*** Please read the syllabus (pdf document) uploaded under >>Learning Activities>> carefully! ***

Imagine the following scenario:

You’ve just been hired to manage online marketing for Kent’s Camera Castle. Along with your team you are responsible for the company’s digital marketing efforts (search engine advertising, email marketing, and landing page optimization). That means you manage a $5,000 campaign budget!

You don’t need to be afraid as you will not spend that money in the real world. This is all part of a simulation called Stukent – The Digital Marketing Simulation. This simulation allows you to test different keywords and bidding strategies in search engine advertising (SEA), test different versions of emails to reach out to your existing customer base, and optimize your landing pages. All while you compete against other companies that sell cameras as well.

The big take-away from this course should be: Test, test, test! But do it correctly, we’ll show you how!

After completing this course, you will be able to

1. calculate the most important digital marketing metrics in order to optimize digital marketing campaigns,
2. describe the importance of experiments for digital marketing in various contexts,
3. describe the differences between the various forms of experiments that you may run in a digital environment (e.g., A/B testing, difference-in-difference designs, etc.),
4. analyze data from digital marketing campaigns (experimental and non-experimental) and use your analyses to make qualified recommendations for improving these campaigns, and
5. effectively communicate your data analysis in a presentation.

The course is taught using a combination of interactive lectures, class discussions, and student presentations.

The course has 4 ECTS, which translates into a workload of 100 hours, 24 hours of which are contact hours in the classroom. That means that you’ll need to work for about 76 hours outside the classroom. The workload (in hours) that you can anticipate for every grading component is approximately proportional to the weight that each grading component has for your final grade (i.e., expect a workload of approx. 15 hours for a presentation that has a 20% weight for your final grade).

Weights for each grading component used to compute your final grade: 

• 30% of the final grade is based on the submitted write-ups of different papers
• 30% of the final grade is based on your rank in the simulation and the effort that you put into it
• 20% of the final grade is based on the peer review presentation
• 20% of the final grade is based on the take-home exam

Please note that to ensure an equal contribution of group members for the group assignment, a peer assessment will be conducted among group members, which enters into the computation of the individual grades for your group work. This means that the members of a group are required to assess other students regarding their relative contribution.