Marketing Engine

The Brief 

Marketing consultants Starfeb wanted to develop a subscription based tool that gives clients, from businesses of any size, the ability to shape a marketing plan and plot marketing data on an interactive graph display.

 

Our Solution

The Marketing Engine’s USP is that all data is stored in one place, so the whole marketing plan is accessible and shareable from the same point. 

The solution we developed comprises of two core functions - the construction of a marketing plan, and also the ability to upload, plot, manipulate and view key marketing data.  

Firstly, a calendar tool was developed which allows users to plot marketing activities. This could be, for example, an email campaign, newspaper advertising or perhaps a series of promoted tweets. 

The second feature, the analysis and evaluation of marketing activity, takes the form of an easily viewable graph - a gantt chart with line data overlaid. The specific marketing plans developed in the calendar tool constitute the blocks of the gantt chart. The line graph overlay constitutes the marketing data that the user receives. This could take many forms - for example, website hits or subscription numbers. This data can be added manually through a custom input form, or automatically through a CSV upload, allowing users to import data from Excel/Numbers. For the latter, a template is provided for users to ensure that the data is imported correctly. 

Users also benefit from Marketing Engine’s direct integration with Google Analytics.  This means that any GA data can be swiftly imported, manipulated and displayed in the platform’s graphs. This can complement any manual or CSV based data that the user may also input into the system.  

We developed the frontend web framework, utilising the Typescript language and the Django  framework. Chart.js was used to realise the display of marketing data. The backend service developed with the Django framework, utilising the Python language  

A Customer Management System (CMS) was also implemented so Marketing Engine staff can easily maintain the programme as well as managed subscriptions. The Stripe Subscription API was also implemented into the backend to allow admins to effectively set up subscription programmes and receive prompt payments from new clients.