SlideShare ist ein Scribd-Unternehmen logo
1 von 28
Downloaden Sie, um offline zu lesen
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.




                                                    Title:

                                 e-marketing strategy




                                    Term paper Exam – Spring 2009:
                                  Information & Communication theory
                                         Subject code: JBMKINFO



                                        Rune Haugestad
                                             + 47 94 88 29 01
                                         rune_haugestad@yahoo.no

                                  My digital CV and recommendations:
                                http://no.linkedin.com/in/runehaugestad


                            Media & Communication Bachelor – 4th term.
                                     Oslo University College

                                     My empirical qualitative survey:
                                     Appendix A: E-mail survey request
                                Appendix B: Original answers to the survey

1|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.


Table of Contents

1.      Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 3

2.      Theory and methodology................................................................................................................................ 3

        What is strategy? ............................................................................................................................................ 4

        What is e-marketing? ..................................................................................................................................... 5

        What is e-marketing strategy? ........................................................................................................................ 5

3.      Discussion ...................................................................................................................................................... 6

Why e-marketing? ................................................................................................................................................... 6

4.      E-marketing tools and services ....................................................................................................................... 7

Google Trends ......................................................................................................................................................... 9

Google Analytics..................................................................................................................................................... 9

Market monitoring & media surveillance ............................................................................................................. 11

5. E-marketing and ethics...................................................................................................................................... 11

        Customer Relationship Management ........................................................................................................... 13

        Enterprises way of improving their e-marketing .......................................................................................... 13

6.      Analyzing my survey ................................................................................................................................... 15

        Selection of participants ............................................................................................................................... 15

        Participants and interpretation ...................................................................................................................... 15

        Research objectives and purposes ................................................................................................................ 15

        Questions and answers ................................................................................................................................. 16

        Patterns & themes......................................................................................................................................... 19

        My interpretation .......................................................................................................................................... 20

7.      Summary and conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 21

        References .................................................................................................................................................... 22

        Appendix A: E-mail request ......................................................................................................................... 23

        Appendix B: Original answers to the survey (Verification) ......................................................................... 24




2|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

    1. Introduction
My choice of theme “e-marketing strategy” is based on my interests in marketing, digital
communication and technology, in addition to a rapidly new developments in e-marketing.
Through 11 years of experience from the IT branch, I have worked with project management
of ERP and CRM solutions, and consulting about strategic thinking within both business and
IT strategy. I have no directly experience with e-marketing strategy, only indirectly. So this
term paper was a nice opportunity to learn more about communication strategy, marketing
and e-marketing strategy and tools. More specific, I wanted to look deeper into how e-
marketing strategy and e-marketing tools are integrated and used in a few selected digital
enterprises. Because of this I decided on the following research question: How can a
medium sized digital enterprise improve its e-marketing?

    2. Theory and methodology
Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln define qualitative methodology like this: “Qualitative
research is multimethod in its focus, involving an interpretive naturalistic approach to its
subject matter. This means that qualitative researches study things in their natural settings.
Attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring
to them” (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003 p. 24). I decided to use qualitative methodology to gather
my empirical data in this educational research because I wanted to look at marketing
managers and marketing professionals individual meanings, knowledge, practice and attitudes
towards e-marketing. In addition is my purpose to discover the link between e-marketing
strategy and implementation, and to discover e-marketing concepts and usage after data was
gathered. I wanted to do this because the important of connections of my discoveries to theory
and theses in our curriculum. In this paper the word enterprise is synonymous with “company
or firm”. The literature used in this term paper is based on Anderson (2008), Friedman (2006)
and McQuail (2005). In addition I have used Peppers & Rogers Ph.D. (1999), Professor
Adrian Sargeant and Professor Douglas C. West (2007), MsC/MBA Søren Hougaard and
MsC/Ph.D. Mogens Bjerre (2002) to obtain more specific in depth knowledge about e-
marketing which is a small part in our curriculum books. In the same matter I have used
Carter, Clegg & Kornberger (2008), Ph.D. Kjell A. Nordström (2002), and Ryan & Jones
(2009) to obtain specific knowledge about defining strategy and e-marketing strategy. I have
used Ph.D. Edward De Bono (1999) as source to creative thinking. I have chosen to use
questionnaires and not interviews as method of collecting research data. The main reason for

3|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

choosing questionnaires is because of the short timeline writing this term paper. It`s easier to
send the questionnaires by e-mail, and to be able to reach more people than to travel around
and doing interviews. Then participants can answer the questions when they have time and in
their own speed, and choose the order of the questions (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003). I am aware
of some negative effects of doing it, like; if the participant does not understand a question, I
can`t help them immediately. And after I have distributed the questionnaires I can`t change
the questions or re-phrase them. If I had more time, I would both use questionnaires and
interviews to have the ability to ask follow up and in depth questions or to redefine questions
if not understood. I have limited my research focus to not go in depth into economical issues
and objectives, and to not do any cross branch analyzes this time. I have conducted ten open
research questions. I have tried to get the questions as easy to understand as possible to avoid
participants doing their own interpretation (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003).

What is strategy?
Etymologically, the word “strategy” derives from Greek language. The word consists of two
words putted together; “Stratos” means army, and “agein” means; to lead (Carter, Clegg,
Kornberger 2008 p. 8). If there was no competition for an enterprise there would be no need
for defining a strategy (ibid). If you ask different people with different background, education
and positions, you end up with a long list of different definitions. Today, strategy is very often
technology driven. Technology change and develop, business models, business strategy and
marketing strategy must change with all the new possibilities technology has brought us
(Nordström 2002). I needed a definition of the word strategy relevant to e-marketing (which is
business and technology driven) strategy in this term paper. The definition I decided to use is
quoted from Thompson and Strickland “ A company’s strategy consists of the competitive
moves and business approaches that managers employ to grow the business, stake out a
market position, attract and please customers, compete successfully, conduct operations, and
achieve targeted objectives.” (Carter, Clegg, Kornberger 2008 p. 9). I choose to use this
definition because it covers both business and marketing approaches (including e-
marketing/interactive marketing) in a broad way. A business strategy often includes a vision,
mission, goals, objectives and maybe some important organizational ethics. Strategy across
different disciplines often shares the following four characteristics: 1: Strategy is about the
future and goals. 2: Strategy is about how to score, what to do to achieve your goals. 3:



4|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Strategy is about growth in a competitive world. 4: Strategy is about leaders and
management’s responsibility (ibid).

What is e-marketing?
E-marketing or electronic marketing refers to marketing principles and techniques via
electronic media (PC, software, databases, networks) and more specifically the Internet (New
media). You will find different synonyms out there, such as Internet marketing, online
marketing, WEB based marketing etc. These are often the same tools and services. In the
same way, you will find endless definitions of e-marketing. E-marketing is the process of
marketing a brand, enterprise, product or service using the Internet. It includes both direct
response marketing, indirect and interactive marketing elements and uses a broad range of
technologies to help connect businesses to their customers (Sargeant & West 2007). By such a
definition, e-marketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via Internet with the
aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

What is e-marketing strategy?
E-marketing strategy should be a sub-set of marketing strategy (Sargeant & West 2007 p. 53).
It is important as with any strategy to identify goals, and in addition; target groups, formulate
message/story, identify parameter for measuring, choose media, tools and services.




5|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Some important question should be asked before writing down an enterprise e-marketing
strategy. It is important with strategic thinking: Why does my enterprise need an e-marketing
strategy? How do we know if e-marketing is right for our business? How does my enterprise
formulate an e-marketing strategy? Who in my organization is responsible for our e-
marketing strategy? Who is responsible for choosing and deploying e-marketing tools and
services? How do we measure our efforts and how can we detect and analyze our Return On
Investment (ROI)? (Jones & Ryan 2009 p. 18). Therefore will I look into the; “how”, “what”
and “why” of e-marketing, outlining the benefits and pointing out how it differs from
traditional marketing and communication methods and how knowledge about communication
and marketing theories, technology tools, innovation and creativity can help an enterprise to
improve its e-marketing. E-marketing strategy in this term paper means everything from the
conceptualization of a comprehensive e-marketing strategy, through to the implementation of
the various methods, tools and services needed to make that strategy a reality. A defined e-
marketing strategy should explicitly identify the business goals which e-marketing efforts
support the enterprise to achieve (ibid).

    3. Discussion

Why e-marketing?
One main reason for enterprises to use e-marketing is to increase the speed of marketing, and
to create a loop of dialogue not monologue or mass “one to many” communication, to create
interaction and dialogue not only content, to create liking not only branding and to use new
repeating stories with storytelling (Peppers & Rogers 1997, Nordström 1999). Modern
marketing is about adding value for the customer and the enterprise. Today’s marketing is
about to communicate with what Chris Anderson calls “Generation Why” or what Friedman
call generation Z (Zippies) (Friedman 2006 p. 215). Today’s consumers are less loyal than
ever, because they have more choices than ever (Nordström 1999). Today’s consumers ask
themselves; what’s in it for me? So with an up to date e-strategy, enterprises should identify
their objectives within how to be better to listen and increase learning of their customer’s
behaviors and demands. A way to do this is to start one to one (1:1) e-marketing approach,
and to create ways of doing non-stop dialogue and learning (Peppers & Rogers 1997).
Participation from both customers and the enterprise are essential in this process. One of the
main goals is to create a win-win situation. Tools to win increased market shares are maybe
most importantly use of personalization and individualization approaches. Another approach
6|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

is to try to get closer to a monopolistic competition situation, stated by Porter (1980), which is
one of the most influential voices in strategy (Carter, Clegg, Kornberger 2008 p. 5). This point
of view is supported by Kjell A. Nordström (1999) with his book Funky Business. He says it
is not possible any longer to obtain and stay as a monopoly for long periods of time anymore.
He suggests building temporary monopoles, and when competitors adapting their business
models or products, they change again and then build a new temporary monopoly situation.
And then create a never ending line of temporary monopoles (ibid). How you do this is a
success factor. Insight about this “How” subject is shared by Dov Seidman in his book; How.
To quote Seidman;“To differentiate yourself from your competition, you can no longer rely
on price and service, or even on best practices. Everyone will have those sooner or later, -
everyone who stays in business. You will differentiate your company from the others by HOW
you do business” (Friedman 2006 p.468). How you do e-marketing is also significant to
differentiate.

    4. E-marketing tools and services
This chapter is based on combined insights from Ryan & Jones (2009) and from e-
marketingstrategies.net, and Googles information pages. The acronyms and buzz words are
never far away within e-marketing technology. Here is an overview over the most common e-
marketing tools and services used today.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is both a software system for maintaining sales and marketing data. The purpose with a
CRM solution is to empower and improve relationships with customers.



Enterprise Websites

A Website is perhaps the most important tool to share marketing visions and communicate
and interact with customers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is about optimizing websites to achieve high rankings on the Search Engines for certain
selected key phrases. Sometimes called "organic" or "natural" optimization, SEO involves



7|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

making changes to the HTML code, content and structure behind your website, making it
more accessible for Search Engines, and by extension, easier to find by users.
SEO is an extremely cost effective way of generating new business to a web site. SEO is a
continuous process though; both to maintain rankings and improve rankings for other terms
that may bring in relevant traffic. PPC and SEO work synergistically to maximize Search
Engine traffic.




Contextual advertising

Advertising on a web site viewed by a user at that specific time.

Conversion Rate

This is a metric which measures success of an online ad, when compared to the click-through
rate. (i.e. conversion depends on the marketing objective; percentage of people converted into
subscribers, or buyers out of the total population exposed to a particular campaign.)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing is divided into two categories: Paid Search and Organic Search.
Talk about Paid Search and you’re talking Pay Per Click or PPC. Talk about Organic Search
and the focus is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. They’re similar enough to be classified
together under SEM but they’re different enough to warrant separate explanations. SEM,


8|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

niche and targeting marketing is also what Chris Anderson (2008) calls; The Long Tail
marketing.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search advertising

You Pay Per Click. You buy sponsored adverts on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The
beauty of the system is that you’re paying purely on a performance basis, that is, when the ad
is clicked on. A PPC campaign is a dynamic strategic process. It needs to be closely
monitored and managed to ensure maximum ROI. The more targeted your traffic, the greater
your conversion rates, and the better your ROI.

Google AdWords shows ads matching search words in Google Search (Google).

Google AdSense is content tailored Ads (Google).

Google Trends
Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches
have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on
Google over time. Hot Trends reflects what people are searching for on Google today
(Google).

Google Analytics
Isolate and analyze subsets of Web traffic. Motion Charts add sophisticated multi-dimensional
analysis to most Google Analytics reports. .Google Analytics track and compare all ads, email
newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and keywords on Google and other
search engines (Google).

E-mail marketing

There are two main approaches to use e-mail; one-to-many and one-to-one.
E-mail marketing is very powerful. It’s also extremely cost effective, highly targeted,
customizable, measurable and best of all, takes advantage of the consumer's most prolific
touch point with the Internet, their inbox.




9|Page
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Web Browsers

I.e. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Fire Fox and Opera. The latest Opera Web
browser gives users more speed, easier, faster and customizable Web search.

Cookies

Packets of data created on the user’s hard disk in response to website instructions

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing uses affiliate partner websites to display your adverts, and pays them on a
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis. Advertisers earn a commission on sales generated.
So while you’re increasing your brand visibility, you are only paying for the results.


Social networking

Social networking is one of the newest marketing opportunities on Internet today. It can offer
highly targeted advertising to niche social groups on profile information the users volunteer
through sites like Facebook, MySpace and other similar web sites.

Viral marketing

Word-of-mouth is probably the world’s oldest form of marketing. Viral marketing is word of
mouth in an electronic context. Viral marketing uses the connectedness of the Internet and the
social networks characteristic of Internet communication to build brand awareness
exponentially. People pass on, gives their recommendations, and share things that provide
value. Anything that truly entertains, informs, shocks, amuses or intrigues the recipient is
likely to be further distributed. Viral marketing is limited only by the creativity of the e-
marketer. Measuring can be done with viral responses; the number of recipients, who received
the referral, opened it and clicked on a link.

Online public relation (PR)

Business has moved online and Public Relations (PR), that indispensable tool of brand
awareness, has followed. Online PR allows PR to reach its fullest expression because the
potential for getting your brand “out there” is limitless.


10 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Online Reputation Management (ORM)
ORM means monitoring what’s being said about you on Internet. An enterprise reputation is
out there on the web for all to see, and it can be difficult to delete or reverse. Existing and
potential consumers and customers care about that reputation. People are talking. Good things
and bad things. By being aware of what’s being said about your enterprise on the Internet, you
are able to react and put the necessary damage control strategy in place as soon as bad
publicity pops up. To quote Friedman; “Because of Internet, your company’s reputation, will
be the sum total of all your conduct and interactions, which will now be so much more
measurable by outsiders” (Friedman 2006 p. 469).



Market monitoring & media surveillance
Using WEB-agent technology from companies such as Norwegian CyberWatcher to monitor
your target marked and/or customers can be a useful tool to identify, target or analyze e-
marketing efforts. CyberWatcher offer search engines for Business Information, creating
value and innovation by combining news updates with structured business information.



Microsoft Advertising

Advertising within Microsoft services such as; MSN, Windows Live, Messenger and Hotmail
and Spaces. In addition offers Facebook, in-game ads and the B2B website Office Online.


         5. E-marketing and ethics
Business ethics in e-marketing reflects many of the general ethical concerns of marketing, i.e.
children and direct marketing (Sargeant & West 2007 p.323-331). Modern e-marketing
technology presents real challenges to ethics. Here are some different kinds of ethical
challenges enterprises face when planning and implementing e-marketing and e-advertising:
Identify and describe clearly the facts (who did what to whom, where, when and how). Define
the conflict or dilemma and the higher order values involved (values such as freedom,
privacy). Identify the owners (players with an interest in the outcome). Identify the options
one can reasonably take. Identify the potential consequences of your options (Ryan & Jones
2009). E-marketing have global reach (across national boundaries and national marketing
laws) However, such general concerns must be considered by marketers with regard to

11 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

concrete priorities in the daily work of marketing and advertising in the digital environment.
A minimum ethics is to follow the laws of the country where headquarter and WEB site
belongs. Here are four more specific major ethical dimensions (ibid):

    1. Information rights (individual rights to their own personal information and access to
         information about organisations)

    2. Property rights (enforcement of traditional intellectual property rights)

    3. Governance (should the internet and e-commerce be subject to public laws? What law-
         making bodies should have jurisdiction?)

    4. Public safety and welfare (ensuring equitable access to the internet; pornography and
         gambling threats to safety and welfare )

Privacy and Information Rights

Under what conditions should we intrude into others lives? Information plays an important
role in the privacy concept. The web is ideal for invading personal privacy (unobtrusive
surveillance, market research) but there will be conflict as to how data is collected and used.
The “right to be left alone”. Personally identifiable information has been defined by the US
Federal Trade Commission as “any data that can be used to identify, locate, or contact an
individual” Cookies handle online information for shopping carts, recall stored sales
information to remind of purchases previously made and suggest new products (ibid). Cookies
can collect email, full name, postal addresses, telephone numbers, computer’s geographic
location and time logged online. Cookie packets can be combined with other digital
information, transferred between servers and sold to third parties.

Ethics and technology

Unethical SEO is a technique where users optimize Meta Tags in their HTML code, with
words and phrases witch not necessary have anything with their business. If Google finds out,
Google will delete them from their ranking systems. Here are some more examples (from e-
marketingstrategies.net ) with technology which focus to prevent exploitation, aesthetics and
dishonesty: “The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited
Pornography and Marketing Act) is a federal law that establishes requirements for those who
send commercial email. It spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products
12 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask e-mailers
to stop spamming them. Permission-based email isthe practice of only sending email
messages to those recipients who have agreed (or asked) to receive them. A challenge-
response system is a program that replies to an email message from an unknown sender by
subjecting the sender to a test designed to differentiate humans from automated senders, also
known as “bots”. The Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC) was formed to fight spam
while protecting the delivery of legitimate email. The ESPC members have recognized the
need for strong spam solutions that ensure the delivery of legitimate email and have been very
active in the war against spam (e-marketingstrategies.net)”.

Customer Relationship Management
To have a modern and integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is crucial to be
able to deploy business strategy into the wheels of any business. An ERP solution (i.e.
Axapta, Visma, Oracle Financials) includes software solutions for economic data, financial
data, accounting data, production data, logistic data and warehouse data. Some ERP solutions
include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, other providers offer this as an
optional module, and other software providers are selling stand alone CRM solutions with
integration to existing ERP providers. CRM systems solutions are often a big part of
enterprises e-marketing tool also. CRM systems can store e-mails related to specific
customers and partners, and can be a useful tool to plan, collect, and store and analyze data
retrieved from other systems and e-marketing campaign. CRM system often has tailored
statistics modules for generating easy to understand data presentation for sales and marketing
people and key economic statistics for financial management. Analytical CRM applications
include: Sales analysis, customer profile analysis, campaign analysis, loyalty analysis,
customer contact analysis and profitability analysis (Hougaard & Bjerre 2002 p.132).The
managements need for real time data are essential, so many enterprises have business
intelligence (BI) solutions in addition to their ERP and CRM solutions. BI solutions have the
ability to extract and present data across all systems and databases in real time, giving the
management minute to minute business status to take the optimal decisions. CRM is the
central application to store all e-marketing campaigns data and statistics.

Enterprises way of improving their e-marketing
Business professor Oded Shenkar says; “You need an entirely new business model to
compete!” (Friedman 2006 p. 140). A lot of other business gurus are saying the same; when
13 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

all the technological tools are available to everyone, you have to compete with other skills in
addition; Such as knowledge, creativity and constant innovation (Friedman 2006 p. 140, &
Nordström 2002). An important tool to achieve innovation is to collaborate with other
companies (Friedman 2006 p. 204). Justin Lu and his company Protime Consulting helps
customer such as Sony, Hyatt and Estèe Lauder with their e-marketing. He says “I can run
virtually my entire business on the Web using Salesforce.com. We’ve been able to grow very
quickly by focusing on what’s important to generate more revenue and keeping our systems
cost low with Web-delivered services” (Friedman 2006 p. 89) Lu uses Salesforce.com as his
e-mail marketing system to send out mass e-mails. Lu uses its sales force automation system
to control all presale data. Then he uses it`s CRM system to memorize all customer
interactions. The cost to use all these Web enabled systems are very low and competitive
(ibid). But again; everyone can use similar tools, and they can do it with high speed, so you
have to do more to be unique. A company need more than computers and Internet to stay
ahead. To quote Romer; “You needed new business processes and new types of skills to go
with them…” (Friedman 2006 p. 209). New types of skills are to be found inside (vertically) a
company or to be found outside via collaborating with others (horizontally). “It takes an
adjustment to move from vertical to horizontal thinking. Because vertical thinking often
requires you to start by asking who controls what system, not what is the outcome or effect
you want to create” (ibid). Creative thinking is an important asset also in the modern digital
world to stay ahead (Friedman 2006 p. 367). Why? “We need creativity, because nothing else
has worked... For many people the core idea of creating thinking is difficult, because it is
contrary to the natural habits of criticism, judgment and recognition. The brain is designed as
a ”recognition program”. The brain is designed to set up patterns, to use them, and to
condemn anything that does not ”fit” these patterns. Most thinkers like to be secure. They like
to be right. Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking” (Bono 1999 p. 118-
119). To quote what Gartner Group says about human resources trends in the new media
world is what they call employee versatility: “Specialists generally have deep skills and
narrow scope, giving them expertise that is recognized by peers but seldom valued outside
their immediate domain. Generalists have broad scope and shallow skills, enabling them to
respond or act reasonably quickly but often without gaining or demonstrating the confidence
of their partners or customers. Versatilists, in contrast, apply depth of skill to a progressive
widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building
relationships, and assuming new roles” (Friedman 2006 p. 294). Versatilists are capable not
14 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

only of constantly adapting to their surroundings, but also of constantly learning and growing
(ibid). Creative thinking can be learned. “Before you create anything new you need to
understand what is already there (and analyze why). Once you have this foundation, being
creative can be trainable” (Friedman 2006 p. 369). It’s all about imagination. Albert Einstein
says to us; “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. Imagination is an important
creative tool and enterprise assets to achieve differentiation in many branches and niches
including e-marketing approaches, when everybody is competing for attention. Creative
storytelling can be a powerful tool to differentiate an enterprise e-marketing campaign,
whether it is text or multimedia showed via e-mails, banners, search engine ads, flash or
videos on the enterprise Web site or launched on i.e. YouTube.

    6. Analyzing my survey

Selection of participants
My selection of participants in my survey is based on own “ads” on Facebook within my
social network and ad hoc contact with new people at Gulltaggen 2009, a big Internet
conference in Oslo 28th and 29th April (Where Chris Anderson and Kjell A. Nordström was
speakers amongst several other “guru`s”) I got 5 reply’s out of 10 requests, and these is a mix
of 5 totally different digital enterprises;

    • Enterprise A: Is an Internet based international digital enterprise.

    • Enterprise B: Is a Norwegian Web based service provider.

    • Enterprise C: Is a Norwegian new media Web/marketing bureau.

    • Enterprise D: Is a Norwegian media software based enterprise.

Participants and interpretation
The answers tell me that I managed to create easy to understand questions for the participants.
None of them seem to misunderstand the questions or doing any misinterpretation.

Research objectives and purposes
My main purpose in this term paper is to answer my research question: How can a medium
sized digital enterprise improve its e-marketing?. To do this I have constructed the ten
questions in my questionnaires. You will find all the original answers from the participants in
the appendix.
15 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Questions and answers
Question 1: Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB
strategy plan or both?
Answers:

Enterprise A; “YES both”. Enterprise B; “E-marketing is an essential part of our marketing
plan. Since we’re an online business, this is essential for us.” Enterprise C; “Yes, it would be
very little strategic to not be digital visible.” Enterprise D; “Yes. Being a company that bases
its services on the Internet we should have some sort of idea about e-marketing of its
services.”


Question 2: If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-
marketing?
Answers:

Enterprise A; “Web and Internet is crucial to all parts of our business, and therefore we rely
almost solely on e-marketing as a marketing driver.” Enterprise B; “I work within sales, so
unfortunately I don’t have easy access to these documents.” Enterprise C; “I have not seen
any written documents related to these subjects. But we do have a focused approach to be
active, visible and attractive on the net.” Enterprise D; “The Company does not have a
written web strategy.”

Question 3: Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why?
Answers:
Enterprise A; “Google Adwords and contextual advertising.” Enterprise B; “We are tracking
all our e-marketing, to make sure we get the results we want. We have internal tracking tools;
I’m not 100% sure if we also use external tracking. According to our own service to improve
this, we have used eye tracking study. The results made us adapt and change layout and
different elements on our page, so we can attract more users, but also keep the existing users
happy.” Enterprise C;”We use basically e-mail, several social networks and our own
enterprise WEB site as communication channel. If the need for more activities, we will add
banners and online PR to reach our target market.” Enterprise D; “The company has
engaged in search engine marketing (Google AdWord program). We have, to a small extent,
used banner ads on specific websites. We are not running any email campaigns at the

16 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

moment, but we are regularly supporting several of our partners in such campaigns. SEO has
to some extent been implemented but not entirely (Meaning some of the group’s websites are
SEO optimized whereas others are not yet optimized towards search engines.”


Question 4: What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and
why? Answers:

Enterprise A; “As Above. Pay per performance works better and gives measurable results”.
Enterprise B; “Eye tracking study (answered above), and tracking tools to see where we get
out traffic from.” Enterprise C; “As a communication bureau we are dependent that our own
website tells as much as possible about us.” Enterprise D; “I would say that this depends
highly on the marketing objective. If the direct objective is increased sales I would say that
email campaigns with following (Telephone) calls would have an impact. I think it is still so
that the main marketing/sales tool for increasing sales is cold calling. This can however
easily be combined with email campaigns for increased focus. I have yet to see that search
engine marketing really works as well as some say. It might be that we have not been
executing our campaigns well enough. For brand building and -recognition, banner ads and
possibly the use of various social tools such as Twitter, Facebook profile, blogging, etc.
would make an impact, because this gives the company a more “neutral” venue for
communicating with new and existing clients, and building trust and dialogue with the
audience.”



Question 5: What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility,
interactivity, storytelling, etc. ) Answers: Enterprise A; “Measure results. Copy and improve
success, and stop what's not working.” Enterprise B; “We combine online and offline
marketing and are getting good synergies to get more value out of every kind of ads we do.
We also launched our new design and service on Twitter, to get valuable feedback from the
entrepreneurs in the business. We also improve our PPC campaigns, and get more values by
optimizing the campaigns. SEO is also in focus, but this is an area we can do more.”
Enterprise C; “We`re updating our own web site these days. We`re planning activities
targeting social networks marketing. Our business demands to be updated on digital
communication! “ Enterprise D; “In developing our new services we keep in mind how these


17 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

can be even more accessible, and how we can sort of merge an open access service and our
paid service – the objective obviously being to increase the number of paying users.”

Question 6: How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What
do you think the mix will look like in the close future? Answers: Enterprise A; “Most e-
marketing, but also some physical Direct Marketing. Future; Even more e-marketing, maybe
as a Direct Marketing tool”. Enterprise B; “We mix TV and online activities to get more out
of each channel. Our PR strategy is also close related to our marketing. I already see that a
lot of companies are cutting their budgets on offline activities and are putting this money
online. I also believe that the mix in the near future will be different online activities where
you can measure the effect of the campaigns. I also believe that social medias, blogs and the
companies PR strategy will be essential and will be integrated more close than before. Search
will play a more central role, to get more out of offline campaigns.” Enterprise C; “We`re not
marketing our own enterprise with traditional mass communication. Mostly with our web site.
Maybe we should surprise the surroundings with some traditional mass communication, the
opposite of others strategy these days. Hmm…” Enterprise D; “We have two main business
areas. The subscription services that seek a large volume of clients are to a large extent being
managed by our various partners. Our other main business area involves integrated
services/solutions (integration of news search into other applications such as CRM, credit
information services, etc.). The marketing of the integrated services is handled mainly by
personal contact and to some extent by e-marketing tools such as e-mail campaigns. We does
not conduct any large scale of traditional mass marketing with regards to any of our
products.”

Question 7: How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing?
Answers: Enterprise A; “Both.” Enterprise B; “We don’t use this in an extended way.”
Enterprise C; ”So far doesn`t one to one fit the right need for us” Enterprise D; “My
company is using both types of communication depending on the message. On some
campaigns we have for example openly addressed several players in one industry seeking
partners. In these campaigns we have, through the communication, made it clear that we are
addressing all the players in the respective markets. On other campaigns it makes more sense
to communicate more on a one to one level. We use both approaches depending vastly on the
message and the objective.”


18 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Question 8: How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? Answers: Enterprise A; “Sign-
ups, visits”. Enterprise B; “Sorry, I don’t have this information.” Enterprise C;” When we
help our customer we use tracking systems like Google Analytics, other tools are
TradeDoubler and with converting rates and direct sale as a result of ads.” Enterprise D;
“The efforts should be measured based upon what the objective is. Very often the objective is
increased sales, and that is the easiest thing to measure as well”.

Question 9: What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? Enterprise
A answer; “more customers, users and very measurable marketing. Very high relevance.”
Enterprise B; “More users and more value to our clients, which are essential for our
service.” Enterprise C; ”We have achieved some amount of new customers via our Web site,
one new employee via banner, and we have found a employee via Facebook.” Enterprise D;
“Signing new partners and new clients, but mainly new partners I would say. By partners I
mean resellers who market and sell our services in their local market.”


Question 10: What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? Answers:
Enterprise A; “Pricing”. Enterprise B; “I don’t see any big challenges.” Enterprise C; “The
biggest challenge these days, is to conduct and write down a concrete strategy. We are in a
business which is used to the old “word of mouth”. Enterprise D; “As an overall challenge I
would say time. This means that there is little time for making well organized plans for how to
better use various e-marketing tools. I would personally like to further explore and use the
social web as a marketing channel. I think this will continue growing of importance and as a
marketing channel and communication channel between companies and organizations and
people. There are several reasons – you meet people at “home”, it is a more or less trusted
channel, given that you use this channel seriously – you have several room for dialogue, and
increased dialogue with clients normally will improve the relation. There is basically no
limitation as to how it can be used and exploited. But anyway I get back to lacking of time and
priority.”

Patterns & themes
All the enterprises (Enterprise A, B and D) do have a written e-strategy or sees the importance
of construct one as soon as possible (Enterprise C). The main e-marketing tools and services
used of the participants are; enterprise Website, SEO, SEM, tracking tools, banners,
contextual advertising and e-mail. Some of them consider; social network, online PR, as a
19 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

strategic choice in the close future. The participants answer to; what e-marketing tools works
best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? Pay per performance because of easy to
measure the ROI. Eye tracking study (to optimize the Web design), banner ads and possibly
the use of various social tools such as Twitter, Facebook, blogging and e-mail campaigns
(with following telephone calls). To quote enterprise D; “…social tools such as Twitter,
Facebook profile, blogging, etc. would make an impact, because this gives the company a
more “neutral” venue for communicating with new and existing clients, and building trust
and dialogue with the audience.” What does your company do to improve your e-marketing?
The answers to this question were several efforts; to quote enterprise A; “Measure results.
Copy and improve success, and stop what's not working.” PPC campaigns, SEO, social
networking and ease accessibility, to sum it up. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing
and e-marketing today? They answer: E-marketing plus direct marketing, and TV and online
activities working together to get more out of each channel are pointed out by enterprise A
and B. Enterprise C and D do not use traditional mass marketing at all. The answers to the
next question are particularly interesting. What do you think the mix will look like in the close
future? The answers to this question are: More e-marking plus e-marketing as a direct
marketing tool, e-mail campaigns, social media, blogs, search and PR strategy. How are your
company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? Enterprise A and D are doing
both depending on the message and target group. Enterprise B and C are not into one to one
marketing yet. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? The answer to this question
was: Sign-ups, visits, Google Analytics, converting rates and direct sale as a result of ads.
What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? The answers to this
question were: signing more customers and partners, more users and very measurable
marketing, and more value to our clients. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing
strategies? The answers to this question were: Pricing, to conduct and write down a concrete
strategy and to little time for making well organized e-marketing plans. I rise a question why
not anybody have thoughts about e-marketing and ethics as a challenge in the future!

My interpretation
The lack of a written Internet/WEB (Enterprise (B), C and D) strategy shows the importance
of including the management across business departments such as marketing, & sale, IT,
economy managers and the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in this subject. Strategy should be
the management’s responsibility to conduct and deploy into their organizations. It is not the

20 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

marketing director, but the CEO, who should be responsible for the enterprise strategies
within Internet, CRM and e-marketing. Because success on Internet and with e-marketing can
be the difference between “win or disappear” in today’s globalization and that should concern
the CEO. Marketing manager is responsible for conducting and deploying the CRM and e-
marketing strategy. CEO should also take action so market strategy is shared with everybody
at the sales department. Focus on storytelling (a technology independent but creativity based
tool) seems to be abundant in the answers from the participants. It doesn`t mean that their
respective colleges or that their enterprise do not understand this is an important tool. The
range of tools used in the four enterprises tells me that they all have taken advantage of e-
marketing, but that they probably could use more tools and services to improve their efforts.
One to one communication and marketing is almost absent. Mass communication and mass
marketing is not dead, but focus on e-marketing are increasing and have less costs, reach more
people, and have easier and faster ways to measure the ROI. When implemented correctly, the
return on investment (ROI) from e-marketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing. I
consider exploring more of the subjects in this term paper in depth in my Bachelor paper,
eventually with both qualitative and quantitative methodology, with both questionnaires and
interviews to achieve both a good statistic material, and to be able to discover trends between
branches and between different management levels.

    7. Summary and conclusion
E-marketing can be a means to reach millions of people every year. By continuously tracking
the response and effectiveness of a campaign, the marketer can be far more dynamic in
adapting to consumers wants and needs. With e-marketing, responses can be analyzed in real-
time and campaigns can be tweaked continuously. Combined with the immediacy of the
Internet as a medium, this means that there’s minimal advertising spend wasted on less than
effective campaigns. E-marketing creates new opportunities to seize strategic competitive
advantages. Marketing messages are most effective when they are presented directly to the
audience most likely to be interested. Finally, my conclusion is they who manage to use an
optimal mix of strategy theory, marketing/communication theory, technology insight and
possibilities, use of innovation and creative thinking, have good chances to stay ahead of the
pack.




21 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

References
Curriculum books

Anderson, Chris (2008). The Long Tail. New York: Hyperion.

Friedman, Thomas L. (2006). The world is flat. London: Penguin books Ltd.

McQuail, Denis (2005). Mass communication theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Additional books

De Bono, Edward (1999). Six Thinking Hats. London: Penguin Group

Gall, Meredith D. & Gall, Joyce P. & Borg, Walther R. (2003). Educational Research – An introduction. US:
Pearson Education, Inc.

Hougaard, Søren & Bjerre, Mogens (2002). Strategic Relationship Marketing. DK: Samfundslitteratur Press.

Nordström, Kjell A. (2002). Funky Business – Talents makes capital dance. UK: Prentice Hall - Financial Times,
Pearson Education Limited.

Peppers, Don & Martha Rogers (1999). Enterprise one to one – Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age.
New York: Random House Inc.

Ryan, Damien & Jones, Calvin (2009). Understanding DIGITAL Marketing – Marketing strategies for engaging
the digital generation. US: Kogan Page Limited.

Sargeant, Adrian & West, Douglas C. 2007. Direct and interactive marketing. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Inc.

Thompson, A. & Strickland, A. (2006). Strategic management: concepts and cases, 13th edt. London: McGraw-
Hill

Internet sources:

http://www.cyberwatcher.com/business/benefits.htm

http://www.e-marketingstrategies.net/glossary.html

http://www.google.com/ads/

http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html

http://www.google.com/analytics/

http://www.opera.com/browser/


22 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Appendix A: E-mail request
Sending you my term paper survey as agreed on Gulltaggen today. The course is in English and all my papers
and documentation the same. Therefore, please answer in English!
The survey is about e-marketing strategy and usage of e-marketing tools and services.

My Research question is: How can a medium sized enterprise improve its e-marketing?
I wanted to study some cases with offices in Norway, and to study their individual meaning, knowledge, practice
and attitudes towards e-marketing. I also want to discover the link between e-marketing strategy and usage, and
to discover e-marketing concepts, usage and technology.

This is my second year (4th term) of a Bachelor degree in Media and Communication at Oslo University
College. I am particularly interested in your response, because your experience within traditional (mass)
marketing and e-marketing will help me in my educational research analyzing links between strategy and e-
marketing usage.

It is important that you answer all the ten questions. I have tried to formulate the questions as easy to understand
as possible, to reduce the time necessary to fill in your answers in the survey.
I will appreciate it if you will complete the attached questionnaires and finish and return it to my e-mail address
prior to 1st May. We have a very short deadline on this paper.

All content and information replied to me will be total confidential and anonymous in the term paper. The
information will not be used outside my term paper, but I might use some of the information in my Bachelor
paper next year. I will be pleased to send you my term paper or a summary of the survey results if you desire?

If you want to check out my earlier education, work experience and recommendations, please click in to my
profile at www.Linkedin.com. There you will find my updated digital CV.
Remember to give your answers the same number as the questions. Just reply to this e-mail account. Please also
add your position/role.

See my questionnaires below. Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards
X




23 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

     Appendix B: Original answers to the survey (Verification)
Enterprise A;

1.   Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both?

     YES Both
2.   If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing?

     web and Internet is crucial to all parts of our business, and therefore we rely almost solely on e-marketing as a
     marketing driver.
3.   Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why?

     Google Adwords and contextual advertising


4.    What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why?

     As Above. Pay per performance works better and gives measurable results
5.   What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. )

     Measure results. Copy and improve success, and stop what's not working
6.   How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will look
     like in the close future?

     Most e-marketing, but also some physical Direct Marketing. Future; Even more e-marketing, maybe as a Direct
     Marketing tool
7.   How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing?

     Both
8.   How do you measure your e-marketing efforts?

     Signups, visits
9.   What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing?

     more customers, users and very measurable marketing. Very high relevance

10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? pricing

     On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Rune Haugestad <Rune.Haugestad@stud.jbi.hio.no> wrote:

     Position: Industry Head
     -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




     24 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Enterprise B;

Research questions:

1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both?

E-marketing is an essential part of our marketing plan. Since we’re an online business, this is essential for us.

2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing?

I work within sales, so unfortunately I don’t have easy access to these document

3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why?

We are tracking all our e-marketing, to make sure we get the results we want. We have internal tracking tools;
I’m not 100% sure if we also use external tracking. According to our own service to improve this, we have used
eye tracking study. The results made us adapt and change layout and different elements on our page, so we can
attract more users, but also keep the existing users happy.

4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why?

Eye tracking study (answered above), and tracking tools to see where we get out traffic from

5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. )

We combine online and offline marketing and are getting good synergies to get more value out of every kind of
ads we do. We also launched our new design and service on Twitter, to get valuable feedback from the
entrepreneurs in the business. We also improve our PPC campaigns, and get more values by optimizing the
campaigns. SEO is also in focus, but this is an area we can do more.

6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will
look like in the close future?

-Answered above; we mix tv and online activities to get more out of each channel. Our PR strategy is also close
related to our marketing. I already see that a lot of companies are cutting their budgets on offline activities and
are putting these money online. I also believe that the mix in the near future will be different online activities
where you can measure the effect of the campaigns. I also believe that social medias, blogs and the companies
PR strategy will be essential and will be integrated more close than before. Search will play a more central role,
to get more out of offline campaigns.

7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing?

We don’t use this in an extended way.

8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts?

Sorry, I don’t have this information

9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing?

More users and more value to our clients, which are essential for our service

10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies?

I don’t see any big challenges.

Position: Byråansvarlig


25 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

Enterprise C:
1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both?
  Ja, det hadde vært usedvanlig lite strategisk gjennomtenkt ikke å gjøre seg/holde seg synlig digitalt nå :)

2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing?
  Ingenting skriftlig (som jeg har sett), men en gjennomgående tanke om å fremstå som aktive, synlige og
attraktive på nettet.

3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why?
  Vi bruker stort sett e-mail, diverse digitale sosiale nettverk og vår egen website som kommunikasjonskanal.
  Dersom behovet skulle oppstå, vil også bannerannonser og evt. PR være aktuelle virkemidler for å nå frem til
de vi vil snakke med.

4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why?
  Som et kommunikasjonsbyrå er vi selvfølgelig i stor grad avhengige av at vår egen website formidler så mye
som mulig om oss.
  Ellers er det jo alltid de jobbene vi gjør for våre egne kunder som til enhver tid er målestokk for hva vi besitter
av kompetanse.

5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. )
  For øyeblikket sprengjobber vi med websiten vår LOL :) Diverse aktiviteter knytta til sosiale nettverk kommer
vi nok også til å trappe opp.
   Synlighet kommer forøvrvig som et vedheng på de jobbene vi selv gjør for våre kunder. Når det er sagt - det
dreier seg jo i veldig stor grad om å makte å
   formidle tankene bak og resultatene av disse jobbene på en konkret og underholdene måte. Det er også viktig
for et selskap som vårt å hele tiden
   fremstå som oppdaterte på digital kommunikasjon, så i den grad vi får våre kunder med på å sprenge
tradisjonelle grenser på mediafronten, vil det ha stor betydning for oss. Ergo - hva gjør vi for å forbedre vår egen
emarketingstrategi - jo, vi lærer oss mer som våre egne kunder vil nyte godt av.

6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will
look like in the close future?
  Vi markedsfører vårt eget selskap i veldig liten grad - og da spesielt lite gjennom tredisjonell
massekommunikasjon. Som tidligere nevnt er vi jo selv i markedføringsbransjen, så mye av vår egenreklame
ligger i de jobbene vi gjør daglig. Per i dag er vi stort sett utelukkende tilstede digitalt - kanskje vi skal
overraske og heller blande inn litt trad. massekommunikasjon etterhvert? Stikk motsatt av hva alle andre
kommer til å gjøre? Hmm. Det er verdt en tanke :)

7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing?
  Her må jeg innrømme at jeg ikke har no' godt svar :) Så langt har vi ikke hatt bruk for å snakke én til én.

8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts?
  Vi måler ingenting av det vi gjør for oss selv, av den enkle grunn at vi så langt ikke trenger det. Når det gjelder
jobber vi gjør for våre egne kunder, måles effekt på mange forskjellige måter. Noe gjennom vanlige
trackingsystemer (Google Analytics etc.), noe direkte gjennom medianettverk som TradeDoubler og noe måles
gjennom våre kunders egne systemer (deriblant konverteringsrater og direkte salg som følge av annonsering).

9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing?
  Vi har vel fått en og annen kunde som direkte resultat av våre egne websider, og iallefall én ny ansatt som
følge av bannerannonsering. I tillegg har vi besatt en ledig stilling nå gjennom aktiviteter på Facebook.

10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies?
 Den største (og kanskje for øyeblikket eneste) utfordringen vi har nå, er vel i det hele tatt å få en konkret strategi
på plass. Vi er jo i en bransje som ikke har noen tradisjon på å markedsføre oss selv annet enn gjennom
markedsføring av andre. Som de sier - skomakerens barn har ofte dårligst sko :)
Position: Art Director & Interaksjonsdesigner



26 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Rune Haugestad [mailto:Rune.Haugestad@stud.jbi.hio.no]
Sent: 27. april 2009 14:56


Enterprise D:

Research questions:

1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both?
Yes. Being a company that bases its services on the Internet and the use of such X should have some sort of idea
about e-marketing of its services.

2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing?
The company does not have a written web strategy.

3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why?
The company has engaged in search engine marketing (Google AdWord program). We have, to a small extent,
used banner ads on specific websites. We are not running any email campaigns at the moment, but we are
regularly supporting several of our partners in such campaigns. SEO has to some extent been implemented but
not entirely (Meaning some of the group’s websites are SE optimized whereas others are not yet optimized
towards search engines.

4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why?
I would say that this depends highly on the marketing objective. If the direct objective is increased sales I would
say that email campaigns with following calls would have an impact. I think it is still so that the main
marketing/sales tool for increasing sales is cold calling. This can however easily be combined with email
campaigns for increased focus. I have yet to see that search engine marketing really works as well as some say. It
might be that we have not been executing our campaigns well enough. For brand building and -recognition,
banner ads and possibly the use of various social tools such as twitter, Facebook profile, blogging, etc would
make an impact, because this gives the company a more “neutral” venue for communicating with new and
existing clients, and building trust and dialogue with the audience.

5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. )
In developing our new services we keep in mind how these can be even more accessible, and how we can sort of
merge an open access service and our paid service – the objective obviously being to increase the number of
paying users.

6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will
look like in the close future?
X has two main business areas. The subscription services that seek a large volume of clients is to a large extent
being managed by our various partners. Our other main business area involves integrated services/solutions
(integration of news search into other applications such as CRM, credit information services, etc.). The
marketing of the integrated services is handled mainly by personal contact and to some extent by emarketing
tools such as email campaigns. X does not conduct any large scale of traditional mass marketing with regards to
any of our products.

7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing?
My company is using both types of communication depending on the message. On some campaigns we have for
example openly addressed several players in one industry seeking partners. In these campaigns we have, through
the communication, made it clear that we are addressing all the players in the respective markets. On other
campaigns it makes more sense to communicate more on a one to one level. We use both approaches depending
27 | P a g e
Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory.

vastly on the message and the objective.

8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts?
The efforts should be measured based upon what the objective is. Very often the objective is increased sales, and
that is the easiest thing to measure as well.

9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing?
Signing new partners and new clients, but mainly new partners I would say. By partners I mean resellers who
market and sell our services in their local market.

10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies?
As an overall challenge I would say time. By this I mean that we are a rather small organization where everyone
needs to do that extra little effort. This means that there is little time for making well organized plans for how to
better use various e-marketing tools. I would personally like to further explore and use the social web as a
marketing channel. I think this will continue growing of importance and as a marketing channel and
communication channel between companies and organizations and people. There are several reasons – you meet
people at “home”, it is a more or less trusted channel, given that you use this channel seriously – you have
several room for dialogue, and increased dialogue with clients normally will improve the relation. There is
basically no limitation as to how it can be used and exploited.But anyway I get back to lacking of time and
priority.

Your position/role: Marketing Director




28 | P a g e

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Was ist angesagt?

Was ist angesagt? (20)

Electronic payment system(EPS)
Electronic payment system(EPS)Electronic payment system(EPS)
Electronic payment system(EPS)
 
E - Marketing
E - Marketing E - Marketing
E - Marketing
 
E business
E businessE business
E business
 
Internet Marketing Presentation
Internet Marketing PresentationInternet Marketing Presentation
Internet Marketing Presentation
 
Local e-Commerce
Local e-CommerceLocal e-Commerce
Local e-Commerce
 
introduction to internet marketing
introduction to internet marketingintroduction to internet marketing
introduction to internet marketing
 
Electronic Payment Systems in E Commerce
Electronic Payment Systems in E CommerceElectronic Payment Systems in E Commerce
Electronic Payment Systems in E Commerce
 
E - C O M M E R C E
E - C O M M E R C EE - C O M M E R C E
E - C O M M E R C E
 
Digital marketing
Digital marketingDigital marketing
Digital marketing
 
E-commerce Marketing
E-commerce MarketingE-commerce Marketing
E-commerce Marketing
 
e-Commerce the future
e-Commerce the futuree-Commerce the future
e-Commerce the future
 
Emarketing ppt
Emarketing pptEmarketing ppt
Emarketing ppt
 
E marketing
E marketingE marketing
E marketing
 
1 introduction to e commerce
1 introduction to e commerce1 introduction to e commerce
1 introduction to e commerce
 
Security in E-commerce
Security in E-commerceSecurity in E-commerce
Security in E-commerce
 
Presentation - Electronic Data Interchange
Presentation - Electronic Data InterchangePresentation - Electronic Data Interchange
Presentation - Electronic Data Interchange
 
E commerce
E commerceE commerce
E commerce
 
E-CRM
E-CRME-CRM
E-CRM
 
E payment
E paymentE payment
E payment
 
Electronic Customer Relationship Management (E-CRM)
Electronic Customer Relationship Management (E-CRM)Electronic Customer Relationship Management (E-CRM)
Electronic Customer Relationship Management (E-CRM)
 

Ähnlich wie e-Marketing strategy

How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job
 How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job  How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job
How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job Nicolas Suchaud
 
QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019
QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019
QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019Irina Filonova, PhD
 
Lecture 2 generating the research idea
Lecture 2 generating the research idea Lecture 2 generating the research idea
Lecture 2 generating the research idea Kwabena Sarpong Anning
 
M.Phil/Phd information brochure
M.Phil/Phd information brochureM.Phil/Phd information brochure
M.Phil/Phd information brochurejlubpl
 
Qualitative Research Assignment
Qualitative Research AssignmentQualitative Research Assignment
Qualitative Research AssignmentKate Organ
 
Ms 66 marketing research
Ms 66 marketing researchMs 66 marketing research
Ms 66 marketing researchsmumbahelp
 
An Introduction to Marketing Research.pdf
An Introduction to Marketing Research.pdfAn Introduction to Marketing Research.pdf
An Introduction to Marketing Research.pdfEmma Burke
 
An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...
An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...
An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...Samantha Ross
 
Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554
Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554
Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554pfungwa
 
Introduction to Marc Rosenberg and Associates
Introduction to Marc Rosenberg and AssociatesIntroduction to Marc Rosenberg and Associates
Introduction to Marc Rosenberg and Associatesmarcjrosenberg
 
Fek 00012189
Fek 00012189Fek 00012189
Fek 00012189wake23
 
Marketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwc
Marketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwcMarketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwc
Marketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwcClarke L. Caywood, Ph.D.
 
Reliability And Validity Of Interviews Essay
Reliability And Validity Of Interviews EssayReliability And Validity Of Interviews Essay
Reliability And Validity Of Interviews EssaySandra Anderson
 
Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...
Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...
Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...RohanSilvenia
 
Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.
Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.
Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.Eszter Mónos
 
Modern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year on
Modern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year onModern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year on
Modern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year onEconsultancy
 
Student-centred KM strategies
Student-centred KM strategiesStudent-centred KM strategies
Student-centred KM strategiesSIKM
 

Ähnlich wie e-Marketing strategy (20)

How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job
 How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job  How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job
How does big data disrupt marketing : the modification of a marketer’s job
 
QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019
QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019
QuickFix: LinkedIn: Developing Your Profile. 08.2019
 
Social Media strategy
Social Media strategySocial Media strategy
Social Media strategy
 
Lecture 2 generating the research idea
Lecture 2 generating the research idea Lecture 2 generating the research idea
Lecture 2 generating the research idea
 
M.Phil/Phd information brochure
M.Phil/Phd information brochureM.Phil/Phd information brochure
M.Phil/Phd information brochure
 
Dissertation Proposal
Dissertation ProposalDissertation Proposal
Dissertation Proposal
 
Master Thesis PDF
Master Thesis PDFMaster Thesis PDF
Master Thesis PDF
 
Qualitative Research Assignment
Qualitative Research AssignmentQualitative Research Assignment
Qualitative Research Assignment
 
Ms 66 marketing research
Ms 66 marketing researchMs 66 marketing research
Ms 66 marketing research
 
An Introduction to Marketing Research.pdf
An Introduction to Marketing Research.pdfAn Introduction to Marketing Research.pdf
An Introduction to Marketing Research.pdf
 
An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...
An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...
An Evaluation Of The Strategic Application Of Integrated...
 
Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554
Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554
Generating the research idea lecture 2 isd 554
 
Introduction to Marc Rosenberg and Associates
Introduction to Marc Rosenberg and AssociatesIntroduction to Marc Rosenberg and Associates
Introduction to Marc Rosenberg and Associates
 
Fek 00012189
Fek 00012189Fek 00012189
Fek 00012189
 
Marketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwc
Marketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwcMarketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwc
Marketing Public Relations syllabus FALL 2015 mmwc
 
Reliability And Validity Of Interviews Essay
Reliability And Validity Of Interviews EssayReliability And Validity Of Interviews Essay
Reliability And Validity Of Interviews Essay
 
Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...
Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...
Digital marketing strategies of company in fmcg market. VIVA Report, Mini pro...
 
Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.
Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.
Corporate Brand Management of Hungarian Startups. A Critical Analysis.
 
Modern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year on
Modern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year onModern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year on
Modern Marketing Model (M3) - 1 year on
 
Student-centred KM strategies
Student-centred KM strategiesStudent-centred KM strategies
Student-centred KM strategies
 

Kürzlich hochgeladen

Talent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdf
Talent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdfTalent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdf
Talent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdfCharles Cotter, PhD
 
AMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdf
AMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdfAMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdf
AMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdfJohnCarloValencia4
 
Amazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the company
Amazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the companyAmazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the company
Amazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the companyfashionfound007
 
Entrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizations
Entrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizationsEntrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizations
Entrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizationsP&CO
 
PDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdf
PDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdfPDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdf
PDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdfHajeJanKamps
 
Fabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and Festivals
Fabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and FestivalsFabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and Festivals
Fabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and FestivalsWristbands Ireland
 
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access
 
ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...
ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...
ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...ISONIKELtd
 
Graham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdf
Graham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdfGraham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdf
Graham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdfAnhNguyen97152
 
The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003
The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003
The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003believeminhh
 
Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)
Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)
Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)tazeenaila12
 
Anyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agency
Anyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agencyAnyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agency
Anyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agencyHanna Klim
 
Intellectual Property Licensing Examples
Intellectual Property Licensing ExamplesIntellectual Property Licensing Examples
Intellectual Property Licensing Examplesamberjiles31
 
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access
 
Lecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb to
Lecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb toLecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb to
Lecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb toumarfarooquejamali32
 
Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet- 2024
 Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet-  2024 Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet-  2024
Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet- 2024Stephan Koning
 
Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access
 
Q2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for Business
Q2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for BusinessQ2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for Business
Q2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for BusinessAPCO
 
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John Meulemans
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John MeulemansBCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John Meulemans
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John MeulemansBBPMedia1
 
MC Heights construction company in Jhang
MC Heights construction company in JhangMC Heights construction company in Jhang
MC Heights construction company in Jhangmcgroupjeya
 

Kürzlich hochgeladen (20)

Talent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdf
Talent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdfTalent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdf
Talent Management research intelligence_13 paradigm shifts_20 March 2024.pdf
 
AMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdf
AMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdfAMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdf
AMAZON SELLER VIRTUAL ASSISTANT PRODUCT RESEARCH .pdf
 
Amazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the company
Amazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the companyAmazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the company
Amazon ppt.pptx Amazon about the company
 
Entrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizations
Entrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizationsEntrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizations
Entrepreneurship & organisations: influences and organizations
 
PDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdf
PDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdfPDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdf
PDT 88 - 4 million seed - Seed - Protecto.pdf
 
Fabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and Festivals
Fabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and FestivalsFabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and Festivals
Fabric RFID Wristbands in Ireland for Events and Festivals
 
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
 
ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...
ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...
ISONIKE Ltd Accreditation for the Conformity Assessment and Certification of ...
 
Graham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdf
Graham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdfGraham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdf
Graham and Doddsville - Issue 1 - Winter 2006 (1).pdf
 
The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003
The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003
The Vietnam Believer Newsletter_MARCH 25, 2024_EN_Vol. 003
 
Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)
Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)
Harvard Business Review.pptx | Navigating Labor Unrest (March-April 2024)
 
Anyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agency
Anyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agencyAnyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agency
Anyhr.io | Presentation HR&Recruiting agency
 
Intellectual Property Licensing Examples
Intellectual Property Licensing ExamplesIntellectual Property Licensing Examples
Intellectual Property Licensing Examples
 
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global B2B Panel book-unlock 2024
 
Lecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb to
Lecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb toLecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb to
Lecture_6.pptx English speaking easyb to
 
Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet- 2024
 Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet-  2024 Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet-  2024
Building Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn - Expert Planet- 2024
 
Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024
Borderless Access - Global Panel book-unlock 2024
 
Q2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for Business
Q2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for BusinessQ2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for Business
Q2 2024 APCO Geopolitical Radar - The Global Operating Environment for Business
 
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John Meulemans
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John MeulemansBCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John Meulemans
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John Meulemans
 
MC Heights construction company in Jhang
MC Heights construction company in JhangMC Heights construction company in Jhang
MC Heights construction company in Jhang
 

e-Marketing strategy

  • 1. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Title: e-marketing strategy Term paper Exam – Spring 2009: Information & Communication theory Subject code: JBMKINFO Rune Haugestad + 47 94 88 29 01 rune_haugestad@yahoo.no My digital CV and recommendations: http://no.linkedin.com/in/runehaugestad Media & Communication Bachelor – 4th term. Oslo University College My empirical qualitative survey: Appendix A: E-mail survey request Appendix B: Original answers to the survey 1|Page
  • 2. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Table of Contents 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 3 2. Theory and methodology................................................................................................................................ 3 What is strategy? ............................................................................................................................................ 4 What is e-marketing? ..................................................................................................................................... 5 What is e-marketing strategy? ........................................................................................................................ 5 3. Discussion ...................................................................................................................................................... 6 Why e-marketing? ................................................................................................................................................... 6 4. E-marketing tools and services ....................................................................................................................... 7 Google Trends ......................................................................................................................................................... 9 Google Analytics..................................................................................................................................................... 9 Market monitoring & media surveillance ............................................................................................................. 11 5. E-marketing and ethics...................................................................................................................................... 11 Customer Relationship Management ........................................................................................................... 13 Enterprises way of improving their e-marketing .......................................................................................... 13 6. Analyzing my survey ................................................................................................................................... 15 Selection of participants ............................................................................................................................... 15 Participants and interpretation ...................................................................................................................... 15 Research objectives and purposes ................................................................................................................ 15 Questions and answers ................................................................................................................................. 16 Patterns & themes......................................................................................................................................... 19 My interpretation .......................................................................................................................................... 20 7. Summary and conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 21 References .................................................................................................................................................... 22 Appendix A: E-mail request ......................................................................................................................... 23 Appendix B: Original answers to the survey (Verification) ......................................................................... 24 2|Page
  • 3. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. 1. Introduction My choice of theme “e-marketing strategy” is based on my interests in marketing, digital communication and technology, in addition to a rapidly new developments in e-marketing. Through 11 years of experience from the IT branch, I have worked with project management of ERP and CRM solutions, and consulting about strategic thinking within both business and IT strategy. I have no directly experience with e-marketing strategy, only indirectly. So this term paper was a nice opportunity to learn more about communication strategy, marketing and e-marketing strategy and tools. More specific, I wanted to look deeper into how e- marketing strategy and e-marketing tools are integrated and used in a few selected digital enterprises. Because of this I decided on the following research question: How can a medium sized digital enterprise improve its e-marketing? 2. Theory and methodology Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln define qualitative methodology like this: “Qualitative research is multimethod in its focus, involving an interpretive naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researches study things in their natural settings. Attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003 p. 24). I decided to use qualitative methodology to gather my empirical data in this educational research because I wanted to look at marketing managers and marketing professionals individual meanings, knowledge, practice and attitudes towards e-marketing. In addition is my purpose to discover the link between e-marketing strategy and implementation, and to discover e-marketing concepts and usage after data was gathered. I wanted to do this because the important of connections of my discoveries to theory and theses in our curriculum. In this paper the word enterprise is synonymous with “company or firm”. The literature used in this term paper is based on Anderson (2008), Friedman (2006) and McQuail (2005). In addition I have used Peppers & Rogers Ph.D. (1999), Professor Adrian Sargeant and Professor Douglas C. West (2007), MsC/MBA Søren Hougaard and MsC/Ph.D. Mogens Bjerre (2002) to obtain more specific in depth knowledge about e- marketing which is a small part in our curriculum books. In the same matter I have used Carter, Clegg & Kornberger (2008), Ph.D. Kjell A. Nordström (2002), and Ryan & Jones (2009) to obtain specific knowledge about defining strategy and e-marketing strategy. I have used Ph.D. Edward De Bono (1999) as source to creative thinking. I have chosen to use questionnaires and not interviews as method of collecting research data. The main reason for 3|Page
  • 4. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. choosing questionnaires is because of the short timeline writing this term paper. It`s easier to send the questionnaires by e-mail, and to be able to reach more people than to travel around and doing interviews. Then participants can answer the questions when they have time and in their own speed, and choose the order of the questions (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003). I am aware of some negative effects of doing it, like; if the participant does not understand a question, I can`t help them immediately. And after I have distributed the questionnaires I can`t change the questions or re-phrase them. If I had more time, I would both use questionnaires and interviews to have the ability to ask follow up and in depth questions or to redefine questions if not understood. I have limited my research focus to not go in depth into economical issues and objectives, and to not do any cross branch analyzes this time. I have conducted ten open research questions. I have tried to get the questions as easy to understand as possible to avoid participants doing their own interpretation (Gall, Gall & Borg 2003). What is strategy? Etymologically, the word “strategy” derives from Greek language. The word consists of two words putted together; “Stratos” means army, and “agein” means; to lead (Carter, Clegg, Kornberger 2008 p. 8). If there was no competition for an enterprise there would be no need for defining a strategy (ibid). If you ask different people with different background, education and positions, you end up with a long list of different definitions. Today, strategy is very often technology driven. Technology change and develop, business models, business strategy and marketing strategy must change with all the new possibilities technology has brought us (Nordström 2002). I needed a definition of the word strategy relevant to e-marketing (which is business and technology driven) strategy in this term paper. The definition I decided to use is quoted from Thompson and Strickland “ A company’s strategy consists of the competitive moves and business approaches that managers employ to grow the business, stake out a market position, attract and please customers, compete successfully, conduct operations, and achieve targeted objectives.” (Carter, Clegg, Kornberger 2008 p. 9). I choose to use this definition because it covers both business and marketing approaches (including e- marketing/interactive marketing) in a broad way. A business strategy often includes a vision, mission, goals, objectives and maybe some important organizational ethics. Strategy across different disciplines often shares the following four characteristics: 1: Strategy is about the future and goals. 2: Strategy is about how to score, what to do to achieve your goals. 3: 4|Page
  • 5. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Strategy is about growth in a competitive world. 4: Strategy is about leaders and management’s responsibility (ibid). What is e-marketing? E-marketing or electronic marketing refers to marketing principles and techniques via electronic media (PC, software, databases, networks) and more specifically the Internet (New media). You will find different synonyms out there, such as Internet marketing, online marketing, WEB based marketing etc. These are often the same tools and services. In the same way, you will find endless definitions of e-marketing. E-marketing is the process of marketing a brand, enterprise, product or service using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing, indirect and interactive marketing elements and uses a broad range of technologies to help connect businesses to their customers (Sargeant & West 2007). By such a definition, e-marketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via Internet with the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity. What is e-marketing strategy? E-marketing strategy should be a sub-set of marketing strategy (Sargeant & West 2007 p. 53). It is important as with any strategy to identify goals, and in addition; target groups, formulate message/story, identify parameter for measuring, choose media, tools and services. 5|Page
  • 6. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Some important question should be asked before writing down an enterprise e-marketing strategy. It is important with strategic thinking: Why does my enterprise need an e-marketing strategy? How do we know if e-marketing is right for our business? How does my enterprise formulate an e-marketing strategy? Who in my organization is responsible for our e- marketing strategy? Who is responsible for choosing and deploying e-marketing tools and services? How do we measure our efforts and how can we detect and analyze our Return On Investment (ROI)? (Jones & Ryan 2009 p. 18). Therefore will I look into the; “how”, “what” and “why” of e-marketing, outlining the benefits and pointing out how it differs from traditional marketing and communication methods and how knowledge about communication and marketing theories, technology tools, innovation and creativity can help an enterprise to improve its e-marketing. E-marketing strategy in this term paper means everything from the conceptualization of a comprehensive e-marketing strategy, through to the implementation of the various methods, tools and services needed to make that strategy a reality. A defined e- marketing strategy should explicitly identify the business goals which e-marketing efforts support the enterprise to achieve (ibid). 3. Discussion Why e-marketing? One main reason for enterprises to use e-marketing is to increase the speed of marketing, and to create a loop of dialogue not monologue or mass “one to many” communication, to create interaction and dialogue not only content, to create liking not only branding and to use new repeating stories with storytelling (Peppers & Rogers 1997, Nordström 1999). Modern marketing is about adding value for the customer and the enterprise. Today’s marketing is about to communicate with what Chris Anderson calls “Generation Why” or what Friedman call generation Z (Zippies) (Friedman 2006 p. 215). Today’s consumers are less loyal than ever, because they have more choices than ever (Nordström 1999). Today’s consumers ask themselves; what’s in it for me? So with an up to date e-strategy, enterprises should identify their objectives within how to be better to listen and increase learning of their customer’s behaviors and demands. A way to do this is to start one to one (1:1) e-marketing approach, and to create ways of doing non-stop dialogue and learning (Peppers & Rogers 1997). Participation from both customers and the enterprise are essential in this process. One of the main goals is to create a win-win situation. Tools to win increased market shares are maybe most importantly use of personalization and individualization approaches. Another approach 6|Page
  • 7. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. is to try to get closer to a monopolistic competition situation, stated by Porter (1980), which is one of the most influential voices in strategy (Carter, Clegg, Kornberger 2008 p. 5). This point of view is supported by Kjell A. Nordström (1999) with his book Funky Business. He says it is not possible any longer to obtain and stay as a monopoly for long periods of time anymore. He suggests building temporary monopoles, and when competitors adapting their business models or products, they change again and then build a new temporary monopoly situation. And then create a never ending line of temporary monopoles (ibid). How you do this is a success factor. Insight about this “How” subject is shared by Dov Seidman in his book; How. To quote Seidman;“To differentiate yourself from your competition, you can no longer rely on price and service, or even on best practices. Everyone will have those sooner or later, - everyone who stays in business. You will differentiate your company from the others by HOW you do business” (Friedman 2006 p.468). How you do e-marketing is also significant to differentiate. 4. E-marketing tools and services This chapter is based on combined insights from Ryan & Jones (2009) and from e- marketingstrategies.net, and Googles information pages. The acronyms and buzz words are never far away within e-marketing technology. Here is an overview over the most common e- marketing tools and services used today. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) CRM is both a software system for maintaining sales and marketing data. The purpose with a CRM solution is to empower and improve relationships with customers. Enterprise Websites A Website is perhaps the most important tool to share marketing visions and communicate and interact with customers. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) SEO is about optimizing websites to achieve high rankings on the Search Engines for certain selected key phrases. Sometimes called "organic" or "natural" optimization, SEO involves 7|Page
  • 8. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. making changes to the HTML code, content and structure behind your website, making it more accessible for Search Engines, and by extension, easier to find by users. SEO is an extremely cost effective way of generating new business to a web site. SEO is a continuous process though; both to maintain rankings and improve rankings for other terms that may bring in relevant traffic. PPC and SEO work synergistically to maximize Search Engine traffic. Contextual advertising Advertising on a web site viewed by a user at that specific time. Conversion Rate This is a metric which measures success of an online ad, when compared to the click-through rate. (i.e. conversion depends on the marketing objective; percentage of people converted into subscribers, or buyers out of the total population exposed to a particular campaign.) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Search Engine Marketing is divided into two categories: Paid Search and Organic Search. Talk about Paid Search and you’re talking Pay Per Click or PPC. Talk about Organic Search and the focus is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. They’re similar enough to be classified together under SEM but they’re different enough to warrant separate explanations. SEM, 8|Page
  • 9. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. niche and targeting marketing is also what Chris Anderson (2008) calls; The Long Tail marketing. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search advertising You Pay Per Click. You buy sponsored adverts on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). The beauty of the system is that you’re paying purely on a performance basis, that is, when the ad is clicked on. A PPC campaign is a dynamic strategic process. It needs to be closely monitored and managed to ensure maximum ROI. The more targeted your traffic, the greater your conversion rates, and the better your ROI. Google AdWords shows ads matching search words in Google Search (Google). Google AdSense is content tailored Ads (Google). Google Trends Google Trends analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. Hot Trends reflects what people are searching for on Google today (Google). Google Analytics Isolate and analyze subsets of Web traffic. Motion Charts add sophisticated multi-dimensional analysis to most Google Analytics reports. .Google Analytics track and compare all ads, email newsletters, affiliate campaigns, referrals, paid links, and keywords on Google and other search engines (Google). E-mail marketing There are two main approaches to use e-mail; one-to-many and one-to-one. E-mail marketing is very powerful. It’s also extremely cost effective, highly targeted, customizable, measurable and best of all, takes advantage of the consumer's most prolific touch point with the Internet, their inbox. 9|Page
  • 10. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Web Browsers I.e. Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Fire Fox and Opera. The latest Opera Web browser gives users more speed, easier, faster and customizable Web search. Cookies Packets of data created on the user’s hard disk in response to website instructions Affiliate marketing Affiliate marketing uses affiliate partner websites to display your adverts, and pays them on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis. Advertisers earn a commission on sales generated. So while you’re increasing your brand visibility, you are only paying for the results. Social networking Social networking is one of the newest marketing opportunities on Internet today. It can offer highly targeted advertising to niche social groups on profile information the users volunteer through sites like Facebook, MySpace and other similar web sites. Viral marketing Word-of-mouth is probably the world’s oldest form of marketing. Viral marketing is word of mouth in an electronic context. Viral marketing uses the connectedness of the Internet and the social networks characteristic of Internet communication to build brand awareness exponentially. People pass on, gives their recommendations, and share things that provide value. Anything that truly entertains, informs, shocks, amuses or intrigues the recipient is likely to be further distributed. Viral marketing is limited only by the creativity of the e- marketer. Measuring can be done with viral responses; the number of recipients, who received the referral, opened it and clicked on a link. Online public relation (PR) Business has moved online and Public Relations (PR), that indispensable tool of brand awareness, has followed. Online PR allows PR to reach its fullest expression because the potential for getting your brand “out there” is limitless. 10 | P a g e
  • 11. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Online Reputation Management (ORM) ORM means monitoring what’s being said about you on Internet. An enterprise reputation is out there on the web for all to see, and it can be difficult to delete or reverse. Existing and potential consumers and customers care about that reputation. People are talking. Good things and bad things. By being aware of what’s being said about your enterprise on the Internet, you are able to react and put the necessary damage control strategy in place as soon as bad publicity pops up. To quote Friedman; “Because of Internet, your company’s reputation, will be the sum total of all your conduct and interactions, which will now be so much more measurable by outsiders” (Friedman 2006 p. 469). Market monitoring & media surveillance Using WEB-agent technology from companies such as Norwegian CyberWatcher to monitor your target marked and/or customers can be a useful tool to identify, target or analyze e- marketing efforts. CyberWatcher offer search engines for Business Information, creating value and innovation by combining news updates with structured business information. Microsoft Advertising Advertising within Microsoft services such as; MSN, Windows Live, Messenger and Hotmail and Spaces. In addition offers Facebook, in-game ads and the B2B website Office Online. 5. E-marketing and ethics Business ethics in e-marketing reflects many of the general ethical concerns of marketing, i.e. children and direct marketing (Sargeant & West 2007 p.323-331). Modern e-marketing technology presents real challenges to ethics. Here are some different kinds of ethical challenges enterprises face when planning and implementing e-marketing and e-advertising: Identify and describe clearly the facts (who did what to whom, where, when and how). Define the conflict or dilemma and the higher order values involved (values such as freedom, privacy). Identify the owners (players with an interest in the outcome). Identify the options one can reasonably take. Identify the potential consequences of your options (Ryan & Jones 2009). E-marketing have global reach (across national boundaries and national marketing laws) However, such general concerns must be considered by marketers with regard to 11 | P a g e
  • 12. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. concrete priorities in the daily work of marketing and advertising in the digital environment. A minimum ethics is to follow the laws of the country where headquarter and WEB site belongs. Here are four more specific major ethical dimensions (ibid): 1. Information rights (individual rights to their own personal information and access to information about organisations) 2. Property rights (enforcement of traditional intellectual property rights) 3. Governance (should the internet and e-commerce be subject to public laws? What law- making bodies should have jurisdiction?) 4. Public safety and welfare (ensuring equitable access to the internet; pornography and gambling threats to safety and welfare ) Privacy and Information Rights Under what conditions should we intrude into others lives? Information plays an important role in the privacy concept. The web is ideal for invading personal privacy (unobtrusive surveillance, market research) but there will be conflict as to how data is collected and used. The “right to be left alone”. Personally identifiable information has been defined by the US Federal Trade Commission as “any data that can be used to identify, locate, or contact an individual” Cookies handle online information for shopping carts, recall stored sales information to remind of purchases previously made and suggest new products (ibid). Cookies can collect email, full name, postal addresses, telephone numbers, computer’s geographic location and time logged online. Cookie packets can be combined with other digital information, transferred between servers and sold to third parties. Ethics and technology Unethical SEO is a technique where users optimize Meta Tags in their HTML code, with words and phrases witch not necessary have anything with their business. If Google finds out, Google will delete them from their ranking systems. Here are some more examples (from e- marketingstrategies.net ) with technology which focus to prevent exploitation, aesthetics and dishonesty: “The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) is a federal law that establishes requirements for those who send commercial email. It spells out penalties for spammers and companies whose products 12 | P a g e
  • 13. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. are advertised in spam if they violate the law, and gives consumers the right to ask e-mailers to stop spamming them. Permission-based email isthe practice of only sending email messages to those recipients who have agreed (or asked) to receive them. A challenge- response system is a program that replies to an email message from an unknown sender by subjecting the sender to a test designed to differentiate humans from automated senders, also known as “bots”. The Email Sender & Provider Coalition (ESPC) was formed to fight spam while protecting the delivery of legitimate email. The ESPC members have recognized the need for strong spam solutions that ensure the delivery of legitimate email and have been very active in the war against spam (e-marketingstrategies.net)”. Customer Relationship Management To have a modern and integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is crucial to be able to deploy business strategy into the wheels of any business. An ERP solution (i.e. Axapta, Visma, Oracle Financials) includes software solutions for economic data, financial data, accounting data, production data, logistic data and warehouse data. Some ERP solutions include Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, other providers offer this as an optional module, and other software providers are selling stand alone CRM solutions with integration to existing ERP providers. CRM systems solutions are often a big part of enterprises e-marketing tool also. CRM systems can store e-mails related to specific customers and partners, and can be a useful tool to plan, collect, and store and analyze data retrieved from other systems and e-marketing campaign. CRM system often has tailored statistics modules for generating easy to understand data presentation for sales and marketing people and key economic statistics for financial management. Analytical CRM applications include: Sales analysis, customer profile analysis, campaign analysis, loyalty analysis, customer contact analysis and profitability analysis (Hougaard & Bjerre 2002 p.132).The managements need for real time data are essential, so many enterprises have business intelligence (BI) solutions in addition to their ERP and CRM solutions. BI solutions have the ability to extract and present data across all systems and databases in real time, giving the management minute to minute business status to take the optimal decisions. CRM is the central application to store all e-marketing campaigns data and statistics. Enterprises way of improving their e-marketing Business professor Oded Shenkar says; “You need an entirely new business model to compete!” (Friedman 2006 p. 140). A lot of other business gurus are saying the same; when 13 | P a g e
  • 14. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. all the technological tools are available to everyone, you have to compete with other skills in addition; Such as knowledge, creativity and constant innovation (Friedman 2006 p. 140, & Nordström 2002). An important tool to achieve innovation is to collaborate with other companies (Friedman 2006 p. 204). Justin Lu and his company Protime Consulting helps customer such as Sony, Hyatt and Estèe Lauder with their e-marketing. He says “I can run virtually my entire business on the Web using Salesforce.com. We’ve been able to grow very quickly by focusing on what’s important to generate more revenue and keeping our systems cost low with Web-delivered services” (Friedman 2006 p. 89) Lu uses Salesforce.com as his e-mail marketing system to send out mass e-mails. Lu uses its sales force automation system to control all presale data. Then he uses it`s CRM system to memorize all customer interactions. The cost to use all these Web enabled systems are very low and competitive (ibid). But again; everyone can use similar tools, and they can do it with high speed, so you have to do more to be unique. A company need more than computers and Internet to stay ahead. To quote Romer; “You needed new business processes and new types of skills to go with them…” (Friedman 2006 p. 209). New types of skills are to be found inside (vertically) a company or to be found outside via collaborating with others (horizontally). “It takes an adjustment to move from vertical to horizontal thinking. Because vertical thinking often requires you to start by asking who controls what system, not what is the outcome or effect you want to create” (ibid). Creative thinking is an important asset also in the modern digital world to stay ahead (Friedman 2006 p. 367). Why? “We need creativity, because nothing else has worked... For many people the core idea of creating thinking is difficult, because it is contrary to the natural habits of criticism, judgment and recognition. The brain is designed as a ”recognition program”. The brain is designed to set up patterns, to use them, and to condemn anything that does not ”fit” these patterns. Most thinkers like to be secure. They like to be right. Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking” (Bono 1999 p. 118- 119). To quote what Gartner Group says about human resources trends in the new media world is what they call employee versatility: “Specialists generally have deep skills and narrow scope, giving them expertise that is recognized by peers but seldom valued outside their immediate domain. Generalists have broad scope and shallow skills, enabling them to respond or act reasonably quickly but often without gaining or demonstrating the confidence of their partners or customers. Versatilists, in contrast, apply depth of skill to a progressive widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles” (Friedman 2006 p. 294). Versatilists are capable not 14 | P a g e
  • 15. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. only of constantly adapting to their surroundings, but also of constantly learning and growing (ibid). Creative thinking can be learned. “Before you create anything new you need to understand what is already there (and analyze why). Once you have this foundation, being creative can be trainable” (Friedman 2006 p. 369). It’s all about imagination. Albert Einstein says to us; “Imagination is more important than knowledge”. Imagination is an important creative tool and enterprise assets to achieve differentiation in many branches and niches including e-marketing approaches, when everybody is competing for attention. Creative storytelling can be a powerful tool to differentiate an enterprise e-marketing campaign, whether it is text or multimedia showed via e-mails, banners, search engine ads, flash or videos on the enterprise Web site or launched on i.e. YouTube. 6. Analyzing my survey Selection of participants My selection of participants in my survey is based on own “ads” on Facebook within my social network and ad hoc contact with new people at Gulltaggen 2009, a big Internet conference in Oslo 28th and 29th April (Where Chris Anderson and Kjell A. Nordström was speakers amongst several other “guru`s”) I got 5 reply’s out of 10 requests, and these is a mix of 5 totally different digital enterprises; • Enterprise A: Is an Internet based international digital enterprise. • Enterprise B: Is a Norwegian Web based service provider. • Enterprise C: Is a Norwegian new media Web/marketing bureau. • Enterprise D: Is a Norwegian media software based enterprise. Participants and interpretation The answers tell me that I managed to create easy to understand questions for the participants. None of them seem to misunderstand the questions or doing any misinterpretation. Research objectives and purposes My main purpose in this term paper is to answer my research question: How can a medium sized digital enterprise improve its e-marketing?. To do this I have constructed the ten questions in my questionnaires. You will find all the original answers from the participants in the appendix. 15 | P a g e
  • 16. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Questions and answers Question 1: Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both? Answers: Enterprise A; “YES both”. Enterprise B; “E-marketing is an essential part of our marketing plan. Since we’re an online business, this is essential for us.” Enterprise C; “Yes, it would be very little strategic to not be digital visible.” Enterprise D; “Yes. Being a company that bases its services on the Internet we should have some sort of idea about e-marketing of its services.” Question 2: If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e- marketing? Answers: Enterprise A; “Web and Internet is crucial to all parts of our business, and therefore we rely almost solely on e-marketing as a marketing driver.” Enterprise B; “I work within sales, so unfortunately I don’t have easy access to these documents.” Enterprise C; “I have not seen any written documents related to these subjects. But we do have a focused approach to be active, visible and attractive on the net.” Enterprise D; “The Company does not have a written web strategy.” Question 3: Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why? Answers: Enterprise A; “Google Adwords and contextual advertising.” Enterprise B; “We are tracking all our e-marketing, to make sure we get the results we want. We have internal tracking tools; I’m not 100% sure if we also use external tracking. According to our own service to improve this, we have used eye tracking study. The results made us adapt and change layout and different elements on our page, so we can attract more users, but also keep the existing users happy.” Enterprise C;”We use basically e-mail, several social networks and our own enterprise WEB site as communication channel. If the need for more activities, we will add banners and online PR to reach our target market.” Enterprise D; “The company has engaged in search engine marketing (Google AdWord program). We have, to a small extent, used banner ads on specific websites. We are not running any email campaigns at the 16 | P a g e
  • 17. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. moment, but we are regularly supporting several of our partners in such campaigns. SEO has to some extent been implemented but not entirely (Meaning some of the group’s websites are SEO optimized whereas others are not yet optimized towards search engines.” Question 4: What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? Answers: Enterprise A; “As Above. Pay per performance works better and gives measurable results”. Enterprise B; “Eye tracking study (answered above), and tracking tools to see where we get out traffic from.” Enterprise C; “As a communication bureau we are dependent that our own website tells as much as possible about us.” Enterprise D; “I would say that this depends highly on the marketing objective. If the direct objective is increased sales I would say that email campaigns with following (Telephone) calls would have an impact. I think it is still so that the main marketing/sales tool for increasing sales is cold calling. This can however easily be combined with email campaigns for increased focus. I have yet to see that search engine marketing really works as well as some say. It might be that we have not been executing our campaigns well enough. For brand building and -recognition, banner ads and possibly the use of various social tools such as Twitter, Facebook profile, blogging, etc. would make an impact, because this gives the company a more “neutral” venue for communicating with new and existing clients, and building trust and dialogue with the audience.” Question 5: What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. ) Answers: Enterprise A; “Measure results. Copy and improve success, and stop what's not working.” Enterprise B; “We combine online and offline marketing and are getting good synergies to get more value out of every kind of ads we do. We also launched our new design and service on Twitter, to get valuable feedback from the entrepreneurs in the business. We also improve our PPC campaigns, and get more values by optimizing the campaigns. SEO is also in focus, but this is an area we can do more.” Enterprise C; “We`re updating our own web site these days. We`re planning activities targeting social networks marketing. Our business demands to be updated on digital communication! “ Enterprise D; “In developing our new services we keep in mind how these 17 | P a g e
  • 18. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. can be even more accessible, and how we can sort of merge an open access service and our paid service – the objective obviously being to increase the number of paying users.” Question 6: How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will look like in the close future? Answers: Enterprise A; “Most e- marketing, but also some physical Direct Marketing. Future; Even more e-marketing, maybe as a Direct Marketing tool”. Enterprise B; “We mix TV and online activities to get more out of each channel. Our PR strategy is also close related to our marketing. I already see that a lot of companies are cutting their budgets on offline activities and are putting this money online. I also believe that the mix in the near future will be different online activities where you can measure the effect of the campaigns. I also believe that social medias, blogs and the companies PR strategy will be essential and will be integrated more close than before. Search will play a more central role, to get more out of offline campaigns.” Enterprise C; “We`re not marketing our own enterprise with traditional mass communication. Mostly with our web site. Maybe we should surprise the surroundings with some traditional mass communication, the opposite of others strategy these days. Hmm…” Enterprise D; “We have two main business areas. The subscription services that seek a large volume of clients are to a large extent being managed by our various partners. Our other main business area involves integrated services/solutions (integration of news search into other applications such as CRM, credit information services, etc.). The marketing of the integrated services is handled mainly by personal contact and to some extent by e-marketing tools such as e-mail campaigns. We does not conduct any large scale of traditional mass marketing with regards to any of our products.” Question 7: How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? Answers: Enterprise A; “Both.” Enterprise B; “We don’t use this in an extended way.” Enterprise C; ”So far doesn`t one to one fit the right need for us” Enterprise D; “My company is using both types of communication depending on the message. On some campaigns we have for example openly addressed several players in one industry seeking partners. In these campaigns we have, through the communication, made it clear that we are addressing all the players in the respective markets. On other campaigns it makes more sense to communicate more on a one to one level. We use both approaches depending vastly on the message and the objective.” 18 | P a g e
  • 19. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Question 8: How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? Answers: Enterprise A; “Sign- ups, visits”. Enterprise B; “Sorry, I don’t have this information.” Enterprise C;” When we help our customer we use tracking systems like Google Analytics, other tools are TradeDoubler and with converting rates and direct sale as a result of ads.” Enterprise D; “The efforts should be measured based upon what the objective is. Very often the objective is increased sales, and that is the easiest thing to measure as well”. Question 9: What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? Enterprise A answer; “more customers, users and very measurable marketing. Very high relevance.” Enterprise B; “More users and more value to our clients, which are essential for our service.” Enterprise C; ”We have achieved some amount of new customers via our Web site, one new employee via banner, and we have found a employee via Facebook.” Enterprise D; “Signing new partners and new clients, but mainly new partners I would say. By partners I mean resellers who market and sell our services in their local market.” Question 10: What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? Answers: Enterprise A; “Pricing”. Enterprise B; “I don’t see any big challenges.” Enterprise C; “The biggest challenge these days, is to conduct and write down a concrete strategy. We are in a business which is used to the old “word of mouth”. Enterprise D; “As an overall challenge I would say time. This means that there is little time for making well organized plans for how to better use various e-marketing tools. I would personally like to further explore and use the social web as a marketing channel. I think this will continue growing of importance and as a marketing channel and communication channel between companies and organizations and people. There are several reasons – you meet people at “home”, it is a more or less trusted channel, given that you use this channel seriously – you have several room for dialogue, and increased dialogue with clients normally will improve the relation. There is basically no limitation as to how it can be used and exploited. But anyway I get back to lacking of time and priority.” Patterns & themes All the enterprises (Enterprise A, B and D) do have a written e-strategy or sees the importance of construct one as soon as possible (Enterprise C). The main e-marketing tools and services used of the participants are; enterprise Website, SEO, SEM, tracking tools, banners, contextual advertising and e-mail. Some of them consider; social network, online PR, as a 19 | P a g e
  • 20. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. strategic choice in the close future. The participants answer to; what e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? Pay per performance because of easy to measure the ROI. Eye tracking study (to optimize the Web design), banner ads and possibly the use of various social tools such as Twitter, Facebook, blogging and e-mail campaigns (with following telephone calls). To quote enterprise D; “…social tools such as Twitter, Facebook profile, blogging, etc. would make an impact, because this gives the company a more “neutral” venue for communicating with new and existing clients, and building trust and dialogue with the audience.” What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? The answers to this question were several efforts; to quote enterprise A; “Measure results. Copy and improve success, and stop what's not working.” PPC campaigns, SEO, social networking and ease accessibility, to sum it up. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? They answer: E-marketing plus direct marketing, and TV and online activities working together to get more out of each channel are pointed out by enterprise A and B. Enterprise C and D do not use traditional mass marketing at all. The answers to the next question are particularly interesting. What do you think the mix will look like in the close future? The answers to this question are: More e-marking plus e-marketing as a direct marketing tool, e-mail campaigns, social media, blogs, search and PR strategy. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? Enterprise A and D are doing both depending on the message and target group. Enterprise B and C are not into one to one marketing yet. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? The answer to this question was: Sign-ups, visits, Google Analytics, converting rates and direct sale as a result of ads. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? The answers to this question were: signing more customers and partners, more users and very measurable marketing, and more value to our clients. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? The answers to this question were: Pricing, to conduct and write down a concrete strategy and to little time for making well organized e-marketing plans. I rise a question why not anybody have thoughts about e-marketing and ethics as a challenge in the future! My interpretation The lack of a written Internet/WEB (Enterprise (B), C and D) strategy shows the importance of including the management across business departments such as marketing, & sale, IT, economy managers and the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) in this subject. Strategy should be the management’s responsibility to conduct and deploy into their organizations. It is not the 20 | P a g e
  • 21. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. marketing director, but the CEO, who should be responsible for the enterprise strategies within Internet, CRM and e-marketing. Because success on Internet and with e-marketing can be the difference between “win or disappear” in today’s globalization and that should concern the CEO. Marketing manager is responsible for conducting and deploying the CRM and e- marketing strategy. CEO should also take action so market strategy is shared with everybody at the sales department. Focus on storytelling (a technology independent but creativity based tool) seems to be abundant in the answers from the participants. It doesn`t mean that their respective colleges or that their enterprise do not understand this is an important tool. The range of tools used in the four enterprises tells me that they all have taken advantage of e- marketing, but that they probably could use more tools and services to improve their efforts. One to one communication and marketing is almost absent. Mass communication and mass marketing is not dead, but focus on e-marketing are increasing and have less costs, reach more people, and have easier and faster ways to measure the ROI. When implemented correctly, the return on investment (ROI) from e-marketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing. I consider exploring more of the subjects in this term paper in depth in my Bachelor paper, eventually with both qualitative and quantitative methodology, with both questionnaires and interviews to achieve both a good statistic material, and to be able to discover trends between branches and between different management levels. 7. Summary and conclusion E-marketing can be a means to reach millions of people every year. By continuously tracking the response and effectiveness of a campaign, the marketer can be far more dynamic in adapting to consumers wants and needs. With e-marketing, responses can be analyzed in real- time and campaigns can be tweaked continuously. Combined with the immediacy of the Internet as a medium, this means that there’s minimal advertising spend wasted on less than effective campaigns. E-marketing creates new opportunities to seize strategic competitive advantages. Marketing messages are most effective when they are presented directly to the audience most likely to be interested. Finally, my conclusion is they who manage to use an optimal mix of strategy theory, marketing/communication theory, technology insight and possibilities, use of innovation and creative thinking, have good chances to stay ahead of the pack. 21 | P a g e
  • 22. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. References Curriculum books Anderson, Chris (2008). The Long Tail. New York: Hyperion. Friedman, Thomas L. (2006). The world is flat. London: Penguin books Ltd. McQuail, Denis (2005). Mass communication theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd. Additional books De Bono, Edward (1999). Six Thinking Hats. London: Penguin Group Gall, Meredith D. & Gall, Joyce P. & Borg, Walther R. (2003). Educational Research – An introduction. US: Pearson Education, Inc. Hougaard, Søren & Bjerre, Mogens (2002). Strategic Relationship Marketing. DK: Samfundslitteratur Press. Nordström, Kjell A. (2002). Funky Business – Talents makes capital dance. UK: Prentice Hall - Financial Times, Pearson Education Limited. Peppers, Don & Martha Rogers (1999). Enterprise one to one – Tools for Competing in the Interactive Age. New York: Random House Inc. Ryan, Damien & Jones, Calvin (2009). Understanding DIGITAL Marketing – Marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation. US: Kogan Page Limited. Sargeant, Adrian & West, Douglas C. 2007. Direct and interactive marketing. Oxford: Oxford University Press Inc. Thompson, A. & Strickland, A. (2006). Strategic management: concepts and cases, 13th edt. London: McGraw- Hill Internet sources: http://www.cyberwatcher.com/business/benefits.htm http://www.e-marketingstrategies.net/glossary.html http://www.google.com/ads/ http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html http://www.google.com/analytics/ http://www.opera.com/browser/ 22 | P a g e
  • 23. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Appendix A: E-mail request Sending you my term paper survey as agreed on Gulltaggen today. The course is in English and all my papers and documentation the same. Therefore, please answer in English! The survey is about e-marketing strategy and usage of e-marketing tools and services. My Research question is: How can a medium sized enterprise improve its e-marketing? I wanted to study some cases with offices in Norway, and to study their individual meaning, knowledge, practice and attitudes towards e-marketing. I also want to discover the link between e-marketing strategy and usage, and to discover e-marketing concepts, usage and technology. This is my second year (4th term) of a Bachelor degree in Media and Communication at Oslo University College. I am particularly interested in your response, because your experience within traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing will help me in my educational research analyzing links between strategy and e- marketing usage. It is important that you answer all the ten questions. I have tried to formulate the questions as easy to understand as possible, to reduce the time necessary to fill in your answers in the survey. I will appreciate it if you will complete the attached questionnaires and finish and return it to my e-mail address prior to 1st May. We have a very short deadline on this paper. All content and information replied to me will be total confidential and anonymous in the term paper. The information will not be used outside my term paper, but I might use some of the information in my Bachelor paper next year. I will be pleased to send you my term paper or a summary of the survey results if you desire? If you want to check out my earlier education, work experience and recommendations, please click in to my profile at www.Linkedin.com. There you will find my updated digital CV. Remember to give your answers the same number as the questions. Just reply to this e-mail account. Please also add your position/role. See my questionnaires below. Thank you for your cooperation. Regards X 23 | P a g e
  • 24. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Appendix B: Original answers to the survey (Verification) Enterprise A; 1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both? YES Both 2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing? web and Internet is crucial to all parts of our business, and therefore we rely almost solely on e-marketing as a marketing driver. 3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why? Google Adwords and contextual advertising 4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? As Above. Pay per performance works better and gives measurable results 5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. ) Measure results. Copy and improve success, and stop what's not working 6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will look like in the close future? Most e-marketing, but also some physical Direct Marketing. Future; Even more e-marketing, maybe as a Direct Marketing tool 7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? Both 8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? Signups, visits 9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? more customers, users and very measurable marketing. Very high relevance 10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? pricing On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Rune Haugestad <Rune.Haugestad@stud.jbi.hio.no> wrote: Position: Industry Head ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 | P a g e
  • 25. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Enterprise B; Research questions: 1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both? E-marketing is an essential part of our marketing plan. Since we’re an online business, this is essential for us. 2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing? I work within sales, so unfortunately I don’t have easy access to these document 3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why? We are tracking all our e-marketing, to make sure we get the results we want. We have internal tracking tools; I’m not 100% sure if we also use external tracking. According to our own service to improve this, we have used eye tracking study. The results made us adapt and change layout and different elements on our page, so we can attract more users, but also keep the existing users happy. 4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? Eye tracking study (answered above), and tracking tools to see where we get out traffic from 5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. ) We combine online and offline marketing and are getting good synergies to get more value out of every kind of ads we do. We also launched our new design and service on Twitter, to get valuable feedback from the entrepreneurs in the business. We also improve our PPC campaigns, and get more values by optimizing the campaigns. SEO is also in focus, but this is an area we can do more. 6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will look like in the close future? -Answered above; we mix tv and online activities to get more out of each channel. Our PR strategy is also close related to our marketing. I already see that a lot of companies are cutting their budgets on offline activities and are putting these money online. I also believe that the mix in the near future will be different online activities where you can measure the effect of the campaigns. I also believe that social medias, blogs and the companies PR strategy will be essential and will be integrated more close than before. Search will play a more central role, to get more out of offline campaigns. 7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? We don’t use this in an extended way. 8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? Sorry, I don’t have this information 9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? More users and more value to our clients, which are essential for our service 10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? I don’t see any big challenges. Position: Byråansvarlig 25 | P a g e
  • 26. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. Enterprise C: 1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both? Ja, det hadde vært usedvanlig lite strategisk gjennomtenkt ikke å gjøre seg/holde seg synlig digitalt nå :) 2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing? Ingenting skriftlig (som jeg har sett), men en gjennomgående tanke om å fremstå som aktive, synlige og attraktive på nettet. 3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why? Vi bruker stort sett e-mail, diverse digitale sosiale nettverk og vår egen website som kommunikasjonskanal. Dersom behovet skulle oppstå, vil også bannerannonser og evt. PR være aktuelle virkemidler for å nå frem til de vi vil snakke med. 4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? Som et kommunikasjonsbyrå er vi selvfølgelig i stor grad avhengige av at vår egen website formidler så mye som mulig om oss. Ellers er det jo alltid de jobbene vi gjør for våre egne kunder som til enhver tid er målestokk for hva vi besitter av kompetanse. 5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. ) For øyeblikket sprengjobber vi med websiten vår LOL :) Diverse aktiviteter knytta til sosiale nettverk kommer vi nok også til å trappe opp. Synlighet kommer forøvrvig som et vedheng på de jobbene vi selv gjør for våre kunder. Når det er sagt - det dreier seg jo i veldig stor grad om å makte å formidle tankene bak og resultatene av disse jobbene på en konkret og underholdene måte. Det er også viktig for et selskap som vårt å hele tiden fremstå som oppdaterte på digital kommunikasjon, så i den grad vi får våre kunder med på å sprenge tradisjonelle grenser på mediafronten, vil det ha stor betydning for oss. Ergo - hva gjør vi for å forbedre vår egen emarketingstrategi - jo, vi lærer oss mer som våre egne kunder vil nyte godt av. 6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will look like in the close future? Vi markedsfører vårt eget selskap i veldig liten grad - og da spesielt lite gjennom tredisjonell massekommunikasjon. Som tidligere nevnt er vi jo selv i markedføringsbransjen, så mye av vår egenreklame ligger i de jobbene vi gjør daglig. Per i dag er vi stort sett utelukkende tilstede digitalt - kanskje vi skal overraske og heller blande inn litt trad. massekommunikasjon etterhvert? Stikk motsatt av hva alle andre kommer til å gjøre? Hmm. Det er verdt en tanke :) 7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? Her må jeg innrømme at jeg ikke har no' godt svar :) Så langt har vi ikke hatt bruk for å snakke én til én. 8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? Vi måler ingenting av det vi gjør for oss selv, av den enkle grunn at vi så langt ikke trenger det. Når det gjelder jobber vi gjør for våre egne kunder, måles effekt på mange forskjellige måter. Noe gjennom vanlige trackingsystemer (Google Analytics etc.), noe direkte gjennom medianettverk som TradeDoubler og noe måles gjennom våre kunders egne systemer (deriblant konverteringsrater og direkte salg som følge av annonsering). 9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? Vi har vel fått en og annen kunde som direkte resultat av våre egne websider, og iallefall én ny ansatt som følge av bannerannonsering. I tillegg har vi besatt en ledig stilling nå gjennom aktiviteter på Facebook. 10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? Den største (og kanskje for øyeblikket eneste) utfordringen vi har nå, er vel i det hele tatt å få en konkret strategi på plass. Vi er jo i en bransje som ikke har noen tradisjon på å markedsføre oss selv annet enn gjennom markedsføring av andre. Som de sier - skomakerens barn har ofte dårligst sko :) Position: Art Director & Interaksjonsdesigner 26 | P a g e
  • 27. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rune Haugestad [mailto:Rune.Haugestad@stud.jbi.hio.no] Sent: 27. april 2009 14:56 Enterprise D: Research questions: 1. Does e-marketing appear in your business plan, marketing plan or Internet/WEB strategy plan or both? Yes. Being a company that bases its services on the Internet and the use of such X should have some sort of idea about e-marketing of its services. 2. If your company has a written Internet/WEB strategy, how does it include e-marketing? The company does not have a written web strategy. 3. Which e-marketing tools and services are your company using and why? The company has engaged in search engine marketing (Google AdWord program). We have, to a small extent, used banner ads on specific websites. We are not running any email campaigns at the moment, but we are regularly supporting several of our partners in such campaigns. SEO has to some extent been implemented but not entirely (Meaning some of the group’s websites are SE optimized whereas others are not yet optimized towards search engines. 4. What e-marketing tools works best to achieve your marketing objectives and why? I would say that this depends highly on the marketing objective. If the direct objective is increased sales I would say that email campaigns with following calls would have an impact. I think it is still so that the main marketing/sales tool for increasing sales is cold calling. This can however easily be combined with email campaigns for increased focus. I have yet to see that search engine marketing really works as well as some say. It might be that we have not been executing our campaigns well enough. For brand building and -recognition, banner ads and possibly the use of various social tools such as twitter, Facebook profile, blogging, etc would make an impact, because this gives the company a more “neutral” venue for communicating with new and existing clients, and building trust and dialogue with the audience. 5. What does your company do to improve your e-marketing? (i.e. visibility, interactivity, storytelling, etc. ) In developing our new services we keep in mind how these can be even more accessible, and how we can sort of merge an open access service and our paid service – the objective obviously being to increase the number of paying users. 6. How do you mix traditional (mass) marketing and e-marketing today? 6.2. What do you think the mix will look like in the close future? X has two main business areas. The subscription services that seek a large volume of clients is to a large extent being managed by our various partners. Our other main business area involves integrated services/solutions (integration of news search into other applications such as CRM, credit information services, etc.). The marketing of the integrated services is handled mainly by personal contact and to some extent by emarketing tools such as email campaigns. X does not conduct any large scale of traditional mass marketing with regards to any of our products. 7. How are your company using; one to many and/or one to one e-marketing? My company is using both types of communication depending on the message. On some campaigns we have for example openly addressed several players in one industry seeking partners. In these campaigns we have, through the communication, made it clear that we are addressing all the players in the respective markets. On other campaigns it makes more sense to communicate more on a one to one level. We use both approaches depending 27 | P a g e
  • 28. Candidate: 142. MOK. Exam - Information & Communication theory. vastly on the message and the objective. 8. How do you measure your e-marketing efforts? The efforts should be measured based upon what the objective is. Very often the objective is increased sales, and that is the easiest thing to measure as well. 9. What are the benefits your company has achieved with e-marketing? Signing new partners and new clients, but mainly new partners I would say. By partners I mean resellers who market and sell our services in their local market. 10. What challenges are you facing using e-marketing strategies? As an overall challenge I would say time. By this I mean that we are a rather small organization where everyone needs to do that extra little effort. This means that there is little time for making well organized plans for how to better use various e-marketing tools. I would personally like to further explore and use the social web as a marketing channel. I think this will continue growing of importance and as a marketing channel and communication channel between companies and organizations and people. There are several reasons – you meet people at “home”, it is a more or less trusted channel, given that you use this channel seriously – you have several room for dialogue, and increased dialogue with clients normally will improve the relation. There is basically no limitation as to how it can be used and exploited.But anyway I get back to lacking of time and priority. Your position/role: Marketing Director 28 | P a g e