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Common Bond Case Study

This use of sending out email to advertise products or services has been around a long time with proven effective results. To create a strategy for email marketing a company must first compile a list of email addresses they can use to send their advertisements to. This is done by gathering email addresses straight from the consumer themselves most times while getting their permission to send advertisements but another less than ideal way is to purchase email addresses from other companies. The ladder is often not the best way of advertising because it is not a guarantee that the advertisement will be welcomed. The next thing is to build the email and its content the best way possible to increase the consumer response. One of the more challenging things to do in email marketing is to ensure that the email does not land in the spam folder so that it can be seen or reached by consumers. Common Bond found this strategy very necessary because of the understood preferences of the consumer. Common Bond wanted to ensure they were able to reach the desired audience which was those in college to obtain their MBA.

They wanted to target a specific audience which would allow to them the room and ability to screen the criteria for those that apply and by limiting their audience they will be able to manage the responses. During the reading of this case study is showed that over the course of several years targeting their specific audience they were able to produce good results and build trust in those they were offering the loans to. This allowed Common Bond to grow in size and loan offering to where in 2016 they were offering student loans to not only MBA’s but undergraduates as well as the majority of schools as well. Starting out limiting your audience gives you the ability to one day grow to limitless possibilities. One of the biggest risks to creating a three-month forward-looking calendar for the email marketing is preplanning and working on the content of the emails in advance and then having new products or promotions that require the content to completely be redone after it has already been done causing double the work and time spent. While success is something they are celebrating now the fact that in order to keep focused on success how and to better that success it is important to understand what has created that success and what about their content help the consumers make their decisions. I think that it would be a good idea to send out a survey to the ones that are regularly using their email advertisements or the ones that have signed up based on receiving an email advertisement. The survey would ask questions to see what part of the content was valued from the consumer and was not liked about the emails that were sent by the company. That will allow the company to create a base for comparison when changing anything about their email content. Once the surveys are done then the company can monitor the click through and open rates and compare increase or decrease and see how they relate.

If I were working on the email marketing team and was able to change anything it would be that I would introduce by quarterly surveys to stay informed and allow consumers to have the opportunity to give feedback, so they have the power to affect what they are receiving. Monitoring the click through rates and open rates every three months will allow the company to see how any changes or new items are affecting the consumer interests as it reflects the roll out from their three month forward looking calendar. I think looking at the long term is a great thing to do but staying present in the things that are actually happening currently keeps a company connected to their consumers.

I do believe that the consumers should have the option to opt in to all promotional email or only product or service specific. This is a good idea so that the company doesn’t become just more spam in the spam folder or a message deleted because it does not relate to anything that interests that specific consumer. One that is important to consumers is that they are not drowning in advertisements in which they have not interest. When advertising is focused on what the person is interested in they become trusting in that company to pay attention to their wants and needs. It’s hard to know which person would like which product or if they would be interested in hearing about anything new at all times so it is important to keep connected with your audience when marketing.

As Common Bond continues grow in their success I believe that they should continue to utilize email marketing as part of their strategy. When things are proven to work there is not reason to ignore them or toss out just because you have used them once. Maintain the fact that what is working will continue to work as long as you keep it fresh and focused on the consumers interests. The focus should be spread on how to keep the emails fresh and interesting and up to date with the company’s message. I think that it is also important to stay connected to how the consumers interests change and evolve for example how social media is becoming a major interaction interest for consumers this can be added to the marketing strategy. It is important to keep in mind that even though interests change not everyone changes with the times. There will also be some people that prefer the original or the older way of things like face to face contact or email. I personally don’t open up advertising emails but just because I don’t find them useful doesn’t mean that I can’t work in a department that utilizes something like this. I say this because in the professional world it doesn’t have to be personally understood why something works in order to remain focused on having it a part of the strategy.

References Larson, J., & Draper, S. (). Internet Marketing Essentials [University of Phoenix Custom Edition eBook]. : University Of Phoenix. Retrieved from University Of Phoenix, MKT/440 website. http://myresource.phoenix.edu/secure/resource/MKT440r3/MKT440_r3_common_bond_email_case_study_Week4.pdf