The Department of Marketing offers a comprehensive interactive marketing curriculum. The goal of the interactive marketing area of study is to provide students with current, up-to-date instruction intended to prepare them for careers in interactive marketing or related fields.
Northern Illinois University is the only university in the state to offer an undergraduate curriculum in interactive marketing, and to have a named professorship in Interactive Marketing. Dr. Debra L. Zahay currently holds the position of "Acxiom Corporation Professor of Interactive Marketing."
Interactive Marketing refers to a form of marketing, often facilitated by technology, where we address customers individually, gather and remember their response and address them once more in a way that takes into account that unique response. In this form of marketing, marketing is a conversation, not a one-time transaction. Examples of technologies that facilitate interactive marketing are customer databases, the Internet and call-center technology.