In this paper, I will share my experience as a marketing intern at Cortek Test Solutions and present and analyze the digital marketing results achieved during my summer internship from June 1st to August 4th.
Cortek Test Solutions is a leading manufacturer of custom and off-the-shelf test fixtures and related products for the ATE and electronics industry. With over two decades of industry experience, the company has been highly successful due to its innovative and customer-oriented approach. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the company experienced unprecedented growth, and the CEO wanted to revamp its branding and marketing efforts to align with its increase in visibility.
As an intern, my responsibilities included creating and monitoring email marketing campaigns, redesigning various data materials such as data sheets, manuals, and corporate brochures, refreshing the company and CEO's LinkedIn pages to improve engagement, creating informative articles to publish on their LinkedIn account, and writing copy for their new website that is currently being developed.
Email Marketing
At Cortek, they use Constant Contact for email marketing campaigns. My supervisor had expressed a desire to increase their open rates and send out at least two email campaigns every month. Previously, they only sent out one email campaign per month and sometimes skipped months. Consequently, the open rates were relatively low, ranging from 5 to 13%. I believe this was due to the inconsistency in sending emails, along with the unengaging and uninformative subject lines being utilized.
To address this, I cleaned up our contact list by removing those who had unsubscribed or blocked us and those whose emails were no longer active. I also improved the graphics in our email campaigns and sent out 2-3 campaigns each month. I even created drafts for future campaigns to last until November. Furthermore, I made sure that our emails were mobile-friendly. By improving the subject lines, updating their contacts, and enhancing the content of the emails, the open rates improved significantly to an average of 28-31%. Cortek's web designer even noticed an increase in website traffic following these changes.
In addition, I drafted LinkedIn posts and articles to accompany our email campaigns. Further information regarding these efforts will be outlined in the following section.
LinkedIn Updates
One of my primary responsibilities was updating the company's LinkedIn page. Because I had no experience in tech or engineering, I conducted extensive SEO and tech marketing research before beginning the project. I started by redesigning the company's LinkedIn banner and went from there. Although I had limited creative capabilities due to a lack of software, I presented several options to my supervisor. I then edited the page's information, buttons, overview, and hashtags. It's important to note that I didn't have complete freedom to post what I believed would most effectively increase traffic and engagement. However, what my supervisor and I ultimately settled on was significantly improved. After completing the company page, I proceeded to update my supervisor's LinkedIn profile.
Before I joined, Cortek's posts on LinkedIn received minimal engagement, averaging one like. The graphics used were sometimes cluttered and off-brand. Often, posts were created on the CEO's LinkedIn account and then reposted by the company account. For content, they would share a link to their most recent email campaign with a short caption encouraging readers to click on the link to read more.
To improve engagement, I created independent content for LinkedIn that complemented ongoing email campaigns instead of simply providing a link to the campaign. For longer content, I used the LinkedIn article function. I conducted extensive research to write the articles and created visually pleasing covers and engaging headlines. After publishing the articles, I accompanied them with posts explaining their content and researched hashtags. Then, I reposted them on my supervisor's LinkedIn account with different wording for the posts but the same hashtags. As a result, engagement on the company's content increased, with articles and posts receiving 5-10 likes and multiple reposts. Articles received around 150-233 impressions, and there was a significant increase in organic engagement.
Prior to my work, the company's LinkedIn page had only 88 followers. In the two months I have worked for them, that number has increased to 195. There has been a 396.2% increase in page views, a 223.3% increase in unique visitors, and a 350% increase in custom button clicks.
Redesigning Company Material
I was given the responsibility of revamping all of Cortek's outdated company material. This included creating new data sheets and manuals for their different products, as well as redesigning the company brochure.
Here is an example of what one of the old data sheets looked like:
I was asked to redesign and expand it to include a FAQ section:
To maintain consistency with the company's branding, I incorporated their existing colors and added highlight colors that corresponded with Cortek's products. This part of my job was my favorite as I had the freedom to exercise my creative abilities. Regrettably, I cannot provide samples of the company manuals I created as they are confidential.
Conclusion
I had a fulfilling internship with Cortek Test Solutions where I gained valuable insights on marketing for the tech/engineering industry. My supervisor has extended an offer for me to continue working part-time to continue their marketing efforts.