My childhood memories include a myriad of wisdom from my parents. My mom delivered these nuggets through dichos y refranes, the popular sayings and proverbs she learned as a child. My father imparted wisdom more directly, in plain Spanish, without much flourish. One of my favorites came to mind recently:
It’s the end of the year and my annual “unsubscribe from emails” project is underway. I put on some holiday music, make myself a pot of spicy hot cocoa, and sit at my laptop to remove myself from email lists that are no longer relevant to me. The results are often mixed—a better, more pertinent inbox for me, peppered with frustration over the various poor unsubscribe experiences I have to slog through to complete this simple task.
Automating certain marketing tasks is not only a great way to be productive, it’s also an effective strategy to strengthen your company’s brand. With marketing automation, you can guide prospects through your various marketing channels, turn leads into customers, and cultivate those customers to become your brand’s ambassadors.
There are many tools available that include marketing automation features. Before committing to a tool, it’s important to understand what marketing automation is and how it can be incorporated to improve your marketing efforts.
We’ve all been there. You open an email on your smartphone and it displays so poorly you get frustrated and tap “delete.” The malfunction can be a button that doesn’t work, email copy that’s cut off because it’s too wide for the screen, or words so small you’d need a magnifying glass to read them.
Stories are part of our DNA. From our earliest ancestors sharing stories over a fire to today’s proliferation of videos throughout the web, stories keep us entertained, informed, and connected.
As a lifelong bookworm, I know firsthand the power of stories to heal, to protect, and to expand a person’s experience. As a marketer, I am convinced that great marketing tells engaging stories that connect people to brands, and vice versa.
When speaking with someone in person, you know if they are listening. I mean, really listening or just pretending. When having these in-person conversations, we’ve developed ways to inaudibly say, “Yes, I’m here listening—and I hear you.” We smile and nod, make eye contact, or sit facing the person we’re speaking to, body bent slightly forward. Opposite visual cues reveal if your conversation counterpart is distracted, with thoughts a million miles away. These external behaviors help us navigate face-to-face communication. But what happens for those of us communicating with clients and coworkers exclusively by digital means?
I was supposed to publish this blog last week. But, the week came and went, and I had written nothing. Past deadline again, I found myself sitting at my desk on a late Friday afternoon with no creative inspiration in sight. Plus, I couldn’t muster up the energy to write about the right way to do things when I myself had seen everything go wrong.
In my blog a few weeks ago, I discussed some of the pros and cons of running a distributed company—a way of doing business that is becoming more common than not. Having been in a remote working scenario for a number of years, I’ve learned which tools are required to ensure daily operations run smoothly.
