¶ … E-Marketing Strategies at Apple
Orchestrating rapid new product development cycles that in many cases deliver products and services that create new markets, while at the same ensuring the continual strengthening and fidelity of a global brand is a daunting strategic challenge. Incorporating the most effective approaches to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) strategies today across a spectrum of established and emerging e-marketing channels must be managed with goals in mind first, and guided to fruition using analytics and metrics (Strategic Direction, 2011). These strategic challenges are what Apple faces daily in orchestrating its broad product mix, keeping its new product development and introduction (NPDI) process, IMC, e-marketing, selling, highly profitable retailing and services business units tightly integrated and functioning well together (Cusumano, 2008). Of the several catalysts that keep Apple functioning so effectively as an ecosystem, the tightly synchronized nature of its IMC strategies are by far the ones that scale the quickest, deliver the greater lead generation, ensuring lead generation and ultimately sales across all market segment served (Wonglimpiyarat, 2012).
With Apple's IMC strategies being essential to their continued profitable growth across all distribution channels they compete in, tracking their effectiveness is crucial to the future success of the company. The goal of this dissertation is to evaluate the effectiveness of e-marketing campaigns at Apple within the context of their IMC framework which is considered one of the best in the field of marketing (Caemmerer, 2009). The IMC framework Apple relies on to orchestrate e-marketing strategies is specifically designed to scale or flex to the unique requirements or needs of each individual new product launch strategy. Apple has also designed their IMC framework to allow for inclusion or exclusion of specific elements from their broad base of e-marketing applications, strategies and tools. Unifying all of these elements together is Google Analytics, a cloud-based analytics platform that provides Apple senior management, marketing, sales and market research teams with the insights they need to create new campaigns (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Apple has a very analytics-driven culture that thrives on dashboards that provide new insights into marketing campaigns. With Google Analytics providing the baseline measures of broader e-marketing performance, Apple also relies on Salesforce globally to orchestrate their lead generation, selling and service strategies. HubSpot, the cloud-based marketing automation application, is used for generating e-mail blasts, defining new campaigns, and measuring them, measuring the impact of social media campaigns, and defining personas that are used throughout the selling process. The tight orchestration of Google Analytics, HubSpot, Salesforce and the many Apple websites is what forms the foundation of the analytics reporting system for the company. E-marketing effectiveness is measured across each of these systems with dashboards created containing specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance for determining which campaigns are the highest and lowest-performing. Further, Apple has an extensive level of self-service Business Intelligence (BI) software created on their own operating systems, providing managers, directors and executives with real-time updates on their specific areas of responsibility and interest. Apple therefore pushes accountability and responsibility deep into their organizations globally, which is one of the primary determinants of how effective the company is at launching new products (Abetti, 1996). The analytics platforms that Apple relies on for evaluating e-marketing effectiveness are so effective, Apple Engineering, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Professional Services and Retail Services are starting to adopt the analytics applications based on Google Analytics, Salesforce, HubSpot and website data.
Apple's heavy reliance on analytics makes measuring their e-marketing effectiveness more effective than any other competitor in the consumer electronics markets they compete in. Benchmarking each phase of their e-marketing campaigns provides the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Marketing Vice Presidents, Directors and managers needed information to best understand how to price, promote and reposition when necessary each product they sell (ABA Journal, 1990).
Apple has moved quickly beyond the four Ps of marketing in their analysis of e-marketing effectiveness too. Using the combination of their websites tailored to each nation they sell into. Apple operates stores in 16 countries and has their web-based online store available in 39 stores (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Using Google Analytics and website traffic in each of these nations gives Apple marketers the opportunity to better define the 4 Ps of marketing for each country. Apple learned by doing this that each product also has a definite lifecycle that varies by nation too. The sales of MacBook Airs and the latest iPad may skyrocket in the U.S. And western nations first due to the heavy spending on e-marketing campaigns in these geographies (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). While the U.S. And western nations drive the majority of revenue in the early phases of any new product launch, foreign nations have significantly longer product lifecycles. Apple discovered this from their e-marketing effectiveness metrics that showed the U.S. And western nation launches gaining sales at a 3X to 4X accelerating rate then quickly moving to a growth state of the product life cycle. In foreign nations, Apple was seeing a less rapid rate of sales, but the products stayed in the growth phase far longer (Zahra, Chaples, 1993). The lesson learned was that Apple products sell differently across the 4 Ps of the product mix depending on the specific cultural aspects of the markets they are selling into (Strategic Direction, 2004). The product, price, promotion and place of Apple strategies are today dictated to a large extent by the analytics and insights gained from their reliance on e-marketing effectiveness measures. Apple product marketing and the CMO's office has become so adept at using these advanced analytics tools to evaluate and continually track performance that they can now define the price elasticity of demand for specific products by category by nation (Bangert, 2013). According to interviews published with current and previous C-level executives at Apple, the CMOs often remark how effective their pricing strategies have become by concentrating on the price curves or price elasticity of their products. Apple executives during these interviews make no apologies for realizing their products are highly inelastic, or not driven by price declines. Instead, they realize the value they sell, often defined by initial customer surveys to begin with, is what drives the success of new products (International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 1999) (Wines,1996). All of these insights are possible for Apple due to their heavy investment in e-marketing effectiveness measurement software. Integrating their Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics and wide variety of websites together is delivering insights and intelligence that gives the company greater ability to respond quickly to changing market and customer needs. This dissertation critically analyzes the current state of IMC strategies from the standpoint of e-marketing effectiveness. Apple has a very unique structure of its IMC framework which further allows for greater flexibility and agility in defining new marketing indicatives. In determining the e-marketing effectiveness of the company, understanding the IMC framework is essential. That aspect of their business model is covered in the Literature Review.
Literature Review
Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) frameworks continue to go through a rapid maturation as their role as a strong catalyst used for unifying advertising, public relations, marketing, selling and service communications strategies continues to accelerate in all industries (Anwar, 2014). Nowhere is this more prevalent than in high tech, where tight synchronization of every aspect of marketing strategies is essential for the successful completion of complex marketing strategies. Apple's IMC framework is tightly integrated to its Google Analytics platform which generates key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance from the many websites, HubSpot e-marketing campaigns that are running concurrently on a global level, in addition to the broad cross-section of e-marketing campaigns that are Web-based.
The Apple IMC framework relies on analytics to gain greater insight into each campaigns' performance over time. What differentiates the Apple IMC framework from many others is also the integration with financial data from the company's accounting systems as well. It is common to find IMC frameworks that have the capacity to measure overall effectiveness in attaining Return on Investment (ROI) performance by marketing campaign. While this area of IMC frameworks is still evolving, Apple has found a method for capturing the cost per lead across all e-marketing campaigns. This is one of the most valuable sources of data, as the cost per lead can be quickly used for prioritizing which specific e-marketing strategies are the most and least effective. Rank ordering the specific e-marketing channels by the number of leads produced, knowing the cost per lead, and also creating a trend line of these costs over time all give Apple a competitive advantage that is difficult to overcome by its smaller and less well-financed competitors.
During the process of completing this literature review, key insights were gained of the broader IMC frameworks in use today. There are also many studies of the future direction of IMC frameworks as well, and insights gained form these studies are also included. An IMC framework has varying definitions and its role as a foundation for evaluating e-marketing effectiveness also varies by industry, type of products, size of company and the average duration of campaigns and strategies. What all e-marketing effectiveness approaches share in common is a reliance on IMC frameworks for the development and continual strengthening of a brand over time.
Apple's concentration on analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance is strengthened by their deep integration of financial systems as well. Due to this focus on measuring the financial impact of e-marketing strategies and their effectiveness, Apple can also more accurately gauge how much a new product introduction is going to cost. Apple generates on average 60% of their revenue from new product launches, making this event the single most profitable for the company. By assessing e-marketing effectiveness with financial data, Apple is able to not only define the duration of a product lifecycle by region or nation, they can also track the profitability during each phase of the product lifecycle (Apple Investor Relations, 2015).
Apple has a very specific approach to integrating their financial systems together, ensuring the ROI of each e-marketing channel, campaign and strategy is measured (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Measuring Return on Investment (ROI) for e-marketing campaigns across a broad IMC framework enables companies to enter new markets faster. Adding in financial measures of e-marketing effectiveness ultimately ensure a much higher level of responsiveness to market conditions and greater insights into what's working or not, relying on IMC frameworks to accomplish this (Willey, D. 1993). The intent of this literature review is to illustrate how measuring the effectiveness of e-marketing campaigns is made more effective through the use of IMC frameworks. The focus on Apple's approach to mass merchandising at a global scale requires e-marketing strategies and programs that can flex to the unique needs of given markets and highly diverse selling scenarios.
Using the value chain model from Dr. Michael Porter of Harvard to further illustrate how e-marketing effectiveness measures impact the performance of an entire company, it's clear that having a clear view of the customer is essential. The following figure is the value chain originally defined by Dr. Porter:
E-marketing effectiveness has a direct impact on the overall profitability of any business, as it drives greater gross margin. From the social media channels that are highly interactive to those that are more statics (as websites are for example) the wide variation in customer responsiveness, the capability of tailoring a specific e-marketing channel to specific audiences' needs, and lastly, the potential to create a more interactive communication channel exists. Theorists contend that the future of IMC strategies will be more interactive, relationship-driven and therefore more contextual from an intelligence standpoint than they are today. Social media continues to change e-marketing effectiveness as well, with the foundational elements of Web 2.0 technologies being critical to their success.
Forward-looking companies in both the Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C)-based industries are increasingly relying on e-marketing campaigns to ensure each sales channel gets the appropriate level of sales leads, activity and attention. What's been missing from these many strategies in the past has been the ability to define and implement e-marketing applications, tools and technologies that can align with how prospects want to learn and buy. Initial e-marketing technologies were more oriented to pushing information to prospects, not giving them an opportunity to interact with the company and learn more. These static approaches to e-marketing campaigns were push-based, with no regard for what the prospects wanted to learn or know. As could be expected, this approach was very ineffective and often led to approaches to e-marketing that concentrated on just sending more and more e-mails to people who really had no intention of buying anything. The continued efforts on the parts of many nations to curtail SPAM and unwanted e-mail is a direct result of these early types of e-marketing strategies that placed more emphasis on shoving unwanted information to prospects (Tariq, Ishrat, Khan, 2011). As e-marketers concentrated on creating and launching e-mail campaigns that were targeted to specific market segments and audiences, the performance increased over time. Yet the annoyance factors was very high for this approach and there was major room for improvement based on the very low responsive rates to these one-sided e-marketing campaigns.
The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies continue to have a revolutionary effect on e-marketing strategies', platforms and how their performance is measured as well. Web 2.0 technologies are also most importantly changing how potential prospects and customers interact with e-marketing campaigns, in many cases drastically increasing overall response rates. This new approach to e-marketing strategies continues to shift the focus away from the marketer and the company to the customer. No longer is the focus just on how to drive up response rates, but how to create a more customer-centric, responsive organization (Uncles, 2010). The adoption of Web 2.0 technologies are also serving as a catalyst for more effective website designs, advanced opt-in, permission-based e-marketing strategies, and the emergence of content marketing. All of these factors are leading to a more effective approach to listening intelligently to customers and quickly responding to them. The core foundational elements of Web 2.0, originally defined by Tim O'Rielly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media and O'Reilly Associates, illustrate how the design objectives of Web-based applications need to be responsive and deliver an exceptional experience over and above just concentrating on functionality. The focus on enabling an excellent experience for anyone using a Web 2.0-based application is based on the principles shown in Figure 1 (O'Reilly, 2006). All of the elements shown in this figure are often orchestrated together to create a highly responsive, intuitive and customizable application experience for anyone using an application. As the Web becomes the platform, the Web 2.0 architecture or Meme Map shown in Figure 1 also allows for much greater interactivity and conversational communication between companies and their customers (O'Reilly, 2006). Ultimately this platform allows for greater reciprocal communication across diverse customer groups while synchronizing presales, selling and post-sales efforts across diverse sales channels as well. In short, Web 2.0 technologies are ideal for launching, fine-tuning and ultimately optimizing e-marketing strategies over time (Hsiao, Tsai, Shen, Yeh, 2011). Since the first introduction of this concept, there has also been a layer of analytics included that makes tracking performance of e-marketing campaigns more accurate, attainable and scalable.
Figure 1: Web 2.0 Design Objectives, Source: (O'Reilly, 2006)
Web 2.0 Technologies as a Foundation of E-Marketing Effectiveness
Social media applications as diverse as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many others are all designed on the foundational elements of Web 2.0 technologies. Many of the founders of these companies sought out assistance from Tim O'Reilly to ensure their specific applications reflected Web 2.0 constructs. The incorporation of Web 2.0 concepts in core social media applications began to influence the design and development of e-marketing applications, tools and techniques. The ability to interact easily with customers using e-marketing applications designed based on the lessons learned from e-marketing applications has accelerated how many of these applications are used (Doyle, 2001). The continued use of Web 2.0 technologies to create e-marketing applications has also driven up adoption of these applications over time as well, as more marketers learn how to use them. Best of all, using these Web 2.0-based e-marketing applications, campaigns can be designed to engage and interact with sales prospects via the social networks, channels, methods and techniques they are most comfortable using (Goldman, 2008).
One of the most valuable aspects of using Web 2.0 design principles in developing new applications is how the interaction, continual sharing of information and transparency can lead to greater trust. For any marketing strategies, especially those based on e-marketing to succeed, there needs to be a very strong framework of trust serving as the foundation (Smith, Gopalakrishna, Chatterjee, 2006). By choosing to develop e-marketing applications using Web 2.0 design criteria, e-marketing strategies and campaigns have the potential to achieve a higher level of trust. This is especially true for Apple and their approach to defining a very unique mix of e-marketing strategies and programs to drive direct sales off of their website and also drive new sales into their large, highly profitable stores (Taylor-West, Saker, Champion, 2014). All of Apple's marketing is predicated on the foundation of how to create greater trust. Web 2.0 technologies make e-marketing strategies more authentic, immediate and focused on customer needs. The unique product and service aspects and attributes also need to be taken into account and a tightly integrating e-marketing campaign produced (Datta, 1996). Like many other companies, Apple relies on e-marketing strategies to also break out of their unidirectional-focused approach to marketing that has ceased to be effective. What makes e-marketing effectiveness so difficult to measure is the gradual shift from legacy, unidirectional-focused applications to ones that can measure interactivity and customer propensity to become involved with the brand via social media channels. Bridging these differences is how e-market effectiveness can be more efficiently used to gain greater insights into how a given campaign or strategy is performing (Rosenberg, Czepiel, 1992).
Basing e-marketing applications on Web 2.0 technologies ensures they can be quickly oriented towards how prospects and customers want to interact with them. This is well defined by the Web 2.0 technologies meme map shown in Figure 1. What's been added since 1996 when the foundational elements of Web 2.0 where first defined is an analytical layer that provides marketers with real-time updates on their efforts. This capability of tracking e-marketing effectiveness across a broad base of channels, campaigns and strategies is not immediately available to every company undertaking these strategies however. The more integrated and invested in e-marketing applications and technologies, the more they are capable of producing this level of insight and intelligence into their e-marketing effectiveness data. Consumer products companies who rely on this data for the successful execution of marketing strategies across their broad distribution networks invest the heaviest in marketing analytics. Apple is one of the only high technology companies that has taken on this level of investment to ensure a high level of accuracy, reliability, validity and real-time access to analytics that provide immediate insight into how their e-marketing initiatives are performing (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Having this depth of insight and intelligence in e-marketing campaigns and strategies also drastically reduces the reaction time to unforeseen events in the market, including pricing decisions by competitors, new product introductions, and the development of entirely new social media channels and programs. Real-time analytics of e-marketing strategies and programs can also drive an entirely new series of products faster and more effectively than if the process was very manual, static and defined by just single steps in a long chain of events to gain customer feedback (Rowland, T. 2014).
Web 2.0 technologies serve as the foundation for social media platforms and applications today. The design goals for Web 2.0 are very evident in social media applications today with usability being the most visible and useful to customers of these applications. The usability of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media applications is now driving the next generation of e-marketing applications. This is making adoption of these applications and tools accelerate, driving even more value for the companies that use them. Apple's ability to quickly take in e-marketing applications and have nearly their entire marketing staff be quickly conversant in them illustrates just how powerful usability is as a design attribute. E-Marketing effectiveness is in large part driven by the usability of applications used to measure it. Further, the usability of e-marketing applications will also define just how broad or narrow the measurements can be for a given program. This breadth and depth of analytics, key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance is only valuable if the marketing professionals using them can get the data they need. The value therefore of e-marketing effectiveness is partially driven by just how usable a given marketing application is or not. With Web 2.0 technologies used as the foundation for creating e-marketing applications, all of these benefits are available to marketing teams looking to better understand how effective they are or not in each campaign. The most effective e-marketing campaigns are based on a continual stream of new insights and intelligence generated from analytics that are a core part of the e-marketing applications being used.
Getting a good view of e-marketing effectiveness requires applications that are very usable and capable of being adopted across marketing departments, often on a global scale. Apple's success with their e-marketing effectiveness measures can in large part be defined by how well the marketing department sin the company are tightly coordinated across their worldwide offices. Instead of just having e-marketing effectiveness available only in their headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple has e-marketing effectiveness measures of performance running across the globe. All measures of e-marketing effectiveness are aggregated together in corporate, put into dashboards electronically and in real-time, and immediately published to the corporate intranet where any marketing manager can get to the data in seconds. All of these steps happen electronically and in real-time, with HubSpot being one of the foundational reporting systems in this process. Apple has integrated together their Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics and global websites to create a single marketing information systems platform that can be used for measuring overall campaign performance. The ability to measure marketing programs on a global scale in real-time is possible because each of the applications being used are cloud-based. None of the systems used by Apple to complete their e-marketing effectiveness are on-premise, or installed on a computer server in their offices. Apple, like many other companies who have chosen to create a high performance e-marketing programs team, chose to have all their application cloud computing based. The need for making e-marketing effectiveness programs available on a global scale to any team who needs them is what is driving the adoption of cloud-based e-marketing effectiveness applications.
Given how analytics is changing e-marketing effectiveness for the better, it's clear that having applications everyone can use across all offices is necessary for their success. Keeping everyone on the same set of data is critically important for marketing teams to drive greater results together. The best-in-class systems have the ability to bring together hundreds of marketers, all using the same analytics and measures of performance, to attain a common goal. With legacy e-marketing systems, this level of orchestration towards a common goal was nearly impossible. Today with e-marketing systems and the analytics they rely on to measure effectiveness, it is possible to keep an entire team focused on a common series of objectives. This is accomplished by standardizing on cloud computing technologies that can immediately scale globally across literally any location where Internet access is available. Cloud computing applications streamline the administration, customization and performance of e-marketing campaigns by overcoming the limitations of on-premise legacy systems that by their very nature, cannot scale fast or at all (Capatina, Draghescu, 2015). Apple has chosen to rely entirely on cloud-based applications and programs to ensure 100% scalability across the global network of distributors, dealers and retail outlets (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Cloud computing-based applications have five essential characteristics or attributes that make them ideally suited to e-marketing application development and use. Apple has found these five attributes to be very effectiveness guides to defining their own application development as well. Cloud-based applications can also be used on any mobile device anywhere, anytime, which makes applications based on this technology ideal for retail store use and also for measuring customer purchases across broad distribution and selling networks. Apple has found cloud-based e-marketing effectiveness applications indispensable in managing their massive amount of data produced daily throughout their selling and service networks.
The five foundational elements for cloud computing applications was originally defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). These five elements or attributes are well-suited to the development of e-marketing applications and programs as well, as they ensure scalability and greater availability of each application. The five attributes of cloud computing platforms are on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity and measured service. Each of these attributes are briefly discussed below from an e-marketing effectiveness standpoint.
On-demand self-service is essential for e-marketing applications running on a cloud platform as this attribute makes sure there is enough server time and network storage to keep the application running (Cole, Matsumiya, 2007). On-demand self-service means that if an e-marketing application needs a sudden burst of storage to complete a complex calculation, the cloud platform and application can work together to keep the e-marketing application working. This on-demand self-service aspect of cloud computing is what makes sure e-marketing applications are responsive and quick to manage complex calculations while tracking prospect and customer activity. Dynamically allocating resources on a self-service basis is essential for e-marketing applications to manage the many complex tasks required to report back the performance of campaigns, initiatives and programs. This attribute is why many large-scale enterprises including Apple are increasingly moving to cloud computing-based e-marketing applications including HubSpot, as they can scale quickly to the enterprises' global needs.
The second attribute of broad network access is also critically important for the success of e-marketing campaigns and the applications that run them. Broad network access for cloud computing applications ensures every store, distribution center and location in a company's network can quickly get to the information and data they need. For Apple's e-marketing effectiveness measures, broad network access means that any sales, service or marketing team member anywhere the Internet is available can work on e-marketing campaigns and also monitor the performance of strategies and campaigns in process. This is one of the reasons why mobile-based applications in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) continues to accelerate. Mobile devices with broad network access on 3G and 4G networks are an area that is also revolutionizing e-marketing effectiveness programs today (Buskirk, Reddy, Popper,1994). This is also why there are entirely new e-marketing programs being started, with many choosing to standardize on the Salesforce1 platform, which has many of the attributes that marketers like Apple need included in their applications. Broad network access also further underscores the reliability and real-time responsiveness that is critically important for applications to have when providing e-marketing effectiveness measures of performance. The broad network access aspect of cloud computing applications in general and e-marketing software specifically also makes it possible for companies to rapidly grow their selling and service networks on a global scale (Hodock, 2009).
The third attribute of cloud computing applications in resource pooling. Like on-demand self-service, this attribute makes it possible for cloud-based applications to scale to the specific needs of a given e-marketing application (Danaher, Dhanasobhon, Smith, Telang, 2010). Resource pooling also makes it possible for a cloud-based application to deliver the same level of performance in a region where there is excellent connectivity and network access and in those areas where there isn't as well. In short, this attribute makes it possible to gain greater agility and speed in managing the overall workloads across cloud-based applications. Resource pooling makes sure the applications e-marketers are using in remote regions of the word to manage campaigns are performing at the same level as those in areas where bandwidth and computing resources are abundant. All of this ties back to an exceptional high level of responsiveness and performance of cloud-based e-marketing applications.
Rapid elasticity is also very important for any cloud computing application to be designed in as an attribute. Rapid elasticity means that as an e-marketing application needs to have greater computing power, more bandwidth and more storage, the cloud platform and application working together can get access to them. For e-marketing applications, rapid elasticity means the e-marketing applications won't time out or just stop working altogether on broad networks. This shift in focus to a more agile streamlined approach to gaining access to resources is what makes cloud computing such a strong alternative for large-scale enterprises to base their applications on. Apple has chosen this platform specifically for the scalability and quick elasticity of using resources across their global supply chain, selling and service network. Rapid elasticity also ensures a very high level of uptime for e-marketing applications, keeping the analytics and data available on a 24/7 basis 365 days a year, which is essential for Apple who needs the e-marketing effectiveness data to manage their global operations.
The fifth attribute of cloud computing applications is measured service. For Apple and its many locations globally, measured service is a competitive advantage when it comes to their cloud computing applications. This is especially true in the area of e-marketing effectiveness applications, as they often take an exceptionally large amount of resources to run. Measured service ensures that each application running on a cloud platform can get the optimal mix of computing time, storage and core processing performance it needs to complete complex tasks. This is especially important for the analytics applications that are often very resource-intensive and require accurate, real-time data to be useable by marketers.
Cloud Applications Using For Evaluating E-Marketing Effectiveness
Given the many strengths of cloud-based applications, it's not surprising that the dominant trend today in e-marketing effectiveness is to rely on applications built on this platform. Apple's reliance on Google Analytics, Salesforce CRM and HubSpot is a case in point, where all of these cloud-based systems are regularly used for tracking e-marketing effectiveness (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Cloud-based applications also ensure that marketers can further tailor their programs to specific prospect and customer prospect interests or needs. Marketers who use e-marketing effectiveness programs are increasingly relying on representations of key customers, which are aggregations of these core groups' attributes. These are called personas in e-marketing applications as they are an abbreviated, aggregated view of what key prospects and customers are defined by in terms of attributes. Personas are the future of e-marketing program effectiveness and can be quickly tailored to specific campaigns due in large part to the agility and easy-to-use nature of cloud-based e-marketing campaigns. Personas have proven to be very effective in defining e-marketing campaigns and strategies, making them ideal for managing complex, globally scaled strategies like Apple regularly completes (Furnell, 2010).
By combining personas, the foundational elements of cloud computing applications and Web 2.0 design goals, the developers of e-marketing effectiveness software are aiming at creating new applications that can provide even greater depth of insight into why people buy. One of the main reasons for this is because personas are so predictive of how people buy. A well-defined persona makes it possible for e-marketing effectiveness to move beyond an overall view of a market and take into account individual needs, wants, preferences and perceptions (Dubberly, 2012). Personas are becoming a core part of e-marketing effectiveness measures as a result (Fleischer, 2006). Apple and other corporations their comparable size and smaller are all interested in how they can better create scalable, stable and long-term e-marketing campaigns that drive sales. Personas are becoming the foundation of e-marketing effectiveness software development, and best practices in using these applications as well. One added benefit of personas is that they are very useful during the new product development and introduction (NPDI) process as well (Smith, Gopalakrishna, Chatterjee, 2006). Forward-thinking companies are using personas to drive their new product ideation, creation and launch process. The personas of mobile professionals and the need of upper-income individuals for a more effective tablet device drove the development of the Apple iPad Series (Tariq, Ishrat, Khan, 2011). Apples' innovations in new product development and especially in e-marketing strategy development, execution and effectiveness can all be tied to their reliance on analytics, personas and the ability to gain perspective and insight their competitors could not. The combining of personas, cloud applications and Web 2.0 design principles they are based on also fuels more effective measures of performance and further aids in the development of real-time analytics as well (Sahoo, 2012).
Apple had long been focused on core market segments, then transitioned to the development and use of personas pervasively throughout their marketing strategies. As with many large scale corporations, Apple also began using e-marketing effectiveness applications and tools when Web 2.0 technologies first began to become more pervasive in the market. Appendix A, Description of Web 2.0 Applications, provides an overview of these. Apple relied intensively on applications based on Web 2.0 technologies to create and sustain conversations with customers over time (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). Apple found that using these technologies as the basis of creating, sustaining and growing conversations with customers over time was exponentially more effective than using their previous-generation strategies that lacked the precision that personas allowed for (Taylor, Levin, 2014). The new approach to using e-marketing effectiveness applications that were Web 2.0-based also brought an entirely new level of accountability and responsibility for marketing performance and e-marketing effectiveness the company had not known before (Apple Investor Relations, 2015). All of these factors together started a revolution of e-marketing effectiveness results throughout Apple that continues to this day. Over time Apple began to also aggressively pursue a more integrated marketing communications (IMC) strategy based on the lessons learned from their e-marketing strategies and efforts.
Integrating IMC Strategies into E-Marketing Effectiveness
Being able to organize all e-marketing strategies so they deliver a single, unified impact on building greater awareness, product interest and sales is why many marketing departments rely on Integrated Marketing Campaign (IMC) strategies (Thomas,1993). The developing, refining and focused execution of IMC strategies requires each department to have a highly coordinated series of tasks that all are unified around a common goal. The use of IMC strategies in rapidly changing industries including consumer electronics is critically important for making sure new product launches attain the highest levels of revenue possible (Cojocaru & Cojocaru, 2014). IMC strategies are also strategically important for ensuring all departments, divisions and in the case of Apple, all retail stores are on the same communications messaging and positioning of products. IMC strategies however are often very difficult to achieve due to limitations in organizational cultures and the resistance to change many have (Thomas, 1993).
Cultural silos often constructed over years of being only able to focus on a single series of marketing strategies, combined with insecurity on the part of marketing managers, leads to IMC strategies failing due to lack of widespread support (Eagle, Kitchen, Bulmer 2007). Organizations like these often settle into a myopic, inward-centric way of doing marketing and fail often due to the lack of cross-functional and intradepartmental coordination. IMC strategies can't be made more effective through the use of e-marketing effectiveness programs (Chacko, 1999). They can however get the added start they need by having corporations concentrate on metrics of performance that unify and force collaboration over rewarding the single-department-knows-best mentality that often pervades larger, more complex marketing departments. So technology is not a cure for companies whose marketing departments' can't work together and get along. IMC strategies can be designed however to scale and support complex communications over time (Shimp, 1997). For large-scale corporations including Apple, this challenge is made more difficult by the widely varying product strategies that are occurring globally at any point in time in the company's selling and go-to-market strategies.
An IMC framework then serves as a means to keep all elements of an e-marketing campaign orchestration together. Best practices in IMC strategies concentrate on creating a framework that takes into account the speed, depth and scale of how marketing departments change over time (Sirgy, 1998).
IMC frameworks must flex with organizational shifts to stay relevant to the companies using them, and this includes the ability to keep tracking e-marketing effectiveness measures over time (Sull, 2010). The more complex a company's product and services strategy the more critical an effective IMC structure and strategy becomes. Figure 2 provides an overview of how IMC strategies would be used in a highly complex manufacturing business of customizing manufactured products (Castro, 2011)
. If Apple chose to create a build-to-order iPad or MacBook Air for example, this is the type of framework they would need. This example is provided to give an insight into how critically important IMC frameworks are for orchestrating e-marketing campaigns over time. Excellently run IMC strategies that capture the most valuable e-marketing effectiveness measures of performance concentrate on having a very clear line of sight to the external factors influencing overall strategy performance, as is shown in Figure 2. These externally facing areas including customer, industry, marketing product factors all have a direct effect on each stage of the marketing, production and services strategy of a business (Broekhuizen, Alsem 2002). The greater the depth and complexity of the business model, the more challenging the IMC framework to manage. Figure 2 shows how the various external factors drive mass customization (and in the case of Apple, very rapid mass production) following by operating, marketing and R&D and management all being impacted by the IMC strategy being deployed.
Figure 2: IMCs and Mass Customization Strategies Have High Dependence
Sources: (Broekhuizen, Alsem 2002) (Reppel, Szmigin, Gruber, 2006) (Quintal, Phau, 2013) (Prykop, Heitmann, 2006)
An IMC framework is excellent for managing the many intricate parts of an e-marketing strategy as well. The many factors that influence the choice of e-marketing channel, from direct e-mail to more participative approaches including social media platforms, can all be orchestrated from a common platform (Ismail, 2012). This is why Apple relies on IMC platforms so extensively, in that they allow for greater visibility and quick access to e-marketing effectiveness measures of performance over time.
Methodology
The methodology to complete this study will be based on three phases, all of which will be completed using secondary research sources. The first phase will concentrate on all those sources of information that are publically available including the filings Apple has made with the United State Securities and Exchange (SEC) commission. As Apple is a publically-traded company, there is a wealth of published data available on their performance, marketing strategies, programs and results of these efforts to attract, sell and serve customers. Another aspect of the secondary research strategy will be to rely on investor presentations the company has made over time, in addition to the industry trade groups Apple presents to periodically.
As was also mentioned in the research proposal, secondary research of interviews with current and past Chief Marketing Officers of the company will also be used, with the key points distilled down the most relevant, applicable content to e-marketing performance analytics and metrics of performance (Okazaki, Barwise, 2011). In addition, Apple has contributed a significant amount of video to e-marketing conferences, and video tracks from HubSpot, MarketingSherpa and other conferences will be studied for further insight. All of these information sources will be aggregated together to create a common, unified database of e-marketing strategies and performance data.
In evaluating the performance of integrated marketing communications strategies, it's imperative that a sequenced approach to first understanding strategy assumptions and second defining the phases of research align with the unique strengths of the respondent marketing organization (Caemmerer, 2009). When the entire series of e-marketing campaign applications and platform are taken into account, a more effective measure of overall e-marketing effectiveness can be defined. Taking all of these factors into account leads to a more effective methodology for measuring e-marketing effectiveness (Nair, Leng, 2012).
Research Objectives
The three phases are designed to capture the most relevant e-marketing effectiveness metrics available from Apple today. These research objectives are predicated on understanding how seven key categories of e-marketing effectiveness impact the overall performance if Apple's U.S.-based marketing strategies. These seven categories include organic search, referral traffic from investments in search engine optimization (SEO), and social media e-marketing effectiveness, e-mail marketing, paid search performance, direct traffic and ancillary campaigns. Each of these seven categories of e-marketing channels contributes to the total number of visits, contacts generated and ultimately the sales generated over time. Apple relies on the tight integration of these seven factors to gain a greater insight and performance measurement across all of their marketing, selling and service channels (Moriarty, Kosnik, 1989). From their retail stores to the enterprise sales teams calling on corporate accounts, Apple must continually monitor all seven areas to ensure a high degree of visibility across all sales efforts. These seven factors also have an accumulated effect on the overall brand strength of companies as well. Apple's branding teams regularly meeting with marketing executives including the CMO to define strategies for driving greater name awareness and brand recognition in addition to accomplishing current and future marketing, selling and service strategies. The IMC framework defined in the literature review provides an overview of how Apple organizes their strategies with a clear view to selling results. Taking into account external factors and combining them in the context of internal systems, Apple has devised a strategy for making IMC frameworks deliver immediate, significant value in their chosen markets (Mlot, 2015).
With these factors of taken into account in addition to the inherent nature of e-marketing effectiveness performance data being highly proprietary and often difficult to obtain, the following objectives are defined:
1. To ascertain through secondary research and analysis of Apple e-market activity how social media contributes to their e-marketing effectiveness.
2. Through the use of secondary data and analysis, the contribution of organic search to overall e-marketing effectiveness will also be measured.
3. Using secondary research including filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the effectiveness of e-mail marketing campaigns will also be evaluated.
4. Using a series of sources and interpolating the overall results, the e-marketing effectiveness's measure of direct traffic will also be interpolated.
The specific phases of the methodology are shown here:
Phase 1: Background Research Including United States Securities and Exchange Filings Analysis
This first phase of the study is focused on a thorough analysis of the forms 10K, 10Q and 8K that Apple periodically files with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. These documents occasionally mention performance metrics of e-marketing, e-sales and e-support programs. They also provide in-depth insights into which marketing and sales applications Apple is investing in, including their continued efforts to integrate Salesforce across all operating units to attain a single, unified view of the customer. Apple also reports on their revenue from e-commerce, iTunes and other key online initiatives in these documents, further making them invaluable for this research effort (Lendino, 2015). As the data from the SEC also includes performance by specific channel, this first phase of the research will be instrumental in setting the foundation for the accomplishment of the four research objectives.
Apple provides an analysis in their filings with the SEC of their channel strategies. This will be used for evaluating the overall performance of e-marketing effectiveness. As these metrics and analytics of e-marketing effectiveness are often not shared outright, significant time will be invested in interpreting and gaining greater insight into the overall performance of e-marketing programs (Machado, Can't, Seaborne, 2014).
In addition to these factors, Apple does not publish specifics on new product introductions due to the competitive value of this data. Often investor relations will publish a subset of data and provide a look-back series of aggregated data points to assure investors of a successful new product launch. This is often cited as the percentage of revenue from a new product for example. Apple is fairly consistent with this figure, often citing 60% of organic growth from new devices and the backlog from a supply chain standpoint typically reaches 45 days within two weeks of launch. These two metrics are often used to communicate the overall performance of a product launch. Apple does not disclosure the actual costs of these new product introductions yet interpolations are made with regard to their e-marketing effectiveness using the aggregated metrics provided in filings with the SEC and their own financial statements.
Phase 2: Industry and Financial Analyst Secondary Data Survey
There are a wide variety of research firms tracking e-marketing effectiveness in the high tech industry and many of them have Apple as a client (Kilambi, Laroche, Richard, 2013). These include Forrester, IDC, Gartner and several smaller boutique firms. The second phase of this methodology centers on gaining greater levels of precision into measuring Apple's e-marketing effectiveness by gaining access to industry studies from these research firms. As the library and university has several subscriptions, this can be achieved with existing resources.
Evaluating the current and future e-marketing effectiveness levels of performance in high tech provides an accurate level of benchmarking for evaluating Apple's performance as well. These insights will be used for evaluating and measuring the four objectives mentioned in this study, with specific focus on how the median levels of e-marketing effectiveness for each compare to how Apple is performing today. The focus and orientation on how to gain the greatest value of these metrics will also be included in the data analysis section of this analysis. With certain e-marketing effectiveness measures, their longitudinal aspects of their performance over time tell more about Apple's performance vs. just a single measure at a specific point in time (James, 2013). Whenever a specific e-marketing effectiveness metric can be used to illustrate a key point in the analysis, this approach has bene used. In capturing secondary data from industry and financial analysts, specific attention has been taken to ensure longitudinally-based variables are captured at the outset to ensure greater accuracy and analysis. This approach to data collection and analysis will also enable greater trending of the highest and lowest-performing aspects of the Apple e-marketing strategies.
Apple is a well-researched company and there is an abundance of financial data available. Using these secondary sources of industry and financial analysts' data, interpolations have been done and aggregated into HubSpot to track specific point-based performance of e-marketing effectiveness measurements and those mentioned earlier that are best measured using longitudinal, longer-range data. The outcomes of this type of analysis will show how Apple is using specific strategies across the spectrum of e-marketing strategies to accelerate the effectiveness and performance of specific strategies and programs.
Google Analytics and Salesforce are also heavily used throughout Apple, all unified to their website as well. Industry and financial analyst reports have mentioned this and rarely provide a glimpse into the internal dashboards of the company. Every effort has been made to collect and aggregate the data in these dashboards to provide an insightful analysis of the company's e-marketing effectiveness over time. As Apple has continued to shift to a more confidentially-based, secretive approach to new product introductions, the level of data they release to industry and financial analysts continues to become more aggregated. Every effort has been made to deconstruct these dashboards and gain greater insight into how Apple is performing from an e-marketing effectiveness standpoint. The data gained from Google Analytics and Salesforce, while aggregations of overall performance, serve to provide the insights and analysis for the data analysis, discussion of findings and conclusion sections of this paper.
Phase 3: Data and Knowledge Aggregation into Study Structure
The third phase of this methodology centers on aggregating together all the specific e-marketing effectiveness ratings and creating a unified report from them. This phase also will be where the overall results will be summarized into a prioritized list of the most and least effective e-marketing strategies and their results achieved over time. Apple's approach to creating this list centers on creating a ranking based first on overall trending captured in Google Analytics, followed by analysis using internal surveys and the data from Salesforce, their CRM application. Apple never provides individual customer counts in their Salesforce application as this data is too confidential. It does however publish their lead ranking stack bar report on occasion at industry trade groups and also at financial analyst days. This lead generation stack graphic has bene obtained from secondary research and provides the primary barometer of how the company is performing from a lead generation perspective. The last published lead generation stack graphic was in March, 2015 so fortunately the data is relatively current. This data also provides a breakout of how leads were generated and using data from SEC filings, industry and analyst reports, interpolation has made as to the origin of each band. This level of abstraction is at best approximate as Apple will not provide additional details beyond the aggregated graphic to show that their e-marketing is effective, which is a message they often want to deliver to financial and industry analysts.
One of the most challenging areas to gain access to are the web analytics and metrics of performance with regard to Apple's core e-commerce website. Using the data provided by 3rd party services including Quantcast which tracks overall website performance, a series of assumptions have been made with regard to Apple's web performance. The following metrics were found to be the most indicative of their main Apple e-commerce website performance. These include the number of sessions and their length (which averages 30 minutes or longer per visitor), page views, number of click thrus to offers, pages per visit seen by every visitor, click-thru rates, bounce rate for the site, average time on site and number of resource (white paper, brochure and other PDF downloads). Contacts added will be gained through analysis of their current customer counts and the differences in this figure across each financial period reporting is completed. All of these metrics taken together provide a useful grid for evaluating the company's overall website performance. As is the case with many of these kinds of web performance variables, tracking them over time provides insightful analysis as to what is occurring on the Apple website and throughout all e-marketing activities based on overall marketing strategy performance.
Data Analysis
Apple's social media strategy continues to accelerate in 2015, with the focus of their e-marketing strategies shifting to how to improve web and sales lead generation traffic from social media. The first research objective of this study is to ascertain through secondary research and analysis of Apple e-market activity how social media contributes to their e-marketing effectiveness. To accomplish this research objective, an aggregated view of all sources of Apple's e-marketing activity has been created. This aggregated view shows all activity across e-marketing strategies in thousands of visits, consolidated from the beginning of 2015. This data is for the launch of the new MacBook Pro-launched in March, 2015, with initial e-marketing campaigns beginning in January, 2015. The following graphic provides an overview of all e-marketing strategies over the last seven months, with total visit count show in thousands:
Figure 3: Analysis of E-Marketing effectiveness by channel
(January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015)
Evaluating the e-Marketing Effectiveness of Apple's Social Media Strategies
Apple typically has generated a very small percentage of their leads from social media, and the analysis completed supports this trend. Using the series of reports obtained from the company's 10K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and data provided during marketing conferences, it is estimated that Apple derives just .83% of all their sales leads over social media. Social media as a contributor to overall e-marketing effectiveness is minimal. Social media also is an area that Apple executives believe has the potential to help its watch and personal electronics products ramp faster than the higher-end laptops including the MacBook Pro, which is profiled in this analysis.
Social media generated just 854,000 visits and potential leads, and this equates to less than 1% (.83%) of all activity for Apple in the first six months of the year for the MacBook Pro. Apple is typically doesn't rely on social media as there are a group of marketing executives who believe their core website and referrals, driven by e-mail campaigns and events, are more effective. It is not surprising that social media is such a low percentage of Apple e-marketing effectiveness as a result of these factors. Apple's IMC's strategy is to combine its website presence, which is very significant from an e-marketing effectiveness standpoint, along with its events (not tracked as an e-marketing effectiveness variable) and its referral traffic to its website.
Apple's social media strategy is largely built on quickly getting new product introduction information out and attempting to use its inherent strengths to serve as a catalyst for its IMC strategies. Apple is unlike Dell, IBM or Samsung, all of which have massive social media centers with sophisticated analytics applications to track interactions and social media sentiment analysis. Apple engages in these activities yet not at the scale of its competitors. This is why the .83% of all contacts and leads are from social media.
With the total amount of traffic being very small from social media for Apple, the effectiveness of his specific e-marketing strategy needs to be evaluated. From January to June, 2015 Apple grew the number of contacts generated from social media for the MacBook Pro-launch from 68,000 to 854,000 (figures estimated based on analysis). So while the percentage of total traffic is very small (.83%) the effectiveness of the social media strategy is significant. Apple concentrates on the small business and enterprise computing buyers when selling the MacBook Pro, and as a result tends to do better in social media networks that are oriented towards these types of customers. The following graphic provides an overview of the social media e-marketing strategy's effectiveness.
Figure 4: Analysis of E-Marketing Effectiveness for Social Media
(January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015)
Apple's social media strategy for the MacBook Pro-places the greatest emphasis on those social networks where they will most likely attract those prospective customers with the highest incomes, including those owning small and medium businesses (SMBs) and also those working for very large companies (enterprises). The e-marketing effectiveness of concentrated on LinkedIn and Twitter was very effective for Apple in the first six months of the year. LinkedIn generated approximately 367,000 new prospects, Twitter generated 307,000 and Facebook, just 84,000. This is to be expected as these social media channels are only used by SMBs and enterprises to gain greater Information on how to run their businesses, these prospects don't typically turn to social media for recommendations on which new laptop computer to buy for their businesses. Apple also worked very hard on updating its Wikipedia entries, provided content and product demos on Google+, and also provides slide presentations on SlideShare. All of these other areas of their social media strategy (Wikipedia, Google+ and SlideShare) amounted to just 95,000 prospects taken together. Apple's e-marketing effectiveness on these platform has been mediocre at best. Despite their overall mediocre performance on lesser social media platforms, Apple's e-marketing effectiveness from a social media standpoint is in line and comparable to their competitors, who generate 3% of leads on these platforms. Figure 5 shows the distribution of contacts and leads generated by social media platform for the first six months of the year:
Figure 5:
Performance of Social Media Channels as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness (Visits in Thousands)
(January -- July, 2015) (Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015)
Based on analysis of Apple's HubSpot page activity (visible across their website in the URL: location of the browser) and the cumulative number of shares and Likes they are getting on LinkedIn for their MacBook Pro-sales promotion, the following history of LinkedIn activity has been created. This is an approximation, showing that Apple was able to generate 49,000 contacts for the new MacBook Pro-in advance product launch activity. The traffic jumps to 57,000 in March, drops in April to 46,000 and then jumps to 97,000 in June as a result of summer promotions being run across all other e-marketing channels. Apple continues to promote the MacBook Pro-in July, with partial history available as of this writing.
Figure 6:
Performance of Social Media Channel LinkedIn as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness (Visits in Thousands)
(January -- July, 2015) (Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015)
Evaluating the e-Marketing Effectiveness of Apple's Organic Search Strategies
Apple is a very analytically-driven corporate culture, choosing to rely on analytics and metrics of performance to evaluate nearly every decision vs. just choosing to trust intuition. This explains why the company doesn't invest very heavily in social media as its performance has often been mediocre for them in the past and continues today Organic search strategies on the other hand, which can be measured in real-time and provide immediate feedback regarding the effectiveness of e-marketing strategies, are a very high priority. Apple invests heavily in understanding which keywords across all search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) are the most effective in driving their new product introductions including the MacBook Pro-launch that was just successfully completed in March, 2015. Based on Apple's extensive data provided in the SEC documents and from industry conferences their VPs of Marketing and CMO present at, in addition to monitoring their search engine results using online tools including Quantcast and other SEO tracking freeware applications, the following analysis has been completed.
Using the stated methodology, it is estimated that Apple generated approximately 14,191,000 visits to their websites in the first six months of the year using organic search. One of the cornerstones of this approach is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which is the study of which keywords can optimize how many search results are returned for the given search terms provided. This is a very effective e-marketing strategy, generating 13.85% of all e-marketing activity for the MacBook Pro and is second only to direct traffic which is the result of print and location-based promotional strategies driven from walk-in store traffic.
Figure 7:
Organic Search Performance as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness
(Visits in Thousands) (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
Analyzing how organic search jumped to 13.85% of all e-marketing strategies shows that the ramp began in January, 2015 when the initial keywords were created for the MacBook Pro-launch and embedded into the many websites Apple relies on to drive traffic and eventually unit sales. The MacBook Pro-marketing team defined the unique value proposition of the product as "With the latest-generation Intel processors, all-new graphics, and faster flash storage, MacBook Pro-moves further ahead in power and performance" and embedded it in the product homepage on all Apple websites. This can be seen in Figure 8, which is the source code for the MacBook Pro-homepage on the Apple website. Apple's marketing team also concentrated on making the homepage for the product so well defined and unique that is core SEO performance would quickly take it about other potentially competing pages. Figure 8 shows the source code for the Apple MacBook Pro-home page:
Figure 8:
How Apple Makes Organic Search Performance Effective: MacBook Pro-Source Page
(Source: Analysis of Apple.com)
Apple replicates this same strategy across all websites globally, ensuring consistent performance across all MacBook Pro-pages. Being consistent and seeding these pages with keywords three months before product launch results in a very effective e-marketing strategy, generating 14,191,000 visits in just over six months.
Apple's SEO strategy is designed to also enable the first stage of the selling cycle, driving prospects to evaluate and purchase sections of the website. As Apple has a core strength in this area as a marketing strategy, the effectiveness of its performance on this area is exceptional. In January Apple's marketing team was able to generate 1,977,000 contacts from using SEO keywords to prelaunch the MacBook pro. This continues to slightly increase to 2,013,000 in February to 2,406,000 in March, which is when the MacBook pro-was launched. Post-launch the e-marketing effectiveness of organic search continues to accelerate, with June, 2015 being the best month ever for this campaign (2,719,000 contacts with potential prospects). In conclusion, the e-marketing effectiveness of organic search at Apple is among the best in high tech electronics, as benchmarked relative to peers who only average 5% of total e-marketing activity on this specific area of their strategies.
Figure 9: Monthly Organic Search Performance as Part of E-Marketing Effectiveness
(Visits in Thousands) (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
Evaluating the e-Marketing Effectiveness of Apple's E-Mail Marketing Strategies
Apple selectively relies on e-mail marketing, varying their approach by the products being promoted. Typically e-mail marketing is just used on the higher-end iPads, MacBooks and iPads being sold into SMBs and the enterprise. As a result, the total amount of traffic Apple generates form e-mail marketing campaigns is low. This is also the case with the MacBook Pro-launch, where just .88% or just 897,000 contacts were made for the new laptop from January through the time of this writing. This is a low volume of contacts by Apple standards, nearly a rounding error for their organic search performance.
Apple began the year with a very low-key campaign promoting the MacBook Pro, aimed primarily at enterprises. E-mail marketing traffic began at just 63,000 contacts, increasing to 236,000 by February and 498,000 at launch. By June, 2015 the MacBook Pro-e-mail campaigns were generating 889,000 contacts. Interpolating this performance over time shows that the enterprise began to accept and evaluate the MacBook Pro, further driving more HubSpot campaigns. Apple uses specific HubSpot tracking codes seen on e-mails received from them during these promotions, which makes tracking the performance of these elements in real-time possible.
The e-marketing effectiveness of e-mail marketing campaigns from a global standpoint is minimal at just .88% of total marketing strategy performance. This level of performance for e-marketing campaigns is consist with other companies in the high technology market arena that Apple competes in.
Figure 10: E-Mail Marketing Performance as Part of E-Marketing Effectiveness
(Visits in Thousands) (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
Despite the mediocre e-marketing effectiveness performance of e-mail, Apple shows prowess and exceptional effectiveness in the use of e-mail targeting techniques. Based on the value of research completed and insights gained from this study, Apple clearly considers e-mail spamming or carpet bombing of e-mail campaigns to be bad marketing practice at best and unethical at worst. The CMO's many comments at industry associates and marketing events support this contention.
Apple's ability to track e-mail marketing performance is exceptional, despite the very low levels of absolute traffic this strategy delivers. From an e-marketing effectiveness standpoint, e-mail marketing is one of the strongest Apple has for precise marketing to individuals and corporations who are interested in purchasing the MacBook Pro. One of the inherent strengths of e-mail marketing is the ability to precisely target a given e, and within an audience, a given audience. Apple was able to initially target SMBs and enterprises interested in the MacBook Pro-in January, 2015, gaining 63,000 potential high value leads through this approach. During March, 2015 Apple generated a record 257,000 potential leads through highly targeted e-mail marketing strategies.
Figure 11: E-Mail Marketing as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness
(Visits in Thousands) (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
While e-mail marketing does not have the ability to scale rapidly and challenge SEO or direct traffic volume, it is the most effective strategy in terms of targeting and precision of marketing. Apple rarely will rely on this approach to e-marketing strategies however, as the CMO and senior management team have often said at conferences, they do rely on it for the highest-margin, most valued products during their new product introduction phase as it has consistently proven to be a highly effective strategy. One of the most valuable lessons learned from completing this area of e-marketing effectiveness study is how well orchestrated e-mail campaigns that are driven by opt-in content and offers are very effective. This is one of the design objectives of HubSpot, which concentrates just on opt-in marketing and content delivery.
Evaluating the e-Marketing Effectiveness of Apple's Direct Traffic Strategies
Of the many e-marketing strategies Apple relies on for the launch of new products, specifically the MacBook Pro-earlier this year, the largest percentage of contacts and leads are from their direct traffic strategies. Direct traffic e-marketing strategies are driving an estimated 78.36% of all new contacts and leads, equating to approximately 80.2 million potential prospects for the MacBook Pro-on a worldwide basis. Direct traffic is the most accurate metrics of how effective the overall IMC strategies are being for Apple over the long-term. The combined effects of organic search investments, continued investments in highly targeted e-mail marketing campaigns, the retailing and direct selling strategies, all supported by e-marketing programs, all are contributing factors to the direct traffic performance levels. For many companies who rely on IMC-based strategies to broaden their reputation in the market while also enabling a greater inbound contact and lead generation activity, the direct traffic measurement becomes the most valuable part of their analytics strategy as it shows overall performance. Apple's highly successful retail stores globally are also all continually promoting the website as a means to further attract, sell and serve customers as well. With nearly every e-marketing strategy having a component that points to the website, direct traffic is the focal point of the smallest strategies to the largest global initiatives.
Figure 12 illustrates the cumulative direct traffic for the MacBook Pro-from January, 2015 through July as of this writing. The initial traffic levels began with 19.1 million total hits to the MacBook Pro-website pages (this includes all languages and is an estimate based on analysis of investor relations documents, Apple.com traffic and HubSpot Analysis). Apple launched its IMC strategy for the MacBook Pro-in March, 2015 and was able to gain 49 million hits to the products page. June continued to accelerate with 79 million hits overall. The e-marketing effectiveness of direct traffic, while an aggregated measures, shows how effective Apple is at orchestrating and launching IMC strategies and campaigns globally for new product introductions.
Figure 12: Cumulative Direct Traffic as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness
(Visits in Thousands) (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
Apple's performance on direct traffic however hasn't been as impressive as the cumulative figures indicate when they are analyzed on a month-to-month basis. Apple's IMC strategies aimed at driving traffic for March, 2015 generated 15.3M visits, down from 19.6M in January. Figure 13, Monthly Direct Traffic as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness. As of June, 2015 Apple had generated just under 50% of the direct traffic they had generated in January, 2015 for the MacBook Pro-worldwide. Factors that could have contributed to this drop are analyzed in the next section, discussion of findings and conclusion.
Figure 13: Monthly Direct Traffic as a Measure of E-Marketing Effectiveness
(Visits in Thousands) (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
The direct traffic performance for the MacBook Pro-product line globally is not as consistent as any other e-marketing effectiveness rating in the entire study. Using Google Analytics to ascertain how and why this is happening was undertaken with data captured from web tracking applications, HubSpot captured data and the historical data Apple provided under condition of anonymity and use purely for academic research. The following data analysis from Google Analytics illustrate the factors that are impacting the reduction indirect traffic over time.
Starting with demographics of the direct traffic, its clear Apple is doing a great job of attracting primarily males in the 25 -- 34 and 35 -- 44 age groups. Just 22.7% of those in the direct traffic category of e-marketing effectiveness are females. The following table, interpolated in Google Analytics based on actual Apple data, illustrates this point. For the first six months of the year, Apple is attracting primarily 25- to 34-year-old men, and hardly getting the attention of women or females. The analysis also shows just 10.17% of all direct traffic contacts are in the 18 -- 24 age segment, a market segment where Apple typically excels. The data also doesn't show any tracing with the age group where the majority of C-level executives are either (55 -- 64).
Figure 14: Direct Traffic Analysis Using Google Analytics (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
Direct traffic analysis based on estimated data captured during the methodology segment of this study show that Apple is doing an excellent job of generating interest in the MacBook pro-in the United States. It is however struggling to gain greater awareness in other regions of the world, especially Europe, where the company has an excellent reputation. The distribution of direct traffic, while an estimate, also shows that Australia and a large part of Asia are not hearing about the MacBook Pro-to the level needed to drive greater web traffic and leads. The lack of Chinese traffic is a cause for concern in terms of global e-marketing effectiveness for the MacBook Pro-launch as well. Figure 15, Global Direct Traffic Analysis Using Google Analytics, provides an estimated overview of the MacBook Pro-e-marketing traffic for the first six months of the year. For the e-marketing strategy to be considered effective, it would have had to have also shown activity in Asia, Europe and Africa. Those areas are relatively light with traffic.
Figure 15: Global Direct Traffic Analysis Using Google Analytics (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
Figure 15 also shows that the primary personas, or aggregated view of specific customer segments and audiences, are not being reached as well as they potentially could be. Apple's depth of expertise with demographic segmentation is foundational to their marketing strategies. Personas are often used for guiding the overall development and launch of new product introductions to ensure a higher level of accuracy and fidelity of market messaging is achieved. Figure 15 indicates that there may be additional focus needed on personas and their specific interests.
In defining personas, it's critically important to consider the affinity categories of interest personas have. For Apple, this is primarily technophiles, or those that are the early adopters of new technologies. Apple's insight into their specific interests, and the ability to tailor specific messages and key insights to them, is an essential catalyst of gaining early adopters for their new devices. The single most important persona and group that influences the purchase of new Apple products are technophiles. Figure 16, Direct Traffic Analysis, Affinity Categories, indicate Apple is going in the right direction.
Figure 16: Direct Traffic Analysis, Affinity Categories (January -- July, 2015)
(Source: Apple Investor Relations, 2015; analysis of Apple.com; HubSpot Analysis)
The dominant segment that the e-market strategies are reaching globally today for the MacBook Pro-are 25- to 34-year-old men, whose interests includes TV, movies, travel and are also business professionals. These are the core values of the dominant segment Apple is successfully reaching today. With just 22% of women being interested in the MacBook Pro, Apple clearly has an alignment challenge with regard to the affinity rankings obtained through research. Shifting the focus away from the pure technophile by concentrating more on the benefits of communication, creativity, autonomy and featuring more women in their advertising would all help. Apple became galvanized on the SMB and enterprise communities to such an extent that their marketing reflected a purchase cycle mindset to C-level executives, discussing speed, agility and coolness of the MacBook Pro-as a symbol of corporate power. In the rush to gain sales in these two very valuable business segments, Apple lost many of their strongest women customers who also look to purchase high-end laptops.
To enhance and improve the positioning of the MacBook Pro, Apple must create an entirely new persona that concentrates on professional women. The data from Figure 16 support this and underscore its importance. The distribution of age groups also shows that while Apple may have found the right messaging to attract the fastest growing demographic segment of 25- to 34-year-olds, yet it needs to broaden this focus and be able to attract a broader audience. What's also going to be a challenge based on the distribution of age groups is the drop off in traffic for the 55- to 64-year-old males, which is the dominant age segment of C-level executives in enterprises would approve large-scale purchases of the Apple MacBook Pro. This is another challenge the data analysis provides insights into, and underscores how e-marketing effectiveness analytical tools including Google Analytics and HubSpot e-marketing applications can find gaps in strategy execution and performance. Taken together, the lack of women interested in the MacBook Pro, and the lack of overall support in the senior management-age potential prospects illustrate that the e-marketing strategy needs another phase to better align with potential market opportunities.
Another aspect of the personas and their interest in the MacBook Pro-can be found from an in-market segment analysis of estimated traffic. Figure 17, Direct Traffic Analysis, In-Market Segments provides insights into the factors that are the most interest to those opting in and participating in e-marketing campaigns. Apple has been very effective in positioning the MacBook Pro-as a work-related laptop, as evidenced by the dominance of the Employment line below. Clearly those young, predominately male professionals are most active in financial services, investment services, real estate, residential properties, travel hotels and accommodations, air travel and employment. Software is also included for 2.15% of the overall audience.
Figure 17, Direct Traffic Analysis provides insights into how many of the most important contacts Apple has been able to obtain through e-marketing strategies define their industries. For Apple to expand their potential sales of the MacBook Pro, it needs to return to its core strengths in graphics, creative design and its many related areas. The MacBook Pro-is perceived as a business power tool and needs to be recast to make it more of the mainstream core value proposition of Apple itself. The fall-off in women's interest in the device could be a direct result of this over-emphasis on the MacBook Pro-being purely a powerful tool for business and less of an enabler of creativity and excellent design.
You’re 80% through this paper. Sign up to read the full paper.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.