Join Digital Marketing Foundation MasterClass worth Rs 1999 FREE

Interview with Praveen Meloth, Head Digital Marketing, Shopcj.com

Interview blog banner praveen meloth

Praveen melothPraveen Meloth has over 14 years of marketing experience, starting with Offline marketing and moving over to digital marketing at Travelguru.com. With his core expertise being planning and executing digital campaigns he has rum multiple campaigns across the organizations he has worked. Data and Analytics being his strength he has used it effectively to get maximum return on digital campaigns.

He has worked in multiple startups like Babyoye.com, Travelguru.com and couple established companies like Reliance Brands and Outlook. 

In his current role at Shopcj, he is responsible for scaling up the e-commerce business and improve the product offering to the customer.  

How did you get into Digital Marketing? What interested you in learning Digital Marketing?

Praveen: I started off in Brand Marketing, with focus on Offline marketing. Internet was a new phenomenon when I was at Outlook.New technology always excited me, so I started looking into their existing website and suggesting changes in them. They were accepted and got more access to data. The data insight really thrilled me and used it to make changes, so from there on the journey in to digital began. At Travel guru though I joined as the Offline Marketing person, my boss Hari gave me a lot of exposure to online marketing. I learnt digital marketing there…on the job. The journey had been great so far, the best part of Digital Marketing is that there is continuous learning with newer mediums and properties opening up for advertising. 

According to you, what are the advantages of conventional marketing over Digital Marketing? Do you think that Digital Marketing is a threat to the future of conventional marketing?

Praveen: Offline marketing gives scale quickly and has a larger reach. Not all customers are online hence offline is important. Also, it can portray that the company is large one, especially if you use Television.

Marketing is going to be integrated, the campaign and the target consumer will decide the choice of media. One advantage of digital is you can do quick pilot before you launch main campaign. Eg : If you have  multiple TVC’s and you are not sure which one will do well. You can run it on YouTube, whichever ones has the better interaction you can go ahead with that TVC.

Share about your 3 favorite Digital Marketing case studies. What did you like most about them?

Praveen: Wanted to share an interesting thing we did at Babyoye. We realized that a customer would require to buy diapers again after a certain number of days depending of the quantity they brought. We sent an e-mail 5 days before saying that it time to order your diaper before you run out of stock. This was only one message in the mailer and on click the customer was taken to the same diaper he had brought earlier. This campaign had tremendous results, we achieved a 15% to 20% conversion rates. Looking at the success we used Facebook custom audience with the same idea. The conversion for that campaign was over 5%. Looking at the success we automated the email campaign.   

According to you, what are the top 3 mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging Digital Marketing?

Praveen: 

  1. Companies plan digital after they have planned their offline campaigns, so the focus is not an integrated one.
  2. Not tracking the campaign data to get useful insights. The loose the ability the modify the campaigns or take corrective steps early in the campaign. 
  3. Spending very low and having wrong benchmarks. 

Between Agency and In-house, which approach would you recommend for maximum value of Digital Marketing? Why?

Praveen: It depends on the scale of operations. When the business in growing fast it is better to have an in-house team. In-house teams breathe the company idea and the thought process. It gives tremendous flexibility and quick implementation of campaigns and any corrective action required can be done quickly. When the scale is large using an agency helps as maintaining a large in-house team may not be feasible. The in-house digital marketing team role will be to assigns KPI and make sure they are met. Agencies tend to better when they have to come up with large creative campaigns. 

Which are your 3 favorite Digital Marketing Tools?

Praveen: 

  • Omniture
  • Cheeta Mail for email marketing
  • Programmatic marketing
Why do you think it’s important for entrepreneurs, marketing professionals and students to learn Digital Marketing today?

Praveen: 

  • For Entrepreneurs: Digital is going to be the first step, it allows them to get valuable information f their customer behavior. It is also easy to do many experiments on the digital front
  • For Professionals: Digital marketing is an integral part of any marketing campaign, knowledge of digital marketing will help plan and use it better
  • For Students: It is an important part of their armoury as they will have more options to choose from.
What are the top 3-5 skills you look for when hiring a candidate for Digital Marketing profile?

Praveen: 

  1. How they use data to make decisions
  2. Willingness to learn and how updated they are with the trends
  3. Someone who is ready to experiment and not afraid to fail
What is your advice for newbies, who are looking at building a career in Digital Marketing industry?

Praveen: Stay updated, be ready to question the existing norms. Be strong at data that will help to take decisions!

How do you stay updated on the latest trends in Digital Marketing? Which are the Digital Marketing resources (i.e. blogs/websites/apps) you visit regularly?

Praveen: There are host of options available,  LinkedIn and Twitter I use to discover interesting content. Then there is Mashable, Search Engine Land, Hubspot, Techcrunch…etc.

Share the names of 3 people you respect when it comes to Digital Marketing.

Praveen: 

  1. Alok RodinhoodKejriwal
  2. Mahesh Murthy
  3. Alok Goel
How do you see Digital Media evolving in future? What are the top 3 trends do you foresee for 2016?

Praveen: 

  1. The top trend going forward will be Video content, useful content like even “how to” is among the highest searched in Youtube, and Youtube being the second largest search ending Video is all set to grow further
  2. Mobile……all of us should think mobile first. With improved network and internet speed that is where the customers starts
  3. Short Format content will be the key, we don’t like reading long stuff
Would you like to share few words about the work we are doing at Digital Vidya?

Praveen: 

Digital Vidya, is doing very good job in getting more and more people interested and educated on the digital marketing front. With their corporate ties there getting more offline companies to consider digital seriously. With the ever changing world of digital they help students and professionals keep abreast with the latest developments.

Are you inspired by the opportunity of Digital Marketing? Start your journey by attending our upcoming orientation session on Digital Marketing for Career & Business Growth. It’s online and Free :).

Avatar of jasleen kaur
Jasleen Kaur
[Sr. Associate - Content Marketing] A content passionate, Jasleen handles content writing & marketing activities. Also, she leads Digital Marketing Internship Program. She is in the content writing and marketing fraternity for 10+ years now & is proficient in writing content for blogs, articles, books, brochures and social media. She embraces practical knowledge of WordPress CMS.

1 thought on “Interview with Praveen Meloth, Head Digital Marketing, Shopcj.com”

  1. Thanks Praveen for your contribution to our community through this interview. Really happy to know your feedback about the work we are doing in spreading digital (marketing) vidya :).

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

In-Demand Courses

4-7 months Instructor Led Live Online Training
Starts March 23, 24, 25, 19, 2024
  • Covers all Digital Marketing Techniques

4 months Online
New Batch Dates are not Open
  • Digital Media Mastery (with Paid Media Expertise)
Digital Marketing Webinars
Mar 23
Upcoming
Raj Sharma, Digital Vidya Team 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (IST)
Apr 28
Completed
Marketing Leaders from Paytm Insider, Cognizant and Digital Vidya 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM (IST)
Mar 24
Completed
Marketing Leaders from Merkle Sokrati, 3M, Uber India and VIP Industries Limited 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM (IST)

Discuss With A Career Advisor

Not Sure, What to learn and how it will help you?

Call Us Live Chat Free MasterClass
Scroll to Top