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Zando shoes & fashion online

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Zando

Chapter 16

 case questions

 1. Which elements of Zando’s email marketing constitute best practice?

Zando approached Digital Fire, a digital marketing agency. Zando wanted to create brand awareness, target new customers, grow their existing email database with quality leads, and increase traffic to their website in an effort to boost sales. To meet these business objectives, Digital Fire created an email campaign with an enticing Call to Action at its core. The campaign offered the chance to win a new pair of shoes every month for a year together with your friend. This made people share it faster with their friends.

 2.     What role did the database play in this example? Why was it so important?

 The email marketing prompted readers to fill in their own details and those of a friend, for the Zando database. The email was sent to 70000 people in Zando’s target market from a well-maintained opt-in email database, with a second follow-up email sent later. Thanks to the database Zando could create a bigger target market and achieved their business objectives.

 3.     Explain how viral sharing played a role in the success of this campaign?

Viral sharing allowed Zando to track and use data bases to get information from their potential customers. Viral sharing also led to new visits to the Zando website. 29% of people who received the first email opened it, with 11800 people entering the competition with their personal details and signing up to the Zando email newsletter. This is a great result considering that direct mail has a response rate of around 0.1%.

 chapter questions

 1.What is meant by ‘mass customisation’, and why is this so beneficial?

Mass customisation is a new way of approaching your customers, whereby they are individually targeted. The customers are segmented in demographic, transactional and behavioural groups. Every customers gets a personal message and is more likely to like the message they got.  Customers become more loyal.

 2. What are the key differences between direct marketing by email and direct marketing by post?

Direct marketing by post, people feel more personal targeted and are more likely to take a good look at it. Direct marketing by email is cost effective and targets a lot of people. People check their mails multiple times a day, although it is still possible to see the email as spam.

 3. Why is it important for permission to be gained before marketing by email to a prospect?

Permission means to give formal consent to another person. When using email to market your business, you want to have permission from your prospects and customers. By getting your prospects to give permission before you start sending emails you will avoid spam accusations. The law says that all email messages must, offer a method for the recipient to opt-out and contain the sender’s valid physical postal address.

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Fuji Xerox

Chapter 8

 case questions

 1. What type of CRM solution did Fuji Xerox implement?

Fuji Xerox implement an integrated CRM system called the Sage CRM solution. Fuji Xerox created with this new system a repository for information. In this system there is also an Oracle ERP system included. This is an enterprise resource planning software solution that enables businesses to manage all facets of their organisation from development to manufacturing and sales.

 2. Which pitfalls and problems did the new CRM system solve?

The most important aspect of the new CRM system was the fact that the focus was now on the customer and their needs. Fuji Xerox gave the sales team the opportunity to manage their sales pipeline effectively. The CRM system offered contact and customer management functionality and sales force automation.

 3. What other potential improvements could the CRM system make in the long term?

Quicker response times to sales queries and improving customer experience. The new CRM system gave sales representatives software that would simulate costs, profit and discounts immediately, which lead to quick preparation of quotes and confidence in knowing that these were accurate and made sound business sense.

 chapter questions

 1. How do you think CRM changed or evolved as social media rose to popularity?

The main objective of CRM is to create customer loyalty. Social media can be used to check your customer’s opinions on your company. The company itself can easily respond to their customers as well. If the company is more popular on social media, answers questions quickly and clearly, is nice to their customers and tries to help them, customer’s loyalty will improve rapidly. Before social media, it was harder to check whether your customers are happy with your company. Now you can hire a company that easily scans social media websites and will provide you critical information in order to increase customer’s loyalty.

 2. Why do customers respond so positively to personalized communication?

Customers prefer to communicate with someone who can respond quickly, clearly and help them, rather than talking to a machine that is programmed to work the same for every customer. This creates customer loyalty. Personalized communication makes the customer feel understood, makes them feel important.

 3. What ethical problems do you think customers might raise with regards to behavioural tracking?

They might feel like they are being watched, or even controlled which can create a feeling of not being safe. This might be seen as an invasion on their privacy. Customers might feel stalked, as some sort of system is tracking every step they take on the internet and who knows what someone can do with this information.

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Quirk education

Chapter 19  

case question

 1. Why can an image make such a difference to someone’s online experience?

People can be emotionally influenced by an image. An image can explain so many emotions, which may will have impact on each person on a different way. Furthermore, an image makes the website more interesting, because people will understand things better. The online visitor does not only see a page full of text. Without an image the website may be less attractive and will ensure to more click away.  

 2. Why was testing important in this case?

Quirk Education needed to maximise their conversion rate to get as many course registrations as possible. They understood that a well-placed picture or a splash of colour could make the website more interesting and would ensure people to read the website. A/B testing allowed them to determine which images would have the best results.

 3. Discuss why the one image led to more conversations than the other.

The case study was talking about two different images. One with an image of a woman, and the other with an image of a logo. This DMMA logo of a well-known digital marketing body, lent an additional level of credibility to the Quirk Education offering.  

 chapter question

 1. Describe a situation where an A/B test would be more suited as a data-gathering method than a multivariate test.

An A/B test can be more suited as data-gathering method when you want to see if changing one element has a lot of influence, without changing other elements. For example, if you want to sell a service that the customer can read online books off and you offer them a free 30-day trial, you might want to check if having ‘’30-day free trial’’ in the title will lead to more customers trying out the service than putting the same text in for example the sub-title. An A/B test, also known as a split test, involves testing two distinct versions of the same page or site to see which performs better, usually with one specific element changed. A multivariate test tests combinations of versions of the website to see which combination performs better.

 2. What is a conversion rate, and why is it so important to marketers?

A conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the number of visitors, expressed as a percentage. The success of a campaign will be determined by its conversion rate, as you can easily measure how effective it is. Marketers will be able to see how many people do and do not click on the ad, which shows the effectiveness of it.

 3. What can you test on an e-commerce product page? List three examples.

You can test whether people usually buy your products on a mobile device or on a desktop. As well as the exact moment people click away, which shows what you have to change on your website. Furthermore, you can see what time of the day most people visit your website, and change your prices according to this pattern.

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Conversion Tunnel

Chapter 18

 case questions

 1. What is a conversion funnel?

The steps a consumer takes through a website from the beginning to the final sale. A conversion funnel indicates how many consumers eventually actually make the purchase and how many quit during the process and in what step of the process they quit.

 2. Describe what was done here to ensure that more site visitors did what Motoreasy wanted them to do.

They first looked where in the conversion funnel consumers were dropping off and abandoning the process. Analysts discovered that the website visitors were lost at every part of the conversion funnel. Reasons for this problem are the language, which was too formal, and the product benefits, which were only mentioned up front. These benefits were not repeated later in the conversion funnel process. Changes were added, where visitors were constantly motivated to complete the process and were reminded about the company’s important information continuously. Furthermore, there would still be any obscurity among the visitors, the company’s phone number was displayed to contact them for any difficulties.

 3. How did language play a role in this case study?

After analysts analysed Motoreasy’s website, they discovered that the overall obscurity for every visitor was the formal language that was being used.

Next to highlighting the benefits and important information, the usage of formal language had to be adjusted to make the website understandable for every visitor.

 chapter questions

 1. Why is it so important to use data to inform business decisions? 

It is important to use data to inform business decisions, because data gives a full picture of the personalisation of the audience. It shows solid facts and clear results. It is all about monitoring user behaviour and marketing campaign over time. Every single step taken online is recorded, which provides a wide ranch of information for marketers. This helps them to understand their customers. It also shows the trends and changes in a certain period. So, you get a very clear image of your customers.

 2. What would you learn from a single-page heat map? 

It produces information that helps you to know which areas of a website are clickable and which areas are not clickable but have users attempting to click there. A heat map can show you exactly where users click on a web page. This can show companies what visual clues on the web page influence where your visitors click, what will optimize the click path of the visitors.

 3. What is the difference between a goal and a KPI? 

the difference between a goal and key performance indicators is that a goal is an objective you want to achieve and a KPI are metrics used to indicate if objectives are being met. If your objective is to increase the time visitors spend on your website, your goal is a minimum time on site and your KPI are length of visit, average time spent on website and percentage of returning visitors.

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What happens on social media, stays on Google.. Forever..

yoursocial

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Social media vs. Social customer

Chapter 15

 case questions 

1. How would you describe the link between social media strategy and the social customer?  People are willing to pay a lot more money for a specific brand, even when they can get a similar product from another brand that is way cheaper. Furthermore, social media has a great impact on a brand, it can build or destroy a brand’s reputation. Social customers are the customers, companies want to reach out and to get to know them. They have to consider the brand as their friends. People want to signal their reputation with the brand that they use. 2. How would you advise the strategists in the Social Media Command Centre to respond to a very unhappy fan?  Social media is a two-way communication channel: organisations interacting in this space need the resources not only to push messages out, but to deal quickly with the messages coming in. The strategies in the Social Media Command Centre has to monitor all the information. When negative comments and opinions are online, the company needs to react quickly. Otherwise the company will get a bad image. Most of the company set up a team who deal with these problems and find solutions. 3. How would you define a keyword in this context?  A keyword in this context can be defined as super bowl or a half time show. A halftime show is a performance given during the brief period between the first and second halve, or the second and third quarters, of a sporting event. To define a keyword, you have to try to find a topic that is interesting, that can trigger conversation. It has to go viral.

 Chapter questions

1. What are some of the pitfalls of engaging difficult customers on social media platforms?

There are some pitfalls of engaging difficult customers on social media platforms. One of the pitfalls is that placing a comment is easy. The quick reaction can easily increase your cost by monitoring. Social media is public, so everyone will be able to see the bad comments of customers and the answers of the company.

2. What skills do you think are important for a great community manager to have?

If you want to be a great community manager you should respond quickly to emergencies, but also do not take too long to react to the other messages. The most important skill is to have empathy, to feel what your customers feel and to show the empathy to the customers. A great community manager is motivated and can bring his motivation over to his co-workers and customers.

3. Should all brands be active in social media spaces? What brands have less to gain from trying to create an online community?

Social media is important for most brands being active depends on the target group, although more people are getting active on social media. For some companies who focus on elderly people social media may not be the best way to reach them.

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Twitter

Chapter 14

case questions:

1. Why was Twitter well suited to the Col’Cacchio #PriceSlice campaign?

Col’Cacchio knows their most popular customers are using social media and uses Twitter to get their customers to tweet ‘’#PriceSlice’’, in order to get a discount on their pizza. Twitter was well suited, because of a function that shows, which hashtags are trending and has a huge platform of users. More tweeting means more discounts. This caused to the following things; more people tweeted about the company, more followers of the page of the company on twitter, and people created Twitter accounts to tweet about the company. Thus, to get discount on their pizza the brand awareness of Col’Cacchio increased. Col’Cacchio has targeted their market the right way. Furthermore, Twitter is well suited, is because Twitter makes it easier to monitor customers’ behaviour online. Col’Cacchio can respond easy to its customers. This ensures to a better connection with their customers.

 2. How were hashtags useful for this campaign?

Monitoring hashtags is easily done. The hashtag #PriceSlice was trending in Cape Town and in South Africa. This ensured that a lot of people were talking about it, and more people would have noticed it. By seeing it via follower’s people will try themselves. This will ensure for more followers and more brand awareness. This whole process ends up with more customers.

 3. Comment on the interaction between offline and online touchpoints used in this campaign.

More customers in the store, means more customers asking for discounts and tweeting the hashtags online. The offline store shows how effective the campaign was. When more people are talking about the company online via Twitter, more people will get to know the company. They will show herd-behaviour and will start searching for the company.

 Chapter questions:

 1. Visit www.guardian.co.uk. List the ways in which this print publication is embracing social media.

The ‘guardian.co.uk’ website gives their visitors the opportunity to share their articles via Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger etc. by logging in on the site, visitors can comment on the articles. Customers have to register themselves to be able to log in later and, therefore, share personal information, which is used by companies to collect data about their customers and adapt their strategies to that data.  

 2. Why is transparency so important to marketing using social media? Has this halted or accelerated the use of social media for marketing?

When companies are transparent it is easier for visitors to share negative information. Vague suggestions or options can lead to negative comments of customers which will be shared with customers’ communities and eventually give the company a bad name.

Nowadays for customers it is easier to click away websites, that they are not interested in.

As well, investors are interested in how well a company is doing and this is only possible when companies are transparent.

Transparency accelerates use of social media for marketing. If companies are not transparent, negative comments will overrule the positive ones and that will affect reputation of the company or a brand negatively.

Companies should be honest and truthful. If a customer comments negatively or there is a problem, companies should be able to react immediately, which can be done by a special team set up to deal with these issues.

 3. What is the difference between advertising using social media and marketing using social media? What are the benefits of social media to each, and what are the challenges?

The difference between using social media for advertising and marketing is the amount of interaction that is used. Using social media for advertising is a one-way communication where a company informs customers about their products or services. Advertising is a part of marketing.

Using social media for marketing is a way of communicating with a company’s customers by interacting with them. Information comes from both sides and companies connect with customers and understand what they want and need, which will become the input for the product.

Besides, social media is being used to monitor and gain data about customers that is used in the development of the process, from idea creation, to production to the actual selling.

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The personalized Coca Cola bottles

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Coca Cola

Chapter 4

 case questions:

1.   What is Coca Cola’s overarching goal? Why is this significant?

 Coca Cola’s goal is to double the sales and redefine their business by 2020. By harnessing the power of content marketing in order to engage consumers. This is significant because, consumers were creating an ever-increasing amount of brand content. Technology had empowered them as never before, to shape the brand.

 2. What is brand storytelling?

Brand strategy creates an emotional connection and spread ideas. This further leads to positive conversations. Coca Cola creates an emotional connection by using connections with family, friends, and strangers in their commercials. Their slogan is ‘’Taste the feeling’’.

Coca Cola uses Santa Claus in time of Christmas to connect with their customers. By creating a story, they show the happiness of life and the love from people surrounded. This relates customers to each other. By personalizing their coke with names, they created more emotions.

3. What do you think about the content audit? Is it a process you would undertake?

Yes, you have to undertake the content audit. It is important because, the tastes and preferences of customers changes all the time. The demand of consumers changes over time, so strategies will change too to stay updated. They can find out what the customers need, by the buying life cycle and by primary and secondary research. Therefore, marketing managers have to change the contents and need to know what they have to do with the customer input.

 Chapter questions:

 1.     What is content marketing strategy?

Content marketing is a technique for marketing. It is creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience, with the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing strategy applies to all the spaces in which people share content. This can be, campaigns, blogs, and the social media space. Also the way in which the information is shared.

 2. Why is the customer journey or buying cycle relevant to content marketing strategy?

By understanding the journey of consumers and were they go through, what they feel and think, and as they approach your ultimate sales goal, will enable to match content formats to their needs. This is why the customer journey is relevant to content marketing strategy; Because of it is essential part of marketing planning, and the fit into the content marketing strategy.

3. How do you decide what new forms of content your brand needs?

Firstly, you make a brand style guide. This is a document, which guides anyone creating content for a brand at any time. This can be a challenging document, because the document has to be updated all the time. The document really gives you a look on your brand, so you really get to know your brand and choose the best form of content.

Then you make a content calendar, which assist the content marketer in planning the content. This has to be done very clearly, because the more specific it is done, the easier it is to react to opportunities.

Furthermore, a workflow map is important. This documents the path of a piece of content when it is created A workflow map assists you in streamlining this process, because it answers questions about the steps taken and if parts of the existing content can be used again.

In the end, you make a persona map. This map focusses on the target group and answers about motivation of consumers and for who the created content is meant for.

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Rocking the Daisies

Chapter 3

case questions:

1. What were the key insights drawn in connection with the Rocking the Daisies festival?

The organizers want to know if people enjoyed the festival, which is why they hired a company called Brands Eye. They analyse the internet for you and checked on the amount of comments and if people were talking positively or negatively about the festival. Online activities, willingness’s to pay and to go to the festival are measured. The results show the things what should be changed for the next time to give better experiences to their customers. For example, sponsored stages were more popular, so they may want to have more sponsored stages next year in order to improve the ticket sales.

They can use Brand Eye’s information as well to identify popular brands. Via social media Brands Eye can research the most liked festivals, to replace surveys. They can use the popular bands or artists on social media to improve their tickets sales, by booking them for their festival.

 2. How can the festival organizers take what they have learned to make changes? Suggest some ideas.

Next year, the organizers may want to book more international headlining bands, as this will increase online discussion about Rocking the Daisies even more. This might increase the sales, as more people want to attend the festival to see the bands. This is showed when Rocking the Daisies festival made the announcement, that an international headlining act was going to be attend at the festival. people were getting more excited to go and the festival got mentioned a lot online.

At the festival this year, the most frequently mentioned sponsors were the ones whose names were displayed at one of the stages. The organizers can use this information when recruiting new sponsors. They can increase the money from their new sponsor by showing them the online mentioning. They may want to increase the amount of sponsored stages as well, which will cause more sponsors to display their product on any stage.

 3. Why would ongoing monitoring be important in this case?

By monitoring customer behaviour, marketing processes will be changed. This is because of the Customers’ values, the life-cycle stage and their opinions what changes all the time. This means marketing has to change as well.

Monitoring, which artist is relevant and which is not, helps with picking which bands to book.

 chapter questions:

1. What is the purpose of exploratory research?

In exploratory research qualitative data is used. It finds out what potential consumers think and feel about a certain subject, and is used for market analysis. Whereas quantitative research puts hard numbers behind a hypothesis, the purpose of qualitative research aids in identifying potential hypothesis. In exploratory research the market is getting explored instead of seeking for answers. It also helps to determine the best research design.

 2. What is primary research?

 Primary research is conducted when new data is gathered for a particular product or hypothesis. In this research method the data is collected by yourself. For example, an online survey.

 3. What role does online research play in the overall market research toolkit?

 For online research you can use both the primary and secondary research method. These methods allow to get quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data can be quantified and verified, and is amenable to statistical manipulation. Qualitative data is data that approximates or characterizes but does not measure the attributes, characteristics, properties, etc., of a thing or phenomenon. Quantitative data defines whereas qualitative data describes. You can for example see how many people visited your website, their behaviour, and comments.

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Nike

Chapter 2

Case questions:

 1. What was the key insight that helped Nike develop a holistic marketing strategy?

Nike chose to use technological innovations, data analytics and social media engagement to reach this new audience online. Nike gave customers different opportunity to design their own personal shoe. This is called Nike ID, where they can add words or symbols to their personal preferences. The key insight what helped Nike was a traditional, big-budget advertising strategy that was seeing fewer returns over time. They realized that their strategy needed a new approach to reach their digital audience. In this way the new online consumers could be reached.

 2. What role do you think offline marketing and branding channels played in furthering the digital strategy?

Offline marketing and branding channels do not play a big role in the digital strategy. The online audience will only be reached via social media and online marketing. Although, offline marketing and branding channels are still important to reach the audience that does not get influenced by social media or online marketing. Offline marketing and branding channels do not only reach those that are offline. They also give customers a chance to experience the product when they are offered in stores or at promoting locations. For example, promoting days, where employees of the company promote a product on busy areas, such as train stations or city centres, to reach those customers that are not online. This is a way to give them a possibility to meet the new product. However, subtle needs that cannot be reached online, are reachable in Nike stores.

 3. What should Nike take into consideration when rolling out new elements and campaigns as part of their marketing strategy?

Nike should still target their offline customers via promotions and stores. These different segmented groups need different approaches, because of the different needs and preferences. This should all be considered when rolling out new elements and campaigns. As mentioned before, Nike is focusing more on their online audience. However, when Nike rolls out new products or elements, they still need to consider the audience that is offline. Additionally, Nike should make sure that the brand image and representation will be the same. Whether they offer their products online or offline.

 Chapter Questions:

1. Why is it important to consider the business context when planning your marketing strategy?

These beliefs depend on the organization and their adjusting of online and offline marketing strategies. When planning a marketing strategy, an organization should always focus on their customers, preferences, needs and wants. When marketing their brand or products, Nike can link themselves to celebrities who can impress their followers and encourage them to buy the products of Nike. 

 2. How has the Internet affected marketing and the models we use to understand it?

The internet affected marketing and its models differently. Online marketing can use data trackers such as cookies that keep track of what interest’s people, how they got to the company’s site and general preferences. With cookies as an example, organizations can adjust their websites and customize them to each and every customer personally. They could insert adds that are based on the customer’s former search terms or guide them to products which the company believes could be interesting.

Furthermore, data trackers ensure companies to easily find potential customers, and guide them to their website or send them with offers or discounts.

Additionally, it is easier for companies to get to information about their customers. Their social media accounts make it possible to do research on and use that information to customize customers’ experiences even more.

This can be positive for customers, because at the end they will find their highest valued and cheapest product more easy. Online marketing gives them the chance to buy products international.

The negative part is that data trackers can only apply cookies to their online customers. Companies will have different strategies and approaches to the offline customers.

This only marketing ensures for more competition between business, because it is possible for every company to use these data trackers for collecting personal data.

The negative part for customers is that they are getting approached by products with discount or other offers to push them to buy the product, although buying that product was not supposed to happen at all.

 3.  Do you agree with the idea that customers are more empowered than they were before digital communications were so prevalent? Motivate your answer.

Yes, I agree. It is more easy and accessible for customers to find reviews about the product you want to buy. Customers can discuss with each other about the product and price-rate more easily now, because of social media. Customers can now buy products international. This ensures that customers have more power before social media was so prevalent.

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Introducing the blog

Hello there,

I am an International Business and Management Studies student, at the HvA. This blog is based on the cases and workshops, which I have had in the Digital e-Marketing classes. Enjoy reading!

Warm regards, 

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