Summit attendee Jessica Kornacki, the senior director of e-strategy for Marriott Vacation Club, says if conflicting goals get in the way of moving things fast, re-align the team first.

Jessica Kornacki is senior director, e-strategy, for Marriott Vacation Club. She has 12-plus years of online marketing experience: six-plus years in the travel industry and six years in packaged goods. Kornacki has an MBA from Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and another Masters degree in political science from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL.

iMedia: What's your current greatest challenge when it comes to marketing in general, and interactive marketing, specifically? How are you tackling it/them?

Jessica Kornacki: How to manage competing fields' online marketing expectations without having 'corporate' as a bottleneck.

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

Kornacki: We are at an infancy level for implementing targeted online marketing tools-- we have lots of data but they are not mined efficiently/effectively.

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

Kornacki: I'd love to learn from others' success stories!

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?

Kornacki: SEM -- organic and paid -- brings tangible results for us fast.

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?

Kornacki: This is not an out-of-the box thing-- we've put in place an incredible web tracking tool so that we can measure every campaign to details.

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

Kornacki: Yes and yes.

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?

Kornacki: We discuss this constantly internally. Basically, we can't get our arms around the legal side. Again, we'd love to learn from others!

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? 

Kornacki: iPod-- it's a great product with a great message, and a great platform to build everything around it. I love the simplicity that gets the message across. Another brand would be Target.

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

Kornacki: Separating the web team between customer acquisition and customer retention so that neither one gets in the way of achieving web goals fast and efficiently. Lesson learned: if there are conflicting goals to get in the way of moving things fast, re-align the team first.

Dawn Anfuso is senior editor for iMedia Connection.