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In the fast-paced world of modern digital business, a lack of coordination among a company's departments can result in inefficiencies, duplicate efforts, and missed opportunities. A combination like this can have a negative impact on the company's key business metrics, customer satisfaction, and harm its position in a highly competitive market. This is why departmental alignment and connectivity are critical for business success today. It is possible to achieve alignment through the clever use of CRM and marketing integration tools, as well as a data-driven approach, resulting in significantly streamlined processes, automation of routine tasks, and increased efficiency. In this article, I'll go over tools, techniques, and approaches for improving department interoperability, as well as share my experience connecting departments at a European big data startup. Tools and Technologies Streamlining your business operations by increasing departmental coordination necessitates the development of a unified system that will collect all work data in one location, bring transparency to daily operations, and automate some of the routine tasks to focus resources on development efforts. The following tools can assist in meeting these lofty objectives: CRM Software Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can become a critical component of the company's coordination efforts. It is more than just software; it is an all-encompassing platform designed to centralize, streamline, and manage all interactions between a company and its customers. It compiles all customer data into a comprehensive but easily accessible database, allowing for the tracking of customer interactions, the provision of customer support, the execution of marketing campaigns, and the management of leads. CRM, in essence, becomes a solution that provides a 360-degree view of each customer relationship. With access to this solution, various departments, such as sales, marketing, and customer service, gain a unified view of the company's goals and begin to build interdepartmental interactions in order to achieve common goals. In addition, modern CRM systems include advanced features such as automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and integrations with other software tools. They can assist with a variety of tasks, from automatically sending follow-up emails to lead nurturing and scoring. These days, CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics 365 are among the most popular. Salesforce is a market leader, offering an advanced automation tool called Process Builder, which allows for custom workflows and triggers. HubSpot CRM is a leader in inbound marketing automation, with features such as automated email sequences and lead nurturing campaigns. Zoho CRM's workflow and sequence automation features, as well as its Blueprint function, which maps out entire sales processes, provide multifaceted automation. Microsoft Dynamics 365 seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft products and provides rule-based workflow automation. A well-implemented CRM software can help synchronize the initiatives of sales, marketing, and customer service by providing a single, centralized hub for customer data and interactions. This not only improves efficiency but also allows for more personalized and targeted customer interactions. Marketing Automation Software Another crucial component in building a unified technological environment for shared use is marketing automation software. This multifaceted technology platform is designed to help marketers by leveraging various channels such as email, social media, and websites automatically. Features like lead scoring and nurturing, customer segmentation, analytics and reporting, social media management, and landing page creation are frequently included in this kind of software. Utilizing these features, this software manages multiple marketing functions and channels cohesively through a single interface to streamline the entire marketing process. In tandem with CRM systems and other software tools, marketing automation software can offer a more personalized and targeted approach to marketing. Businesses can also take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms to get predictive analytical data and develop more sophisticated personalization tactics. Overall, marketing automation software aims to simplify complex marketing activities, offering a centralized tool that can be used by various departments. The selection of the right platform should be based on an exhaustive analysis of organizational needs, customer behavior, and the peculiarities of the market niche. Some examples of prominent marketing automation software include integrated platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which offer a one-stop-shop solution. There are, however, solutions such as Pardot that are designed to meet the needs of specific industries or functionalities and leverage specialized feature sets to attract a specific customer base. By automating routine marketing tasks like email campaigns and social media posts, marketing automation software frees up staff to focus on more strategic activities. This technology can also be integrated with CRM and sales platforms, resulting in better sales and marketing department alignment. Integration Tools The primary goal of the alignment process is to ensure that diverse software solutions work together as one and efficiently. Integration tools, which can enable real-time data flow between a CRM and marketing automation systems, serve as the linchpin that connects these disparate systems. This reduces data latency and, as a result, creates a shared environment in which employees from various departments are not only aligned but interconnected. This effectively promotes faster decision-making and increased efficiency. Today's software market provides a wide range of integration solutions. For example, Zapier can serve as a link between CRM software such as Salesforce and marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot. Another tool, Microsoft Power Automate, enables you to create complex workflows involving multiple applications, such as SharePoint for document management and Microsoft Dynamics 365 for CRM tasks. Custom connections between disparate systems are also possible with API management solutions such as MuleSoft, allowing for a more unified and centralized data repository. Data-Driven Marketing Implementing the aforementioned software tools can assist you in running sophisticated marketing campaigns and meeting your ambitious goals by leveraging a wide range of diverse data that will provide you with insights about your customers and market trends. It entails the use of: Customer Data Understanding consumer behavior is fundamental for business success. Utilizing customer data, you can segment the market, personalize interactions, and predict client future behavior. This is critical for building a comprehensive strategy that aligns all consumer-facing departments towards a unified objective: customer satisfaction and long-term relationship building. Sales Data This is the primary source of information for the company's financial situation, as well as understanding purchasing trends, customer preferences, and sales cycles. Metrics such as lead generation, conversion rates, and revenue must be tracked not only for the sales department but also for inventory management, financial planning, and organizational strategy. A real-time understanding of these metrics can help to align different departments towards common financial goals. Website Data Monitoring website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates can be beneficial to various departments, like marketing and product development. They can obtain this information by using an analyst's tool to gain a better understanding of customer needs and preferences. Case Study: Aligning Company Departments to Increase Efficiency To illustrate the implementation of the tools and practices I described above, I will tell you about the project I completed at a European company I will not name here. I was faced with the tricky task of transforming the sales pipeline to accelerate the conversion of contacts with high potential into finalized deals. In the process, I faced the tough conundrum of aligning the interests and workflows of sales, marketing, product, and development teams. To reach the objective, I integrated a suite of four cutting-edge tools, including ActiveCampaign, a utility similar to Zapier, a now-discontinued LinkedIn automation tool, and Zoho. This enabled me to seamlessly connect together teams, creating a cross-functional in-house team of roughly 20 individuals. As a result, I was able to streamline inter-departmental workflows and accelerate the sales engagement timeline by 20%. Further, the advanced automation implemented saved an estimated 100 man-hours each week. Conclusion Summarizing, connecting, and aligning departments greatly increases efficiency, with streamlined communication eradicating information silos and ensuring that everyone is on the same page. This aids in the development of a unified strategy and the achievement of common goals in close collaboration. To align the departments, conduct an internal audit to identify gaps and inefficiencies between departments, establish common objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) with key stakeholders from each department, and then begin to implement integration tools such as CRM and marketing automation software. Do not hesitate to delve deeper into understanding the myriad of integration tools available, such as Zapier, Microsoft Power Automate, and MuleSoft, among others, as well as alignment techniques. More information can be found at: The Value Of Learning Through Alignment With Business Goals How do you align your department's objectives with the organization's strategy and vision? "Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World" by General Stanley McChrystal Photo by on Matt Artz Unsplash

How to Align Departments to Improve Efficiency: Tools, Techniques, and Approaches

Does Your SaaS Have a Positioning or Messaging Problem?

আপনার SaaS এর কি পজিশনিং বা মেসেজিং সমস্যা আছে?

Hat Ihr SaaS ein Positionierungs- oder Messaging-Problem?

¿Su SaaS tiene un problema de posicionamiento o mensajería?

Votre SaaS a-t-il un problème de positionnement ou de messagerie ?

क्या आपके सास को पोजिशनिंग या मैसेजिंग की समस्या है?

あなたの SaaS にはポジショニングまたはメッセージングの問題がありますか?

SaaS에 포지셔닝 또는 메시징 문제가 있습니까?

Seu SaaS tem um problema de posicionamento ou mensagens?

SaaS'ınızda Konumlandırma veya Mesajlaşma Sorunu Var mı?

SaaS của bạn có vấn đề về định vị hoặc nhắn tin không?

您的 SaaS 是否存在定位或消息传递问题？

Working for a regional ecom platform with tens of millions of visits each month phishing is our everyday reality. Looking into it in detail challenged some of my assumptions and helped me get a better idea of what one can do about it. I’m sharing some of my experience from the trenches about methods and tools we tried and the ways we were successful dampen phishing. If you thought protecting your organisation from phishing was hard wait till the users show up! All the usual technical and awareness measures are out the window when you are addressing millions of people. How can you detect them? The simplest and most effective step is to provide some generic information to your users about phishing on your website and give them an email address they can forward the phishing emails to. For us, it turned out to be useful to also provide some detail on how to forward emails, because these days people often view emails on their phones and will just send you a screenshot. Phishing reporting mailbox: An added benefit of having a phishing submission mailbox is that you will learn a lot about your regular communications to users. Whenever it is not on point, some will probably mistake it for phishing and report it back to you. The downside of this method is, that most likely by the time phishing emails are forwarded to you, some users will have given their credentials away. Additionally, since these days companies have few public email addresses, you will also receive quite a lot of unrelated questions. If you decide to handle these, depending on your customer service culture, answering/routing them will take considerable effort. When setting up the mailbox we looked at some of the more established companies dealing with similar issues. Most of them will specifically have auto-reply stating, that one will not receive specific feedback on submissions. In the beginning, we did answer them in detail, in hopes to raise awareness and boost submissions. Eventually, we stopped doing that without any noticeable side effects. What helped was rather, that some of the users who had gotten phished at one point did become avid forwarders of phishing emails later on. : The basic thing is, in case there is an active campaign against you, you could add an extra notification on your site, something that they see either straight after login or directly on your landing page. This is a great option because users fatigued by phishing spam will not trust or read your emails anymore. Awareness Eventually, we also sent some examples of actual phishing emails in a newsletter. Initially, I was very sceptical because we were literally sending phishing to our users, which I assumed would only add confusion, but it turned out great. We had a big uptick in submissions and password changes. Granted it is one data point but I’ll probably keep this in mind for the future. You can create some fake user accounts on your site and start dropping them in phishing pages to add them to the target list of attackers. After that, you can open a beer, kick back and see if anything comes up. Usually, these lists are shared/bought/sold and targeted by different phishing campaigns. Similarly, it can provide really valuable information about the behaviour and goals of the attackers if you have a baseline of a compromised account without any actual user interaction. Honey accounts: Attackers often set up phishing pages to load resources from your actual page. There, you will be able to find them by checking the referrer header for these resource loads because it will point to the phishing domain. Requires some work, but it is awesome because at the latest you will know about a new phishing site when one of your users is visiting it the first time. That said if the phishing attackers have proper opsec this will not work. You are giving them extra work though and if they are setting the phishing page up on a hacked site they might not be able to/want to change these settings. Referrer header: : You can look for recent DNS entries, domain registrations, or certificate transparency logs for recently acquired certificates. Most times if attackers set up a domain, which in our case is a fraction of all cases, they will try to set up something similar to yours. So look in a few character distance around your sender domains and brand names. Looking for domains There are a few more non-obvious tricks. I’m glad to share it if you reach out. I do not want to give away things that we have been effectively using to not harm our own operations. How Can I Make It More Painful For Them? Outright hacking the phishing sites is probably not legal or even advised but you could make it a bit more painful for them in ways that is legal in most jurisdictions. Obviously, this is not legal advice you should check it for yourself to make sure you don’t get into trouble. Sometimes it is worth looking around on the phishing site because there might be either the phishing kit available, that allows you access to the source code, or directory listing not disabled that will give you some pointers. Looking for the phish kit: Usually you will find the kit by taking the landing URL path and making it to zip: → .zip you can find collections of kits out there if you want to learn more about them: . If you get lucky you may find something to identify and prosecute the criminals conducting the phishing campaign. You can find out more for example with . http://fake.domain/fake/login.php http://fake.domain/fake https://github.com/cybercdh/phishfinder StalkPhish You can blast them with fake credentials for non existing users, hopefully poisoning their user lists and making it easier to notice their logins. More advanced option is to even have your login page give 200 for these users so you trick them when they do the validation. Most of the phishing kits we looked at will monitor source IP and user agent so keep this in mind when you are trying to give them trash. Sending fake credentials: What about technical measures : it was supposed to solve phishing but it doesn’t really and it has its own problems. What you may gain is that attackers cannot send emails where the from email shows up as yours. That said people usually only check the alias of the from email -or more just the subject- and not the email sender itself. Even if they did attackers can still set up on adjacent domains. DMARC Setting up DMARC is also not without its complications. DKIM says nobody tempered with the email, SPF says the email was sent by one of the whitelisted senders. Tldr: there are 2 parts to DMARC, which itself is just the reporting and enforcement mechanism. So you need to make sure all sending mechanisms you use can set these and be listed in SPF. Even when that is a given you will have some trouble for example when your users are forwarding emails (e.g. Gmail set up to forward all emails to Outlook will have a broken SPF since the sender is Google). This is not to say DMARC is useless, but it will not be straightforward and will not solve phishing. However, DMARC reports are even useful to tell you about delivery problems for example and you can set up DMARC in report only mode as well.We are using it, it just have not had any noticeable impact on phishing. making the credentials not be the only thing that users need to use to log in (or in case of step-up authentication used to do sensitive operations) is a great way to ratchet up the cost of attackers. The downside is that it will mean costs for you too: some friction for users, costs of SMS messages if you use them, and more complicated account resets upping customer service requirements. Add to that, that people that are willing to give away their credentials on random sites will probably have little overlap with the group that opts in for MFA and even if it is mandatory (which in most cases is a big step) might still give away their MFA codes as well. MFA/Step-up authentication: If you think I missed something or you want to collaborate on making the life of phishers harder, don’t hesitate to reach out! This article was first published here.

Biting Back Against Phishers

This Slogging thread by  and Arthur Tkachenko occurred in slogging's official #programming channel, and has been edited for readability. Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:49 AM #Together4Victory: List of Email Marketing tools Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:50 AM Today I'm collecting a list of email marketing service providers, aka Mailchimp alternatives. And I already find a lot of cool solutions for small businesses Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:52 AM Let's start with a list of cool articles that I find during researching on Zapier https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/ https://zapier.com/blog/mailchimp-integrations/ https://zapier.com/blog/automate-email-marketing/ https://zapier.com/learn/automation-for-small-businesses/email-marketing-automation/ https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/best-drip-email-marketing-apps/ https://zapier.com/learn/email-marketing/email-marketing-list-automation/ https://zapier.com/apps/email/integrations it was one of the easiest way to find a great and reliable service. if it's listed on Zapier, it's probably cool, right? Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:40 PM Sendy Sendfox TinyLetter Mailerlite BUTTONDOWN Upscribe Palabra Friendly Froged Moosend Mailjet UnderSend MailMeteor EmailOctopus NoCodeLetters BirdSend ActiveCampaign AWeber ConvertKit Constant Contact Omnisend Getresponse Sendinblue https://sendy.co/ https://sendfox.com/ http://tinyletter.com https://www.mailerlite.com/pricing https://buttondown.email/ https://www.upscribe.net/ https://palabra.io/ https://friendly.is/automate https://froged.com/ https://moosend.com/ https://www.mailjet.com/ https://undersend.com/ https://mailmeteor.com Customer.io https://customer.io/ https://emailoctopus.com/ https://nocodeletters.com/ https://birdsend.co/ https://www.activecampaign.com/ http://www.aweber.com http://convertkit.com http://www.constantcontact.com https://www.omnisend.com/ https://www.getresponse.com/ http://www.sendinblue.com Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:42 PM There a lot of things to take into consideration. And as marketing and email marketing is a huge market for services - its not about pricing or the number of emails. below is a set of options that can help to differentiate plans Arthur Tkachenko May 5, 2022, 6:43 PM - Email Builder - Email Templates - Landing Pages - Segmentation & Personalization - Retargeting Audience - Email Analytics - Dynamic Content - Marketing Calendar - Behavioral-based Automation - Custom-coded Templates - Lifetime Value - Surveys - Single-step Automation Rules - Multi-Step Workflows - A/B Testing - Multivariate Testing - Send Time Optimization - Phone Support Arthur Tkachenko May 6, 2022, 3:41 AM it is worth mentioning solutions, having different core values for example, the companies below work good with eCommerce Klaviyo https://www.klaviyo.com/ Campaign Monitor (listed before) Encharge https://encharge.io/ Newsletter2go https://docs.newsletter2go.com/ companies/services focused on marketing automation Aritic https://aritic.com/ ActiveCampaign Drip https://www.drip.com/ GetResponse Automizy https://automizy.com/ Sender https://www.sender.net/ MailPoet http://www.mailpoet.com/ Elastic Email https://elasticemail.com/ Woodpecker - http://woodpecker.co Zoho Campaigns and many more flodesk https://flodesk.com/ peopcampaigns https://pepocampaigns.com/ mailster https://mailster.co/ sparkpost https://www.sparkpost.com/ Jilt https://jilt.com/ Autopilot https://www.autopilothq.com/ Keap https://keap.com/ Arthur Tkachenko May 6, 2022, 3:41 AM I'll continue to extend this list later, thr source will be located in this repository: https://github.com/LLazyEmail/awesome-email-marketing

#Together4Victory: List of Email Marketing Tools

After defining what the RFM analysis is standing for, and how you can apply it to your Customer Base, I want to show you how to apply it on Shopify orders data. A brief introduction to anticipate some doubts, such as: Why should we use RFM analysis?What kind of information can be obtained by using it?How do I increase the Conversion Rate or AOV (Average Order Value) using customer segmentation and RFM analysis? I answered to some other questions, in an article that you can find it out by clicking on this link. Let's export orders from Shopify The data collected by Shopify are a pretty good starting point, but they need a little normalization to make them available for Recency, Frequency and Monetary analysis on excel. In order to extract all the orders, we need to go in the backend and , and follow some steps, described below. click on the "Orders" tab, from the side menu Use "Order" and "Filter" buttons, to filter all by and ( ).In the , click on the button, in the top left side. Payment Status, Paid Fulfilment status, Fulfilled you can find a detailed instructions on Shopify website Order page Export A modal window will open, showing some options. Select the option for .In the Export as section, leave the default selection. All orders Now you can click on button, to export the orders we have just filtered. Export orders The bigger the export, the more time it takes to do it. For example, an export with less than 100,000 items could be completed in less than one hour, while an export with 400,000 items could take about 4 hours. At the end of such a long export, Shopify will notify us by email, sending us a link to download the file. Side note Now that we have our file, let's import it into our Google Drive account, which will automatically turn it into a Sheet file. The file is made up by informations that Shopify keeps for our store; a lot of data is superfluous for our calculation and we'll go forward, in the next step, to clean them. Exported the data already filtered by we'll need to delete the superfluous columns. Financial Status, Paid and Fulfillment Status, Fulfilled First, we check that , otherwise we may have . all rows are correctly filled by "paid" and "fulfilled" inaccurate results Proceed sorting from A --> Z on the column "Fulfillment Status", and delete the rows that have a value other than "fulfilled". We delete all the columns, keeping only the fields shown in the following table, making sure that the currency field has the correct currency format. The , allowing us to display in Google Data Studio, the related emails when we'll going to filter on a specific customer segmentation. Email field will be our Customer ID - The selected segments exported can be used in Active Campaign to create targeted communications using email marketing automation. TIPS Normalizing values At this point, we need to normalize all values in the "Paid at" column, as the format exported by Shopify also handles the time zone. For the purpose of this example, one day variation can be allowed too, but if we wanted to apply the right conversion, we should apply a custom function in the Google Sheets scripts module, in order to convert correctly the date. ### Timezone conversion a Google spreadsheet *I suggest to use in `` `
/**
 * Converts a datetime string to a datetime string in a targe timezone.
 *
 *@param {"October 29, 2016 1:00 PM CDT"} datetimeString Date, time and timezone.
 *@param {"GMT"} timeZone Target timezone
 *@param {"YYYY-MM-dd hh:mm a z"} Datetime format
 *@customfunction
 */
function myFunction(datetimeString,timeZone,format) {
  var moment = new Date(datetimeString);
  return Utilities.formatDate(moment, timeZone, format)
}
` `` this .* function only for skilled Going forward to the next step, we can apply the =SPLIT function, as shown below: , where you can review all the singles steps, or if you prefer, download the ready-made Google Sheet file. Apply the RFM matrix calculation, as shown in this article Showing data in Google Data Studio Open Google Data Studio and create a new Report, as shown below: When creating a new report, you will be asked to associate a data source; select the sheet on which we have worked so far. When creating a new Report, it will be shown some different data source integrations; select the sheet on which we have worked so far. It'll create a simple table, which we'll update as following: The settings will allow us to view all email and RFM value for each our customers. Now, add a tree graph, that can help us to properly show how and how many clusters make up our customer database. Add the "Tree Map" graph and set its configuration as follows. At this point, several rectangles will be shown, representing our Customer Base clustered and sorted by size: the color becomes darker based on the sum of the emails. The 343, 344, 545 values, represent a very specific information of our customers, as you can read from the association table, . that I described in the final section of this article These graphs are a basic representation of our data, as you can see in the image below. Now, we can filter clicking by on these graphs, consequently updating in real time, the right side table with the related emails of the customers belonging to the clicked segment. - When we normalize the orders, there were other data too that we cleaned (e.g. products number for each order, cost per product and many other data). These columns could be interesting to keep and shown in Google Data Studio, while your filtering the cluster. PRO TIP In Google Data Studio, you can create a custom dashboard more suited at your specific needs. Here you'll find Datastudio Dashboard: it's a good starting point for building a more customized one. Articles Series I published an article series based on RFM matrix to explain different applicable actionable tactics to grow your business. In case you missed something, the series includes the following articles: – Applying RFM Customer Segmentation to Your Business right now — [ Step by Step Guide] Map Customer Segmentation using Google Analytics and Google Sheets – Segment Shopify Customer Base using Google Sheets e Google Data Studio

How To Segment Shopify Customer Base with Google Sheets and Google Data Studio

Who doesn’t like surveys? I’m a huge fan of them, as from the company side, it helps to understand your audience better. On the participant's hand, I can compare my replies with others; that is fun. So, I’ve decided to gather the best WordPress survey plugins in one place to discover their main features, possibilities, pros, and cons. I placed all plugins randomly, so don’t try to find the best from the tops. Tricky, agree? Before I start exploring each plugin, let’s figure out why we need WordPress survey plugins? [ ] WordPress plugin makes survey organizing simpler and easier [ ] Surveys help to engage with your audience and give them the impression that you care about your clients/audience [ ] With the WordPress survey plugin, you can export all data to analyze replies [ ] The embedded option helps to add surveys on any website page or popup Now, let’s go over each survey plugin to discover all features. Survey Maker Survey Maker is the dedicated survey plugin by Ays Pro extensions for collecting data via surveys. Highlights: User-friendly and beginner-friendly Responsive design 7 free questions types Mult-page surveys Real-time reporting Styling options (background, button text color, font size, etc.) Survey maker is primarily a free WordPress plugin. Still, you can buy the Pro: $39 one-time payment (without Stripe and PayPal integrations, no summary emails), or Developer License $99 one-time payment. Pricing: Pros: Clean and simple plugin Unlimited questions/surveys Cons: No conditional features in the free version It can be too simple for advanced solutions SurveyMonkey Momentive has created SurveyMonkey; this service helps create surveys and integrate them into your WordPress website. Highlights: Team collaboration (create surveys with your team) Templates & themes Unlimited number of surveys Recurring surveys Payments integrations Variety of survey features slider questions, matrix questions, rating questions, etc. SurveyMonkey has 2 plans for business and personal use. Personal plans start from $45 per month; business plans go from $35 per user/month. Pricing: Pros: Has enormous survey building options Customize and brand your surveys as you wish Cons: Limited free version works only with paid subscriptions Embedding to WordPress Typeform Typeform is one of the famous WordPress surveys plugins. With Typeform, you can create quizzes, surveys, forms, polls, or tests. Highlights: Ready-made templates Integrations with popular platforms are available Hidden field, calculator 10 questions per month / 10 responses per Typeform Export the data Unlimited typeforms You can try free or trial Typeform or proceed via pad plans, starting from $29 per month. Pricing: Pros: Clean design Interactive surveys Cons: Limited free version It needs to be with shortcode embedded in WordPress JetFormBuilder JetFormBuilder is a free Gutenberg plugin, created for surveys, forms, quizzes. Highlights: 19+ field types Multi-step surveys option Conditional logic & dynamic features Hidden fields and calculated content Spam protection Styling options Payment integrations JetFormBuilder is a free WordPress plugin, but you can buy Pro addons additionally (like User login, Stripe, Converkit, Hubspot, Mailpoet integrations, etc.) for $39 per year for one website, or $79 per year for unlimited websites. Pricing: Pros: Creating for native WordPress editor It can be embedded into any WordPress page builder plugin Cons: It can be confusing for Gutenberg beginners TotalPoll TotalPoll helps to design and build polls in WordPress. Highlights: Visualize survey data Export all replies Multiple questions, choice types Random votes generator 5 field types The free version is available, but if you want access Pro addons, premium supports, and one site activation, just proceed with $59 per year. Pricing: Pros: Easy-to-use dashboard Customization available Cons: Premium support isn’t included while using the free version Modal Survey ModalSurvey is a WordPress survey plugin from CodeCanyon marketplace. Highlights: Display results in a visual way (charts, graphs) Start and expiry survey time Export or import surveys Modal Survey plugin costs start from $39. Pricing: Pros: Simple to use Visual builder for building surveys Cons: No free version Quiz and Survey Master This WordPress plugin was created for tests or exams, quizzes, surveys. Highlights: Countdown timer Create customizable emails Integration with MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and others There are a few plans available to buy Pro addons: basic (6 addons) for $129/year, plug (17 addons) for $179 per year, pro plan (34+ addons) for $199. Pricing: Pros: Unlimited surveys with free plugin Easy-to-use Cons: Expensive plans WP-Polls WP-Polls is a free WordPress plugin for creating surveys with templates and CSS styles. Lester Chan developed this plugin, and you can donate to help the plugin grow. Highlights: More than 90K installations Multiple selections of answers Open-source software Pros: AJAX poll system Simple plugin dashboard It can be confusing for beginners Cons: YOP Poll Add a survey to any post or page with YOP Poll WordPress plugin. Highlights: Surveys scheduling Custom fields option Limit voting by registered/login user If the free plugin isn’t enough, you can buy one of 3 available plans: personal ($17 for 1 site), plus ($27 for 3 sites), expert ($57 for 7 sites). Pricing: Pros: Easy-to-use WP plugin Customizable surveys Cons: It can be too simple for advanced solutions Crowdsignal This free poll WordPress plugin is created by Automattic and also has rating options. Highlights: 20 different styles Set the closing survey date Display results or not Pros: Unlimited polls Custom style Cons: Limited for advanced surveys Social Polls by OpinionStage Poll, survey, and quiz maker free plugin by Opinion Stage for WordPress will help you create surveys from scratch or with the help of a template. Highlights: Add images or videos to your surveys Add your logo Real-time survey results Social network integration Responsive design Pros: Easy-to-create surveys Report dashboard Cons: I haven’t found a conditional feature. Sum Up In conclusion, I would like to say that it is excellent to try the free survey WordPress plugin first. Kindly share in the comments below. Which software do you use for taking surveys?

11 Best WordPress Survey Plugins

Subscribers are like your buddies, amigos, the ones with whom you share your success, failures, updates, and what not! They are the peanut butter to your bread. Shaggy to your Scooby. Monica to your Rachel. Source: Giphy This is exactly why you must be loyal, friendly, add value, and make sure that you never let them go. This is important because, Subscribers can become your customers They help you build your brand They enable your brand to sustain So, here’s your handbook of building an authentic subscriber base which has 4 key mantras that you must swear by. Let’s begin. 4 Mantras To Swear By To Build An Authentic Subscriber Base 1. Be a thought leader: Go the depth when it comes to content creation Recollect some of the best content that you have subscribed to. As a marketer, my personal favorites are Hubspot, Copyblogger, and Content marketing institute newsletters because I get a lot of value from them. I get to learn something new every day and I get to follow the advice of industry experts! This is exactly what a good newsletter must do. Whenever you create content, understand that the subscribers are those who are already familiar with the industry. Source: Giphy The concepts are not alien to them. So, you should ensure that you don’t bore them with the basics and provide them with real value. You must go the extra mile while creating the content and also dive deep into the process. Create content that discusses New concepts and theories Explain a familiar concept in detail with minuscule details Publish findings from your research and experimentation Be a thought leader in whichever industry you belong to and make sure that you create diverse content - which we would be discussing next. 2. Diversify your content to resonate with every subscriber segment: The cross tree mantra Your subscribers are not like a one-pot meal. There’s no one-size-fits-all for all your subscribers. They vary immensely based on their demography, their interaction with your content, and their purchase patterns. This is why you must create clear segments for your subscribers and make sure that your newsletter resonates with them. Source: Giphy For example, if a subscriber has just discovered your brand, then, sending them a product demo in the first newsletter would be a bad choice. Similarly, if you have a subscriber who has been sticking around since your inception, then, writing to them about your brand may not be very relevant. This is why you must diversify your content and make sure that you segment and funnel your subscribers appropriately. The cross tree mantra of content creation and distribution: Educational and informational content >> blogs, infographics Promotional and apt for the buyer journey content >> web pages, product updates, feature announcements, company news, case studies, product demo videos Life long value add content >> webinars, ebooks, whitepapers, industry news, first-hand reports, etc. You must make sure that you segment your audience based on transactional, behavioral, and demographic basis and show the right content to the right subscriber at the right time. There are email marketing tools like BayEngage, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and more that can help you with this. Whereas, tools like ActiveCampaign do not have this feature in which case you may want to consider some . ActiveCampaign alternatives 3. The magic of asking: Give your users an opportunity to subscribe -You might have done everything right. - Creating quality content. Check. - Mapping the right subscriber to the right content. Check. - Providing solid takeaways and making the visitors want to subscribe. Check. Source: Giphy But, what you might not be doing is helping your visitors subscribe to your content at ease without making it a hassle for them to hunt for that option. I have personally experienced this! Sometimes I instantly get hooked to a blog and would volunteer to subscribe to their content. But, the options to subscribe would not be apparent and I’d give up in a few attempts. So, it is always wiser to create opportunities rather than making your audience do all the hard work. How can you ask your visitors to subscribe? Leverage the power of well-timed pop-ups with attractive copies to make it irresistible for visitors to opt-in. This can be shown when they are about to exit your website, as soon as they land on your website, or after they spend some time You can also make use of real estate on your blog pages. Insert a catchy CTA in-between the paragraphs or make use of the spaces on the left, right, or below the article Social media channels can be a great way to identify your potential audience and ask them to subscribe to your newsletter 4. Sustain the growth and never let your subscribers down This is the most important mantra of all. You’ve done all it takes to build a strong subscriber base. But, if you are not consistent in your efforts to provide them value and keep them engaged, it might result in the demonic metric that you’d never want to see - unsubscribe. Source: Giphy Here are different ways in which you can ensure their loyalty to your brand Provide valuable content consistently Run contests and giveaways Make your content personalized and relevant Make your newsletters interactive (ask them questions, solve their concerns) The Final Mantra: Wrapping Up A strong subscriber base can do wonders for your brand. The key to building a strong subscriber base is in these four mantras. I hope this article is a handy guide that helps you navigate through your newsletter strategy. If you have any questions or would like to add something, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

4 Ways to Get More Authentic Email Newsletter Subscribers

Working with tech businesses of different sizes and located in different parts of the world, we noticed a recurring challenge: . get noticed by the right buyers If the growing competition was not enough, add the buyers’ need to research on their own and the need to receive the minimum amount of assistance possible in the process and you have a complete picture of the maze that is the marketing online today. Getting noticed and attracting the right clients has become , , and . more complicated lengthy time-consuming In all this whirl, how can a tech business, either product or service-oriented build a solid marketing plan that will make it stand out and increase its number of conversions? We have discovered that there are mainly four pillars that make a marketing plan sustainable in the long term: understanding your buyer persona(s), building content strategies for every buying stage, content distribution, and automation. Pillar #1: Understand your buyer persona(s) You probably already have an idea of the type of people who might buy from you. But oftentimes we fall into the trap of assuming we know our clients all too well, only because we do business with them. And we communicate what our CEO or what our sales team think the clients want to hear, and so on. Instead, the better choice is to sit down and speak to a few of your clients. You can follow an investigative journalist’s approach, asking your clients to go back in time to the day they decided to buy from your company: What was their context, what was happening in their life at that moment? What made them choose your company? What questions did they have prior to purchasing? What is something they wished they knew (related to their pain point) that no one told them about? What words do they use to describe their pain points? Such interviews are very insightful and you should come out of these meetings with , ideas of how to write , . content ideas copy for your value proposition copy for your landing pages Adding quantitative research can give you more data on where your clients are active, what social media sites they use the most, what publications they read. You can name your personas, make them as relatable as possible, understand where they spend their time and what they need. But this doesn’t stop here. Each client goes through what we call a . Your team must understand this and the differences between each stage because they might want to change their approach according to different steps. For example, a sales specialist shouldn’t try to sell too much if your client is in the first stage, where the customer has just discovered they have a problem. buyer journey Furthermore, a strong marketing plan consists of dedicated content for each buyer journey stage. This leads us to our second Pillar. Pillar #2: Have a content strategy for every buying stage A buyers’ online journey has become complex, with buyers twisting and turning through the buying funnel, looping back, and repeating one or more tasks in the buyer’s journey. To try to simplify the picture, think of the buying journey as having these stages: Awareness Consideration Decision No matter how you define them, each step comes with its specifics and you must be prepared to meet your potential customers’ needs and concerns. Awareness stage Potential customers are they face, so you can ask yourself: how can I help them in this discovery process? What are the topics and angles I can tackle to help them identify and name their problem? just becoming aware of a problem Thus, you might want to create articles, eBooks, webinars, podcasts, or interviews through which you can show your expertise, provide tips, build trust and authority. Consideration stage Potential clients now have a clear idea of the problem they want to solve and need to . They will start comparing various alternatives, looking for results, testimonials, reviews, or specifications. know what potential solutions are out there At this point, offering case studies, solutions comparisons, and showing them what other clients have to say about you (it is known that we are compelled to using solutions that were tried & tested by others before) is the right thing to do. Show them the added value you bring and results, and in which scenario your solution is the best fit. Decision stage Customers now . And perhaps can come back to buy again and even become brand ambassadors - given that you are there for them, offering quality services and also, customer support. have their minds set on a solution and are ready to select a vendor At this point, you’ll want to focus on your solution through demos, consultations, free trials, etc. Furthermore, it helps to have some hooks in places, such as return policies or free trials for a certain period. Reinforcing their decision is vital, so make sure the whole buying process is smooth and easy and that your customer service colleagues are ready to manage potential negative feedback. You can even send follow-up emails to show your desire to consult with them and possibly improve your service. The real challenge is that almost every company out there creates content, we are drawing in an ocean of information. So to stand out, you need to find a than everyone else, you want to challenge common knowledge. radically different angle Finding that angle comes from understanding your audience and their thinking, researching what competitors have done. And then take all that and try to see what can you challenge, what is a point of view that has never been addressed?  Studies based on your internal data or conducting industry research are two quick ideas to start producing original content. Pillar #3: Distribution of content When researching your ideal customer and creating your persona’s profile, you will also learn about the channels they use to communicate and connect with others. This will help you decide which ones are mandatory for you and your business and what format of content you should focus on. There is a wide beach of resources available, channels, formats that can support your marketing efforts: : Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, own website, Whatsapp, Clubhouse Channels : remember that each platform dictates its preferred form of content, length, size: video, stories, carousels, articles Formats : being present on relevant blogs helps to build authority (companies even invest in media outlets to have more publishing space) Guest posting or press mentionings : many platforms support building communities (Facebook, LinkedIn, Slack to name a few), and having your own can position you as an authority in a field - be careful though not to turn a community into a space where you promote your products. You want to build a group around a concept or idea and to support content creation and connections and not sales Communities But organic posting is not enough to help you get your message out, you also need to complement it with paid media. To make the most of your budget, one good approach is to start with the cheapest channel (for most it’s Facebook) and test different variations of your ad (copy, title, visual). Once you’ve learned which version gets the most engagement, take that ad to a more expensive channel (perhaps LinkedIn) and run it there. Make use of warm audiences, retarget people who visited your website or that viewed other ads, instead of advertising to cold audiences only. Lead generation forms on both LinkedIn and Facebook are also worth a try, as well as conversational ads on LinkedIn. Creating great content is just half of the journey, bringing that content in front of the right people is the other half. Besides finding the right mix of channels, you also need to find supporters that will help you amplify your message: your colleagues, happy customers, micro-influencers. Pillar #4: Automation Marketing automation helps you segment your audience based on relevant criteria (industry, services needs, location, etc), personalize and sync your communication with relevant actions your leads take. It also helps you streamline processes that used to be made manually (changing leads status, sending notifications to team members, etc). Here are some tools we have tested and recommend: HubSpot ActiveCampaign SalesMango specifically for B2C companies There is no winning formula in marketing today, or at least we can’t think of one. It’s about testing and learning what works and what doesn't and iterating on those learning. But you need to build a solid foundation, to keep you focused on reaching and helping the right people and keep your marketing efforts organized. Building an ideal customer profile based on real customer interviews, putting a content creation and distribution strategy in place, and automating marketing processes are the pillars of that foundation. If you find yourself overwhelmed by the possibilities and need to regain clarity, we’re happy to and guide you in the right direction. have a conversation

Sustainable Marketing for Tech Companies: The 4 Pillars of a Successful Marketing Campaign

What does marketing automation mean? Are activities planned triggered on user-generated events. Simple and clear. Events can be: click events, pageviews, user navigations, etc. All those events could be a hook to trigger a specific automated communication sent through different channel, such as email, push notification, browser push, app push notification or whatever. Why I'm going to focus on Inactive Customers? Acquiring a customer has a cost (CAC), trying to take back customers who are, to date, inactive has a much lower cost. Just consider the following data: than that of an already acquired customer Acquisition cost is 5x higher compared to a customer to acquire that a percentage between 5-20%. You have between 60%-70% more chance of being able to sell your product to a customer that you have already acquired, So I need to put in place a tactic to "re-engage" them because they probably forgot us, or found more interesting products/services online from other competitors. Where do we start In order to deliver this tactics in the best possible way, it's really important to start from quantitative analysis, and . never delegate to hypotheses The customer base analysis is basically important because it represents your business potential in terms of sustainability and growth. Side Note on advanced methods (machine learning) Customer Base Segmentation (or clustering) could be analyzed using advanced machine learning algorithm that allow us to view segments with similar behaviors (K-Means algorithm). For instance, I could use specific features in order to plot a specific customer segment which have purchased 2 times in the last 2 months a t-shirt and a pair of pants, and that are "most likely" looking for a shoe to match. Information, needless to say, are a gold of mine for anyone with a profitable online business, today, this kind of analysis are reserved for only enterprise businesses. Coming back to RFM Online companies wants to gain more understanding about their customers, to enhance better marketing strategies and uplift their business through data analysis. A pretty straightforward solution is RFM analysis, that allows you to analyze important behaviours based on simple 3 dimensions: Recency, Frequency and Monetary. Recency is when their last purchase was, how often they’ve purchased in the past (frequency), and how much they’ve spent overall (monetary) in a span timeframe. . The output can be used to increase customer retention, customer engagement and targeted marketing The Marketing Automation Considering to have (active, inactive, VIP, loyal, etc.) it's possible to import them into lists in a Marketing Automation tools for boosting sales. 11 customer segments Personally, I've been using for years, because it allows you to manage the different automation flows by segments or sub-segments, adding dynamic tags, create customer scoring and integrate third party data through their tracking code. Active Campaign Actionable hints therefore provides use of a marketing automation product to roll out – at the bottom of this article, you find the link for that I'm going to explain. copying the marketing automation flow How to generate new sales that could be a . Once you've analyzed your customer base, you can export the inactive ones very large pool of the database Two options depending on your data type: you can send an email more targeted, asking for a simple feedback (quantitative, as should be Net Promoter Score), in exchange for a substantial discount to the next order; If you have behavioral and purchasing information: then I have to try to capture their attention based on the time period of sending by conveying information related to vacations, for example. I capture their attention and ask them for a small "commitment": in this case a feedback about their last experience with us, in exchange for a substantial discount. if instead, you don't have any kind of information, What interests us most is that customers interact with us . Once I get the click, I'm ready to tag him as and push it into the flow. asking them a small commitment, that shows us there is still an interest partially active It starts when you put tag "inactive" a contact, and: send an email for feedback request IF – It's not opened and/or clicked THEN – Enter in a reminder sequence and qualify it as temporary-lost ELSE (has clicked)  – IF he has completed feedback process THEN – Apply tag and remove active inactive ELSE – Enter in a reminder sequence untile qualify it as temporary-lost instead of affirmative one. Note how are much longer the NO cases Click here to download a marketing automation template.

How to Generate Sales from Inactive Customers and Boost E-commerce

The tech pace has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow. This is what is going on today: the COVID-19 pandemic is creating havoc in almost every industry. Businesses are moving towards digitization and preparing themselves for adopting new ways of operating and serving customers once they reach a safe situation. COVID-19 is radically accelerating the digital future. Companies are migrating towards digital practices, following , outsourcing product development, improving customer experiences and promoting remote working. agile ways of working This is amazing. Isn’t it? But, on the flipside, we become slow too. Startups are shutting off in response to the current crisis. The sudden economic shift from physical to digital, leaves businesses with enormous loss and no revenues. The pandemic changed the way we live, do work, do business and whatnot. It is accelerating the Digital Revolution, fuelled by smart technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and mobile supercomputing. A Glimpse Of Business Automation Business Automation, also known as Business Process Automation, is the digitized automation process to run repeating tasks or processes in a business where human effort can be replaced. You can streamline business processes with greater efficiency, achieve digital transformation, improve service quality, enhance service delivery, minimize cost. The benefits of Business Automation can be achieved by utilizing business automation tools such as Zapier, IFTTT, active campaign, leadformly, and so on. By automating business processes, following advantages can be enjoyed: Increased Productivity Better Customer Service Greater Efficiency High Accuracy Better Job Satisfaction The best business automation tools like Zapier, IFTTT, and leadformly help businesses streamline work processes in less time, increase revenues and take your business to the next level. A Look At Sales Automation Sales automation also helps businesses improve efficiency, streamline recurring activities, and ensuring nothing will be mishandled during the sales process. Sales automation is a smart digital way to enhance productivity with increased sales and revenue. It eliminates time-consuming and redundant tasks using Artificial Intelligence (AI), and other digital tools. Check out some of the advantages of Sales automation discussed below: Maximize productivity and sales performance Improves accuracy Ensures your sales leads don't fall Streamlines the quality of your sales tasks Reduces response time which can increase customer satisfaction Make sales data consistent According to research, automation can minimize operating costs up to 90 percent by Business Process Automation. Forrester Why should businesses automate processes? Let’s dig out a few reasons why businesses automate business processes. A way ahead to Digital Transformation Digital Transformation is all set to transform the way . Business process automation is considered one of the key aspects in the rapid adoption of digital transformation. products develop and processes work Clarity The automation process needs a specific amount of clarity about the processes right at the designing stage. If you don’t know the tasks involved and the team responsible for running the process, you can’t design and automate the workflow. Process mapping can be used to provide clarity to all employees and serve as a training resource as well. The real-time insights help you analyze the gap between your process as is and as it should ideally be. Streamlined processes One of the reasons for a business automation system is streamlined processes. The benefits like clear accountability, customizable notifications, valuable insights, and faster turnaround times make it easier to eliminate irrelevant activities and focus on core tasks that add value. Compliance Business process automation facilitates recording every detail of a particular process. The information can be presented to demonstrate compliance during audits. Standardization of operations A consistent standard of outcome is expected every time you automate a business process. Standardization helps to make your organization as reliable, which ultimately helps increase your customer base. Customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction is considered the most vital factor for any industry type. Customer expectations can be fulfilled by focusing on process efficiency and operational excellence. When you meet promised standards, customers are more likely to develop preference for your company. Source: McKinsey Migrating To Smart Systems-Redefining The Future Of Work The rapidly increasing significance and deployment of automated systems in the workplaces is not a new phenomenon, but with every passing year it is gaining more attention and topic of debate. These technologies hold a lot of exciting potential. Numbers of organizations are migrating towards integrating intelligent automation systems which are considered as a critical component of their business model. The new-aged entrepreneurs are ready to adapt and innovate for the new normal. By adopting evolving automation technologies such as AI, blockchain and vision systems, organizations can make big profits. Only the companies that respond fastest will enjoy the benefits such as recruiting, productivity, innovation and customer satisfaction. According to a study, more than 4 out of 10 workers (around 44%) have the opinion that digital evolution will have a positive effect on their current jobs, while 20% feared a negative impact. Automation Impact On the Workforce Of The Future Businesses are all set to drive innovation with the comprehensive set of innovative ideas, new products, right tech stack, and so on. But, what about our workforce? Are they ready to transform themselves into the way we work in the future? Automation helps you in the following ways: Create an adaptive enterprise with an adaptive workforce Influences and is influenced by the gig economy Fuels and is driven by shape-shifting organizations Build new ways to deliver differentiated experiences and value Evolves value According to McKinsey, it was estimated that nearly of the global workforce or 400 million workers could be displaced by automation in the period 2016–2030. 15% Automation and AI will increase productivity and economic growth, but millions of lives globally need to switch their jobs or upgrade their skill. The future of work is going to be a blend of humans, gigs, and robots. The tech-driven world is full of promises and challenges which are going to be fulfilled in the coming future. Making Workforce ready for the Future work Business entrepreneurs should keep in mind the following to make future workforce ready in which both humans and smart systems work together collaboratively to accelerate productivity, innovation, and growth. Reimagine work Tasks should be assessed not jobs. Allocate work to machines and humans both, by balancing the need for automation. Create new job roles. Build agile teams and implement outsourcing practices. Hire latest skills to new roles. Assess hired employees potential with the internal capabilities required for new roles. Pivot the workforce Pivot the workforce to create new sustainable business models. Introduce teams to support new customer experiences. Make processes agile. Develop flexible and scalable processes and motivate the workforce to support both old and new business processes. Embrace business leaders at all levels to support the workforce to develop new growth models. Scaling new skills Prioritize the skill-set for niche development of a product. Embrace ‘new skills.’ Supports the workforce to learn different levels of skills. Adopt digital practices. Make use of digital technologies like Virtual Reality (VR). Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificial Intelligence to accelerate  the speed and scale of effective and learning. Key Takeaways Organizations are using data analytics and other digital tools to strengthen business potency, customer relationships, technology systems, and operations Business leaders are taking proactive steps to transform their companies, adapt digitization practices and also motivate the workforce for remote working For most of the big businesses, incorporating agile practices and outsourcing along with remote working is the new normal now Businesses are now focussed more about building new customer relationships via effective digital experiences Last Words Businesses are all set to transform their workforce into  a “productive digital workforce” and  it will look completely different from what it is today. Accelerating your workforce transformation will be able to compete in a digital age, while extending your leadership and helping you gain a competitive advantage. All this can be achieved by evolving existing workforce and shaping their competencies and talent with brainstorming technologies. It’s time to rejuvenate the workforce for digital transformation.

Business Process Automation Is Key to the Success of the Future Workforce

Chances are, you need better strategy, not more tools. Marketing Automation (MA) historically has been perceived as a magic solution for most businesses' growth problems. Many business and marketing “experts” are obsessed with automation, preventing them from strategically thinking about their customers and instead relying on tools to automate as much as they can without a clear or realistic goal in mind. Regardless of all the noise made by mainstream media and marketing technology companies, marketers still struggling with their jobs. According to , 40% of marketers have issues proving the effectiveness of their efforts to their bosses. Hubspot The Problem Why are they struggling? In simple terms, their approach is wrong. Most marketers lack a strategic approach to marketing automation and instead focus their attention on tools. This rather common approach leads businesses to automate their customer journey without context, forcing automation through the  funnel with arbitrary touch-points and  irrelevant content, generating friction points, jeopardizing customer relationships, and increasing CAC in the long run. The Solution This guide will teach you how to use marketing automation to acquire, convert and retain users and distills the overwhelming world of marketing automation into something easily actionable. By executing the concepts in this article you will have the apparatus to focus your attention on long term results while saving money on tools that aren’t contributing to your bottom line. To make this guide a complete reference for marketing automation, I’ve spent a few months fine-tuning it to include case studies and software reviews. You’ll learn what the research says about: How to use marketing automation on any type of business and how successful businesses use automation.How to take advantage of marketing automation without paying a fortune.How to use marketing automation to significantly improve customers LTV while reducing CAC. Interested? Good. If you aren’t willing to spend one to two years paying for tools/courses to get results with MA this guide is for you. Definition Before we dig deeper into marketing automation as a concept and its implications, it is important to define it: Marketing automation (MA) is an optimization process of the user journey through the application of technology to monitor, control and deliver meaningful marketing activities ( ). It aims to easily connect and map customer interactions across multiple touchpoints, in order to direct or influence the end-to-end experience. automation Important Considerations Before we get to specifics on how to effectively use marketing automation, I’d like to briefly cover three important concepts: Business LifecycleCustomer Lifetime ValueCustomer Acquisition Cost Business Life Cycle: According to , most businesses go through four phases: HBR StartUpGrowthMaturityDecline Everything you do should be prioritized based on your business phase. The Diagram Above Represents the Business Life Cycle & Marketing Automation Framework Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) CLTV is a metric aiming to measure the profit your company can make from a customer over time. as businesses increasingly generate revenue from the creation of long-term relationships with their customers. The whole purpose of marketing should be maximizing customer lifetime value and customer equity. It is crucial for service-based economies Customer Lifetime Value — Visual Representation Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) CAC is a calculation of the total cost of acquiring a new customer and it must include the total marketing cost over the actual number of acquired customers. CAC will help you identify profitable marketing channels and activities. Source: D2C brands are driving up customer acquisition costs — and it’s time to course-correct How To Use Marketing Automation — A Step by Step Guide Now that you understand the above concepts, let’s determine whether or not you should start using marketing automation in your business As a rule of thumb, you should not invest in marketing automation if your business hasn’t achieved the following milestones: Value Proposition Validation (Product/Marketing Fit)Established two to three profitable acquisition channels — There’s no point in automating marketing when you don’t have a steady number of users coming to your site every month.Your business is generating a consistent MRR (monthly recurring revenue) at least $1000+ dollars over the last 6 months.You haven’t manually established processes for the marketing activities you need to automate. Marketing Automation Process Step 1: Identify Your Users’ Need (Jobs to Be Done Framework) Step 2: Define Your Customer Journey Map Step 3: Automate Marketing Activities (Marketing Automation process) Step 1: Identify Your Users’ Need (Jobs to Be Done Framework) First of all focus on audience needs. Remember, your audience is your business judge, jury and executioner. Every user within your audience is unique, but you can use certain attributes and behavioral triggers to predict what their pain points and expectations are. Use the . for categorizing, defining, capturing, organizing all your customer’s needs, and tying them up with customer-defined performance metrics. Jobs To Be Done framework Source: The Jobs-to-be-Done Market Discovery Template Step 2: Define Your Customer Journey Map A customer journey map is a visual representation of every experience your users have with your business regardless of the channel or device. Building a comprehensive customer journey map will help you assess your overall business experience from a customer’s perspective. “The end goal of a CJM is to improve customers experience at each touchpoint” Source: Customer Journey Maps: A Step-by-Step Guide Step 3: Automate Marketing Activities Marketing automation can be used throughout the whole customer journey, from building awareness to cultivating a dedicated user base. It is especially powerful in the conversion stage, helping you boost revenue. Source: The New Sales Funnel: How to Revitalize Your Messaging to “Wow” Today’s Consumer Marketing Automation for User Acquisition: Content Creation and Distribution Goal: Acquire as many qualified users as possible at the lowest possible CAC In early acquisition stages, marketing automation can help you identify successful marketing activities and content ideas/types that attract your audience around the product or service you’re offering. Once you are aware of effective marketing methods and content ideas, the distribution and optimization of these messages can be easily managed with marketing automation. Things like relevant posts on Facebook, the right blog post in the specific period of the month or a delivery method that fits the customers’ lifestyle could be a detail that makes a difference. Source: How to Acquire Customers: 19 “Traction” Channels to Start Testing Today Marketing Automation for User Activation Goal: Generate active engagement from acquired users before they’ve reached the point of buying intent (increase users’ probability of becoming a high-quality sales opportunity). Websites and products activate users by providing value. Marketing automation helps you address customers’ needs and expectations by easily delivering the right message to the right people at the right time. Make sure you always give your audience a reason to read your emails or visit your web pages, so your engagement metrics are good and customers don’t lose interest in your product over time. Generally speaking, a metric like TTV (Time to Value) will help assess your activation process — A short TTV normally means customers get a return on their investment of time faster — and that means they are more likely to stick around! Source: Time To Value Marketing Automation for User Retention Goal: Once you activate your users, you need to make sure users continue to use your product or service. Marketing automation uses customers' attributes and behavioral information to deliver personalized content/messaging (Follow-up email campaigns, A/B testing, etc) and optimize marketing operations. In short, everything is automated based on specific segments. Your Retention Rate depends on your business model and the product/service you’re offering, in general businesses with high ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) tend to have the lowest Churn Rate (a business with high churn rate would by default have a lower retention rate). Source: The world’s largest study on SAAS churn Marketing Automation for Revenue Generation Goal: User Monetization There are multiple monetization models (see image below), however marketing automation will help you monetize your audience regardless of the model. With marketing automation, you can automate cross-sell, upsell and promotions activities based on user behaviors by defining triggers and workflows — triggers are key events in the customer and business lifecycle and workflows are a series of automated actions that you can trigger to occur based on a person’s behaviors or contact information. Source: Digital Business Models Map: The Most Popular Digital Business Model Types Marketing Automation for Referral Marketing Goal: Encourage existing customers to drive their friends, colleagues, and family members to buy from you. Positive word-of-mouth can significantly drive your business growth when leveraged through a systematic rewards program for fans, customers, influencers, and affiliates. MA helps you optimizing the user segmentation process and automate the incentivization process via emails, landing pages or chatbots. Source: Dropbox grew 3900% with a simple referral program. Here’s how! Are You Ready For Marketing Automation? Interactive Checklist We have created an to help you find out whether or not marketing automation is a good idea for your business: interactive checklist Marketing Automation Interactive Checklist How Marketing Automation Tech Works “Marketing automation historically has really focused on static experiences while requiring the business to create every unique experience. “ — , Founder and CEO at ActiveCampaign Jason VandeBoom Nowadays every website collects lots of customer data through user interactions like emails, website visits, app usage, etc. This data is the lifeblood of a business and it is used by marketing automation tools to easily streamline the journey for multiple users providing a unique experience based on their attributes and behaviors. Here’s how marketing automation techs work: Three functional attributes every marketing automation system should provide : This is an essential function of marketing automation tools. It helps you analyze and understand who your customers are and provides intelligent insights for marketers to improve communications strategy and UX. Marketing intelligence: Tracking, experimentation and data segmentation personal and smart touchpoints based on user behaviors and attributes. Marketing automation: Content and Communications personalization — calable design and delivery of personalized customer journeys. Advanced workflow automation : Orchestrated and repeatable marketing activities—s History “Marketing automation” as a concept was first introduced by in a presentation at UC Berkeley in 2001. The concept initially referred to an automated marketing decision-making process supported on the internet and solving one essential problem: “What do we tell retailer X to do when customer Y arrives on Monday morning?” John D.C. Little He suggested businesses need to analyze the digital footprints of customer Y and use appropriate models to come up with meaningful managerial touchpoints across the whole purchase funnel. Such an automated marketing decision support promises enhanced productivity, better decision-making, higher returns on marketing investments, and increased customer satisfaction and loyalty through customization of marketing activities. Industry Overview — Trends and Statistics Marketing automation has been a growing trend for the last two decades. According to , the interest over time around marketing automation has grown exponentially around the world. Google Trends Marketing Automation Trends From 2014 to 2020 As pointed out in his , even though the landscape has grown by double digits year on year it seems like the industry is plateauing as the overall growth for 2019 was 3%. Scott Brinker 2019 research on the marketing technology landscape This isn’t the case for Marketing Automation Platforms, where over the last four years we have seen more and more evolving and tools entering the market (most traditional email marketing platforms now offer ). marketing automation solutions Source: chiefmartec.com 2017 vs 2015 = 42% growth 2019 vs 2017 = 35% growth Evolution of Marketing Technology Source: Is martech headed for its “dot-com moment” in 2020? As shown above, the future of marketing automation looks promising and it is expected to be adopted for more and more businesses as the industry evolves and prices decrease over time. But if you’re not familiar with MA, you might not be convinced that it’s worth your time or money. Here are some interesting stats highlighting the key benefits it offers your business. The average increase in sales productivity is up to 14.5%, which is a number that speaks about the power of automation.“Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead.” “91% of marketers say that marketing automation is very important to the success of their marketing campaigns.” “44% of companies that implement marketing automation see a return on investment within six months, and 76% see it within the first year.” Adobe Instapage Marketo Case Studies — The Value of Marketing Automation on Small, Medium, and Large Businesses Some general benefits are obvious in the long run, and these are: — Productivity is an obvious benefit because the whole point of automating a process is to delegate repetitive tasks to machines. Productivity — Customer experience is another positive result of marketing automation, as it is easier to segment customers and send personalized content and communications. Customer Experience — Revenue represents the ultimate result of an effective marketing automation strategy. With the right revenue insights, your automation software can predict the future increase in sales. With these predictions, you can plan future investments for more effective marketing campaigns. Revenue Here are more specific examples across different types of business and how they are using marketing automation to grow: Small Business URL: https://www.homepainterstoronto.com/ Platform: Keap Marketing Activities: Landing Page OptimisationLead QualificationEmail Marketing Benefits: 30x lead flow velocity30% closing rate Medium Size Business URL: https://www.spaceship.com.au/ Platform: Autopilothq Marketing Activities: Landing Page OptimisationLead QualificationContent MarketingEmail Marketing Benefits: Automation marketing journeys for a few different types of usersProductivity Improvements Large Business URL: https://www.amerifirst.com/ Platform: Hubspot Marketing Activities: Landing Page OptimisationLead QualificationContent MarketingEmail Marketing Benefits: Website Traffic ImprovementsLead Generation Improvements5% increase in sales after 2 years Marketing Automation Tools—An Interactive Database Today, you can find an endless number of marketing automation tools, but there are only a few of them that are reliable according to the users. You will be surprised how a simple platform can dramatically increase your chances to get more customers in the long run. Find out more about the best platforms in . this list By clicking on the link above you’ll be able to easily filter important attributes for the most popular marketing tools in the world. Marketing Automation Tools — Interactive Database Top 3 Performers According to G2.com and Capterra 1. Marketo Medium Size Business to enterprise-level in a variety of industries — recommended for companies generating $5000+ MRR. Target customer: Product Overview Cloud-basedMarketing Activities include Email Marketing, Lead Management, Consumer Marketing, Account-Based Marketing, and Marketing analytics WYSIWYG editor for email and landing page creation ContentAI add-on application uses AI to recommend content across the web, based on CRM data 2. HubSpot Medium Size Business to enterprise-level in a variety of industries — recommended for companies generating $800+ MRR. Target customer: Product overview Free CRM Lead capture, management, scoring, nurturing, analytics, A/B testing, blogging, content management, social monitoring and publishing, email marketing and paid advertising Workflows and Automated Communication Solutions Email tracking from the user’s inbox, notifications when leads view site pages, and in-line information on competitor sites and emails users receive Mobile apps and integration with 100+ apps 3. Mailchimp Mainly SMBs Recommended for businesses generating 0 to 1000 MRR. Target customer: Product overview Integration with Ad platforms and Landing Pages Signup forms and basic customer relationship management Automated Workflows — Automated emails based on marketing triggers Testing: Provides A/B and multivariate testing tools to optimize campaigns Advanced Analytics and Segmentation Features Conclusion I hope this guide helped you better understand the marketing automation world. Now I’d like to turn it over to you: What was your favorite concept or resource from this guide? Or maybe you have an excellent piece of content that you think I should add. Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.

Marketing Automation for Non-Technical Professionals [The No-Nonsense Guide]

As Startups, we have a habit of moving fast. But in our haste, did we pick the right tools for the job? I surveyed 139 entrepreneurs in various stages of their business. Summarised the data so you get the best Startup Tool for email marketing, project management, CRM, Company Wiki, plus in 5 more categories. Read on to make your SaaS tool selection easier and give you a few more vetted options to consider. Stuff to know 139 people surveyed. Which gives an error margin of approximately +/-10% on an assumed population of 10 million entrepreneurs. Respondents hailed globally. Though mostly from US, AU, and NZ. Where possible, I also included Sentiment analysis on Why a particular SaaS Tool was picked. Given time constraints, forgive me if I only include analysis for the top SaaS choices. There was no marked difference between the groups in the survey demographics (e.g. Founders vs everyone else — see demographics below). So for the benefit of analysis. I’ve called everyone a Founder. For each section, you’ll find: - survey result, and - what we use at , our Meeting Scheduling Startup. People’s Choice JZ’s Choice Inviited I hope you like Pie Charts, because you’re gonna see lots of it! 🥧 👍 Now, onto the results! ‍ Best Email ProviderChoice of Email Hosting SaaS No surprise here. Gmail user at a whopping 71.2% of Founders. It takes next to no time to set up. GSuite comes with 30GB of file storage, bundled with Google Docs, Sheets, Forms etc, along with advanced user admin. GSuite has a which turns Gmail and GSuite into: market place Project Management Tool ( ) Wrike A CRM systems for Gmail ( ) Streak Along with more traditional plugins like , or . Dropbox for Gmail Zapier And it’s all here for under US$8 / month / user. We’ve used it for every single one of our businesses. With (76%) and (14%) dominating the Startups Email space, it’s difficult to imagine smaller players and making any dents in the market… Google Microsoft Zoho Yandex ‍ Best Email Marketing SaaS ‍ : People’s Choice MailChimp : JZ’s Choice MailerLite ‍We literally had 41 different Email Marketing software suggested 🤯(what a tough market!). Anything from (3.6%), (2.2%), (2.2%), to (1.5%). Intercom SendGrid Hubspot Active Campaign seems to be the de-facto choice here, with most people citing their familiarity with it from previous experiences (33%). Plus it’s Free (as in 🍺), has lots of Integrations and has a solid reputation. MailChimp "[Mailchimp was] cheap, pretty, did everything I needed out of the box, easily integrates with my other systems” A number of respondents cited they used a mix of MailChimp and other tools. And as their needs got more advanced, they shifted to the likes of (for Live Chat and Inbox integration), or (for the CRM and bunch of other features). Intercom HubSpot "Mailchimp initially as cost and ease. Moving across most to Hubspot for more tracking data to segment nurture lists and helps sales" While no one mentioned email functionality, we use ours for customer segmentation, list management, and light weight CRM (more on this later) We seem to be on the same journey. As email marketing newbies, we came across MailChimp since it often topped Review sites. We used it with a couple of product launches. Eventually graduating to (awesome Automation, straight-forward UX), till it got too expensive for us. Drip We currently use for as it’s the right balance between cost and functionality. It does just that much more than MailChimp to make us happy. MailerLite Inviited 🤞it evolves with our needs.‍ ‍ Best Team Communication Tools Oh, Slack. How you’ve won our hearts by becoming our Communication backbone. Allowing (most of) us to ditch email, Your easy on-boarding, emojis, gifs, and many Integration has made us 102% more productive and have at least 78% more fun at work. While you are great, it’s tough staying focused with irrelevant channel messages (or the sheer volume of them after a holiday — Threaded model anyone?) But we love your Free plan, and nothing seems to come close - JZ (a Fan) Looks like we’re not the only team living in Slack. This is why 48% of our Founders use it. And here’s why? Why Slack? This proves conclusively: “Network effect is key in workplace messaging apps” — JZ Despite being “more Free” than Slack, (4%) and (2.2%) still have a lot of catching up to do… Microsoft Teams Discord “All the integrations. Jira, bitbucket and a bunch of webhooks provide a lot of updates along with the human messages. So one app Slack to see what’s going on across the business.” ‍Other Observations: Some teams still using Email (10%). Most common reasons cited were: for small teams, it’s simple, free, has zero-learning curve, and just there. Non-work messaging tools still have a place here: (5%), (5.8%). Skype Whatsapp Which reminds me of the state of Messaging from 2015 ( ). Still Fragmented… 😓 Wired article Remember from 2015?‍ HipChat ‍ Best Task Management / Project Management Tool : People’s choice (Personal) Trello : / JZ’s Choice (Personal) Asana GTask : People’s choice (Team) Trello : JZ’s Choice (Team) Trello It seems like a new task management tool comes out every other week. But Trello (29.5%), the One Board to rule them all, takes it out. Just look at the fragmentation of the market here. We had 50. 🤯 Yes, 50 different Task or Project Management product choices nominated by our Founders. From the more traditional: , , good ol’ trusty pen & paper 💪. Asana JIRA To the not so traditional: , , , , , and , Plutio ClickUp Basecamp Bitrix 24 TFS Notion Notes on iPhone “There are so many [tools]. I had to pick one. I chose Todoist years ago and I haven’t looked elsewhere because it does what I want.” Some of those tools clearly have uses beyond task management, which illustrates the blurring lines of project management space and opportunities for vertical integration. Some examples: — Note and Company Wiki (see Company Wiki Tool below), but has a good Task tool as well — the grandfather of SaaS. All in one project management tool, with Chat and Task bundled in.All in one products like: (Email, live chat, document collaboration, Kanban boards, etc), (CRM, Website Builder, etc) Notion Basecamp Plutio Bitrix 24 “[Notion is] Best. Most flexible. Free to me! Even in Team Plan.” Why was the top choice? Trello Most common reason cited, for personal use: Simplicity (50%),Used previously (25%)Integration, Free, or Specific use case — e.g. tracking product roadmap, Business Development steps, etc For team use: Simplicity (75%)Used previously (5%) For , the runner up for both personal and team task management tool. Most commonly cited reason was previous exposure and one task tool for the whole team. Asana “We use it [Asana] for the wider team and it makes sense to keep todos in one place.” While has Team features. Their Business plan is less than 3 years old. Todoist and have been around longer, and were built from the ground up for “multi-player” meaning Startup teams got to use them early and stuck with them thanks to their simplicity. Trello Asana For us, we loved Asana’s keyboard controls, they were also a big influence in us making . Inviited a dream for Keyboard Ninjas However, we found Asana’s long task lists difficult in a team setting. We also couldn’t easily switch between their List & Board views (Asana Board stand along very sub-par compared to Trello). Trello’s awesome keyboard shortcuts, overall simplicity and zero learning curve won us over, and we’ve been using it for years.‍ ‍ Best CRM ToolChoice of Email Hosting SaaS : , or Email List Tool doubles as CRM People’s Choice Hubspot : Our Email marketing tool ( ) JZ’s Choice MailerLite 25% of respondents didn’t have a CRM tool, and used their email list management tool instead — just like us. The reason is simple: “Early stage Startups are not ready for a dedicated CRM” — JZ We are small, agile and moves fast. Unless dedicated tooling solved a pain-point, it adds unnecessary complexity & administrative overhead. So most of us stuck with our Mailing List tool which has enough for us to do simple segmentation. If your Startup is ready for a CRM. (23%) was the top choice for our list of Founders. Largely because it was free (according to 69% of Founders using Hubspot) Hubspot “[Hubspot because] functionality, price, startup program” (7.2%) was the next choice. Most because the team had used it before, or already came with the tech stack (40%) SalesForce Best Landing Page Builder , or custom coded site People’s choice: Wordpress : JZ's choice Webflow While no-code tools have matured leaps & bounds in the last 5 years. Nothing beats custom code’s ability to: do-it-exactly-as-I-envisioned-it. It helps that 43% of the Founders who custom built their website self identify as Developers. And 30% did it for reasons of customisation. leads the pack for no-code tools (it’s doesn’t strictly meet the definition of a no-code tool since heavy customisation can be done with PHP). No surprise as WordPress powers 29% of the world’s internet traffic, and likely the most popular blogging platform under the ☀️. Wordpress For Founders used WordPress it to build their website (22.1%), most of them did it because of familiarity with the platform (50%). “[Wordpress because] familiarity at the time as a non-tech, Now I’d probably start with Carrd if I was needing a landing page.” We built the landing page & blog on (11.6% of founders) because it was heavily customizable (think: frontend for CSS), can fine-tune mobile responsiveness, and we didn’t mind the learning curve. Inviited Webflow There was a more pivotal reason: - JZ “Using a no-code tool for the Inviited website meant we could preserve our core engineering effort for the actual product.” For everyone else, the landing page tool is really a personal choice. Depending on your needs and previous experiences. , , , , , (for Wordpress), are all viable choices, along with 100s of others. SquareSpace Wix Carrd WebFlow LeadPages Brizy Hubspot “Significantly expanded functionality, SEO capability and site speed recently. Ease of use is [Wix's] key differentiator.” “[Unbounce is] easy quick and cheap to start on , move to hubspot because it gives us more data for segmenting and targeting lists” ‍ Best Customer Support Tool : Email, or People’s choice Intercom : Email JZ’s choice Email, a relic from the infancy of the Web is used by 30% of our respondents for customer support. We use it too. Email is ubiquitous as it’s attached to our web domains. Everyone’s familiar with it. And let’s be honest. Real-time customer support like live chat requires dedicated time & resources that Startups may not have. “Email is best option at this stage — use it with hubspot and live chat” But if you’re in the market for a dedicated Customer Support tool. (14%) is the winner here. Followed by (7%). Intercom ZenDesk 40% of Intercom users cited Integration as being the number #1 reason they used Intercom. “[Intercome] It connects with everything else (support, sales, email marketing, help center).” It was also interesting to see 16% of respondents don’t do customer support. Are these companies too early to do support — at least I can’t think of an industry where where customer support isn’t needed. Super interesting, we may dig into this in the future. If you’d like to look around, products like , , , even were also mentioned. FreshDesk HelpScout Gist WhatsApp “[HelpScout] Has a KB and good support for email comms.” Best Internal Documentation / Company Wiki Tool ‍ : People’s Choice GSuite : (previously ) JZ’s Choice GSuite Quip GMail, the most popular email for the same reason that GSuite dominates here: You can’t beat the price. 52% of Founders collaborate using GSuite cited cost as the reason (the word “Free” 🍻 was thrown around a lot!) “We were all using it [Gsuite] individually before we started so we just continued to use it.” It’s great to see (a company less than 3 years old) being used by 12.2% of our respondents. For those who use it, 62% absolutely raved about its flexibility and ability to do so much. Notion “Because I have tried many, nothing comes close, and Notion is the bomb!” “We also use gsuite. Notion forces a clearer structure.” I found it interesting no one used : A collaboration product made by ex-GSuite Googlers. Acquired by SalesForce in 2016 for $750m. Quip For 3 years it was the backbone of our internal company wiki: document chat, product & finance documentation, marketing schedule, and even agile ceremonies (we documented product planning, retros out of it too). We recently switched to GSuite. While It doesn’t have the everything-is-in-one-place feel of Quip. Like you, we loved that it came with our Business Gmail — and it’s hard to beat Free 🍻! ‍ Best Video Conference Tool Zoom (41%) topped our choice for video conferencing software. Its growth has been absolutely phenomenal ( Source for graph 👇) Don’t forget installing Zoom required us to ignore the default options that came with Slack (#1 for team communications) or Google Hangout (GSuite is #1 for Company Wiki). Which is a testament to its product superiority. The major issue with group virtual meetings is connectivity. Our team has personally experienced dropouts, voice & video lag with Skype and Google Hangouts as soon as we had 4 or more people on the call. Conversely, I’ve been in Zoom meetings with 20 people and no connectivity issues. This is supported by the survey data: 67% of Founders cited Connectivity as the #1 reason they use Zoom. 21% cited the product’s simplicity. “Zoom could operate even at 40% data loss, so it would still work on a spotty or slow internet connection. And at $9.99 per host per month ($14.99 today), it undercut its rivals. Zoom customer service chief Jim Mercer was then working at competitor GoToMeeting when a colleague opened a Zoom account to see what the hype was about. “One click, we were in, and there were 25 feeds of participants at the same time,” he says. “We were like, ‘What is this voodoo? How are they doing it?’ “ — Forbes article Thanks for Reading There you have it. The best Startup Tools for your business. If you enjoyed this article, please Share 🙏 Johnathan Zhuang (JZ) loves and breath Startups. He currently heads up Inviited , a Meeting Scheduler for the 21st century, and writes about side hustling Startups at iamjz.com

The Founders Survey Winners Are: Gmail, Mailchimp, Slack, Trello, Hubspot, Zoom and Custom Code

The Definitive 227 Item Quality Assurance Checklist to Test Before Launching New Software

This morning I was browsing Reddit when I stumbled upon a post in /r/cscareerquestions titled At first this seemed like a strange request, why do you need an entire guide around how to do this? Then I started thinking a bit more and remembering what it was like when I first entered into the industry and I realized it probably would have been incredibly helpful had a guide existed (or if I read through one), since a lot of the questions the person asked made perfect sense. I wanted to take the chance today to respond to the questions they asked. Is there a guide on how to move on from your first job? How do you find time for interviews? Finding time to interview can seem fairly daunting at first but it really isn’t too bad, especially if you are selective with the places you’ve applied at. This all starts with what type of interview you are doing which I’d break up into three different types which have an increasing time commitment. Interviewing with the recruiter. I’m a little hesitant to bucket this into an since the time commitment is so small but you are still talking about your experience and this is typically the first step companies take to vet candidates. In these cases you are safe to block thirty minutes on your calendar during the day to take a phone call. You likely work in an office so stepping away to take a phone call is common, maybe you are talking with a family member, you have to talk with a delivery person, or one of a million different reasons you could have to talk on the phone. interview I use this opportunity to step away from my desk so I can divulge in my experience without worrying about a co-worker eavesdropping. If your office has a common area that’s probably fine, or you could walk to a coffee shop, or you could go sit in your car for a bit. The only thing to keep in mind is this is still an interview, and you should make sure it will be easy for the person on the other end to hear what you are saying. If all goes well you are likely heading into a technical phone screen. Technical phone interviews. At this stage the recruiter is happy with your answers and you have graduated to speaking with a member of their engineering staff. At this point in time it’s a good idea to be sitting at a computer where you can answer questions (the recruiter should have given you specific instructions with what to expect). During these interviews I’d recommend working from home, if your company has a relaxed policy around remote work then don’t worry about coming up with an excuse. On the other hand if your company needs reasons for working from home this is where you unfortunately will want to start coming up with reason for why you need to work remotely and it should fit into a narrative where you can work remotely several more times to accommodate for technical phone interviews from other companies too. If you need ideas think of vague illness or home improvement projects. some One thing to keep in mind is you should still complete the work you are committing to. If you generally are working eight hours a day and this interview takes an hour away from that then you should try to work a little longer that day. On-site interviews. Once you are at this point you need to start coordinating and planning things out a bit more. During my last job hunt I had four on-sites with my top three companies. In general this is where you need to start taking time off, fortunately for myself my company had an unlimited PTO policy and since I was getting my work done there wasn’t much push back when I requested days off. When I worked at companies with fixed buckets I would take a half-day for each on-site which typically was enough. It’s important to keep this part in mind though because you don’t want to overbook with on-site interviews and find you are unable to take the time off. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to travel for your interview then I’d recommend trying to do that on-site on a Monday so you can travel during the weekend and ideally fly back that day or Tuesday. There are exceptions though. I will preface this by saying if you have a good relationship with your manager then there is nothing wrong with letting them know you intend to interview outside of the company. In the past I’ve had managers that I trusted enough where I would have informed them of this, except by the time I started interviewing elsewhere they were no longer around so I haven’t had the opportunity to try this myself so your mileage may vary. How long should you stay at your first job? There is no right or wrong answer to this question because in short: it depends. You should stay at your first job (and any job) as long as you still find yourself learning and you are happy with the company. Once you start becoming bitter about a company it’s best to start planning your exit strategy because it’s not good for you and it’s not fair to those around you (just because you’re unhappy doesn’t mean others are). I stayed at my first job for four months before moving on. My manager had sixteen direct reports and didn’t sit anywhere near me (I didn’t know where she sat for my first month). To no fault of their own I just never felt like we had much time to build a relationship and ultimately if you don’t trust your manager it’s hard to talk about career goals. They were hoping I would become a Tibco developer and continue to work on an internal C# web app that ran on IE6. I wanted to pursue a career as a mobile developer so I found another company that allowed me to grow in that area. On the other hand, had I started as a mobile developer (or even a web developer working on interesting projects) I likely would have stuck around quite a bit longer. Are you looking for an actual time frame? If you want an actual time frame then I’d say as long as you stay at your first company for one year you are in the clear. It’s easy to make a narrative around why you only stayed for one year and there are plenty of people that leave before their first year. If you are approaching the three year mark at your first company then it is a good idea to start reflecting on where you are now and if you are still happy with that. Typically merit salary increases aren’t incredibly competitive as the largest I’ve received was just shy of five percent. On the other hand the lowest salary increase I’ve accepted from another company was fourteen percent with the highest being a little over twenty. A fairly normal number I’ve seen thrown around is to stay with your company for two years. This gives you enough time to build compelling relationships with others, you can complete a few projects, and your salary shouldn’t stagnate. If you find yourself in a position where you don’t really care about making more money then feel free to ignore this advice (although I’ve found most people at the start of their careers complaining that they don’t make enough). How do you handle references? This is another situation where it really depends on your specific company and the circumstances around it. If this is for a background check then they will usually just call your employer to ask if you work there and if your title lines up with what you told them. In these cases I’ve never encountered any issues, if you’re fired out of retribution there is likely a lawyer that would love to work with you. No, I need actual references. In my experience this is a fairly rare occurrence. I think I’ve only had one company request references from me and in this case you’ll want to make sure the people you give will talk highly of you. If you have friends at work that know you are interviewing elsewhere or you are comfortable asking for a reference then start there. Outside of that search your network, see if you have professors that remember you or other employers from your college days. How do you make sure promises are kept? This can be filed away into the category of . My rule when it comes to employment agreements is anything on paper should be kept, anything not on paper may have never been discussed. In the past I had an employer that required I relocate for my position and I was locked into a rental agreement. They told me they would cover my rent at my current place until I found someone to sublease and I would not sign the agreement until it was in writing. Thankfully I did because this unfortunately was a topic of discussion for several months and they would have backed out on it had it not been in writing. you live, you learn If you find yourself in a situation where the company promised something and it was in the contract and they are now backing out of it then it’s best to bring it up to your manager. In these situations there might be things that can be done, but ultimately you have to decide if it’s worth finding a lawyer over. Which brings me to my side note. In general I look at everything outside of money as very flexible things which may or may not stick around after I join the company. I go into a new job knowing my base salary, if I am eligible for a bonus, and what their retirement plans look like. Outside of that I assume most things will change overtime and I set my expectations accordingly. How do you tell your boss once you accept an offer? Once you find yourself with a signed offer in hand and successful background check behind you it’s time to notify your boss. I have always broken the news by handing my boss my resignation letter in person and in private. If you are able to schedule a short meeting that typically works the best, but if you are having difficultly finding time pulling them aside in the morning can work too. During your conversation you should explain how when you’d like your last day to be (typically two weeks from that day is fine) and make sure you clear up everything revolving around your employment with the company during this time. Expect them to try to keep you at the company, if you are open to negotiating then make sure you sort that out in this meeting. If you are not interested in negotiating then make sure they know up-front, the worst thing you can do is be vague in this moment and have to let your boss down when they come back with a counter offer several days later. If you are looking for a script this is generally what I have said. Hello Boss-Person, I have received an offer to join another company and have decided to accept it. My final day will be (day of week), the (date of month). I wanted to say that I appreciated everything this company has provided for me and all of your help. I want to make it clear though that this decision to leave is final and I am not open to negotiating against the offer I have received. In this moment it’s important to remember less is more. I’ve made it a personal rule of mine to never discuss where I am going with others at my current company. There is really no value you can get out of divulging this information and it can actually be detrimental. Just think what could happen if your boss is spiteful and knows someone at the company you’re going to. Another scenario could see people speaking badly about the company you are going to and completely killing your new job rose tinted glasses. Bonus advice! While answering those questions I found myself wanting to add more but it didn’t seem directly relevant to the question at hand. I wanted to offer some small bits of bonus advice for all job seekers out there which will hopefully help you with your future endeavors. Build a relationship with your manager. Managers should be looked at as job coaches. They should be able to help you navigate your current company and assist you in achieving your goals. You should build an open and honest relationship with your manager so you can vent your frustrations and ideally have problems solved before you have one foot out the door. Collect your negative thoughts and be productive. I’ve found it fairly normal to grow bitter of your company prior to leaving. I’m not sure if I’ve left a company that was doing everything right and I was happy with (if that were the case I wouldn’t have left). It’s important to figure out you are leaving that company so you can use that during your job search to find companies that aren’t like this. You can use this information to build out questions to ask the interviewer to determine if the company would be a better fit for you. why Be honest during your exit interview. You are leaving the company, and in most cases you are talking someone from the HR department. While I’ve never had much luck with exit interviews changing anything I still think it’s important to be honest during these. The worst case is nothing you say turns into actionable items, however in the best case you could make life easier for the co-workers you are leaving behind. Save documents from your final two weeks. This is something I wish I would have started sooner, but you should really save the documents from your final two weeks. I like reading old resignation letters to see if I still have those same feelings or if my new employer has helped to extinguish them (if you still have those same feelings either you picked the wrong company or you need to look inward because the problem might just be you). I file away all of the documents my former employer gives me along with things like offer letters and general information from my future employer. Saving job descriptions can be useful as well since you can usually use that to assist you in updating your resume. I have a folder in the cloud title , and within that folder I have other folders with the company name on it. Throw all of those boring documents in there, chances are you’ll thank yourself for doing that in the future. Career Don’t jump into the new company after the old one. I made the mistake of leaving a company on a Friday just to start at the new one on Monday. Don’t do this, for the last month or more you’ve been working full-time and interviewing. You are likely tired and burnt-out at this point. Take a week off between jobs so you can relax and feel energized when you start at the new place. Thanks for taking the time to read through my article. If you found something to be not quite right or have other information to add please reach out in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this article, please click on the clap icon a few times or share it on social media (or both). Lastly, I’m starting up a mailing list that is powered by ActiveCampaign , if you want to get weekly newsletters then please use the sign-up form below.

The Definitive Guide For Leaving Your First Software Engineering Job

I have been on Facebook since Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 8:36 PM CDT, I know this because Facebook has kept track of that for all of these years. In the 12 years I have been on the platform I have reacted to 8,283 posts, removed 474 friends, responded to 668 events (most of which are ), and have imported 664 contacts from my phone into the network. I knew Facebook kept track of things, and I’m honestly not surprised by how much information they keep track of. In total my information dump I received from Facebook was 2.26gb which also included all of my photos and videos in medium quality (of which accounted for 1.78gb). I’m also not against a company collecting information in this manner so long as they aren’t reckless with it. Maybe Searching for new’s articles on Google with the query yields 667 million results in 0.33 seconds. It has been reported that Facebook was using information as a with the likes of Netflix, Spotify, and others. The . Amid all of this pressure the with a price-target cut as well. To put it bluntly, Facebook is not a company I trust with my information. With that said though, what information does Facebook have about me? facebook privacy bartering tool FTC is looking into Facebook’s privacy concerns yet again share prices of the company have hit a 21 month low Let’s Start With The Basics Facebook of course knows when I registered for the service. They know my current city, where I grew up, and everywhere else I’ve lived in-between. Oddly enough it does not seem to have my full relationship history, this might be from girlfriends deleting their profiles though. They know about my family members, my education and work history. They have my screen names for GitHub, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The social network knows I’m interested in women, am a liberal, and my religious views are agnostic. Most of this information is fairly basic though, anyone that is a friend of mine probably can already view this anyway. Facebook also has a datapoint called which is described as: Friend Peer Group Life stage description of your friends on Facebook The current life stage of my friend group is apparently , which makes sense sine most people I’m friends with I either met in college or are younger relatives of mine. I’m still kind of surprised that they felt the need to categorize this though. Starting Adult Life Of course my search history is readily available at my fingertips. Something that seems to be somewhat hopeful is this only includes my history that I have not deleted as I will periodically go through and purge that sort of stuff. Facebook has also kept tabs on places I’ve created which includes the Menard’s in Woodstock Illinois, and in Dekalb, Illinois. A Friend’s House Unsurprisingly Facebook has also kept track of my profile update information. Rather than displaying this information in chronological order though it’s fairly scattered and I can’t figure out what order it’s actually in. As an example, stuff from 2012 is at the top while more recent events from 2018 are in the middle of this page. I’m kind of mortified that I tagged my girlfriend in a post about shortly after I purchased a coat from Canada Goose this October; don’t worry they kept track of my exact location when I made that update. New Clothes Who Knew Messenger Had So Much Data I guess it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Facebook keeps your messages around. Having roughly 12 years worth of messages is still rather hard to comprehend. I found a message between myself and someone else I did not get along with, and I had the opportunity to relive petty arguments that took place 7 years ago. Going back even further than that I can read conversations I had all the way back in 2006. In some ways it’s a little shocking to see how far I have come since I was 16 years old, but at the same it’s rather creepy that Facebook has all of this information readily available. Even deleting your account isn’t enough which was made obvious after scrolling through many chats. One of those users was asking me if I could hack into someone’s Facebook account (because you know, everyone with a computer science degree can and will do that for free). A lot of these ones are messages from 2008–2011 and I have to admit, I have grown up quite a bit in that time. The way the information is presented makes it fairly difficult to go through every message and I get the feeling that’s intentional. In total the folder accounted for 438mb of the 2.26gb Facebook has on me. Facebook User messages The Advertisers Portion Is Unsurprisingly Worse I want to start off by looking through the section. I guess you are able to upload contact lists as an advertiser for reasons I’m not quite sure on, however 678 companies decided to give my information to Facebook. I won’t list off all of them, however here are some interesting ones I noticed while scrolling through: Advertisers Who Uploaded a Contact List With Your Information Precision Garage Door of Austin (and Delaware, and Houston, and Southeast Michigan, and West Michigan). I’ve never needed a garage door in any of those areas, in fact Austin is the only city of those listed I’ve been to. Adam Panter For District Attorney, I’m not even sure who that is. Americans For Prosperity, as well as their regional branches in Colorado, North Carolina, Ohio, and South Dakota. Chipotle Mexican Grill, I ate there 8 times a week in college so I’m not shocked. Dallas Fort Worth Acura Dealers, I’ve never been to DFW so I’m assuming they just bought a list of people somewhere. Nike Japan, oddly enough Nike US did not give my information to Facebook. Roti Modern Mediterranean, I’m not sure if I ever gave them my email address so this is kind of disturbing. Uber Eats Kenya, why Kenya? It’s good to know that once I delete my Facebook account that companies will still offer up my information to Facebook. The company also keeps track of advertisers I’ve interacted with, albeit it seems like only for the past few months (I also may have purged this information too). It looks like back in October of this year I was really excited about shopping for essentials at Express though. Just the other day I was looking at an ad for the #1 meeting room booking system. They keep track of my ad interests as well which include 236 topics ranging from Timesplitters (a game that needs a next-gen remake) to the number 1,000,000,000. They Keep Tabs On The Technical Stuff Too It’s not just about making money off of your information at Facebook. The company also keeps plenty of information around related to your security and login information. According to their records I have changed my password 5 times (doesn’t seem right, so maybe they don’t track that anymore), although I have removed my profile photo 83 times. The company has been keeping tabs on logins and logouts since 2016 which include 56 logins and 58 logouts. Facebook also know’s where I have logged in at going back to 2017. They have kept tabs on 280 IP addresses I have used while using their platform. Speaking of location, the company knows where I have been since 2017. Most of the records show up as me being in Chicago but they have also picked up on my recent trips to Florida and California. Anecdotally it appears the company did not collect much location information about me when I had an iPhone, however since switching back to Android they have been collecting information like crazy. I’m Getting Rid Of Facebook In 2019 I didn’t get the chance to talk about the events or group activity that Facebook has kept about me. I’m also not sure what they have collected from my Oculus Go or Instagram. In writing this article though I have switched over to DuckDuckGo, so it’s safe to say I’m officially paranoid about what information any free service has collected about me. Looking through the section I have several accounts off of Facebook that I need to transfer over before I can safely delete my account. Over the next week I plan on migrating over to email logins for some of the 356 services I have associated with Facebook, while the others I’ll be okay with just orphaning. I will of course delete my Instagram account as well and I’m not really sure what to do with the Oculus Go. I do feel very fortunate for not purchasing one of those Facebook Portals though, I can’t imagine what this company will do with a camera embedded in households. Apps and Websites Thanks for taking the time to read through my article. If you found something to be not quite right or have other information to add please reach out in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this article, please click on the clap icon a few times or share it on social media (or both). Lastly, I’m starting up a mailing list that is powered by ActiveCampaign , if you want to get weekly newsletters then please use the sign-up form below.

There ain’t no such thing as a free service, and why I’m giving up Facebook in 2019.

There are a plethora of email marketing tools out there, each has a strong suit and should be used for a particular type of campaign. While Aweber, ConstantContact, GetResponse, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign are some of the best tools to build AutoResponder based relationship building email marketing campaigns. In this article, we will review, 3 of the best bulk mailing solution services for startups & small business. How is Bulk Mailing Solution different from Traditional Email Marketing campaigns? Generally, when you’re trying to blast your emails to a large number of contacts who might or might have subscribed to your list yet — is known as ‘Bulk Mailing’. Bulk Mailing is generally used for Cold Email Campaigns, Database marketing, Broadcast & promotional emails while traditional solutions like Aweber & GetResponse is used for Lead Generation and Auto-responder/NewsLetter campaigns. What to look for while choosing the ideal bulk mailing solution for your campaign? Some of the key elements to look for are: Daily & Hourly sending limit Delivery quality Whether it allows Purchased/Scraped contacts or not Hard bounce handling Mailing software features Setup & configuration requirement Let’s start by reviewing out top 3 Bulk Mailing Solutions: InstantBulkMailer ( ) Visit Website InstantBulkMailer is one of the fastest growing email marketing services in the world and there’s a good reason for that. It is specially built for the non-techie marketers and startup founders out there. Generally using a Bulk Mailing Solution, you would have to connect your corporate domain to the Bulk Mailing Solution providers Servers, Configure your SMTP & Sender emails — sometimes this might become extremely complex and if not done right, it leads to poor delivery rate. Many a time, the support staff will help you configure your Email & Domain via a screen share and it might end up becoming very tiresome process — not to mention the limitations that you have in using different ‘Sender emails’ which you’ll have to stick to your own corporate email addresses. InstantBulkMailer, on the other hand, has eliminated all of these steps, you do not need any configuration and are free to change and use any sender email of your choice including Gmail, Yahoo, OutLook. (Most other Bulk Mailing solutions do not allow free email services) I’m a big fan of InstantBulkMailer — simply because of it’s simplicity, competitive pricing and one of the best inboxing rate in the industry — without having to purchase any third party SMTP or G-Suite. Website — www.InstantBulkMailer.com Free Trial Available — Yes Advantages: No Setup or technical knowledge required Unlimited Sender email Cost effective for large-scale email blast campaigns Low Hard bounce penalty Allows Purchased email databases Disadvantages: Not good for newsletter & auto-responder campaigns 2. Semi-automated bounced & unsubscribed lead handling When to choose InstantBulkMailer over other bulk email marketing solutions? If you need to start sending out large-scale email blast campaigns right away without any technical know-how — then choose InstantBulkMailer. For Newsletter or Auto-responder campaigns you should choose other solution. SendInBlue Sendinblue — Popular Email Marketing Platform SendInBlue is one of the more reputed Bulk Mailing Solution in the industry. SendInBlue is an All-in-one email marketing solution as opposed to being just a bulk mailing solution, which means you can use it for Cold email marketing campaigns as well as Newsletter & Auto-responder campaigns. The beauty of SendinBlue is their commitment to regularly improve and enhance their infrastructure to provide a much greater user experience. As I write this article, they have recently raised $36 Million in venture funding — showing how much trust the market has given them in a very short period of time. They boast a rapidly growing number of small business and startup clients exceeding 50,000 mark in 2018. Some of the very reputed companies have shifted their email marketing to SendInBlue in recent times. I’ve used SendInBlue on many occasions for a different type of marketing campaigns. There’s no question that their platform is far superior in many ways than many of the leading email marketing solutions provider, however, why did I choose to rank it #2? Simply because they have the same limitations as any other bulk mailing solution providers have. i.e. Hard bounce penalty, complex email server configuration, and sender email limitations. Website: www.SendInBlue.com Free Trial Available: Yes Advantages: Efficient email blast & auto-responder campaigns in the same dashboard Drag and drop email marketing automation design Advanced contact list management Reputed leading company serving Fortune 100 clients Disadvantages: Email server configuration required Technical knowledge & setup Strong Hard bounce penalty Expensive compared to other solutions When to choose SendInBlue over other email blasting solutions? If you’re building an end-to-end email marketing campaign from cold email blasting to building relationships with their active email leads — then SendInBlue is the ideal solution. The one-time setup and configuration will be a worthy investment of your time. MailShake MailShake is one of the best cold email marketing solutions in the industry. It is an intuitive G-mail based email marketing solution best used when you’re looking to reach out to high email lead leads and set up a drip or auto-responder follow up a campaign to extract the best results. Generally speaking, it has many limitations — but the beauty of MailShake is it’s intuitive Auto-responder & Drip emails that you can setup which increases your response rate significantly. Their inboxing rate is much higher than most — given the fact that they use G-suite’s SMTP server to send emails on your behalf. Website: www.MailShake.com Free Trial Available: No Advantages: The best solution for small-scale cold email outreach Excellent Follow-up email campaigns for best response rates Uses G-suite for better inbox delivery rate Disadvantages: Complex set-up with G-suite email server Additional cost for every new sender email address you use An additional G-suite expense for every new email you add Not at all good for large-scale email blasts — as you’ll be banned from Google Very strong hard bounce penalty (With too email bounces — your account will be suspended) Very low daily sending limit (again, Google penalizes high volume emails!) When to use MailShake over other bulk mailing services? If you have a small list of pre-vetted high-quality email contacts that have very low chances of bouncing — then MailShake is an ideal solution. Their follow-up email setup is very powerful to derive good responses from your email leads- however, it is very limited for large-scale email blast campaigns. Closing thoughts on different Bulk Email Platforms This is how we use these tools for us and our clients. We generally use a service like to send out our larger email blast campaigns. We save money, don’t get penalized for hard bounces and due to its zero setup technology — we can run as many different highly customized campaigns as possible. Once we start obtaining results from these campaigns in the form of email Opens, URL clicks, email replies — then we extract and download those leads and set up follow-up campaigns using . InstantBulkMailer MailShake This article is an excerpt from our recently released kindle book “ ” How I Made $400K in Profit under 6 Months using only Cold Email Marketing

Top 3 Best Bulk Mailing Services for Email Blast Marketing Campaigns

I have been reading Peter Thiel’s book, . One of the most recent chapters I was reading about discussed the topic of definite and indefinite optimism (with pessimism thrown in as well, but that’s not incredibly important now). I found myself coming to the conclusion that indefinite optimism is to be avoided while definite optimism is what we should strive for in everything we do. I wanted to take some time this morning to reflect on why I feel this way. Zero To One, Notes on Startups, Or How to Build the Future Indefinite Optimism Assumes Things Will Get Better Without A Plan Being optimistic means that you are hopeful and confident about the future. You believe that overtime things will get better. One industry that is full of optimists is the financial industry, you wouldn’t spend money if you expected to lose money, right? Stoke brokers working on Wall Street believe that the money they invest in a company they have no control over will go up in value. While you can do some amount of research and investigation into why a company is worth investing in, you typically have an indefinite idea of how the stock will increase in value. This is the indefinite optimist. You can look at entire swaths of people and say they are all indefinite optimists as well. Look at the Baby Boomers for example, they grew up when everything was on the rise. If you look at the S&P 500 between 1946 and 1964 it had a continuous upward trend with fairly little downturn. This generation grew up in an era that was highly optimistic with fairly little influence over the actual success as they were still growing up. I tend to associate indefinite optimism with the way our government is ran today; we assume things will get better with little idea about how it will get better. Indefinite optimism in my eyes is a terrifying thing. It creates a sense of security without any security because you essentially give up control over planning and freewill and put control into someone else’s hands. actual Definite Optimism Assumes Things Will Get Better With A Plan On the other-hand you have definite optimism. This is where you are hopeful and confident about the future, and you have a plan that leads you to think that way. You can look at a company like Apple when it was ran by Steve Jobs. The company had a vision to create computers in your pocket that people would actually use. You couldn’t just put the product out there and hope it would stick, hardware doesn’t work that way; if it did we would all be reading this on our Palm Pilot 21. Steve started off with the iPod, something fairly minimal that could start building the foundation for the likes of an iPhone some years later. With that kind of knowledge it’s fairly easy to feel optimistic about your future. I believe the definite optimist is something we should all strive to be. It’s important to be optimistic about the future, pessimists often do little to move things forward. It’s also important to have a plan though. In my fairly relatively small sample size of employers I’ve noticed that as a company grows larger the number of indefinite optimists inside does as well. I think Allstate is a good example that comes to mind (nothing against the company, it truly is a great place). It’s a major corporation where most people can only have a small impact within the confines of their current team. You know the company isn’t going anywhere because of the massive financial reserves that insurance companies tend to have; yet at the same time you can’t really have much of an impact either. On the other hand you can work for an incredibly tiny an nimble startup where you have the freedom to make major decisions and actually plan out the future of your company. My general experience in that space was bad; I came out of Allstate as an indefinite optimist and the founders I worked with were also indefinite optimists, it’s no surprise this startup is not in business today. I think I’ve always been aware of the struggles between definite and indefinite thinking, however I never put a label on it. Armed with this new way of thinking I’m kind of excited to start using it in my day to day activities. Well how can I move them over to be more optimistic, or at the very least how do I make them see the world as a definite pessimist where they know things suck but at least know why the outlook is that way. I can see how this information can help with building teams or even in hiring new team members. If you have a group of indefinite optimists then maybe you drop a definite optimist into the mix and give them the confidence to start changing minds. Is someone showing qualities of an indefinite pessimist? At This Point I’m Rambling I find myself starting to ramble and looking for tangents to explore, it’s probably a good time to summarize this article. When it comes to building companies or even teams in general I think it’s important to find definite optimists. If you find yourself working with indefinite optimists then it’s important to show them they can change things in a positive way. On the other side of the fence, a definite pessimist is better than an indefinite one however I still think it’s a good idea to move them to the definite optimist quadrant to have the most impact. Thanks for taking the time to read through my article. If you found something to be not quite right or have other information to add please reach out in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this article, please click on the clap icon a few times or share it on social media (or both). Lastly, I’m starting up a mailing list that is powered by ActiveCampaign , if you want to get weekly newsletters then please use the sign-up form below.

Why I’m Definitely Pessimistic On Indefinite Optimists

I was walking to Chipotle with my girlfriend yesterday when she mentioned that one of the questions on her final exam wanted her to model a map in a video game. As I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 for the last month this didn’t sound like a difficult question to grasp, however as a non-gamer Jessica said it took her more time trying to understand the concept than actually answering the question. The professor used Risk and Settlers Of Catan as examples, both of which are games she has never played. Ultimately Jessica answered the question using Sims as an example since you are able to move around the neighborhoods in a way similar to a map. Ever since Jessica declared her major in Computer Science I’ve been more focused on the different privileges that currently exist in the software industry. While some companies are able to attract a very diverse engineering staff, there just aren’t enough candidates graduating with engineering degrees to afford all companies that same privilege. I’d like to take a look at seemingly harmless things in today’s world which could be partly to blame. Silicon Valley — The Show Jessica and I love watching this show together. We are eagerly awaiting for the sixth season to see how the series comes to an end. One issue with this show comes in the form of the cast which accurately depicts the norm in the software industry and continues to perpetuate that norm. The main software engineers are all males, two are white while one is Pakistani. The majority of the main cast are males with the exception of Monica Hall and Laurie Bream with the former being the only female to appear in every episode. If you are a white male then this show is great, there are plenty of people in the show that look like you. If you aren’t then it likely makes you feel that the startup world isn’t for you, even though they never explicitly say that and I doubt that was even the intent. I’d like to quote the Houston Chronicle’s article, where they talk about the important of racial and ethnic socialization (RES). Why ‘Black Panther’ means so much to the black community Many have wondered why “Black Panther” means so much to the black community and why schools, churches and organizations have come to the theaters with so much excitement. The answer is that the movie brings a moment of positivity to a group of people often not the centerpiece of Hollywood movies. Plus, what we know from the research on RES is that it helps to strengthen identity and helps reduce the likelihood on internalizing negative stereotypes about one’s ethnic group. Silicon Valley doesn’t have a single black character in a major role. They don’t have a female engineer in a main role. If you are a kid or even adult watching this show which is , chances are it probably doesn’t make you excited to get into the tech industry. credited to being like the real thing Mr. Robot, while not perfect seems to be heading in the right direction through giving major roles to females and males. Ignoring Rami Malek who plays Elliot Alderson, the series main character, you have Darlene. Darlene works closely with Elliot throughout the series to help him see his plans through. There is also Angela Moss who starts out as a fairly weak character but seems to gain more and more strength as the series goes on (I’m only half way through season 2 so I may be completely wrong too). Again though, this series fails to cast a black actor for any of the major roles, it’s split between mostly white males and white females. Hollywood still has a long way to go. on IMDB’s main page for the series Major Technologists Are Misogynists I guess it worked out that those words rhymed, but it’s also fairly disgusting as well. It’s especially troubling because this misogyny usually isn’t apparent unless you are looking for it as I hope to highlight in some of my examples. I’ll start with an example that brought me the most pain when I realized it. Uncle Bob, the guy that championed clean architecture is a fairly tone deaf individual. In his article , where he thought he was writing to help women in technology he wrote this paragraph. there are ladies present lovely What if the roles were reversed? What if women had dominated the software industry for years, and we men were the ones who were struggling to break into the industry? Men, can you imagine how hard it would be if all the women were constantly, and openly, talking about tampons, cramps, yeast infections, cheating, being cheated on, Trichomoniasis, faking-it, etc? I don’t know about you, but It would make me feel out of place. And there’d be no place to escape it, because the women would be everywhere. I’d want them to save that kind of talk for the ladies room. I’d want them to remember that men were present. I wish I could say that he has come around since 2013 but in a tweet from December 9th of this year he tried to completely downplay the word privilege. body[data-twttr-rendered="true"] {background-color: transparent;}.twitter-tweet {margin: auto !important;} The primary use of the word "privilege" nowadays is to disqualify ideas based on who is offering them. This is a form of ad hominem argument and is fundamentally invalid. Ideas must be debated on their merits, not on the status of their authors. — @unclebobmartin function notifyResize(height) {height = height ? height : document.documentElement.offsetHeight; var resized = false; if (window.donkey && donkey.resize) {donkey.resize(height); resized = true;}if (parent && parent._resizeIframe) {var obj = {iframe: window.frameElement, height: height}; parent._resizeIframe(obj); resized = true;}if (window.location && window.location.hash === "#amp=1" && window.parent && window.parent.postMessage) {window.parent.postMessage({sentinel: "amp", type: "embed-size", height: height}, "*");}if (window.webkit && window.webkit.messageHandlers && window.webkit.messageHandlers.resize) {window.webkit.messageHandlers.resize.postMessage(height); resized = true;}return resized;}twttr.events.bind('rendered', function (event) {notifyResize();}); twttr.events.bind('resize', function (event) {notifyResize();});if (parent && parent._resizeIframe) {var maxWidth = parseInt(window.frameElement.getAttribute("width")); if ( 500 < maxWidth) {window.frameElement.setAttribute("width", "500");}} This man holds a lot of authority today in the software industry. In my attempt to mentor engineers I often point them to clean code and clean architecture as good starting points. While I don’t like the idea of withholding information from those I’m mentoring, I also hate that this is the de-facto software design person. I am encouraged that vocal programmers like exist though, and I’ve been enjoying watching the talks she has given. Sandi Metz It’s not just the software industry though. When I was growing up I idolized Leo Laporte, he seemed like such a cool guy that knew so much about technology. He now runs a podcasting network which I would regularly watch from 2014 through 2016. After a while though I was starting to pick-up on some subtleties that he wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to support. It started off with some mild sexist comments, and has continued to devolve overtime. TotalDrama which is a website that covers his slip-ups (though their posts are fairly tasteless at times) caught him making a comment about how there was a of his flagship show, This Week in Tech. The disgusting thing is that this guy is still supported by fairly normal people, that just help to perpetuate this. white person side and a black person side It unfortunately doesn’t stop at the older generation though. There is that I think is fairly passable most days all the way to which I actively avoid now because of his childish jokes which usually belittle women. Why does this industry seemingly perpetuate this kind of thinking? Linus Tech Tips Bitwit The People That Made It Are Still Making It I believe part of the problem is that the people that made this industry are still making it. Interview processes are inherently flawed to cater towards the biases of the person creating that process. It has been called out at the company I work for that having a female engineer interview with all males is probably intimidating. The same is true if you place an engineer of color with the same group of interviewers. This problem isn’t an easy one to solve. We are trying to take a non-diverse workforce and expect to fix it overnight. I don’t think that’s the right approach, nor do I think it’s even realistic. Part of the solution comes from realizing and accepting the issues that currently exist today. It means being aware that not everyone in the room feels comfortable to speak up without being prompted. Some of your co-workers may not get the references you are making about that video game or TV show. You need to reflect on your own actions and answer . It’s fine if the answer is , while I’m enthused every-time I answer yes, it’s just as important to answer no and try to avoid making that mistake in the future. is this beneficial or detrimental to bringing diversity into this industry no The Path Forward The path forward is not an easy one, however I do think it’s an achievable one. It starts out by accepting that there is a problem and holding yourself accountable for your actions. There are some other steps we can all take as well. Be aware of the actions of others, especially influencers you give a lot of power to. I stopped consuming anything from Leo Laporte’s podcasts. I’ve unsubscribed from YouTuber’s that seemingly abuse their power through snide underhand remarks. I look for alternatives to the teachings of Uncle Bob whenever I get the chance, I even hope to rewrite some of his teachings using my own voice so I can stop building him up to others. Understand the biases in your own processes and find a way around them. My girlfriend was able to bypass many coding interviews because of her GPA. This also prevented stressful and ineffective interviews while hopefully helping those companies bring it more diverse talent. The downside is Jessica seemed to struggle with imposter syndrome during this time because she didn’t feel like she was doing as much as others. This is to the contrary though as the companies just realized they had a flaw in their process and came up with a solution around it. She still has to maintain a competitive GPA for the offer to stand. If you are coming from a place of privilege then help lift others up that aren’t. While I’ve worked hard to get to where I am, I also have to accept that coming from the majority made that easier. I try to go out of my way these days to support others that aren’t as privileged, whether that means showing up for talks or offering my time to help out with writing or speaking. This week I am also kickstarting an event called which lowers the barrier to public speaking by allowing employees from across the company to speak about a topic for 1–10 minutes over lunch. While this is currently open to just engineers and product I hope to open it up to the entire company should it become successful. I also hope this will help boost the confidence of my peers and encourage them to do more long-form presentations in the future. Quick Take Tuesdays I’m sure I’m missing a lot of other valid ideas or my examples above are incomplete. If you have anything you’d like to add onto this please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear what others think. If you enjoyed this article, please click on the clap icon a few times or share it on social media (or both). Lastly, I’m starting up a mailing list that is powered by ActiveCampaign , if you want to get weekly newsletters then please use the sign-up form below.

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