B2B Marketing - Mason Interactive

The Education Department plans to eliminate regulations forcing for-profit colleges to prove that they provide gainful employment to the students they enroll.

As someone who makes his living (in part) from advertising For-Profit Colleges, I have mixed feelings about this. The roll-back will most-likely result in my clients doing more advertising, which is good for me.

And yes, I think personally that past Presidential Administrations over-regulated. Yes, I get that colleges are businesses, and businesses should operate as a free market. Yes I understand that nobody is making anybody enroll in these classes.

But the loans people take out to attend these colleges, are backed by the tax-payer. In effect, the tax-paying public is subsidizing the few for-profit colleges that can compete at scale. So on that end, I think that rolling back these regulations is a bad idea.

On the other hand, nobody every asked whether my Ivy League Art Degree was likely to result in me being gainfully employed. And in fact I drove a cab for a few years to make ends meet, because it was the best job I could find.

At Mason, our worldwide client base means that we’re up to date on the latest trends not just in the USA, but around the world.

Lately, the GDPR has become a big topic of conversation. People disagree what its affect will be, and we’ve prepared some guidance, below, for our clients.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is regulation that strengthens data protection for individuals in the European Union. These laws apply to nearly all businesses with customers, potential customers, or any consumer data in the EU, and obligate these businesses to protect their clients’ data.

It obligates businesses in several ways:

First, the software you use for emailing files, contacting customers, and storing data must be compliant. The onus is on you, the business owner, to only hire GDPR-compliant providers.

Second, businesses must re-draft their opt-in clauses to be in line with the law.

Third, you need to let users edit, delete, or just access, their data. I imagine that there is a business here for an enterprising developer to create and sell as an SAS.

Four, you need to edit your terms of service to be compliant, stating clearly that you will use cookies, and everything else at your disposal, to give your customer their best journey.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My own feeling is that clients’ Facebook performance will not be very impacted, that Google’s Audience tactics (RSLA, etc…) will take a hit, but that things will level off.

We fired a client this week. This is unusual, so I thought I‘d spell out why we did so. “The Client” was referred to us by a friend and liked our experience, so we went live in short order, adhering to our 90-day plan (all new clients get a three month plan of deliverables, goals, and expected results). Within 30 days, they decided to stop advertising and re-group. 60 days later we went live again… for about 5 days. After another 60 days where the client rejiggered the site, we went live again… for about five days. After one more 60-days-offline, 5-days-on cycle, I called them and told them we could no longer work with them.

Rather than offer generalities about mismatched expectations or clients getting what they deserve, I thought I’d list the specific reasons we made this call: We didn’t make any money. We get paid to run a client’s advertising. When they’re not advertising, we don’t make any money. Because they kept stopping and starting, our total billing for them over the last 90 days was $350. Which is fine except… They didn’t spend enough to learn. Not hitting an ROI target isn’t bad news, if you’re learning things that will help you hit it next month. Being live for 5 out of every 60 days? Not going to get any learnings there. They were a time drain. They wanted to talk weekly while they were offline. This is also conceptually fine, but… They went in circles.

At first, the site was product focused. A revision zeroed in on the service aspect of the business. The third re-do was back to focusing on product. The fourth re-design was back to service. They wanted us to solve problems that we had nothing to do with, but didn’t give us the tools to do so. When they rebuilt their shopping cart in Shopify, there was a problem tracking sales in Analytics. Fine, this happens. They demanded that we fix this – we didn’t develop their Shopify integration, but fine, we can do that – but wouldn’t give us access to the system. So, between money, time concerns, not listening, circling back to old directions, unrealistic tech help expectations, and condescension, I think we made the right choice.

Our two cents on the Yelp employee who got fired after publishing a piece on how hard working at Yelp was: Good for her. I’m sure she expected to be fired – now anywhere she goes she’ll stand out in an interview. Side note about employee expectations: everyone wants to make more money. I do, you do, and our interns do. But it’s not an employer’s job to pay someone as much as possible; it’s an employer’s responsibility to treat people fairly, and with respect, hopefully, and to give them honest feedback. I’m not sure what Ms. Jane’s intention was in writing the piece, but I’m glad she did: it’s opened up cool discussions in our office, and I hope yours too.

As our summer internships in nyc come to an end, we say goodbye. One intern, Vivian, has worked here off and on for about three years, and so we’re extra-sorry to see her go. But our loss is Charleston’s gain. Without further ado, here’s our exit interview with Vivian Eisenberg.

How long have you worked here? Well, I started at Mason in May of 2013. And ever since, I have been interning for them on and off during my summer and winter college breaks, so it has been a patchy two years. What are you studying in College, and where? I am studying Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing at the College of Charleston in the lovely Charleston, SC. How closely has what you learned in school about marketing, correlated to what you’ve done here? I actually just started taking my core business classes this past year. Last semester when my Marketing 302 professor presented a couple of PowerPoint slides about SEO, it was sort of thrilling to already be acquainted with the real-life application of it. So I would say what I have learned in school about marketing has vaguely touched on the fundamentals of what I do at Mason. What’s the best part about working here? I would have to say the amusing and distinct vibe here- the fact that it is not a quiet office with cubicles. The spunky, modern touch here joined with the Pandora music in the background definitely makes us different from a lot of other companies in Corporate America. And of course, my friendly co-workers! Are we going to see you again? I can only hope so! I can only learn more and more about SEO at Mason, which I intend to keep doing, possibly even as a full-time career– after I backpack in Thailand for a little that is… Vivian Eisenberg at Mason Interactive Vivian, our longest-tenured intern, is saying goodbye for the summer.