The Art of Storytelling + The Science of Marketing Analytics
Find your voice and become a powerful, insight-driven, creative modern marketer that drives innovation and positively impacts and influences the world.
Rise Above the Noise
Dig into your passion by specializing in Social Media & Digital PR with your Master of Arts in Marketing and expand your professional brand storytelling, digital campaign creation, web and social analytics, and conceptualize customer behavior and insight.
Amplify digital PR and social media efforts through in-depth understanding and application of communication and media theories, modern tools, and technologies.
Emerge as a savvy, holistic digital marketing pro equipped with the skills you need to break through the cacophony of messages that bombard us every minute of every day.
At Emerson, your voice matters. How will you rise above the noise?
Program Themes & Highlights
The courses in this program are developed with industry professionals and align with tools, technologies, and trends of today's digital marketing landscape.
You'll gain relevant, real-time knowledge and experience that you can apply to your current or future career.
Create powerful brand messaging with storytelling, social media, and SEO using blogs, podcasts, emails, and much more to reach your target audience.
You'll learn digital marketing best practices and amplify your resume thanks to top industry training built-in to our program from leading social media and marketing software companies like Brandwatch and Hootsuite.
Fast Facts
32 credit hours
$1,349 per credit hour
3 intakes per year
8 courses/4 semesters/15 months
Strategically Designed and Flexible Format
Progressive and Engaged Community
High-Demand Skills and Specializations
Career Path for the Social Media & Digital PR Marketer
Digital PR and Social Media work together.
Modern PR professionals are strategic in combining traditional tactics with SEO, social media, and content marketing to build brand awareness, brand trust and enhance reputation.
Data shows that more director-level marketing positions are being posted now than a year ago (2022) and that most of those positions require, if not prefer, a master's degree.
It's important to keep in mind that there isn't a one size fits all career path for marketers, which is one of the appealing aspects of the industry – you get to carve out your own path based on your passion!
Here are some examples of jobs in some of the different marketing career paths you can take:
Digital Marketing Manager → Digital Marketing Project Manager → Digital Marketing Director → Vice President (VP) of Digital Marketing
Social Media Coordinator → Social Media Manager → Digital Marketing Manager
Director of PR and Marketing/Communications → VP of PR and Marketing → CMO
Core Curriculum & Specialization
Five digital marketing courses comprise the foundation of this program:
Admissions Requirements
Official transcripts from all colleges and universities previously attended
Degree evaluations are required for all applicants who completed their degree outside of the U.S.
2 Letters of recommendation
Essay (2 pages, double spaced, 500 words): Discuss your short- and long-term professional goals in the areas of digital marketing, data analytics and/or brand storytelling. Elaborate on how a specialization area in the program and an Emerson education will help achieve your goals. Discuss any relevant work and educational experiences and how you would contribute to the program and the profession.
Resume
In addition to two letters of recommendation, essay, and resume, international applicants must also furnish:
Course-by-course evaluation, GPA equivalency performed by
World Education Services
Educational Credential Evaluators
National Association of Credential Evaluation Services
English language proficiency test results are required for applicants whose native language is not English.
TOEFL: 95-115
IELTS: 6.5-7.5
Duolingo: 115-135
Pearson: 65-80
Students with relevant professional experience or prior comparable coursework may request up to 8 credits (2 courses) be recognized and credited towards their degree. Students must apply for Advanced Standing upon acceptance into the program. Advanced Standing requests are handled on a case-by-case basis following stringent evaluation criteria and process. The granting of Advanced Standing is not guaranteed and decisions are not appealable. See Graduate Catalogue for more details.
Digital Marketing and Campaigns
This course equips students to engage in digital-centric thinking, planning, and implementation of a comprehensive marketing campaign. Students learn how different roles on a digital marketing team work in unison to develop online content and programs that result in exceptional user experiences. The goal of the course is to introduce digital best practices and to leverage these approaches in the development of a customer-centric digital marketing campaign that targets specific customer segments through one or more digital interfaces. (4 credits)
Digital Storytelling and Branding
Storytelling in the digital environment differs from how it is approached and executed in traditional marketing. Research and data collection, story conceptualization, and reporting methods are studied within a primarily digital communication strategy. Students understand how to set message goals, evaluate various storytelling techniques, and produce stories relevant to different digital devices, audiences, and brand strategies. (4 credits)
Online Customer Behavior
Customers behave and make purchase decisions online in a process unique from traditional marketing. The emphasis of this course is to learn how to identify processes and trends in online customer behavior and influence that behavior. Students understand how to bridge the connection between online and offline customer behavior. Customers’ goals and fears are examined to find psychological, emotional, logical, and sociological explanations of behavior. Additionally, customers’ online search intentions and search engine optimization (SEO) are examined and applied. (4 credits)
Web Analytics
This course introduces students to a broad array of website analytic techniques. Students will use the Google Analytics platform to identify visitor profiles and segments, study website usage patterns and content viewing behaviors, and pinpoint channels that drive the greatest desktop and mobile visitor traffic to companies’ websites. The insights obtained through web analytics have become an essential input in the development of digital marketing strategies that incorporate highly targeted paid (advertising), owned (web properties), and earned (social sharing) media components. (4 credits)
Social Media and VOC Analytics
This course provides an in-depth understanding of how social media analytics and voice of the customer (VOC) analytics are used by today’s modern marketers. Students utilize a leading social media listening and analytics platform to develop a “hands-on” understanding of how social media data is captured, analyzed, and ultimately turned into actionable information. Students also learn how companies are transforming their outdated customer feedback data collection practices into enterprise-wide VOC programs that generate timely insights and help companies create better customer experiences and greater brand loyalty. (4 credits)
Three additional courses not only specialize your focus in the program, but you'll graduate with a Master of Arts in Marketing and a Social Media & Digital PR Certificate from Emerson:
Human-Centric Marketing and Social Responsibility
Explore how society’s relationships with and expectations of brands are shaped by sociocultural, technological, and other factors. Leverage insights to develop and support holistic market strategies that are infused with diverse, human-centric, purpose-driven, and socially responsible innovation. (4 credits)
The enrollment was all completely online, I definitely had some questions; One was: “How do I make sure financing is in order?” Emerson was able to guide me through that process. Everything went so smoothly and that was really great.
Customer Segmentation & Descriptive Analytics
This course presents a variety of customer segmentation techniques that provide the framework to design and deploy highly targeted, insight-driven marketing campaigns. Students use cutting-edge analytics software to develop segmentation solutions that support many facets of today’s marketing and sales operations. Students also learn how to perform and interpret the results of other commonly used descriptive analytic approaches, such as exploratory data analysis and market basket analysis. (4 credits)
Now over a year and a half later, I've received an incredible opportunity as the digital operations manager for an e-commerce skincare company. The knowledge I have gained and the connections I have made in the program are truly priceless.
ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING REMAINING ELECTIVES
Choose one of the following: Predictive Analytics, Fundamentals in Content Strategy, or Creative Writing and Story Creation.
When I looked at Emerson's classes, each one showed me that I would learn something new that I could use in my career.
Predictive Analytics
Introduces students to predictive analytics and the broad set of business applications these predictive tools support. Students use data mining platforms to build predictive models that address a variety of sales and marketing needs, such as identifying the best targets for campaigns, highlighting customers most at risk of churning, and optimizing the allocation of marketing spend across media and channels. Several different modeling techniques are covered in the course including linear regression, logistic regression, and decision tree analysis. (4 credits)
I’m learning things that I use in my career daily. The way that I've thought about marketing has evolved through this program.
Fundamentals in Content Strategy
Content strategy is about developing content as a business asset and using it to achieve specific business goals. This course is designed to help you plan and execute an effective content strategy to build an audience. It will be conducted as a dynamic live project, where you will work alone and in groups to get experience in all the facets of content strategy. You’ll devise a strategy, set goals, create a project plan, and conduct basic research to test your assumptions. You will create, publish, and propagate regular content to meet the needs of the audience you define. You will learn how to organize and optimize your content for maximum impact and how to set metrics, measure your results, and iterate. (4 credits)
I truly believe that what I learned in this program will help me make a very large impact at the company, I work for and beyond and in my future endeavors as a small business owner.
Creative Writing and Story Creation
Learn to use story to increase the impact of your communication and ability to engage, influence, persuade, and inspire others. This course explores the art and science of a compelling story, how stories convey a vision and motivate actions, create meaning and build culture, inspire buy-in, trust and belief, construct brand identity, attract investors and customers, and contribute to advancing one’s career. Through case studies and structured learning activities, students develop capacity to communicate appropriately in varied situational and cultural contexts. (4 credits)
It has also given me a newly found confidence, inspiration and excitement... It has allowed me to expand the way that I think and contribute to my teams.
Thanks to my admissions counselor and student success advisor, the enrollment experience was simple and informative. I was really nervous to begin because I haven't been in school in a really long time.
What Our Students Say About Emerson
We believe in the power of storytelling. These students share their stories about Emerson College—including ease of enrollment, career impact, and newfound confidence to thrive in their roles. What will be your story?
Meet Your Advisor
Begin your story as a creative force in marketing. Complete the form at the top of the page. An enrollment advisor will connect via phone and email to discuss your goals and how Emerson could help you reach them.
