Studyabroad.com Newsletters

Studyabroad.com Newsletter - Volume 36

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I. COUNTING THE CLICKS - MARK LANDON

Online advertising has numerous advantages over traditional advertising. Perhaps the biggest advantage offered by online advertising is the ability of the advertiser to measure results. Studyabroad.com is pleased to offer its advertisers the ability to measure the effectiveness of advertising with click-thru reports.

These reports are now provided automatically for all new advertisers and we are working on creating this functionality for existing advertisers. We intend to have all of our web-based advertisers set up with tracking reports by the end of the first quarter of the year.

Here's how it works: Each paid advertising link from the Studyabroad.com web site goes through a special tracking URL. This URL allows us to record the click in our log before passing the user on to the advertiser's website. With the clicks recorded on our web server log, we can then generate a log report specifically on any given advertiser's click-thrus.

These reports allow advertisers to count the number of clicks and break them down by time (hour, day, week, month). The reports also allow the clicks to be analyzed in terms of the users domain (.com, .edu, .uk, etc.) and even sub-domain (aol.com, upenn.edu, etc.).

Other reports will allow you to look at clicks from specific pages on the Studyabroad.com system and to specific pages on your system. This type of analysis allows you to determine the effectiveness of advertising on specific pages within the Studyabroad.com system.

We are confident that this type of reporting will serve our advertisers well and that it will help prove the effectiveness and value of advertising with Studyabroad.com. Please contact Studyabroad.com customer support at webmaster@studyabroad.com if you have any questions on our tracking system.

II. MAKE US WORK FOR YOU! - JENNIFER LEWIS

Continually dedicated to an awareness of areas for improvement and maintaining a responsiveness to Studyabroad.com user needs, our organization welcomes the submission of all forms of feedback. Online users including prospective study abroad students, program administrators and Studyabroad.com advertisers frequently submit ideas. Highly motivated and challenged by customer feedback and suggestions, Studyabroad.com regularly analyzes received submissions.

At present, our organization is immersed in numerous outreach efforts in order to obtain Studyabroad.com demographic and user lifestyle information, study abroad habits analysis, and Studyabroad.com customer satisfaction statistics. The varied nature of feedback received by Studyabroad.com has consisted of issues of design and online format, visibility and advertiser prevalence, page impressions and click through rates.

General site facts, traffic information and student commentary are archived online at Studyabroad.com! *For some of Studyabroad.com's latest site and user facts, see: http://www.studyabroad.com/traffic.html. *To read Studyabroad.com student commentary: http://www.studyabroad.com/comments.html.

As well, Studyabroad.com is conducting an online student survey. This survey will help us better understand why students study abroad and thus, increase the value of the Studyabroad.com Directory!
*Encourage students to take our survey at (for students ONLY): http://action.edudirectories.com/sabsurvey/sabsurvey.taf?_function=form
*Fill out an online Feedback form at your leisure (for administrators and students): http://www.studyabroad.com/forms/feedback.html

III. COST-EFFECTIVE PROMOTIONAL PRODUCTS - LORI FAUNCE

Promotional products can either be an effective means of advertising or a waste of spending dollars. When choosing promotional items, however, many people decide to buy what is "cute," "nice," or "interesting," but not necessarily productive.

A promotional item should not be confused with a gift. Many companies send gifts to associates, prized affiliates, good clients or other close business associates. These gifts should be "nice," generally more expensive, and do not have to blatantly promote your organization. For example, a classy globe with a discrete imprint of your organization's name and logo makes a great gift, but not a great promotional item.

Depending on the quantity being distributed and budget constrictions, promotional items can range from $.10 to $10.00. The cost-effectiveness of each item, however, should be taken into account in order to receive the most "bang for your buck." Questions should be asked such as: "For each item given out, how many people are likely to see it?" (e.g., a t-shirt is likely to be worn by a college student and seen by many people in a day whereas a pen will be hidden in a pocket); "Is our logo and name prominent enough so that most people who see the promotional item will also see our organization's brand?"; and "Is this an timeless item that will be viewed many times (even by the same people) or will it be quickly discarded or stored?".

If possible, an estimated cost per impression should be done as well. For example, if you purchase 1,000 promotional items for a total of $400 and you estimate that it will be viewed 5,000 times (not just the item but your organization or program's name and/or logo!), then the cost per impression is $.08. For a promotional product that is a pretty good rate, but if you translate it into online dollars the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is $80. Not too many people would pay a CPM of $80! Is that to say all promotional items are not cost-effective? Not at all. Promotional items offer branding and timelessness that online advertising cannot and are therefore naturally more expensive. Keep in mind though, that just as with online advertising, you should be willing to spend more for an item that will be viewed and/or used by a highly targeted audience and less for an item viewed by an untargeted audience.

Other things one should consider when deciding on a promotional item is how the item relates to the product or service being advertised. A watercolor set may be perfect to promote a Fine Arts program, but would not be nearly as effective in promoting a Psychology program. The originality of the item under the context it will be handed out should also be considered. A pen given to a student in an institution's own career center is more likely to be kept and used than a pen given at a graduate school fair where a student is also likely to receive several other pens at the same time. In conclusion, if you evaluate the suggestions above before purchasing a promotional item, you will save yourself much time and money, not to mention you will gain a more effective means of advertising!

IV. NEW ADVERTISERS

We welcome the following new advertisers, all of whom are new since our last newsletter:

Abbey Road Overseas Programs
Academia Enforex
Academia Vinigulaza
Alternative Therapies College of Australia Nature Care College of Naturopathic Medicine
Breakthroughs Abroad, Inc.
Caffe Italiano Club
CALIA (Centro de Arte y Lenguas Ibero-Azteca, S.C.)
Coeur de France
DALI Ltd. At London College of Fashion
Giralda Center Sevilla
Helsinki Summer School
i to i International Projects
International Youth Ambassador Program
Lingua 2000
Loyola University Chicago Rome Center
Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad Law Center
Santa Clara University, International Programs

V. TRAFFIC REPORT

**UNIQUE HOSTS BY MONTH

Here's a look at unique hosts (roughly the number of unique users) per month visiting studyabroad.com:

December 2000: 128,371
December 1999: 68,538

November 2000: 135,360
November 1999: 98,813

October 2000: 136,961
October 1999: 99,847

September 2000: 200,683
September 1999: 80,074

August 2000: 263,402
August 1999: 70,356

July 2000: 94,076
July 1999: 49,774

June 2000: 108,392
June 1999: 56,408

May 2000: 99,502
May 1999: 51,974

April 2000: 93,204
April 1999: 61,277

March 2000: 108,291
March 1999: 64,205

February 2000: 121,078
February 1999: 63,855

January 2000: 95,653
January 1999: 66,263

VI. TRAFFIC FACT OF THE MONTH

The following are the top 10 countries searched on Studyabroad.com during the fourth quarter of 2000:

1. England
2. Spain
3. Italy
4. Australia
5. United States
6. France
7. Germany
8. Canada
9. Ireland
10. Japan

VII. TOP TEN EDU Domains

Here are the current top 10 EDU Domains visiting Studyabroad.com for the three-month period ending on January 25, 2001. Following each school name you will find the number of pages viewed from that campus during the period.

1. University of Virginia - 5,633
2. Stanford University - 4,397
3. University of Michigan - 4,014
4. University of California, Irvine - 3,824
5. Rutgers University - 3,759
6. University of Pittsburgh - 3,756
7. SUNY, Buffalo - 3,483
8. University of Washington - 3,376
9. Indiana University - 3,304
10.University of Minnesota - 3,146

Studyabroad.com
1450 Edgmont Ave, Suite #140
Chester, PA 19013
USA

(610) 499-9200
http://www.studyabroad.com

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