UBC Web Analytics: “Measuring Marketing Campaigns Online”

This is part three of a four-part series on my experience enrolled in the UBC Award of Achievement in Digital Analytics Program.

ubc-wa-banner

Previous posts in the series:

The third course Measuring Marketing Campaigns Online begins with somewhat of a quick refresher roughly based on key concepts of the second course Web Analytics for Site Optimization – in case you never took that one and jumped straight onto the third. This “Online Marketing Fundamentals” refresher also includes the surprise free giveaway i first mentioned in the second course Web Analytics for Site Optimization.  The required reading in this course is as like the second course; a lot, but is very rewarding for what you learn and hopefully take away with you is pretty invaluable, especially given the current state of the economy and the opportunities that can arise.

Following that is the real meat ‘n potatoes of the course and is basically split into three areas: PPC Campaigns; identifying keyword candidates, measuring campaign latency / recency, using web analytics to optimize PPC campaigns, providing the right maintenance in order to get the most out of them, Email Campaigns;  basic metrics to measure their effectiveness, campaign targeting and database segmentation, customer retention via email, providing the right maintenance in order to get the most out of them and Display Advertising Campaigns; the placement and pricing of display ads, metrics for assessing their effectiveness and correct coding practices for tracking using web analysis. The course even covers a good bit about Adservers, Rich Internet Applications (RIA) such as Adobe Flex and designing dashboards for the presentation of your findings. Note that if you’re not an advertiser or marketer by trade, like myself, you may find this course a bit difficult to latch onto at first, just keep reading for it’ll all start making sense in due time.

Assignment wise there are three in total; two written  and one discursive involving all your classmates and the tutor. There are no surprises in this course and you are notified of all assignments well in advance during the readings. As always, the final report is the most challenging and requires a good bit of extra thought and analysis; you may need to think out-of-the-box on this one!

Our instructor was James Ollunga, McCann World Group who i also had for the second course Web Analytics for Site Optimization. James directed this course with subtle nudges once and awhile notifying us of assignment due dates, initiating discussions on the forums  and pointing us to pertinent articles elsewhere on the Internet. He also left very helpful and constructive comments when it came to grading the assignments.

Overall, for me this course was the most challenging so far because it made me step out of my analytic role and into a more advertising/marketing mindset and basically run before i could walk. I thoroughly enjoyed it for that though and it’s impression it has left me with. I highly recommend this course for anyone curious or currently involved with Internet marketing.

Continue onto part four in this series: Creating and Managing the Analytical Business Culture

4 Responses

  1. I took this course as well and found Russell did a good summary of it. I agree, it was basic enough that I felt I could keep up but challenging enough to push me. I also highly recommend the course.

  2. I just signed up for the certificate program at UBC that is partnered with UC Irvine named Wed Intelligence. The introductory course begins early July and I am really excited to get going. The second course is already filled till the fall, so I am a little worried about how long it will take to complete all four. Reading reviews like yours confirms I am on the right path and that I will learn a tremendous amount from this program.

    1. Hi Christine, yes the three courses that i have taken for the award of achievement and the fourth that i’ll take come September are prerequisites for the intelligence cert. I wouldn’t worry too much about completion time as the courses are really only one month in duration (broken into four one week sessions) so if you miss out one month you’ll mos def get into the following! Nice to see your enthusiasm; all the best on the cert!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.