Eggcerpts from Natalie: Interactive Marketing 101

by Natalie Grbic

What exactly is interactive marketing? Wikipedia defines interactive marketing as the evolving trend in marketing whereby marketing has moved from a transaction-based effort to a conversation.

With interactive marketing, marketers should have the capability to:

• Address the customer
• Recall what the customer says
• Address the customer again in a way that portrays what we have remembered what the customer has already told us.

An example of this is Amazon.com or Borders.com. When customers document their preferences online, they are shown additional book selections that match the consumers’ preferences and also their recent purchases. This is why it is a conversation-based effort. Instead of just collecting the customer’s money through a transaction-based effort, marketers “interact” and interrelate with the customer.

Interactive marketing can determine the best solution to help marketers launch their brands by collecting information and empower the customer through internet technology. It is amazing what technology can do these days and how far marketing techniques have gone.

Susan:

Here are other real world examples of internet marketing.

• Blogs. Like this one. Or the one Egg designed for client Davis Goss. They’re written to an audience, and the reader has the opportunity to respond via comments.
• Retail websites. Natalie gives the examples of Amazon.com and Borders.com above, but how many websites have you visited remember what you’ve looked at? I know I’m always surprised when Half.com recommends something I’d really like on the home page.
• Social media/bookmarking. We have the opportunity today to decide what is newsworthy. Through sites like Digg and Stumbleupon, we have the opportunity to elevate news stories or bury them.