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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Though it may appear the following “Eulogizing” exposition of monotonous beat of a usual

acknowledgement I assert, beyond the confines of simple sense of the word “gratitude”.

I would like to thank Mr. Dinesh Kotha who gave this opportunity to work at Confirm Ticket

Online Solutions Private Limited I express my profound gratitude to my acknowledged guide

Mr. Pranav Chimular whose guidance and constant inspiration led towards the completion of

the project work. I would also like to thank all the employees of Confirm Ticket Online

solution Private Limited who helped me during the course of project and without whom this

project would not have been possible.

I am also thankful to my faculty mentor Prof. Rajat Sharma for assisting me in

staying in track with the project. I seize this opportunity to pass on my deep felt thanks to

those who have helped me directly or indirectly for the successful completion of this report.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction & Background………………….……………………………………….3

2. Email marketing

a. Types of Email campaign …………..……………………………………………5

b. Software, Websites and tool use..….……………………………………………..7

c. Facebook Email hack and spam check….………………………………………..8

3. User Online Onboarding

a. Tools and website used……..……………….……………………………………9

b. Application……………..………………….……………………………………...9

4. Facebook marketing

a. Posts and results ………..………………………………………………….……10

b. Year plan and analysis…..……….…,,……………………………………..……15

c. Content management.……………….………………………………………...…17

5. Online Survey

a. Tools and website used………………………………………………………….18

b. Application and analysis……………………………………………………..….19

6. Pamphlet test campaign……………………………………………………………..20

7. Online reputation management……………………………………………………...21

8. Instagram and Pinterest……………………………………………………………...23

9. Achievements...……………………………………………………………………...24

10. References…………………………………………………………………………...25

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Introduction and Background

Confirm ticket online solution Private Limited is a growing name in field of travel in

India. It solves the basic problem on Indian train travellers.

Key Features: 1. Predict confirmation chances of waitlist train tickets 2. Discover confirm vacant seats from next/previous stations

Key Stats: 1. 25 million+ PNR predictions 2. 170 million+ Train predictions 3. 6 lac + downloads on Android 4. 40,000+ daily users

Prediction is computed based on the historical data like booking and cancellation trends, station quota, seasonality, holidays, days of the week and many other such parameters. Available on Android, Windows and iOS and also having web service.

Social media marketing (SMM) is a form of Internet marketing that utilizes social networking websites as a marketing tool. The goal of SMM is to produce content that users will share with their social network to help a company increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach. In our case the different Social media channels used were Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and many other. Facebook: The official page of company had 36K like already but engagement and traffic was very low. Instagram: 3 post in a year Pinterest: Inactive The initial objective was to increase the traffic and engagement through relevant and engaging posts. Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. We had three type of Email campaign in span of two months. 1. Acquisition 2. Lifecycle Emails 3. Newsletter Emails. Online reputation management (ORM) is the practice of crafting strategies that shape or influence the public perception of an organization, individual or other entity on the Internet. It helps drive public opinion about a business and its products and services. So ORM is focused on repairing malicious content: anonymous, negative online commentary posted on Internet forums and in the comments sections accompanying blogs and media platforms. We took different forum like 1. Google Play store 2. Facebook 3. Quora where we tried to answer the relevant doubts of consumers and tried to give best possible positive perception about the company.

Online Surveys help in knowing the feedback from targeted audience. It helps in

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planning and strategizing the future path for any company. There are many

companies which gives free online surveys and their analysis. You just need to make

the survey on the tool and embed the given code on your website and the responses

are recorded and analysed by these website.

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Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the easiest and most effective marketing channel. I did

three campaign

1. Acquisition: Emails to new people and introducing them to the organization. It is important to get targeted audience for this campaign and fortunately my mentor had a lists of Email that was collected by him. 2. Lifecycle Emails: These Emails were sent to those who have already installed the app. Lifecycle email consisted of 7 emails were each email were sent to particular group of people falling in that category. For example If a person have just installed the app we used send them a Welcome email introducing them about the app and its feature. I designed and created the campaign. Seven Lifecycle emails were: A. Welcome Email: For the people who have just installed the app they will get an Email which will include the key feature and how to use them. B. Introducing alternate feature A special feature of the app. If a person have not used this particular feature (this can be tracked by help of Moengage) then we will send this Email after filtering. C. Introducing Live status feature A special feature of the app. If a person have not used this particular feature (this can be tracked by help of Moengage) then we will send this Email after filtering. D. Introducing offline feature A special feature of the app. If a person have not used this particular feature (this can be tracked by help of Moengage) then we will send this Email after filtering. E. Secrets to book Tatkal tickets. An additional points for people so that they feel really engaged with the app. F. We miss you Email If a person is not using the app often we will send this Email and suggesting them to use any new update feature. G. Uninstall Email If a user have uninstalled the app we will send them the Email asking for feedback that what made them uninstall the app. Analysing the feedback we can change the certain required things according to users.

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3. Newsletter Emails. This Email was for the people who have subscribed Confirmtkt. This Email used to

consist a week activity including Blog posts Video, Images and App updates. The

Email was sent on every Tuesday and the main purpose of this type of mail was to

keep the subscribers active and make them feel about our presence and about our

activities.

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Tools and Website used

Email campaign consisted of three major parts:

1. Design

2. Create campaign

3. Analysis of campaign

Design of campaign was mainly done on online websites like Mailchimp.com and

Sendy.com. Both of these websites are very user friendly and easy to use. Fair idea

of content can be taken from reallygoodemails.com.

Creating campaign: We can create campaign once we have designed the Email. The

target audience that is receiver of the campaign should be accurate. Short but crisp

subject line (for eg. Get confirmed Railway tickets for your next trip!) with good

content is necessary for better conversion or goal achievement. Once subject line is

applied, mail content is pasted, you have to upload the list of receiver and then just

with a click we can start the campaign. In many websites we have the option to

schedule the campaign which can help us to plan in a better way.

Analysing the Campaign: Analysing the campaign is as important as creating one.

We should be aware of what people are liking and what not and take further step

accordingly. We can see the number of people who are opening the mails from both

these websites.

Moengage is a website where you need to link you application with the website and

Email ID of every user have to be entered. It gives you in depth analysis and filtering

option to target and retarget people. It have many additional features for analysis for

eg. Number of clicks on particular CTA, Number of people achieving the goal that

you wanted etc. Number of filters are available and we used it mainly for targeting

the users of application.

We used sendy more for acquisition purpose. It had many additional feature like we

can download the list of people who have not opened the mail and we can redesign

the mail and send to these people. We can know how many people unsubscribed

and blocked the email.

Reallygoodemails have some good emails format and collection of some best

emails. We took idea from this site and used it in our campaign.

Spam score tells you if the sent email will be received by receivers in inbox or spam

box. You can easily check the spam score by using this website www.mail-

tester.com. If the score is less than 5 then receiver will receive it in Spam box or else

in Inbox. The various parameters in takes in account for spam score is mentioned on

the website. The measures that should be taken to increase the score is also

mentioned in the results.

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Facebook Email growth hack:

We founded a way to get the facebook email Id from the profile link of the user. We

used targeted group having people who are avid traveller or fans of railways. For eg.

Indian rail fan and we opened the all members tab from there we took links of all

users curated the link in Excel to get facebook email ID and stored the IDs.

We did it for almost 4-5 groups for test campaign. We created the campaign in sendy

and sent the introductory mail about the company and the features it offers.

The results were not encouraging so we had to drop this idea.

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User Online Onboarding

User Onboarding is the process of increasing the likelihood that new users become

successful when adopting your product.

We carried out an online survey on company’s own website concluded that many

people find problem in understanding a feature presentation. So an online

onboarding was the need of an hour. There were many websites that are available

which helps you to design the oboarding experience. You have to download the

plugin and activate on the page you want to show it and then click and write the text

box you want to show on the particular click.

Whatfix allows you to embed guides and 'flows' in your website or application to

reduce customer support queries and improve user onboarding. It's easy to use, with

no coding or HTML knowledge needed. Whatfix works through a browser extension,

so it's always accessible on the cloud and can be set up in minutes. You can use

both slideshows and videos to guide users, who are driven step-by-step to complete

a task, and all guides are fully interactive. Whatfix integrates with Google Analytics to

analyse data using pre-defined dashboards and reports, and builds custom reports

that can be scheduled to arrive in your email inbox. Whatfix also encourages self-

service and cuts down on customer inquiries with the 'self help widget.'

As shown in the figure the yellow box is the text box that will appear as soon as you

open the website after completing that task another such box will guide you and so

the process is easy to understand and it guides you to complete the task.

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Facebook Marketing

Facebook has an ample amount of social actions that users perform daily. Through

likes, comments, shares, and status updates, a Facebook user is able to interact in

various forms of communication. Users can also interact with brands on Facebook

as well.

Facebook represents a large portion of social media marketing for marketers through

the brand pages and social interactions that take place on the network. The platform

also has a huge source of advertising capabilities, which digital marketers can use

for brand awareness and/or lead generation. It can be one of the biggest traffic

sources for brands and companies’ websites in comparison to the other social media

platforms.

With its wide capabilities and user base, Facebook marketing is essential to any

social media marketing campaign.

The organization had an official Confirmtkt page on Facebook with 36K like but

engagement and activities numbers were not engaging. So to bring the traffic to the

page and increase the targeted audience the need was to have relevant and

attractive content on continuous basis.

Post Frequency

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We posted almost three posts every day that included topics like:

Train journey is the only way to experience these 10 sceneries!

Railway stations in India get world-class Japanese signalling system

24 Indian railway facts which you should be proud of as an Indian!

Places in India that look like game of thrones locations!

Prabhu suspends constable after his video taking money from passengers

9 ways Modi government changing the face of Indian Railways!

8 Railway Stations in India That Prove Traveling is About the Journey

Suresh Prabhu promises redevelopment of 48 suburban railway stations

Indian Railways to plant 5 crore saplings on rail land before monsoon!

As a result of relevant content and boosting the content to relevant crowd the

page likes and reach spiked. As shown in figure the regular posts helps the

page to get regular likes and reach.

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Page likes are 49.8K for now and the average reach and likes have risen as shown

in table. The tables show the difference between the performance of March month

and April-May month.

Performance of April-May

Performance of March

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Different parameters are compared and we can easily observe the growth of all

parameters.

Some of the posts and the response of people as shown in the figure.

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It is important to mix up the content posted. Trolls in form of images and Videos are

also essential to keep the audience engaged. Posts consisted of mixture of videos,

pictures and articles the numbers is as shown below.

As shown in figure 133 blog posts, 31 pictures and 9 videos were posted.

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Year plan and analysis

Year plan consisted of different festivals and celebrations that can be targeted or on

which campaign can be done. The analysis consists of date, day, occasion and the

purpose for the campaign. It also includes the number of days it will need to be

executed.

Month and Date Day Festival Preparation date Purpose

July

7 Thursday Eid al-Fitr-Ramadan Just a post will do

August

15 Monday

Independence Day 11-12 August Campaign in which we can target all kind of people

18 Thursday

Rakhi 13-14th August

Three main ocassion. Can target Raksha Bandhana and it will take 4 days or less to ideate and execute.

25 Thursday Krishna Janmashtami

September

5 Monday

Ganesh Chaturthi 1st of September

Famous in Gujarat and Maharastra and we have less audience from that part of country we can target people easily by some campaign based on this festval

13 Tuesday Onam, Eid al-Adha

October

2 Sunday

Gandhi Jayanti 29th of september

A campaign can easily be done on such topic.

9 Sunday

Durga Ashtami 4th of october

Famous in Bengal and Orrisa a small campaign targeting people of these two states can work.

30 Sunday

Diwali, Lakshmi Puja 20th of october

Diwali need to be targeted but a proper planning is needed. A week would be sufficient!

November

1 Tuesday Bhaiya Dooj

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6 Sunday

Chhath Puja 2nd November

As we have large customer base there we can leverage it and try to get more audience from this campaign

December

12 Monday Milad an-Nabi, Id-e-Milad

25 Sunday

Merry Christmas 20th December

Easy to design campaign on this festival and every company will be taing leverage of it

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Tools and Website used for content:

Content is an integral part for online marketing. To get the best and most relevant

articles you need some reliant source. We had some sources from where we used to

get idea for the articles. We used Contentmart for getting article written.

Contentmart is a content marketplace that serves as a wonderful platform not only

for the authors and copywriters but also for those who are looking for the perfect

wordsmiths. With the mission to bridge the literary artists and those who need their

services, Contentmart has a categorical presentation of the lists of the content

experts as well as the content requirements placed by the users. The interface is

easy to use and features a structured navigation system for clients and writers to find

each other.

After getting it written from Contentmart we used to optimize it in wordpress blog of

Confirmtkt. Using different plugins like Yoast SEO and Squirlly we used to make it

suitable for posting.

The points kept in mind while doing SEO is as mentioned:

These are the points that are considered for SEO. Green colour shows that your content is

following that rule, orange shows you can still improve on that point and red shows that you

are violating that point. Steps are taken to make all points green and so that our content is

optimized.

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Online Survey

Feedback is very necessary part for strategy and planning. Online survey gives you

that feedback direct from consumers. Online surveys are easy to conduct and easy

to analyse the results. To add to these facilities various tools are available for free

which helps you create your survey and stores and analyse the results for you.

We used freesurveycreator for creating and analysing the feedback. Some of the survey questions that were applied are as mentioned below:

1. What status would you like to see when Indian railways server is down? A. Last checked data (with refresh button) B. Data Not available (with refresh button) C. I can't say 2. Do you understand the alternate options on the same train? A Yes, It was pretty easy to understand. B I am not sure C I was not able to understand at all 3. What would you like to see as prediction (CONFIRMTKT STATUS)? A. Percentage chance of confirmation B. High, medium or low chance. C. Number of tickets can be booked safely 4. Is getting confirmed ticket for major part of the journey better than no ticket for full journey? A. Yes, I'll adjust for part of the journey B. No, I would not travel C. I can't say 5. Would you like to see the past trends of WL confirmation for your train? A. Yes, trends are helpful B. No, I want only prediction C. I can't say 6. Are you ready to pay subscription fee for Ad free service of Confirmtkt? A. Yes, I am ready to pay. B. No, I am fine with Ads. 7. Would you like to have periodic updates(say -Everyday) about your PNR status? A. Yes, I would love to have the update B No, I can check by myself 8. Would you like to customize the alerts for PNR status? A. Yes, I'd like to decide the frequency B. No, I'm okay with default settings

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C. I can't say After survey was formed a code is generated that is applied on the website and this survey pops up on the bottom of the screen. Results are stored and analysis is shown in form of percentage distribution among the options mentioned.

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Pamphlet Test campaign

Pamphlet distribution is most traditional but really effective way of spreading words in the particular area. To target particular audience pamphlet can be proved to be very effective. The foremost and important step is to target the audience. Since Confirmtkt is an organization connected to railways and it’s solution what better audience and place can be other than Railway station itself. Clear with the audience and region, the design of pamphlet should be attractive and easy to understand. Pamphlet was designed by organization keeping various parameters in mind. One page, one side printed pamphlet having all necessary details with proper description of features it offers and a number on which a person can give miss call and get the link to download the app. As a test campaign I reached Bangalore Railway Station (Majestic) by 9 o’clock and started distributing the pamphlet whoever was leaving the station. Till 12:30 I distributed the pamphlet. To measure the effectiveness of the campaign we used number of miscall that were received that day. The total number of miscall that was recorded were 27.

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Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management (ORM) is the practice of crafting strategies that shape or influence the public perception of an organization, individual or other entity on the Internet. It helps drive public opinion about a business and its products and services. Google’s app store is a platform where you get all information regarding an app. You can even see the reviews and the reply back of the organization about the app which is a major influencer for the download. There are many such platforms which binds the reputation of organization with it. It’s important to form right impression about organization on every platform possible. Confirmtkt having an application on Google’s app store, Window’s app store and Apple’s app store. People give review about the app on all the three app store. Google’s app store gives the feature to reply them back on their review. And they get back the reply on their respective registered Email ID. So this way you can engage the user as well as maintain the reputation online. It is tedious task to reply each one of the review on the store. But it is observable that people are having similar kind of review for a particular app so replying them (People having same kind of opinion) with the same answer is not a bad option. So there must be some particular opinions and the replies you need to know and rest will be an easy task. Some opinion do need technical support, in such case I used to ask the responsible person and reply back to the user. One hack that we discovered while answering. A person get an Email every time we reply him. So a person have given us less rating for some wrong reason or by mistake we can reply them more than once asking them to correct or reconsider to rate. This helped us to get many updated rating which got changed from low rating to high. This trick can even be used to introduce new feature to few people who have given us good rating and so on. Apart from app store review, Facebook is a place where people comment about the organization the page of the organization. To answer them positively and to be active is really important. Even answering them on message can form opinion about your company in their mind. Quora is also such platform where people ask question about many organization and people answer them. Many railway related questions are also asked. As an organization whose prime motive is to solve railways problem it is a good platform to make its presence feel. I tried to answer any question related to railways or travelling

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having a link for the confirmtkt that helped to bring traffic to website or increase the download.

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Instagram and Pinterest

An entirely different social media platform where we can target different crowd. Average age on Instagram is between 25 to 34. Confirmtkt wanted to target young crowd so Instagram was the best online platform to engage them. Confirmtkt had Instagram account but it was completely inactive, having 257 follower in a year. First objective was to get some posts on Instagram and get active. Content on Instagram was entirely different from Facebook or Quora. Attractive images with some clear message was need to get maximum reach. The best part was we don’t need to boost to reach to people. A post by any account will reach to all their followers and so reach increases. Initially the posts got very few likes and as we were not following anyone the reach was minimum. We followed some influencer and some accounts gradually. From the next post onwards the likes spiked. Last two posts we got almost 100 likes. I am still exploring the ways to get the post viral or get to maximum reach on Instagram. Pinterest is another interesting social media platform where you can engage the target audience with help of relevant posts. Pinterest is a free website that requires registration to use. Users can upload, save, sort, and manage images—known as pins—and other media content (e.g., videos) through collections known as pinboards. Pinterest acts as a personalized media platform. Users can browse the content of others in their feed. Users can then save individual pins to one of their own boards using the "Pin It" button, with Pinboards typically organized by a central topic or theme. Users can personalize their experience with Pinterest by pinning items, creating boards, and interacting with other members. The end result is that the "pin feed" of each user displays unique, personalized results. There is lot to explore in this platform. We posted some pins and tried to get the reach on this platform.

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Achievements Words of appreciation from the guide

Words of appreciation from Co-founder

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Reference

www.facebook.com/confirmtkt/?fref=nf

www.wikipedia.com

www.fanpagekarma.com

www.pinterest.com

www.whatfix.com

www.freesurveycreator.com