Excellent course content, but it needs to update given all the advances in digital marketing over the past 2 years. Professor Clifton was excellent and provided many examples.

The course depended in big proportion of the material of Rob Stokes. It's OK to make the process as Stokes suggest but I think you can put more of yourself.

The course material could have been better....Instructor was just reading out content, more practical example and case studies could be a part of content.

It is very basic and boring. Really you can spend 5 min Googling the things you learn on this course.

it is a pity that the professor just reads the text when presenting...

El curso me pareció un poco lento y es mas para principiantes

Good but less depth than the rest of the specialization

Very Basic for a management student/professional.

Really not at the level of the other lessons.

It's much better than the previous course..

Good experience and very nicely explained.

its a little bit boring for UX.

Great course

Good

Gr

There is good and bad - assuming you read this - I think it will genuinely help.

Good:

-This was better than Professor Yao's last course - though it was largely reading from a script. He does not connect well with viewers.

-I looked up his rating online. It was good -but there was only one. It is hard to know what others think.

Bad:

-There are a few ways in which the course could be MUCH better. As a licensed teacher, and having prior Internet experience including running a Fortune 500 Internet division. (I am taking this for an update), I suggest the following. The reason for these suggestions is THAT THE COURSE IS NOT THAT APPLICABLE ONCE TAKEN. IT DOES NOT ALLOW A STUDENT TO REALLY DO THINGS.

I suggest:

-More attention to the basic math of digital marketing. He does it for a minute or two - but gives a lot of defintions. This is largely direct marketing - but he is not giving the basics of direct marketing - how to calculate the numbers for what to do and how to measure.

-He needs more flow charts - most of what Yao says can be summarized in a few charts with notations. These should be downloads as should be the equations.

Also - Yao said the funnel no longer matters. That is totally wrong - from someone who has sent out about 5 billion emails, paper letters and other things. I get the point that it is different than in the past, may not be linear, etc. That is obvious. However, the question becomes how do you judge the filter through which all leads go through - whatever they are - via social media, a circular path, etc. This is all, in the end, numerical. Essentially he says there are now many more channels and it is not linear. So what - it still can be represented by numbers and flow charts so that the entire concept can be understood and communicated.

The guest speakers could be better.

This "planning" course was slightly better than the preceding "landscape" course, but it was still underwhelming. The instructor seemed better prepared with her presentation, but her dependence on the textbook and speaking style still made it seem as if she lacked mastery of the subject. The course did touch on the important subject matters at hand, but since the textbook was so old (practically outdated by digital media standards), it missed or made little mention of so many innovations and best practices that are now the rule for digital marketers. For example, the increasingly crucial role of marketing automation platforms like HubSpot, Dynamics Marketing and Marketo and how CRMs like SalesForce and Dynamics are driving both marketing and sales strategy. Another example is how email marketing has moved to rules-based and triggered workflows. Again, there's a definite need for this course. I would actually recommend breaking out social, SEO and online advertising into their own courses, rather than squeezed into small segments. Finally, the "putting it all together" section is vital for anyone who wants to work in digital marketing, but the coverage here was much too general.

Lecture videos are fine but very high-level. Nothing you cannot learn from reading a book.

The home work assignments are solid. As always, it is motivation that makes the difference. If you are motivated to lear something, the assignments are a good way to get you started thinking about things. But the could be better and/or more relevant.

The quizzes are the clear low point. There is sometimes a selection of answers that is so similar, yet only one answer is true (because it is the word used in the book). Often, they ask for knowledge-based questions that are completely useless for advancing your career, e.g. to know who EA Sports teamed up with for a campaign.

Great study material.

However, the course seems over reliant on the e-marketing book by Rob Stokes. It is exhaustive (and exhausting!) and provide great concepts/models/frameworks for the learner.

Video lectures are mostly highly condensed form of the same book. For someone who goes through the text diigently, there is no need to see the video lectures.

I feel the video lectures must offer more value add that just repetition of the concepts explained in the e-book. Video must give real life examples of the concepts based on the faculty's experience/ research.

This course has definitely been the low point of the Digital Marketing Specialization offered through University of Illinois. The quiz questions are too granular and don't accurately test on the knowledge you should have gained from an overall perspective. I've also found that the lectures are just summaries of the textbook and other content you're asked to read, adding nothing to what you've already spent time learning.

I would not recommend taking this course, unless required to do so for the Specialization.

Not as good as the other courses. I do wish another instructor could have done the videos. I had a very hard time staying with this course due to my frustration with instructor style of communicating. I felt like to much basic info about marketing especially traditional vs digital advertising. Most of us, get that. I don't know when I've struggled so hard to keep my attention and focus on the material. This specialization starts with a bang and ends very boring and outdated feeling.

Redundant, stretched. lacking depth and without any practical training. Assignments aren’t thought through, in one case, it asks for us to research what website and blogs students of Illinois are visiting by reviewing their social media profiles!!!

Instructor kept saying the same lines spoken over and over to extend the course. Digital marketing principles and strategies could have been covered in 1 course of half the length if they had organized it properly.

The teacher needs to improve her delivery. The quizzes are also useless. They don't really add to important information that we need to remember. Instead, the quizzes usually have questions that make you gofer for irrelevant info, made to test if you've gone through the reading. Honestly, I barely listened to the teacher's videos. It wasn't all that helpful nor engaging. We got all the info from the readings.

This is clearly not the right medium for Prof Clifton. This was inferior to the first installment, which had a great many problems on its own. Poor on camera delivery, lack of familiarity with the material and a tendency to just read the PPT slide on the screen are just a few of the problems. While the content is good you really have to work to get through the presentation of the material.

Disappointed by this class. Instructor and mentors added not value to course. The main reading "eMarketing" was good but all video content and assignments were directly from the "eMarketing" guide by Rob Stokes. Also ... they couldn't even get Rob Stokes name spelled correctly in the references.