Remember career day at school? It was one of the best days of the year when firefighters, policemen, and athletes join forces to teach the next generation about their professions. Today, those professions are still some of the favorites at career day. However, over the past decade, schools have been fostering STEM-related talent in the next generation of men and women. Definitive Results’ CEO, Carly Schrager, recently had the opportunity to help foster that talent by teaching several 3^rd grade classes about marketing automation. Here were some of the key takeaways.

Technology makes more sense to kids

Think about it, twenty years ago, who would have thought you could click a button, talk to someone AND see them on your portable phone that fits in your pocket. This idea isn’t foreign at all to kids growing up now. Third graders are typically around 8 and 9 years old and the first iPhone came out ten years ago in 2007. These kids have never known a world without iPhones, iPads and every gaming device possible. Technology is ingrained into their thinking because since birth technology has been at every turn.

Kids understand technology is behind everything

“Technology is what makes the world work.” If you said that to someone under the age of ten, they would probably respond with something along the lines of “Yeah….” When explaining marketing automation to the older generation, or oftentimes even our own, technology is much more limited. The next generation doesn’t believe technology has any limits because their entire world is made of technology. So, the concept of marketing automation isn’t difficult for an 8-year-old to understand. One child in class even raised her hand to ask if marketers used email addresses to identify a person.

Presenting is a type of marketing

Marketing is always focused on having the right content or message, delivered the right way, at the right time. Presenting to the 3^rd grade classes followed the same set of guidelines. The content had to be tailored to its audience, meaning instead of giving a lecture, the kids performed skits acting out different scenarios to demonstrate marketing campaigns. Getting the right delivery was also key in how well the kids understood marketing automation. Classes where kids struggled to read scripts or were monotone, did not understand marketing automation as well as those with animated readers. The most successful presentations were those where the kids read the skits, with the correct delivery, at the right time.

While many of these kids will not grow up to work in marketing automation, many will have futures in technology. Firefighters and policemen may still be the heroes of career day, but marketing and STEM is on the rise. Marketing automation is still often difficult to explain to adults. But it wasn’t that hard for the tech-savvy 3^rd graders!