Ron Jacobs Helps Architect New Certificate in Multichannel Marketing Program Offered at DePaul University

Chicago, IL (PRWEB) August 25, 2008 -- Direct marketing evangelist Ron Jacobs is helping to pioneer a certificate program and graduate degree course for marketers at DePaul University to debut in Fall 2008. The Jacobs and Stone Multichannel Marketing Communications Graduate Certificate program, dubbed MC2, was named in honor of Ron Jacobs and Bob Stone, co-authors of the seminal direct marketing text, Successful Direct Marketing Methods. Jacobs helped develop DePaul's first direct marketing program in 1989. He returned to help design this new curriculum to meet the changing needs of marketing communications professionals.

Most communications courses are taught from the perspective of advertising, branding, direct marketing, interactive, promotion or public relations. The MC2 program is designed for professionals from all of these disciplines. It teaches marketing communications from the outside-in perspective of customers and prospects, where today every customer is a multichannel customer. It will help communications professionals learn how to create, coordinate, manage and measure every offline and online channel with which their customers interact. Students and professionals will sharpen their edge by learning from industry thought leaders who are driving the changes in multichannel communications every day.

Dr. Steven Kelly, Co-Director of The Kellstadt Marketing Center at DePaul University, has academic responsibility for the program and said the school is honored to have Jacobs lead an advisory board to be the architect of this new and innovative program.

"We are grateful to Ron for having his firm, Jacobs & Clevenger, sponsor this new program, as well as to have his help assembling some of the most prominent and influential practitioners who will speak in this course about the most pressing and innovative changes in marketing communications today," Kelly said. "The result is a unique program that offers students and professionals alike the opportunity to gain an understanding of what multichannel marketing truly means today - and tomorrow."

The course builds upon a 19-year history of DePaul's involvement with professional education in direct and interactive marketing communications. Kelly said now is the time to make a "giant leap in the content and pedagogy of the program."

Jacobs noted that, "Today's rapidly changing communications landscape requires that marketing communications professionals reinvent themselves in order to stay on the cutting edge." Jacobs continued, "Marketers must go far beyond an understanding of interesting product presentations, clever creative efforts, and strategic media placement. The Jacobs & Stone Multichannel Marketing Communications certificate was designed to teach marketers how to create a framework for building sustainable relationships with their customers, and build effective multichannel message management systems to attract, acquire, engage and convert customers."

Course content will include in-depth discussions of converging online and offline marketing practices, Internet marketing, mobile marketing, social media, search engine optimization, differences in business to business and business to consumer marketing, marketing mix modeling, multichannel metrics and analysis, measuring online and offline lift, audience measurement, reputation management, global direct marketing, database management, and strategies and techniques for acquiring customers and building customer relationships. To support the material, their will be relevant casework, allowing students to understand the real-world applications of their studies.

Professional students will receive a graduate certificate in Multichannel Marketing Communications and may receive course credit if they enroll in the MBA program. DePaul MBA students may receive course credit as well as the Certificate.

About The Kellstadt Graduate School of Business of DePaul University:

DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business enrolls more than 2,000 students in highly respected, practical, flexible business degree programs and also offers professionals a wide range of relevant certificate study. The school employs 135 full-time and 163 adjunct faculty members, representing a diverse blend of leading scholars and distinguished business professionals who bring real-world experience to the classroom.

The Kellstadt Graduate School of Business is accredited by AACSB International - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. In addition, the part-time MBA program has been highly ranked in U.S. News & World Report's "Best Graduate Schools" for more than a decade.

About Ron Jacobs:

Ron Jacobs is president of Jacobs & Clevenger, a multichannel direct marketing communications agency that provides direct, database and digital marketing solutions that foster one-to-one dialogues with prospects, customers and end-users. In this capacity, Ron works with large national corporations, international governments, and global post offices to help clear obstacles to market development; to establish standards, develop processes and implement best practices for sustainable growth; and to evangelize the tools and techniques of multichannel direct marketing for use by brands, organizations, ad agencies and others focused on the potential of targeted, relevant, technology enhanced, measurable communications.

Ron is both a practitioner and a teacher and a well-received and frequent speaker at both national and international industry conferences and events. A recipient of the 1994 Outstanding Direct Marketing Educator Award of the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation, Ron is a popular international keynote speaker.

Ron is co-author, with the late Bob Stone, of Successful Direct Marketing Methods, the eighth edition of which was published in January 2008. Translated into a number of foreign languages, it is the best-selling text and trade book on the tools and techniques of direct marketing, and has sold more than 250,000 copies worldwide.

For more information, or to register, please click on this link, Multichannel Marketing Communications Certificate Program, and visit the web site.

Editor's Note: For more information or to arrange an interview with Ron Jacobs or Steve Kelly, please call Ginny Simon at 610-889-2036.

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