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liftcutie · 3 years ago

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DNA: a basic guide

there’s been a lot of new/returning activity in the community, and though i’m somewhat new to DNAing myself, i thought i’d make a very basic overview, since i’ve seen a lot of lifters asking questions about it.

feel free to reblog with additions/your own experiences!

MASSIVE DISCLAIMER:

i am not the authority on anything i’m about to write. i’m a stranger on the internet! as you should with all posts on liftblr, take what i’m about to say with a relative grain of salt, and do your own research and risk assessment.

what does “DNA” mean?

“DNA” stands for “did not arrive.” it’s used as shorthand to describe a common type of online refund fraud.

how does it work/how do i do it?

there’s no special process. it’s relatively simple:

the customer places a legitimate online order for their target item/items. however, when the package arrives, the customer then contacts customer service and claims the parcel didn’t show up in order to receive a fraudulent refund.

unlike shoplifting, with DNAs, a legitimate purchase has to occur in order for the scam to take place.

what are the consequences if i get caught?

this is very important: DNAing, no matter how small the amount, is a type of fraud. based on where you live, the legal penalties for getting caught will vary—it can be difficult to find information online, but i would encourage you to do as much research as possible.

however, even if companies don’t take legal action, refund scamming can result in your account(s) or address being blacklisted from certain online stores. i’ve heard certain companies (amazon) will even ban IPs (which basically means they ban your whole computer, rather than just an account on it). i’ve also heard UPS and other mail carriers can/do ban the addresses of repeat offenders if a suspicious amount of investigations (see below) have been filed.

i personally haven’t heard of anyone experiencing trouble from their bank’s end, but i would stay vigilant nonetheless.

other important terminology

EB: this stands for “empty box.” it’s a variant of DNAing where, instead of claiming the parcel didn’t arrive, you claim the box itself came empty.

partial DNA: partial DNA is when you claim only a portion of your order didn’t arrive. for example, you might say you received a dress you ordered, but were missing a shirt or a pair of shoes—the company then refunds you for only the “missing” items.

investigation: an investigation occurs when the company files a report with the carrier regarding the missing package. this can take days to weeks to process. from what i understand, most of these investigations are either protocol or purely meant to scare you off, and most of the time go absolutely nowhere.

how long should i wait after my order is placed/delivered to contact customer service?

it depends. many people suggest waiting longer so the company is less likely to conduct an investigation (it’s virtually useless after a certain point). however, i’ve also had some successes doing it the day of delivery; use your best judgement.

what do i say to customer service?

act natural! put yourself in the mindset of someone whose order has genuinely failed to show up. be disappointed but polite, and above all firm in what you want. many DNAs are as simple as:

YOU: hello, i placed an order on your site about a week and a half ago. i got an email saying my package was delivered, but i didn’t receive my order.

CS: i’m sorry to hear that. let me check on that for you... i can offer you a reshipment or a refund. which would you prefer?

YOU: a refund, please.

a common mistake is over-explanation. don’t offer more than what customer service asks—an innocent person likely wouldn’t.

i’m not going to go in-depth with methods or “what-ifs” on this post, but there are plenty of great tips on liftblr and reddit. however, if you end up facing suspicion, you will need the ability to stick to a believable story if you want your money back.

what stores can i DNA?

there are lots of stores you can (relatively) safely DNA, with varying degrees of difficulty. from what i’ve read and my own experiences, most people agree that:

shein/romwe*

glossier

lush

hollister

abercrombie

victoria’s secret

are easy places to start and build your confidence. if you’re curious about a certain store, ask around! lots of people are willing to share their experiences. or check out my new blog—@dna-stories!

*shein and romwe will always open an investigation to try and scare you off—however, i have literally never heard of one of these investigations going anywhere. don’t let it intimidate you!

ANOTHER HUGE DISCLAIMER:

just like shoplifting, it’s important to keep greed and recklessness in check. there’s always a risk with DNAing; be smart, and never spend what you can’t afford to lose. if you need that $600 for rent, don’t blow it on bathing suits and bank on your refund—there’s always a chance you won’t get your money back, and you don’t want to accidentally put yourself in a bad position.

where can i find more tips?

reddit has a lot of good information, particularly about amazon, though be mindful of the age of certain threads; some things are bound to outdated. this is a master list of store information i’ve referred to before (but again, take everything with a grain of salt)!

there are also a ton of lifters who post helpful tips on here. i’ve been referring to @heavenlylifter, @urfavoritelifter and @fairylift’s blogs a lot—and many others, too!

i hope this post serves as a helpful intro to DNAing!

stay safe, and happy scamming!

#mine

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favjacksparrow-blog · 4 years ago

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Advice For Free Internet Marketing

Marketing is an ongoing process of planning and implementing a set of products, prices, and locations, and promoting products, services, or ideas to create exchange between people and organizations. Marketing is a constantly changing process, and advertising is revolutionizing with the emergence of a new style of marketing, the World Wide Web. Marketing, or any other field in this matter, is knowledge. What is the best way here as we guide you through different types of online marketing and guide you through all the basics that you need to know to start an online business.

Online

Learning all these things online and gaining the Asigo System Review knowledge that I have now has been a sharp learning curve and a very expensive process. I've been shredded, burned and burned more times than I want to admit. However, a more worrying trend since it first started online is that marketing tips are becoming more targeted to companies with large websites and budgets as the Internet slowly becomes the most dominant marketing tool. In the world. So I think leaving the little guy without huge budgets to play is mainly to defend himself. I sincerely want to try to bridge this gap with my articles at your disposal.

In the future, I will introduce online programs designed to help the beginner go through all the steps and processes of creating an online business. Providing marketing consulting and information services to the small business community to help increase the effectiveness of online marketing and online promotion. Basically I want to pay my dues the way I see them, and I want to support and support all the workers, like "you", who shape the way we do business online.

I want to tell you through my articles, a complete online marketing strategy, how to start an internet business, an internet marketing strategy and email marketing, and SEO, in other words, Shebang in full. All you have to honestly ask yourself is: Are you ready to start making money online?

tree branch

Affiliate marketing is one of many ways to make money online. Affiliate marketing is definitely one of the easiest ways to make money online. Commission commissioning is also not difficult, although it takes a lot of work. It is also important to inform you that commission commissioning is a marathon ... not a quick race and requires you to work hard and design.

Seo

SEO is the practice of improving your rankings over regular (unpaid) search engine results. SEO is one of the most common words in Internet marketing, but unfortunately most internet marketers simply don't know enough about SEO to make this strategy appropriate for them. SEO covers the process of creating spider-friendly web pages (so search engines can read them) and helping web pages match your targeted keywords. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and key phrases so that pages rank highly in search engine results. However, there is also a lot of free bad information on the Internet (especially in forums) about SEO and affiliate marketing. It is very difficult for me to keep up with the SEO theme, so it is almost impossible for beginners. I'm just going to write an article about some of the free high-quality SEO books that I reviewed and during my research there were many useless e-books full of affiliate links.

SEO services can be quite different and it is often difficult to compare one company to another. What I found is that most SEO companies are out of my readers ’budget.

Unfortunately, most SEO consulting sites either do not have real customer case studies or have old stories. However, a certain amount of SEO training is very important for your future success. Once again, I want my articles to help you learn about SEO, advertising and email promotion through the SEO tutorial and articles and tools on how to get traffic to your website.

Success

Successful businessmen are not the ones who try to do everything themselves, they know their limits. Successful businessmen know the value of good information; They develop a network of information sources, realize a good opportunity when they see it, and "use it today."

Unfortunately, you cannot create a website without any proper knowledge or marketing tools on the Internet and then expect to have a successful online business. I am constantly looking for clues around me, especially the people before me, the people I liked, or the people I know have had clear and visible success.

Successful marketing -

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strangeauthorarchive · 6 years ago

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Don’t use Paypal

This is the last thing I wanted to do, since I know so many people use this site to help them, but after this fucked up shitty ass experience I had and this horrendously awful customer service I was subjected to, they let me no other choice.

Also long post

So, context:

In June, I was told that my job was closing down on the 14th of July (and it has), so I would be out of a job.

I asked for donations so I could have some money while I got ready for school/looked for work elsehwere.

Come July, and I got this email.

Naturally, I was confused. How did I break policy? I checked my paypal account to see if this was scam email. It wasn’t.

I called them and they said to contact aup. That was the first sign of trouble, because after I contacted aup and asked what I did wrong and how I could fix it, they just sent me this.

[Transcribe:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding the limitation on your account.

Please be advised that due to the violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy, your account will remain permanently limited.

The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy.

The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found by clicking Legal at the bottom of any page, select your location and click PayPal Acceptable Use Policy.

Per the User Agreement, when PayPal permanently limits an account due to an Acceptable Use Policy violation, we will hold any funds on your account for 180 days.

If you have not yet done so, please remove any references to PayPal from your website/auction site.

Thanks, PayPal]

Now the date says july 10th but it doesn’t matter because no matter how much I contacted them they always sent the same, automatic message.

So, I called again, explaining that I received no response and only got an unhelpful automtic response. You know why?

Because it turns out AUP doesn’t respond to emails. They don’t respond to anyone. Not customers, not people within the team, no one. They don’t resolve anything; so basically I wasted my time. I asked why did they even tell me to contact them if they knew this. They dodged the question and said I could mail the legal department and also other people.

So I did that. I mailed the legal department, pr, exevtuive, EVERYONE I thought would look into this and help me understand. By this point, its been a week, I’m exhausted cause this taken up most of my time, and I’m on the verge of a mental breakdown because I have no fucking job (as of this post).

I called, they said they have my ticket and will look into this. So I waited. And waited. I know these things aren’t quick, but the amount of time I’ve been waiting was too much, and I was losing my paitence. I kept trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, like maybe they were concerened with the amount of money coming in. That I could’ve EASILY clairfied and veritifed that it was all legit.

That all went out the window today (or July 17th as of this post), when I got this.

[Transcribe:

PayPal appeal denied

Dear, Thank you for contacting PayPal regarding the limitation on your account. Please be advised that due to the violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy, your account will remain permanently limited. The PayPal User Agreement states that PayPal, at its sole discretion, reserves the right to limit an account for any violation of the User Agreement, including the Acceptable Use Policy. The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found by clicking on Legal at the bottom of any page of our website, and then selecting PayPal Acceptable Use Policy. Per the User Agreement, when PayPal permanently limits an account due to an Acceptable Use Policy violation, we may hold your funds for up to 180 days. For full details around the release of funds process, please refer to our original email outlining details of the limitation. If you have not yet done so, please remove any references to PayPal from your website/auction site. Sincerely, Paul PayPal, Brand Risk Management PayPal ]

They denied my appeal.

They denied me the chance to know what I did wrong and how to fix it.

Now I’m pissed off, so I contacted customer service yet again, and got the most appalling response;

Either take this to court or use another service. They no longer were willing to help me.

So that brings me to where I am today. I know they won’t really check a tumblr post or even go on Tumblr but I still want to get the word out about how I was treated. How completelt and utterly useless and horreoundus customer service is. How they will lock your account with no answer and hold your money hostage.

I’m making this post to warn people--that if anything happens to you or your money on paypal, they will not help you. They will make you go through all these hoops but, in the end, still won’t do anything to fix it.

I don’t want people to go through what I went through. I want everyone to have their money safe and sound and not be taken away from them so unnecessarily an cruelly.

Please get the word out.

#author makes a speech #long post #paypal #god this took so much energy but i need to warn people

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nehatiwari454545-blog · 5 years ago

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Factors Deciding the Future of CRM: What lies next?

Take a look around. Everything around you is evolving.

You. Your business. Your customers.

But what about CRM?

Why should your CRM software be stagnant? Is it an outdated one or the one with irrelevant features that you don’t need? Is it why your relationship with customers is stagnant and suffering? Do you know where your CRM software heading? Is it lagging? Is it up-to-date with current trends?

There has been a lot of talk about what CRM could be and what it couldn’t. However, as a business leader, you would like to understand which trends are worth pursuing. According to Gartner estimates, global CRM is expected to grow at 13.7 per cent CAGR. The growth, however, shouldn’t be holistic and integrate the evolving needs of business too.

The businesses are recognizing the value of data, their needs are evolving with time, and it is time the CRM is used and embraced as a technology in all its potential and capabilities- which is a lot more than just organizing customers’ information. So, what is it that CRM should do so that you understand your customers’ expectations and market challenges, way before then your competitors’ do?

So, we sit with a crystal ball (okay, couldn’t resist) and predict what future trends are experts hoping in for CRM. The idea is not to make your existing CRM future-proof but adaptable, flexible, all-embracing and of course, keep your business a few steps ahead in innovation.

The Long Overdue Overhaul

It is time that CRM is seen as a business strategy and not just software –a strategy that understands not only the business but also the customers. This twenty-three-year-old data management technology needs a dire refresh while companies figure out the capabilities within the system to earn rewarding relationships. A system that was initially designed as an application to drive sales function and reduce costs should undergo a transition and work towards building mutually rewarding customer experience.

While customers are getting more and more proactive and engaging the brands online and offline, existing CRM doesn’t. In the foreseeable future, CRM software should be able to listen socially and prompt engagement with customers on all levels. The command centre should alert the stakeholders and filter the noise that there is. The search intelligence, which almost every CRM is lacking, need to be enhanced and should be able to perform just more than a simple string of keyword search. The software should be able to categories the social content as well and push it forward to the right set of people, be it sales, customer support, business development or marketing.

Customers First

Yes, CRM systems were designed to improve the businesses and reduce their costs. To retain their relevancy in future, the customers and their needs should be at the centre point. The CRMs should evolve to make the customer experience better and improved. Customer satisfaction and the prediction of their expectation should be raison d'être for the CRM system. A customer’s buying journey, the analytic tools and the design tools- all should be integrated with CRM. The process of ideal response and action should be in-built for enhancing customer experience and increased ROI. The optimal response needed for the customers, valuing their time and trust in you can minimize the disruption caused by other technologies and competitors.

Automation is the Keyword and not just AI.

While the world is still getting the hang of it, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been around in the CRM space since long. However, the possibilities are endless, and if this Infoholic Research is to be believed, the integration of AI with CRM is going to be worth $73 billion by the end of this year.

A few years ago, Zoo's Zia and Sales force's Einstein were the talk of the town and paved the way of AI into the CRM system. These bots would use predictive analysis, streamline and ease the bottlenecks by pushing the customers further down in the funnel and eventually, boosting the sales process. Or that was what they thought. According to Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, the customers failed to process the predictive analysis in most cases, and the machine learning algorithms couldn’t offer any real insights into the large datasets of relationship.

Let’s face it. AI is still in the nascent stage. It isn’t ready for a real crossover and definitely can’t be the only factor making or breaking CRM’s fate. The focus, instead, should be on automation and streamlining the existing process to serve as well as understand the customers. However, its potential can’t be ruled out of the big picture, and it is still the most important technology to uncover marketing insights. Digital streaming companies like Netflix and Amazon are using predictive analysis and based on this personalizing and recommending content. Such precise targeting can take the hot spot among other customer relationship management trends; however, as it happens with any other hot thing, one needs to proceed with caution and apply it brilliantly within the processes.

Human. Not Machines. And the Balance within

The data operations of Facebook, Netflix and Google tells us to trust data sciences and not the damp squib AI and ML. The basic yet intricate human analysis will be at the core of gathering data insights that will help the companies to gain a peek into prospective customers’ mind and understand their psyche. The personal manual touch gets redeemed (once again) in the world of ML but striking a balance between the automation, and manual analysis is where the magic lies. The automation should improve the efficiency and the insights derived from human intervention should be used to spot the prospects and growth opportunities.

The idea of inducting human touch comes from the realization that the businesses can’t afford to treat their customers any longer.

Data-Driven Customer Intelligence

The business response from sales, marketing and customer support often seems like repetitive and based on a trial-and-error. Instead of relying on the data, the businesses are still adopting an opinion-driven route to make commercial decisions. Existing CRMs deliver basic information and not insights that can be used to develop accurate buying journeys and make improved decisions. The existing CRMs don’t take customers’ profile, their social media conversations, demographics, buying preferences and other attributes into account to dive deeper into what a customer wants. Data can lend confidence to the decision-makers and help businesses to find their voice amidst all the web interference.

The future CRMs will add many more algorithms, patterns and alerts to predict customers’ behaviour and buying patterns. The up-selling and cross-selling, recommendation engine and social engagement algorithm should be a package deal in the years to come.

Under-utilized and Unused Data

The businesses take pride in the big data. Each business process has bundles of data lying there. But it is time we address the elephant in the room. It is not about the quantity. It is about quality. According to the Forrester report, up to seventy-three per cent of data is rendered useless. The companies often get data from a third-party collaborator, which can be dirty, inconsistent and incorrect. The CRM ingests the bad data, leading to inaccurate insights and thus, business decisions that aren’t beneficial. The quality will always trump quantity, and this is why, companies need to get irrelevant, unimportant and inaccurate data out of the system. The right data for the job sets the processes straight and it is time that data scrubbing, data mining services and data appending, data verification are made a standardized process for CRM.

CRM cleaning is a painstakingly, thorough job and a semi-automated process. If you go by 1-10-100 rule, the “uncleaned” CRM data can cause a business $100 every time it takes a decision based on the data.

Mobile First

Mobile-this is where the business lies. Five per cent of businesses deploying mobile CRM has seen a surge in sales and have exceeded their sales quota. Users want their experience to be easy, streamlined and seamless and omnichannel CRM can enhance it-eventually, letting you stand apart and win brownie points.

Conclusion:

As Mahatma Gandhi said, “The future depends on what you do today.” So, the future of CRM lies in the fact what you are doing effectively for forecasting accuracy and a positive impact on your business decisions. The data that CRM thrives on, the data, which goes into the system, processes like data scrubbing and cleaning- it can lay the foundation of strong CRM in the future. However, you need to take action today to ensure that your CRM game stays strong and top-notch. Customer satisfaction remains the number one metric, and in the future, too, CRM will be expected to double up as a solid foundation that can harness data and derive actionable insights out of it. An integrated, aware and intelligent customer-centric CRM platform that can forecast accurate results and measure them is what the future needs.

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rohitsurwase · 4 years ago

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How to Overcome Email Marketing Fatigue

Email fatigue is a real thing, especially with the continuing pandemic.

Email marketing is far from dead, but it is getting harder and harder to get your branded emails opened and clicked.

What is Email Fatigue?

As the name suggests, email fatigue is when a person doesn’t want to read emails and feels more willing to delete, unsubscribe or send emails to spam.

Email fatigue is something just about anyone feels from time to time.

Gone are the days when people would diligently click each and every unread email in their inbox to read what is inside.

Gone are the days when people would actually be looking forward to receiving a new email.

These days a full inbox is nothing new or exciting. And it has been getting worse.

Back in 2017, two thirds of Americans felt overwhelmed by the number of email messages they received on a daily basis.

And who can blame them?

Same year, 85% of emails were found useless.

In 2020 email fatigue grew exponentially and for an obvious reason: Most consumers were locked at home and all the brands started relying on email marketing as the prime (and often the only) way to keep in touch with them.

Obviously, we were all overwhelmed in 2020 and it isn’t much easier in 2021.

Yet, email marketing remains one of the most effective marketing tactics.

Customers who buy products after clicking links in an email tend to spend almost 140% more than an average customer. As many as 50% of marketers claim that email marketing is more effective than social media.

Here’s how you can overcome email fatigue and boost your email marketing strategy:

1. Send a Welcome Email

This one may be a no-brainer but lots of brands still fail to do that. Welcome emails still work, mostly thanks to the factor of recency. Your customers have just interacted with your brand, so they will likely engage with and locate your email right away.

Welcome emails are highly effective: studies claim that welcome emails bring 320% more revenue than any other promotional emails.

2. Take Advantage of Marketing Personalization

It is astounding how many promotional emails I still receive that don’t even include my first name.

Yet, even the most basic personalization helps. Greet your customers with their name and you’ll find them much more willing to give your message a try.

Go a step further and personalize your email by including products they viewed or added to a shopping cart, and you will see even better results.

Case studies show that personalized campaigns bring almost twice as many opens and clicks as non-segmented ones.

Of course, this depends on how well personalization is done, so that per cent may even be higher. How well you do personalization obviously depends on your marketing partner or platform.

With Wix’s email marketing services you can personalized your emails in a meaningful way, for example, by using your customer’s name or previously purchased products:

3. Treat Emails as Any Content Campaign

Any email marketing blueprint will recommend you sending great emails so that your subscribers would look forward to your next one.

Obviously, it is easier said than done.

However it may doable if you change your mindset: Treat each campaign as any content marketing asset out there. Talk to your customers’ needs, pains and interests. Research what triggers their interactions and find content ideas that would spur their curiosity.

Asking a good question in an email subject and then answering it in your email is one of the most effective ways to generate more email opens. I often turn to Text Optimizer’s question research section to pick up a good question to discuss in my upcoming email marketing campaign:

Text Optimizer uses semantic research to identify angles that customers expect to read, so it is a good tool for both topic and audience research.

4. Make Use of Video Content (But Don’t Overuse)

Another marketing trick that tends to work in content marketing is using video content. Like any form of visual content, videos combine the best features of two worlds: It makes information easier to process while being entertaining.

Videos work wonders when placed on landing pages, and they do help emails to get noticed.

It is a well-known trick that including in an email subject tends to drive more opens and reads. Obviously, you cannot overuse this tactic but sending a happy birthday video email or sharing an occasional video tutorial may do wonders to your open rate.

5. Set up Meaningful Email Triggers

Quite obviously, email fatigue is triggered by too many emails. So do your best to avoid hitting your subscribers’ limits.

It is a fine line between not letting your customers forget about you and being too aggressive with reminding them of your brand.

Normally, the following routine helps build recognizability without irritating:

A promotional email once a month

A special occasion email (like “Happy birthday” message which was mentioned above)

Automatic email reminding customers of an abandoned cart or a failed payment.

Just about any email automation software will help you set these up pretty easily. Just don’t overdo!

Thank You........!

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easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

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The Coronavirus Delivery Pivot Is Already Coming to an End

A single order awaits being carried out from Sushi Yasuda in Midtown Manhattan | Gary He

As dining rooms around the country shuttered in response to the pandemic, restaurants turned to delivery and takeout — but now, some chefs are saying it’s not worth it

“I don’t think we as a society are fully grasping how fucking dire and dystopian this can get,” says Andy Ricker, the chef and owner of the Pok Pok restaurant group. In the week following Oregon’s March 17 order to shutter dining rooms statewide to slow the spread of COVID-19, five of Ricker’s seven Portland-area restaurants continued operating in a takeout or delivery capacity. But after chef Floyd Cardoz’s March 25 death from complications of COVID-19, a loss that Ricker described on Instagram as “an arrow to the heart,” he decided to close all of his restaurants. “We are food professionals,” he wrote. “We’re okay following health code, and being careful about spreading foodborne illnesses. But a deadly coronavirus? That’s just not something we’re trained to deal with. It just hit me: It’s better to close than to be open.”

Ricker joins a growing number of chefs and restaurant owners across the country who initially tried to make a go of takeout and/or delivery after many cities implemented social distancing or shelter-in-place plans, but have recently decided it was too risky for the health and safety of their workers, and are instead choosing to close entirely. Last week, Chicago’s One Off Hospitality Group announced it was closing its restaurants (which include Big Star and the Publican) due to safety concerns for staff and customers; in Houston, Ford Fry announced he was shutting down his restaurants for similar reasons. This week, Los Angeles’s Sqirl added to the chorus, writing on Instagram that the restaurant’s last day of service will be April 3. At suburban Detroit’s Eli Tea, Elias Majid made the tough decision to close his shop thanks in part to “customers not respecting distance,” he tells Eater. “One lady came in visibly sweating and coughing.” From a financial perspective, Majid had been doing well, as had many of the restaurant owners interviewed for this story. But it’s public health they’re more concerned about now.

“The unfortunate reality is that there are no concrete guidelines available for small restaurants about how to operate in a way that’s not endangering their employees and potentially their customers,” says Heather Sperling, co-owner of Botanica in Los Angeles. When the city’s “safer-at-home” orders came down on March 19, Sperling and her partner, Emily Fiffer, quickly rejiggered their restaurant setup into a marketplace, selling pantry items, fresh produce, and prepared foods.

Business was “hugely successful,” Sperling says, and the revenue sustainable enough to allow Botanica to stay open indefinitely. And yet, on March 20, she and Fiffer announced on Instagram that they were closing to “regroup, restock & do a precautionary quarantine.” Ultimately, “until we better understand how to operate in a way that truly feels safe — if that’s even possible — we didn’t feel it was fair to put our employees at risk,” Sperling says.

In other parts of the country, other operators echoed that sentiment. On March 25, the team at Jonathan Waxman’s beloved New York City restaurant Barbuto announced they were halting their popular to-go operation and closing entirely. “We have been so thrilled to have your support, however the crisis has become too hard to justify our staying open. ... Until the government declares New York City safe, we will remain hunkered down for the duration,” they wrote. Other restaurants across the city, including Superiority Burger and Cafe Katja, posted similar messages of their own.

Back in Portland, Ricker’s post hit home for Johnny Nunn, the owner of Verdigris. Although the French-inspired restaurant had been doing a robust curbside takeout business, Nunn decided to close down on March 25. “I just feel outmatched,” he explains. “I’m a cook. I’m not qualified to make decisions about people’s wellbeing in the face of a crisis.”

Some chefs and owners say that part of the issue is the lack of guidance about worker safety from local and federal officials, who are themselves scrambling to manage and distribute information to an industry in crisis. Nick Cho, the owner of San Francisco’s Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, has written Medium posts about the measures he’s put in place to keep his workers safe: They include trying to minimize all contact by moving service to the front door, installing an enormous plexiglass sneeze guard that separates customers from baristas, and asking all customers to wrap their fingers in a sheet of thin wax paper before signing on a touch screen for their credit card orders. Momofuku owner David Chang has also been particularly vocal on this topic: As part of a long Twitter thread on the question of how to keep workers safe in the event that restaurants reopen, he wrote, “One thing is for certain we cannot wait for local, state or federal authorities to prepare us. We need to go on the offensive here.”

“What I wish is that there would be rapid training and mobilization within the Health Department, to send a free consultant to any operation that wants to stay open at all, to come into their facility and help establish best practices,” Sperling says. “Instead, what we got was an email alerting us to the safer-at-home ordinance that had been passed four days earlier. It was laughably, dismayingly useless.”

When I reached out to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to ask if it had any specific guidelines for restaurants to operate safely in a takeout or delivery capacity, it sent over this link, which encourages increased handwashing, basic food safety precautions, and the establishment of “social distancing practices for those patrons in the queue when ordering or during pick-up.” It declined to comment further.

Other officials are trying to address an issue of unprecedented scale, while grappling with quickly changing and sometimes-conflicting information about the virus and best practices for preventing it. In Oregon’s Multnomah County, where Portland is located, environmental health supervisor Jeff Martin says his team has been calling every restaurant in their district individually, talking to them about how to safely execute delivery and takeout and answering as many questions as possible—often, he says, about proper sanitation procedures and what exactly “contactless” delivery means. “We’re doing phone calls, video inspections, and email—we’re trying to use technology to cover as much ground as possible,” he says. The Multnomah County Health Department has set up an online FAQ page that’s updated constantly with questions like “Should I wear a mask when preparing food?” (“No, masks should only be worn for people experiencing symptoms. If you are experiencing symptoms, you should not be at work.”) and “What are acceptable takeout and grab-and-go methods?” (Maintain social distance, no self-service, etc.)

And on a personal level, Martin adds that he still feels comfortable ordering takeout. “I think it’s still safe,” he says. “I’ve been picking up food almost every day.”

Gary He

Carbone in Manhattan resorted to taping out spaces for waiting couriers to maintain distance

Not everyone is discouraged by the efforts of their local officials. In Raleigh, North Carolina, chef Ashley Christensen has been working closely with the Wake County Health Department to stay ahead of rapidly changing developments: On March 17, the state ordered all bars and restaurants closed for dine-in; on March 27, Wake County issued shelter-in-place orders. “We’ve been in constant contact with the governor and county reps; any time any document is produced, we have direct access to it, and we distribute it to a number of colleagues,” Christensen says. “These guys are busy, they have a lot on their plates right now.”

Christensen started offering takeout at her restaurants two weeks ago, but found herself dealing with an unforeseen problem: the crowds who clamored outside without adhering to social-distancing guidelines. It’s an issue that has dogged restaurants around the country, and created perhaps the biggest threat to takeout safety. This became startlingly clear the week before last at the New York City restaurant Carbone, where the crowds of delivery workers and pickup customers were so bad that the police had to be called and the restaurant’s managers eventually closed down the operation, leaving a number of customers empty-handed.

“We can’t really control how the public thinks and how they interact with each other in front of our shops,” Christensen says. So she and her business partner and wife, Kaitlyn Goalen, quickly made the decision to pivot to a delivery-only model, offering premade dinner kits prepared in a commissary kitchen with social-distancing practices in place.

“I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

The pair aren’t sure what they’ll do in a few days when they run out of the product they had already ordered, and which had made the switch to delivery temporarily possible. “Takeout and delivery was important for us to do for a week to stretch the timeline of what we could do for the team we’ve been able to retain, and hopefully stretch the cash flow until we can access some other kind of support,” says Goalen. “But the biggest concern here is the very real reality that people are getting sick and dying.”

All of the chefs interviewed for this story have been in constant communication with their staff about whether they felt comfortable coming to work. “I checked in with every person on my team, and they all said, as bad and hard as this is, I feel safer not working,” says Sylvie Gabriele, owner of Love & Salt in Manhattan Beach, California. After initially pivoting to become a curbside and delivery grocery popup, Gabriele decided to close on March 26. “I wanted to ride as far as we could until some relief came through, so there could be a little good news,” Gabriele says. “I’m just hoping I didn’t wait too long.” The day after she closed the restaurant, the House of Representatives passed a $2 trillion economic stimulus plan, which will offer some relief to affected workers in the restaurant industry — though it still might not be enough for small-business owners and millions of workers.

Some owners who are frustrated by the lack of guidance from official sources are still choosing to stay open, and implementing extraordinary safety precautions as best they can. In San Francisco, which ordered restaurants and bars to close for dine-in service and residents to shelter in place on March 17, Wrecking Ball owner Nick Cho says that safety means “taking control of our space and the customer environment.” Of the measures he’s taken to that end, he explains, “I’m just trying to think about it in terms of managing systems and creating protocols and procedures. Too much is being left to individuals to figure this out on our own.”

Most chefs emphasize with their colleagues who choose to stay open. “I can’t find fault with it — I myself was there just a few days ago,” says Ricker. “I wanted to protect as many employees’ job status as I could, and I wanted to show spirit and feed the community. I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

He hopes that as the situation continues to evolve, the government will “do the right thing” and provide relief so that more operators feel comfortable shutting their doors. “I love my restaurants, and I love the restaurant world, but we are not a part of the supply chain that can deliver basic human necessities to stay alive in hardship,” Ricker says. “We have got to stay home. All of us.”

Jamie Feldmar is a Los Angeles-based writer and cookbook author. See more at jamiefeldmar.com and follow her @jfeldmar. Photos by Gary He

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3aDPQ12 https://ift.tt/2QZaBws

A single order awaits being carried out from Sushi Yasuda in Midtown Manhattan | Gary He

As dining rooms around the country shuttered in response to the pandemic, restaurants turned to delivery and takeout — but now, some chefs are saying it’s not worth it

And on a personal level, Martin adds that he still feels comfortable ordering takeout. “I think it’s still safe,” he says. “I’ve been picking up food almost every day.”

Gary He

Carbone in Manhattan resorted to taping out spaces for waiting couriers to maintain distance

“I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

Jamie Feldmar is a Los Angeles-based writer and cookbook author. See more at jamiefeldmar.com and follow her @jfeldmar. Photos by Gary He

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3aDPQ12 via Blogger https://ift.tt/3bFLcQr

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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yesaldigs-blog · 5 years ago

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10 LEGIT Cannabis Email Marketing Tips You Can Start Using Today

So you’re here for some LEGIT cannabis email marketing tips, huh? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

You must already know that email is one of the most powerful outreach tools available. I mean, look at these statistics!

105 billion emails are sent each day, and this amount is projected to reach 246 billion in 2020.

For every $1 spent on email marketing $44 is made in return, according to a study by Campaign Monitor.

73% of millennials polled prefer to keep communications with companies through email

If you have heard of these statistics – good! If you haven’t, now you have. Whatever the case, keep these numbers in mind because…

Email marketing takes patience, learning, and quite a bit of set-up.

Having these in mind are for keeping your mentality where it needs to be to really pull in this cash cow. Plus, if you’re working in the cannabis industry, it could be all that much more powerful and ROI-rendering because there are so few cannabis-related companies that successfully do cannabis email marketing, if any at all.

One thing is for certain: there is a big, big pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.

3 Principles for Successful Email Marketing

Before I can get to any tips, we have to understand what aren’t tips – meaning: what is expected of you as an email marketer. Here, I outline 3 principles that we should all carry into cannabis email marketing.

If you ignore these 3 things, it’s like you’re hitting the “unsubscribe” button for your audience.

Do Only

Permission Marketing

Email is primarily thought of as direct communication and anything that falls outside of permission-based communication is suspected of being spam.

Simply put, those on your email list should know and even expect your emails. They opt-in and stay subscribed of their own volition.

“Permission” should be thought of in more expansive terms than just avoiding having your customer database hit the “unsubscribe” button. As Seth Godin puts it:

Real permission is different from presumed or legalistic permission. Just because you somehow get my email address doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because I don’t complain doesn’t mean you have permission. Just because it’s in the fine print of your privacy policy doesn’t mean it’s permission either.

Real permission works like this: if you stop showing up, people complain, they ask where you went.

Don’t Run Afoul of the Spam Filters

This is common sense, but I want to dig a little deeper here.

Internet service providers (ISPs), such as Google and Yahoo!, use spam filters to weed out unwanted messages.

What this means is that your messages are vetted and either stamped ‘go’ or ‘no-go.’ And if you’re unaware of this, you can seriously waste time, money, and effort (and maybe a little bit of sanity) doing bad cannabis email marketing.

You may simply want to push a couple more THC cartridges this month, maybe introduce a new marijuana strain to your peeps, or answer some questions about CBD. – But if you’re using specific “red flag” wording, you’re hitting the spam folder every time.

This is a huge, huge topic, so I will defer to Fulcrum Tech’s article, entitled “7 Key Strategies for Avoiding the Gmail Spam Filter,” which does a great job of summing up what you need to know about this.

Segmentation is a Must

“Segmentation” is an intimidating word to some, especially if they are new to cannabis email marketing.

For this reason, I will use an example to show what segmentation is and what it can do.

Imagine you’re selling your TV because you want a new one, and – just to make it feel a little urgent – you want to sell it fast so you can watch a boxing match (*or something you like) within 3 days.

Now, you know your grandmother and sister both have shown interest in your TV, but that was a while ago. So you have to pitch them the idea that the TV is exactly what they need, and fast since the boxing match is so close.

Do you say the same thing to each person when you know that a more informed message would do much better? For example, your sister is a gamer. Your grandmother loves to watch cooking shows but her TV is too small and the one you’re selling is much bigger.

Knowing this, do you say, simply, “This TV is exactly what you need! I’ll sell it for $300 if you act fast!”?

No, probably not. You would talk about how your sister’s games would look so much doper than on her old TV to your sister, and you’d probably talk about the size of the TV to pitch to your grandma. If you do this, you’re using targeted messages.

Now – you see! – that wasn’t so hard. Now, you get the point, but the more hands-on part of this is knowing what information to use to help you make targeted messages, where to find that information, and how to sort and tag your email list so that you can target accordingly.

Here’s what you do:

Keep reading because I drop some important insights about segmentation throughout this article, and

Read “Create and Send to a Segment,” an article by MailChimp.

And now the cannabis email marketing tips you’ve been scrolling for…

Without further ado, here are those tips you’re here for!

1. Make subscribers feel like they found the hookup.

Your goal should be to use your knowledge of “what’s out there” on the internet, your relationships within the cannabis industry, and self-generated ideas to build lists of deals and value propositions.

What’s more is that every value proposition you push to your email list should make you money.

Basically, give them the impression that you know what’s good to know (especially about weed), and that’s what they’ll think. This is all the more powerful if you’re leveraging your website SEO to go after reviews of products in the marijuana industry.

A good place to start compiling your list is by searching for affiliate programs (both in and out of the cannabis market) that will give you good commissions based on your referrals.

Push your and your affiliates’ deals all the time.

Check out these lists to get started!

“The Best Cannabis Affiliate Programs to Join for Passive Income” – Jane Dope

“Top 10 Medical Marijuana Affiliate Programs for a Smooth Ride to Online Income” – One More Cup of Coffee

“The Best and the Worst Cannabis Affiliates” – Cannabis Research A- Z

2. Personalize your emails

So, the beauty of using content management systems (CMS) is their ability to help you personalize your emails. MailChimp, Convert Kit, and other email marketing software even has preset campaigns that use coding that give you all the capabilities for any email personalization you may need.

Here are some bong-dropping stats about how email personalization can improve your campaigns:

Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. – Campaign Monitor

Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. –Experian

When asked to prioritize one capability that will be most important to marketing in the future, 33% of marketers answered: “personalization.” – Adage

Personalizing your email and segmentation go hand-in-hand. The same rationale for targeting people with the same issues is the same basis for why you would have their name show up: catering the outreach to the reader so that they feel as if the message is meant for them, which, if you look at the stats above, really make a difference in how customers/readers/customers perceive messages and outreach – and ultimately your brand.

3. Remember: People buy solutions, not products. (The high, not the pot)

One thing that can be quite easy to forget is that it was your customers’ problems that lead them to find your articles or website. They typed their inquiry into Google and bam! there you were.

To know that a potential customer came to you with a specific problem isn’t really that helpful in itself, but having ideas about what that problem might be is a definite advantage for segmentation and writing email copy.

One way to take advantage of this is understanding from which page or article a customer got on your email list from. If you understand that, you have the topic of the article, which then becomes an idea about what they were searching for which led them to find you.

Another advantage this can bring comes in the long-run. Selling solutions instead of products requires a shift in mindset and is quite challenging, but it’s for the better – and more profit. Here’s what

” Selling a solution requires that companies fundamentally change how they do business: Instead of pushing products, they must create genuine connections with other people. The solution-selling methodology requires lasting relationships with clients in which the goal is always to find new ways to help. “

4. Make Your Writing Scannable

According to Jakob Nielson, author of Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed, people do not – that’s right, I said “do not” — read online. They scan.

This is true for emails also, especially since mobile has become such a de facto consideration in web development and email marketing.

Use the following tactics to optimize your “scanability”:

Reading intimidation is real. Wall of texts intimidates readers. Break your paragraphs into “chunks” so that each “chunk” is easily consumed. Another way of saying this: use white space rhetorically to cut down on intimidation from text walls.

Paraphrase and summarize the gist of the paragraphs in the title that precedes them. In other words, make the reading of each paragraph (almost) completely useless.

Use colloquial language. Colloquial simply means the language you would use in your everyday life, not some language you would use – say – in a courtroom. It makes your content far more approachable and understandable.

Use bullet points like it’s your job.

Hyperbole is memorable when it’s not misleading.

Present one idea per paragraph.

5. Use the Word “You” in Your Email Copy

Common colloquialisms are used in web copy and email marketing to evoke a feeling of closeness, familiarity, and ease. And the use of the word “you” does the same thing, only a little more since it hails the reader.

See the original blog post.

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youngavengersfeels · 7 years ago

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Survival of the Fittest

Pairing: Stucky

Chapter: 1/?

Summary: Drowning in student and credit card debut and unable to find a real job, Bucky has to find alternative ways to earn some money. Getting offered a spot on 'The Challenge', a survival competition show with a grand prize of $250k seems like an amazing opportunity expect for the fact that the show is a couples competition and Bucky is perpetually single. Good thing Steve's always willing to help Bucky out.

Read on AO3

Bucky was stressed as fuck. Even though he was working two part time jobs he was seriously in danger of not being able to pay the bills. His dad said he wasn't working hard enough, because surely if he was really working as much as he claimed he was, he would be making enough money to pay the bills. Bucky kind of thought working 60 hours a week should be considered working hard enough but apparently his employers didn't agree. His mom said he was just bad a budgeting and offered to look over his finances to see what he could cut out. Maybe it was all of the avocado toast he was eating she had suggest forwarding him a facebook news article.

Steve wasn't really any better off; in a lot of ways he was worse off. After being laid off from a long line of part time jobs because he got sick so often Steve decided to just give up and do freelance work while he tried to find a full time job. There was no denying Steve was talented, but so were so many other people. When Steve did make money it was good money but there could be long dry spells in between work. His only saving grace was the fact that he was under 26 and able to stay on his mother’s health insurance. With Steve’s long list of pre-existing conditions they were all worried about what he was going to do when he got kicked off her plan.

So yeah they were kind of screwed. Bucky’s parents had grumbled about him living with Steve instead of finding a wife but Bucky didn't have time to date let alone try to find a life partner. Also there was no way in hell he would be able to afford even the shitty apartment he shared with Steve by himself and sure as heck didn't want to live at home, not that his parents wanted him there anyway. So yeah, he would really appreciate it if his family stopped making snide comments about his lifestyle.

Only once in a blue moon did Bucky ever get to sleep in. He wasn’t a morning person by choice but working customer service jobs sure taught him how to fake it. So when his phone woke him up on his one day off in the last month Bucky was about ready to murder the caller. He answered the damn thing with a barely understandable hello.

“Hello, I’m calling for James Barnes?” A voice Bucky didn't recognize asked. He only ever put his real name on job applications, which dear god let it be the Stark job, he would kill to work at Stark Industries. Bucky sat up because if this was a potential job interview he didn't want to be laying in bed.

“This is James,” Bucky said starting to pace. What was it about being on the phone that made you start pacing?

“This is is Phil Coulson with the Challenge. Your sister Rebecca submitted an audition tape for you and your partner. We would love to have you on the show.” Phil said.

“Wait what?” Bucky said dumbly because he had no idea what was going on. The Challenge was a reality tv show competition for couples. Bucky wasn't even dating so why would his sister submit him for that particular show out of all the competition shows.

“As I'm sure you know we've never had a same sex couple on the show before so this will be groundbreaking. We think you and Steve would be perfect,” Phil said completely bowling over Bucky’s confusion.

“Oh no, I don't think…” Bucky sputtered because there had to be some misunderstanding. Becca had to be playing some stupid joke on him.

“We’ll send you plane tickets and all the necessary paperwork. We start filming in three weeks, I look forward to meeting you and Steve in person we really this will be an amazing opportunity to get some diversity on the show.” Phil said hanging up before Bucky could say anything else.

Bucky just stood there phone still up to his eye for a second wondering if it had been a prank. If it was a prank call the person making it was very good since they didn't even give Bucky time to react. His phone vibrating letting him know he had an email jolted Bucky out of his stupor. He looked and sure enough it was from Phil Coulson of The Challenge sending him over a contract to sign as well has a basic itinerary of the six week filming schedule. Bucky tried to read the contract but he was no good at lawyer speak so it was as useless to him as the Apple terms and conditions.

Knowing that this was the real deal and not just some elaborate prank, Bucky quickly called his meddling sister. He was totally going to chew her out because why the fuck did she think sending in an audition tape to the Challenge was a good idea. Also when did she even find the time to make a tape, she had a full time job and two kids, didn’t she have better uses of her time?

“Becca what the hell? You submitted an audition tape for me and Steve to The Challenge? We aren't even a couple. Why would you do that?” Bucky yelled into the phone as soon as Becca answered.

“So I take it you made it in, congrats. You are always stressed about money and the winners get $250,000 so all you have to do is win. If you really don't want to do it just don't sign the contract, but have you even talked to Steve about it yet?” Becca asked totally unphased by Bucky’s anger. When they were little it was so easy to rile her up, but since she became a mom apparently nothing phased her anymore. Bucky wished he had that kind of self control, or better yet Steve. Maybe that would keep him out of the fights he always got mixed up in.

“Why couldn't you have signed me up for American Ninja Warrior or America’s Next Top Model? What made you think signing us up for a COUPLES competition show was a good idea?” Bucky said changing tactics because she did make an excellent point. He had been working his ass off since he graduated high school first to finish college and now trying to find a full time job and so far all that got him was a shitty apartment with his best friend. How sad was his life that he had a better chance of winning a competition show then landing a full time job?

“Wow, you're really hung up on the couples thing,” Becca said with a laugh that irritated Bucky to no end. “Bucky, most of our extended family is convinced you are dating Steve, he'll even out parents are half sure you are and are lying about it, you get in that show and act like you normally do with Steve and the world will believe it,” Becca cackled. Bucky had force himself not to think about any of what she just said because that was going to lead him down a road he really didn't want to be on. “But seriously Bucky, this could be a good opportunity for you and Steve, at least talk to him before you delete the email,” Becca said in a much more serious tone.

“Fine, but he's probably going to punch or something for even suggesting it,” Bucky said half heartedly before allowing Becca to shift the conversation to talking about her son’s first t-ball game which Bucky had been forced to miss because of work.

Bucky couldn’t focus for the rest of the day, he kept thinking about what it would be like if they actually agreed to be on the show. Part of him thought it would be super cool and fun, because they would get to go to an exotic place and do some really fun things. The other part of him was terrified of being humiliated on national television. He was a pretty secure guy but he didn’t really want the whole country to see he at his worst.

His biggest problem with being on the show was the who couples aspect. The idea of fake dating Steve wasn’t really bad in itself because they had done that before to bail each other out of unformatable situations in bars all the time. But this was the first time a gay couple would appear on the show and it would be a lie. That made Bucky feel kind of shitty for potentially taking the opportunity from an actual couple.

The idea of potentially winning $250k was also very tempting. Even after taxes that was a lot of money that would really help them out. If nothing else they could pay off their student debt and credit card debt and just start over with a clean slate. It was kind of sad that he was fantasizing about winning a competition show just to pay off his debt.

Becca was right though, he needed to actually talk to Steve about it. He really didn’t know how Steve would react. On the one hand Steve didn’t know how to say no to a challenger and on the other he would probably be just as hesitant as Bucky to take the opportunity away from an actual gay couple. If the show was going to start trying to include more representation of gay couple it would probably be better if their first gay couple was actually in a romantic relationship.

Steve had been out all day meeting with a big client but still came home and immediately pulled out another project he was working. Bucky always tried to get Steve to relax and take some time for himself, but whenever Steve could find work he tended to go overboard with it because he was so worried about finding that next client. Bucky worried that Steve was going to overwork himself and make himself self sick, but Steve just said it was like the pot calling the kettle black since Bucky was over working himself too.

They were both chilling in the living room, just existing together in the same space. It was nice but Bucky was also trying to figure out a way to bring up Phil’s call. He wanted it seem natural but there was really a natural way to suggest they pretend to be a couple on national television to try and win $250k.

“I’m going to put on a show for background noise,” Bucky said pulling up netflix. Steve just made an affirmative grunt because he really didn’t care.

Bucky pulled up The Challenge on Netflix because that would set the mood for the conversation. He watched the show for a little while slightly horrified by the actual challenges. None of the physical stuff looked too bad, but there was no way in hell he would make it through any of the challenges where they had to eat something for shock value. Bucky wasn't really a picky eater but still even he had his limits.

“So Steve, have you ever wanted to be on the show?” Bucky asked. Steve looked from his work and squinted at the tv, he probably hadn’t even noticed what show Bucky put on he was that engrossed in his work

“I mean that would require me to be able to date someone long enough to even want to do the show but I guess it would be fun,” Steve said not even looking up from his work.

“Would you really want to do all that stuff on national television?” Bucky pressed.

“Why are you asking?” Steve said studying Bucky.

“Phil Coulson called and offered us a spot on the show,” Bucky said.

“Wait are you serious? What do you mean us, we aren't a couple? Did they change the rules?” Steve asked finally putting aside his work. That’s how Bucky knew he had Steve’s full attention.

“Becca submitted an audition tape for us as a couple. Apparently the crew believed it because Coulson called and offered us a spot, sent over a contract and everything.

“Why would she do that? It isn't a very funny joke,” Steve said confused.

“She pointed out that the winning couple for $250k which would be awesome but It doesn't really matter that show is always filmed in some remote location I doubt you'd be able to handle the whole six week season,” Bucky said as if it was a checkmate.

“What do you mean I wouldn't be able to handle it,” Steve said eyes narrowing in a clear warning for Bucky To watch himself.

“I'm just saying they leave you out in the wilderness and make you survive on the land. With all you health issues it would be hard is all I'm saying,” Bucky said. Steve pursued his lips and Bucky knew he made a fatal mistake. He knew better than to every even imply that Steve couldn’t do something because of his health. That was a sure fire way to make sure he did whatever stupid thing Bucky didn’t want him to do.

“Fuck you Bucky. I can survive just as well as you could. We are going to sign that contract and we are going to win that stupid tv show,” Steve said finality in his voice. Steve tended to have the last word in these kinds of matters and all Bucky could do was follow him and make sure the idiot didn’t get himself killed.

“You know we would have to pretend to be a couple right?” Bucky said as a last ditch effort even though he knew they would be signing that contract.

“Because dating me would be so horrible,” Steve spat. Bucky's wanted to smack him because now Steve was being obtuse on purpose. That wasn't what he and meant and Steve knew it.

“Now you're just being self deprecating to be self deprecating. I'm just saying if we do this the whole world is going to think we're dating, is that something you can live with?” Bucky asked.

“I know you extended family already thinks we're in a secret relationship so might as well give them a show. Besides if we won that money would really help a lot,” Steve said with a shrug.

“Alright, I guess we're going to be on The Challenge,” Bucky said in resignation.

#Stucky #Bucky Barnes #Steve Rogers #captain america #winter solider #my fanfic

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floreneiwlareedz10insurance-blog · 5 years ago

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servicedesksolutions-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Is Marketing Technology the New Marketing?, and The Top 16 Marketing Technology Articles Curated Today, Friday, 8/23/13

See on Scoop.it - Service Desk Solutions

I tag each scooped, curated article, and it’s becoming more and more difficult because I’m finding lines between marketing technology and marketing less relevant. Here’s the issue: technology is driving the wagon right now, and marketers are jumping onto the technology bandwagon (as they should). The whole marketing technology environment is moving swiftly, seemingly changing overnight. Staid ol' marketing is now marketing technology and these technologies are driving strategy, i.e., technology is providing unseen opportunities to marketers. Can we truly separate marketing technology from marketing? Is it one and the same?

Marketing technology…NOW!

Receive a daily summary of The Marketing Automation Alert directly to your inbox. Subscribe here (your privacy is protected). If you find this valuable, please share by using the links below:

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Featured Marketing Automation Article

Marketing Operations: Pit Crew or Service Station? - Profs | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/4jRaAD

From www.marketingprofs.com - Today, 12:20 PM

"General Management - A good way to think about your marketing operations function is that it could operate either as a pit crew or as a service station."

Digest...

Pit crews work offensively and defensively. And Marketing Ops, resembling a pit crew, would be proactively managing data, analytics, processes, planning, and tools that help identify customer wants and needs, decide on which markets and customers to pursue, what messages and channels to use and when these will occur, what service and adjustments are needed throughout program execution or how to modify the strategy due to unexpected changes in conditions.

Just as the pit crew needs to be prepared and equipped to perform any service from the simple to complex on the car during the race, Marketing Ops needs to be prepared and equipped to perform any service or adjustment to support the marketing team and its internal stakeholders in Product, Sales, Service, and Delivery.

A service station typically has little visibility into which customers and cars they will service that day or what kind of services they will be asked to perform. Similarly, marketing ops organizations behaving as a service station work on-demand, supporting whatever requests come their way with little opportunity to strategize or plan.

As a result, ops organizations that operate similar to service stations are better served with skills and tools that provide basic turnkey services on demand. Successful service stations and like-minded marketing ops organizations need exceptional customer service, supply/inventory management, financial management, and general maintenance skills- very different skills from the pit crew's.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

A great article. Take a step back for a second and ask which is more important in an age of rapidly moving technology? If things were fairly stagnant, then the knowledge would reside with Marketing Op's customers. But this whole environment is moving swiftly, seemingly changing overnight. Staid ol' marketing is now marketing technology and the application of said technologies to strategy. Marketing Ops needs to be out front breaking down walls.

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High-Performance Marketing: It’s Not What You Think | SiriusDecisions Blog | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/6OqFLF

From www.siriusdecisions.com - Today, 12:36 PM

Key points from a recent SiriusDecisions' webcast about identifying and implementing high-performance marketing practices.

Excerpt...

Contrary to frequently held beliefs, high-performance marketing is not defined by the following metrics:

Solid click rates. High click rates may be a component of high-performance marketing, but they are an insufficient metric on their own.Award-winning Web site design. Although marketing may earn kudos, the achievement is useless unless it is linked to demand creation.Conference or other event success. Event evaluation must be tied to specific marketing-related outcomes.Reliable responses to sales’ ad hoc requests. Exclusive focus on these requests can degrade the organization-wide view of marketing rather than enhance it.Abundant leads delivered to sales. Like click rates, this number can be relevant but does not provide comprehensive evidence of high-performance marketing.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

This is part 1 of a 2 part post. Why scoop this for you? 2014 planning KPIs, that's why. The aforementioned is old school and doesn't pass the sniff test. Your KPIs reflect your importance to the organization relative to its goals, and this ain't it. Part 2 will reflect characteristics of high performance marketing.

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Five Tips for Painting a Clearer Marketing Ops Picture With Data Visualization - Profs | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/9HfGEr

From www.marketingprofs.com - Today, 12:09 PM

Summary...

Experts have written about how to portray data effectively, by using simple and informed graphs to reveal the story behind the data. This article focuses on how to apply data visualization techniques in marketing operations to make a real impact.

Five categories of data visualization as it relates to marketing:

Data Quality AssessmentsLead Lifecycle ManagementMarketing Channel Performance ReportingCampaign Planning and BudgetingMarketing Return on Investment (ROI)

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Obviously this does not cover the full range of data visualization options, but this article gives you a tremendous view (so to speak) of the rationale behind certain types of graphs/charts. Strongly encourage the quick read.

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3 important lessons for marketers from Google's CIO - Chief Marketing Technologist | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/8kERZh

From chiefmartec.com - Today, 9:55 AM

You can imagine that being the CIO at Google could be a pretty tough gig. The whole company is teeming with super smart engineers. A large number of them are under 30 millennials who are famously opinionated.

Condensed...

1. Savvy customers

First, acknowledge that your customers are savvy. Google employees, the article notes, “aren’t haplessly trying to set up their voicemail; they’re experts in technology and expect it to work.” Ben sees them as representative of a broader shift in the workforce. Your customers are far more savvy than they were 10 years ago.

2. Front-line talent

Second, to deliver on the expectations of savvy customers, you need strong front-line talent. Ben takes great pride in hiring real experts on the front line of IT support — an approach that runs counter to traditional help desk economics.

3. Everyday experiences

Third, in IT — as in marketing — it’s easy to get preoccupied with major strategic initiatives at the expense of giving love and attention to the everyday experiences that people have with you.

For marketers, it’s easy to get caught up in the next major campaign. But the majority of the touchpoints that customers have with us include far more experiences than the typical campaign. It’s all the rest of the content on our website and blog. It’s how our web and mobile apps behave. It’s the quality and relevance of what is emailed through our nurturing programs. It’s the materials we provide for sales support deeper in the funnel.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

The mass dissemination of information has had a significant impact on our ignorance: we're all so much more alert, smart, witty than ever before. Assume intelligence before being proved wrong (don't assume ignorance).

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3 Common Problems with B2B Marketing Personas - B2B Digital Marketing | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/7gNVOj

From b2bdigital.net - Today, 9:43 AM

Good personas are useful, but poor personas do more harm than good. Here are three common problems with the personas B2B marketers are using along with solutions for each one.

Digest...

1. The Funhouse Mirror Persona

All too often marketers end up with these funhouse mirror personas: grossly distorted and misleading views of the audience that focus attention on irrelevant features while obscuring the most important ones. Instead, personas should be like a caricature: immediately recognizable while focusing on the defining characteristics of each segment.

2. The Title Persona

You do not need to create a profile for an accounting manager, a director of finance and a CFO. Depending on your market, you might only need two. Or you might need five, in order to capture the relevant differences in their motivations and perspectives.

3. The Personal Persona

Yes, personal and professional lives are inextricably linked. But if a persona tells you more about a person’s family, pets and free time activity than their professional career and motivations, you are missing an absolutely critical part of the picture.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Don't let the aforementioned get shoved down your throat! You've got to peel away layers of the onion to gain an understanding of the motivations associated with potential buyers, THEN build an MA structure that communicates with each persona. But don't go persona crazy! Major time sink if you do.

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Matt Cutts: Google +1s Don't Lead to Higher Ranking - Search Engine Watch | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/7KnzVp

From searchenginewatch.com - Today, 9:39 AM

A Moz blog post gained big attention after proclaiming an "amazing correlation with higher search rankings" and quickly prompted Google's Distinguished Engineer to debunk the overall idea that Google +1's lead to higher search rankings.

Key excerpt...

So his belief falls in line with what a lot of SEO professionals are doing for long-term SEO success, where creating great quality content that is more likely to be shared is the best kind of strategy when it comes to content.

He does continue to reiterate that +1s and rankings are not related. "Most of the initial discussion on this thread seemed to take from the blog post the idea that more Google +1s led to higher web ranking. I wanted to preemptively tackle that perception."

Cutts also mentioned that another SEO has been doing a rigorous study on whether it +1s lead to higher rankings are not, which he suspects will be released the next month or two. If it is providing specific examples in the study, it will be good to be the most conclusive evidence SEOs will have about whether it is or isn't a ranking factor with concrete data to back it up.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Moral of the story: Used Google+, post to Google+, build Google+. That will positively impact your SEO. Don't be concerned with +1's. Focus on good content distributed over excellent channels, and let the SEO specialist worry about the other stuff.

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Why You Shouldn't Optimize for Quality Score - Unbounce | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/6LD2Hp

From unbounce.com - Today, 9:33 AM

Quality Score and Click Through Rate (CTR) are given too much emphasis by PPC agencies and advertisers. Optimize AdWords for Profits, not Quality Score.

Condensed...

Google’s documentation says that Quality Score is their system’s way of measuring how relevant your keywords, ads and landing pages are to a person’s search query. A higher quality score means your ad can be shown in a higher position for cheaper. Awesome! However, Google doesn’t pull its credit card out of its wallet and buy from you. Your customers do.

So why put all your resources into optimizing for Google’s opinion of your keywords, ads and landing pages? Shouldn’t you be putting more effort into getting sales? I’m not saying to disregard your quality score. It IS an important metric for getting more clicks for less spend. But don’t optimize for quality score at the expense of more important metrics

iNeoMarketing's insight:

So I thought this would be in direct conflict with yesterday's post regarding hacks to improve your QS, found here. It's not. Quality Score is incredibly important as it reduces your CPC and thus your spending. That's a given and supported by this post. The point is more in alignment with a recent scoop regarding email campaign profitability, found here: the objectives should ALWAYS be highest ROI, where I = $. Is QS important? Of course, but it's not the be all and end all.

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The Role of KPIs, Marketing Goals & Business Objectives in Online Marketing - TopRank | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/8HqpcH

From www.toprankblog.com - Today, 9:08 AM

The moving parts within a marketing organization often get tied up in the mastery and performance of specific tactics like content creation, search engine

Condensed...

Before a business decides how, why and what to optimize, socialize and publicize, it’s important to take a step back and ask this essential marketing question, “What are we trying to do?” The answer is usually pretty obvious: “We’re trying to get more people to buy what we’re selling!”

That’s the big picture for most companies, but practical online marketing objectives will be unique to each company’s individual situation. The role of content works across departments and the interaction between departmental content within a company can actually amplify overall business outcomes.

While there are these and more KPIs and marketing outcomes to consider, the simplest thing to do is assess your online marketing strategy for what has worked so far and what needs improvement.

To tie marketing goals to overall business goals, think about how well the web site is performing currently and what the overall online business goals are for the future. Look at each business goal whether its focus is revenue, retention or service and then decide how that translates to your content marketing plan.

Business goals can be broad, but to create actionable plans to achieve them, it’s important to break them down into the key performance indicators that communicate progress and provide feedback for optimization.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

A very timely post inasmuch as you need to think about how your 2014 budget ties into the other corporate components, and how performance could be measured. The post contains examples of KPIs for you to consider.

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Google Steps It Up With Data Driven Attribution | Forrester Blogs | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

From blogs.forrester.com - Today, 9:00 AM

Key excerpt...

The Data Driven Attribution feature is only available for Google Analytics Premium users. It has several notable features worth highlighting:

Google DDA’s approach is statistically driven methodology. Google’s DDA approach is a huge improvement over its rules-based Attribution Modeling tool (which is available for FREE for Google Analytics users). The DDA approach uses probability modeling to best estimate the values of each interaction. The approach itself is transparent, understandable, and Google is extremely open about how it calculates the value parameters.Google’s DDA feature can include non-Google data. Yes, you read correctly. The DDA feature leverages the Google Universal Analytics capabilities. Universal analytics capabilities allow marketers to upload a richer set of data, including offline data, mobile app data, and richer data through more accurate tracking. This enables marketers to track converters and non-converters, from online to offline —this is huge.Google’s DDA feature integrates seamlessly with existing Google products. If you’re a Google shop, it’s easy for you to integrate your existing data sources into the DDA feature.Google’s DDA’s feature is now a serious option for marketers wanting a more advanced attribution measurement approach. Google’s advanced approach demonstrates that it is serious about measuring more effectively. It’s a serious option for marketers seeking a more advanced attribution approach.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Most of us will not require this type of power, but this post helps you see where this whole analytics engine is heading, and how a powerful engine is needed to take advantage of Disparate Data.

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Lead Generation: How Adobe generated a 500% lift in conversion by changing its webinar strategy - Sherpa | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/7TgENN

From www.marketingsherpa.com - Today, 8:31 AM

Summary...

Britton sat down with Daniel Burstein, Director of Editorial Content, MECLABS, to discuss how starting in 2010, the team took a closer look at the structure of the webinar program at Adobe and changed the overall strategy of webinar content, invites, landing pages and follow up process. Through this transformation, the team discovered by starting with a "solutions" webinar instead of a "product" webinar, prospects gained value from the best practices learned rather than product demonstrations. In this webinar, you will learn:

How marketers can tell if a webinar attendee is sales-ready, or notHow free trials fit into Adobe's webinar programHow to provide quality content that leads to a saleWhat is the best way to invite people to a webinarHow far in advance to promote webinars to your audience

iNeoMarketing's insight:

It's about 30 minutes, but I don't think you have to sit for the full 30 to fully understand the complete makeover. Alternatively, you can download the slides to this presentation.

Sidebar: is this the same Shelby Britton?

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Innovation Excellence | The Collective Force of SlideShare | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/5DFBlx

From www.innovationexcellence.com - Today, 8:05 AM

There is much more to the SlideShare story than the ‘presentations no longer need to suck’ factor; SlideShare has opened up a distinctively new creative class of visual thinkers doing their part to make complexity disappear.

Key excerpt...

This May, SlideShare celebrated a milestone of over 10 million presentation uploads. Now, with a massive community of over 50 million unique users each month, Seeborg shared that from the beginning, SlideShare had a strong vision of their core business model and implemented an aggressive growth strategy. The early users of SlideShare were from the interactive design and user experience community. Seeborg advises others needing to grow a customer base to, “go with who you know and use your first tier contacts as your beginning base.” She goes on to say that SlideShare had a great idea and the other part of their good fortune was timing.

Meyer agreed by stating that, “it has been a perfect setup for visual communication. The pace of communication has increased, as has the need to communicate quickly and effectively. Those of us in the innovation and creativity space are continually bombarded with the new and fabulous, and visual thinking plays a role in how ideas and concepts are both captured and remembered.” Meyer continued by stating that the two main advantages of imagery are:

The acceleration of productivity: studies show that people are 17% more productive and use 20% fewer resources when using a visual language.By using visual artifact, it is easier to structure a team’s thinking around the different elements of a project.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

More proof supporting the incorporation of SlideShare into the mix (and should be added to your Inbound strategy).

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Introducing a New Look for LinkedIn Groups [INFOGRAPHIC] - LinkedIn | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/7Brtxp

From blog.linkedin.com - Today, 8:02 AM

LinkedIn Groups, one of our most popular products on LinkedIn, is getting a major redesign with a beautiful new look and feel.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

FWIW. I'm assuming you're participating in LinkedIn Groups.

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[INFOGRAPHIC] 26 Digital Marketing Statistics You Shouldn't Miss - Optimind | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/7Qd2jB

From www.myoptimind.com - Today, 7:59 AM

26 Digital Marketing statistics you shouldn't miss with downloadable quick reference infographic.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

More stats 'n facts to support your 2014 budgeting.

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[INFOGRAPHIC] Inbound Marketing: Tool or Tactic? | Pardot | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/82RGfB

From visual.ly - Today, 7:54 AM

iNeoMarketing's insight:

One of the benefits of Pardot going all basic on us is that they are re-establishing a baseline around marketing automation and marketing technology, i.e., teaching the basics. This is a great infographic that does just that (although it does not include PPC, retargeting, and a few others).

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[GRAPHIC] Marketing Automation: a Solution for Lead Generation Challenges | ClarityQuestMarketing | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/5AgnbN

From visual.ly - Today, 7:49 AM

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Danger when bringing two studies together to come to a conclusion, but this one reflects our current environment.

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[GRAPHIC] The Benefit of Nurtured Leads | ClarityQuestMarketing | #TheMarketingAutomationAlert

http://sco.lt/5Xx57Z

From visual.ly - Today, 7:46 AM

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Scooped if you needed basic, high-level stats to support your 2014 budget.

0 notes

73oss-blog · 6 years ago

Text

SEO Secrets Inside 2018

youtube

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the procedure of improving the amount plus quality of traffic to an internet site from search engines via "natural", which may mean either natural or algorithmic, search results. However, since blogging grew to become important for SEO much a lot more people jumped on the music group wagon and it has turn out to be a useless tool for marketing and advertising unless Blog9T Youtube certain ethics are used. Aside from finding your very own style, tone and subject issue there are few considerations in order to take in before you start blogging. The mobile share associated with digital advertising revenue is anticipated to grow to 70% by 2019. By the end of 2016, Mobile made up 51% associated with total digital advertising revenue. Simply by 2019, spending on mobile advertisements is expected to reach 72% of all digital advertising invest in america. The reduction associated with your mobile market strategy significantly improves the likelihood of item success. IhreMarketingbemühungenwerdendirektmitIhrenZielgruppensegmentenkorreliert. Understanding your focus on group is the first phase in determining how best in order to communicate with these users. Liebe Grüßefüralle Android App Developer! Google provides recently released important announcements regarding app development policies. And almost everything these statements should be produced from the following year onwards; So 2018 and 2019. Therefore, read the news, to stay abreast of the development procedure. And yes, all of these types of major changes are unlikely in order to increase the robustness of application security and enhance the overall performance of mobile applications. Inbound is definitely an amazing community of blog owners, marketers and enthusiasts passionate regarding non-paid channels like SEO, cultural media, content marketing, conversion price optimization and so forth May think twice before subscribing in Blog9T order to their newsletter. Ankush is the online marketing professional and specialists at advertising products, events plus services on the web. Professional efficiency in search engine advertising (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), e-mail advertising banner ads. Of course, you have in order to begin from creating a WORLD WIDE WEB. Nowadays this can be a must. It assists, because your company is heading to be visible for the particular world. Webpage since it will be, is not enough. Thing regarding SEO (Search engine optimization) plus become visible in search motors. Also good idea is trading in marketing online (FaceBook, Tweets and so forth ). This will promote you company upon the Internet. It is very normal, that people are looking for services or products presently there. I can risk and state that this it a initial place they starting looking. 56 yrs old Resident Medical Officer Cruz Franceschini from Dauphin, has pastimes including studying an instrument, top seo trends in 2018 and russian dolls collecting. Loves to see unknown cities and places like Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: Pilgrimage Park. Right after that they may be asking friends. Therefore being visible on the Web is very important for each company nowadays. SEO also requires an efficient list of keywords. Locating proper keywords for your website articles and Meta tags for specific languages like Arabic often need new "organic" research on chosen keywords. You can afford to basically depend on translated keywords: with regard to some languages your translation merchant will need to create authentic keywords associated with your item or services. We all have been here to supply you extensive practical live tasks during your convenient timings. Given that more numbers of people are usually necessary to work on various on the internet works like blogging, content advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), PAY PER CLICK Google AdWords, affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, movie marketing, online reputation management plus customer service, we do teach our students to work plus gain practical knowledge. Do not really use keywords that do not really relate to your site. A person may see more people going to your internet site, but they will rapidly leave it and mark this as spam, which could harm your brand name and client relationship. The purpose of great keyword SEO is to not really only drive traffic to your own site, but to keep viewers on the site lengthy sufficient for a sale. If the particular average viewer on your web site stays for a maximum associated with 10 seconds, it is period to search for new key phrases, ones that are specific plus competitive. Google and other lookup engines might penalize your website for supporting keywords that are usually not relevant to the products, services, or information your business offers.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

Link

At what point in the completely nightmarish process of online dating does one decide that it’s worth spending money on making that experience slightly less terrible? After the first truly bad date? After the 70th?

A generation ago, things were simpler. You essentially had two options: Meet a fellow human being in your respective flesh sacks, or pay somebody (or a newspaper) to set you up with one. The internet wrought popular paid services like Match.com in 1995, JDate in 1997, and eHarmony in 2000, but it wasn’t until Tinder invented the addictive “swipe” in 2013 that online dating became a true free-for-all.

But a free-for-all doesn’t pay, which is why if you’ve ever spent time on Bumble, OkCupid, Coffee Meets Bagel, or any of the other zillion apps promising to make us feel a little less lonely, you’ve likely seen ads for a mysterious paid version of the very same service. They offer perks like read receipts, the ability to see who’s already swiped right, and a temporary “boost” that automatically puts you at the top of the pile for a certain amount of time. The practice has a long history: OKCupid rolled out its A-List feature as early as 2009, before Tinder and Bumble even existed.

And what the freemium pricing model did for online games is becoming the strategy used by dating apps today. They’re free to use, but the psychology of gaming suggests that the more you use them, the more tempting it is to advance to the next level. When it comes to online dating, however, the reasons that people choose to upgrade to the payment models are far more varied than that of a typical gaming app.

It may seem redundant, particularly when there are already dating apps where you can see who’s liked you that don’t cost a thing (Hinge, for instance). But people are still paying for premium — lots of them. Last fall, Tinder beat out Candy Crush to become the Apple Store’s top-grossing app after unleashing its Tinder Gold service. And app makers claim it’s worth it: In June, Coffee Meets Bagel co-founder Dawoon Kang told Vice that men who pay the $35 per month for the upgraded version have “a 43 percent higher number of connections (mutual likes) than non-payers” and that conversation lengths increase by 12 percent.

Those I talked to who’ve used premium versions of free dating apps didn’t have a singular reason for doing so — their motivations ranged from wanting to expand their location-based potential matches to avoiding the stigma of being discovered by Facebook friends on a kink-friendly app in a conservative town. But the most popular reason seemed to be the desire to see who’s liked them without having to make the commitment of liking them back.

Hannah, a 31-year-old teacher in Chicago, bought Bumble Boost after four years of being single and realizing she wanted to get serious about marriage and family. She says she doesn’t interact with a lot of men on the job (“other than my first graders, their dads, and our parish priest — none of whom I’m interested in dating”), and all of her friends are couples. A weeklong trial of Bumble Boost cost her about $10, which led to a monthlong package (about $25) and then a three-month-long package (about $50).

What you get when you pay for free dating apps

Bumble Boost, $24.99/month

See everyone who’s right-swiped you

Extend matches by 24 hours

Rematch with expired connections

Tinder Plus, $9.99/month for users under 30; $19.99/month for 30+

Unlimited likes

Rewind last swipe (if you swipe by accident)

5 Super Likes per day

1 Boost each day (puts you on the top of the pile)

Passport to swipe around the world

Tinder Gold, $4.99/month added to the cost of Tinder Plus

Everything that Tinder Plus offers, plus the ability to see who’s liked you

Feeld Majestic, $15.99/month

See who’s liked you

Hide profile from Facebook friends

See when others were last seen on the app

Grindr Xtra, $11.99/month

OKCupid A-list, $9.99/month

Ad-free

See who likes you first

More search and filter options

See who’s read your messages

For Hannah, the biggest benefit was seeing who liked her before making the commitment to like them back. “[It’s] been helpful in seeing who’s left in the dating pool, adjusting my expectations, and deciding what ‘trade-offs’ I’m willing to make,” she explains. It also helped her get out of her comfort zone. “I definitely decided to match or message with some men I would’ve left-swiped on if I hadn’t known they were interested in me. I think it’s such a fine line — being open to different types of men and giving ‘pink flags’ in profiles the benefit of the doubt, while still listening to your gut and not wasting your time going out with men you’ll never be interested in or are straight-up jerks.”

That curiosity is the same reason Wynter, a 33-year-old engineer in Brooklyn, made the leap to Boost. “I recently broke up with someone and was out of the loop with swiping,” she explains. “A few days went by after downloading the app and I wasn’t getting any matches. I had friends reviewing my photos and got the thumbs-up on quality. I think I’m an attractive person and couldn’t understand the issue — was the app broken or what? I figured if I could see the matches, I could at least see who was swiping on me. Even if I wasn’t attracted to that person, it gave me some validation that I wasn’t a monster.”

However, paying for Bumble didn’t improve her actual experience on the app. In three weeks of using it, she’s gone on one date but said she probably would have swiped right on the person anyway. “Sure, I’m able to reach out to more people because I can connect to them, but the response rate is the same. A small percent of the people I match with respond or move past a few back and forth messages.”

That wasn’t an issue for Molly, a 25-year-old producer in Leeds, England, who paid for Tinder Gold despite never planning on actually meeting anyone from the app. “Arguably getting Tinder Gold was basically just a vanity purchase to reassure myself that people would be interested in me if I started using it more seriously,” she says. The ego boost worked, however: “Seeing who has liked you is kind of wild; it’s completely overwhelming but it was very, very interesting.”

For 23-year-old writer Dylan, the draw of Grindr Xtra was expanding the radius of potential matches. In New York City, where he’s based, the free version of the location-based app only showed him profiles within a couple of blocks. “In my opinion, if you live in a big, densely populated city, [the upgrade] makes a big difference. Though convenience is great, I don’t want to limit my dating or hookup prospects to just a couple blocks from my apartment. I would hate to miss out on meeting someone exciting just because they live six blocks away.”

In South Carolina, 36-year-old legal professional Jessica (not her real name) paid for the premium kink-friendly app Feeld because that was the only way her profile could remain hidden from Facebook friends. Due to her field of work and the fact that she lives in a small town in a conservative state, she didn’t want her precise sexual desires (profiles on Feeld specifically ask users to list them) to be public knowledge.

She says having the freedom to use an app without fear of being exposed introduced her to people she wouldn’t have met if she hadn’t known that they were into her first. “I hooked up with two guys separately that were younger than my age range, so I would not have seen them if I had not paid for the app and saw that they liked me first,” she says. “They were fun times.”

She also discovered a few surprises about the people in her town. “Lots of guys that I would not think were into kink were on the app,” she adds. “Just goes to show you do not know what goes on in other people’s bedrooms and not to judge a book by its cover. … It has made me more open and exploratory in my own sex life.”

Physical validation, sexual discoveries, and newfound open-mindedness: They’re the sorts of intangible objects that money isn’t supposed to be able to buy. But for most of the premium users I emailed, that’s what they found — all for under $25 a month.

But how much more likely are you to find an actual, IRL match? According to Eli J. Finkel, a psychology professor at Northwestern who has conducted comprehensive studies on the subject, the real genius of online dating isn’t sophisticated algorithms that promise to find your soulmate, like the ones offered by Match or eHarmony. Nor is it the ability to browse the profiles of other users for a glimpse into their actual personality (studies show it’s pretty much useless).

It’s much more simple than that: Online dating expands the pool of potential partners. In a 2015 New York Times op-ed, he wrote, “With Tinder, online dating is capitalizing on its strength — an expanded dating pool — and then accelerating the process of actually meeting someone.” So the greatest benefit of paying for an already free app might be services like Grindr’s location expander and Tinder’s unlimited swipes.

Of course, even when you’re paying for it to be somewhat less soul-crushing, dating is still dating. Unfortunately, that virtual $10 doesn’t unlock the gateway to the magical closet where your perfect match has been hiding all along, or even the gateway to someone who’s willing to meet up. “I’ve met some nice guys and met some duds. There are plenty of people that I talk to that I end up not meeting, either because it fizzles out or distance or whatever,” says Jessica.

“The actual interactions weren’t really any different than using the free version or any other dating apps,” adds Hannah.

Lorenzo, a 38-year-old customer service manager in San Diego, downloaded the paid versions of Tinder and OKCupid because he wasn’t looking for the kind of long-term relationships promised by sites like eHarmony. He said that at first he was able to schedule a date each week, but that the constant stream of matches started to turn into more of a trickle. “As far as OKCupid goes, I’m not sure it’s worth the pay,” he says. “I hardly get any likes, and most women don’t respond unless you message them.”

It also doesn’t prevent users from being, well, predictable human-being-on-a-dating-app levels of shady. Wynter says she’s skeptical of whether paying for premium is worth the cost because “I know a lot of men who swipe right on everyone they find even mildly attractive and filter later. It’s especially frustrating on Bumble because then I don’t feel I should put a lot of effort into my initial message because the match doesn’t guarantee a response.”

That’s the thing about paying for a free dating app: It might not provide the variables to the mysterious formula that equals “love” (or “great sex” or at the very least “a mildly pleasant evening”), but it’ll probably give you some interesting insights about the nature of humanity or a pretty solid confidence boost. And for many, that’s reason enough.

Want more stories from The Goods by Vox? Sign up for our newsletter here.

Original Source -> Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble are free. But people say paying for them is worth the money.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes

easyfoodnetwork · 5 years ago

Text

The Coronaviruas Delivery Die-Off Has Started

A single order awaits being carried out from Sushi Yasuda in Midtown Manhattan | Gary He

As dining rooms around the country shuttered in response to the pandemic, restaurants turned to delivery and takeout — but now, some chefs are saying it’s not worth it

And on a personal level, Martin adds that he still feels comfortable ordering takeout. “I think it’s still safe,” he says. “I’ve been picking up food almost every day.”

Gary He

Carbone in Manhattan resorted to taping out spaces for waiting couriers to maintain distance

“I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

Jamie Feldmar is a Los Angeles-based writer and cookbook author. See more at jamiefeldmar.com and follow her @jfeldmar. Photos by Gary He

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Juq9Ej https://ift.tt/2QZaBws

A single order awaits being carried out from Sushi Yasuda in Midtown Manhattan | Gary He

As dining rooms around the country shuttered in response to the pandemic, restaurants turned to delivery and takeout — but now, some chefs are saying it’s not worth it

And on a personal level, Martin adds that he still feels comfortable ordering takeout. “I think it’s still safe,” he says. “I’ve been picking up food almost every day.”

Gary He

Carbone in Manhattan resorted to taping out spaces for waiting couriers to maintain distance

“I don’t think anyone who is staying open is really thinking they’ll make money — most of them are scared that if they close, they’ll lose everything.”

Jamie Feldmar is a Los Angeles-based writer and cookbook author. See more at jamiefeldmar.com and follow her @jfeldmar. Photos by Gary He

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Juq9Ej via Blogger https://ift.tt/3aD6wWz

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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sandralmuller · 6 years ago

Text

Cobbler's kids: how to unwittingly hurt your writing business

Early on in the late-90s action movie “The Negotiator”, police negotiating expert Chris Sabian remarks:

“I once talked a guy out of blowing up the Sears Tower but I can’t talk my wife out of the bedroom or my kid off the phone.”

It’s a modern twist of the timeless proverb ‘the cobbler’s children have no shoes’. If you haven’t come across the term before, it refers to someone who, while perfectly capable in their profession, is unable or unwilling to help their family with whatever skill they’ve mastered (in this case, the cobbler can’t even give his own kids shoes).

And it’s a phrase that’s been kicking around my head for the past few months.

Why?

Because recently, I took the plunge into solopreneurship.

Little did I know…

I tripped up. A lot. Surprisingly, the things I stumbled over weren’t what I expected. Sure, finances are a drag, but easy to keep on top of if you spend the time. Replying to potential clients pronto and having the right process — two of the ‘professional basics’ — were both things I picked up super-fast.

But the things that I helped clients with as a copywriter, and got great feedback and response almost every time? No problem… except when it came to my own business.

So, what were these ‘cobbler kid’ mistakes leaving my business high and dry? The list is a long one, but these were a few that particularly stung.

1. Not optimising for SEO

What went wrong

You’re probably asking, “How the heck does a copywriter not optimise their own site for SEO?”

And that’s a good question!

Simply put, I didn’t appreciate the value or importance of SEO. My introduction to the industry and priority for the last several years was direct response copywriting. SEO barely rates a mention in this field, as the focus is squarely on how to craft effective, persuasive messaging.

SEO is its own speciality and one that I only recently started to explore. And yes, I’m discovering some hard lessons.

Getting back on track

The first step to getting half-decent at any skill is to get a clue from a credible source.

The next stages involve a lot more elbow-grease. Slowly revisiting my web pages to optimise them for SEO is a painful but necessary task, but building off-site SEO with things like guest posting (with the help of lovely people like Sandra!) and directory links have been the #1 priority over the past month.

2. Under-pricing your services

What went wrong

Any business who doesn’t charge enough is at worst going out of business and at best checking in for a long stay in Struggle Town. And it’s not just a matter of profit and loss. Cheap prices can be a red flag to many customers and earn you a reputation as a budget service provider.

And yet, from my very first jobs in copywriting — where I wrote blog posts for $10/hr — to even earlier this year, price has been a big problem for me.

Imposter syndrome and lack of self-confidence certainly played a major part in that. Getting much of my early work on an online freelance platform, where low-cost bidding is prevalent, also had a role. Plus, the simple fact was that I didn’t know industry rates for a lot of things I did… a very basic thing I needed to address.

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Getting back on track

To be honest, I sometimes still struggle to charge a fair rate. Being in a Facebook community where others encourage you to charge what you’re worth has been one big way to put the Under-charging Monster back in its box.

Sick of the wild ‘I guess it’ll be $70 for a web page’ guesses, I also followed the SEO example and read up. Being a bit of a Kate Toon fan (if you haven’t noticed), I took her pricing course, which created a lot of clarity to what I charge these days.

3. Not doing enough marketing

What went wrong

If you’re a copywriter, you’ve probably done jobs where it’s been as much about the marketing as it is the copy. Even if I’m not giving marketing advice, I almost always talk to clients about how they’re going about marketing their business.

Oh, how I wish I could have had that conversation to myself twelve months ago (without appearing like a complete crazy to the world).

In my earliest days, I was completely oblivious to the marketing side of things. And while I’ve learnt a lot over the years, it wasn’t until I’d been running my business for some months that the need for marketing became painfully apparent.

Captain Obvious GIF

Getting back on track

I’ve found marketing as much an organisational challenge as anything else. Carving time out of every week to spend just on marketing has started the wheels to slowly turn.

Experimenting with things like social media and pay-per-click ads has also been educational. There have been mistakes (like setting up a landing page but disabling the opt-in button, then spending a few hundred dollars driving traffic to a useless page) but the lessons have been valuable most times.

Content marketing — in which blogs play a big part — also rears its head. On top of being super for SEO, it’s a powerful marketing tool for many businesses and sits at the top of my marketing to-do list these days.

4. Spending too much time with prospects

What went wrong

I’m an introvert but can spend hours talking to almost anyone about a subject I’m a fan of (like marketing, copywriting, or AFL). It’s a weird paradox.

So, when businesses approach me, I’m always happy to have a chat.

The problems started when I took 1, 2 or even more hours out of my workday to talk to prospects. Regardless of whether I ended up with work, it quickly became an inefficient way of scoping a project.

Getting back on track

Today, I try to be more ruthless and protective of my time.

I’ll always be happy to help people out, but the investment is more carefully controlled. 60-minute chats can be cut in half (or more). The pre-work I used to do is now sidelined until a project is green lit.

Finally, to finish on a more personal note…

5. Getting snared in the distraction trap

What went wrong

When you’ve got writing to do, it seems like the perfect time to jump on Facebook. Check out LinkedIn. Re-tweet a few blog posts.

That’s never been my problem, luckily. When it comes time to write, the siren song of social media is one I can happily sail past. But… email is a different proposition, even though the problem is the same (as Sandra points out here).

The little dopamine hit you get when a new email lands in the inbox is all it takes to keep me checking email throughout the day, even though 95% of it is non-urgent, irrelevant of flat-out crap.

While it’s not a serious time sink, it does break your concentration. That momentum kill is enough to hinder your productivity for the next couple of minutes. Add that up enough times over the day, and you’ve just lost a big chunk to the nefarious inbox.

Getting back on track

Using an app like Freedom to block access during my writing time was an obvious first step (which reminds me, I’ve been slipping lately!).

The second thing was to give myself permission to let my inbox blow out a bit throughout the week. “Inbox Zero” is a tempting target to strive for, but it becomes more a distracting annoyance than liberating. Cleaning out emails once every week or two is more than enough, just to make sure it doesn’t get to this…

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How about you? Are you selling your shoes in the market while your kids (AKA your business) run barefoot in the back streets? And if so, what can you do to bring the love back into your own ‘home’?

About the author

Owner of the imaginatively-titled Dean Mackenzie Copywriting, Dean is a freelance copywriter trained in direct response methods, with most of his work centring on landing pages, emails, websites and sales pages.

He also enjoys speaking about himself in the third person and a good cup of tea.

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Cobbler’s kids: how to unwittingly hurt your writing business was originally published on The Smarter Writer

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lucyariablog · 6 years ago

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It’s Not About the Tea: How to Make Buyer Personas That Really Satisfy

“These buyer personas will help you craft killer content for our client’s audience,” they told me.

They were wrong.

You see, “Marketing Agency X” (unnamed for reasons which will soon become clear) would send us four-page buyer persona descriptions. Each one delved deep into the fictional lives of the characters they had created for their clients – describing a day in the life of that character in Dickens-like detail. And boy, did they love to set a scene:

Meet Sarah Cunningham, CMO at Vertus Capital Limited. She’s recently divorced with two kids; little Jess and Jimmy. Sarah likes to drink Earl Grey in the morning while leafing through the Guardian newspaper. After dropping off her kids at school, Sarah makes her way to work – usually getting caught in a traffic jam or two, which really gets her goat …

Yep. Four endless pages of frankly useless detail.

Not only is this type of buyer persona development a massive waste of time, it can even have an adverse effect.

That’s right. Your marketers, copywriters, and content creators may get so caught up in this made-up story that they tailor messaging exclusively for this Sarah character, excluding a far more true and useful representation of your actual potential prospects (e.g., those buyers who aren’t divorced, don’t drive to work, and don’t drink Earl Grey tea).

Are you guilty of this buyer persona frivolity?

Many marketers are.

And they’re all missing the true power of one of the most valuable weapons a content marketer can wield.

Keep reading, and I’ll arm you up.

You see, a proper buyer persona includes two components.

Buyer profile – explains who your ideal customer is through relevant demographic and psychographic details

Buyer insight – reveals what makes your ideal customer pull out their credit card and buy

Too many marketers stop at the profile. Or leave the buyer insights portion of their buyer personas looking like an unfinished painting.

Buyer insight should detail the buyer’s feelings, motivations, and expectations relating to the part of their life that your product or service will impact. It should identify their goals and doubts, and methods of evaluating products/services like yours.

Buyer insight details their motivations & expectations related to your product or service. @konradsanders Click To Tweet

Buyer insight also encompasses the reasons the persona chooses to buy or not buy similar products/services in the distant or recent past. It specifies what time of day they buy, under which conditions they tend to buy, and how long that buying process takes. It also explains what kind of advertising or marketing they like and respond to.

These buyer insights are the real key to rock solid buyer personas and content marketing results. And most importantly, they are the details relevant to your service and marketing strategy, nothing more!

No favorite morning cup of tea flavors here (unless you’re selling them tea, of course).

Buyer insight difference

Picture this scenario …

You’re helping a friend who’s looking to buy real estate. You talk to the real estate agent to set up some viewings. You could:

Tell the agent your friend is tall, white, married with no kids, works as an architect in the city, plays tennis on Wednesdays, likes to drink Guinness, and reads the Times.

Tell the agent your friend is looking for a two-bedroom, well-lit apartment with a garden, within a 10-minute walk from a public transit station on the central line, and won’t pay more than $700,000. His wife is concerned about house safety.

Which description is more valuable to the real estate agent? It should be glaringly obvious.

The inclusion of the buyer insights makes a mahoosive difference in helping the real estate agent show properties that are relevant to the buyer’s interests and needs.

Buying insights make your customers and their purchasing journey real. They tell you all the little things that make them like, dislike, act, or flee.

Buying insights make your customer and the purchasing journey real, says @KonradSanders. Click To Tweet

And these insights are key in a killer marketing strategy, copy that converts, and a marketing funnel that drives sales.

If you know how to gather this info as you market, you’re a long leap ahead of the competition, most of whom just know the most basic stats (yep, those little feeble buyer profiles). For them, the customer is a stranger. For you, it will be like selling to a friend.

Starting to understand the power of what you’ve been missing?

Gather kickass buyer insights

Adele Revella’s excellent book, Buyer Personas, lays out the methodology and reasoning behind it with crystal clarity. I can’t recommend it enough.

In a nutshell, you’ll need to interview people who have recently evaluated your product or a product just like yours. They might have bought or not. In fact, if they didn’t buy – the insights you squeeze may be even juicier.

Either way, you want to know why.

Find these customers and prospects, offer them a reward for helping you. Get them on a 20-minute recorded phone call with the friendliest person in your team – or, even better, a third-party agency that offers an arm’s length distance, which might encourage the interview subjects to be more open in sharing their real reasons.

Carefully guide the interviewees into answering questions like these:

What triggered your decision to search for a solution like this?

What results were you expecting and hoping to get?

What concerns did you have that prevented you from going ahead with a solution you didn’t choose?

What top three to five factors did you use to compare solutions before deciding on one?

What was your personal role in the final decision?

Who else impacted the decision?

How were they involved and what resources did they trust to guide the decision?

What was the overall process of making the decision?

What was the first step in your process? And the last?

Ask interviewees to tell you the entire story – from the moment they thought “I should consider investing in X” to the moment they parted or didn’t part with their cash. What was the chain of events and thought processes they went through from point A to point Z?

Ask buyers to tell you their purchase story with lots of details, says @konradsanders. Click To Tweet

And, from their answers, build your list of buyer insights and add the buyer profile demographic and psychographic details. Simplify it all, nice and clearly, and stick it up on your content marketing team’s walls for all to see.

The interviews should reveal similarities and differences among the triggers, desired results, objections, comparison factors, and journeys. Group those interviewees with similar responses into a single buyer persona. Not those with similar tea tastes – or even job titles or company types or locations. But those who fit into the same boat when it comes to their entire buyer’s journey – whatever walk of working life they may come from.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The 3 Biggest Mistakes Marketers Make With Buyer Personas

Ask internally first

Before you interview buyers (or potential buyers), you can glean a great deal of insight from your company’s people.

Send a message to the people in your organization, paying special interest to your top sales operatives, as they are probably in closest contact with your prospects. Ask them to answer the questions with care and reward the most detailed answers (yes, sales people like rewards, don’t you know?).

Here’s an email template you can cut and paste:

Hey team,

We’re going to be delving into our content marketing strategy soon, and I need your help understanding our buyers and the journeys they take.

I’d like you to think of a recent prospect you dealt with. It could be someone that we sealed the deal with or someone who considered our (product/tool/solution/service) but decided not to go ahead in the end. Both are valuable, especially the latter.

Please put yourself in their shoes, from what you know of them, and answer these five questions from their perspective, in their voice:

What triggered your decision to search for a (product/tool/solution service) like ours?

What results were you expecting to get from a (product/tool/solution service) like ours before purchasing?

What concerns did you have which may have prevented you from going ahead – with a (product/tool/solution service) like ours in general, and ours specifically?

What were the top three to five factors you used to compare with other solutions before making a decision?

What was your role in the final decision? Who else impacted the decision? How were they involved and what resources do they trust to guide the decision?

And please just jot down a few facts about them, their company, and their position.

Please shoot the answers back to me ASAP. This is going to help us nail our marketing funnel!

Cheers,

You might find that this exercise leads to a greater understanding of the customer across your organization before you even flesh out your persona.

After you conduct the interviews with buyers, see how close the internal assumptions were. If they weren’t closely aligned, it’s even more important to share your fully realized buyer personas across the organization.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 5 Questions to Ask Your Customer Support Team to Help Build Buyer Personas

How buying insights lead to a content marketing win

When you have the insights, you have the answers. When you truly understand what’s going on inside the minds of your buyers at each stage of the sales funnel, you can create the content that helps nudge them closer and closer toward conversion.

Let’s imagine you’re selling a shiny new CRM platform, for example.

Your interviews lead you to create a persona for buyers looking for a CRM system to cope with their startup’s fast growth. You create a blog post, How to Keep on Top of Your Startup’s Rapidly Growing Client Base,” to tap into that trigger.

And voilà. You’ve enticed that persona – because of your buyer insight research – into the top of your inbound funnel.

You’ve also discovered through the interviews that prospective buyers perceive your company’s lack of brand recognition as a negative. Now’s your chance to preempt the objection on your website.

You craft home page text: “Yes, we’re the new kids on the block in the CRM world. But no, that doesn’t mean our software is any less powerful. In fact, it means we’re more agile, more future focused, and more committed to each and every client than our old, stagnant competitors.”

This tactic not only overcomes the objection before the prospects have time to dwell on it, it shows them that you understand their thought process. You “get them.” You’re similar to them and you’re cooperating with them to achieve a mutual goal (which are key ingredients in getting prospects to like you; the fifth principle of persuasion detailed by the legendary Robert Cialdini).

Next, your buyer’s journey insights tell you a portion of your typical buyers are fresh-thinking marketing managers with big ideas who have to run everything by their old-fashioned CEOs. These CEOs are the ultimate decision-makers, but not the buyers who interact with your brand during the buying process). And they tend to think spreadsheets are all fine and dandy. They dig the status quo.

Armed with this knowledge, you can help those innovative marketers influence their bosses’ decisions and preempt the resistance. You email an article into their inbox, entitled How to Prove to Your CEO That a New CRM Will Boost Their Bottom Line. Accompanying the email is a downloadable PDF report with all the relevant stats needed to sway your buyers’ stubborn CEO, which they could simply hand to him or her.

You’ve made that buying hurdle a whole lot easier for your buyer to hop over – with pre-calculated, pre-crafted, triggered content. No salesman required.

Boom! Thank you, buyer insights.

See how much you can ethically persuade your buyers when your personas forgo their favorite tea or marital status and comprehensively detail the buyer insights relevant to the journey they might take with you?

Now go forth and gather.

People who attend content marketing world like to gather with other like-minded individuals in an environment that’s fun, educational, and motivating. Is that you? Register today for Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 and use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post It’s Not About the Tea: How to Make Buyer Personas That Really Satisfy appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/06/buyer-personas-satisfy/

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