Developing a Framework for Multi Channel E-marketing

Developing a Framework for Multi Channel E-marketing Hassan Torkaman 1 e-mail: hasan.torkaman@gmail.com Ab Razak Che Hussin 2 e-mail: abrazak@utm.my Arash Bayat Shahbazi 3 e-mail: arash.bsh@gmail.com Author(s) Contact Details: 1 Ministry of I.C.T, Tehran, Iran 2,3 Faculty of Computing, Department of Information Systems, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310, Skudai, Johor, Malaysia Abstract This paper is about combining three E-marketing tools including Search engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Email marketing to develop a new multiple channel E-marketing framework. A marketing framework can be generally defined as a written document that details the current marketing situation, threats and opportunities, marketing objectives, and the strategies for achieving the objectives. A marketing plan can be written for each product, service, brand, or for the company as a whole. An e-marketing plan is more focused than the traditional marketing plan. An e-marketing plan is more focused compared to the traditional marketing plan. Although it often includes some topics that are used in traditional marketing plan, it is more centered on the marketing opportunities, threats, objectives and strategies on the Internet. Having an effective online marketing framework is the most important part of marketing strategy for any companies. World Wide Web appropriates effective tools for marketers such as Social Media, Search engines, online advertisement, Email marketing, pop up Advertisement and etc. There are many E-marketing frameworks which support E- Marketing campaign but they only use one tool or a mixed tool. Marketing expert s focused on Search engine optimization and social media as a new emerging trend in an online environment. This study is going to make more benefits by adding email marketing to these new trends of E-marketing. This study has been done in Universiti Technologi Malaysia. For data collection, 200 questionnaires have been distributed among the respondent and 152 has been collected, after analyzing collected data, the authors proposed a new framework for marketing. This framework has been evaluated by marketing experts. After evaluation, the authors concluded that this study achieved its goal. The proposed framework is named Multiple Channels Framework for E-marketing. Keywords e marketing; search engine optimization; social media; email marketing; seo; marketing strategy 1. INTRODUCTION With the rise of the internet and its usages, e-commerce has opened a new perspective of marketing. E-commerce helps companies to introduce and sell their products through the internet. There are many tools which can be used for E-marketing such as emails, online advertisements, search engines, social networks and etc. Nevertheless, the most important point is how to choose a proper tool and how to use it. This paper will focus on designing an efficient multiple channel framework with combining search engine, social network and Email marketing for an E - marketing campaign. Marketing framework is a written document that includes details of the current marketing situation, threats and opportunities, marketing objectives and the strategies for achieving the objectives. A marketing plan can be written for each product, service, brand, or for the company as a whole. An e-marketing plan is more focused comparing to the traditional marketing plan. Although it often includes some topics that are used in traditional marketing plan too and it is more centered on the marketing opportunities, threats, objectives and strategies on the Internet [6]. Free from all marketing strategies that marketer may use such as 4P (product, place, price, promotion), 4S (scope, site, synergy, system), 4C (convenience, cost, communication, and customer) and etc., how to use e-marketing tools and its objectives have a direct impact on the success or failure of the business. For example, inappropriate usage of email marketing can be illegal. Sending emails as spam has culpability in many countries. If a marketer has not accurate aim and exact calculations, inappropriate using of PPC will be so expensive and less beneficial. Hence possessing accurate strategy, observing correct method and care for the feedbacks are necessary for marketing and it will help the company achieve its goals, the wrong social media marketing strategy could put the company at a viral social disadvantage ( put foot in mouth ). So having a proper framework is necessary to avoid the problems and reduce risks of incorrect using of E-marketing tools. There are some problems that might happen due to incorrect use of e-marketing, such as, illegal mails, damaging brand awareness, and these problems make unexpected costs for business. A perfect framework optimizes marketing campaign and avoids unnecessary expenses. This paper consists of 7 sections. Section 1 describes the importance of the e - marketing framework. Section 2 describes the methodology of this study. Section3 explains which channels chose by authors and why. Section 4 compares the advantages and disadvantages of chosen channels to determine the benefits of the proposed framework. Section 5 explains P a g e 77

how the proposed framework works. Section 6 focuses on evaluation of the paper s result and it ends with a conclusion and suggestion for future works 2. METHODOLOGY This study started by planning the phase. In this phase, the project has been defined and scheduled. In the next step, the authors started to collect all articles related to the subject, these articles has been used for better understanding of the project and for designing the questionnaire. Next phase called survey and analysis, in this phase, authors designed dissertation questionnaire to identify the five critical users' behavior about the selected tools for E-marketing challenge and understanding the importance of these tools. 200 questionnaires have been distributed among the students of Universiti Technologi Malaysia due to data collection and 152 have been collected, after collecting the questionnaire authors started to analyzing the results. At the end of this phased authors discussed about the information which has been used for developing the proposed framework. In the next step, the proposed framework has been designed based on literature review and survey. The flow has been completely explained for better understanding the framework and its efficiency. After that, authors tested the proposed conceptual framework by designing a questionnaire to evaluate the proposed framework. This questionnaire distributed among the marketing experts. Apart from that, the proposed framework has been compared with some existing marketing framework which used the same channels for an E - marketing campaign. In the last step, the authors proposed E-marketing framework based on the analyzed data. 3. SELECTED CHANNELS FOR THE PROPOSED FRAMEWORK A. Search Engine Optimization Search has become integrated into the fabric of our society. With more than 12 billion searches being performed each month as of January 2009 according to ComScore, approximately 400 million web searches are performed every day. This means that on average more than 4,500 searches are performed every single second of every day. [1] To sell the products, to be successful in selling and marketing campaign and to be famous in the market, at first must be visible, easy to find and well known, for these aims search engines are the most important and the most effective digital marketing tools due to its usage by internet users. Usually people use search engines to find their needs on the internet. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the accomplishment of improving a web site, therefore as to attain preferred ranks on the search engine results pages (SERPs). [5]: Search engines are helping the people to catch what they are looking for. To be assured about listing the best results in the first search, it has to find any signs of Relevance, Importance Popularity, and Authority (well known as on page factors). This can be achieved by applying changes to the HTML code, content and construction of a web site, which makes it more available for search engines and users, consequently. SEO contains off page factors as well these are usually made links to the web sites. SEO is a highly effective method of making new business to a site. Search engine optimization is a proper technical exercise but it can be divided in five leading areas: A search engine friendly web site structure. A well-researched list of key phrases. Content optimized to target those key phrases. Link popularity. Usage data. [2] B. Email Marketing Email is the most common feature of the internet and companies use email as one of the most effective tools for marketing. Organizations find out that email can be used as a strong tool for customer relationship management but it is also can use as a marketing tool for finding target market and to encourage customers to purchase companies products and services. There are four main reasons that indicate an email is a suitable tool for marketing: Email reduces cost of marketing. Email is highly focused on target. Email is so customizable. Results can be completely measured. P a g e 78

There are three different kinds of e-mails that company can send to customers: Transaction emails: When the customer placed an order, the company can send some e-mails for confirming the orders, banking account and shipping options. Newsletter: To keep customers informed about the new products or services. Promotional e-mails: When an organization has special promotion this e-mail will be sent to confirm customers C. Social Media Since the invention of the internet, people used it to create personal content and information. Thus, programmers began to make tools for internet users that allow them to create their own content on the web, tools such as: blogs, Wiki etc. Social media is not just about blogs, though and many other platforms that make it easy to share other kinds of content has become to the fore. [3] Social media is completely about the pattern of creating connection and online sharing. They allow users to make links, videos, photos and share them with other users. Users in social media can share a link by clicking on a share button only. This service can increase the web site traffic and make new users. It allows companies to analyze customer s behavior to improve their future plan. The two main ways of advertising on social networks are through wish list features and tell-a-friend applications. The communication in social network helps customers to listen to another customer, review ratings for products and services, provide product knowledge and personal information. Social networks protect users from interaction with the outside world, and keep information and interaction away from strangers. [4] Social network marketing is a future of E-marketing, companies have been realized the importance, strengths and opportunities that social media provides for e-marketing. All businesses can benefit from social media advertising as revolution in online marketing tools. Businesses have an advantage of brand intelligence conducted on social networks. The companies can get ROI feedback from social sites and observe the situation of their brand; also it gives companies the opportunity of making more connection, improve trust and viral marketing. 4. ADVANTAGE AND DISADVANTAGE OF CHOSEN CHANNELS A. Social Media The main advantage of having a social network presence is the amount of information an organization can gain about its customers. The most important advantages of social media marketing include: Cost efficiency: Social marketing can be an inexpensive way to promote the company s products. Making Connections: Social media network databases have treasure information about business opportunities and contacts are identified through it. Social networks can be a great way to find suppliers, employees, customers and commercial partner in the business and also a good way to exchange professional information, knowledge and business experiences. Brand Awareness: Further argues that brand awareness is important when it comes to social network marketing, and widgets are a good way to establish a presence in social networks. Through the use of widgets, businesses have a lot of opportunities to market [themselves], company, and add value in the overall business ecosystem. [7], Moreover, in order to raise brand awareness, employers should encourage their employees to participate in social network marketing and keep connecting to community. However, these activities should be monitored in order to discourage abuse. Social Network Marketing Opportunities: There are many opportunities for a business to engage with social network sites, such as increasing public awareness, improving the reputation of the company, making trust, brand awareness and viral marketing. Public Awareness: Social networks allow business to connect to public and build brand and there are many ways to advertise products and services and understanding of the customer s behavior and attitudes. It also can improve business reputation. Increasing customer s trust: Companies can make more connections with customers through social media websites, it increases customer s trust when they see, the company answers their needs and opinion. Making better reputation: public awareness, customer s trust, more connections with customers make a better reputation for companies. It has been proven that high reputation brings more income for companies. P a g e 79

B. Search Engine Optimization There are many reasons that search engines help customers and they are effective tools: Search is objective oriented: users search the internet for their needs. Search engines are entrances and thresholds to the Internet. Need to be visible on the web to be found Many people set search engines as a home page on their browsers [1]. C. Email Marketing There are four main reasons that show email is a suitable tool for marketing: Emails extremely reduce cost of marketing. Email is highly focused on target. Email is customizable. Results can be completely measured. FIGURE 1: Need for the proposed framework 5. FUNCTION OF MULTIPLE CHANNEL FRAMEWORK FOR E-MARKETING For starting E-marketing, the marketing strategy must be defined. The marketing strategy is a written document that detailed the current marketing situation, threats, opportunities, marketing objectives and strategy to achieve company goal. Also it must clearly explain competitor benchmarking, brand identity, business positioning business purpose, target market and business infrastructures. Finally it must determine a business model to achieve company s goals such as 4p, 4c and etc. A. Search Engine Optimization The most important and critical part of the proposed framework is search engine optimizing, to be seen, must be findable. According to the literature review search engine marketing contain three main parts: [2] Keywords Research Companies must research on the market and customers' interests to find the most relevant keywords and phrases for their business or products. These keywords must contain three factors: A) Relevancy B) Popularity C) Competition P a g e 80

Page Optimizations Page optimization has several steps which must be applied to each page. They made Webpages visible and searchable in search engines. Details about the page optimization will be described step by step: Meta Tags Optimization: Meta tags are part of the web page's code. The web designer usually puts them in HTML source code to provide information about keywords and content of the web pages to search engines. It can appear in source codes but not in page layouts. So internet users cannot see these Meta tags on the page but the text in these tags gives search engines specific information about the page. Search engine use Meta tags by their spiders and sometimes the information in Meta tags appear in the search engine page result as descriptions of the page. If Meta tags are well written with the most relevancies by a user s query, search engine result will be optimized, so it is important to be more visible and findable for business web sites. Title tags: Internet browsers show Title tags on top of the window when the page opened by a browser. Also search engines use title tags for defining the content of a page and they use it as a title in search engines result pages. So title tag improves the page s search engines rank and leads to the result. Title tags should be clear, and briefly describes the title and the content of the page. When the marketer team is selected and keywords and main phrases have been identified for search engines, the important part is to choose the words and sentences with most relevancy and relation with the content of the web page. Content is the most important part of a webpage and the marketer team must be sure that the content is properly structured and send signals of relevance. Robot. txt: Search engines provide a service for webmasters as special tools, if a developer makes robots. txt for Web pages, the crawler or spiders of the search engines do not explore the certain pages of a web site and will use this file for indexing as an instruction for search engines. ALT tag for an image: Any pictures on the web site must be described with suitable and relevant ALT tag, because it helps search engines to search pictures and shows them in the results page. Meta description: Use it at least once in the Meta description of the page. It will encourage users to click on your website link from the SERP (search engine result page). Optimizing Images Search engines cannot identify the images, so it s crucial to describe the images on web pages, with relevant keywords. When Search engines receive a query from customer these key words help to determine the images. The images will be shown on the SERPs page if the images are labeled and tagged with proper and related keywords. Optimizing images are recommended to use because of two main reasons: Images help users to have a better and clearer view of the page. Search engines use images for page ranking so it can improve the ranking of the web site. Image optimization with key phrases for SEO can be done by applying the steps which are described below: Use related file names. Use proper ALT tags and Title for the images. Use proper captions. Notice that the header tags and images must be relevant to each other. B. Social Network Marketing: One of the most useful social media tools for introducing a business and products to the marketplace is blogging. Make a profile and pages for business in social network sites such as Facebook and start to make connections with others. Tag pictures and videos in social networks and make hyperlinks in pages. Make content on social network pages and share them in other related pages or customers' pages. Engage and participate in social groups and start to communicate. Update profile regularly. C. Email Marketing P a g e 81

Email marketing contains four main parts: Strategic planning: First part of email marketing is planning. For creating a map for marketing, at first marketing planner must clarify the goals that must be achieved by businesses. Email marketing must be used as a tool to help companies achieve their goals. Define list: To get/buy the affective optimal emails list. It must be considered that there are four main factors which must be applied to this list, otherwise emails may recognize as spam: - The list of persons, who allowed a company to send them emails with marketing contents. - The list of persons who wants to receive newsletters or reports from the company - The list of persons who like to be informed about promotions. Integrate email marketing with two others tools: Email marketing must operate as an integrated tool. It must have same main line with social media advertisements, pictures, and videos even in the design of the email by following the same marketing strategy. It also must have links to lead customers to company s social websites or pages. Personalize the message: Email marketing allows customization to marketer, it is important to customize the email, content and advertisement for each category of customers to improve the preference and cover customer s interests. 6. EVALUATE AND ONLINE TOOLS FOR OBSERVING THE E-MARKETING After implementing page, it is important to evaluate the e-marketing framework to understand the effectiveness of the new framework. These are some simple ways to evaluate a marketing framework. Evaluating Email marketing: Categorize emails with subject lines and delivery times. Optimize the links in an email for clicking by users. Different copy styles and length of emails. Evaluating Search engine marketing: Check your keywords on search engines. Ask queries from search engines then test and test more. Evaluating Social media marketing: Identify Level of customer s satisfaction. Number of reports from users about failure in services. Resolved and answered user s reports. Number of customer compliments. P a g e 82

FIGURE 2: Multiple Channels E-marketing Framework 7. CONCLUSION The purpose of this paper was to propose a framework which is using three e-marketing channels (search engine optimizing, social media and Email marketing) these channels are known as the most important channels in e-marketing. The framework is designed for planning a successful marketing and the workflow is completely clarified for marketers who will use this framework. Social media websites as a new trend of marketing has more influence because there are many users around the world who are using these websites. For example, Facebook has more than one billion users and it is a completely suitable media for introducing a business, brand or products to market. Applying the proposed multiple channel framework for E-marketing can decrease the costs of marketing and increase the efficiency in several ways such as making business more visible in market, increase company reputation, brand awareness, making more connections with customers. The work flow of the proposed framework has been shown in Figure 2. After collecting data and evaluating the framework authors has achieved their goal which is proposing a multi channel e- marketing framework which is more efficient for companies. ACKNOWLEDGMENT I would like to express heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Ab Razak Bin Che Hussin for his constant support during my study at UTM. He inspired me greatly to work on this project. His willingness to motivate me contributed tremendously to our project. I have learned a lot from him and am fortunate to have him as my mentor and supervisor. P a g e 83

REFERENCES [1] Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, J.C.S., 2010. The Art of SEO Mary E. Treseler, eds., O Reilly Media, Inc. [2] Stoker,Rob (2009). emarketing: The Essential Guide to Online Marketing(3rd edition) [3] Bolotaeva, V. & Cata, T., 2010. Marketing Opportunities with Social Networks. Journal of Internet Social Networking and Virtual Communities, 2010. [4] Burke, K. 2006. Network to Drive Revenue, Target Marketing,29 (2), 25-26.Constantinides, E., 2002. T he 4S Web- Marketing Mix model. journal of Management-elsevier,. [5] Hou,H. et al,2010. A Comparative Study for Search Engines Business Model--Base on the case of Baidu and Google. 2010 International Conference on E-Business and E-Government. IEEE Computer society [6] Grzywaczewski, A. et al., 2010. E-Marketing Strategy for Businesses. IEEE International Conference on E-Business Engineering. [7] Weinberg, B.D., Pehlivan, E. & Street, F., 2011. Social spending : Managing the social media mix. Business Horizonselsevier. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.008. P a g e 84