Successful Event Promotion: Create WV 2008

The picture at left, while somewhat blurry and low-res, shows one important measurement of the success of an event: a packed house!

At Maple Creative, we measure a successful event in three ways:
1- Packed house, standing room only
2- Full media coverage
3- Smiling happy client

The fellow standing on stage is our smiling, happy client, Mr. Jeff James. Jeff, who is one of the most gifted, passionate leaders I've ever known, is the chairperson of the Creative Communities Team of Vision Shared. Working with Jeff and his team of passionate volunteer leaders (change agents), made promoting the Create West Virginia 2008 Conference "an easy sell." In Jeff's words, "I feel good that the event execution has been in Maple's hands this year. It's great when things are organized. Great work by your team.

In terms of full media coverage, the state's newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, wrote two excellent stories. One was published on the 2nd day of the conference; the other, a conference recap, was featured on the front of the Sunday business section. These and many other positive stories were the result of a strategic, statewide media plan that we implemented over a four-month period from July through October. In crafting this plan, we worked carefully to create compelling storylines that provided diversity and relevance by focusing on various aspects of the conference: keynote speakers, record attendance, entertainment, venue and diversity. In such work, it is important to offset media fatigue, helping to mitigate reporters' potential burnout on event coverage. Again, in the client's words,"Really great work…I’m hard pressed to think of any event I’ve read more about since I’ve been to WV the last three years."

When we talk about full attendance and standing room only, we are not exaggerating. The goal for attendance was 300, which represented a healthy 20% increase over the 2007 event. In the end, we had over 400 participants in attendance. Despite the fact that we over-prepared, we still ran out of lanyards and name-badge holders. And on the final session of the last day, a full assembly and keynote presentation, when we expected some attrition, the venue catering staff had to set up extra tables and had to rush to prepare extra lunch plates. What a good problem to have!

In the end, this success story is one of planning & execution, teamwork & passion and the implementation of a leadership team's vision!

Three Marketing Guys

Search No Evil
Inspire No Evil
Speak No Myths of Evil

Pictured above (left to right): Justin Seibert - President, Direct Online Marketing, Wheeling, West Virginia; Skip Lineberg - Chief Creative Officer, Maple Creative, Charleston, West Virginia; and Jeff James - CEO, Mythology, Charleston, West Virginia.

Photo courtesy of Jason Keeling, photographed at Next Generation Marketing, Huntington, W.Va. May 13, 2008.

Next Generation Marketing Huntington

Jeff James engages the audience around new rules, new marketing. Our series continues tomorrow in Charleston, then later this month in Morgantown, West Virginia. We'll wrap up in Martinsburg on June 12. Thanks to everyone who attended today! Great to be in the learning space with you.

Next Generation Marketing - a unique learning opportunity

Over the past several years, I've done dozens of bootstrap marketing seminars and other "marketing overview" one-hour presentations. Invariably, the attendees request additional training for more in-depth marketing, or more advanced training, especially on the latest Web 2.0 and social media tactics. Jeff James of Mythology Marketing and Justin Seibert of Direct Online Marketing have shared similar experiences and similar feedback. Finally, we have decided to give you what you want. I am looking forward to collaborating with these two fine marketing geniuses, for whom I have great respect.

Next Generation Marketing is officially "on." We have put together a full-day seminar of advanced marketing content. This seminar is for experienced marketing executives; it is not beginner level content. We will be emphasizing the new marketing tactics (Web 2.0, social media, search engine strategies, etc.) with a special focus on accountability and marketing ROI.

We'll be hitting five cities in a 30-day span from April 30 through May 22. In fact, we are declaring: May is Marketing Month!

April 30 - Martinsburg - Holiday Inn
May 13 - Huntington - Pullman Plaza Hotel
May 14 - Charleston - Embassy Suites
May 21 - Wheeling - Wheeling Island Resort
May 22 - Morgantown - Waterfront Place Hotel

In addition to our trio, we will have one or more "marketing superstars" as guest presenters. So far, these include the top marketing execs from CAMC and Snowshoe. We'll keep you posted as the other superstars are booked. We have an exciting group of sponsors forming too, including The State Journal and Continental Airlines.

We hope you will make plans to attend. Jump on our event Web site to get all the details and to register online.

Valuation of an E-Commerce Relationship

Recently we've been working on an e-commerce project for a client. The client's project involves a major Web play. And so lately I have been scouring the Internet and reaching out to smart friends to find the answer to these questions:

1- What is the monetary value of a registered member (i.e., an opted-in community member) on a retail Web site? This person has purchased a product or content from you.

2- What is the monetary value of an opt-in, e-mail address for an e-commerce prospect. This is someone who has not yet become a customer but who has granted you permission to add their contact information to your database.

The answer of course is: "It depends." But thanks to good friend and marketing guru Jeff James (a Microsoft alumnus), we can all refer to the following primer.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the dollar value of a customer relationship based on the present value of the projected future cash flows from the customer relationship:

Customer Lifetime Value ($) =
Margin ($) X (Retention Rate (%)/1+Discount Rate(%) – Retention Rate (%)
In a web ecommerce scenario, that should be relatively easy to figure out based on the average dollar amount of a sale, average frequency of sale, etc. On a site where ad revenue is generated, it can be more complicated, but still doable.


Prospect Lifetime Value is the expected value of a prospect minus the cost of prospecting:

Prospect Lifetime Value ($) =
Acquisition Rate (%) X [Initial Margin($) + CLV ($)] – Acquisition Spending ($)

Acquisition rate above refers to your closing percentage, i.e., the percentage of prospects who will actually buy. In the case you reference below, the firm should have some idea of what percentage of prospects come to the site and registers, and what percentage of the registered prospects turn into buyers before they could factor this value.

Finally, here are a couple of other good sources for this topic and related ones (e-commerce, e-mail marketing, search engine strategies, etc.):

Marketing Sherpa
Silverpop

If any of our marketing genius readers have relevant info and would like to contribute to the knowledge base, please leave us a comment.

Cultivating Connectedness among Creatives

Our team has had the pleasure of working with the Creative Communities Team of Vision Shared, under the leadership of Jeff James and Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher. Our goal has been to help Jeff and his team create a place on the Web for creative folks in West Virginia to link up, share big ideas and to engage in conversations. We hope that their newly launched Web site helps those creative folks do just that. We're using some really cool new Web tools, like Google maps (via the Community Walk app), Two Brains (shared learning), an online merchandise mart (via Cafe Press) and a companion blog. We're working on integrating a Facebook group, as well. Have a look - check it out!

Jeff has created a companion blog to support CreateWV. In his usual inclusive and generous fashion, he mentioned us and recognized our work on this great project.

We are happy to announce the updated createwv.com web site, full of useful links for anyone interested in learning about or developing the Creative Community in West Virginia. Thanks again to Maple Creative for their hard work on this site.

Here are a few things you'll find:

Big Ideas - A listing of existing suggestions on how West Virginia can break through to become one of the most innovative, prosperous states in the U.S. - and a form for you to submit your own ideas.

Action Resources - A long list of interesting organizations and resources that can help inform and empower you locally to drive improvement in education, technology, arts and culture and more.

Create WV gear - You knew the bumper sticker was coming, didn't you? Stickers, shirts and more with the Create WV logo available for purchase. All proceeds go towards the Create WV Conference and local workshop expenses.

Featured Creatives and Places - This list will grow, but we love telling the stories of innovative people and places in West Virginia.

Don't forget we still have the statewide CommunityWalk map that needs your input! Please add any interesting New Economy or Creative Community location in your community - anything from small business development centers to museums to wireless hot spots. To add your locations, just click on the "Build This Map" link near the top of the page.

Leading the Creative Charge in WV: Jeff James

We are excited to be working with Jeff James on the CreateWV initiative! Jeff is a marketing genius, who hails from Microsoft. For the past several years, Jeff led the Microsoft's Executive Circle program. Now, he has launched a marketing venture, Mythology Marketing.

Jeff and other leaders within Vision Shared have made great strides in advancing the creative sector of the West Virginia economy. They have identified, quantified, spotlighted and are now actively linking up the many creative people, places and networks that are found all across the Mountain State. You can learn more via the group's recently released whitepaper, "Culture, Creativity and Innovation - West Virginia in the New Economy."

Jeff is the lead blogger on the CreateWV blog, now a part of our blogroll. We are working feverishly on the launch of the CreateWV web site, which features tons of information, resources and social networking tools for the West Virginia creative community.

The Maple Creative team has been proud to have provided graphic design, Web design and public relations support for Jeff and his talented, creative cohorts! It is always a treat to work with a visionary and marketing genius like Jeff!