#related: I need to check my inbox more often because I keep not getting notifications for new asks aksdjfksdjf

[sensitiveheartless]

Saw your 'The Horrors' comic and 1. Absolutely loved it, and 2. I love love LOVE the progression of Dazai's fears and his reactions to it. There's the immediate fear of Chuuya dying, and his response is to go numb and emotionless. In RESPONSE to that reaction, the mirror switches to copying that apathetic state he was in his mafia days, and he snaps back to being emotional and keeping his priorities to 'keep Chuuya safe' to distract himself, which is what he does in the ADA now and critically, what Oda wanted for him. So of course, it latches on to THAT fear, and without the cold, analytical side of him on the front, it completely catches him off-guard. The build-up and progression is SO good and my God you're amazing.

!! Yessss oh my gosh I'm so happy you noticed all that!! I spent a lot of time thinking through the different shifts of form it takes — and how because the only thing the mirror-ability can do is reflect, Dazai initially thinks he can beat it by remaining unemotional. The problem is, the mirror-ability can reflect the darkest part of any side that Dazai shows it, including that lack of emotion, so he can't beat it at all. I thought that would be a really messed up antagonist for him to face :0

Also, another backstory tidbit because this made me think of it, is that whenever no one is looking at the mirror it starts borrowing elements of forms that have scared people in the past, which leads to it becoming big and fucked-up looking. This is because in the past, one of the people that it reflected was afraid of the mirror gaining a memory and intent. So the mirror now intentionally hunts people, and tries to scare them into looking at it with ominous noises and such. But yeah, that's why it takes on these forms when nobody is watching!

I just love the idea of a monster that essentially weaponizes the fear of the unknown. It's that whole concept of "not seeing the monster is worse because the real monster can never be as scary as what you imagine it to be", except in this case it can genuinely be as bad as anyone imagines, and if they think of a way to make it worse, the monster will immediately get worse. A complete runaway affect as people get more and more scared of it.

Anyway, this ask made me super happy, I'm really glad the motivations behind the shapeshifting came across, as well as the shifts in Dazai's mentality!! Thank you so much for this ask, it made my day :D

[yankpop]

Yandere BTS: You ignore a call from him (Hyung Line)

All copyrights belong to @yankpop (aka me) so do not post/translate my works on any other platforms without my consent/knowledge.

Check more: Masterlist.

WARNINGS: Mention of violence, stalking, some hacking.

AN: Probably only going to be a hyung line thing. Not sure if i'm gonna post stuff on January cause of college, but i'll try to find some time. Anyways, hope you guys enjoy it 💖

Jin

- Established relation

Jin couldn’t believe you would ignore a call from him. From your own boyfriend. Caring and loving boyfriend, he must say (at least most times, excluding some occasions). You should be grateful that he loves and cares about you, any other man would never love you as much as he does. It makes his blood boil of anger when you decline his call, if anything it should be you the one calling him and not the other way around. You’re the one who needs him, not the other way around, obviously. Just because he loves you so much doesn’t mean you get to just ignore him like he’s no one.

Jin makes a promise to himself that when he’s home he’s going to set your bratty attitude away and make sure that next time you pick up the phone the second he calls.

“So now you think you don’t need me, is that so? Spoiled brat, I give you all my love and in return you can’t even pick up a call? You better apologize or you won’t like the consequences”

Suga

- Beginning of the relation

At first Yoongi didn’t think much of it. He shrugged it off by assuming you were busy with college/work and that it wasn’t a big deal, since sometimes he also misses some calls from you. However, his mood quickly turns sour when 5/10 minutes later he rings you again, yet there’s no answer.

The rapper tries to keep working on the lyrics of a new song, but the fact you ignored his calls on purpose was getting under his skin, making him more and more cranky and edgy. Yoongi tries to drown on his work, but his eyes inadvertently keep checking his phone screen, secretly hoping for a notification, and every time he’s met with a pitch black screen he gets pissed off for doing that to himself yet he can’t stop thinking about all the possibilities.

There is a way for him to know what’s going on and although he promised to himself that he would keep this to a bare minimum and only in extreme situations, his anxiety takes the best of him. He quickly opens the app on his phone, browsing the options he has and swiftly deciding that the audio would do the job and accesses the microphone of your phone. The sound volume is set almost on the maximum, while he tries to decipher what is going on around you.

Your voice is the only thing sound in the audio and looks like you’re discussing some details with your colleagues about your work/college. A relieved sigh leaves his lips as he realizes you were just busy with your work and nothing else was going on. Nonetheless he’s glad he did what he did.

“You were busy with work? Oh, no, no, it’s okay, really, I didn't mind. I was busy anyways.”

JHope

- Beginning of the relation

Very clingy boy. He knows you are going to hang out with a friend however he can’t stop himself from calling every 5 minutes - just to make sure you’re okay and everything is alright. So, obviously it shouldn’t be a shock when you started to decline his calls in order to have some peace with your friend. But he gets even more worried, both phone calls and text messages start flooding your inbox, so you turn off the phone hoping he would get the idea.

You usually thought it was adorable he would call so often to check up with you, but it was getting exhausting when you just wanted to relax and have fun with your friend.

This only makes Hoseok even more paranoid until he impulsively decides to go check on you at the cafe you told him you would be meeting your friend. He told himself he would only take a peek, 5 minutes tops, but as soon the man sets his eyes on you laughing your heart out he just can’t pull away his eyes from you, completely drowned by the marvelous sight. Hoseok tries not to drag too much attention over him as he watches you from the opposite street and as soon as you leave, he runs back home.

When you get home he’s going to apologize over and over again, blaming it on his passionate love for you and making it up by cooking dinner and watching a movie, which soothes your annoyance away.

“I’m truly sorry, sunshine, please, please, forgive me. I was just worried, and you weren’t even answering my calls. I’ll do better next time, I promise.” (Spoiler: no, he won’t)

RM

- Established relation

He’s always, and I mean always, on the phone with you, that’s his way of keeping in contact with you while you’re in college/work. And you always try your best to stay in touch with your boyfriend, knowing he always assumes the worst things happening to you if you don’t answer back. You always text him when you get home, if you’re going to study at the library, when you’re going to eat, what you’re to eat - the more information the better.

So, when your phone decides to rebel up and die in the morning while you have no power bank or even a charger, you low-key freak out knowing you had no way to contact your boyfriend.

Meanwhile your boyfriend gets perplexed and confused with your lack of response to the point that he accesses your tracking app only to be struck with the unexpected message “The phone has been switched off”, which makes him turn onto the next thing. The beautiful pendant he gifted you on your birthday and that he made you promise you to never take it off, no matter what. It wasn’t only the glamour of the pendent that attracted him, but also the functional benefit since it contained an ingrained GPS locator.

He has no choice but to keep an eye in your location, constantly checking. Namjoon is a smart man, so he thinks of many possibilities and explanations that could justify your actions knowing something must’ve happened to your phone but part of him is still cautious and suspicious, so he does check your bank account and the house cameras, which doesn’t show any strange activity.

Since he knows your schedule down to the last detail, Namjoon is probably going to pick you up and when he finds out what happened, he’s gonna be more relieved but still gives you a major speech.

“I’ve told you a million times that you can’t be so damn reckless, you need to start using that brain of yours if you even have some left. Do you even know how worried I was? I don’t care if it was the phone’s fault, I expected more from you. I’m so disappointed."

[unorthodoxsavvy]

An Unorthodox Update

Hello, friends, Romans, country-core-people... mutuals...

I’d like to take a minute to address this blog and the direction it’s been going in.

First let’s look at our roots.

I started this blog in November of 2016, about a month after I started dating my boyfriend (CretaceousHero, go give him a follow guys) and it was originally an MCR blog titled Welcome-To-The-Savvy-Parade (yeah it hurts to read for me too but there were good intentions). Around that time somewhere maybe like 2015 I had started watching Dan and Phil and my posts gravitated towards them and Bands™️. After a while I think I slowly changed over to mostly Dan and Phil under UnorthodoxSavvy, which has become my main branding everywhere, starting on here (Twitch, Twitter when I had one, Discord, other messaging systems, Pokémon go, AC: PC) and I use the name “Savvy” which I also went by IRL for a while and still kind of do I just don’t talk to as many people anymore. From there I was often lumped in with Dan and Phil blogs even though I never had an official Dan and Phil branding. Throw in some superheroes and tv shows, etc. I was even a front-runner for Phandom Meetups when those were a thing. Commenting on YOUR photos brought me happiness.

At some point I decided to split my content into two blogs, this one and my side blog. Both have a certain theme that are almost polar opposites when you compare them, but they are both me. I’m currently thinking of changing that url by the way as the joke has kind of died out. My content over there has also changed recently.

Dan and Phil have been posting less and less, which is OKAY. Personally I think that Dan can go do whatever the hell he wants and doesn’t owe us anything BUT I know that I’m in a minority of thinking that way. Even other YouTubers have suggested that not keeping up with your audience and telling them if you are still a YouTuber or what-not is kind of unfair, so, no offense, but hearing it from another YouTuber’s perspective makes me more inclined to see that you guys maybe aren’t as unfounded as I would have originally thought.

Either way, it’s clear that there is less DnP content out there which means less content for all DnP blogs, which I feel like puts me even more away from being labeled a “Dan and Phil” blog. I’ve never wanted to limit myself to just them though.

Over the past year or so I’ve grown into focusing more on posting nature, plants, “aesthetic” images, more positivity, more positive LGBT+ stuff. I’ve tried to step back from the discourse but that hasn’t always been successful. I’ve tried my best to put negative things on my other blogs but honestly sometimes I need to post on here about how lonely I am where people can see it. I’ve taken YOUR suggestions and I’ve tried to post more informational and positivity posts about things I am not in support of others: Trans and other gender identities, autistic post, psychotic and other mental illnesses that aren’t as well recognized/more stigmatized, etc.

The feeling I wish to convey on this blog I guess is a sense of peace and purity with information and a non-nonsense tollerance of hatred with some positivity and jokes here and there. Does that make sense?

I guess what I’m trying to say through all of this is I don’t really know where this blog is headed right now. Some content you can expect to see if I keep up with the blog is Queer Eye, LGBTQ+ things, plants, animals, photography, art, information, etc. If anyone has any other suggestions please feel free to throw them out. Tell me what you do/don’t like.

I say if I keep up with this blog because right now Tumblr Mobile’s new notification system has pushed me towards turning off all of my notifications on my phone for this app. That means if I get an ask, if I get a message, I am not seeing it right away because even if I had them turned on it would be swept in with all of the likes, reblogs, and comments and buried. By nature I’m not being as active on this blog.

I would hate to throw away everything I’ve worked for on here and though it’s hard for me to believe I think some of you might actually miss me if I just threw it all away. I had a good 3 days last week of constant hate in my inbox and notifications so that was fun too. Whatever man.

If you’re interested in any of my other interests like The Umbrella Academy, Stranger Things, Dark Egos, Vulture Culture, BFU, Cryptids, Superheroes, the general post about me complaining about people, feel free to follow what is currently @shes-demons-jim but will probably change soon.

Some of you may also know that Emory and I have finally opened a few online shops which I run the PR for. I follow many of the same blogs on there and drop by YOUR inboxes from time to time spreading the positivity I used to on here, but kind of slacked off on. From there I was to comment on your photos and lift you up. Though we are a store, we are us, Savvy ans Emory, dating for almost 4 years, have had your backs since day 1 and hope you have ours too. If you don’t know our shop’s proceeds are going to raise money for his top surgery, as he’s getting older now and it’s more of an option and because dysphoria sucks. Which I’m sure a lot of you relate to (and I feel for you I can’t even imagine). Also the blog for that is @unorthodox-hero-shop feel free to go check it out there will be more designs up today.

If I’ve missed any asks or messages over the past week or so, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t feel like being as active as much because Tumblr gets worse and worse. People on here suck and I would hate to leave you all to the wolves ;) (I’ve been seeing some rough posts lately yikes).

Also who else do I have to bitch to about people??? So there! You can keep me around so I can bitch to you guys!! Look her real personality came through ya’ll.

Anyway I hope you’re having a great day as usual I don’t expect anyone to read this, it’s more for me then anything else I guess, have a nice day, see you over on my other blogs as well 👋🏻

[tsgaustintexas]

24 Hours with Spread & Co

Meet Rosemary Ewald, the lady behind Spread & Co. - the most Instagram-able cheese + charcuterie boards in town! Also, can we take a second to appreciate how perfect her beautiful name is for this particular line of business??

I was first introduced to Spread & Co. through a friend and immediately began following her on Instagram - @spreadandco - you should too, daily temptation... I was absolutely blown away by the presentation and care that Rosemary manages to squeeze onto every board. As someone that loves to entertain, I was dying for an excuse to purchase a board to wow my friends and along came Waller Creek Picnic. I literally had strangers stopping to ask about my gorgeous grazing board - of course, I gave all the credit to Rosemary - but to this day, her boards are still show stoppers. 

Keep reading to see what 24 hours with Rosemary Ewald looks like and when you go to place your order - be sure to tell her that The Scout Guide sent you! xo - Leigh Ann 

All photos by Paige Newton 

7am | Alarm goes off, I press snooze, check my NYTimes app, and take a peek at my inbox. I do a quick scan to see if there’s anything really important that needs my attention right away, and then I’ll actually get my computer out in a bit to answer everything else. I make a conscious effort to not even open Instagram because I don’t want to begin scrolling (I have notifications turned off so I won't be tempted). After a few minutes, I’m up and headed to let our two pups outside to hang in the backyard and play for a bit (husband walks them when he wakes up).

7:15am | Throw on some workout clothes, head to the bathroom to wash face, brush my teeth, grab my vitamins, and head to the kitchen.

7:30am | Take an apple cider vinegar shot, and wash my vitamins down with some green juice and head out to pilates. (I realize at this point I sound like a health nut - this is all something that was always a part of my routine and then I fell off a couple months ago. Back in the groove again for the past couple weeks and it truly does make me feel better - especially with gut issues). I try and get a workout in the morning because it’s rare I’ll make it happen later in the day. Pilates is the only workout I’ve ever truly enjoyed and look forward to going to. I aim to go 3 days a week when my schedule allows … lately, it’s been a little more challenging to find the time with how busy March has been. On those days that I don’t have time, I try not to shame myself. My main goals are really just to move every day and get some time outside. On this particular day, I’m able to squeeze in a workout because I have a large wedding order later in the evening, and have closed off orders to be able to get all the prep done during the day.

9am | Jump in the shower, get dressed, and make coffee + a quick breakfast - usually something involving eggs and avocado. I’ll answer any emails that came in last night while eating.

10:30am | Arrive at the kitchen and start on prep for tonight’s wedding at Mercury Hall. I’ll usually do a lot of prep the day before: fold & stamp boxes, print out the cards the boards come with describing all the cheeses, bag crackers, wash and fill jars for our house-made preserves, etc. Plus, all the cheeses still need to be weighed out and portioned, charcuterie needs to be sliced, fruit needs to be washed, etc.

1pm | I don’t have any full-time staff (just me and my husband) and then I have a few girls I call on for particularly busy days. One of them shows up around this time to help me assemble all the boards now that I’ve finished prep. If I’m working with someone else, we’ll have Spotify going - current favorite playlist is called “Feelin’ Good” a lot of Al Green, Arthea, and Bill Withers. If I’m solo, I’m listening to a podcast - current favs are Second Life, The Goop Podcast, and anything true crime related.

4:30pm | We’re finishing up with the boards, placing them in their boxes, and tying them up. They chill in the fridge until we’re ready to take the order over to the site in an hour. In the meantime, we’re cleaning up, and packing up all the crackers and serveware to bring over with the rest of the order.

5:30pm | Deliver over at Mercury Hall, this delivery was nice because it didn’t involve any on-site work - simply a drop & go! Often times this is the case, but people can pay an additional styling fee and we can create a whole custom grazing table set-up with our pieces.

5:45pm | I live super close so didn’t take long to get back home! My husband, Austin, and I have a drink together and take the pups on a little walk.

6:30pm | I sneak back on my computer to answer order inquiries that came in throughout the day and send invoices. Austin is in the kitchen cooking up some dinner - I love to cook as well, but he’s the actual chef and I have a lot of computer work to do so I’m happy to let him take over tonight. We’re currently working on getting into our first brick and mortar within the next couple months so lots of planning to do right now!

7:30-8:00pm | Eat our dinner out on the back porch, my absolute favorite time of year for this! We don’t really have the best dining area situation (we usually eat on a fold-out table in front of the TV… haha…) so we live for weather that’s nice enough for us to eat outside on the patio.

9pm | I’ll wash my face and get in comfy clothes before we curl up on the couch to watch a show or two (I’ll usually put my phone away at this point - trying to be present and not scrolling is a big focus right now). Currently watching Shrill on Hulu and I could binge it all night long it’s so good!!

11pm | In bed. I go ahead and set my alarm for the next morning. Do a quick once-over of tomorrow’s schedule - I put EVERYTHING into my Google Calendar with multiple reminders set, along with notes. It’s probably a bit much but I find it necessary or things get overlooked or forgotten! I also have a running to-do list I keep up with throughout the day and this is the time I look it over and make sure nothing was missed. Then I’ll start on tomorrow’s to-do list, and add on anything that I didn’t get to today.

11:30pm | Hopefully asleep with my sound machine going. Trying to change my night-owl ways and get to bed a little earlier, but it’s a work in progress :)

[rebirthxguardian]

😡

😡 : Worst role play-related encounter and what advice you would give to others to avoid similar situations?

//The worst had been somewhat recent; I’ve had someone that I had considered a friend to start hassling me so soon after we started roleplaying. At the start, it was an occasional reminder to reply to all X amount of threads we had... but it kept getting worse. They berated me on not talking to them often enough, or not answering/asking the right way (i.e. “I asked how you were” “And like I said, I’ve been good!” “And..?” “And... what?” “Aren’t you going to ask me how I’M doing?”).

//I’ve lost a lot of want to roleplay with them, though I hadn’t considered blocking them until they really started getting onto me about me responding to everyone else, even though I explained that I have no inspiration for our threads yet, and that some people had been waiting on me for days or even weeks for a reply.

//And it was even HARDER to want to talk to them, when all they ever spoke about was ‘why won’t people get back to me, it’s like being mutual means nothing to them, I guess I should have known better than to expect those that SAYS they’re my FRIENDS to ever back up their words’, excreta and so forth... Much of which I’m pretty sure were very hard jabs to make me feel guilty. And they excused it to say ‘I’m saying this to ALL my mutuals, it’s not just YOU’, like it was supposed to lessen the stress and anxiety it was building.

//They also go out of their way to list the people I DARED to talk with the most, asking how they’re ‘more mutual’ than they are. Why was I taking their drawing requests over theirs. Why do I send them more prompts than I send them.

//The final straw had been was when I said I was helping someone (I had just gotten home from work at around 4:30 in the morning, but as soon as I saw a post asking for help, I jumped), they said okay... and about over an hour later, when I went to go get settled into bed, and I’ve found that they’ve blown up our DM asking when I was getting back, pretty much expecting me to jump as soon as they called. “Aren’t you done with them yet?” is generally the last thing I really remember before I decided;              I just had enough.

//My stress levels had spiked way too often whenever I see that they’re online, and that there’s suddenly 5+ messages waiting on me. Clearly, I needed to do something about it before I drowned in more stress than life was already giving me.

//My advice; it’s okay to (GENTLY) remind someone that you’ve replied after some time has passed (but please double check their rules!!). Or in the case of tumblr breaking notifications, to leave a little message in their inbox/DM (whichever they are comfortable with) and just leave the matter alone. Don’t start asking why aren’t you’re ‘mutual’ enough if a friend of yours is replying more often to another person, because we all have times where some interactions don’t call to us at all. We’re all here to have fun.

//And to anyone facing similar things, do try to talk to them if they’re making you stress. I had honestly tried to tell them how this was making me feel, but they had made a point of always turning it around on me. It doesn’t mean it’s the same for others, because sometimes we’re all just overly-enthusiastic. Communication is key. But if it doesn’t work out, then cut your ties so that you keep yourself healthy.

[ardaasfilms]

Email Outreach (Email Marketing)

1. Email Marketing: - Email marketing is when you deliver a commercial email message to contacts that have signed up to your email list and expressly allowed you to receive email messages from your email subscribers. Email marketing is used to educate the company, drive sales and create a community (e.g. with a newsletter). Modern email marketing has shifted away from mass mailings that are one-size-fits-all and relies on approval, segmentation, and personalization instead. Examples of various forms of emails for marketing Promotional Emails Email marketing campaigns are used to promote a new product release, an ebook, or a webinar, whether it's to promote a promotional deal. 3-10 emails sent over multiple days or weeks may be part of a campaign. There is a simple call-to-action or CTA for short, for promotional emails. If it's visiting a website or making a purchase, the CTA reflects the particular action you want the reader to take. In line with the rhythm of your company, this form of marketing email is sent as and when necessary. Informational Emails As the name suggests, a newsletter will share news related to your company (recent milestones achieved, new product capabilities) or highlight a case for product use. Newsletters, sent according to a fixed schedule (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly), help maintain a clear connection with your subscribers. But you knew? It's not just that newsletters have to be about 'news.' Focus on the letter part, as email guru Ann Handley says. Imagine that you're sending your subscribers a one-to-one letter about something that interests them. In other words, a newsletter is a chance to share ideas, opinions, tricks, whatever gives the audience the most value. 2. Business Needs Email Marketing in 2021:- There's no new technology for email. It was also one of the very first multimedia communication tools to arrive back in 1971. But get this: Email marketing is more commonly used today than ever, nearly 50 years old. Every now and then, the term 'Email is dead' is bounced around the marketing echo chamber. But believe it, don't. It's just getting bigger with text. Only look at these numbers for yourself: • In 2019, global email users accounted for 3.9 billion (source: Statista) • 80% of Americans check their emails at least once a day, with almost a quarter checking their personal emails multiple times a day (Fluent Inbox Report, 2018) • 80% of business professionals agree that e-mail marketing increases the retention of customers (Emarsys, 2018) It is not surprising, given the numbers, that email is hailed as the most powerful medium in B2B marketing. Not having a plan for email marketing means losing out on sales opportunities and the ability to improve consumer relations. 3. Email Marketing Work: - To send marketing emails, companies use what's known as an Email Service Provider (ESP). An Email Service Provider is software that sends and handles promotions for email marketing. It is often referred to as a forum for email marketing, an instrument for email marketing, an email marketing program, or software for email marketing. Now, you might be thinking, can't I just send my daily inbox provider marketing emails? Do I really have to pay for this supplementary email service? It is theoretically possible (we even explain how in our guide to sending mass email with Gmail). Beware, however. With restricted email capacity, design, and, more importantly, email deliverability, you are likely to run into problems. Here is the reason why: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, etc. are intended not for email blasts, but for personal use. So it's quickly flagged by spam filters when mass email is sent from an ISP and your account can be blocked for suspicious behavior. On the other hand, ESPs have the requisite infrastructure in place to guarantee email deliverability, the ability to land inbox emails. If you want to set yourself up from day one for email marketing success, get a dedicated email marketing service for yourself. 4. Start Email Marketing: - 1. Email Marketing Software A dedicated email marketing provider is the way to go, as we've just described. Sending marketing emails via an ISP would only put your reputation as a brand and email sender at risk. 2. An email list The email addresses of interested subscribers who have opted-in to receive email messages from you are included in this list. Yes, that's right, opt-in. Because here's the email contacts thing: All on that list of emails must have given their express permission to be there. What is that meant to mean? It implies that when they entered their email address in an email signup form on your blog, website, landing pages, social media, or anywhere else, they agreed to receive emails from you. This form is referred to as 'opting in' ('opting out' would be an unsubscribe) in email terms. To comply with data protection laws and safeguard the reputation of your brand, permission-based marketing is essential. Nobody likes spammers, after all. Up to now, still with us? Cool, because this is where it gets fun, beginning with your first email campaign, learning how to launch an email marketing plan. 3. Set up a new subscribers' welcome email You've got their attention when someone signs up on your email list. Now's the time for a welcoming email to involve them even more. An automatic notification that is sent to new customers and subscribers is a welcome email. The idea is to add a welcome discount, connect to recent posts, useful information, etc. to your brand and any content that will build your partnership with the subscriber. Deliverability tip for email: Get subscribers to add you to their contact list so that they never miss an email. 4. Defining the purpose of your plan for email marketing It's time to think about what you want to accomplish from this first campaign, now that you've begun creating your email list. There needs to be a specific aim for any email marketing campaign. Popular objectives include examples of: • Fostering a new product • Sharing a discount with faithful clients • For your new ebook, get more downloads • Updating subscribers to a big piece of business news. • As long as they align with your organization and your audience, your objectives can either be hyper-specific or large. • It'll be easier to produce your email content with a specific target in mind. Which leads us to the next stage: 5. Create an email responsive-design You may be thinking, do I have to employ a designer for an email? If you are on a budget and bootstrapped, then no. You don't need one. The majority of email marketing services have some sort of Drag & Drop email editor to make things simple. These are excellent for creating clean, simple, hassle-free designs. This is not, of course, to reduce the importance of having a dedicated email designer, particularly for e-commerce. With custom models, an email designer will help you stand out from the crowd. It's certainly something to consider down the road, or if you have the means, even now. And bear in mind, it doesn't have to be fine. For the first email newsletter, don't get hung up on making a fancy template. Keep it clear. As your abilities improve, you can still expand upon this later on. One way to go faster, of course, is with customizable templates for emails.The ideal shortcut to a standout email design is email marketing models. If templates are provided by your email marketing service, select one you like and customize it to fit the colors and font of your brand. For potential email newsletters, re-use the template over and over. Each time, all you'll do is update the content. Simple and fast. 6. Craft your copy of the email You know your aim, you know your target audience, let's just fill in the word template now. Your copy of your email needs to provide meaning and talk to subjects that concern your audience. You need to pin down the voice tone as well. Keep these tips in mind for writing persuasive, engaging e-mail copies: • Ask yourself: What is it that my audience wants from me? How am I able to help? • Suppose you write to one person, • Demonstrate your personality • Say the story • To instill interest, write (starting with the subject line of the email, more on that below) • Use a sound of conversation, i.e. compose the way you speak • Split the copy with short paragraphs and, where possible, use the bullet points 7. Optimize your opening pace, clicks, and conversions for emails There are a range of ways to increase the opening and conversion rate of your email, starting with the name of your email sender. • Using an easily identifiable name and address for the sender • Write an intriguing subject line email • Optimize the pre header/preview text of your email. 8. Test your campaign by email before submitting Before you officially hit send, always send a test email. Small mistakes can fall through the cracks easily and harm the reputation of your brand. Keep peeling your eyes for: • The typos • Links forgotten or wrong • Errors in text formatting • On both desktop and mobile, have some team members proofread and review the test email. • Use the email preview feature to compare various screen sizes and email clients if you're with Sendinblue. And if it's all good to go, double check that you've chosen the correct email list. 9. Schedule the best time for your campaign Be proactive rather than selecting a random day and time. Based on what you know about them, choose a time that makes sense for your audience. Many individuals prefer to only access their inbox a few times a day. If subscribers check their emails, find a time that will place you at the top of the inbox. This will boost your open rates for sure. If sent on Tuesday or Thursday mornings about 10:00 AM or in the afternoons around 2:00 PM, email marketing campaigns tend to perform better. 10. Track the outcomes of the campaign Most ESPs provide a dashboard for analytics with at least the following metrics: • Open rate: The ratio of the total number of recipients to the number of people who have opened your email. • Click-through rate: The ratio of the number of people in your email who clicked on a connection, separated by the total number of recipients. • Unsubscribe rate: The number of unsubscribed individuals divided by the total number of beneficiaries (hopefully, as close to zero as possible). If this number is big, you need to check the frequency and segmentation of your email, which we will soon look at in more detail. • Bounce rate: The number of emails that were not sent, divided by the total number of emails that were sent. Soft bounces are attributable to temporary problems, such as the inbox of the receiver being complete. On the other hand, rough bounces are due to permanent problems (e.g. an inactive email address). 5. 10 Best Practices for Email Marketing Success: - • Never purchase lists of emails • Using opt-in double • Segment your list of mailings • Customization • Mobile Optimize • Optimize Deliverability for Email • Choose an engaging concept email newsletter • Regularly clean your email list • A/B testing the subject line and content of your email • Size with auto responders and automation for email. 6. Advantages of Email Marketing: - • Low expenses • Enter an audience already engaged • Provide targeted messages • Revenue drive • Easy to get started • Simple to calculate • Quick to share • Reach a worldwide audience • Instant Effect • Return on investment unrivaled For More Information Visit Our Website:- https://ardaasfilms.com

[mxblog24]

Email Marketing For Publishers: Grow Your Audience This Year

Email Marketing For Publishers: Grow Your Audience This Year

5 min read

You may have heard that email marketing is dead.

The internet is interspersed with messages about people getting more and more tired and annoyed with marketing emails, and email marketing practices being generally obsolete.

In reality, however, email marketing is far from dead, and it is still among the top marketing strategies to grow your audience.

According to Backlinko, from the entire email marketing traffic, 4.24% will make a purchase, compared to 2.49% from the search engine traffic and only 0.59% from social media traffic. But these numbers are mostly related to businesses.

What about publishers?

Is email marketing effective to help publishers grow their audience?

Yes, because people generally prefer to receive subscription notifications through email. According to Campaign Monitor, 92% of adults on the internet use email every day, and out of that number, 72% prefer to receive subscription notifications and promotional content through email.

So, if your goal as a publisher is to grow your audience, there are certain effective email marketing strategies that can help you achieve that.

How exactly?

Let’s take a look.

1. Give Multiple Newsletter Options

As a publisher, you know that a newsletter is the foundation of your email marketing campaign. However, newsletters don’t always work best to grow a publisher’s audience. In fact, newsletters have lower interaction and CTR than, for instance, transactional emails.

But what should you do if you cannot exclude newsletters from your email marketing campaign?

Here’s what The Huffington Post did to fix this.

To get more people to subscribe to their newsletters, they broke them down into categories — HuffPost Insider, The Morning Email, Entertainment, etc.

People are more interested in getting the newsletters that are tailored specifically to their needs. “Such newsletters can help publishers find a new approach to the interests of the subscribers,” says Grace Kenny, a marketing strategist at PickWriters.

So, for instance, if a subscriber opts for a morning newsletter from The Huffington Post, they will receive the roundup of the most relevant news:

Diversifying your newsletter options can help make your target audience more interested in subscribing to you as a publisher, as they will receive the content they are genuinely interested in, instead of getting newsletters that clog their inbox.

2. Grow Your Audience with Even More Personalization

Regarding personalization, you can either break your newsletter into several different types, but you can also go further and target a particular topic.

The Washington Post gives their potential subscribers a possibility to follow a particular topic, on which the publisher sends news coverage every day:

How does such ‘extreme personalization’ benefit the publishers?

Such emails have great potential to help you grow your audience as a publisher. When the message of an email is personalized, the average open rate is 18.8%, compared to only 7.4% with personalized email subject lines.

In case of personalized email messages, you pass on the reins to your target audience and let them choose, which particular topic to follow, and which messages to receive.

3. Send Your Subscribers a Friend Request

Let’s take a break from newsletters and talk about other email marketing strategies to grow your audience.

One such strategy is to encourage your existing subscribers to invite their friends to subscribe to you. This the strategy that The Skimm uses to grow its audience:

This is a so-called friend referral marketing strategy and works well to help publishers grow their audience. “Our friend referral email marketing strategy helped us grow our conversion rates by 5 times,” says Martin Harrison, a product strategist at BestWritersOnline.

Using this method is more effective in terms of attracting new subscribers than personalized newsletters. With such friend referral emails, you get high-quality leads, meaning that you’ll have more subscribers stick with you and remain active.

Here’s the proof: friend referral emails bring on average 20,000 new email addresses than any other email marketing strategy, and the lifetime value of these new subscribers is 16% higher than the subscribers you’ve got from other email marketing strategies.

What Else Can Publishers Do to Grow Their Audience?

Apart from friend referral emails, publishers also use one-time offers as their email marketing strategy. This is what The Washington Post does to attract new subscribers:

With this email, they give their subscribers a one-time offer to save over 70% off their subscriptions. There are also other similar options publishers can employ in their email marketing campaign:

free subscription trials

subscription giveaways

recurring subscription discounts (e.g., seasonal)

Such offers, together with friend referral emails, can help publishers not only improve customer retention but to acquire new subscribers who stay with them for longer.

Can You Combine Email Marketing and Push Notifications?

These two strategies are often perceived as very different from each other. The key differences between email marketing and push notifications include the following:

Difference in length. Push notifications are generally a lot shorter than marketing emails, with only 50 characters long.

Difference in personalization levels. Push notifications are generally more personalized than marketing emails. This is a different kind of personalization, which is more intimate.

Difference in content. Marketing emails usually include content that is more complete. Both marketing emails and push notifications serve to alert the subscribers. However, due to their nature, marketing emails can do it in a well-rounded and completed form. Push notifications are very short, so the message that they deliver is very compact.

As you can see, email marketing and push notifications are as different as night and day. However, publishers can still get both strategies involved to grow their audiences.

Making your emails more time-sensitive. It may take your subscribers a while to read your email. However, if you pair your email marketing campaign with push notifications, which will get sent to your subscriber’s desktop, this will urge them to check out your message sooner.

Making emails more engaging. Pairing push notifications with marketing emails allows you to employ a wider variety of strategies. For instance, you can use more personalized messages with names of your subscribers and emoji in your push notifications, while keeping your emails more neutral.

Making your click-through rates more consistent. Push notifications paired together with email marketing can help increase your click-through rate, as push notifications serve as reminders to your subscribers to go and check their inbox.

Beware: using push notifications for every email that you send to your subscribers may result in lower tolerance towards you as a publisher and may force people to unsubscribe from your emails.

The best way is to use push notifications when the time and the message require sending an alert. This may be an offer limited in time or similar emails that need the attention of your subscribers right away. But don’t overuse push notifications just to get more attention.

Wrapping Up

Email marketing definitely isn’t dead. You just need to make it work for you.

As a publisher, you, too, can get many benefits from email marketing, from diversifying and personalizing your newsletters to engaging new subscribers with friend referral emails and one-time offers.

You can also pair your email marketing efforts with push notifications to get more attention to your messages and increase subscriber engagement. It is important, however, not to overuse push notifications for your emails, keeping in mind that they should be timely and appropriate at a certain moment.

Originally published at https://businessscan24.blogspot.com.

WRITTEN BY

Oware A. Augustine

I am a multiple Award-winning blogger, CEO of Business scan24 Blog, My business is to help you start up an online business with free offers and No income.

[asklotarasarrin]

Getting Started Role Playing

I’ve had a number of asks on this topic over the years, and rather than retyping the same thing repeatedly, I’m gonna try and collect my thoughts on how to go about this. All of this is assuming you’re on desktop; mobile makes some things a little more difficult. Feel free to add to this; I’m sure there’s things I’m forgetting.

Warning: Long Post!

First things first: Preparation

Get your blog in order

Create a character bio - This should include character name, a description, and a background. If your character is a canon character, then it’s not so bad to forego this, but I think it’s a good idea even for canon characters, as not everyone is going to be familiar with every single character in a universe.

Put a short explanation of the blog in the blog header - This is like a pitch or an introduction to what your blog is about. This should indicate you’re an RP blog, who you RP(if you have multiple muses on the blog, I think it’s okay to just say ‘multiple OCs’ or ‘multiple muses’), and maybe the universe your muse is from. Some blogs also include if they’re selective or not, multi-ship or not, open to cross-over/multiverse or not, etc, but not nearly as necessary.

Rules page - not necessary, but sometimes helpful if you have any particular things, such as being unwilling to RP smut, or you have some triggers/sensitive topics that you aren’t will to do, etc.

Make sure your inbox is open - Seems silly, but I forget this one frequently when I’m making a new blog. Check other blog settings as well- (submissions, anon, etc)

Follow other blogs - This seems obvious, but it is key. Follow other blogs you want to RP with! Find others from the universe your muses are set in. Do take the time to read their bios and rules pages, if they have any.

Write an Introduction post - Not everyone does this, but I think it’s very helpful. It should be a SHORT post, in or out of character. Many blogs are disinclined to reblog long intro posts because people instinctively skip over walls of text.

Reblog RP memes - The Intro post will help generate interest, the RP memes make it easy to break the ice.

Next Step: Getting Out There

Provided you have taken the time to read other people’s rules and bios, reach out!

If they’ve reblogged memes you are interested in, send an ask with that meme - These are GREAT icebreakers so you can get started with relatively low effort. Friendly reminder: Read the meme carefully. Typically the meme has some form of explanation or instruction in it, and it is very frustrating when someone sends in a meme when they clearly did not bother to actually read what it’s about.

Use the messenger to ask to plot - Sometimes blogs don’t post memes often, or they reblog memes that don’t quite work for your character. Politely ask to plot. Try to come with ideas. It can be frustrating when someone comes to you wanting to plot but has NO idea about what to do. I personally will frequently take premises from memes I like and adjust them as necessary.

Open starters - Alternative to memes, sometimes blogs will post ‘open starters’. These are usually open ended in-character posts that other role players can reply to. It isn’t a bad idea to post your own open starters either, if you’re feeling up for it. Note: Generally speaking, open starters once taken by someone are not available for additional role players unless otherwise noted in the tags. If you like an open starter that has already been taken, you can also use the messenger to ask if you can also get in on that. Many RP bloggers use thread trackers, so the starter would need to be copied to a new post before beginning RP.

Important Notes: Etiquette

There are a number of rules and behaviors that are important to keep in mind, some obvious, some not so much. In no particular order.

Patience - This is my number one thing. RPers come from all walks of life- full-time students and career people, big and small families, personal struggles, different time zones, language barriers abound. And Tumblr is not a well programmed website, so notifications don’t pop up, or get buried under other things. So don’t panic if people don’t immediately reply. Don’t be rude when following up after a reasonable amount of time has passed. Give people the opportunity to measure their replies to you.

Try to keep your In Character and Out of Character clear/separate - Some RP blogs are actually a mishmash of personal and roleplay. Many blogs indicate in the tags or with markings of some form(the most common being ‘//’ slashes or () parentheses). It can be confusing for people without these markers.

Do not reblog RPs you are not involved in - This is a personal pet peeve. RP posts are often only snippets of the overall story, and when reblogged it is taken out of context. The other problem is it adds notifications to a thread that aren’t from the partner, and can be confusing. RPThreadTracker doesn’t have a problem with it, but other forms of tracking can struggle.

Respect and ‘Don’t like Don’t follow’ - universes big and small, OCs and Canon Characters over the top and from humble beginnings, we’re all here to have a good time. You’re not going to like every mun or muse you come across. Not every other blog is going to like you or your muse. People talk shit about self-inserts, teenage OCs, people who like to RP almost exclusively smut, and myriad of other things. But those muns are doing things that make them happy. And you don’t get to control what other people do. If you don’t like it, don’t follow. Don’t RP with them. Let it go.

Self Care - This is part of a larger topic and related to the above bullet point, but important to at least touch on. Not everyone who RPs is well or good. This is meant to be fun. So if you are stressed out or overwhelmed by an RP partner or thread for whatever reason, talk to your partner about it. If they do not respect your requests or needs, then it would be better to not RP with them. There are people who struggle with a myriad of health and situational issues. You will at one time or another meet people who will insist you cater to their every whim, try to control you and your muse. Block these people.

Read tags - This may not seem like an etiquette thing, but this is important. Some people communicate extensively this way. It will help to prevent communication errors.

Read More - use the read more function for NSFW threads. It’s the [...] at the end of the options bar

Tagging - Tag NSFW, triggering content, and anything else you think appropriate. I also try to tag my different verses, my in character and out of character posts, etc.

Trim Your Posts - This is hard to do on mobile, but necessary. When a post has many reblogs, it can be tedious to scroll past. Trimming them/cropping them makes a big difference. [Link here for a tutorial on how to trim - Browser]

Mun and Muse Knowledge [Meta Gaming] - There maybe things your character does not know, and cannot know, that you know. Remember to keep the distinction. Nothing kills my desire to RP with someone than their character somehow reading my character’s thoughts.

Controlling other Characters [God Modding] - You control your character. Your partner controls theirs. You don’t control if they get hit by a punch, if they dodge, if they punch back. It’s part of the give and take.

Drive the Story - Role Playing is joint story telling. Don’t put all the burden if directing where the story goes on your partner. Give your partner something to react to, to build on. If you only ever give one sentence replies, it’s going to get tedious fast.

Other Tips and Tricks

I am a big fan of XKit, a browser addon that makes Tumbling much easier for RPers. [Link here!] The specific functions that are most helpful are Editable Reblogs and One Click Reply. Editable reblogs makes it far easier to trim in post. One Click Reply makes it possible to reply to comments and other notification forms.

In addition to those two, I also like to use the Blacklist, and Post Block functions. Some RPers or topics I particularly cannot stand, so I use Blacklist to keep them from my dash. Post Block is great for those discourse posts and individual RP threads that just squick you out for whatever reason.

I also am easily lost and confused by the innumerable notifications I get on the daily, so it became very important for me to use a website called RPThreadTracker. I highly recommend it, as I occasionally have threads that don’t get replied to for weeks. They also have an add-on button so you can click to add a thread to your list quickly and easily.

Terms

There is a bit of a jargon with this. Sorry if it’s been confusing thus-far!

Mun - the writer behind the blog

Muse - the fictional character, the character

IC/OOC - In Character / Out of Character

OC - Original Character

Thread - the roleplay, the chain of posts making up the story

Selective/Semi-Selective/Private/Mutuals Only - This is often in a blog header - indicates how picky the mun is about selecting RP partners and threads. Read their rules. Respect their decisions to RP or not to RP.

Multi-verse - Indicates the blog is open to threads outside of their designated universe. (IE, my Warhammer character being willing to RP with an Overwatch character). It is advisable to message the mun to hash out the details.

DM or PM - Direct message or private message. Both indicate the tumblr message system.

AU - Alternate Universe. Indicates a deviation from the traditional universe.

[howellrichard]

How to Adapt to Working from Home

Hiya Gorgeous!

People often assume I’m an extrovert. I can’t blame them, given my penchant for speaking in front of thousands of people and connecting online every day. But the truth is, I love being alone. Solitude is my happy place, and working from home has always come naturally to me.

That doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. Many find it easier to focus at an office. But as we practice social distancing to flatten the coronavirus curve, many of you have suddenly found yourselves with remote jobs… whether you like it or not.

If you’re feeling the whiplash, you’re not alone.

Folks all over the world are dealing with sudden, unexpected life changes, myself included! But since I have been doing the work-from-home thing successfully for a long time, I’m hoping I can help make this transition a little easier. So today I’m sharing what I’ve learned about what it takes to stay happy and productive while working remotely.

We’ll also talk about ways to create and maintain BOUNDARIES. Full disclosure: This is the area I struggle with most. I love what I do—it’s my life’s work! And if I’m not careful, that line between work and life gets pretty darn blurry.

When our world is turned upside down, it’s easy to bury ourselves in work or lose sight of what’s best for us. But I know that I’m happiest, healthiest and best-equipped to lead when I prioritize self-care and keep my boundaries strong. I think you’ll find that to be true for you, too!

Pulling back the curtain on common work-from-home pitfalls.

So, practically overnight you may have gone from commuting to the office to commuting to the… kitchen table (or home office if you’re lucky enough to have one!). That’s big, and on the surface it might sound like a dream come true. No more sitting in traffic or putting on real pants, right?

But with the need for social distancing accelerating at lighting speed, you probably didn’t have much time to prepare. That means you may be missing out on some of the best practices that can make working from home a win.

Whether you’re brand new or a seasoned pro at working from home, these symptoms indicate that remote work isn’t working for you. (No worries, though. Tips on how to make it work coming soon!)

Look out for these common pitfalls:

Breaking frequently because you’re distracted by household chores like laundry.

Not taking ANY breaks and sitting at your computer for hours at time.

Eating meals at your desk.

Rolling out of bed with only a few minutes to spare before work.

Working into the evenings instead of shutting down at day’s end.

Being constantly distracted by the people and pets you live with.

Difficulty balancing work with caring for your kids.

Having more anxious thoughts or dreams about work than usual.

Feeling isolated and disconnected from your coworkers.

Feeling like you can’t disconnect and transition into “home mode” at the end of the day.

I didn’t write this list just to stress you out. But if any of those sound familiar, there are some proven practices you can engage to protect your productivity (and your mental health!) while working from home. Now, ready to talk solutions?

How to Quickly Adapt to Working from Home

These practices have been essential for cultivating my balanced work-from-home life. I hope they help you stay happy and productive, whether you’re working from home or just staying home more than usual. And it doesn’t end when you go back to the office—you can keep using these ideas to improve your work/life balance, no matter where you are!

1. Create a consistent schedule with start-up and wind-down times.

Establishing start and stop times for your work day helps you maintain boundaries. I encourage you to try this out, even if you normally keep a flexible schedule! Your day is no longer bookended by getting to and leaving the office, so this gives you back that definition. Plus, establishing routines can provide a sense of normalcy in uncertain times.

Take it a step further by creating start-up and wind-down rituals. That means that the first hour of your day is dedicated to getting grounded and set up for success with the work ahead—and the last hour is dedicated to wrapping up that work so that you can “clock out” on time. My team and I started doing this recently and it has been a game changer!

2. Set clear objectives for each day.

This might be something you do during your start-up ritual! Pick two or three top priorities and keep them visible all day long. (I write mine in my Results Journal, but do whatever works for you!) Whenever possible, batch activities like meetings, inbox time, etc. together on your calendar. That way, you’ll have long periods of dedicated focus to work toward your top objectives.

3. When it comes to hygiene, act like you’re going to leave the house.

Take a shower, put on clothes… you know the drill! I’m not saying you have to do full hair and makeup—if yoga pants are your jam, go for it. But good hygiene is part of taking care of yourself and maintaining your routine. Plus, it can make you feel more centered and motivated.

4. Establish a dedicated workspace.

All of a sudden, work is home and home is work. Whaaat? When the two share a space, it can be pretty hard to maintain boundaries. Don’t worry if you don’t have an office, just be intentional about creating separate spaces for work and the rest of your life (aka don’t work in your bed!). Also, tidy up your space. Chaos in your workspace creates chaos in your mind.

5. Take real breaks.

When you go to the office, you automatically get a little fresh air and movement, even if it’s just walking from your front door to the car. You’re also more likely to walk to meetings and water cooler chats throughout the day. Fear not if you feel a bit stagnant or sluggish when you first start working from home—it’s totally fixable.

The key is to take real, mindful breaks. Take a few minutes for deep breathing in the morning or for stretching in the afternoon. Avoid the eat-at-your-desk trap and give yourself recess! Eat lunch outside if you can or do a quick yoga session in your living room. Just make simple self-care breaks a part of your day.

Need a dose of calm on your break? Grab my free Instant Stress Reduction guided meditation below!

6. Connect virtually.

If you’re new to working from home, you might feel disconnected at first. Luckily, there are a lot of ways to connect virtually. Have video meetings whenever you can using a tool like Zoom. Use Slack to check-in with your coworkers about work-related topics as well as fun stuff like photos of your at-home workspace and wins for the day. Just don’t keep chat notifications on all day. I’ve been there and it’s a recipe for getting nothing done!

7. Have kids? Read this.

I know that many of you aren’t just dealing with a surprise work-from-home scenario. You’re dealing with a whole new paradigm of parenting during the day, too. (You deserve a medal for this, by the way!) Trying to work while your kids are home can be really tough—and that’s especially true if you’re suddenly having to homeschool them. One of my amazing colleagues is a pro in this department (she homeschools and works from home on the reg!), so I asked her for a few tips…

Keep a routine, but it doesn’t have to be rigid. Set clear boundaries between school and play time, and make sure everyone knows what to expect.

Plan for together AND alone time each day so you can all stay connected while still having your space.

Make a list of activities to choose from and get your kids’ input. If they’re bored during free time, they’ll have a resource to go to.

Be gentle with yourself and seek support. If your partner is home, work out a schedule to trade shifts with the kids. Lean on your loved ones and fellow parents, too. They can’t be with you in person right now, but they can still be there for you from afar. (There may even be a loving aunt or grandparent who’d love to read your child a story on Facetime if you need a quick break.)

These are just a few of the ideas my friend shared to help those working from home with kids. Would you be interested in a blog post dedicated to this topic? Let me know in the comments!

And here’s my final tip…

Remember, you are a whole person who is likely going through a lot of stress right now. Please be kind to yourself. There aren’t hard and fast dividing lines between the many roles in your life. You’re a friend, parent, employee, boss, lover, artist, patient, thriver… all of these beautiful parts of you are intertwined. Try seeing this as an opportunity to explore those connections and to plug into the activities that give you energy and comfort. With a few simple boundaries, working from home can be a powerful way to bring all the parts of yourself together.

And as you adapt to this new reality, spread kindness around to those who can’t work from home. From medical and emergency workers, to the hospitality industry, to those who are keeping our supply chains running (farmers, factory workers, truck drivers, etc.)—many are braving traditional work climates because remote work isn’t an option. Recognize those who may be losing income or risking their safety to help others—and look for ways to help them in return. They’re looking out for us, so let’s make sure we have their backs, too!

Your turn: Are you working from home right now? If so, how’s it going? And if you have tips to share, please do!

Peace & boundaries,

The post How to Adapt to Working from Home appeared first on KrisCarr.com.

[carolinaare]

If you’ve spoken to me at least a few times, you probably know I enjoy fucking myself in the head with the pros and cons of social media. You know, soul- and time-sucking, fake identities and addiction vs. space to share your thoughts or to show off your pole moves you’re so proud about, that kinda crap. I mean, I’m doing a PhD on the dark side of Twitter – my obsession is pretty clear. So it might come as a shock to some people that I actually disconnect from time to time. Care to know why? Here’s why I think that even bloggers and part-time social media addicts like me can benefit from what I call “switch-off days”.

Why I Disconnect

ICYMI, I have anxiety and depression. I’m not making this up btw, I have been diagnosed with it by my GP – I’m just that lucky! Anyway, one of the warning signs that I’m really stressed or that I’m going through a rough patch is that I begin opening Facebook, my three email inboxes, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and – if things are particularly bad – Snapchat waiting for an answer, a sign from God, a unicorn, a doughnut, or something that will come and rescue me and give me all the solutions for whatever ailment my mind thinks it has at that moment. It becomes a loop, something I can’t abstain from and that prevents me from focusing on whatever it is that I need to do.

Now that I’m essentially self-employed, working part-time at the uni and dedicating my whole time to a PhD however, this just can’t happen. My mind needs to be sharp and focused because there’s no boss I need to impress by getting shit done and staying off social media. I am that boss, and if I fuck it up, bye bye PhD.

https://giphy.com/embed/12Y5YaNziEoiNq

via GIPHY

Enter one of my favourite things: switch-off days. What are they, you ask? Simply days in which I abstain from the use of the social networks and communications technologies that cause me to go on a checking loop. I can’t switch off completely because to get shit done, or even just to watch Netflix or listen to Spotify, I do need the Internet. Hence, my switch-off days mean I don’t open Facebook, my three email inboxes, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Snapchat at all, and that I even put my phone on airplane mode so I can still take pictures if I see a cute dog, have some great food, do an amazing pole move or see a fun graffiti somewhere around East London, without spamming anyone with what I see or waiting to see if I get likes (don’t we all).

While training on a switch-off day at the London Dance Academy recently, a pole friend told me disconnecting  “sounds extremely hard for someone who has a blog!” and yes, you probably don’t associate blogging with switching off. However, switching off allows me to get shit done for my blog and for everything else and keeps me way more inspired than my stupid checking loop.

As bloggers, we have to be “on” most of the time liking, commenting, sharing, Instagramming and emailing, but switching off a day a week is not that tragic: realistically, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t Instagram your breakfast, or if you wait a day to do so.

Reasons Why Switching Off Matters

Even though I have removed notifications from most apps from my iPhone, checking them still takes considerable time away from what I need to be focusing on.

Dr. Yvonne Thomas, an LA-based therapist interviewed by Mashable, noticed that when her clients take digital detoxes they are “more balanced and calmer, […] more rested, more aware, more present, more productive and less overwhelmed and stressed out. They also feel more connected to their work, their love relationships, their family, their friends and themselves.”

Digital detoxes have also been linked with better sleep quality (the light from your phone/laptop disturbs your sight and makes falling asleep harder) and better eating habits. That’s partly because a study by the Rochester Institute of Technology found students are more likely to eat while on their phones than to sit down at dinner table, which turns eating into a multi-tasking activity and prevents you from doing so consciously and feeling satisfied.

When I Started Switching Off

My first switch-off experience was travel-related and happened in 2012, when I visited my friend Oda in her homeland of Norway. We ended up hiking up a mountain for five hours, reaching a cabin in the middle of nowhere, facing a beautiful lake. It was just us, no electricity, no signal, no running water, no Snowman-like serial killers (thank fuck).

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Our Norwegian cabin in the middle of the mountains

I thought swimming in a Norwegian lake was a great idea. It wasn’t.

Me in my highly fashionable cold-ass Norwegian summer attire

At the time I wasn’t as hooked on social media as I am now, but I definitely enjoyed not checking my phone for two days. And why would I even check it, when I knew there was no signal anyway?

Coming back to London after my Couchsurfing trip in the USA, working in PR as bouts of anxiety, PTSD and depression started hitting me, I began taking shelter in switch-off days again. Living by myself, this was quite easy and I made sure that all my social events happened on days I wasn’t switching off, so if I had to text a friend that I was going to be early, or late, or that I was lost and needed to check Google Maps, I could do it.

I unfortunately had to stop switching off in Australia, because I already felt far enough from my loved ones without switching off completely, let alone if I ended up putting my phone on Airplane Mode. Luckily, during holidays in the Whitsundays, in Singapore and Hong Kong I was on reduced social media used and I ended up switching off completely while in Bali.

Now that I’m back however, there’s no excuse not to switch off again.

What I Do On My Switch Off Days

If I don’t have any deadlines, my switch-off days are an occasion to discover new parts of London or to simply walk around in the areas I love the most.

Among my favourite switch-off day activities there’s:

Walking around London with my iPod listening to, among others, Dire Straits when the sound goes down – don’t ask me why it’s Dire Straits specifically, but there’s something magic about the Sultans of Swing solo busting through your headphones as you speed-walk through the deserted City of London at night;

Going to galleries. Specifically, I often end up at the Wellcome Collection in Euston because it’s the perfect mix of a classy hangout and a venue to geek out;

Taking my notebook to a new café and writing more chapters of my new detective novel. And yes, I know my previous one hasn’t even been published yet, but I feel inspired when I switch off so why the fuck not;

Discovering new cafés to study and write in. During one of my latest switch-off days I ended up writing the 6,000 extra words I needed to add to my working document/expanded PhD proposal in between two East London cafés I had never tried before. The first one was The Close-Up Film Centre in Sclater Street, a lovely DVD library with extra chess, cute couches, amazing almond cappuccinos, independent film screenings and a neighbourhood feel. The second one was Quaker Street Coffee in – you guessed it – Quaker Street, a café which gave out free coffee as a promotion, a creative supporting local artists that is about to launch an album;

Picture by Quaker Street Coffee

Speaking to random people in said cafés and finding out their stories (if they speak to me first, I try not to creep on them because this is London and you technically shouldn’t speak to strangers or you’ll annoy them to death);

Cooking new healthy recipes;

Doing pole, ofc.

How I Feel After A Switch-Off Day

After a switch-off day, I feel happy, energised, and I get to focus on my favourite things without interruptions, without being bombarded by what the world thinks I should be doing, eating, watching, reading.

I feel ready to start the working week, my anxiety and weird checking loops have now been sent back where they came from for at least a while and I become one of those weird people that smile at you on the street but that are really just smiling at themselves.

So if you run into me on one of those days, I’m not crazy. I’m just detoxing. You should give it a try.

Picture I took on a switch-off day

Pictures: Carolina Are

Why I Disconnect If you've spoken to me at least a few times, you probably know I enjoy fucking myself in the head with the pros and cons of social media.

[lucyariablog]

How to Deliver Emails That Will Increase Reach, Impact, and Subscriber Satisfaction

Editor’s note: Because email marketing continues to be one of the most used and most effective cornerstones of content marketing, Jodi Harris updated her 2015 article.

Think of a well-executed email strategy as the backbone of a successful content marketing program. It’s an essential structure that supports your various content efforts and is the best technique for building a subscriber base – which is critical for achieving value from your content marketing program.

Just how important is the email channel? Consider this: 93% of B2B marketers report using email to distribute their content, according to CMI/MarketingProf’s B2B Content Marketing: 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America research. And, perhaps even more importantly, 74% of marketers who use email consider it to be the most effective distribution channel for their content.

But, just like most things in the world of content marketing, email is not a set-it-and-forget-it tactic. Media trends, informational needs, and consumption preferences evolve; and people change careers, upgrade their devices, develop new interests, and discover new obsessions. If you aren’t prepared to maintain the effectiveness of your email content to ensure that your experience is always viewed as fresh, useful, and personally relevant, your once essential resource can transform into a fly-like nuisance that won’t stop buzzing in your reader’s inbox – keeping it from performing to its full potential.

Email is not a set-it-and-forget-it tactic, says @joderama. #emailmarketing Click To Tweet

If you are looking to evaluate the fitness of your email content, CMI’s original 7-Minute Email Workout infographic is a great quick-start guide on how to test the strength of your e-newsletters and fine-tune your delivery strategies at all levels of experience – beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

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Of course, it never hurts to go the extra mile when it comes to enhancing the impact and performance of your email efforts. Here, I revisit my original article on the topic and add some fresh tips and takeaways from a few of CMI’s most trusted email experts. I also share some new examples to inspire you to branch out and get creative in how you use this channel to build and maintain your vital audience relationships.

Build a strong list

Your email content won’t do your business any good if you aren’t reaching the right people – or reaching enough of them to drive your content marketing strategy forward. Fortunately, there are plenty of techniques at content marketers’ disposal when it comes to attracting consumers who will be delighted by your email offerings.

Your email content won’t do your business any good if you aren’t reaching the right people, says @joderama. Click To Tweet

As Aaron Orendorff explains, email list-building techniques typically fall into one of three main categories:

Options – exclusive content offers, forms, and various types of button ads to tempt readers to opt in to hear from you regularly

On-site techniques – landing pages, pop-ups, and other types of sign-up notifications to alert your site visitors to your subscriber-only assets

Off-site techniques – Social media fans and followers can join your subscriber list without having to interrupt their social experience on sites like Twitter, Facebook, or Medium.

The most profitable online click is subscribe, says @iconicontent. #contentmarketing Click To Tweet

For more details on each of these techniques, check out Aaron’s visual checklist:

Example: Salesforce’s sign-up forms

Salesforce takes a multistage approach to build its email lists. For instance, it initially attracts blog subscribers with a simple two-field form that clearly outlines what they are opting to receive:

The company also uses more detailed forms that require additional audience information in exchange for higher-value assets, such as its industry reports. The longer forms provide additional marketing benefits for Salesforce. They are used as a preliminary step toward customer qualification (i.e., identifying high-quality leads) and help the company to better tailor its outreach to the needs of individual consumers.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Setting Content Free: How Health Catalyst Gets Results With Ungated Content

Craft meaningful, compelling messages

Once your subscriber list is filled with consumers eager to hear from your business, you need to take steps to ensure that they like what they receive. Sujan Patel reminds us that this boils down to creating email content that your recipients will want to read. Of course, this means your content needs to be well-written and focused on their interests (rather than your company’s); it also means you must deliver on the promises made to your email subscribers – including publishing on a consistent, reliable basis, and avoiding unwanted surprises and not bombarding them with content they opted out of receiving.

To make sure all your bases are covered, follow Sujan’s top recommendations summarized below:

Only send emails when you have something of value to say.

Keep your messages simple, focused, and concise.

Write great copy – or hire a professional writer to do it.

Go easy on sales-y messages.

Allow subscribers to customize the types and frequency of the messages they receive.

Invest in creating a well-thought-out design that will grab your readers’ attention from the get-go.

#Emailmarketing tip: Allow subscribers to customize type & frequency of message, says @SujanPatel. Click To Tweet

Example: The 21-Day Self-Care Challenge

Nonprofit organization Move to End Violence issued a challenge to its audience members to become more impactful and strategic change agents by incorporating sustainable, mindful practices – like exercising self-care – into their everyday lives. According to the website, what started out as a short-term email campaign that invited social change-minded activists to receive one self-care tip a day for 21 days became a wildly popular ongoing content initiative – helping to grow Move to End’s email database from 400 to 11,000 subscribers in just over a year.

Segment your list for increased relevance and impact

As a smart marketer, you surely recognize how important it is to create content that targets a particular persona – the audience member who will benefit most from the insights you plan to share. This is particularly true for email content, given how discerning today’s consumers are when it comes to allowing marketers to penetrate the inner sanctum of their inboxes. Remember, as CMI founder Joe Pulizzi always says, if your content is meant for everybody, it won’t end up benefiting anybody.

If your #content is meant for everybody, it won’t end up benefiting anybody, says @joepulizzi. Click To Tweet

By segmenting your subscribed audience by known interests and communication preferences, you can deliver an email experience that’s more personally resonant as well as relevant – something that, according to Andrea Fryrear, will increase the likelihood that the recipient will do something with that content, such as sharing it.

Delivering #email content that's resonant will increase likelihood the recipient will share it. @andreafryrear Click To Tweet

How do you gather the insights you’ll need to accurately characterize and categorize your email subscribers? Andrea recommends asking a few targeted questions at the start of your subscriber sign-up process to gauge their top priorities and engagement preferences:

How often would you like to receive emails from us? Daily? Weekly? Monthly?

What particular topics are you interested in?

What kinds of content interest you the most? Text? Video? Infographics?

Example: Eventbrite

According to Eventbrite’s Mark Walker, the company recently updated its newsletter to personalize event picks based on the recipient’s stated preferences and order history. Not only does this technique increase the likelihood that recipients will find Eventbrite’s content to be relevant, the emails are algorithmically generated – so they can easily scale to target all subscribers regardless of how they are segmented.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How User Segmentation Really Works in Content Marketing

Surprise and delight your recipients

Once you incorporate segmenting capabilities into your email program, you can adjust your email content in all sorts of ways – including how you get your messages to stand out from all the other emails your subscribers receive on a given day.

For instance, as Mathew Sweezey points out in his presentation at Content Marketing World 2016, your subject line and sender details (prime email real estate) are the only pieces of information readers have to quickly determine if an email is worthy of their attention. As such, he recommends customizing this valuable bit of real estate to speak to the recipient’s current stage in the buying process. Here are his guidelines for achieving this:

Stage 1: This audience is asking generic questions. They may not even know the keywords in that space. If they see a vendor’s name in the prime email real estate, they know the email is from a marketer. In the prime email real estate, don’t include keywords or brand names.

Stage 2: This audience is looking for social proof to support their research. Use the subject line to give them ammunition to get support from others. In the prime email real estate, use a keyword or brand name, but not both.

Stage 3: This audience wants to be assured that they have researched all the viable options before they make a decision. In the prime real estate, use a keyword and brand name.

Subject line and sender details are prime #email real estate – make them count, advises @msweezey. Click To Tweet

Example: Xerox’s Get Optimistic

When the marketing team at Xerox was looking for a way to differentiate its messaging from its numerous competitors, the big, audacious idea it came up with was optimism. It started a biweekly email campaign targeted to CIOs called Get Optimistic, which provided a look at the future of technology, business, and the world through an optimistic lens. This e-newsletter quickly grew in popularity, leading the marketing team to expand it into a full-fledged print and digital content initiative – Chief Optimist Magazine – which has reportedly helped the company generate over 1,000 new sales appointments and more than $1 billion in pipeline revenue.

Nurture your subscribers on an ongoing basis

Email newsletters may be one of the best ways to build and communicate with your target audience, but, as Gini Dietrich pointed out during CMI’s ContentTECH virtual event, there’s a potential flaw to consider: “New subscribers only see your new emails. They don’t see anything that came before it.”

To quickly help your subscribers – new and old, alike – get better acquainted with the value your business provides, consider creating an email drip campaign. As Stephanie Stahl explains, a drip campaign is a progression of pre-written marketing emails sent automatically on a set schedule or directly triggered when a reader takes an action – like signing up for an e-book on a particular topic, or registering to attend a conference or webinar your business is hosting. Below are some of the forms this useful technique can take:

By crafting a series of messages customized to address a topic or purpose, marketers can nurture their subscriber relationships and increasingly earn their trust. However, Gini cautions, unless you are certain the subscriber data is accurate, you need to be careful about using it to personalize an email. “Good personalization can help you convert. Bad personalization will actually kill your efforts,” she warns.

Good personalization can help you convert. Bad personalization will kill your efforts, says @ginidietrich. Click To Tweet

Example: The Start-up Sales Success Email Course

CRM provider Close.io created a drip campaign to deliver a free course designed to help start-ups get better at sales. At the bottom of the first email, a testimonial from someone already enrolled in that same course is included. What Sujan Patel points out is that testimonial doesn’t push (or even mention) Close.io’s products. Instead, the testimonial reinforces the value of the course, consequently addressing a key question (potential objection) that subscribers are most likely to have – is the course worth continuing with?

Click to enlarge

Measure and optimize

The above tips and guidelines will take your email content efforts far. But, as Jessica Best contends, you aren’t truly ready to unlock your “email rock star” badge until you are prepared to do two things:

Accurately measure the returns on your marketing investment – not just opens and clicks

Understand how to maximize your content assets and email framework

#Email rock stars measure returns on marketing investment, not just opens and clicks, says @bestofjess. Click To Tweet

Jessica recommends calculating email return on marketing investment (ROMI) by taking the amount of revenue a campaign generated, subtracting your expenses for creating and delivering that campaign, and dividing the result by your expenses. (She also suggests visiting the email marketing ROI website for a simple calculation tool that comes in handy for this task.)

  Once you understand your baseline email ROMI, Jessica offers the following high-impact ideas for optimizing, enhancing, and amplifying your email content:

Look for ways to automate and extend the email experience, such as delivering your welcome message as a series of customer-nurturing (i.e., drip campaign) emails.

Ask for the referral: While sometimes this amounts to no more than a new subscriber or lead, it can also mean a purchase under the right circumstances.

Use motion to move your audience: Not only can including animation and relevant motion effects in emails add emotional appeal to your messages, it can drive up response rates up to threefold, according to Jessica.

Take advantage of video: While embedding a video in your email messages simply doesn’t work well in the inbox setting, there are ways to get around that. For example, you can offer text about why readers might be interested in watching and link to the full video.

Make email a two-way conversation: Use your email content to convey how receptive your company is to hearing from its audience by encouraging subscribers to ask questions and offer their feedback or even inviting them to take a detailed user survey.

Tell a great story: Even some of the most seemingly mundane of businesses can harness the creative muse and deliver an emotionally resonant experience through this marketing channel.

Example: Noodles & Company

Fast-casual restaurant Noodles & Company created a full-blown campaign to support email sign-up referrals, offering a chance to earn entries for its Travel the World sweepstakes. According to Jessica, the restaurant received almost three times the number of new email address sign-ups in one month as a result of the campaign, which also led to a 200% increase in monthly sales.

Conclusion

Don’t overlook the value that email offers for strengthening your brand’s relationship with customers and prospects. Email may no longer be a shiny new tactic on the content marketing scene, but with the right strategy and a little upkeep, it still packs a powerful punch.

Got a great email content example to share? Let us know what we’re missing out on by posting in the comments.

Join us in a conversation about improving your email marketing with Sujan Patel on Tuesday, Oct. 10 in the #CMWorld Twitter Chat – 12 p.m. US Eastern time.

Want help in improving your content marketing program every day? Sign up today for the CMI newsletter (or weekly digest.) (And feel free to give feedback on our email marketing format about what works or doesn’t work for you.)

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

The post How to Deliver Emails That Will Increase Reach, Impact, and Subscriber Satisfaction appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/10/emails-reach-subscriber-satisfaction/

[neptunecreek]

Mastering the Art of Work/Life Balance in a Digital World

I love connecting with nonprofit technology colleagues who are also promoting work/life balance and how to avoid digital distractions.  Meet my colleague, Meico Marquette Whitlock, who  is the Founder and CEO of Mindful Techie. I’m honored to be included on a panel proposed by him, along with Carrie Rice, called “How to Conquer Technology Distraction and Burnout and Be More Present for Yourself, Team, and Organization for the 2018 Nonprofit Technology Conference. (If you’re interested in the topic, please vote.)

I had an opportunity to interview  Meico about being a Mindful Techie. Here’s what I learned:

How did you get started working in the nonprofit sector?

I’ve been involved in the sector in one form or another since I was a young kid. I landed my first “real” job in the sector when I graduated from college. I was seeking a way to combine my interest in technology and helping people. I came across a posting for an internship at TechBridge, an organization based in Atlanta that provides affordable technology solutions to non-profits and applied. The interview went so well that I was offered a full-time web developer position on the spot. Since that time, I’ve been involved in the sector helping organizations with a wide range of communications and technology challenges.

You have now moved into the area of “Mindfulness and Technology,” what inspired the move from nonprofit techie into mindfulness?

I would say that I’m still a non-profit techie. However, now I’m bringing a new tool to my work in the form of mindfulness. I’ve always been a very spiritual person, and mindfulness has played an increasingly important part of my path since I was a young adult. But I reached a point a few years ago where I felt frustrated by the separation between my personal spiritual journey and my professional work. I wanted to figure out a way to marry the two and bring my full self to my work. Simultaneously, I was struggling with burnout related to work-life imbalance and feeling overwhelmed by all the digital technology in my personal life and professional work. I realized that mindfulness was a powerful tool for me in my personal journey, so I started thinking about how I could make it work in a professional context. When I gave a talk about my challenges at the 2015 Nonprofit Technology Conference, the response was and continues to be overwhelming. Based, in part, on the responses to that talk, I saw there was a great need for tools and resources in the sector around mindfulness and technology and shifted my work to focus on it full-time.

Describe some of your mindfulness work with nonprofit organizations.

I work with organizations primarily in four different areas: tackling technology distraction, managing information overload, achieving greater work-life balance in a digital world, and mindful leadership. My work consists of interactive talks, workshops, trainings, and coaching. This year, I’ll also be offering online courses and programs.

Can you share some tips about for dealing with the stress that results from using technology, like email. I noticed that when I emailed you, you had an interesting bounce message. Can you share the strategy around that and other ways to keep mindful while using tech?

Sure. So one of the keys to managing technology-related stress is to have a clear sense of what our intentions are and what we’re trying to accomplish in a given moment. If you don’t have clear priorities, your attention is more likely to be hijacked by your email or some other distraction.

For example, with email, I think many people check it reflexively because of their device notifications, boredom, or having the false notion that busyness (e.g. checking and responding to email) equates to being productive. One simple way to manage this, in addition to having clear priorities, is to turn off the push notifications on your devices. Or if you’re using a desktop client, disable the pop-up alerts and sound effects and close or minimize the application until you’re ready to focus on email. Since I use Gmail, there’s a cool Chrome browser plug-in called Inbox When Ready that allows me to protect my focus and minimize the amount of time I spend on email by hiding my inbox when I’m not using it. That way I’m not distracted by new messages or other things when focusing on other tasks.

I also find it helpful to set healthy boundaries around my tech use. So for me, I don’t check my email first thing in the morning or before going to bed at night. And each day, I work on at least one important task I want to accomplish before opening my inbox or social media. I also carve out time to read articles or newsletters I find interesting. I use Evernote to bookmark those items to look at later. This helps me not to feel too distracted or overwhelmed by all the interesting things I want to read since I know I’ve already set aside time in my schedule to come back to them.

The last thing I’ll say here is that I encourage folks to be mindful about whether email is always the best action to take. All tech tools aren’t alike. For example, I don’t think email isn’t the best tool for instant messaging or project management. Sometimes a phone call or a quick walk down the hall to speak in person is more effective.

Many people who work for nonprofits feel overwhelmed because there is so much to do, but so little time and capacity to do it. Add to that what’s happening in our world today, and you have a recipe for stress. What’s your advice to nonprofit professionals?

In the non-profit space, I think we often feel overwhelmed because we don’t have a clear set of intentions that match with a realistic assessment of our capacity and bandwidth. So one of the first steps I take to reduce anxiety is just to get clear about my vision or what I’m trying to achieve and then identify priorities that align with that. Second, I assess how I’m investing my time. In other words, when I look at my calendar, do I actually have enough hours in a week to accomplish the priorities I’ve identified or am I’m trying to do too much at one time? Am I spending too much time on things that aren’t aligned with my priorities and vision? Someone explained this to me by sharing the analogy of the one-stop-shop Chinese restaurant. You know the one that has hamburgers, chicken wings, pizza, and a host of other things on the menu in addition to Chinese food? While the restaurant offers tons of options, what’s the quality like? Is it doing anything well? Compare that example to a taco stand that just has a handful of taco selections on the menu. That’s it.

So I tell people that you can do it all and you can have it all. But you can’t do it all at the same time. I don’t believe we can be effective over the long-term if we operate under the illusion that we can multitask and do everything at the same time and do it well. Science is showing us that the brain can really only do one thing at a time. When we are engaged in what we think is multitasking, what we’re really doing is we’re forcing the brain to switch back and forth really rapidly and creating feelings of anxiety and stress in our physical body. So I recommend folks do one task at a time and do that one thing well before moving on to something else.

For folks that are interested, I have a free Mastering the Art of Work/Life Balance in a Digital World starter kit that walks through this process in more detail.

One final thought on this point. I share with clients that the emails, projects, and other work will never stop or slow down enough for you to catch up. There will never be a perfect time to take time for you. But you can take time for yourself and the world around won’t come to an end. And, yes, it’s possible to be committed to your work and have a fulfilling personal life too. At one point, I was depressed, had gained a ton of weight, and wasn’t eating or sleeping right. My personal life was non-existent. But I had a powerful realization that even if I worked myself to death, the emails would keep rolling in and the projects would keep moving ahead. My colleagues might have had a lot of great things to say at my memorial service, but eventually, I would have been replaced and the work would have carried on like business as usual. I realized I needed to take to time re-fill regularly because I couldn’t continue to pour into my colleagues and our members from an empty cup. If I wanted to make a positive impact over the long-term, I needed to start investing as much in myself as I was investing in my work.

Given what is going in the news and our country over the past few weeks, it is very hard for us to shut it out and tune out, perhaps because we feel urgency to do something. What is your advice about consuming the news these days and how to be an activist but also balance self-care.

Wow, this is such an important question. And I think you’re right in terms of just the sheer volume of news and information that is being thrown at us every day.

The first thing I would offer is to realize that we have the power to control how we’re receiving and consuming news and other information. For me, this means that I don’t own a TV or watch the local news. When it comes to my devices, I turn off all push notifications so I’m not constantly bombarded with updates from the news or social media. I also don’t engage with my devices first thing in the morning or the last thing at night before I go to bed. I prioritize my morning routine first before I enter the world each day and my evening routine before heading to bed. I also don’t follow breaking news. I have a handful of news sources that I trust. So I listen to weekly summaries or read news roundups about important news items to stay in the loop about what’s happening in the world.

I also reflect regularly through meditation and other mindfulness practices on what are my gifts and talents and how I’ve been called to use them to be of service. In many cases, folks in the non-profit space are working for organizations that serve a cause that’s really important to them. And being aligned with the work of your organization can be an asset when you might feel helpless about what’s happening in the news because you can remind yourself that you’re making a positive impact on the world. That you are already using your gifts and talents to serve your organization and the communities it supports. It’s really important to acknowledge this.

Folks can also engage in what I call planned giving and activism. What I mean is that every so often there’s a natural disaster like Harvey and the fundraising teams for organizations like the Red Cross kick in high gear. So you give money and volunteer. Or maybe you buy Girl Scout Cookies or make a one time donation to the canvasser outside your office building raising money to save the whales or feed children in Africa. How much money and time does that add up to over the course of a year? What if you selected one or two organizations you really cared about and then donated your time and money to them on a consistent basis? While organizations like one-time donations or volunteers, consistent givers and volunteers help make their work more sustainable. Even if it’s just $5-10 or a few hours each month. My point here is that if you’re regularly using your gifts, talents, and resources to make an impact (even if it’s “small” or incremental), you can be grounded in knowing you’re making a difference and not feel as helpless when the latest batch of “bad” news comes your way. I may not be able to do it all, but I can do something.

Finally, even when time and money are limited, you can always offer loving-kindness to any person, place, thing, or situation. So, one of the things I do when I find myself feeling helpless or in judgement is to offer this silent affirmation: “May you be wellness, wholeness, happiness, and freedom from all manner of suffering.”

What are your favorite podcasts and blogs that you read that are on mindfulness?

For podcasts, I love Thriving Mindfully by Ananda Leeke. She’s been doing this work a while, but it’s still simple, accessible, and down to earth.

I also love Kyle Cease’s Youtube channel. I guess it’s technically not a podcast. Kyle’s a transformational speaker and comedian and posts several times a week.

For blogs, I like Self-care by Aisha, Mindful Magazine, Thrive Global, and Harvard Business Review. I know some people might be surprised by the last one, but the Harvard Business Review has a ton of great resources on the topic, particularly for folks looking at the intersection of mindfulness and organizational leadership.

Anything else you want to share?

For folks that are interested, I have a free Mastering the Art of Work/Life Balance in a Digital World starter kit. You can get a copy here and I’m teaching the Master the Art of Work/Life Balance in a Digital World online course that starts on September 7.  The course is essentially FREE and you can pay what you can if you sign-up by August 31. After that time, the price will be the suggested value of $97.

  from Beth’s Blog http://ift.tt/2wlCvaq

[clarencenicholsonata]

How Our Support Team Maximizes Customer Success with Intelligent Automation

Like any SaaS company worth its salt, Wishpond puts a lot of effort into making sure our product meets the needs of our customers.

If you’re a SaaS marketer, you know first-hand how important customer success is when it comes to showing users and potential customers how valuable your product is.

Three months ago, our long-time customer success lead, Bree, left Wishpond to start a new chapter in London. Instead of looking for someone to take on her role, we took it as an opportunity to turn our entire support team into a team designed to maximize and maintain customer success.

Our new customer success team immediately got to work, implementing processes and scouring our analytics for data and trends that could help them create a better and more cohesive customer experience, from first touch to payment, onboarding, support and beyond.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the automation processes our customer support team uses to maximize customer success and convert as many potential customers into paid users as possible.

Let’s dive in.

Why We Personalize Communication

Live-chat automation is brilliant for our customer success team because it allows them to create contact points with messaging that’s personalized to our visitors and users based on their interests and actions.

In 2017, the personalization of communications is, in my opinion, one of the most important developing trends in marketing. Why? Put simply, the sheer number of emails, messages, Facebook notifications, Tweets - the list goes on - people get each day has created a sea of noise.

This noise is characterized by its volume (go through your inbox and see how many newsletters you receive every day or every other day) and its lack of personalization (of those newsletters, how many of them are really relevant to you?).

And what happens to loud, irrelevant noise?

People tune it out.

So, to cut through that noise and pull potential customers out of radio silence, we personalize. This means contacting people about the topics they’re specifically interested in by addressing common questions or asking relevant questions.

Though automated personalization might seem like a bit of a paradox, the powerful automation tools available to us as marketers helps us overcome many of the barriers that would otherwise inhibit the effectiveness of these communications.

Whether it’s a timely live-chat popup or an action-triggered email, we work hard to minimize the robotics that are inherent to communication automation.

Let’s go over a few automation flows we have as well as how they help us, and our customers, achieve our goals.

Livechat Automation

Using Segmentation to Identify VIPs

Our customer success team is a hard-working bunch. They deal with hundreds of support tickets and requests every single day - and between the five of them, that’s no easy task.

One thing that can be tough to handle is the prioritization of tickets. Though they try their best to reply as quickly as possible to every ticket, it can be hard when there are dozens piling up.

With this in mind, we’ve found one incredibly impactful use for automation: segmentation. Using information we collect from our visitors’ actions allows us to group them into segments that help us answer their support requests in a certain way.

One such segment is our VIP list - we automatically set our free trial users and “Rapid Growth” plan customers to become part of this list. Don’t get me wrong - we answer all support tickets as quickly as possible, but we’re lucky enough to have a customer base that’s generally patient and understanding.

Providing our free trial customers with first-in-line support means our customer success team is quick to aid them when they’ve got questions or are having trouble figuring out the platform. Having particularly responsive support keeps a free trial user’s overall experience with Wishpond positive.

We do this for our Rapid Growth users for many of the same reasons. Users on a Rapid Growth plan are our big players - larger companies running massive campaigns. More often than not, they have stricter deadlines and more demanding expectations, meaning it’s in our best interest to respond quickly to keep retention and customer satisfaction high.

Takeaway:

Segmentation is a massive opportunity when it comes to modern digital marketing. It allows you to much more easily personalize your marketing efforts, especially when your audience is made up of many different types of customers.

Best of all? It can serve multiple purposes. While we use Intercom segmentation primarily to identify customers and where they are within our sales funnel, we also use it for a ton of other things, like directing Spanish chats to our Spanish-speaking support team member based on browser language or categorizing billing-related support tickets based on the email they were sent to.

Engaging Pricing Page Visitors

As far as SaaS products go, our sign-up flow is pretty standard: people visit our site, check out our products, visit our pricing page, and then decide if they want to sign up for our 14-day free trial by choosing one of our three plans. Simple enough, right?

We know, however, that there’s an inherent friction for page visitors when they visit pricing. This is the first big decision-making step for a potential customer, and it takes a combined effort from our marketing and customer success teams to minimize this friction to maximize conversion.

Though we’ve done a lot to optimize our pricing page (to the tune of increasing revenue 54.3%), there’s only so much we can do within the page itself. We added an FAQ and leveraged social proof in the form of a testimonial to get as many people as we can through the door, but we knew we could do more.

What’s important to note about pricing page visitors is that they’re an incredibly heterogeneous bunch. We drive a lot of traffic to that page (tens of thousands of visitors monthly) from a diverse list of sources. This means each visitor has a different set of knowledge, expectations and intentions, and that in turn means we can’t treat them all the same way.

So, we introduced a small, simple Intercom popup for pricing page visitors. It looks like this:

It’s a very general question that we ask people who have been on our pricing page for 30 seconds.

Our intention with this message isn’t to sell more or to include more information about our product. We simply want to open a dialogue with a potential customer, giving them the opportunity to ask any questions they might have and letting them know that we have a support team that’s ready and waiting to assist them.

A pricing page visitor who doesn’t see an answer to a question they have may simply bounce. But, by introducing an alternative avenue through which visitors are prompted to chat with our customer success team, we’re given a second opportunity to talk with these people and potentially turn them into customers.

Takeaway:

The precise and targeted nature of modern automation is a wonder of the marketing world. It allows you and your business to identify individual opportunities and then choose how to capitalize on them based on a certain message or particular goal.

When you’re looking to set up live-chat automation, ask yourself what your visitor is thinking and feeling at a given time or specific page. What barriers are they encountering? What questions might they have? What problems are they experiencing?

Most importantly, what are the reasons that are keeping them from achieving your intended goal? Identifying these problems and answering these questions will go a long way towards helping you sculpt automation that both assists your customers and impacts business results.

Being a Customer Resource

A unique part of Wishpond’s marketing efforts is that we rely greatly on the strength of our content strategy to pull in traffic. When a great majority of your articles are made up of top-of-funnel content like “20 Instagram Tips”, you get a lot of visitors who don’t know about or aren’t quite ready to use your software.

Though we have an entirely separate marketing strategy for blog traffic and how we optimize it for sales, we’ve recently been exploring ways to do this in ways that reach beyond lead generation, email newsletters, popups or welcome mats. One of these new methods utilizes Intercom to connect our customer success team with blog visitors with the goal of providing value and introducing them to Wishpond.

We're lucky enough that many of our social media articles rank incredibly high in search results - and that’s led to a majority of our blog traffic being on these social media-related articles. As I mentioned, these articles tend to attract top-of-funnel visitors. Though our ultimate goal is to turn these social media marketers into savvy digital marketers using Wishpond, we know that process isn’t quick - or easy.

To help bridge the gap, we’ve begun experimenting with the implementation of proactive chats into some of our higher-traffic blog articles:

Here’s an example of a chat we open automatically on someone reading one of our Facebook contest articles. We know people who come to read this article are looking for ideas for their next Facebook contest, so we prompt them (after a timed delay) with a question about their Facebook contest.

Replies to these messages go straight to our support team, who can either provide visitors with assistance related to their contest, or qualify them as a hot lead and pass them to sales. Though our goal here is ultimately to turn these visitors into customers, we also want to establish Wishpond as a source of knowledge and expertise when it comes to all things digital marketing.

Providing no-strings-attached value can build stronger relationships with blog readers, while increasing the chance that they’ll look towards Wishpond when they’re searching for a digital marketing solution.

Email Automation

Though we love our live-chat automation, nothing quite beats good old email automation. We use email automation for literally (okay, figuratively) everything. Whether it’s our sales and marketing processes, onboarding flows, or “winback” strategies, automation is a huge part of the way we interact with past, existing and potential customers.

Using Billing Dropoff Emails to Increase Self-Service Signups

Our signup process consists of two real stages:

First: The actual “Signup” stage, where users to-be enter their email address (or use their social media credentials) to create a Wishpond account.

Second: “Upgrade” requires the user to put in their billing information to access the platform, which - naturally - can introduce significant friction when it comes to the entire signup process.

To combat the negative effects of this step on our conversion rates, we’ve created an extensive “billing dropoff” workflow that attempts to pull users into the platform with strategically crafted emails.

Check out the flow as it looks on “paper”:

As you can see, it’s pretty complex - and that’s because we’re using marketing automation to determine what interests each person (based on email opens and clicks), and targeting them more specifically with follow-up emails to maximize the chance we convert them into paying customers.

Here’s an example of one of the case study emails in the dropoff workflow:

Takeaway:

As I’ve said throughout this article, personalization - wisely using the information you have about your users and potential customers - can massively increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Sending perfectly-timed emails with content that’s specifically relevant to each user’s interests can mean the difference between a bounce and a conversion.

Increasing Customer Success with Automated Onboarding

One of our Customer Success team’s main focuses over the past little while has been creating a process that helps new users ease into the Wishpond platform in an informative and welcoming way. Though I’d say we’re a long way from the ideal onboarding process, we’re well on our way.

I’ll give you a peek into that onboarding process to show how email automation helps us get more customers to do more with our platform.

Once a user signs up, it’s our goal to get them to try out the platform. Whether or not they decide to continue using Wishpond (though of course we hope they do), we want to them to have a decent grasp of the product and its features before they make that decision.

To achieve this goal, we prompt users to take “baby steps” in the platform. For example, drafting and publishing a campaign.

Here’s how it works:

After a user signs up, we give them a few days to check out the platform. If they haven’t yet created a campaign (meaning they may have just poked around the dashboard or done nothing at all), we send them the following email, prompting them to start creating their first campaign:

Our goal with this email is to get them to create and draft their first campaign. Based on the actions they take, we send different emails to prompt other actions.

For example, once they’ve drafted and their first campaign, we encourage them to publish it:

In addition to encouraging and congratulating users on publishing their campaign, we want to maximize the chances that their campaign will succeed by teaching them how to effectively market it.

Takeaway:

Ensuring your customers have the best possible experience with your product or service is paramount in making sure they make the choice to continue using it. Using automation to walk them through the important milestones within your product can go a long way towards increasing their overall enjoyment - and thus, your retention rates.

Winning Back Past Customers

The final automated email campaign I want to take a look at is a “winback” campaign, which is created with the intention to get past customers to come back and resume using your product.

For us, this is a big one. We’re aware of the nature of many of our customers, who use Wishpond to run a single campaign (usually a contest) and then cancel their subscription once the campaign is over.

What this primarily signals to us is that we need to do a much better job of convincing our contest-only customers of the value of our entire platform, beyond just our contest tool.

Here’s what our winback campaign looks like (courtesy of my editor James’ impeccable Google Drawings ability):

As you can see, it’s also rather extensive. Our goal with this series of emails is to pinpoint and identify points of opportunity that can help us bring past customers back to Wishpond. Whether it was a bad experience a long time ago, or that their campaign simply ended, we’ve created emails that aim to appeal to each of these segments.

Here’s an example of one of these emails:

Takeaway:

You can use automation to pursue areas you may not otherwise think about looking at. Setting up a simple email automation flow to test a certain campaign (for example, Wishpond’s winback campaign) can help you gather new, valuable insights about your customers - and maybe drive some sales along the way.

Wrapping it up

As you can see, automation plays a massive role when it comes to Wishpond’s customer success strategies. We use it for nearly everything - sales, marketing, onboarding, and more. But it’s not mindless or robotic - we put real thought into all of our automation processes, personalizing them in ways that help us maintain strong connections with all of our users.

What’s the lesson here? Automate, but do it wisely. It’s possible (as you’ve seen) and important to maintain personalization in messaging even when it is automated. You’ll find it maximizes your open rates, your customers’ success, and your own results.

Have you used automation in your own messaging? How has it worked out for you? Let me know in the comments below!

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Hack-proof your life: 5 key steps to boost your safety online

Illustration file picture.  (REUTERS/Kacper Pempel)

At this moment, someone wants your information. Hackers covet your email account, your home address, and your social security number. They want to commandeer your webcam and break into your bank account. They are just waiting for you to slip up and give them a chance.

Malevolent coders are finding backdoors and vulnerabilities, but there are simple ways to protect yourself. 

Follow these five steps to boost your safety online instantly.

1. Passwords

Ive heard it a million times: I know that I shouldnt use the same password at every site, but I do. or Every time I set a new password, I forget it.

Well, get over it. Relying on a weak password is asking to be hacked. Your passwords are either your first line of defense against hackers, or theyre an open window that lets them slip through. In cyber-security, there is no middle ground.

How dangerous is it? A lowercase, six-character password takes a hacker around 10 minutes to hack. Add four more characters, and you extend the time of that heist by 45,000 years.

Ready to give your passwords the strength of Fort Knox? Heres a quick to-do:

Create a unique and complex password that isnt hard to remember. One trick is a passphrase, which is both a statement and a complex series of characters, cases, and numbers. Make a phrase thats specific to you like, MySonWasBornOnAug12!

Change your password regularly, but not too often. I recommend that you change your password at least once every 12-month period. If one of the services you use is involved in a data breach, youll want to update your password for that account.

I wrote an entire tip about tools and tricks to remember hard-to-guess passwords. Click here for the best solutions to remember difficult passwords.

2. Set up two-factor identification

Youve probably seen this before, even if you didnt know what it was called. Two-factor identification is a fancy name for adding another step to the login process. A login page may ask for your first car or your favorite food. The website might even send a text message with a special code, to make sure you are who you claim to be.

Two-factor identification adds an important layer of protection to your account. For hackers, the coup de grace is setting up instant alerts when your account is accessed from an unfamiliar device or location. Usually, this is you because youre logging into your email account from an internet café in London, or youre checking your bank balance on a trusted friends phone.

Other times, its a hacker who is trying to figure out your credentials. You will receive a notification by email or text saying that there was a login from an unrecognized machine or someone asked to reset your password. The login will not be authorized or the password reset without having the special code included in the email or text.

If you do nothing else on this list, click here for the steps to turn on two-factor authentication on Google, Facebook and other sites you use.

3. Delete accounts youve abandoned

Youve probably encountered this before. Some spammy message shows up in your inbox, allegedly send from your beloved Aunt Joan. Why does Aunt Joan want you to click on this strange-looking link? Why is she suddenly interested in giving you a limited-time discount on a Rolex watch? These messages are sure signs of a hacked account.

The rule of thumb is this: Old accounts contain more personal data than you realize, no matter how short-lived and no matter how long it’s been abandoned.

Have too many online accounts to remember them all? Click here for a site that provides you with the steps you need to close down the accounts youre no longer using.

Sometimes, you may want to delete accounts simply because you’ve lost trust in the company that’s storing your private information. After Yahoo’s cover up of multiple data breaches, I recommend that you close your Yahoo account for Yahoo Mail and other related services such as Flickr, Tumblr, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo Music, etc. Click here for a step-by-step guide for the steps you need to take right now if you’re a Yahoo customer.

4. Check if your info has been stolen

Now youre on a mission to boost your security. But what about data thats already been stolen? How do you find out whether an account has already been broken into?

At least one trusted site is dedicated to precisely that: HaveIBeenPwned sifts through your accounts in search of security breaches. Just run your email address and username through the search field, and it will tell you if your login information has been linked to any past breaches.

5. Encrypt all of your messages

Encryption used to be a word reserved for international super-spies but not anymore. What youre looking for is end-to-end encryption. This method scrambles your messages so that they cant be read if someone other than the intended recipient gets it.

Signal Private Messenger One encrypts all messages end-to-end by default. The service also doesn’t keep any user information, such as address books or messages, on its servers. It lets you use your existing phone number and contacts list. For a full list of Signal features and download instructions, click here.

Remember, your chain of online security is only as strong as its weakest hyperlink.

Want to know other ways can you stay safe in the era of cyber-crime? You can listen to the Kim Komando Show on your phone, tablet or computer. From buying advice to digital life issues, click here for my free podcasts.

Copyright 2017, WestStar Multimedia Entertainment. All rights reserved.

Learn about all the latest technology on the Kim Komando Show, the nation’s largest weekend radio talk show. Kim takes calls and dispenses advice on today’s digital lifestyle, from smartphones and tablets to online privacy and data hacks. For her daily tips, free newsletters and more, visit her website at Komando.com

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