I took this course because internet marketing is a very attractive topic for me. Through the various in-class discussions as well as the group e-marketing project, I have learned the main elements of Internet Marketing. The biggest thing I have learned and gained from this class is that I could apply most of the concepts, strategies and tools to real business world.
For our group project, we developed an e-marketing program and provided recommendations to improve its e-marketing for a local Vancouver company called Sole Girls. Our team members are Kathleen Lane, Eric Tai, Lionel Zhao, Swetha Kola and Rohaan Sethna. We covered topics including content calendar, social media analytics, email marketing, google adwords and google analytics. I’m responsible for email marketing. I have learned a lot about email marketing through the group project.
I have learned A/B email campaign testing.
A/B testing is a simple way to test changes to your page against the current design and determine which ones produce positive results. It is a method to validate that any new design or change to an element on your webpage is improving your conversion rate before you make that change to your site code.
Testing takes the guesswork out of website optimization and enables data-backed decisions that shift business conversations from “we think” to “we know.” By measuring the impact that changes have on your metrics such as sign-ups, downloads, purchases, or whatever else your goals may be, you can ensure that every change produces positive results. Quantitative data speaks for itself. You and your coworkers may have hunches about how site visitors will respond to certain design elements; A/B testing allows you to show visitors two versions of the same page and let them determine the winner. Constantly testing and optimizing your page can increase revenue, donations, leads, registrations, downloads, and user generated content, while providing teams with valuable insight about their visitors. (https://www.optimizely.com/ab-testing)
I created two different versions of emails for our client and sent to target group. The purpose of A/B testing s to test how different factors affect the way subscribers engage with our email campaign.
I have also learned some strategies to maintain and grow email opt-in list and increase engagement rates when we have a limited list.
There are some strategies to maintain and grow email opt-in list.
• Create clients email opt-in for communication website: Collect e-mail addresses and get permission from customers to communicate with them by e-mails.
• Grow clients email opt-in: Periodically send newsletters, updates and notices to client list to maintain customer loyalty and grow clients email opt-in.
• Build Landing page
• Offer Discount: Run a promotion offering special price programs to encourage new customers to register their email address on the website.
• Use Social Media
• Use an app: Work with email marketing provider and use an accompanying mobile app to help gathering e-mail addresses.
• Sponsor events: Sponsor events and offer prices to collect e-mail addresses in house. Have customers opt-in at the location with a ballot
• Partner with other complementary businesses in email and ad campaigns
The issue of deliverability is a matter of acquiring and maintaining accurate information for contacts. Basically, the deliverability rate is the ratio of the emails we have sent versus how many messages that actually make it into the inboxes of our intended recipients. While one might assume that any email that is sent will make it into the recipient’s inbox, not every message that is sent will make it into an inbox.
There are different ways in which marketers can increase engagement across their small email lists. Start by expanding the company’s visibility on the Web. For example, company can be more active at guest blogging for online industry publications. Company should also develop a more robust social media program that will serve two purposes—it will not only help grow their reach, but also show their followers that they are posting great updates (and thus encourage them to sign up for an email newsletter). Lastly, consider offering incentives to their email subscribers to share their offers with others.
In order to improve Open Rates and Rates, a company should create relevant and interesting subject line, create content that’s useful to more subscribers and target specific content to a segmented list.
A company should be constantly creating remarkable content and repackaging it in ways that draw people in. Develop creative content offers based on customer surveys, industry trends and other insights you have access to. Be open to feedback and take suggestions from your audience, and testing out variations of campaigns.
Testing out variations of an ad campaign to increase sales and profits is still a mystery to many small businesses and marketers. Unlike more traditional advertising methods like TV, radio or print, in online marketing it’s really easy to make changes, test them out and increase ROI. I will continue my study on this issue.
One of the problems I encountered in the presentation was to get an immediate answer when I was asked questions by our client. In a traditional presentation, we are all physically presented and we will leave the Q&A section as the ending of a presentation. In this client presentation, we arranged a skype presentation because our client was in Spain for a business trip. Our client raised questions during the presentation. This problem, however, turned around as I gradually learned to dig deeper and investigate further for my own answers and prepared more. My team members are very reliable, responsible and supportive. Each of us finished our own section on time and delivered high quality of works. I think this was a great learning experience and good team experience.
I would like to add that I have really enjoyed the experience of this class. It has been good for me to learn first-hand what e-marketing is all about and it will be very useful for me to apply all I learned to my work. Thank you for your help.