Project Report
On
Identification of Suitable Digital Channel & tools used to drive traffic to the
new ecomm portal
At
Jan 2018 – March 2018
In partial fulfillment of Field Project of
Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Management
Submitted By
Divya Agarwal
Roll No: - 1602070
PGDIM-23
Under Guidance of
Company Guide: Faculty Guide:
Mr. Sandesh Gupta Prof. Shirish Sangle
Head, Ad Operations & Industrial Safety &
Analytics Environmental
GenY Medium Management
NITIE, MUMBAI
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Vihar Lake
Mumbai, 400087
CERTIFICATE OF PROJECT COMPLETION
This is to certify that Mr. Divya Agarwal, a student of the Post Graduate Diploma in
Industrial Management (PGDIM), 23rd Batch of the National Institute of Industrial
Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai has successfully completed his field project on “Identification
of suitable digital channel & tools used to drive traffic to new ecomm portal” during the
period Jan-March 2018.
During this period, his performance was excellent, and we found him dedicated, hardworking
and sincere. We have derived immense benefit from the project and his contribution to our
organization is highly appreciated.
I hereby convey my best wishes to him for all his future endeavours.
Mr. Sandesh Gupta
Head, Ad Operations & Analytics
GenY Medium
CERTIFICATE OF PROJECT COMPLETION
This is to certify that Mr. Divya Agarwal, a student of the Post Graduate Diploma in
Industrial Management (PGDIM), 23rd Batch of the National Institute of Industrial
Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai has successfully completed his field project on “Identification
of suitable digital channel & tools used to drive traffic to new ecomm portal” during the
period Jan-March 2018.
During this period, his performance was excellent, and we found him dedicated,
hardworking and sincere. We have derived immense benefit from the project and his
contribution to our organization is highly appreciated.
I hereby convey my best wishes to him for all his future endeavours.
Prof. Shirish Sangle
Faculty Guide
NITIE, Mumbai
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I take this opportunity to extend my sincere thanks to Indian Oil Corporation Limited
for offering a unique platform to earn exposure and garner knowledge in the oil and gas
sector.
I wish to extend my sincere and heartfelt gratitude to my team at GenY Medium, who
guided, supported and encouraged me during the entire tenure of the project. I would also like
to thank Prof. Neeraj Pandey, Nitie for his cooperation and valuable guidance throughout the
course of the project. I can say with conviction that I have immensely benefitted from
auspicious and prestigious association as a field project intern with GenY Medium.
I also thank Prof. Shirish Sangle, my faculty guide who inspired me by his discussions and
showed me the right course to pursue.
I also wish to thank all the people in the Head Office of GenY Medium especially Mr.
Sandesh Gupta, Head, Ad Operations & Analytics, GenY Medium for his constant support
and motivation. I also thank scores of Industry executives and friends who pitched in
valuable inputs throughout the project.
Divya Agarwal
1602070
PGDIM-23
INTRODUCTION
About Digital Marketing
Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly
on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital
medium.
Digital marketing is an umbrella term for all online marketing efforts. Businesses leverage
digital channels such as Google search, social media, email, and their websites to connect
with their current and prospective customers.
The reality is, people spend twice as much time online as they used to 12 years ago. And
while we say it a lot, the way people shop and buy really has changed, meaning offline
marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be.
Marketing has always been about connecting with your audience in the right place and at
the right time. Today, that means that you need to meet them where they are already
spending time: on the internet.
It is increasingly advantageous for companies to use social media platforms to connect with
their customers and create these dialogues and discussions. The potential reach of social
media is indicated by the fact that in 2015, each month the Facebook app had more than 126
million average unique users and YouTube had over 97 million average unique users.
The 7 big categories of online marketing are:
1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves achieving the highest position or ranking
practical in the natural or organic listings as the main body of the search engine results
pages (SERPS) across a range of specific combination of keywords (or key phrases)
entered by search engine users.
2. Search engine marketing (SEM)
Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the
promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results
pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising. SEM may incorporate search engine
optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to
achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC)
listings
3. Content marketing
A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as
videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is
intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.
4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a
product or service. Although the terms e-marketing and digital marketing are still
dominant in academia, social media marketing is becoming more popular for both
practitioners and researchers. Most social media platforms have built-in data analytics
tools, which enable companies to track the progress, success, and engagement of ad
campaigns. Companies address a range of stakeholders through social media marketing,
including current and potential customers, current and potential
employees, journalists, bloggers, and the general public. On a strategic level, social media
marketing includes the management of a marketing campaign, governance, setting the
scope (e.g. more active or passive use) and the establishment of a firm's desired social
media "culture" and "tone."
5. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
PPC is an online advertising model in which advertisers can display ads for their goods or
services when users – people searching for things online – enter relevant queries into
search engines. Advertisers are only charged when a user clicks on their ad, hence the
name “pay-per-click.” Due to the nature of keywords and the role they play in paid
search, pay-per-click advertising can also be referred to as keyword advertising.
6. Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing wherein you refer someone to
any online product and when that person buys the product based on your
recommendation, you receive a commission.
7. Email marketing
The use of email to develop relationships with potential customers and/or clients. Email
marketing is one segment of internet marketing, which encompasses online marketing
via websites, social media, blogs, etc. It is essentially the same as direct mail except that
instead of sending mail through the postal service, messages are sent electronically via
email.
OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT
Health Insurance industry is highly dominated by tele-marketing with only a few
users using direct online platform. The industry X in this case wants to test its
newly launched ecomm portal. It will help to reduce the manpower and human
interaction & will enable users to choose & compare various health i nsurance plans
based on their convenience. The project also entails to find the appropriate channel
to drive the traffic towards the portal so that both existing & new customers start
using this portal.
This involves study of different channels and selecting the best amongst them based
on several constraints like cost, revenue etc.
METHODOLOGY
Organically there will be very less traffic towards the ecomm portal and as we must
judge its performance on a pilot basis for a limited time frame, we did a marketing
push to drive the paid, it can be called paid traffic.
There was a choice to select from Online vs. Traditional marketing methods but due
to several advantages with the online marketing methods like controlled results,
better flexibility, timely reporting and feedback mechanism and as this was a pilot
project we chose to go with the online platform.
DIFFERENT DIGITAL CHANNELS & CONSTRAINTS IN
SELECTING THEM
Different digital channels used are as follows:
1) Social Media
2) Email & SMS
3) Search Related Platform
4) Blogs & Articles related websites
5) Affiliate websites (News, banners etc.)
The constraints faced while selecting amongst the different channels are as follows:
1) Potential Reach of channel/ Active Users
2) Cost Orientation
3) Cost per Acquisition
4) Revenue
5) RoI (Return on Investment)
1) Potential reach is the number of monthly active people on Facebook that match
the audience you defined through your audience targeting selections. On Twitter,
you’re not just focused on engaging the people already following you. You’re trying
to grow and expand your audience. The potential reach metric allows you to quantify
not only the users you engaged with, but also the followers of those users who may
have seen @handle or Tweet.
Monthly active users (MAU) is one of the ways to measure the success rate of online
social games, social networking services and, increasingly mobile apps. Typically,
metrics are measured by counting the number of unique users during a specific
measurement period, such as within the previous 30 days.
2) Cost vs. Outcome: Least cost for more outcome.
3) Cost per Acquisition: As cheaper as possible.
4) Revenue: As it is only a pilot project, it is not that important but for the future
purposes of scaling it is an important parameter.
5) Return on Investment vs. Return on Ad Spend (ROI vs. ROAS): ROI is a method
for determining profitability relative to the expense made for a program and is
reported as a percentage measurement. ROAS, on the other hand, looks at the efficacy
of online ad campaigns and determines the gross revenue generated from an
advertising campaign using the formula: ROAS = revenue/expenses.
One of the biggest differences between the two is that ROAS is a ratio derived from
comparing how much you spend with how much you earned, while ROI accounts for
the amount you make after paying your expenses. The sole purpose of ROI is to
determine whether the campaign is worth the investment. ROI can show a negative
number, but ROAS on the other hand won’t – although it will show you if you have
made a loss.
Decision is based on these parameters whether the firm wants to opt for in house
marketing or outsource to a third party.
Channel wise Analysis:
Social Media
1) Based on Potential reach/ Active Users: In the social media segment,
Facebook emerged as the winner with the highest reach and maximum
number of active users.
2) Cost wise Analysis: In the cost analysis too, Facebook emerged as the winner as it
has the lowest CPC (Cost per Click). We are not looking at Cost per Impression as
we are interested towards driving traffic towards our ecomm portal instead of just
showing it to the users.
3) Cost per Acquisition: In this case too, Facebook emerged as a winner as it is
having largest number of MAU and DAU (Monthly and Daily Active users),
hence leading to their conversion to a potential customer.
4) Revenue: In the revenue segment, this is not much of a concern as it is a pilot
project, hence the chosen medium was Facebook.
5) Return on Investment: In this case also, Facebook was declared as the leading
choice.
Email & SMS
1) Earlier SMS were used but now with high internet and mobile penetration, email
marketing is the preferred option. The main challenge here is to select the email
partner which will be used to send the bulk emails. There were several platforms
available like Mailchimp, SendGrid etc. They are used to send bulk emails. They
schedule sending emails at a pre-decided time and provide reports like how many of
them opened the email, how many have clicked on the link in it etc.
Direct Text Marketing (or SMS) is a form of marketing. This includes using a
medium which involves text messaging over a mobile device and can be done from a
mobile phone or in bulk using an SMS Aggregator and distributor online. Some
businesses provide the entire service including creating the messages and sending
them via an aggregator on behalf of a business.
Companies and businesses can benefit from using this form of modern marketing by
sending either promotional content, reminders or discount coupons via text format
directly to individuals via their personal mobile phones or PDAs.
Here two factors come into play i.e. Open rate & Click rate.
Open rate specifies that the mail is not sent in spam, trash or promotions folder
which the user does not open and is sent in appropriate folder.
Here MailChimp emerged as the winner due to its better scheduling & use of multiple
IP’s to send the mails, so it gives a better open rate.
Click rate specifies that the user is opening the link mentioned in the mail which is
our final objective. Sometimes the user opens the mail and finds that the image or text
present in the mail is not user friendly or is not aligned properly so the user will not
proceed. In this case too, MailChimp emerged as the winner by providing a better
User Interface to the users leading to a better click rate once the user opens the mail.
Search Platform
In terms of search platform, Google emerged as the winner in comparing all the
parameters like low cost per click, potential reach, large user base.
Affiliate Portals
1) Banner on different websites like health-related websites where the user is likely
to visit the website after seeing the banner like WebMD, 1mg, Practo etc.
2) Tie with corporates by providing them corporate discounts. This was implemented
successfully with Agarwal Packers & Movers, Microsoft.
3) Advertisement in health section of different newspapers (websites) based on their
readership.
4) Banner ads in different health journals (websites of journals).
Advertisement in print media takes the control out of our hands, there is very little
flexibility for modification as well as there is delay in feedback reports, can’t be
monitored in real time.
WhatsApp for Business
Whatsapp for business is the recent addition in the list of digital marketing
channels with the increasing use of whatsapp as a medium of communication.
The best reason to use WhatsApp for business is that many of the customers are
probably already using it. More than 60 billion messages are sent through
WhatsApp every single day. Surprisingly, users of WhatsApp and similar services
are willing to engage with businesses. According to Nielsen’s Facebook
Messaging Survey, 67 percent of mobile messaging app users said they expect to
use chat more for communicating with businesses over the next two years. What’s
more, 53 percent of respondents say they’re more likely to shop with a business
they can message directly.
RUNNING ADVERTISEMENT CAMPAIGNS
Based on the above analysis, the selected channels are as follows:
1) Facebook
2) Google
3) Mailchimp
4) Practo
We started with a 360-degree approach by running the pilot project for 1 week on all these
four channels and deciding further action after analyzing the results.
Budget:
Database Collection:
They have given me their own user base (not whole but partial), approx. 5 lakh users who are
likely to shift to other health insurance in the future based on several parameters like age, city
of residence, employment status etc.
For new users, explore & prepare a set of another 5 lakh users. This was done by adopting
several methods as follows;
1) Online Survey Float at IIT Roorkee, family & friends.
2) Extracting email-id from Facebook.
3) Tie up with telecom companies, in this case a tie up was formed with Airtel.
4) Data from car servicing companies as person maintaining a car is likely to purchase a
health insurance policy. In this case, tie up with car servicing agency First Choice.
5) Establishing Free health checkups across campuses, airports & corporate parks.
6) Distributing goodies across campuses for providing email id’s. In this case, diary was
distributed in IIT Bombay for providing email id’s.
In the end, the email ids were purchased from Fundoodata at the rate of 10 paisa per email
id. The email ids were segregated according to age (25+ years), employment status
(working), City (Metro & Tier-II cities), gender (Male/Female).
Types of emails used in marketing:
Important considerations for email types
Automation
Bulk Transactional
emailers
A very large Relatively For an even
email base smaller database smaller database
May or may not
For lead
have heard from All opted in
nurturing
you before
Trigger based
High reliability
Low risk. (time, stage,
needed
background)
Example of a Marketing Mail from Flipkart
Example of a Transactional Mail from Flipkart
Mapping email types to user journey
What tools to consider
Email marketing trends
1. Email clients are becoming VERY smart. SPAM detection is a step ahead, always.
2. Bulk emailing will give way to opt-in emails. Inbound marketing is the way to go.
3. All email senders speak with each other and share data.
4. Dynamic emailers are coming in.
5. Personalization is critical get opens and click through. #4 helps.
6. Email marketing will become embedded into cross-channel marketing
Email Database Providers
➢ The pricing models for mailing lists differ with respect to country, demographics,
category and volume of the database.
➢ The mailing list should be an Opt-in list which means that the users have agreed to
receive such mails, resulting in reduced instances of mails getting reported as spam
Below is a list of affiliates that provide consumer mailing lists in India
Providers Cost(INR)/Volume of Opt-IN
database
Fundoodata.com 2500/2.5M Yes
MarketingStrategiesLtd.com 800/2.5M Yes
EmailDataMart.com 1300/2.5M Yes
EmailDataPro.com 1625/2.5M Yes
ParkData.in NA Yes
LeadsDeposit.com NA NA
Mailing services for bulk mails
Recommended: MailChimp
➢ SendGrid and MailChimp are close competitors, MailChimp provides more flexibility
in its interface (in terms of composing the mails and segmenting the contacts)
➢ Mailgun and Sparkpost are used majorly for transactional services, although they
provide stable services for bulk mails as well
➢ Amazon SES, though economical, provides only basic features in terms of mail and
list creation and does not provide a dedicated IP
Service Cost for Cost for storing Remarks
5lac mails database
(INR)/
month
Mailchimp 16,500 None up to Rs. 32,000
50,000 contacts for 1.2M
mails, 1lac
contacts
Sendgrid 19,500 6,500/month for
1 lac contacts
Mailgun 16,250 -
SparkPost 13,000 for -
1M mails
Amazon 8,000- -
SES 10,000
Email Verification Tools- comparison and pricing
Recommended: Quick Email Verification
➢ Used to check authenticity of emails in an existing list, can prevent hard bounce by
detecting invalid emails
➢ These verification tools have the following common features: Real time checking
through API, bulk verification and spam keywords detection
Email Verification Price for Bad Domain DEA (Disposable Emails
Tools verification of 1lac Detection Detection)
Email IDs (INR)
Quick Email 20,800 Yes Yes
Verification
Tower Data 65,000 Yes Yes
Brite Verify 65,000 Yes Yes
Mailbox Validator 13,000 Yes No
Bulk Email Checker 4,875 No No
Spam Checker Tools
Spam checkers assess the spam potential in the body, header and footer of the mails and flag
the content that can block these emails.
Spam Checker Tools Price /month
MailingCheck.com -
IsNotSpam.com -
Spamcheck.postmarkapp.com -
Sendforensics.com -
G-lock Apps.com 2,500
Guidelines for avoiding spams
➢ To avoid spam traps always use an Opt-in process to gather new contacts, avoid
buying lists from email brokers
➢ Make sure DKIM, SPF, Sender-ID and Domain Keys are set up properly- this
establishes authenticity of mails
➢ Make sure the email server is not blacklisted
➢ Make use of clear, trustworthy “From” field names, such as ‘contact@’,
‘newsletter@’
➢ Make the unsubscribe link prominent
➢ Maintain a good text to image ratio-avoid sending image only mails
➢ Certification from Return Path can help deliver the messages to the inbox
Terminologies
• Open rate & Click rate
• Lists
• Domain Reputation
• Opt In & Double Opt In email addresses
• Bounce (Hard & soft bounce)
• SPF and DKIM Authentication
Lists (or consumer segments)
Opt-in & Double Opt-in
Campaign Set Up related terms
Pre-requisites: Sending Domain set up and Verification:
• SPF & DKIM Authentication-
• Domain Verification
What is DKIM & SPF?
Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) allows senders to associate a domain name with an
email message, thus vouching for its authenticity.
◦ Aids email clients to filter emails
◦ Helps reduce SPAM score
SPF record is a type of Domain Name Service (DNS) record that identifies
which mail servers are permitted to send email on behalf of your domain.
◦ The purpose of an SPF record is to prevent spammers from sending messages
with forged from addresses at your domain.
How to setup a campaign?
Marketing Campaigns
• Segmentation of lists
• Use of merge fields to create personalized content
• Multivariate Testing
Triggered Campaigns
• Use of merge fields to create triggers
• Creating the automation flow
Best Practices
Best way to use domains, subdomains
• Use a subdomain for marketing mails
• Use different domains for marketing and transactional mails
• Authenticate (SPF and DKIM) and verify your domain
How to avoid SPAM
• Segment your lists
• Clean up your lists regularly
• Make use of clear, trustworthy “From” field names, such as ‘contact@’,
‘newsletter@’
• Text to image ratio in the creative should be 70:30
• Minimize the Use of Spam words like contest, win, offers, discounts, drugs,
guaranteed winner, etc.
• Have an unsubscribe link
• Make sure that the domain is not blacklisted
Soft & Hard Bounce
Soft bounce
◦ The mailbox was full (the user is over their quota)
◦ The server was down
◦ The message was too large for the recipient’s inbox
Hard Bounce
◦ The email address is invalid
◦ The email addresses don’t exist
Handy Tools
Domain Blacklist Check-
https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists
Email Validation Tools-
• QuickEmailVerification.com
• Emailverifier.org
• TowerData.com
• BriteVerify.com
• MailboxValidator.com
• BulkEmailChecker.com
Automation emailers
More sophisticated emailing
Difference between current & new system (An example)
Illustration of how the new system would work
