On day 3 of my work with The Wilderness Society, I was already treading dangerous ground. Luckily I was too clueless to know it.

I was sitting in a communication workshop in the DC office with upbeat moderator Justin Perkins of Care2 and a welcoming communications staff. Justin asked each of us to rate marketing tools by importance. We then publicly announced our ratings and compiled a group rating. I was too new to know which of these tools were already being used (and I certainly didn’t know how or how well). I had gone about numbering my tools with a specific strategy – specifically by prioritizing primary tools like press releases, research, direct mail, e-mail alerts, and the website and ranking secondary tools like videos and contests much further down the line. I figured without news and research at the backbone of our organization, what the world would we message about in our marketing. This was not the only approach – some ranked based on the current landscape at TWS while others focused on a vision toward the future. What was interesting, though, is despite the range of individual responses, it took no time at all to come to agreement once discussion fired up. The group was refreshingly aware of the need to use different communication tools for different messages and audiences.

The averaged group rankings (from most important to least) were:

  1. Direct Mail
  2. Action Alerts
  3. Website
  4. Search Engines
  5. Press Releases
  6. Newsletters
  7. Research Reports
  8. Videos
  9. Social Networks
  10. Organizational Blog
  11. Bloggers
  12. Discussion Forums
  13. Events
  14. Paid Advertising
  15. Contests

I didn’t miss the few concerned glances from the forward-thinking group seeming to say “Wow. The new e-comm girl isn’t exactly a champion of all things technical.” But in my defense, I’m just not much of a fan of using a tool for the tool’s sake. Finally, something I think we’d all agree on!

Justin went on to talk about the sales cycle (or for those of you who prefer, the process of convincing people to support TWS). During that conversation it became even more clear that no one item in our handy, dandy toolbox is going to get us where we want to be. It takes the whole collection to make the biggest, best impact possible - a lesson that we’ll surely be drawing upon often throughout the web revamp process.