Summit attendee Sean Cheyney, VP of marketing and biz dev for AccuQuote, gets greater ROI with more efficient buys.

Sean Cheyney is the vice president of marketing and business development for AccuQuote. He is responsible for spearheading the overall growth and direction of the company's marketing initiatives, strategic partnerships and customer acquisition through both online and offline advertising. He reports directly to the company's executive vice president. Cheyney's primary responsibilities include executing the company's marketing strategy to the external public, overseeing website design and content development and evaluating and optimizing all aspects of customer interaction. He is also directly responsible for initiating and maintaining all advertising and partnership relationships to help benefit and promote the company's image and business model. Prior to joining AccuQuote, Cheyney served as director of online marketing for BambooBiz, Inc., where he was responsible for helping to build and expand lead generation efforts for existing clients.

iMedia: What's your current greatest challenge when it comes to marketing in general, and interactive marketing, specifically?

Sean Cheyney: Both in general and for interactive, the greatest challenge is finding effective media outlets that produce ROI and basically fit into our ROI metrics. That holds true for any media source. The biggest challenge on the interactive side specifically is increased rise in costs of online-- an increase in CPMS. The universe of media is shrinking.

iMedia: How are you tackling these challenges?

Cheyney: By being more sales efficient on our end; it's forcing us to be more creative in terms of our messaging and creative. We need to stay proactive, and find more alternative and emerging advertising platforms.

iMedia: Behavioral targeting advocates say that BT is a solution to a shrinking media universe. Have you tried that as a solution?

Cheyney: We're still testing BT, but it has been hit and miss for us-- mostly miss. We've had more effectiveness with frequency testing. The results are less avails, but more effective avails. That's what BT is supposed to do; we do it by not adding as many impressions to people who didn't respond to the first few attempts.

iMedia: With which online marketing tools (email, behavioral targeting, display advertising, et cetera) has your company experienced marketing success in recent months?

Cheyney: We're using email and display advertising primarily. We do plenty of display advertising-- that's our bread and butter. And we've found email to be a better cross-sell and communication tool than a lead-generating tool. There's been an evolution in what works. Three years ago, we had success with email blasts and pop-ups. We've migrated away from that, as has the industry as a whole.

iMedia: With regard to this success, what are some lessons learned that you can share with our audience? What worked? What were some challenges and how did you overcome them?

Cheyney: We will do things that generate the ROI we need, being mindful of doing things that don't distract from the brand. For example, what we found with pop-ups is that they became less effective because they started generating more complaints than business. So they just don't make sense.

In terms of frequency of messaging, we let customers tell us if we're communicating too frequently or not enough, and then adjust our frequency based on customer feedback combined with metrics.

iMedia: Think about your company's favorite online marketing tool or mix of tools. What advice would you give to marketers interested in trying these out for the first time?

Cheyney: When we first started, we weren't using an ad server. Once we started using one -- Mediaplex -- we loved it. What we can do in reporting and how we're able to determine what gets served, how and to whom, is priceless. We also have a database tool on the backend that pulls data and provides analytics. Both work very well. What's working for us with these tools is to continually test, do more of what's working and quickly cut the cord on what isn't. That's smart business acumen. Being in an entrepreneurial area, we do only what works. That sums up our success-- do what works. So we believe in testing.

iMedia: What's the most out-of-the-box thing you've done in your marketing efforts to reach a hard-to-reach demographic or meet a specific goal?

Cheyney: From time to time, about once a quarter, I assemble a group of people from the office, not just people on the marketing team but also maybe a sales manager, someone from admin, someone from sales and a general office person. I present the areas we're looking to create communications in and ask for ideas, as crazy as they may be, that fit into those categories. We have fun with it. If someone comes up with an idea that I think will be lifesaving for the company, I throw them a pack of Lifesavers. The meeting sparks creative ideas, and we usually go out of it with several workable ideas. We've actually come up with some of our best ideas that way. And they originate from people throughout the company, not just the marketers.

iMedia: Online video is coming of age. Has it impacted your marketing yet? Do you plan to do more of it soon?

Cheyney: We're looking into it and have had some discussions about it. We're looking at it more as a customer relations tool on our site than as an advertising medium. For instance, we might have our sales people and/or CEO record greetings, so people can see who they're doing business with.

iMedia: Consumer-generated content is scary for many brands because of their inability to control it. How do you view the topic? Have you had much experience dealing with it yet? Any advice for other marketers?

Cheyney: We maintain a blog. We're fortunate that our CEO is considered one of the country's top experts in life insurance and financial planning. All of the top publications and media outlets call our CEO for quotes, and he's a published author. He's a good asset and we use that. So we use our blog to share information with anyone who's interested. Occasionally we also create podcasts. We provide an opportunity for people to learn and that develops goodwill for our brand.

iMedia: Is there another brand you admire for how its agencies are using interactive media to either increase branding or sell it? If so, why and what have you learned from that brand? 

Cheyney: There are a couple: I'm impressed with the auto industry in general, and how they've utilized online not just as a straight branding tool but also to measure their performance. Ford in particular uses it to track and measure performance. I also loved Audi's Art of the Heist campaign. I was blown away by that. Other brands I admire are ING and Vonage.

iMedia: What are you most proud of from the past year? Why, and what should other marketers learn from that?

Cheyney: The biggest thing is our overall capability from an analytic perspective to measure success of the company. We do full-scale analysis of all of our data in a million ways, and then use that information to make more profit. We're not just running the data; we're taking it and using it to our benefit. That increases the value of the brand.

iMedia: Anything else you'd like to add? Like something you've heard or learned that has made an impact on you?

Cheyney: Earlier this year, I attended the IAB Direct Response Leadership Forum in Chicago. I went to a workshop conducted by Young Bean Song from Atlas. He talked about frequency capping and getting better use of your buys. I went right out and implemented the result of that research and that workshop, and that by far had the biggest impact on success of our advertising campaign in 2005. It has allowed us to take campaigns that otherwise weren't working, do reach and frequency analysis and capping and turn those campaigns around. We've got some campaigns that have been on autopilot for over a year that at one time we couldn't get to perform for longer than a couple of weeks.

Dawn Anfuso is senior editor for iMedia Connection.

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