Cover Story > Susan McKenna
more than three years. “I helped build the
marketing division up for a successful IPO
(initial public offering) that took place
in 2000,” she says of the company, which
was eventually purchased by Convergys
in 2004. McKenna calls her experience
at Digital Think her “Pocket MBA,” and
credits the company’s leaders with “teach-
From Brand to Direct to Web ing me how to converge brand marketing
How McKenna, whose presentation at and direct response and … develop my
last month’s Response Expo in San Diego online marketing skills.”
received a ton of buzz during and after the In 2000, she opened a marketing con-
event, became a leading vi- sulting firm specializing in
sionary in the direct response building online businesses,
and Web space starts out which she ran for more than
simply enough — in public six years, servicing major cli-
relations and brand advertis- ents like Toyota and Well-
ing after earning a degree Point. In 2006, she joined
from Adams State College in b-to-b publishing company
Colorado in the mid-1990s. United Communications
“I worked on the agency side Group (UCG) to handle
in brand advertising, and marketing for Loan Toolbox.
then went into recruitment com, a Web site that serves
advertising with an agency in the loan originator com-
San Francisco,” she explains. munity.
There, she worked for “Loan originators
clients like Charles Schwab, would become members
Clorox and Wells Fargo. of the Web site, and we’d
“We had this brilliant idea provide them with train-
to recruit new employees ing, resources, marketing
online,” McKenna says. “I information,” McKenna
worked on a project called says. “The marketing was
CareerMosaic, which was all direct. Loan Toolbox is a
in direct competition with really interesting company
Monster.com — and, at the McKenna’s work at Borba run by some really brilliant
centered aroundefforts to
time, was bigger than Mon- create an E-commerce Web people. Working there re-
ster.” site at Borba that would ally changed my outlook on
Though she didn’t real- emulate the success of how I was marketing. I was
ize it at the time, this was other outlets. there for less than a year, but
McKenna’s introduction to it was really interesting how
direct response. Though CareerMosaic they marketed to their community of peo-was eventually purchased by Headhunter. ple. We did a lot of E-mail marketing and
net and Monster became dominant in the direct mail. Loan Toolbox shaped how I
space, the marketing efforts surrounding it think about direct response marketing
for Schwab and Clorox included TV and and implementing it online.”
print ads to drive traffic to the CareerMosaic site. “That was a life-changing event
for me — to realize you can take brand
advertising, add a call-to-action and
measure it,” she contends.
Eventually, McKenna moved on to
the client side, working for an online
learning company called Digital Think for
about entertainment, communication and
information. The minute a person on one
of these sites thinks, ‘This is a sales pitch,’
you’re done. Its about leveraging that in a
way that gives people the entertainment
they are looking for, the interaction they
are looking for. It’s not easy to do.”
Joining the Borba Team
Carrying that new outlook on Internet
marketing, McKenna joined Borba in
February 2007. “Borba needed to build
its E-commerce division,” she says. “The
company had already been distributing on
QVC very successfully and had success in
the retail division. Now it was looking at
direct, and it wanted to use the Internet
as the first channel for direct.”
However, unlike a number of competitors in their space — McKenna mentions
Murad and Dr. Brandt, among others
— Borba had positioned itself as a luxury
brand. “Direct response or online continuity campaigns are contrary to a brand
marketing strategy focused on luxury,”
she contends. “So it always was a balancing act, for me as a direct marketer and
for Jennifer Norman, the vice president
of sales and marketing, who runs Borba’s
brand marketing, to kind of meet in the
middle.”
McKenna calls that balancing act “the
biggest challenge I faced at Borba.” She
adds, “Discounts, online coupons — you
can’t use those tactics with a luxury brand
because it really diminishes the value of
the brand. Instead, we used concepts like
‘gift with purchase’ or free shipping.”
She says the brand’s positioning also
makes continuity marketing and affiliate
marketing a tougher task. “To run an affiliate program for a cost-per-acquisition
(CPA) campaign, I have to really pitch
the affiliate networks because they want a
certain amount of money per acquisition,”
McKenna says. “After you roll in all the
costs with Borba’s products, it’s not very
profitable at all. If you’re lucky, you break
even for a cycle and then you rely entirely
on continuity. It’s a tough business. I
opted not to do an online continuity program for Borba. If Borba does it, it’ll be in
conjunction with its DRTV campaign.”
The company is working on a DRTV
campaign outside of its presence on QVC,
but that won’t debut until later this year.
However, McKenna says that the company’s Web site does benefit from a “halo
effect” from all of its other channels,
including QVC, retail, direct mail and
others. She also says the recent addition
of the Borba.com site has helped. “When
I first started out, we were only at Borba.
net, and only recently acquired Borba.
com. In the past, people would go to
Google and type in Borba.com, and they’d
find an astronomy site. Once that domain
