Web Marketing Wednesdays: Email Marketing Overload, Third Party Sites, Facebook & Social Sharing

Web Marketing Wednesdays

Hello and thank you for reading this week’s edition of Web Marketing Wednesdays (WMW)! As our regular readers already know, the aim of this column is to provide a concise rundown of key news items and tech tips for business school admissions and marketing staff. Without further ado, let’s see what’s been happening over the past seven days…

While it’s hard to believe that the first month of 2014 is already half completed, I’m sure that most of us are ready to move on from ‘Best of 2013’ type material and dig into more forward-looking news items. With that in mind, we’ll kick off this week’s WMW with a great article about ’email marketing overload’ – when companies or institutions reach out to their mailing lists more often than subscribers desire. The example used in the article is from the corporate/retail domain (Ann Taylor Loft), but I felt that this was relevant for business schools as so many of you conduct email marketing and use newsletters to communicate with prospects and applicants.

A frequent question posed by business schools when it comes to digital marketing relates to limited resources: many schools worry that they cannot afford the time commitment required to be successful in social media. With that in mind, I wanted to call your attention to a recurring blog column that is helping several MBA programs while requiring no time or money on the part of the schools. An admissions consultancy, MBA Mission, is running a series of blog entries called “What I learned at…” which allows MBA graduates to share their thought process on choosing their MBA program, their career plans and more. Not only is this an interesting series, but it should give many schools (beyond those featured in the series) ideas as to how they might inspire alumni, students and other stakeholders to share their experiences via third party sites.

Rounding out this week’s look across the web marketing domain, we turn to a great piece by Jeff Bullas entitled 5 Reasons Why Facebook Drives Consumer Buying. While the focus of the article is geared towards the e-commerce and retail domains, there are some valuable lessons to be learned when it comes to how social networks influence consumer opinions and actions. As expected, people are highly influenced by their friends – especially when it comes to product recommendations. While many may scoff at the notion that a business school is offering a ‘product’, there are still obvious benefits to getting business school applicants, students and alumni to share their experiences across social media outlets. Even something as simple as allowing applicants to share that they’ve completed their application to your program (much like one can share a purchase on Amazon.com) could be very helpful. And yes, many business school applicants may be reluctant to share the fact that they are applying, but then again you don’t need everyone to share in order for a campaign to be effective…