Dean

Dean’s Email Marketing Analysis

In today’s market, an effective way for marketers to reach current and prospective consumers is through email marketing. Not only does email marketing incur small costs, it can be used as an effective tool to drive revenue growth and yield a high return on investment. Email marketing, along with many other digital marketing tactics, is easily measured through analytics.

As a consumer, I have experienced email marketing campaigns to try and sway my purchasing decisions. Most recently, I have been receiving marketing emails from Constant Contact (this is ironic because they are an email marketing software provider). The reason that Constant Contact has access to my email address is because I use to volunteer for a local non-profit where I wanted to leverage their email/contact list. I initiated the company’s account and used my personal email address for the account’s address.

Usually, I never open Constant Contacts’ emails directed to me even when they usually send about two per week. With this assignment – it has driven me to open and analyze the last two emails I have received. The subject line of the last email was “Visit us at the New York Expo next week.” This subject line was enticing to me because I am always looking for conferences to increase my knowledge. The content of the email (below) did match the subject line.

constant-contact-email-1

By studying the content of this email, the call-to-action is for me to click on the red button and register for their expo for free. The timing of the event did not work for me so I did not click on the link. The design of this email was simple and straight to the point.

The obvious goal of this email was to advertise their event to users that are familiar to their product. In that regard, this email succeeded. I believe, however, that this was sent to a segmented list as it is advertising an expo in New York City. Since the event is only one day, it is not worth advertising nationally or internationally. That is why I believe that this list was geographically segmented to all users in New York State. In the future, I should expect a follow-up email about the same event.

Constant Contact sent me a second email with the subject line: “Discover the great features in your account.” The email is shown below:

constant-contact-email-2

 The purpose of this email was to bring awareness to their newly implemented features. I believe that although effective, there is too many links. Since I am already aware of many of these features, I did not click on any of the links. In my opinion, this email was also sent to all the users and was not segmented.

In conclusion, both emails provided me with a path to unsubscribe to give me the option to no longer receive these emails. If you wish to read more about email marketing, I suggest you read Hubspot’s blog on email marketing as it provides further analysis on effective tactics to use.

Lions Blog: On-site SEO Ranking

blogWe are in the process of wrapping up week four of the young NFL season. It is hard to believe that we are already about 25% done with the year and I can speak for all Detroit Lion fans when I say what a disappointment for our team (1-3).

So instead of talking about the Detroit Lions, let’s talk about how I can take my blog to the next level and make it “Billy Fuccillo Huuuuge” by using digital marketing and SEO.

Search engine optimization ranking can be increased by focusing on three criteria:

  1. Keywords
  2. On-site SEO
  3. Off-site SEO

To find suitable keywords, I used Google’s Keyword Planner to find relevant keywords with high traffic to consider using throughout my blog:

keywords

Now, I need to focus on my on-site SEO which can by leveraging my chosen keywords above through my URL, header tag, main content, blog tags and more. For example, as you can see, my URL is www.deanfromsiena.wordpress.com. This will work for my keywords “dean” and “siena college.”

As for my site title, “Dean from Siena College,” and my tagline, “Detroit Lions Blog,” are also remained constant with my keywords. In fact, site titles and taglines carry more weight when determining page rankings for Google.  The content of my blog also speaks for itself as it matches with several keywords mentioned above.

Another sect of on-site SEO is the quality of my blog post which is measured by:

  1. High click through rate
  2. Low bounce rate
  3. Fast load times
  4. Original content
  5. Good spelling and grammar

The last facet of SEO rankings is off-site SEO. Since I am unwilling to pay for Google Ads, I rely heavily on off-site SEO to boost my page rankings. The popularity of my off-site SEO depends on the number of backlinks to my blog. I have connected my blog with all my social media accounts as well as have family and friends share my link on their accounts.

I hope this short blog post provided you with some basic information on search engine optimization. If you are eager to learn more, please read Daniel Louis’ “13 Super-Easy Ways to Immediately Improve your SEO” and Dr. Michael Pepe’s blog.

In conclusion, I have a lot of work to do with my blog and I can not do it without your help! So please, share my site, share your thoughts in the comment section and have fun!

Detroit Lions: The Business

We are all huge fans of the National Football League and our respective teams. The simple reality check that all fans need to know is that the National Football League and the Detroit Lions are – and operate as – a business that requires an inflow of revenue.

lionsThe main product sold by professional football teams are the players on the field – that’s obvious. In order to create more revenue, all of the teams branched out into selling team based apparel.

With the increased use of the internet by consumers, all NFL teams use their own website as a source of e-commerce to sell their products. My Lions use http://shop.detroitlions.com/ as their e-commerce site.

So how effective is the digital marketing of the Detroit Lions’ organization?

If you are associated with an NFL football team, you already have national brand recognition – but where exactly does their traffic come from. I know – through experience – that if you follow the Detroit Lions on social media, they advertise their online store heavily. This is known as unpaid referrals and it makes up a large portion of their traffic (it is also completely free).

Another large source of traffic is through searching in Google. When you google “Detroit Lions apparel,” it is the second website listed. This organic search lags behind only www.Nflshop.com. Although it seems counterintuitive, NFL Shop is a competitor of the Detroit Lions’ website as the revenue will go to the NFL instead of the Detroit Lions. The Lions need to improve their SEO strategy

The next criteria are conversions that lead to their revenue. Below is a picture of the Detroit Lions’ website:

Lions Website.PNG

As you can see, it is a very aesthetically pleasing website that is easy to follow, it has a large call to action “Shop Now” and has a large promotional banner right on top. All of these factors are put in place to boost conversions and click-through rates. This website holds true to the Lions’ brand with the unique Lions’ Honolulu Blue and the “One Pride” banner on the left.

Overall, I think the Lions have an effective website and should be more proactive with their SEO campaign. Especially because their team is the biggest disappointment in professional sports.

If you would like to go into a more in-depth analysis of the use of digital marketing in the National Football League, I encourage you to read the work of Dr. Michael Pepe’s analysis of the Minnesota Vikings. Anything from Dr. Pepe is worth looking into!

Stafford is Starting (Finishing) Right

If you need to know anything about me, it is that I love my family and my Detroit Lions. If you would like, please read the “Why the Detroit Lions?” tab to see how this weird obsession started.

Throughout the semester, I will be blogging about the multiple facets of the Detroit Lions whether it is a recap of their game or questionable marketing/business decisions. So please, relax and enjoy my blog as I want to spark conversations and debates. It is going to be a great semester!

The Detroit Lions earned their Week 1 win on the road against the Andrew Luck and his Indianapolis Colts, 39-35, on a game-winning field goal.

Matt Prater

As a Lion enthusiast, I saw this win coming from months away and it was obvious.

Almost every “expert” picked the depleted Colts to walk all over the lonely Lions to kick off the 2016 NFL Season. Why? Because the Lions’ star receiver, Calvin Johnson, retired from the football field and was hired to the dancing floor (check him out on Dancing with the Stars) leaving the Lions’ offensive “clueless.”

My bold prediction for the Detroit Lions in 2016 is that Matthew Stafford will have his best season statistically – and yes, without Megatron. How can this be? Because of Johnson’s departure, the Lions now have over $20 million dollars of salary cap where they can allocate to find multiple, meaningful contributors whether it is linemen or new weapons on both sides of the football.

I know everyone is looking at Marvin Jones here. I get it – replacing Megatron with Jones is like replacing your 1970 Ford Mustang with your Uncle’s 1999 Honda Accord with 150,000 miles. But think about this, Megatron’s departure and the addition of Decker, Bush, Boldin and Jones is like adding subwoofers, detailed interior and auto-park feature to your 2017 Tesla. We are moving in the right direction here.

Now because week 1 is over, I can even provide proof. Stafford had an 80% completion percentage, 128.6 passer rating and a game-winning drive that moved faster down the field than any Tesla on full throttle ever could.

All of this… Stafford without Calvin Johnson.

The NFL season is long and requires consistency on the Lions’ part, but if each player can contribute and perform their roles correctly, then maybe, just maybe, the Lions can become strong closers in the fourth quarter and give their fans a Super Bowl victory!