You’d think that politics would be behind the times, but it is quite a contrast between the two political campaigns for President in how they use new media.  The Obama campaign has taken a play from the Howard Dean playbook and used the internet to advance their cause much more significantly than the McCain campaign.  Perhaps this is a generational thing, but it is quite clear that Obama’s camp can get its message out much faster and doesn’t need to rely on mainstream media to do it.

Corporate America should take this as a lesson and see how it can use new media too.

I spoke to a woman recently that was looking at podcasting and social networks as a possible way to reach out to lapsed Catholics. Since these folks aren’t found in a church, she thought that reaching out to them in places they congregate online would be effective. I’d say that is some out-of-the-box thinking. Will it work? Possibly. Is it a bad idea, definitely not.

One wouldn’t think that religious organizations aren’t early-adopters of technology, but you’d be surprised. Even though you might not like TV preachers, they were quite visionary when they created their own stations and got themselves into your livingroom. Podcast Alley, the largest directory of podcasts list over 2500 shows in the religion and spirituality segment. Clearly there are a lot of producers of content.

She also was thinking of looking at social media outlets such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook as possible places where these “lost” Catholics hide.

At this stage who knows, but it is the out-of-box thinking that I admire.

Podcasting has started to get some traction with the mainstream media starting to look at it as something that brands should consider. Take Mat Zucker’s column in Advertising Age last month. He cites companies like Johnson & Johnson, CIT Group and Whirlpool as those that currently offer podcasts.

One thing that he did mention that I felt needs clarification is the cost. He says “Audio podcast production can be as low as $5,000 to 30,000 per episode and video podcasts $50,000 to 150,000 per episode.” Yikes!! Where do these numbers come from?

Yes, you can spend your annual salary on podcasting, but it also can be done as cheaply as $50. I’ve installed podcast studios for clients for under $5000 and then the client is able to produce their podcast utilizing internal resources.

My point here is that if a company or organization is considering podcasting, you don’t need an advertising agency to do it for you and definitely don’t need to spend $5000 per episode to do it. What you do need is to have a plan that is heavy on objectives and light on budget to start. Once it gets rolling, then you might consider investing in a better recording studio and better production values.

If you don’t know why you are doing a podcast, you probably should wait before you start one.

Right now you are probably reading this in an office while sitting at your desk. On your desk is a computer and inside that computer are hundreds of e-mails addressed to you.

E-mail is both a bane and a miracle of the modern office. It’s the thing that keeps your organization running, increases your ability to communicate, lowers your mailing costs and makes your marketing more effective. It can be a big headache too, just ask your IT department.

If it is so much trouble, why do we use it? E-mail is the most cost-effective method of marketing. Period. According to a 2006 study by the Direct Marketing Association, “the return-on-investment (ROI) for e-mail marketing was $57.25 for every dollar spent. The ROI of all other online marketing was $22.52, less than half that of e-mail.” The study goes on to say that for catalogs, “e-mail outperforms mailed catalogs by a factor of 7.15 to one ($51.45 vs. $7.29).”

How can we determine if it is working? There are four statistics that everyone should know: delivery rate, open rate, clickthrough rate and click-to-open rate. Delivery Rate is how many of your e-mails were successfully delivered to the recipient’s Internet Service Provider (ISP). Open Rate is how many of the e-mails that were delivered to the recipients inbox were viewed. Clickthrough Rate is how many of these viewed e-mails were clicked on, and Click-To-Open Rate is the relationship of the number of opened e-mails to the number of clicked-on e-mails.

Hey wait a minute. Isn’t e-mail becoming less effective? Actually no. If you take into account how cost-effective it is, it will continue to remain part of your marketing arsenal for many years. In addition, e-mails have become more sophisticated and interesting by incorporating links to PDFs, audio podcasts and videos that recipients can click on. Is your executive director making a public announcement of who the keynote speaker will be at next year’s conference? Record her doing that and link it to an e-mail. Did you just finish your annual report for the membership? Skip the printer and upload it to the website while adding the link to your e-mail newsletter.

Can associations use e-mail effectively? Every association is probably a user of e-mail so you are already on the bandwagon, yet you can still find ways to make it much more effective. Your first order of business should be tracking and analyzing what you are sending. Otherwise you are piloting your plane without a map. Get yourself hooked up with an outside e-mail vendor; ExactTarget, Vertical Response and Constant Contact will have the tracking and sending software you’ll need.

If you are still mailing out membership notices, newsletters or trade show announcements the old fashioned way, you are costing your association money. The cheapest postcard costs around 40-cents to print and send per recipient. That same message sent via e-mail costs less than a penny. You don’t need to be a math wizard to see the cost savings.

Also, e-mail is testable and trackable. You can experiment with your message subject lines or e-mail page designs just like the big guys do. Consider running A/B tests until you’ve got your message exactly right. In less than 48 hours you will know how well your mailing did, who got it and who read it. With some additional tweaking, you can increase its effectiveness too. Can you do that with any other marketing method?

A quick look at your present marketing efforts will uncover ways that e-mail marketing can be useful. Even though it may fill up your inbox and there are days when you’d rather remain anonymous, e-mail is still the best and most cost-effective marketing method available to your association.

Note: This also appeared in the 2008 Minnesota Society of Association Executives Technology & Facilities Resource Guide.