds like a common sentiment from most of the designers I know. One of the first things he said by way of introduction to his presentation was that he wasn’t a public speaker. So the evening depended kind of heavily on samples from the CoolFire Media reel that he brought with him as examples.

With that in mind, here are some gold nuggets taken from an hour and a half of ramblings, tangents and free-association on the subject of designing across platforms. This was all good right-brain stuff, after all. You just had to really listen for it.

General observations
“When taking on a new design challenge, it’s okay not knowing everything about the tools you are using. What you don’t know means you innovate.”

“Less people, money, resources and time has forced the return of the holistic thinking role of a designer.”

“Talent can trump depth and infrastructure any day. With the right people you can accomplish great things with small teams.”

“Designing across platforms allows marketers to more effectively create the user experience they want their audience to have.”

“Designers are now taking a more defining role in developing the user experience.”

Strategies for success
1. Take a holistic approach to production. “Want to do everything. Be happy doing anything.”

2. Allow cross pollination of disciplines. “Don’t just execute ideas – feel empowered to have ideas and share them with others on the team.”

3. Encourage blurring of roles. “Who knows where design is going to take you. Listen to everyone.”

What is coming next culturally and business wise?
“More advertising and branding messages will be integrated into content.”

“The internet is becoming more codified, less of a content dumping ground.”

“Media is all independent of the medium it appears in.”

“Procedural culture is driving change – nothing stays the same.”

“Design will become even more relevant, to help facilitate effective communication.”

Conclusion
What gold nuggets did you leave with? Reply to this blog post with some of the highlights you found meaningful.

So where are you reading this blog post from? Your home in Minneapolis. Your office over the River in St. Paul? Or a coffee shop in Mexico?

You know they call it “the world wide web” for a reason. And as the infrastructure to support it expands around the globe – and as the technology to access it becomes more affordable and readily available – the Internet truly is facilitating communication across widely dispersed geo-political boundaries. So visitors to your website could be coming from anywhere on earth, really.

Lots of smart interactive marketing professionals recognize the Internet’s burgeoning capability to facilitate international transactions. Recently, 200+ members of the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (and guests) met at W Minneapolis for our July event, featuring a presentation by Joe Kutchera an expert in online marketing and building sales in Latin American markets and founder of dotGlobal, an international e-commerce and media consultancy.

Joe spoke to the group about concepts related to localization and internationalization, using Latin American markets as an example. Here are select highlights from his full presentation.

Localization trends
Joe gave us some examples of how geographic boundaries can affect shopping behavior.

Price. According to Joe, who lives in New York City, many people in Manhattan cross the Hudson River to save on groceries and gas, because prices are less expensive and taxes are lower in New Jersey. Or compare the prices for the same products available on Dell’s U.S and Mexican online stores (both prices given in USD).
• Inspiron 13” – Dell.com: $499; Dell.com.mx: $665
• Studio Slim Desktop – Dell.com: $399; Dell.com.mx: $702
• Dell V305 Printer – Dell.com: $99; Dell.com.mx: $132
(Sources: Dell.com and Dell.com.mx, July 2009)

Availability. Joe shared several anecdotes about Latin American friends who frequently seek out U.S. sources to buy products because they often have greater selection and better quality. For a local example, who among us as creative and enterprising MIMA members have not crossed the St. Croix River on a Sunday afternoon at least once to replenish the liquor cabinet after a rollicking party the night before, because of Minnesota blue laws prohibiting alcohol sales on Sunday?

Internationalization trends
Joe provided a variety of figures verifying what we already know: the Internet is an increasingly international space. A look at the top 50 ostensibly U.S. websites shows that many are getting more traffic from abroad than from U.S. visitors. The New York Times web edition gets 42% of its readers from abroad, Twitter 51%, YouTube 81% and Facebook 82%.

Where could these visitors be browsing your website from? According to Internet World Stats, the top five most used languages on the Internet are: English (430.8 million), Mandarin (276.2 million), Spanish (124.7 million), Japanese (94.0 million) and French (68.2 million).

Indeed. For those of you who think visually — or for you verbal people like me who need context to put large numbers into perspective — try this on. The Minneapolis Star Tribune print edition reported two days after Joe’s presentation that China now has more people who are online than the entire population of the United States.

Opportunities for marketers
How are Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking people in the United States finding your website? By typing Spanish terms into their favorite search engines. Joe suggests making sure your SEO strategies include optimizing your site for Spanish (and other important international languages).

Look at your media plan. Joe said to think about your audience’s international language needs or professional interests horizontally across the vertical media channels in your strategy.

Target your messaging. Joe said there are a lot of ways to deliver messages to international audiences.
• By IP address or geographic region
• Re-target (follow up)
• Behavioral/linguistic
• Contextual (by subject)
• Profession/company/social network
• Country

Explore emerging g-commerce best practices. Joe said there is tremendous opportunity for marketers in the United States who make it easier for customers from around the world to buy their products.
• Give your visitors a choice of geographic denominations to transact in and make your offers available in multiple denominations.
• Give your visitors a choice of geographic locations to pick up products they order. If you do not have a physical presence in a foreign market where consumers are looking for your product or service, partner with a business there who can serve as a distributor for you.

Why would 280 ordinarily sensible internet marketing professionals get up at the crack of dawn and convene at the Mill City Museum? Sure, the camaraderie was great. And the breakfast wasn’t bad either. But those are only two reasons our MIMA monthly events have grown to be so popular.

The real attraction, as always, was the content – a presentation on user experience given by Nick Finck, co-founder of Seattle-based Blue Flavor, a web design company that focuses on creating great user experiences.

So what makes a great user experience? And how can you test your website? Nick described seven fundamental building blocks, and provided valuable insights about them, that you can put to use today.

Useable. This should be a top priority for page-driven design. Very simply, make sure functionality works effectively for all platforms and browsers.

Findable. Lots of developers work really hard to make search functionality as robust as possible. However information architecture and navigation design is equally important. Or even more so. Remember: if you can’t find something, it might as well not exist on your site.

Credible. Give website users an emotional reason to believe in you, as well as a rational one. A clean, professional visual design that provides clear, simple content can go a long ways toward creating a sense of trust.

Accessible. This is not just about avoiding unnecessary java script or burying content in Flash modules. Give users the option to explore your site content without advanced functionality. This includes making sure your site is accessible by people with disabilities.

(The Web Accessibility Initiative is a global volunteer organization dedicated to sharing strategies, guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to all.)

And there is a strong business case for paying attention to accessibility. Not only can poor website accessibility lead to expensive, protracted litigation, it can lead to lost revenue opportunities when users are denied access to your site.

Desirable. It is important to think about holistic user experience. Do you really know what your users desire? Do focus groups. Then make functionality easier for users and create positive (not painful) emotional experiences for them.

Useful. This is another big issue in user experience. Lots of technologies exist that allow designers to develop cool effects, but make sure they serve a purpose greater than just serving up some eye candy. That means no gratuitous animation or delays to load graphics.

Put another way: don’t make users endure your site and don’t go overboard with the gimmicks. Make your site fast to load and make it easy for users to find the content they are looking for. Web users are trying to find information and solve problems, so they are not looking for a CD-ROM experience with your site.

Bottom line: Nick wonders how many dollars are lost in missed sales opportunities and how many customers are lost because excessive features and functionality get in the way. Not to mention the dollars wasted on developing them.

Valuable. Focus on providing features that make your site easy to use. Focus on developing content and processes that allow users to find the information they need or complete a transaction in as few steps as possible. Don’t treat users as a source of qualified leads to bombard with marketing messages and touch points. Limit the level of commitment you expect users to give to you and let them choose how deep a relationship they would like to have with you.

Three other gold nuggets Nick shared.

1) We need to think, “device agnostic.” We are no longer designing just for the desktop. With new technologies and new applications – and many more advancements on the horizon, we need to serve up information and experiences based on the context of the device/application the user is using and what they are trying to accomplish by using it.

2) We need to fail more. Because we are not pushing ourselves hard enough. And critical feedback is important too. The more we vet usability and experience, the better it gets. Always remember: “Failure is not falling down. Failure is not getting back up.”

3) We need to come together on behalf of our users. Information architects, interaction designers, visual designers, usability experts, accessibility specialists, content developers and marketing professionals would be wise to keep our audience in mind at all times. It’s not about us – it’s about the people who visit our websites.

The key take away. The one most important thing Nick wants you to remember:

By creating good experiences for our website users, regardless of what they are doing or how they do it, we can successfully accomplish our business goals. And that’s what we all get paid for.

The idea has been circulating in the advertising/marketing world for decades. Develop a profile of your customer – or persona – to help inform your creative decision-making. And I’m a big advocate of using personas, having gotten to know Jill (a busy mom) and Barry (a successful executive) extremely well when writing for Best Buy’s customer-centricity initiative a few years ago.

Trouble is: a lot of people in our business aren’t using personas to their full potential. Which is why it was a real pleasure to listen to our June speaker, Tamara Adlin, founder and president of adlin, inc., and co-author of The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design (with John Pruitt, Microsoft).

On a warm evening at the Calhoun Beach Club, Tamara got right to the Achilles heel of most corporate organizations and the agencies who serve them. The market data we spend so much time and money to collect and analyze always seems to wind up underutilized, misunderstood, ignored and, ultimately, forgotten. There’s too big a gap between the data and the design.

She then explained how personas can help translate the data we have into a language we all speak and help us focus our efforts on the people who are important. Our customers.

To help illustrate the need for personas in the interactive marketing space, Tamara pointed out several common design problems that personas can help marketers and creative types avoid.

Barnacle based design
Bolting sitelets onto a website when new features or functionality are needed instead of modifying your actual website.

Corporate underpants
Website organization that reflects your corporate organization instead of your customers’ needs. Often has a tab for each cost center paying for the project.

“It has to be on the home page”
Putting everything onto your home page, making it cluttered and difficult to navigate. Often tries to bring the pet projects of the CEO and other stakeholders to the front.

Multiple personality disorder
Related to corporate underpants. When different cost centers or product lines develop sections of your site which leads to a bumpy end-to-end experience for site visitors.

“We need to use technology”
Happens when you try to adopt new technical capabilities faster than your customers are willing, interested or able to.

Focusing on a persona helps your site avoid these common missteps if it is developed by multiple teams with different roles and responsibilities. And here’s the kicker: even if the persona isn’t based on hard data, if it is defined with rigor and precision, all involved will be aligned and the end result will be more consistent. And therefore, more effective.

Tamara wrapped up her presentation by sharing ways you can use personas right now.
• Develop ad hoc personas
• Look for the typical site design issues
• Evaluate your site (or your competitors’ site) from the point of view of various personas
• Brainstorm features or messages based on personas
• Experiment with experience design

One final piece of advice from Tamara. Outlaw the term “user” when talking about the people who visit your website. It’s incredibly unspecific. Because like Tamara says: “There’s only one other industry that call its customers ‘users’ – and we don’t want to behave like it.”

For more of Tamara’s great insights on using personas, download the podcast of her presentation. In addition to her book, she recommends another authoritative publication on personas, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Coope

Today I spammed everyone on my AIM contact list with an invitation to join Facebook. I was searching for co-workers on the social network, trying to understand the more useful apps and plugins available to the average user, when I inadvertently clicked yes and authorized Facebook to contact everyone on my buddy list. I was distracted. I was multitasking. I was not as careful as I should have been. And, with one click, I was totally humiliated. My heart stopped for what seemed like an entire minute while I prayed for a confirmation screen that never came. I had misread a question, given my permission, and there was no going back. I just sat there and wondered how I’d explain to my colleagues, friends, peers, and, of course, the random total strangers I’d added to my list along the way, that I was a complete idiot who’d let Facebook hijack my buddy list to solicit memberships. I was one more unsuspecting pawn in the Facebook battle for world domination.

There is value in centralizing data. So many of us are out devouring and contributing to content-rich websites and social networks, connecting with long-lost friends, classmates, colleagues. We’re finally in a position to leverage ‘who we know’. Because, what have we always heard? It’s not what you know, but who. And the who has never been more accessible. We’re separated by miles and years and jobs, but we’re just a click away thanks to networks like Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn. There are new social and professional network sites trying to get in on the action every day. Today alone I had two colleagues try to get me to join Plaxo Pulse. I couldn’t help but wonder if they even knew they’d asked me to join. Recently a friend’s contact list had been hijacked by Spock (I refuse to link to this evil entity) to invite 2500 of his closest friends to join him there. I felt better about my 125 AIM messages when I compared it to 2500. But the sting was still there.

As more and more of these networks fight for our information, who’s going to prove the front runner? Clearly he (or she) who owns the most data wins. And Facebook’s shift from social network to ‘platform’ seems to suggest they believe they can connect all of this decentralized data floating around on the web and make it accessible via their single, simple, interface. So while the data might be scattered amongst iTunes, flickr, Amazon, AIM and other lesser known entities, a series of simple web applications can integrate all of it into the Facebook platform. What’s more, Facebook turns it around and provides an aggregate snapshot of your contacts’ data. It’s really a win-win. Or is it?

Recently Facebook has taken some heat for invasive marketing tactics via it’s Beacon system. Beacon takes data from external websites and makes it available to your contact list with the intention of promoting product through passive endorsements. If you bought something on Amazon, and you’re my friend, the thinking is I might be interested in that product as well. Because you, my friend, are just so darn influential in my life. The problem with this theory is you might be my friend, but I might not want you to know I just bought zit cream from my favorite zit cream website. Its an invasion of privacy and Facebook is still working that one out. Beyond that though, Facebook is starting to look like the Borg. Resistance is clearly futile. If you want to be in touch with anyone in this 21st century the easiest and most practical way to do it is through the web/Facebook, and peer pressure is unavoidable. Come on, everybody’s doing it. There’s a suggestion of youthful trendiness that we all fall victim to. Once you make the leap, though, you’ve sold your soul to the internet’s equivalent of the devil. Because once you create that profile, there’s (allegedly) no getting that data back. You can’t quit Facebook. Not really, anyway.

What does it all mean? To those of us working in technology? And those of us consuming it? These are tough questions to answer. But it seems clear that one of the most valuable assets of our time is our data. Our information. Yet, in spite of that reality, our data is clouded by a mix of fear (identity theft) and ignorance (my dog’s name is my password!).

What’s our responsibility as creators of content, and websites and systems and as participants of networks? What is our contribution? How can we influence how all of this unfolds? I believe that how we interact with, and collect data from users, needs to reflect truth and authenticity. Sure, we publish privacy statements and terms of use policies. We won’t store data or we won’t sell it or give it away or use it without permission. But it’s more than that. We need to help users understand what it is they’re providing and how easy it is to exploit. We need to give them an opportunity to change their minds, or confirm their understanding of an interaction. In my case for instance, a simple ‘confirmation’ page would have saved me the embarrassment of having to apologize to 125 friends and colleagues for that unwanted IM spam. Facebook knew exactly what it was doing when it required only a single click to access my list. I think it’s a cheap tactic in the race for the most data. The downside is, I’m no longer as enthusiastic about the value of Facebook as a networking tool. I see it as suspect now. The upside is I’ll be more careful when I use little web apps like that.

But our standards for collecting this data aren’t set in stone. We’ve only just begun, so what more can we do to extend real value for the user, and tap into the thing that’s most valuable to our clients? We can consider a user’s understanding of their valuable points of data as part of our commitment to simple, usable web experiences. We should see how we collect data as part of usability. We should only collect what is absolutely critical to the experience and we should make certain the user understands the cost of sharing their data and the return on their investment of trust. Finally, we need to keep our promises. Sharing data should have some reward for the user, in terms of access to content, or connections or something of value. We should treat our user’s data as sacred. If we expect to foster a long-term customer relationship, we need to respect what we know about a user and what we continue to discover. It’s common sense, really. Any of us, even presumed ‘experts’ can fall victim to guerilla data collection tactics. It’s embarrassing. It’s painful. It’s avoidable. The difference, though, is we have the ability to influence change. We have the option of applying some code of conduct to how websites interact with users. We’re not done. We’ve only just begun. Facebook doesn’t get to decide. We do.

Got a camera? (You’re nodding yes.) Planning to vote? (Of course you are.)

Participate in the Polling Place Photo Project, a nationwide experiment in citizen journalism, sponsored by The New York Times, AIGA, and Design Observer.

All you have to do is look through your lens and document democracy. Simply capture your local voting experience (abiding, of course, by state and local laws), post your photos, and become part of this nationwide, non-partisan project. The goal is to capture primaries, caucuses, and the general election from the people’s point of view.

Here’s how to participate. And here are some recent photos from the Super Tuesday Minnesota caucuses:

Minneapolis
“Democratic caucus line”
Photograph by Lewis Weinberg

“The convener shouts out directions”
Photograph by Pat Carney

Saint Paul
“Caucus chaos”
Photograph by Heidi Sandstad

“Post-caucus quiet”
Photograph by Arah Bahn

How about it MIMA members? Capture your user experience. Look through your viewfinder. Point and shoot. This is everything you applaud in a open-source initiative — photographs of the people, by the people, for the people.

I just returned from the Adaptive Path sponsored and coordinated MXSF 2007 conference in San Francisco. This was their first “MX” meeting, and it was well attended (it sold out!). There was a very large number of attendees from Minnesota. That was actually freaking a few people out, like we were going to take it over. I crossed paths with Mark Buccella of bswing and Bill from Room and Board (sorry Bill, forgot your last name and I didn’t get your card…). There were also like twenty people there from Adobe.

Anyway, Adaptive Path is Jesse James Garret’s firm in San Francisco, and you may remember JJG as one of the earliest advocates for “user experience” or UX, he wrote a book about it back in 2002. The M in MX is for “managing for the user experience” and the conference was aimed at a multidisciplinary audience of both agency and client individuals who are charged with creating/managing/improving user experience within their work, projects and teams. The bulk of the presenters seemed to be very product design focused, which was ok as there is decent overlap, but I personally would have liked to see more focus on both interactive and service oriented user experience strategies. Adaptive Path blogged the event and has some killer summaries. They are also going to be posting podcasts of each presenters piece. Check out the blog here, but I am going to inspire you first with some of my highlights from the conference:

Jesse James Garret

Jesse opened the conference with a really nice talk on what the whole experience thing is really about. He used the story of Kodak and the first consumer tech product (you click the button, we do the rest…) as a case study and dropped thought bombs on us like these:

- Biggest compliment that can be paid to what we create? I can’t live without it.

- Too many people are approaching problems through technology, others start with features. To be really successful, we need to solve problems by beginning with experience.

- The experience IS the product and business value + opportunity = experience strategy

Lou Carbone (our own local marketing strategy guru)

- CRM does not = relationship, it’s just data so get over it.

- Our goal, our objective should be to create value for our customers. Profit is only the reward for doing this well.

Caterina Fake (Flickr co-creator) interviewed by Peter Merholz

This was a pretty cool interview. Basically, Flickr was an accident. She and her team had been jamming on some online game called Game Neverending. They realized it was not going to scale the way they needed to, and in an act of desperation began re-purposing code and created Flickr. They were broke. They had no plan. They did no research. They had no idea, really, what they were going to end up with. None of them were even photographers, per se, but they were adept at creating social software and knew they were on to something with the idea of photo sharing. They benefited from an intense feedback loop, constant improvement and testing with real live people. Now, Flickr is owned by Yahoo, they’re all rich and have been on the cover of Newsweek. Dreams do come true for all you mom’s basement-working code geeks.

Overall, the conference was great. Really interesting mix to the audience, great conversation and networking, and the weather was nice. I had a killer dinner at Range in the Mission, too.

Welcome to the official blog for MIMA, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association.

Here you will find updated news about MIMA, events, projects and activities as well as interactive marketing industry news. We welcome and encourage your readership and interaction.