If you use email in your marketing plan do you sometimes wonder if it’s still relevant today? How do you tie it in to new forms of digital communications channels. At the National Agri-Marketing Conference Joel Book, ExactTarget, conducted a presentation titled, “E-Mail Marketing: Strategies, Tactics, Results.” I spoke with him prior to his session.

Joel sees email as the “backbone” of the ongoing strategy for keeping customers connected to the brand. He says email performs best when married to other forms of digital communication (mobile, social). It is vital in helping create “brand fans” who will help spread the message.

Joel provides a number of resources marketers can look to for more information about how to best use email as a key component of their strategies.

You can listen to my interview with Joel here (mp3).

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

The Aggies of New Mexico State University were the winners of the student NAMA competition this year. This is the second time the Aggies have won the top honors, but it has been awhile – so they were celebrating big time!

Other top winners in the student NAMA awards included Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, which took first place for Outstanding Student Chapter; and Iowa State University, which received first place and $3000 for their chapter as the John Deere Signature Award winners; and Mike Gustafson regained his title as “Hard Ass” judge of the year – three times in the past four years!

Curt Blades of Successful Farming was honored as outgoing NAMA Careers chair for his years of working with the student NAMA chapters. He was presented with an engraved beer stein for his heroic efforts!

Congrats to all the winners!

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

In a world of high technology one of our presenters went low tech. He’s Paul Adams, President, Paul Adams & Associates. His session was titled, “Put the “High Touch” Back in Your “High-Tech” World.”

At first I thought he was going to talk about technology but that’s not the focus. He says, “I’m really low tech.” He says we need to get back to more face to face communication in a world of high technology. Hmm. Do we really still do that? He laughed at that question and said, “I don’t know.” His presentation was geared to sales people and looked like it was really well attended.

You can listen to my interview with Paul here (mp3).

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

With all the focus on new media and new ways of marketing, the winner of this year’s NAMA Marketer of the Year is one who uses the oldest method of marketing known to man, and the one that still works the best – word of mouth.

Stephanie Liska, co-founder of Beck Ag, grew up on a farm in Iowa and is married to an agronomist, so she knows agriculture.  “Word of mouth is not knew to agriculture or to business,” she says.  “Purdue University has validated that the most influential person that a grower or a veterinarian or someone in our industry looks to to make a decision on what they are going to use or recommend is their peers.”

Stephanie has been involved in NAMA since she was a student at Iowa State University and was chairman of the NAMA conference last year.  She also credits her faith and her husband for supporting her with the business.

Listen to an interview with Stephanie in the player below.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

Each year NAMA honors an outstanding leader in the agribusiness industry.

This year that person is David Seehusen, Land ‘O Lakes. David was presented with the Agribusiness Leader of the Year Award. David has made significant contributions to the industry and made a really fantastic Earth Day speech which I will be adding to this post as soon as I get a copy of it. Dave included a lot of statistics about food production comparing today to years past. He made a great point of saying how new technology can continue to increase food production to feed a growing world population but only if farmers are allowed to use it.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

NAMA toasted the Best of the Best last night at the annual Best of NAMA Awards Ceremony. You can find a complete list of all the winners in AgriMarketing Magazine.

The Best of Show – Advertising went to:

Client: Midwest Dairy Association, St. Paul, MN – Gregg Fogleman
Agency: Sullivan Higdon & Sink, Kansas City, MO – Leslie Franklin
Message: To remind consumers that everything is better with cheese on it.
Audience: Mothers 25-54 with children 18-years-old and younger in the Ozark region.

Our other Best of Show winner is for Public Relations.

Client: Dairy Management, Inc., Rosemont, IL – Jennifer Wing
Agency: Weber Shandwick, Minneapolis, MN – Polly O’Grady
Message: To use social media to tell the dairy industry’s story, reinforce and build its positive image and respectfully counter inaccurate or uninformed online commentary about modern farm practices.
Audience: Consumers, age 17-29 and dairy consumers.

Thank you to Denny Eilers for the photos.

2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
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Twitter Bird has been keeping busy during the 2010 NAMA show in Kansas City. He was caught sending tweets, reading tweets, reading the Nook (which will be awarded to one lucky registrant) and promoting ZimmComm’s new social media campaign, @ZimmComm tweets uright!

Between activities, Twitter Bird signed autographs and took photos with the NAMA attendees, as seen in this photo.

Don’t miss your chance to meet, and take home, Twitter Bird and you can see him in action in the
2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference Photo Album

AgWired coverage of the 2010 National Agri-Marketing Conference
is sponsored by: . They know.