Lifestyle and entertainment communities require tracking, measurement and some blogging.

Greg Heuss is vice president of MarketRange, Inc., which creates and manages subscription-based online lifestyle and entertainment communities including PerfectMatch.com™, dataDate.com™ and TalentMatch.com™. Heuss oversees operations for the marketing department leaders, as they work to take MarketRange to market, and sponsorship, advertising and offline initiatives for the dating properties. Heuss was the vice president of marketing of Kiss.com and udate.com, where he led the events and online advertising initiatives.

iMediaConnection: How has your job changed this year?

Heuss: I’ve had a quick education on a few other forms of media, specialized television for example. As my team is building I’m finding more time to dedicate to strategy -- which is a good thing.

iMediaConnection: What surprised you in the online world this year?

Heuss: I didn’t think I’d see the rise of CPMs as rapidly as it has come.

iMediaConnection: Have you realigned internal structures and resources to simplify or increase integrated marketing?

Heuss: Yes, integrated marketing is core to our business.

iMediaConnection: How do you determine your marketing mix -- and how has the role of online in it changed?

Heuss: As an online property we rely heavily on the Internet, but are now adding to it with a steady mix of offline media.

iMediaConnection: What haven't you brought into the marketing mix yet that you want to try?

Heuss: Print.

iMediaConnection: Are you using consultants, software, agencies or other tools to help with search engine marketing?

Heuss: Yes, Atlas for our search management.

iMediaConnection: What do you believe is the future of ad agencies?

Heuss: There will always be a place for them. I think it is getting tougher and tougher to find the “great” ones but they are out there. They can be a great help but I would never place my entire ad budget in the hands of one agency.

iMediaConnection: What do we need to be doing as an industry to help you make interactive marketing a bigger piece of your marketing pie?

Heuss: I’m already a believer.

iMediaConnection: Are you being affected by any consumer-generated marketing (CGM) -- blogs, user groups, etc.? Are you using any blogs or other social networking tools to market?

Heuss: We are just beginning to utilize blogs. We are starting a blog featuring our “spokesperson/expert -- Dr. Pepper Schwartz, PhD” from one of our companies -- PerfectMatch.com. She will have her own blog, we will manage the day to day with her writing in as often as possible. We see the blogging as a great way to propagate our site further within search results by linking to and from various related topics and thus it will become an advertising tool for us as well as an informative narrative for people to join and follow. 

We are also considering creating several blogs that will tailor more towards the specific needs and or concerns regarding the users of our product. We view blogging as an inexpensive way to get a foot in a market that has a potentially huge upside. I’ll be curious to see how response is.

iMediaConnection: How important is CRM in your marketing efforts? Give us an example of what's working.

Heuss: Vitally important. We have the best tracking and measuring tools of anyone in our industry. We hone them constantly and it ultimately helps us achieve customer satisfaction levels that were unattainable in the past. We have a mutli-layer customer messaging matrix that is responsible for driving our “joiners” through our sign-up/registration and pay process that is unbelievably strong.

iMediaConnection: Does anything still frustrate you about what online can or can't do?

Heuss: I wish our country were further ahead in the broadband spectrum and utilizing video on the Net.

iMediaConnection: What are your daily "must-see" Web sites and why?

Heuss: My competitors' sites, all the major search engines and a few key portals.

iMediaConnection: What are you reading these days, other than iMediaConnection.com, of course?

Heuss: Fast Company, Business 2.0.