Author: Franz Malten Buemann

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Hi everyone, I currently building a Pardot Form handler on our landing page. I’m trying to figure out how to automatically Opt-in for email communications on the form. I’ve set the Prospect field to Global Email Opt-In but once I try to reload the form on our landing page it still does not automatically check the (yes) box. I tried googling for a solution but there wasn’t too much that could help me out. submitted by /u/Comfortable-Chair436 [link] [comments]

Welcome to HubSpot Marketing News! Tap in for campaign deep dives, the latest marketing industry news, and tried-and-true insights from HubSpot’s media team. 
The beginning of January is like the Superbowl for fitness and wellness brands.
Year after year consumers set goals to form healthier habits in the new year and 2023 is no exception. According to Statista’s Top New Year’s Resolutions Survey, 52% of American adults want to exercise more, 50% hope to eat healthier, and 40% are looking to lose weight this year. 
You would think fitness brands would be going all-in to capitalize on this momentum, right? Well, upscale fitness chain Equinox had other plans.
On January 1, Equinox updated the company website and shared controversial social posts claiming the company “Doesn’t Speak January” and isn’t allowing new members to join during the month to prioritize those who are dedicated to fitness year-round.

It’s not you, it’s January. #ItsNotFitnessItsLife pic.twitter.com/Bg6lBnSUR2— Equinox (@Equinox)
January 1, 2023

The statement has been controversial, with some consumers criticizing the brand for shaming those at the beginning of their wellness journey and being exclusionary.

I’m an all access + @AskAmex platinum member, and I don’t want to support a gym that shames people for setting fitness goals during ANY month of the year— it can have a large public health impact for a gym to support their members even if 90% drop off after.— Violeta J. Rodriguez, MS² (@vjrodriguez33)
January 2, 2023

Reading through the tweet replies left me wondering: do we truly expect a company that charges upwards of $330 per month for membership dues to be the poster child for inclusivity?
New Year’s resolutions, especially those geared towards fitness, have a bad reputation because so few people achieve them. Many believe those who don’t achieve their resolutions fail because they aren’t motivated enough to stick with it when in reality it’s often because people don’t have the tools, resources, and support they need to make lasting changes.
As a consumer, frequent year-round gym-goer, and former fitness professional, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and disagree with Equinox discouraging new members from joining in January.
As a marketer, I could see the messaging from Equinox did exactly what it intended to do — create a viral moment that got people talking (we know the brand is no stranger to controversy).
If the goal of a brand is to help people live healthier lives, forming the habit of exercise should be encouraged year-round especially when people feel motivated and excited to do so. But I would argue that isn’t the primary goal of Equinox.
Instead, the goal is to sell a lifestyle that prioritizes upscale experiences and social status, not accessible wellness solutions.
When exclusivity is part of a brand’s ethos, exclusive messaging may be disappointing but is ultimately on-brand. 
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Hey everyone! I’m wondering what marketing automation tools are you using this year? Feel free to share your tool stack below, I’m interested to see what others are using. submitted by /u/Smooth-Trainer3940 [link] [comments]

Remember the “Tide Pod Challenge?” That horrendous time at the beginning of 2018 when adolescents filmed themselves ingesting laundry detergent?
While it was a funny (albeit dangerous) start to the new year, this small boost of infamy was a PR mess for the detergent brand in question, Tide, whose crisis communication team had to figure out how to respond to America’s teens swallowing their toxic product. Tide’s parent company, Procter & Gamble, was swift in their response, thanks in large part to their communication plan.
In this post, you’ll learn how to create an effective communication plan that prepares you and your company for any situation.

Communication plans can help you clarify the purpose of a product launch or new initiative and officially determine the messages you want to deliver to your intended audience(s).
Additionally, a communication plan can help your business during a time of crisis if a previous marketing message or business decision damages your reputation with internal stakeholders or customers.
If companies don’t have a communication plan, they’ll be unprepared when disaster strikes. It may be unlikely that your company will find teenagers eating your product for internet fame, but not so unlikely that you’ll never find yourself needing a procedure to effectively handle difficult situations.
Need a free, easy-to-use communication plan template? HubSpot has 12. Check out this toolkit for everything you need to build your own.
This is part of a template offered in the toolkit. For this particular template, the organization is separated into phases, a description of that phase, and who needs to complete that action.

Download These Templates for Free
Now that we’ve gone over how a communication plan can be helpful, let’s learn how to write one that will be effective.

1. Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.
Before sitting down to get rollin’ on your plan, you need to first decide where it’ll fit into your business. So it’s important you complete a “state of the union,” or an audit of the current climate of communications within your company. This can help you identify any problem areas.
For instance, let’s say you need to create a communications plan for a new product launch. To create your plan, you’ll first need to perform an audit to identify gaps in your current marketing approach.
After performing the audit, you might find there is a major gap in your marketing materials in which you rarely discuss a topic that aligns well with your new product. You’ll want to ensure this topic makes it into your communications plan.

To conduct an audit, you’ll need to carefully gather and interpret data on your current marketing plan performance and build a path forward based on those results. Additionally, you might consider hosting focus groups or sending surveys to your audience to find gaps in your current communications materials.
Of course, you’ll want to have the goal of your communications plan in-mind when conducting an audit. In the example above, noticing you’re lacking material on a certain subject only matters if your goal is to drive leads and conversions to a product that aligns with that subject.
For instance, if you’re launching a new email marketing tool and you notice you’re lacking content on Google Ads, this might not be relevant information for your communications plan. However, if you’re missing content on email marketing best practices, that’s important information you can use to tailor your communications plan appropriately.
2. Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.
After your audit, you’ll want to lay out a few goals based on the data from the results. What do you want to achieve with this plan?
When in doubt, remember that your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.
For instance, if a small agency is writing a communications plan for its client, they might write a goal along these lines: “We plan to increase employment applications for our client by 25% over the course of one quarter.”
Alternatively, perhaps your HR team needs to write a communications plan to pitch designing a new growth matrix for individual contributors who don’t want to become managers.
If that’s the case, your HR team will need to identify specific goals they hope to achieve as a result of their plan, even if the results are less quantifiable — for instance, their goal might be to “increase employee retention rates by 10% over the next year” or even “increase employee satisfaction, as indicated by their next NPS scores.” They’ll need to pitch these goals to stakeholders to get leadership on-board.

Download Your Free SMART Goal Template
3. Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.
Good communication starts with knowing and understanding your listener. In this case, if a crisis communication plan is for stakeholders, which one(s) are you writing for? Stakeholder examples include employees, investors, customers, local government officials, or media outlets.
If you’re writing for media outlets, a press release detailing your goals is a good idea for that audience. There should be a process for who will speak to the media outlets, an outline of what they will say, and an action plan put in place moving forward.
Alternatively, if your audience is your employees, you might want to create an up-to-date internal document for employees to refer to, as well as the contact information for the internal DRI if they have follow-up questions.
4. Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.
When you’re ready to outline and write your plan, it’s likely easiest if you start with a table or chart to identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you’re targeting those messages, and on which channel(s).
Once you’ve created a general outline, here’s how you’ll want to structure your communications plan (feel free to copy these sections into a Table of Contents for your own plan):

Purpose (what is this communications plan for)
Escalation Framework (including ‘first line of defense’ and ‘greater response team’)
Roles and responsibilities of each employee
Do’s and Don’ts
How to maintain an effective response plan

(If you need help writing a communications plan, download our free, ready-to-use communications plan templates.)
When writing your communication plan, work with groups or representatives from your stakeholders to improve accuracy. Strategies should solve for goals or potential risks.
For instance, if you work for an agency aiming to promote a client’s product, a risk might be spending money on paid ads without a guaranteed ROI. To solve for that risk, the agency should detail different steps to ensure the ads are effective before going public.
5. Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.
The channels you choose to communicate with your audience depends on your message, and to whom you want to deliver that message. For instance, if you’re creating a communications plan for internal employees, you might send out your communications plan in a company-wide email, or use in-person team meetings to deliver your message.
Alternatively, if you’re communicating with customers, you might determine it’s best to communicate via an email newsletter, or via a press release.
Of course, the channel(s) you choose will depend on your goals, but it’s important as you’re writing your communication plan that you keep your distribution methods in-mind.
6. Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.
Once you determine your audience and channel(s) on which you’ll deliver your communications plan, figure out the DRI for delivering the message.
For instance, if your HR team is pitching a new growth matrix to leadership, you might ask your Director of HR to deliver the initial pitch in the first meeting. Once leadership is on-board, you might ask each HR representative to deliver one training session for each internal team to ensure every employee understands what’s changing internally, and why.
7. Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.
You should have a ballpark estimate of how much time each step in executing your strategy will take. For instance, if your plan needs to go from the higher-ups down to the employees, it’s good to take into account how long going through the chain of command will take. It’s also smart to infer how long a media cycle will last.
For instance, for a minor slip-up on an ad campaign, the advertising agency might estimate the cycle for controlling the issue will take a month — including meeting with the client, stakeholders, and employees to discuss steps moving forward.
8. Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.
There’s always room for improvement. Measure the results of the plan after presenting it to stakeholders, and determine aspects that went well, and areas for improvement next time.
For instance, the ad agency might not have met its goal of increasing prospective applications by 25% within a quarter. They might rework their goals to give themselves more time or pivot their quarterly focus to fit those goals.
Alternatively, if you notice certain language in your communications plan evokes a level of stress or fear with internal stakeholders, consider how you can re-word next time to ensure your communications plan feels helpful, beneficial, and positive.
Some aspects of building a communication plan can be a “choose your own adventure” journey. The key is choosing aspects that best reflect what your business needs in times when effective communication is key. What do your stakeholders need to know, and how are you going to best communicate that?

Communication plans can get tricky, but writing an effective one will prove itself with its longevity. The following communication plans include analysis for stakeholders you’d respond to and the procedures for what to include in those communications.
1. Strategic Communication Plan
Bright Hub Project Management’s communication plan explains how, when, and why communication happens within its organization.
This example is great because it details how communication managers write crisis plans and acknowledges that sometimes the busy marketer or project manager takes on this responsibility.

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2. Project Communication Plan
Here’s an example of a Billing Upgrade Project from Simplicable. This communication plan maps out all the important meetings and documents needed for the project. As you can see, it also includes necessary sections including audience, goals, format, and DRI.

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3. Marketing Communication Plan
A marketing communication plan is essential for communicating to your target market, especially when launching new products or initiatives. This example from Smartsheet allows you to plan marketing communications strategies for customers, sales prospects, media partners, internal stakeholders, and events.

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4. Corporate Communication Plan
Corporate communication plans outline how organizations communicate internally and externally. This example from Smartsheet is a nine-step roadmap that includes space for a mission statement, executive summary, situation analysis, key messages, and more.

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5. Crisis Communication Plan
This communication checklist below, by Prezly, gives a great overview of the details of a crisis plan from beginning to end. It can be used as an effective guide when drafting a crisis management strategy.

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Communication Planning Tips
Communication planning can be tricky, so here are some extra tips to keep in mind to help your plan shine: when describing procedures for handling crises, include who the situation involves. This lets stakeholders envision decision-making processes.
Additionally, if you’re part of a larger company with a broad stakeholder list, it’s okay to split up target audiences for your plan.
For instance, maybe your audience is more than just “consumers.” Split stakeholder groups for easier comprehension and more distinct solutions.
Ultimately, your communications plan needs to clearly and succinctly provide necessary information to everyone involved in the business decision, product launch, or PR crises. Use the strategy mentioned above, as well as our communication plan templates, to ensure yours is as effective as possible.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

When I started my business — Revel Impact, a workplace inclusivity consultancy — I realized that LinkedIn would be part of my marketing and business development strategy. LinkedIn is a natural place to connect with clients because it’s a platform for professionals. But the impact of LinkedIn on my business growth became even more profound when I started putting myself out there in an authentic way.The morning it all changed was not a fun one: As I was headed into a coffee shop to start my work day, a woman decided to hurl some vaguely threatening and very graphic lesbian slurs at me. It wasn’t extraordinary—this wasn’t the first time this happened, and it wouldn’t be the last—but as I sat down to try and work, I couldn’t get her words out of my head. One of my tasks for this morning was to finalize a LinkedIn post. I already had one drafted, but I wondered: Should I post about this experience instead? It was clearly affecting my ability to work, and therefore was relevant to LinkedIn—but was it too personal? While I was already posting about similar topics, I hadn’t gotten this specific or shared about my personal life before. I didn’t want sympathy, so how could I post in a way that was productive? How would my clients respond if they saw it? I decided to post it. It performed like a typical post in the beginning—a handful of reactions and comments—but within the next few hours, the post garnered a few thousand reactions, over 500,000 impressions, and hundreds of comments. Within the next four months or so, I would grow my LinkedIn presence from 1,000 followers to 10,000. (As of writing, I’m currently at about 14,000 and am a LinkedIn Top Voice of 2022.) About 90 percent of my business leads come through LinkedIn posts. I’ve secured over 40,000 in speaking engagements just from LinkedIn. I’ve been invited to speak on about a dozen podcasts. I received an invitation to write for Harvard Business Review in a LinkedIn message and recently had my first article published. A publisher has even reached out via LinkedIn to inquire if I’d like to write a bookSo, how did all of this happen? I’m not a brand strategist or marketer. I don’t have any other social media platforms besides LinkedIn. I built my platform mostly by being myself. Here are the pillars that help guide my content strategy. I hope they can be just as game-changing for your business as they have been for mine.I focus on stories that tie to the bigger pictureAs a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultancy, much of our content on LinkedIn highlights the importance of being who we are at work and provides tangible resources or tips to create workplaces where business and people thrive. However, I’ve found that when that advice is rooted in storytelling, the posts have so much more impact. For example, I recently wanted to write a post about the stigma around asking for disability accommodations. I could have simply written “ give disabled people accommodations” but that wouldn’t have resonated. Instead, my LinkedIn post focused on a specific moment I had in the airport, using it to exemplify the point I was trying to make. By drawing people in with a story, they’re able to better connect with the human experience behind the point I’m trying to make, even if it’s not an experience they’ve had themselves. The post currently has 950,000 impressions, I received 8 inbound leads, 2,500 new followers, and 3 requests to speak on podcasts from this one post. When I’m brainstorming LinkedIn posts now, I choose one trend or point to highlight and then find a specific, meaningful moment to exemplify it. It doesn’t have to be something life-changing to be a meaningful story. For example, if you are announcing a new website, think about how you felt the moment before or after you pressed publish. Think about a conversation you had with the developer. Choose one specific moment to engage your audience. LinkedIn is a professional platform, but professionals are people and people connect to stories. They will see themselves in the moments you are describing and connect with them. They will want to let you know they connect with you by commenting and reacting—and that’s how your posts will gain traction.I’ve made my own best practicesThere are so many “experts” on LinkedIn who share their top tips for getting engagement. But, after following them for some time, I started to notice that most of the people giving advice are cisgender, white, neurotypical men. How they post on LinkedIn won’t work for my autistic, trans, Jewish, queer self. I found that the best way for me to succeed on LinkedIn was to create my own best practices that would keep me showing up consistently, but in a way that was more feasible for me. These include:Posting twice a week at the same time: LinkedIn rewards users for consistency but I knew that I could never commit to posting every day. I also knew that it would stress me out to try and figure out an optimal posting time. Instead, I post every Tuesday and Thursday at 11:30 am because that’s what works for me. Even if it’s not the most optimal time, I’m able to do it consistently—which is better than not doing it at all.Engaging with posts in time blocks: The LinkedIn algorithm looks at how much engagement your post receives in the first two hours to determine how much traction it will get in the days and weeks to come. The more engagement it gets, the more people will see it. So, I pay close attention to the post within the first two hours, responding to every comment—but then I take a break to give my autistic, introvert self some rest. After these first two hours, I have time blocks where I will check LinkedIn to respond to comments and messages.Skipping a content calendar for observational note taking: I have tried to keep a content calendar to develop posts but I’m not able to maintain one. Instead, I’ve found it better to keep a running document of observations and notes for LinkedIn. When I’m ready to write, I think about the specific point I want to make, check my general topic buckets, and then use my notes to craft the post.Creating a post template: To help facilitate content creation, I created my own structure for each of my posts. I start with a meaningful moment, then elaborate and provide context. Next, I provide resources, tips, or suggestions, directly calling out the audience I’m speaking to (e.g., for those navigating disabilities at work or for DEI professionals). Finally, I end with a soft call to action (e.g., invite me to speak to your team or schedule a call to learn more). Having a streamlined structure makes it so I typically spend less than two hours a week on LinkedIn content creation.These are the best practices that work for me, but they might not exactly work for you. I created based on trial and error to see what would allow me to be consistent and create content that felt right to me. I encourage you to use these best practices as a guide to create your own.I’ve reconsidered what “should” be on LinkedInLike I mentioned above, the idea of sharing some of my more vulnerable or personal moments on LinkedIn was initially nerve-wracking—it didn’t feel like those stories belonged on this professional network. But I’ve come to realize that the idea that there is a strict boundary between our personal and professional lives was never true. We always brought our full selves to work, we just didn’t talk about it. I’ve come to find that sharing how my personal experiences affect me at work is a strength, not a weakness. People hire me because they connect with my story, they appreciate knowing my values, and they trust me because I’m willing to be open.I’ve also found it is possible to share your personal experience while still having boundaries. For example, when I post about being trans, it’s often about the barriers I face, people’s reactions to me, or the resources I need to succeed. It’s very rarely about how I feel about being trans or my personal experience transitioning. I don’t feel vulnerable because my focus is not on myself or my need to process—it’s using my personal experiences to highlight what people can do to support trans communities at work and everywhere else.We all have unique stories. Maybe you’re a caregiver or a parent. Maybe you grew up in a small town. Maybe you’re the only woman on your team and have been for decades. Whatever your experiences are, they belong on LinkedIn. They shape how you work. Being yourself will help you grow your platform and it will help you build your business. We can’t really be anyone else but ourselves—so why not embrace it?

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When it comes to email marketing, it’s important to stand out from the dozen other emails hitting your audience’s inbox. You want your messages to grab the attention of your subscribers and make them engage so you can leave a lasting impression. Doing this requires a lot of creativity with your email content and developing…
The post 11 Email Marketing Ideas That Will Breathe New Life into Your Campaigns appeared first on Benchmark Email.