Blog post three: Research initiative

In my digital marketing strategy proposal for Spotify, I proposed that Spotify used the following, to help enhance customer conversion from free to paid monthly subscriptions.

• Personalized emails campaigns with the aim of converting free users to paid monthly subscribers.
• A social media campaign targeting free users, on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

Obtaining a decent amount of responses from direct marketing from email tends to prove difficult. However, firms now have the capability to send personalized emails to customers, almost every part of your email campaign can be personalized, from the Sending Name, Subject Line, Email Content, Imagery, Dynamic content offers, Product Recommendations, Purchase Abandonment and Behavioral Segmentation. Consumer have come to expect relevant and personalized content in their emails. To try and meet these demands email personalization has moved from 1:many, to 1:1 emails, which provide a more personal touch as they are tailored to the consumer behavior. Emails containing dynamic content combined with consumer behavioral data, make the email more attractive to consumers while still relevant to the consumer and their behavior. Pickton and Broderick (2005) mentions that creativity is very important in email marketing and that mailing to existing consumers offers a better response rate than potential consumers. Response rates can be affected dependent on the type of campaign being run, these can vary from; incentives, personalized letters/emails, design and notifications (Mehta & Sivadas, 1995; Sheehan & McMillan, 1999)

Personalized email marketing could be one of the most inexpensive, yet most effective way to reach your target audience. Email has been proven to be a powerful marketing tool, being inexpensive, fast, measurable and everyone has an email address. Planning out the scale and timing of the email campaigns will lead to greater marketing programs, better results, establish and create relationships and prospects with potential consumers (Sterne & Priore, 2000).

However, A thin line divides spam and email marketing. Spam is unsolicited. While spam email, opt-in / opt-out can be hard to distinguish from it’s really down to the company to respect their consumers and manage their brand well and try to avoid sending spam emails out which are often frowned upon by consumers (Sterne & Priore, 2000).  Email marketing demands continuous tweaking to keep subscribers engaged, many people only sign up for the promotional benefit, these people may find the emails annoying and not pay any attention to the incentives.

A social media campaign is a directed marketing push to help reach a business’s goal with the use of one or multiple social media channels. Social media has essentially changed the way business interact and communicate with their customers and public. Before a campaign begins, measures need to be set out so you can track performance and changes throughout the whole campaign. Goals are set around the message and target audience of the campaign. Demographics will also shape and effect which platforms are used throughout the campaign. Paid social media advertising is highly cost-effective way of expanding your reach, social media marketing is a great tool for business to reach out to their customers. When executed correctly social media can bring incredible success, creating brand awareness and even an increase of sales. Social media platforms offer incredible targeting capabilities, these allow you to narrow down and focus your budget on your target audience.

Opposed to other forms of marketing where marketers remain in control of the message, on social media there is no control. Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter allow everyone to voice their opinions, this can be very controversial and spark some interesting conversations between users. This can lead to negative feedback and reviews on your page. There is also a chance for public humiliation as people on social media will not hold back on any mistakes made.

However, one of the best advantages of social media is that its free to set up and start, there are no sign-up fees required, so the only investment required is in time, bar the paid advertising feature which is available on most social media platforms. Social media offer a unique advantage in that people like to share and like media to their social network, this will increase the reach as they can share it with their followers who can share it with their followers, giving you a very wide reach with a low cost attached.

References:

Kent, Ray, and Hege Brandal. “Improving email response in a permission marketing context.” International Journal of Market Research, vol. 45, no. 4, 2003, p. 489+. Academic OneFile, Accessed 25 Feb. 2018.