The software I can't live without.... Fireworks!

This post is for anyone who has found themselves needing to create some graphic pieces for their website, but don't have the experience with the tools.  Over the past year things have changed up and now I need to create artwork for emails, the website and social media. So, I got Adobe Creative Suite and without any training just dived right in.

I first started with Photoshop, but ran into many challenges. The most frustrating was having to click on the layer I wanted to work on. I always forgot that piece, then I would mess up a different layer and need to back track a bit. Then I was turned onto Fireworks.

Compared to Photoshop, Fireworks is a dream. It is pretty easy to learn the tricks on this program and- no more going to the navigation bar of your piece to change layers!

Can't Live without.. My Music!

My job has me primarily working on the computer and like most entry level employees I am in a cube. I am very close to customer service so there is chatter constantly. Most of the time I don't mind, but sometimes it can drive me crazy. So I block it all out with music so I can focus on my work.

I usually use my iPad to play my music so that I don't drain the battery on my phone, and my iPad can usually last days before I have to charge it again. I have realized that my music tastes change almost weekly. One week I will be more into country, the next week top 40 music and next week it will be entirely different.

Not only do I use music at work, but I listen to it in the car (obviously, need a distraction from traffic) and while working out. If I have music to listen to, then I have a much more successful workout!

Life a year after College

After graduating over a year ago (I know time flies!) I am now in the business world putting everything I learned in school to practice. I work in ecommerce and focus on running the consumer websites (the company as a whole is more B2B focused). I love that I have my hand in everything, from email design and implementation to content management and campaign management.

I have realized that I can be pretty ADD when it comes to the work I do. I can never really start and finish a project without doing other things. So, this job is perfect because I don't have to. I can take little breaks and do other projects (or put out fires). Now that I have this amazing job, I will be sharing some of the experiences I have had as well as the software and technologies we use everyday.

Email Marketing for B2B companies

Over the summer I interned with Jones Lang LaSalle, one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the world. I got to work with their email marketing campaign. The first daunting task was to manage the distribution list. Let me tell you this was not the most fun, however it was highly important to the metrics of the campaign as well as it sparked my interest for email marketing.


My next task was to research metrics and what was considered successful and what was not. The first website I found was by Mail Chimp on the industry averages for open rates on emails. OPEN RATES. This surprised me at first on how low open rates are for these emails, however thinking about my own behaviors, I rarely read most of the newsletters I subscribe to. Note to self: SUBJECT LINE IS KEY!


As for research, the most interesting thing about this was the only thing I used for research was Google. I didn't look to find any books, nor did I talk to people I know in the industry. This is definitely more evidence on how times are changing and technology allows us to have any information possible at our finger tips. With the information I learned from reading hundreds of articles and blog posts, I was able to make recommendations with powerful evidence to support my claims and ideas.

Blogging in Review

As my school years winds to the end, it is time to review how my personal branding project went. At first I was not into the whole blogging thing, but after jumping in and writing about something I love, I have seen the huge benefits of blogging. 

 Since this is a blog about market research, of course I had Google Analytics on my blog to see how effective my blog was. Below are some screen shots of my analytics. 

This is a shot that shows the general information- it shows I have had 167 visits to my website between January and April. Of those, 122 were unique visitors. The average time on the blog was 2 min and 33 seconds. I was really pleased to read this statistic because it showed that people were at the very least reading one post I had on my blog. 

In the image above it shows the bounce rate at 72.46%. For not having many pages for my viewers to go to, I think this is a great rate. 


While all these stats look fantastics, once I looked more in depth, I saw that there were lots of visitors who didn't spend anytime on the blog and left just as soon as they go there. This fact makes the first statistics seem like more people are going to my blog than actually are. Knowing this kept my head in the game and determined to try and make better posts that were more appealing to the viewers. Hopefully time will show that this tactic has worked. 


I have loved this experience and will continue to work on this blog as well as use twitter (@MegCril) to make connections with other market researchers to learn more about this evolving industry. I have learned about the newer tools that market researchers are using to gain data about consumers online. 


So stay posted for even more tools that are being used as well as my thoughts on different types of industry news!

Proof that Sex and Money go hand in hand

      FlowingData recently did a study of people who are looking for casual sex and how much income they make. They wanted to see if there was any correlation between the two factors.

  OkCupid, who ran the research stated, "money seems to be a more powerful influence on sex drive than culture or even religion". While this report doesn't prove that money will get you sex, it just shows that it is a motivator of wanting/ looking for sex.

Some food for thought!

Students and Market Research

 

Cvent recently did an article about how business school kids are becoming huge fans of online market research tools. Their reasons as to why are the fact that online surveys can reach much more people, are cost effective compared to the old school way of paper and pen surveys as well as there is a higher response rate.

   I think a big place that Cvent missed as to reasons why students flock to this medium for research is that these students have grown up with technology. I think it is only natural for us to be most comfortable with technology and use that to gain insight into matters. I would venture that lots of students are more comfortable reaching out online than in person- just because this is what we are used to. Luckily the internet has allowed us to do research, in some ways better research because we are a technological generation. However there are the downsides to online market research still like Cvent discussed- not being able to reach every possible target market (ie people who aren't online and children). It also is minimizing our face to face interaction with the customers. I wonder just how important that face to face interaction is. How does it influence people's behaviors and answers to questions? Will the quality of information decrease because survey takers don't know the person who is "interviewing" them?