Indiana INTERNnet celebrated internship excellence on Feb. 5, 2014, at the 8th Annual IMPACT Awards luncheon. Though the event is over and the winners have been announced, we are continuing to celebrate the nomineesâ successes.
This is a blog by Ashlyn Sanders, a senior Marketing & Operations Management and Psychology major at Indiana University, Bloomington.
During my sophomore year of college, I attended the business career fair at Indiana University and realized that day exactly where I wanted to work â ExactTarget.
Unfortunately, I was not chosen that year to be an intern, which encouraged me to work even harder to earn a spot the following year. One year later, however, I was chosen to be an ExactTarget Slingshot intern, and I had the time of my life that summer.
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âI would recommend that everyone gets at least one internship under their belt during college.â
â Ashlyn Sanders___________________________________________
The first day of my internship I was given my assignment for the summer, which happened to be an area I was not yet exposed to in business school: website analytics, more specifically A/B Testing. I have to admit, I was extremely intimidated by this, but still excited to learn something new. My manager, Brian, was the first person at ExactTarget to A/B test the website and had already amazed the company with the power of this tool.
Essentially, A/B testing is when one version of a web page is tested against another version of a web page and a specific set of metrics are tracked on each page. Therefore, my job throughout the summer was to work with Brian to think of new and innovative tests that accomplished specific metric goals on the website. Once the test variation winners were found, I created case studies on the results to share with employees throughout the company, including the Chief Marketing Officer. One of the tests with the most astounding results was one where a client success video was added to the top of a page, and resulted in an increase of 118% of clicks on our âRequest a Demoâ button. From this experience, I learned that stepping outside your comfort zone is the best way to grow as both an individual and a professional.
Especially since this area of marketing was new at the company, I was encouraged to use my creativity and problem solving skills to think outside the box. In the realm of website analytics, I realized that small changes can make a large difference in peopleâs experience and intentions on the website; this is something I have brought back to campus and applied to my psychology and marketing classes.
Being a Slingshot intern at ExactTarget was definitely not all work no play; I had some awesome experiences outside the office with my fellow Slingshotâs over the summer. Throughout the internship, we were able to have lunch with the top executives at the company and ask them anything and everything. Below is a picture of our Slingshot group with the CEO of ExactTarget, Scott Dorsey, after a Lunch-and-Learn.
As interns at ExactTarget, we were given many opportunities to explore the wonderful city of Indianapolis. A few of these countless experiences include:
Learning to cook on a Big Green Egg at J.J.âs Backyard BBQ in Broad Ripple.
Volunteering at Gleaners Food Bank.
Attending an Indianâs baseball game.
I could not have asked for a better internship experience, summer, or a preparation for my future career. This internship helped me grow as an individual and a professional. I am also fortunate enough to continue my work at ExactTarget as a part-time contractor throughout my senior year at IU, and as a full time Catapult Rotational Associate this coming June!
