On 3

Topic 1 – Beryla

      Customer Relationship management is a medium that is utilized to implement great exposure to consumers through social media platforms, allowing consumers to share their experiences about brands with their online social connections. This is an excellent way to get merchandise noticed through word-of mouth (UMUC, 2022, p.3). CMR allows brands the opportunity to acknowledge and respond to consumers through social media. 

     An online store like Company One should combine CRM and social media to increase tracking of benchmark, and the ability to capture their consumers through their favorite channels. By the company combining CRM with social data, it can see a full representation of its consumers, permitting personalized responses and efficient interactions (Braden, 2021). Furthermore, combining CRM to your social data, provides the ability to compose authentic decisions regarding the future needs of your consumers, and propose relevant purchases. In knowing which merchandise consumers are attentive to, what they are sharing, and which merchants they follow; it allows the brand to create specific merchandise for their targeted audience (Branden, 2021). 

     The impact this has on the brand is that it targets different ways to maintain consumers while focusing on ways to target potential clients, this increases the recognition of the brand and in return increasing sales. This also prompts the relationship between the company and its consumers to maximize (Soltani et al., 2018). Disregarding social media from the company’s CRM strategy can result in a negative effect to the brand as there will be fewer insights, and the inability to plan effectively and strategically. 

Topic 2 – Beryla

           CompanyOne can use social CRM to track and engage its customers across different social platforms by monitoring traffic, this allows the company to know how many consumers are visiting their sites and how each click is converted into revenue. Furthermore, it enables the ability to better understand the needs and issues of consumers. A CRM tool aids in navigating information to give a company a broad-metric analytic summary approaching from every social media platform. In addition to that, it allows the company to view into demographics and pick up on distinct classifications of content that may be relevant to prospective clients (Zunenshine,2019). 

            To ensure a successful social media platform, CompanyOne should Identify the problems and goals of the company and analyze what they may be missing from a consumer’s point of view. Secondly, the company should engage and talk with their consumers and not at them. CampanyOne should ensure that there are two-way conversations going on with its consumers and respond to them in a timely manner. 

            There are several challenges the company can face, the first being cost. The greatest challenge when executing CRM is the cost, specifically if the process is done in a rushed manner without proper planning. Secondly, is the absence of defining clear goals. Prior to implementing the system, the company must have a laid-out plan on which direction the company is taking, future expansions, how much security levels are needed and how to manage the breach between what the company implements and what the software provides. Lastly, the company might face security and data protection issues, this is due to all data being kept in one place (Thakral, 2021).

E.
Bailey- Project 3, Topic 1

What is a social media CRM platform? Why would an online merchandise store like CompanyOne combine CRM and social data? What is the impact on its brand? Explain.

Social media customer relationship management (CMR) is a forum to engage customers using social media by encouraging them to share their experiences about a brand with their connections (UMGC, 2022). Word-of-mouth marketing can help spread awareness about a brand and gain attention; however, to be effective, brands need to respond directly and quickly to their customers on its social media platforms. CRM allows brands to pool data from their platforms and analyze historical complaints to improve customer satisfaction (UMGC, 2022). The best social CRM platforms combine social media CRM tools with social media CRM software to create a better customer experience. With the CRM tools, marketing strategies can be developed and sales leads generated, while the CRM software helps with branding and marketing content management (Scheiner, n.d.). Overall, CRM monitors the number of visitors to the brand’s platforms, the amount of engagement by fans (likes, comments, etc), as well as brand mentions by followers (Scheiner, n.d.).

The combination of CRM and social data allows an online merchandiser to gain knowledge and data about its customers and the conversations they have with other consumers. Using this method, brands and organizations can better collect customer feedback and queries and provide customers with accurate and helpful answers and information about their brands (Hall, 2011). Increasing exposure to brands and products through social media marketing has become one of the most successful forms of digital marketing for organizations. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat topped the list of social media platforms used by marketers worldwide in 2021. Using these platforms, advertisers can gain momentum in their brands and increase their customer base. As such, social media can be used for both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) purposes.

E.

Bailey- Project 3, Topic 2

How can CompanyOne use social CRM tools to track and engage its customers across different social platforms? What should CompanyOne do to ensure a successful social CRM strategy? What challenges can it face? Explain.

Using social CRM tools, CompanyOne can capture data about all its followers across multiple social platforms while also keeping all customer conversations at hand, thereby improving their customer service and support. CompanyOne can also use CRM software to plan, post, schedule, and manage marketing and branding content across social media platforms, which results in improved CRM strategies, marketing strategies, and sales lead generation for the company.

As a result, the company can provide better customer service, build new relationships, understand customer needs, improve the brand’s reputation, control its social media presence, and integrate social media into marketing, sales, and services. The use of CRM tools and software does have some cons, however. CRM tools can be expensive, with plans ranging from $1000 per month for a basic plan to $40,000 per month for an enterprise plan (Scheiner, n.d.). Although there are some CRM tools that are free or much cheaper, they wouldn’t fulfill CompanyOne’s needs because they lack the features that would be beneficial to the company (Scheiner, n.d.).

Topic 3 – Zoey

 

There are three key elements to be considered when CompanyOne conducts a digital brand analysis. These elements are:

1. Brand share 2. Brand audience 3. Brand and consumer alignment.

Explain the role that each of these elements plays in CompanyOne’s digital brand analysis.

 

Brand share is a percentage of a given product category’s sales that is attributed to one brand (Valentine, 2020). Essentially, it also means market share with the amount of dollars spent by consumers on a specific brand compared to other brands. The role that brand share plays in analyzing a brand is making sure that CompanyOne is acting responsibility making good marketing decisions. There is a direct positive correlation between market share and return on investment (ROI) because as market share increases so does profit (Buzzell, Gale, & Sultan, 1975). It is important for CompanyOne to consider brand share in its digital brand. Businesses selling products that are purchase infrequently and by a fragmented customer group, will have a greater advantage of large market share (Buzell, Gale, & Sultan, 1975). Ultimately, analyzing brand share can help to determine if CompanyOne is on track to hit their marketing goals relative to their competitors. 

 

Brand audience would be the CompanyOne’s target audience. Digital brand analysis includes brand audience to ensure that CompanyOne has the right market To develop a target audience, CompanyOne can gather data to determine consumer demographics. These consumer demographics can include age, marital status, estimated salary, location, and ethnicity (UMGC Working with Data, 2022). By analyzing CompanyOne’s audience, it can be determined if CompanyOne has a good marketing strategy. Firstly, by gathering audience insights as varied sets of information as possible, CompanyOne can get a full picture of its audience (UMGC Working with Data, 2022). By getting a full picture of a target audience, CompanyOne can then segment its audience. By segmenting an audience, specific groups of users can be analyzed (Data Analytics: Goals, Tools, Benefits, and Challenges, 2022). Data segmentation can help CompanyOne with its marketing strategy to target consumers that will spend more on their online merchandise business.

 

Brand and consumer alignment is described as a branding strategy that matches the needs & wants of the target market. Brand and consumer alignment is important in digital brand analysis because of its value. Data analytics can help to analyze CompanyOne’s digital marketing strategy. By looking at trends and changes of a period of time, CompanyOne can see if its strategy currently aligns with is consumers (UMGC Working with Data, 2022). Brand alignment is valuable because its means consumers will spend more and create brand awareness. When consumers are aligned with a brand they are willing to spend twice as much share of wallet as those who may not be aligned with a brand (Fleming, Witters, & Adkins, 2014). CompanyOne must build trust and gain significant wallet share of consumers. 

·

Topic 4- Zoey

Most social platforms provide huge amounts of data; however, in the aggregate, which is not very useful. Accordingly, it is not advised that CompanyOne analyze its traffic in aggregate. Web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik argued that “data in the aggregate is useless;” companies should segment or die! (Hemann & Burbary, 2018, p. 13).

Explain six of the segmenting strategies that CompanyOne may pursue when using Google Analytics (GA), and the pros and cons of each of them.

The Six Segmentation Strategies are 1) Demographic 2) Geographic 3) Psychographic 4) Behavioral 5) Needs-Based 6) Transactional. The pros of demographics is that it separates consumers based on who they are in terms of age, gender, occupation, income, and family status (Perceptive, 2018). Another pro of this type of segmentation strategy is that it can eliminate irrelevant audience segments quickly and easily. According to Harvard Business Review, market segmentation based on demographics does not provide a clear direction for marketing strategy because of its traditional methods it cannot keep up with competition (Yankelovich, 1964).  For example, if CompanyOne is looking for high-income consumers that they can focus their resources on a target audience that has high-incomes. One con is that demographic segmentation could turn up unprofitable target audiences.  Geographic segmentation can be based on various locations like countries, states, provinces, or cities (UMGC Segmentation in Web Analysis, 2022). One pro is that it may be easier to have a defined group such as the whole city of Washington DC. A second pro is that a customer’s location influences their purchase decisions. One con may be figuring out how to optimize the customer experience for the different groups of people in different locations. 

 

Psychographic segmentation can be based on personality and segments customers based on interests, attitudes, values, and lifestyles (Perceptive, 2018). One pro is that the marketing can be more personalized and may influence consumers on a deeper level. One con is that there are many different types of psychographics that could be used and each person could be influenced differently. Behavioral segmentation assesses purchase history and patterns and brand awareness. A pro is that this type of segmentation can lead to a more tailored marketing experience that will promote the best of the online merchandise for CompanyOne. A con is that it doesn’t look at who the consumers are as people so, it is more focused on which products/services to market based on purchase patterns. Needs-based segmentation focuses on ways that business can solve needs of consumers whether they are emotional or functional (Perceptive, 2018). A pro is that there is many benefits to the consumers as their needs would be well-defined and easier for the business to meet (Account Learning, 2022). One con is that it could be expensive to keep up with consumer needs and there is no guarantee that all needs can be met. Transactional segmentation looks at the frequency, monetary, and recency of spending habits (Perceptive, 2018). One pro is that it will identify who the most valuable consumers are that are spending the most. One con is that this segmentation would not create promotions catering to potential new consumers, only the existing ones. Ultimately, using several different types of market segmentation in google analytics can help CompanyOne to find the most profitable segments. 

Henry – Topic 3

 

Explain the role that each of these elements plays in CompanyOne’s digital brand analysis.

Brand Share

Digital brand analysis is a powerful tool that leverages data to better understand what consumers think and feel about your brand. It provides a clear view of CompanyOne’s strengths and weaknesses and helps you to make data-driven decisions to improve your brand. One of the most important aspects of digital brand analysis is understanding how customers feel about your brand. This allows you to see how your brand is faring in the digital world and identify opportunities to improve.

Digital brand analysis can be used to determine the optimal brand share in digital marketing. It provides a clear picture of a CompanyOne’s current digital performance, which can be used to identify areas where a brand’s digital strategy is underperforming (Padmanabhan, 2017). This allows CompanyOne to make data-driven decisions that can improve the effectiveness of its digital strategy. For example, the current digital strategy is not producing the level of brand awareness that is desired, digital brand analysis can be used to identify the areas where it is underperforming and make data-driven decisions to improve.

Brand Audience

Digital marketing is a constantly evolving field with new and improved technologies and strategies being introduced all the time. One such strategy is digital brand audience, which is a way of understanding the audiences that visit CompanyOne’s website or use their app so that they can tailor their content to them and ensure that they reaching as many of them as possible (UMGC, 2022b). One first step in digital brand audience is to gather data about the current audience (UMGC, 2022a). This will help CompanyOne understand where they are coming from, what they are interested in, and what they are looking for so that they can adjust strategy accordingly (Paun, 2022). Once the company have a good idea of who their audience is, they can use this data to help find new audiences to target.  

Other ways digital brand audience can be used is by using the gathered data to predict the audience that CompanyOne is likely to reach in the future (Jones, 2014). For example, if you know that people from the East Coast are more likely to purchase your product than people from the West Coast, they can use this digital brand audience to prioritize East Coast -based content over West Coast -based content, services, or goods. This can help you to avoid spending time and money on content that is not likely to convert, and instead focus your efforts on content that is likely to bring you a return.

Brand and consumer alignment

Digital marketing has evolved at a rapid pace since the inception of the internet. It has evolved from simple banner ads on websites, to sophisticated algorithms that use data analytics to target the right people with the right product at the right time (UMGC, 2022a). One of the aspects of digital marketing is brand and consumer alignment, the ability to use data analytics to align CompanyOne’s brand across channels to maximize the impact of marketing efforts. When executed correctly, brand and consumer alignment can increase the impact of marketing by making sure the brand is positioned correctly across all channels, so that the company have the maximum opportunity to reach their audience more effectively while earning their loyalty and trust (Biderman-Gross, 2020).

Additionally, understanding brand alignment allows CompanyOne to take advantage of opportunities to increase the impact of certain channels when they are performing well. However, brand alignment is only as good as the data that goes into it. If the data is outdated or inaccurate, it will cause the brand alignment to be ineffective. The company must identify areas where your brand is being presented inconsistently, so that they can make small tweaks to fix them.

Henry – Topic 4

 

Explain six of the segmenting strategies that CompanyOne may pursue when using Google Analytics (GA), and the pros and cons of each of them.

Customer segmentation is the process of dividing a larger group of customers into smaller groups. The primary goal of segmentation is to make it easier to identify the needs of individual customers and tailor the customer experience to those needs (Blum, 2019). The Some effective types of segmentation are gender, age, location, behavior, interest, and technology (UMGC, 2022b).

Gender: The advantages of gender segmentation are that it is an easy way to understand CompanyOne’s customer base better, and it can also be used to target specific groups who are usually more profitable. The main disadvantage of gender segmentation is that it is not always accurate or relevant. For example, a female customer may make more purchasing decisions than a male customer, but the male customer may have a higher income.

Age: Age is a useful segmentation because it can be a strong predictor of purchasing behavior and lifestyle. The main advantage of age segmentation is that it is a strong indicator of what products and services are more relevant to certain age groups, such as types of clothing or technology (Kari, 2022). The primary disadvantages of age segmentation are that it does not accurately determine which age group will buy more (e.g., a young person may make more purchasing decisions than an older person, but the older person may have a higher income), making it difficult to identify the right age range to target.

Geographical location: The primary advantage of location segmentation is that it can also be used to target specific areas where CompanyOne can bring in more profit, such as from wealthier neighborhoods or consumer heavy countries. The main disadvantage of location segmentation is that location alone may not identify the areas with more purchasing power, due to the prevalence of online shoppers. A customer who purchases products online may be more profitable than a customer who makes purchases in person,

Behavior: Behavior segmentation is useful when developing a marketing strategy because it allows the company to identify returning visitors that CompanyOne will be able to tailor their offerings and messaging to. However, returning visitors does not always mean more sales as it does not take into account the visitors purchasing power.

Interest: Interest segmentation is useful for marketers because it allows them to tailor their products and services to the needs of different groups of customers who are interested in a specific product or service. The downside is that it does not offer a clear way to predict the behavior of customers. Some customers who are interested in a product will buy it, while others will not.

Technology and mobile: Knowing the technology and software potential customers use is important for CompanyOne, so they will be able to ensure that their websites and content are compatible with these systems. The downside to overly relying on the information provided by technology and mobile app segmentation is that sometimes the data is inaccurate, causing the CompanyOne team to waste time and money on developing content that is not relevant to their target market (Deloitte, 2018).

Overall, it is important to consider the best use of segmentations for specific products or services in order to create a more detailed picture of the customers (UMGC, 2022a). CompanyOne must also ensure that they research new and more effective segmentations in order to stay ahead of their competitors (Yankelovich, 2021).

Google Analytics Report

Table of Contents
Question 1: Overview of CompanyOne’s Website activity of its Users 2
Users 2
Demographics Data 3
Language 3
Country 3
City 4
Browser Systems 5
Browser 5
Operating System 6
Operating system 6
Mobile Operating System and Resolution 6
Operating system 6
Resolution of the Display 7
Question 2: Active Users 8

Question 2a: Active users

8
1-Day Active Users for 3rd quarter for 2020 vs 2021 8
Insights 9
Question 3: Bounce rate 10
Bounce rate 10
Page Views 10
Question 4 10
Question 5: Gender 13
Question 6: Targeted Marketing Campaign 14
New Users 14
Male New Users 14
Question 7 15
a) Top 3 countries 15
b) Best and least improved 15
c) Top 5 states 15
Question 8 16
Revenue by Group 16
Gender and Age 16
Question 9 17
Question 10 18
Conversion stats 18
Comment on the conversion stats 18

Question 1: Overview of CompanyOne’s Website activity of its Users

Users

The Third Quarter of 2021

Users

July 1, 2021 – September 30, 2021

 

The total number of users is 161,165. 

The total number of new users is 155,566.

 

There were 220,886 sessions in all.

 

The average number of sessions per user is 1.37

 

The pageviews are 1,026,695.

 

The pages per session are 4.65.

 

Average session duration 00:03:07

 

Bounce rate is 47.91%

 Demographics Data

Language

· 59.19% of speak United States’ English, 9.70% speak English from Great Britain, 3.10% Speak Mandarin from China, 2.67% speak English from Canada, 2.66% speak Spanish, 2.45% speak French and the rest speak other languages.

Country

· 44.39% of the users are from United States, 9.20% are form India, 5.92% are from Canada and 4.94 are from United Kingdom while the rest are from other nations in Europe and Asia

City

· Majority of the users have come from unknown cities (7.79%) while most of the users with declared cities are from Singapore, London and around the United States

· The leading cities are New York, London, and San Jose.

· Majority of the users have come from unknown cities (7.79%) while most of the users with declared cities are from Singapore, London and around the United States
· The leading cities are New York, London, and San Jose.

Browser Systems

Browser

· 75.48% of users browse with Chrome

· 17.48% of the users browse with Safari.

· 3.40%of the users browse with Edge

· 1.60% of the users browse with Firefox

· The remaining 12.36% use other browsers

· No other single browser is used by more than 2% of the users

Operating System

Operating system

· 32.27% of the users use Windows

· 26.01% of the users use Macintosh

· 16.39% of the users use Android

· 15.38% of the users use iOS

· 8.85% use Chrome OS

· 1.11% use Linux while 0.01 use Tizen

Mobile Operating System and Resolution

Operating system

· 51.45% of the users use Android operating system

· 48.51% of the users use iOS operating systems

· Android and iOS account for 99.96% of the operating systems used by the users

Resolution of the Display

· 12.50% of the users have a screen resolution of 414 x 896

· 11.75% of the users have a screen resolution of 390 x 844

· 7.42% of the users have a screen resolution of 375 x 812

· 5.86% of the users have a screen resolution of 360 x 800

· 5.70% of the users have a screen resolution of 428 x 926

· There is a good distribution of uses who use different levels of screen resolution

Question 2: Active Users

Question 2a: Active users

Active Users

Number

1 Day

1398

7 Day

15404

14 Day

29427

28 Day

55093

The ratio of 1 Day Active Users to 28 Day Active Users, expressed as a percentage is 2.54%. This is obtained as (1398/55093) *100 which gives 2.54%. The graphs for 1 Day Active Users to 28 Day Active Users show the same trend over time. This illustrates that there is consistency between the 1 Day Active Users to 28 Day Active Users.

Question 2b: 2020 vs 2021

1-Day Active Users for 3rd quarter for 2020 vs 2021

Insights

1-Day active users grew by 2.2% from 2020 to 2021. This illustrates increased effectiveness of marketing from the third quarter in 2020 to the third quarter of 2021

Question 3: Bounce rate

Bounce rate

The bounce rate decreased from 45.55% to 45.45% between the period Q3 2020 and Q3 2021. this represents a decrease of bounce rate by 0.21%.

Page Views

Page views increased by 15.91%. The page views were 1349719 in 2021 versus 1134778 in 2020.

Question 4: Users aged 25-34

The number of users aged between 18 and 24 increased by 23.44% from 27941 in the first half of 2020 to 34490 in the first half of 2021. On the other hand, the number of users aged between 25 and 34 years decreased by 6.47% from 44507 in the first half of 2020 to 41628 in the first half of 2021

The proportion of all the other ages increased over the same period. 35-44 age group increased by 18.61%. The ages of 45-54 increased by 52.38%. 55-64 increased by 38.34% while 65+ increased by 41.60%. The greatest increase was for the ages of 45-54 years.

Question 5: Gender

CompanyOne’s efforts of increasing female users from 2020 to 2021 appear to be very successful. The proportion of female visitors increased by 30.56% from 44804 in the first half of 2020 to 58498 in the first half of 2021.

Question 6: Targeted Marketing Campaign

New Users

The targeted marketing campaign to attract new users to their online store in the third quarter of 2021 appears effective. New users dropped by 1.3% from 52856 from 2020 to 52171 in 2021. CompanyOne attracted fewer new users from July – September 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 irrespective of gender

Male New Users

CompanyOne attracted fewer new male users from July – September 2021 compared to the same period in 2020. The proportion of new male users decreased by 8.60% from 32339 to 29558.

Question 7: Performance by Country

a) Top 3 countries

The top three countries which sent users to the CompanyOne online store from August 2020 to July 2021 were United States, India and Canada which accounted for 41.80%, 9.07% and 5.93% of the users.

b) Best and least improved

When analyzing the percentage change in the number of new users by country of residence, the United States had the best percentage change in new users from August 2020 to July 2021 with

41.89% compared to 9.07% for India. Canada showed the least improvement of 6.01%.

c) Top 5 states

The top five U.S. states which sent users to the CompanyOne online store from August 2020 to July 2021 are California, New York, Texas, Virginia, and Florida with proportions of 27.72%, 7.25%, 6.94%, 5.89% and 4.05% respectively.

Question 8: Revenue by Age Group

Revenue by Group

The 25-35 age group generated the highest revenue for CompanyOne from August 2020 to July 2021, which was $148,352.42. The 65+ age group generated the lowest revenue for CompanyOne from August 2020 to July 2021, which was $12,046.73. 55-64 age group had the highest average order value although the group did not generate the highest revenue. The 45-54 age group had the highest Ecommerce Conversion Rate, a rate of 2.09%. From these observations. CompanyOne should target the age group of 55-64 as their average order value was the highest. This means increasing the number of customers from this group would significantly increase its revenue.

Gender and Age

Males of the 25-34 age group is the combination of gender and age group that had the highest revenue from August 2020 to July 2021 with a revenue of $81,762.07. Females of the 25-34 age group is the combination of gender and age group that had the second-highest revenue from August 2020 to July 2021 with a revenue of $66,590.35.

Question 9: Audience Composition

The top three categories for male users are Technology/Technophiles, Shoppers/Value Shoppers, and Travel/Business Travelers. For the female customers, top three categories are Shoppers/Value Shoppers, Media & Entertainment/Movie lovers, and Lifestyles & Hobbies/Art & Theater Aficionados.

Question 10: Conversion Stats

Conversion stats

Category

Converters

Non-Converters

Conversion rate

Users

15051

92631

14%

Sessions

36670

108298

25%

Sessions per user

2.44

1.17

68%

Page views

527205

243760

68%

Average session duration

8:40

1:20

87%

Bounce rate

14.33%

56.63%

20%

Comment on the conversion stats

The converters spend a lot of time on the website with longer average session duration and more page views than non-converters. Converters also had a higher sessions per page than non-converters. The conversion rate was as low as 14% for all users while for new users, the conversion rate was 13%. The company can redesign the website to add content that can increase the time a new user spends per session. Non converters have a s very high bounce rate compared to converters.

In terms of acquisition, male users make up 57% while female users make up 43% (27, 024 vs. 20, 762). Male conversion sessions run around two thirds if female conversion sessions, and male new user counts are nearly twice as high as female new user counts. Although female users are somewhat more likely to bounce, both sexes exhibit similar consumer behavior. Pages seen each session differ little between the sexes (6.06 vs 5.68). Both genders’ typical session lengths are similar (3.28 vs 3.39). Male users of eCommerce are more numerous (1,386) than female users (1,098), but male conversion revenues were greater (by 8%), and lastly, the conversion rates for both sexes are comparable (3.74% compared to 3.8%).