Customer Relationship Management: BuzzFeed and CollegeHumor

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a term that refers to practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer life-cycle, with the goal of improving business relationships with customers, assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth (definition from http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM). In simple terms, CRM is building and retaining relationships with customers by analyzing their interactions with your site or business. In this post I will be comparing the CRM efforts of BuzzFeed and CollegeHumor, two sites that share a similar target market.

BuzzFeed launched their website in 2006 and since then the company has slowly been growing to be one of the most popular interactive news related websites on the internet. The company builds relationships with their customers by providing content that users actually want to see. While they cater to people of all ages, their main target market is around ages 18-35, with a lot of content that is targeted to college students. The website is easy to use with bright yellow tabs at the top to take you where you want to go. Users can see exactly what they want when visiting the site and their homepage features articles and posts from a variety of themes catering to everyone.

BuzzFeed provides a personal experience for users in that they don't have to scroll through a bunch of unwanted to content to find what they're looking for, but instead can go directly to the page or theme of their choice. The website also uses social media to its advantage allowing users to follow specific pages, groups, or themes to receive their content in various ways. The site not only acts as an interactive news and leisure source but also allows users to post their own content, personalizing articles, quizzes, and other media to be shared with friends or people of similar interests. This aids customer retention by creating a community feel to the website as well as allowing for customization of the user's experience.

One particular way BuzzFeed has used social media to retain customers is through the use of Facebook and YouTube to promote their videos. Each video is usually less than 5 minutes long and the site has separated each theme into a color so that users can easily find what videos they want to follow.

On the other end of the spectrum is CollegeHumor, which is similar to BuzzFeed in that it provides humorous content targeted to users of collegiate age and has a target market of ages 18-49. The site was founded by two high school friends, and delivers daily comedic content, including videos, pictures, articles, and jokes. Similar tabs at the top of their page provide easy access to the content users want to find. While BuzzFeed has more of a news feel to its homepage with basic color schemes and content set up in windows, CollegeHumor has more of a social media feel, having users scroll through for content that is mainly for humorous purposes.

The site also uses social media to their advantage by posting funny tweets related to their articles or partnering with other websites, tv shows, or products to help promote their site. Their Facebook page also provides similar content to their website with some of their top posts featured.

Their retention of customers stems from their knowledge of what their users want to see. By keeping the overall feel of the website light and upbeat, CollegeHumor builds a good relationship with customers who are looking to escape the somewhat dreary news scene that can be found on the internet. CollegeHumor also allows users to submit their own original content which allows for a personal experience with the site.

In my opinion, BuzzFeed has a more substantial website and customer basis. By providing a wider range of content, the site caters to more people and allows for more customization among users. It also knows how to target users who do not always have time to visit the site or users who want more content through its use of social media. Although CollegeHumor has a large following, BuzzFeed has been catching up or keeping up with its numbers. It also focuses more on the users instead of the content and many photos and articles or posts on the site are directly from users who have added their own original works. Both sites focus on the marketing portion of CRM, and it has clearly been paying off. In all, providing a good experience for your customers is the number one way to retain customers, especially in a technological age.

Affiliate Marketing Online: Amazon & eBay

Affiliate programs allow companies to partner with other companies or individuals to promote their brands. Whether it’s another brand or simply your average blogger, affiliates can be beneficial to both merchant and the person they are partnering with. In this post I will be comparing Amazon and Ebay’s affiliate programs.

Both Amazon and ebay are popular sites selling thousands of goods to consumers every day. To promote their companies and products within, both websites have set up their own affiliate programs to allow people to represent them all around the world. First, let’s look at Amazon.

Amazon 

Amazon’s affiliate program is set up a little differently than some in that there are various ways to get a kickback from promoting the company on your website or blog. There is a site stripe tool that allows you as a user to see your earnings and add links to the Amazon website. You can add product links into your page that are descriptions of specific products in image, enhanced, or text form. Banners allow you to promote product categories with a combination of graphics and text. And the aStore allows users to create a specified store to put on their website or blog with a shopping cart and everything. 

Users get an advertising fee that varies depending on the products sold. The highest advertising kickback is usually things that are specific to Amazon, with the lowest being related to PC components and Television products. The amount received also goes up depending on how many items are sold within a given time period. Another feature is various events where Amazon will give out an extra bounty for things such as getting consumers to sign up for Amazon Prime by promoting it on your webpage.

While the advertising fees only cover the actual cost of the item, it can be a nice way to earn a side profit, especially if you have a popular blog or website.

 eBay

eBay also allows advertisement for their site by providing tools and widgets that can be attached to a webpage. The company then uses these tools to monitor how visitors behave on eBay after clicking on the links you provide, measuring how much you have influenced traffic to their site. Like Amazon, eBay offers a variety of tools including graphics, links, banners, RSS feeds and others for more advanced users. 

 

They pay based on the traffic sent to their site with the amount paid per transaction based on a percentage of eBay revenue. It is also based on a commission rate system, with bonuses paid for attracting new and reactivated eBay buyers. They also allow ways for you to track how well you’re doing and maximize your revenue. You can even promote on a mobile device.

One benefit that Amazon has over eBay is that their program makes it easier to earn money than eBay by allowing users to customize their advertising to fit their customers. They can pick actual products which can be good because if you have a blog talking about how amazing your e-reader is, you can provide a link on Amazon for the same one you have. That said, because eBay works off traffic to their site, bloggers who are just starting out might find it easier because they haven’t established as much credibility or as many followers. Both programs however offer various tools to use with their program, which is good because it allows users to customize their advertising efforts to fit their followers and customers’ needs and wants. eBay and Amazon also allow you to track your sales and progress which is useful when trying to make a profit from the programs. One problem that I do see arising from this is that the main companies loose some control over how their brand is being promoted. Although they have policies, monitoring every user of this program could be difficult and not all users have the same filter Amazon or eBay might use in their online marketing efforts.

Although both of these programs differ slightly, I think using them together could be beneficial. They sell similar products and both programs offer unique ways to advertise and promote their brands. Affiliate marketing is especially popular for bloggers around the country so next time you’re browsing through webpages or catching up on your favorite blog, take a minute to see if you notice any affiliates being promoted.

Commerce Online: Wedding Planning

There’s nothing worse than sitting scrolling through Facebook in the months of March through about July when engagements and weddings are a part of everyday life on social media. While this industry is often forgotten about (especially for those of us who are single) the wedding industry demands billions of dollars per year. If you’ve never had to plan a wedding I can honestly say it’s a lot of work and not something most people would just do on a whim. But thankfully today, there are various sites and apps that can help girls plan their dream weddings well within their budget. In this post, I will be comparing two sites that help with planning a wedding and talk about how both are working to create a social space to promote e-commerce in this dynamic industry.

Both The Knot and Wedding Wire exist to accomplish one thing…help future brides plan their special day and promote local and non-local businesses in the wedding industry. These indirect distribution channels are getting lots of mention for making a simple solution for brides who do not actually want to pay for a wedding planner. With checklists, budgeting tools, and great location services, both websites can help you plan a wedding easily and within your budget. From rings, to dresses, to cakes and everything in between, both The Knot and Wedding Wire have everything you need to plan the perfect wedding.

The Knot

Wedding Wire

They compare prices using tools like a catalog aggregator as well as providing sites of various vendors so that customers can negotiate prices and find which vendors are within their budget.

When first looking at The Knot and Wedding Wire websites, some obvious similarities will show up. Both in a similar light blue color scheme, both organizing their websites by wedding topic, and both creating a place where people can come and share their wedding experiences in hopes to help the next person out with their journey.

The Knot uses great colors and pictures on their site making it user friendly and easy to navigate.  

Wedding Wire goes with a more professional scheme and setup, focusing a lot more on the organizational aspect of the weddings first, and then getting into the fun, inspirational aspects.

Both sites are used for social commerce by having other users and previous brides provide reviews of the products and vendors offered. The sites offer a community of people ready to help out the stressed bride with dress, cake, or whatever other decisions she might need to make. These people have either been there themselves or are currently in the same place making the online community of people not only helpful but relatable for brides. While Wedding Wire is more forum based, taking any questions by users and putting them into a list for others to see, The Knot lists their questions beautifully by category or type of question at the top and allows for you to search for specific discussions if you so choose, allowing users more freedom in how they choose to communicate with other users of the site.

The websites each have a Pinterest page where they provide useful information and inspiration for every aspect of a wedding and allow users to share or save things to their own boards, basically branching off the websites themselves. They also keep their Twitter pages updated with the latest wedding trends and other themes or ideas from brides who have used the site. By sharing pictures posted by other brides, they not only promote their websites to the friends of that bride, but anyone the bride might have been in contact with for the wedding, further expanding their business to new places. And while The Knot tends to be a couple followers short of Wedding Wire on social media, they do beat them by a little on Instagram, a site that both companies use for social and promotional purposes in different ways. 

Wedding Wire goes in a more professional direction with their Instagram, using photos of various venues, dresses, and vendors. While there are some pictures of weddings, their profile focuses on inspiring brides as well as promoting the vendors using their site.

The Knot however takes a more social approach, posting from people’s actual weddings, making their profile a little less staged and more of a social experience. Still promoting their vendors and providing inspiration, The Knot takes their Instagram profile a step further, reminding people that they care about their brides and want to make their wedding experience personal and fun. By sharing from other brides and actual weddings, they also add a nice social experience to their Instagram and make it more relatable for other brides who follow them. 

Whether you love weddings (being a wedding planner is my retirement plan) or you hate the thought of them, the industry continues to thrive as people plan for their special days. And although the experience can be rather stressful (guys will never understand the process, I assure you it is rigorous), it can also be a fun and inspirational time for everyone involved. And what better way to engage in social commerce than to plan for your special day with the support of others going through the same struggles as you? They even have an app for that!

Products Online: A Tale of Three Soft-Drinks

If you’re like me then there’s nothing more satisfying than coming home from a long day and opening a can of pop while watching Netflix (I am from Ohio, I say pop not soda). Soft-Drinks are a billion dollar industry paying millions of dollars for marketing and advertising each year. These advertisements, along with beer commercials, make up the bulk of the commercials during the Super Bowl and if you’ve ever told someone you prefer Pepsi to Coke (which I can proudly say I do), you know the argument that usually follows. In this post, I will look at three top companies and talk about what each is doing to attract customers.

1. Coca-Cola

Coke has been around since 1886 and the company is still going strong today. Bringing back its classic glass bottles and promoting a community of Coke drinkers around the world, Coca-Cola has created a brand that is easily recognizable all around the world. Through the use of their iconic red and white colors and polar bear mascot, Coke has created a brand that people love and live for. Online, their presence seems to be just as popular as it is in the tangible world we live in. Buying up as many domains with their name as they could, Coke has several websites for various regions around the world. 

While Coke is offered in many restaurants across the country (and seems to be the only thing available in the south), the company has tried to make their consumers feel like a community. In the past, Coke ran campaigns such as “Have a Coke and a Smile” which encourage consumers to smile more and look at the positive side of life. In some areas around the world with lower income, the company would give out a Coke just for smiling. Currently, they are running their “Share a Coke” campaign, producing hundreds of Coke cans and bottles with people’s names on them. And if you couldn’t find your name, you could always go on the website and have them print you one. They even ran a campaign where they designed Coke bottles that couldn’t be opened without the help of someone else’s Coke bottle, promoting fun with family and friends.

Their website invites users to come and hang out and connect with other Coke enthusiasts. They even have a place where you can catch up on music from artists who promote their brand as well as find recipes and other facts about the company.

And with all of this popularity, the company has still been working hard to keep customers happy. Their recent new product line is Coke K-cups which will work with the Keruig Kold machine when it hits stores sometime in the near future. They have also allowed for mass customization with their Coca-Cola freestyle machines which allow you to choose the flavor you want in your favorite drink and have been put in restaurants all around the country. 

2. Pepsi

Although not as old of a company, Pepsi has been around since 1898 and has proven that it can keep up with its “old” friend and rival Coca-Cola. While Pepsi also tries to create a community within their brand, they go about it a little differently than their long-time rival. Recently promoting a Pepsi bottle many fans recognized from “Back to the Future”, the company boosted sales and sold out of the product faster than expected. Although their website is mainly just simple graphics and animations and not as involved or easy to navigate as Coke’s, Pepsi proves that there’s more to them than meets the eye.

While still using music and sports to grab people’s attention, Pepsi has been known to create a community based more on the people who don’t like Coke. In fact, Pepsi has featured several ads taking shots at Coca-Cola over their polar bear mascot or the long standing rivalry these companies have had. They have also promoted themselves through several deals with athletes and iconic figures everywhere, even becoming the official soft-drink of the Super Bowl. Partnering with Starbucks and owning Gatorade has also given the company a competitive edge over Coke, proving Pepsi knows what their customers want.

Through the use of social media and their websites as well as some clever marketing within their products, both of these brands have not only made a solid brand name for themselves, but a lasting online presence as well…which brings us to our final company.

3. Dr. Pepper

No, Dr. Pepper is not owned by either Coca-Cola or Pepsi which is good because their online presence is not quite up to par. Dating back to the 1880’s, the soda has been around for a long time. The company is still a largely recognizable brand, however, because it only sells it’s one product line (as well as Snapple which is owned by the same company), Dr. Pepper is at a major disadvantage to its competitors. 

Instead, the company has tried to take a unique approach with their “I’m a Pepper” campaign and their scholarship program, proving that it’s ok to be different and stand out. In fact, I can’t remember an ad where Dr. Pepper has felt the need to attack Coca-Cola or Pepsi. While the company is moving in a positive direction, their website is a little plain in comparison to its rivals. It’s community base is also a bit lacking. The variety of flavors that are offered within their product line are also rather simple and the company does not sponsor as many things as Pepsi or Coke which has put a damper on their marketing efforts. That said, Dr. Pepper does have one of the largest scholarship giveaways in the country which promotes the company every year around the start of a new semester.

The company also has a Vine page, which is not usually a form of social media used by top brands.

No matter what you say about soft-drinks, they make up a large industry in our country and shell out millions of dollars each year towards ads and product placement. While brands like Coke and Pepsi are more self-promoting (the rivalry itself is enough to keep the brands going for years to come), Dr. Pepper could do a little more online to boost its marketing presence and prove that not only is the company here to stay, but it can keep up with its top competitors.

University Marketing: Involving Students in the Experience

Every spring, colleges go out and recruit seniors from around the country, hoping to gain as many new students as possible. And although the free t-shirts and fun colors of all the handouts can be fun, the marketing techniques used by colleges all across America are some of the best. If not, we wouldn’t be paying thousands of dollars every year for an education some countries get for free. In this post, I will be looking at the online and social media presence of two schools in particular and compare and contrast how they stack up and how they get their students involved.

New York University was founded in 1831 and has been expanding ever since. The school not only has a wide variety of schools and programs, but has expanded globally to offer several abroad programs and offer schools in several other countries.

The school not only tries to make the students feel involved on campus but also works to make them involved in the community. Right from the start, you can see the minimalist feel their homepage has with their classic purple and white colors and easy to find tabs. As you click through the tabs, each page gets more and more informative and complex, which makes it easy to find the information you’re looking for and not get caught up in things you aren’t wishing to see. Although each page is a little wordy, the tabs at the top and links throughout the page are all uniform, making everything easy to see and keeping the page form looking cluttered and distracting. 

The school has also figured out a way to keep their students involved through social media. They currently have three Instagram pages, one just for the incoming students which is titled NYU welcome week. The page offers pictures and videos of students as they get to campus and partake in orientation activities, proving that the school knows how to have fun while still taking care of their students.

Their performing arts center also has its own page catering to the campus and the community showing practices and announcing events. This helps the campus stay connected to the community while also boosting viewers of the school online.

Lastly, their regular Instagram page has photos from different places around the city, and campus, showing off the best sides of New York while still keeping the page personal and fun for the students. From their accounts 29.5k followers, it is clear to see that NYU knows how to effectively use their social media to reach students and community.

Meanwhile on the other side of the social media universe, NYU uses twitter to directly communicate with their students, providing fun articles and tidbits about what’s happening around the university. This keeps students engaged and gives them an easy and quick way to find out what’s happening around their school without having to dig through a bunch of information that they feel is irrelevant to them. 

They even have various pages for some of their schools, including their Tisch School of the Arts which is one of their most popular schools being in New York at the center of art and media. Their Facebook page follows suit, keeping consistency and repetition between their Twitter page while adding in some lengthier articles for students who want to dive further into a topic.

Another unique use of social media that NYU has made helpful is their use of apps. The school has several apps offering information about everything from general campus information, to upcoming events, and even a bus schedule and tracker to the campus, proving that the university is willing to go above and beyond for their students and keep them connected at all times. Through their various uses of social media, they are able to easily connect with their students and receive feedback about how to improve not only their online presence, but also receive comments and suggestions about things going on around campus, all in real time.

On the other end of the spectrum is Southern Adventist University, a.k.a. the place I currently call home. Southern prides itself on quality academics while still providing a Christian environment where students can come and learn from and with people who believe the same things they do. This is clearly shown on the school’s homepage, featuring pictures of students connecting with each other as well as tabs to get to all of the important information. 

The school uses their green colors scheme throughout the pages as well as implementing certain aspects of the campus around the page. Although their main pages are fairly easy to find, it can be difficult to navigate the site when looking for specific information, depending on how obscure it is. Their student access pages are useful when trying to find out what homework needs done or what’s up on the calendar for the week, however, when trying to navigate in a hurry, the page can be a little cluttered and take a while to load.

Southern has also proven its love of Instagram over the years and currently has several different pages for the school as well as things such as activities, student missions, and the SAU accent which is our campus newspaper. The pages usually have a theme and feature a lot of shots form our campus as well as of various events and activities around campus.

Although the Instagram use for Southern is effective in the sense of promoting the school, it does have the tendency to feel impersonal on occasion. Even some of the other pages forget to include candid shots of students and focus a little too much on promoting the actual campus instead of the experience of being on campus, which at the end of the day is the most important thing. The amount of followers is significantly fewer, even taking into account the difference in size of NYU and SAU.

The Facebook page has more viewers but is also more informative than the Instagram accounts are which might be some of the reason the students check the page more often. The Facebook page also allows for more communications between the school and the students, and SAU offers various pages for groups and departments around campus, allowing the students to give feedback quickly and easily in real time, something that in a fast paced college environment is always a positive.

The twitter page is one of the most informative places to find news about campus and it shows through the amount of followers as compared to the Instagram page. The page also offers advice and tells students when events are happening as well as providing encouraging bible verses every now and then just to keep spirits lifted. 

The Accent also uses their page effectively as well, providing a non-print version of snippets of news happening around campus or around the community.

Although both schools use their social media effectively, I can say from experience that sometimes SAU could step up their presence online. By de-cluttering their website a little and better including their students in some of their social media sites, they could not only get more feedback from students but also reach students who sometimes feel like just a number around campus. Through various things such as student bloggers and a students of southern campaign, the school is still striving to make the students feel included and welcome. That said, maybe employing a page for the freshman or a suggestion page for students, the school might be able to get more feedback and better improve their marketing efforts.

The school also offers an app for students, however it is mostly used for school purposes to check classes or the cafeteria menu. It also has a problem with usability on occasion which can frustrate students who are just trying to find a simple piece of information on the go.

Overall both schools have done well, but I am curious to see how SAU continues to grow its online presence and reach students both current and future.