The dissertation examines how to create an effective email marketing plan to market the price matching policy to the vendor's customers. The email marketing plan is designed to be used in the year 2019, when Company X applies the Compare Price Policy.
Background Information and Purpose of the Thesis
Getting potential suppliers to join the match-price policy will give current buyers a reason to use Company X's services, as they would be aware of getting the best price on the market when the company uses the match-price policy. After working in the marketing department of company X since 2018 and taking several marketing courses during the studies in Finland and the US, the author saw the thesis as a great opportunity to learn more about email marketing in the European chemical industry. industry in a startup environment.
Research Methods and the Questions
What type of email marketing plan is most effective in increasing the loyalty of Company X's current customers. The thesis examines the questions by studying digital marketing theory, specifically email marketing, analyzing the company's current email marketing, and creating a marketing plan by email for the price matching policy.
Structure of the Thesis
The second part of the theoretical framework focuses on email marketing in order to gain an in-depth understanding of email marketing and its planning process. At the request of case, the data collected and the email marketing plan for the price matching policy are not published.
B2B Marketing
Isohookana represents business acquisition as an eight-stage process, which is important for marketers to recognize when making decisions about marketing content and channels to use. The marketer must understand the buying behavior of key customers: what they need and why they are buying.
Digital Marketing
The marketer must review different options and choose the best channels that deliver the most ROI for the company (Chaffey & Smith 2017, 128). To achieve an effective level of SEO, the marketer must be aware of what the people are typing online as a keyword to search for a product, a service or a brand.
SOSTAC Framework
Analyzing a company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is a key process in situation analysis (Westwood 2016, 29). Once the goals are clear, the marketer can decide which tools to use to build a bridge between the company's offering and customer expectations.
The goal of a conversion-oriented email is to drive traffic with a specific call to action (CTA), which may for example be to convert a customer to make a purchase or attend an event (Hanna et al. 2016, 6) . Lilyquist (2019) defines CTA as a statement that is designed to elicit an immediate response from someone who reads or hears the statement and can be used as a marketing strategy to get a target market to respond with action. Welcome email triggers new subscribers when they agree to receive marketing emails from the company.
Push email is used to achieve a specific marketing communication goal and create awareness when launching one or more new products or updating existing ones. Although the email is sent to many recipients, they can be personalized with the recipient's name and any additional information the company may have about the recipient. An email newsletter is regularly occurring email with primary information or more content summarized, allowing the reader to get a quick overview of the topic(s).
Pros and Cons of Email Marketing
The disadvantage of an e-mail is that there is a chance that the recipient will not see what is in the e-mail. This could be due to a wrong email format and it could prevent the recipient from seeing the email even if the email is not categorized as spam by the recipient's email service provider. This happens when the email is sent in a format that the recipient's email program doesn't recognize.
Email can be sent either in the most basic form of text without any formatting, rich text format that allows changing text font sizes, adding color and the recipient can click on web links in the email, or using codes HTML to allow the marketer to create a more attractive email design. The sender must ensure that the email conveys the important message within the text. Therefore, pictures should be used to make the email look nice and add more attention.
Privacy Issues and Spam
The process
- Data
- Design
- Delivery
- Discovery
When the marketer has ensured that recipients are able to open the email and can see the content, the CTA can be used to get people to react to what they see. An effective subject line can be created by writing a line that gives an overview of the email and creates curiosity before the recipient opens it. The body of the email should get straight to the point, but it should have a friendly tone to engage on a personal level.
It's good to send an email test before sending them to the recipients to make sure the email arrives in the inbox and looks as planned. A/B testing is commonly used in email marketing, meaning the marketer sends different versions of the email to two groups and studies the success with metrics like open rate and conversion. Creative design and content won't help if the email delivery schedule isn't right.
This is why researching the most efficient day and time to send the email for the recipients is an important task for the marketer. The click through rate (CTR) is the number of links clicked in the email.
Company X
Company X’s Current Marketing
The most valuable channels for Company X's marketing are LinkedIn and email, as these two have shown the best results for the company in the chemical industry's B2B marketing. The company's LinkedIn channel is updated three to five times a week and in May 2019, Company X's LinkedIn channel had 621 followers. Email addresses are collected on the company's website when a new customer fills in their contact information when they register and the customers can also sign up for a newsletter.
2019 is occasionally used to post the company's updates and content marketing is done by publishing blogs on the company's website. In addition to using the marketing channels outside of the Company's website, the Company provides marketing services to its supplier customers on the website. For example, the supplier customers can promote their brand by having Company X's marketing team write blog posts about the supplier company.
The Price Match Policy
The marketing department continuously researches the current news and trends in the chemical industry to find interesting topics to write blogs for the website and create infographics for LinkedIn and Facebook channels. Email is the most used channel to attract new customers and keep in touch with current ones. This is valuable information for the suppliers on company X's website to increase their sales of chemical products.
Getting credits is another advantage that suppliers are given on the website when they agree to the price matching policy. This means that whenever they agree to match the competitor's price, they are given credits that they can use in Company X's marketing services. The credits given can be used to promote the supplier's product with marketing internal to the website or externally with Google Ads.
Research Design
Qualitative research also includes recording and writing about what people say or the way they behave. Interpreting what people said leads to the next step, which is the results of the research and generalization of those interpretations. Generalization leads to the study's conclusions, which could consist of a general description of the situation.
Recording the interview gives the interviewer an opportunity to have full focus on the interviewee and also take notes. Later, when listening to the recorded audio, the interviewer may notice something that they did not hear during the interview situation or no longer remember. Primary data was collected using the interview method because it was the most efficient way to gather information for the thesis.
Interview Method
The advantage of the interview is that a personal interview invitation reduces the chances that the interviewee will decide not to participate. Seeing the questions in advance can help the interviewee give better answers in the interview situation. The interviewer motivates the interviewee(s) to respond and directs the process of the interview situation.
It allows the interviewer to focus on the interview moment and go through different parts later, such as the interviewee's hesitation to answer. After permission from the interviewee, the interview was recorded with the interviewer's smartphone. The interview focused only on the questions related to the execution of this particular price comparison email marketing plan.
The Effective Price Match Email Marketing Plan
The emails were designed to the same theme, color and style of Company X's previous material. Delivery dates and times are determined according to the interviewee's response to the most effective day of the week and time of day for Company X. Emails are sent the first week of the schedule and then two weeks are given for the supplier customers to discuss the topic in their companies.
The last week of the plan is dedicated to reporting the success and discovery of the email marketing plan. The email also includes the CTA with the link for the company's website and is an indicator of CTR. The success rate of the email is calculated by dividing the CTR with the open rate, which gives Company X a clear number for analysis and reporting.
Validity and Reliability
Summary
Available at: https://sendgrid.com/blog/getting-started-5-tips-for-creating-an-effective-email-marketing-strategy/. Available at: https://www.inc.com/samuel-edwards/a-startup-s-guide-to-price-matching.html. Available at: https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.aineistot.lamk.fi/lib/lamk-ebooks/detail.action?docID=818102.
Available at: https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ainaistot.lamk.fi/lib/lamk-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1040905#. Available at: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/marketing/can-price-matching-help-your-small-business-compete/. Available at: https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/growth-strategies/2015/04/use-price-matching-to-stand-out-from-competitors.html Ruusuvuori, J .
