What if organizations had a division that simply did the bad stuff? The people who were responsible for creating system updates that slow down old computers, that cover up bad behavior by employees, the people who dump pollution into the river when no one is watching…
If all the folks who invent dark patterns, lobby in secret, and gaslight whistleblowers all worked in the same department, we could watch them a lot more carefully.
After all, the lawyers have a department, and so do the customer service people. Couldn’t we have a VP of dirty tricks?
Alas, mixed incentives and short-term thinking mean that it’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to narrow it down to just a few people…
Author: Franz Malten Buemann
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The department of bad behavior
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Anyone does influencer marketing? Here is how to scrape Twitter profiles with a right click.
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Auto Add Account Team Members to Case Team
Last Updated on May 20, 2022 by Rakesh Gupta Big Idea or Enduring Question: How can you automatically add account team members to case team? How nice would it be if Salesforce auto added users (specified account team role) from Account Team to Case Team whenever a case gets created?
The post Auto Add Account Team Members to Case Team appeared first on Automation Champion. -
Is a 4-day week the future of work? An interview with Charlotte Lockhart
What would you do if you had one day off each week? Would this make you more productive, healthier, and focused on things you want to do for your career, your family, or your side business? In the latest episode of CX Lore™, we talked with Charlotte Lockhart, a founder and managing director at the…
The post Is a 4-day week the future of work? An interview with Charlotte Lockhart appeared first on Customer Experience Magazine. -
The Best 30-60-90 Day Plan for Your New Job [Template + Example]
Worry often comes along with the excitement of a new job. What if you can’t adapt to new people, processes, and team-wide dynamics quickly enough to make a great impression?
Fortunately, there’s a way to organize and prioritize your time and tasks, helping you seamlessly adapt to your new environment: The 30-60-90 day plan. Creating and following an effective plan enables you to soak in as much information as possible, master your core job responsibilities, and make a lasting impact on your new team.
In this post, we’ll cover everything you need to know about building the best 30-60-90 day plan for your new job.Learning the nuances of your new role in less than three months won’t be easy. But crafting a strong 30-60-90 day plan is your best bet for accelerating your development and adapting to your new work environment as quickly as possible.
There are two situations where you’d write a 30-60-90 day plan: during the final stages of an interview process and during the first week of the job itself. Here’s how each type can be executed:
30-60-90 Day Plan for Interview
Some hiring managers ask candidates to think about and explain their potential 30-60-90 day plan as a new hire. They want to see if they can organize their time, prioritize the tasks they’d likely take on, and strategize an approach to the job description.
For a new hire, a well thought-out 30-60-90 day plan is a great way to help the hiring manager visualize you in the role and differentiate yourself from all other candidates.
Of course, it can be difficult to outline your goals for yourself before you accept a new job. So, how are you supposed to know what those goals are? Start with the job description. Normally, open job listings have separate sections for a job’s responsibilities and a job’s qualifications. Work to find commonalities in these two sections, and how you might turn them into goals for yourself staggered over the course of three months.
For example, if a job requires three years of experience in Google Analytics, and the responsibilities include tracking the company’s website performance every month, use these points to develop an action plan explaining how you’ll learn the company’s key performance metrics (first 30 days), strengthen the company’s performance in these metrics (next 30 days), and then lead the team toward a better Google Analytics strategy (last 30 days).
30-60-90 Day Plan for New Job
The second situation where you’d write a 30-60-90 day plan is during the first week of a new job. If you’re the hiring manager, this plan will allow you to learn how the new employee operates, address any of their concerns or preconceived notions about the role, and ultimately help them succeed.
If you’re starting a new job, and are not asked to craft a 30-60-90 day plan during the first week of that job, it’s still a good idea to write one for yourself. A new job can feel like a completely foreign environment during the first few months, and having a plan in place can make it feel more like home.
Even though 90 days is the standard grace period for new employees to learn the ropes, it’s also the best time to make a great first impression.
The purpose of your plan is to help you transition into your new role, but it should also be a catalyst for your career development. Instead of just guiding you over your job’s learning curve, the goals outlined in your plan should push you to perform up to your potential and raise your bar for success at its every stage.Parts of a 30-60-90 Day Plan
An effective 30-60-90 day plan consists of three larger phases — one for days 1-30, one for days 31-60, and one for days 61-90.
Each phase has its own goal. For example, the goal in the first 30 days is to learn as much as possible about your new job. The next 30 focus on using learned skills to contribute, and the last 30 are about demonstrating skill mastery with metrics and take the lead on new challenges.
Each phase also contains components that help define goals and describe desired outcomes. These parts include:
Primer
The primer is a general overview of what you hope to achieve during the current 30-day period. It’s worth sitting down with your manager to pinpoint a primer that’s in line with both your goals and desired company outcomes.
Theme
The theme is a quick-hitter sentence or statement that sums up your goals for the period. For example, your theme might be “find new opportunities”, “take initiative,” or “be a sponge.”
Learning Goals
Learning goals focus on skills you want to learn or improve to drive better outcomes at your job. For example, if you’re responsible for creating website content at your company, you might want to learn new HTML or CSS skills.
Performance Goals
Performance goals speak to specific metrics that demonstrate improvement. These might include making one more content post per week or reducing the number of revisions required by management.
Initiative Goals
Initiative goals are about thinking outside the box to discover other ways you can contribute. This might mean asking your manager about taking ownership of new website changes or upgrades with a specific deadline in mind.
Personal Goals
Personal goals focus on company culture — are there ways you can improve relationships with your team members or demonstrate your willingness to contribute?30-60-90 Day Plan for Managers [Template]
Almost all 30-60-90 day plans consist of a learning phase, a contributing phase, and a leading phase — which we’ll go over in the example plan below. This includes plans that are designed to guide people in new management roles. What sets apart a manager’s plan from any other is their obligation to their direct reports and the decisions they’re trusted to make for the business.
If you’re accepting (or hiring for) a new manager role, consider any of the following goals and how to roll them out at a pace that sets you up for success.
Featured Resource: 30-60-90 Day Sales Onboarding TemplateDownload the Free Onboarding Template
Get to your know your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
Recommended phase: First 30 days
Everyone is learning the ropes in their first month at a company. For managers, much of that learning happens by talking to the team.
If you’re a new manager, grab some time with your direct reports and get to know their roles. What do they like about them? What are their biggest pain points?
Making your team happy is a hard goal to measure, but it’s an important responsibility to take on as a manager. Your first step is to figure out how you’ll manage and coach your employees through their day-to-day work.
Improve the cost-effectiveness of your team’s budget.
Recommended phase: Final 30 days
Managers often have access to (and control over) the budget for their department’s investments — things like software, office supplies, and new hires. After you spend the first couple of months learning what the team spends its money on, consider using the final 30 days of your plan to make suggestions for new investments or how to reallocate money where you think it needs to be.
Is there a tool that can automate a task that’s taking your team forever to do manually? Draft a financial strategy that includes this tool in the following quarter’s budget.
Help a direct report acquire a new skill.
Recommended phase: Second 30 days
Even though you’re new to the company, you were hired for a reason: You’ve got skills. And you can bring these skills to the people you work with, particularly those people who report to you.
After meeting with and learning about your new colleagues, you might use the second month of your on-boarding plan to find skill gaps on your team that you can help fill.
Do you have expert-level experience with HubSpot, and your new company just started using HubSpot Marketing Hub? Teach them how to do something in the platform they didn’t know before.
Draft a training strategy that can help guide your direct reports into new roles.
Recommended phase: Final 30 days
You won’t be expected to promote people in the first three months of your new job, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have learned enough about your team to decide who’s good at what and how to coach them to where they want to be.
In the final 30 days of your 30-60-90 day plan, you might agree to a goal to develop a training strategy that outlines how to manage your direct reports, and ultimately how to guide them into new roles in the future.
30-60-90 Day Plan for Executives
Executives are a little different from managers in that there are higher performance expectations coming in. As an executive, you’ll need to be highly engaged with the organization from the first day and implement high-impact changes in your role as soon as you can. At the same time, context is important, and you’ll need to understand the culture, team, current operating processes, and challenges before you solve for them.
Here are some critical steps to include in your 30-60-90 day plan in an executive role.
Soak up as much information as possible.
Recommended phase: First 30 days
There’s no point in taking action without context, so start your ramp-up period by gathering information and charting the lay of the land. That means reviewing existing documentation, attending as many meetings as you can, meeting with direct reports and skip levels, and ask a lot of questions.
Create alignment between you and the team.
Recommended phase: First 30 days
In the first 30 days, you’ll be meeting new people and understanding their roles in the organization. Ultimately, your job as an executive is to set the vision for the organization while removing roadblocks for your team as they strategize and execute on it.
One of the best questions you can ask as you familiarize yourself and align with your team is, “In your opinion, what are some existing threats to our business (external or internal)?”
This shows that you care about their opinion and trust their expertise while getting unique perspectives from multiple vantage points in the organization. Plus, if you start hearing some of the same points from multiple team members, you’ll be able to identify the biggest pains, equipping you to make the highest impact changes.
Create goals based on what you’ve learned.
Recommended phase: Second 30 days
When you are interviewing or shortly after you’re hired, you’ll get a feel for the types of pains that the executive team has and the objectives in mind for bringing you on.
Once you have more context about how the organization works, you can take this vision and translate it into concrete, measurable goals that will take your department to the next level.
Identify the A players on the team.
Recommended phase: First 30 days
An A player is a member of your team that goes above and beyond what’s expected in their role. While not every employee will be an A player, you’ll want to ensure that critical roles and teams have at least one A player to lead, inspire, and strengthen camaraderie.
From there, you can figure out the existing gaps in staffing and training, whether it’s team members who need a lot of guidance and must be coached up to performance or empty roles that need to be filled altogether.
Diagnose process issues.
Recommended phase: Second 30 days
Companies of all sizes run into operational issues as they implement processes that are efficient and work at scale. Sometimes, when an executive team isn’t aligned with middle management, processes can become unwieldy.
Learn why things are done the way they are and then figure out if there are workarounds you can implement to streamline operations. Perhaps it’s as simple as eliminating bottlenecks or adding automation to certain functions.
Put together and implement hiring plan.
Recommended phase: Final 30 days
You know your A and B players, and you hopefully have a plan to retain, invest in, and mentor them. However, you’ll likely come across gaps that you need to fill and positions that need to be created to eliminate bottlenecks. From there, you’ll want to create a hiring plan to execute, both for short-term, middle-term, and long-term needs.
Effect changes in operations.
Recommended phase: Final 30 days
Speaking of bottlenecks, your final 30 days of your plan should be focusing on the areas of the business that can achieve the results the fastest. Once you’ve identified these, you can focus on removing these roadblocks to start hitting goals and achieving higher performance.
Contribute to broader company goals.
Recommended phase: Final 30 days
As a member of the executive team, you’ll also be looped in one high-level company initiatives, and the other executives of the company will be relying on you to contribute your deep discipline expertise and experience.
Be ready to lean in on executive meetings and contribute to the vision and strategy of the organization as it moves forward.How to Write a 30-60-90 Day Plan
No matter what the level of the job for which a company is hiring, improving an employee’s skills requires concrete performance goals, so watch out for vagueness in the objectives you set for yourself.
“Write a better blog post,” or “get better at brainstorming” are terrific ambitions, but they don’t give you a way to measure your progress in them. Set goals that are realistic, quantifiable, and focused. You’ll know exactly how to achieve them and gauge your success.To write challenging yet feasible performance goals, you need to:
Understand your team’s goals.
Try to understand the purpose behind your team’s goals. It’ll give you more insight into why you and your team should achieve them, motivating you to work as hard as possible to meet those goals.
Identify top priorities.
By connecting your personal responsibilities to your team’s goals, you’ll know exactly how to align your tasks with the needs of the team, which keeps you accountable and compels you to help your team achieve their goals.
Define specific progress measurements.
Tracking your progress helps you gauge your performance and rate of improvement. To see how you’re doing, set up weekly meetings with your manager to ask her what she thinks of your work and track the improvement of your own performance metrics, like the growth of your blog posts’ average views or the amount of qualified leads your eBooks generate.
Reaching your performance goals isn’t the only path toward future success in your new role, though. You also need to study the ins and outs of your team and company, take initiative, and develop relationships with coworkers — all things that a lot of new hires underestimate the importance of.
Consider setting the following types of goals during each stage of your 30-60-90 day plan:Learning Goals – How will you absorb as much information as possible about your company, team, and role?
Initiative Goals – What will you do to stand out?
Personal Goals – How will you integrate with your company and team?Aiming to achieve these types of goals will help you hit the ground running in all the right areas of your job. And if you stick to your plan, you’ll notice you’ll be able to spend less time learning and more time executing.
30-60-90 Day Plan Template
Download Your Free Template
HubSpot’s 30-60-90 day plan template includes space for all key elements of your plan — primers, themes, and goals — making it easy for both you and your manager to see exactly where you are in the plan, what comes next, and how things are going so far.
While our template is a great starting point, it’s worth cross-referencing this high-level plan with a more detailed description of your goals and desired outcomes to ensure you’re aligned with company expectations.
30-60-90 Day Plan Example
Using our template, we’ve created a quick 30-60-90 plan example for new employees.
30 Days
Primer
Many new hires are eager to impress, so they dive head-first into their work or try to make suggestions about their team’s process with limited experience in how their new team operates. But have patience.
Understanding your company’s vision and your team’s existing strategy is crucial for producing high-quality work and actually making an impact. If you don’t know the purpose behind your role or the optimal way to perform, you’ll risk missing the mark and your early efforts won’t pay off the way you expect them to.
It’s always better to over-prepare than under-prepare. And it’s okay to take time to learn the ropes — it pays huge dividends in the long run. In the first 30 days of your employment, your priority is to be a sponge and soak in as much information as possible. Once you do that, you can then try to improve more specific parts of your team’s work style.
Theme: Be a Sponge
Learning GoalsStudy my company’s mission, vision, and overarching strategy.
Read my company’s culture code to learn more about our company culture and why we implement it.
Read the customer persona and target audience overview to truly understand who our customers are, their pain points, and how our product and content can help them.
Meet with my team’s director to learn about how meeting our goals will help our business grow.
Read up on our team’s new SEO strategy, editorial process, and traffic goals.
Learn how to use the SEO Insights Report to plan and structure blog posts.
Review my team’s pillar-cluster model overview and understand how to match posts to clusters.
Meet with my manager to learn more about her expectations.Performance Goals
Complete new hire training and pass the test with a 90% or higher.
Be able to write 3 blog posts per week.Initiative Goals
Run the Facebook Instant Article experiment that my manager recommended me to do.
Personal Goals
Grab coffee with everyone on my team, so I can get to know them on a professional and personal level.
60 Days
Primer
By the end of your first 60 days, you should ramp up your workload, start overachieving, and make a name for yourself on your team.
To do this, start speaking up more at meetings. Don’t be afraid to share your ideas about improving your team’s processes. This shows you’re quickly conquering the learning curve and recognizing some flaws that your colleagues might’ve overlooked. You still have a fresh perspective on the company, so your insight is invaluable.
Theme: Be a Contributor
Learning Goals:Learn how to optimize a new post from scratch based on both the SEO Insights Report and my own competitive research.
Read every other marketing team’s wiki page to learn about other marketing initiatives and how our entire department works together to grow our business.
Deep dive into my company’s product roadmap and strategy to fully grasp our mission and vision.Performance Goals
Be able to write 5 blog posts per week.
Be down to one cycle of edits per post.
Understand how to edit a guest post — clean up at least one rough draft.Initiative Goals
Share content strategy idea at my team’s monthly meeting and ask if I can spearhead the project to boost blog traffic.
Ask my manager if I can oversee Facebook messenger and Slack distribution strategy.Personal Goals
Meet with my colleagues on other teams to learn about their marketing initiatives and develop relationships outside of my team.
90 Days
Primer
By the end of your first three months, you should have a firm grasp of your role, feel confident about your abilities, and be on the cusp of making a breakthrough contribution to your team. Instead of reacting to problems that pop up at random, be proactive and spearhead a new initiative for your team.
You should also be cognizant of how you can collaborate with other teams to improve your own team’s processes. By taking on some new projects outside of your main role, you’ll start turning some heads and catch the attention of the department at large.
Theme: Be a Leader
Learning GoalsDo an analysis of my highest and lowest-performing blog post to date. How can I use this information to optimize new content so it performs better out of the gate?
Performance Goals
Be comfortable with writing five blog posts per week
Edit one guest post per week
Try to have 75% of my blog posts not require revisions.
Write at least one new post that generates over 10,000 views in one month.Initiative Goals
Ask SEO team if they want to partner with product marketing team to brainstorm content topics related to our product road map.
Ask social media team if they’re willing to develop a relationship where we can share each other’s content.
Ask sales team what our customers’ pain points are, so we can write content that our target audience craves and help them close more qualified leads.Personal Goals
Join the yoga club.
30-60-90 Day Plan Team Leader Example
Now, let’s apply that same template to a team leader role with another 30-60-90 plan example.
30 Days
Primer:
During the first 30 days, the goal of a team leader should be to cultivate connections with their team members and discover where they excel, where they struggle, and where they could use help. Creating these relationships lays the foundation for solid communication over time, in turn leading to better results.
Theme: Cultivate Staff Connections
Learning GoalsIdentify strengths for all team members.
Pinpoint current challenges in accomplishing team goals.
Encourage staff connections through honest communication.Performance Goals
Reduce project completion times by 25 percent.
Increase team member output by 5 percent.Initiative Goals
Establish a mentorship connection with one staff member looking to advance in their role.
Personal Goals
Arrange one out-of-work activity for staff.
60 Days
Primer:
For the second month, team leaders may want to focus on putting the connections they’ve made to good use and creating a mindset of success across the department. In practice, this means establishing clear goals and specific metrics and working alongside staff to deliver key outcomes.
Theme: Create a Culture of Success
Learning GoalsUnderstand where previous team leaders have struggled.
Identify common themes in goals not being met.
Clearly define starting points, milestones, and end goals for projects.Performance Goals
Ensure current project deadlines are met.
Deliver at least one project component ahead of schedule.
Take ownership of one complex task to continue developing team culture.Initiative Goals
Based on current project goals, brainstorm two new potential projects.
Look for ways to integrate current efforts with sales, marketing, or social media teams.Personal Goals
Make time for mindfulness practice at work to help improve your focus.
90 Days
Primer:
The last month of your 30-60-90 plan may focus on ensuring the framework you’ve built can be replicated on the next team project and finding new opportunities for your team members to excel.
Theme: Identify New Opportunities
Learning GoalsConvene with staff to see what worked and what didn’t during the project.
Look for outcomes that exceeded expectations and discover what sets them apart to help drive improved processes.Performance Goals
Become confident in assigning staff specific tasks with minimal oversight.
Create a regular performance review structure that focuses on helping staff achieve their best work.
Identify areas for reasonable cost-savings that don’t disrupt current processes.Initiative Goals
Look for team members with a passion for leadership and encourage their growth.
Transition into a more hands-off leadership style that demonstrates trust in employee autonomy.Personal Goals
Take up a new hobby to avoid getting burned out at work.
Making the Most of Your First Months
The first few months at a new job are critical in answering key questions: Is the company a good fit? Can you meet (and exceed) expectations? What does your long-term career plan look like?
Building a robust 30-60-90 day plan can take some of the pressure off by providing a framework for success that combines big ideas with specific goals to help drive success.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness. -
7 Email Cadence Best Practices for Better Email Marketing Campaigns
There’s much more to email campaigns than drafting up some copy and hitting send.
One of the most crucial components is email cadence: the pulse, pace, and playbook of a successful email campaign. In other words, if you can get the right emails to the right customers at the right time, you can get a lot of mileage out of your email marketing efforts.Let’s take a deeper dive into what an email cadence is and establish the fundamental principles of structuring a successful one.
The success of an email campaign can hinge upon the effectiveness of its cadence.
If your cadence is too intrusive, obnoxious, or directionless, you can lose out on opportunities to guide leads through their buyers’ journeys. If potential customers feel pestered or confused by constant, irrelevant newsletters and promotions, they probably won’t stick around to hear what you have to say.
Email Marketing Frequency
In a recent HubSpot Blogs survey of 300 marketers, a whopping 95% reported their email marketing strategy was effective in 2021. Let’s take a look at where (and when) they’re finding success.When it comes to frequency, here are a few stats to know:
Emails sent on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday get the most engagement.
Marketing emails sent from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesday garner the most engagement, followed by Monday and Wednesday at the same time.
The weekend is a dead zone for engagement — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday have the lowest open and click-through rates.Another study by Databox found that 33% of marketers send weekly emails, while 26% send emails “multiple times per month.” In addition, 63% said they adjust their send frequency for less engaged subscribers.
Of course, some marketers send emails more than once a week, while others send less. As you’ll see later, the “right” email frequency is not an exact formula. Instead, it depends on your business and audience.
Here are some best practices to employ to ensure your next campaign’s email cadence is the best it can be.
1. Understand your goals.
What do you want out of your email cadence? You need to understand where you’re trying to lead your prospects and customers. Are you looking to improve traffic to your blog? Drive e-commerce sales? Schedule meetings? Close deals?
An email cadence guides buyers from point A to point B. You can’t do that if you have no idea what “point B” is. Your ultimate goal will dictate the strategy behind your cadence. If you’re trying to do something like increase traffic to your blog, you can stand to lose more subscribers than you would if you were trying to court a group of sales leads into scheduling demos.
If you’re sending emails purely for the sake of sending emails, your cadence will be aimless and haphazard. Plus, you’ll waste a lot of time and resources on email campaigns that go nowhere.
2. Try to understand each customer’s mindset.
The whole point of having an email cadence is to hone in on messaging that will resonate most with a specific customer at a given point in time. That means one-size-fits-all, “throw everything at everyone,” impersonal emails won’t cut it. You need to send your recipients something relevant to who they are as a customer. That often means understanding where they are in their buyer’s journey.
The buyer’s journey is the process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and ultimately decide to purchase a new product or service. It’s divided into three stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.
You can’t expect to target buyers in all three stages with the same message and have it immediately register with them across the board. Different stages — and engagement levels within those stages — warrant different messages.
Additionally, through the wonders of automation, coordinating this kind of strategy is possible. Several kinds of email and marketing automation software allow you to set up the proper infrastructure to tailor email content and timing to suit different leads’ behavior and interests.
3. Personalize when you can.
Think back on all the targeted emails companies have sent you over the years. How inclined have you been to click through ones addressed to “valued customer,” or “to whom it may concern?” I don’t think it’s outrageous to assume the answer is “not often.”
Why would your customers be any different? A successful cadence relies on your leads clicking through your emails and progressing through their buyer’s journey. If you’re sending impersonal mass-email blasts, crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best, your prospects may wind up suspended in buyer’s limbo.
Fortunately, there’s a variety of email software that allows you to personalize your subject lines and email content to cater to specific leads.
4. Don’t be too shy.
When planning an email cadence, you shouldn’t err too much on the side of “I don’t want to bother you.” It’s easy to get anxiety about losing leads by coming off as obnoxious or intrusive, but you have to understand there’s a difference between being pushy and professionally persistent.
You’re missing out on sales opportunities if you’re not consistently sending out emails. A big part of email marketing is keeping your prospects and customers engaged. You might become an afterthought if a lead only gets an email from you once every two months.
Email cadences are a matter of strategically striking while the iron’s hot. You can’t do that if you’re too reluctant to strike at all.
5. Don’t be too aggressive.
Even though you shouldn’t be too passive, you don’t want to be overly aggressive. There’s a movie from the 80’s called Say Anything. It has an iconic scene where the main character stands outside his love interest’s window and serenades her by blaring a song called “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel from a boombox he’s holding over his head. She swoons over it, and they ride off into the sunset together on a lawnmower ( … for some reason).
It’s romantic and compelling. But, if he did that twice a day, every day — playing similar, anthemic 80’s rock songs on her front lawn — she’d be over it pretty quickly. He’d have to take his lawnmower and Peter Gabriel cassettes somewhere else.
That’s essentially what sending emails too frequently in your cadence is like. If your leads receive obtrusive, daily reminders and promotions from you, they’ll unsubscribe from your mailing list.
6. Hone in on the right frequency for your business.
There’s no magic figure when it comes to email frequency. It’s going to vary from business to business. It may take some time to get the right feel for how often you should be sending your emails.
Studying your industry averages for email frequency can provide a solid place to start. A prominent fashion brand routinely sending out new promotions and coupons probably isn’t going to have the same email frequency as a midsize B2B SaaS company looking to set meetings with decision-makers.
Email frequency isn’t an exact science. It’s probably going to take some trial-and-error before you find one that best fits both your business and customers’ interests.
7. Give your subscribers autonomy.
Always give your subscribers the option to control their own email frequency. Giving them this kind of autonomy can keep them from unsubscribing from your mailing list outright if your email frequency seems like a bit too much for them. Include a link to allow them to update their email preferences as they see fit at the end of your emails.
Customers don’t always approach email frequencies in absolutes. Even if they’re overwhelmed by how many emails you’re sending them, they still might want to keep hearing from you. Give them the freedom to pump the brakes. If they don’t have the flexibility to do that, they’ll probably just cut you off.
You should always be putting the customer first. Their personal interests take precedence over what you might believe to be your preferred email cadence.
Back to You
Finding your ideal email cadence might not happen with your first series of automated emails. Still, there are certain actions you can take to take to put yourself in the best position to find the one that works best for your business.
Your main priority should always be your prospects and customers’ interests. Try to understand where they’re coming from, where they stand in terms of buying your product or service, and what they might want out of you and your business, and cater your email cadence around that. -
Switch before perfect
In 1993, when I was raising investment for one of the first internet companies, there weren’t any firms that specialized in this sort of thing. They were VCs from a different era, looking for the next Fedex or pharma company.
I pitched dozens of them, and the answer was consistent, “get back to us when this is irresistible and then of course we’ll say yes.”
The same thinking is applied to many new products, from vegan burgers to online services. None of them are perfect at first, just as none of the things we’re reliant on today began as perfect.
And yet, some folks went first. Some, like Jerry and Fred, started a VC fund that had record returns because they invested in internet companies that weren’t perfect (yet). And some consumers bought things from the local store when version .5 wasn’t quite ready yet.
If you want to leap forward, you’ll need to ship things before they’re perfect, mostly to people who want to buy them before they are.
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Auto Remove a Record From Chatter Groups
Last Updated on May 19, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: How do you automatically remove a record from the Chatter Groups? Salesforce allows you to add a record to Chatter Groups, which means you can now collaborate and discuss the records as a team in the group. You
The post Auto Remove a Record From Chatter Groups appeared first on Automation Champion. -
Essential Technology for the Virtual Contact Center in 2022
The customer service climate is constantly evolving, which means your contact center’s operation must adapt to keep up.
Contact center technology is a key component of the way your business functions. From good old headsets to online chat functionality, social media posts, and cloud-based management systems, the contact center technology your company employs makes a big difference to customer satisfaction (CSat) scores and agent retention.
Industry Report: State of the Contact Center 2022
The Shift to Remote Work
Over the past couple of years, there has been a huge shift in the way contact centers do business. Because of the uncertainty that came with periodic lockdowns, many contact centers have moved partially or fully to remote work.
We’ve also seen a diversification of communication channels used by contact centers (often called omnichannel solutions), providing more ways for customers to interact with businesses.
And let’s not forget the boom in cloud-based technology adoption. Any technology that utilizes the cloud for functionality comes with added security, peace of mind, and scaling flexibility—generally with a cheaper price tag to boot.
With these trends in mind, we’ve compiled a list of our top contact center technology picks for 2022, to ensure your virtual contact center is staying ahead of the curve. Let’s dive in!
How to Foster Agent Engagement in a Hybrid Contact Center
Our Top 6 Contact Center Technology Picks for 2022
1. Visual IVR
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) has been a staple of contact center technology for decades and is better known to customers as a phone menu. A well-organized IVR system will help to improve your First Call Resolution rate, decrease queue time, and increase CSat scores as well.
Visual IVR is a more modern take on this classic tool. It’s designed to engage your digital users through your website or mobile app, and lets you set up menu options and questions so you can direct customers to the right channel. It’s feature-rich and allows you to customize your service to best fit your customer’s needs.
Best of all, it allows customers to schedule a call-back from a live agent during a time window of their choice. In other words, you can optimize the user experience and easily escalate online users to the voice channel with minimal risk of abandonment.
Learn More About Visual IVR
2. Call-Back Technology
Picture this: it’s a Monday morning after a weekend of your call center being closed. The queue is full to the brim with customers who were unable to call in over the last couple of days. Your agents are rushing through each call, letting their customer service level slip to meet the demands. This backlog causes agents to fall behind on their post-call paperwork, resulting in longer hours worked and burnout.
If the above sounds familiar, call-back technology may be a step in the right direction. This valuable tool improves and streamlines the customer journey while also giving contact center agents time back in their days to feel less rushed on calls and deliver the best customer support possible.
How does it work? It’s as simple as recording a call-back 0ffer on your phone menu for customers who prefer not to wait on hold. If they select this option, their line will be held in the queue, and when an agent picks up, it will automatically call the customer’s phone.
This freedom empowers the customer and helps ensure they’re in a better mood than they would’ve been had they been waiting in the queue for a long time. As a result, your CSat scores will improve, and you’ll experience better agent retention—a true win/win.DID YOU KNOW?
On average, Fonolo Voice Call-Backs save customers over 77 years of hold time annually.3. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Take the manual out of manual labor and start automating everyday tasks with help from AI.
Whether you want to streamline your hiring process and candidate selection or take online chatting off your agents’ shoulders, AI has something to offer every department. Plus, it can be utilized to monitor customer interactions and determine whether the experience was positive or negative for them based on the tone of their voice—the future is now!
This technology can be pricey, so it stands to reason medium- to large-sized businesses have the most to gain. However, if the budget is there, it can also streamline tasks for smaller call centers, too.
4. Workforce Management Systems (WFM)
With WFM technology, management can easily track agent performance. All the stats you need will be collected for you and delivered in a way that’s easy to analyze—you can keep a pulse on agent engagement and help agents set and reach performance goals.
WFM systems can also optimize your scheduling to ensure the right agents are working at the right times, a tool that’s especially helpful for remote call centers.
3 Things to Consider When Picking a Call Center Workforce Management Software
5. Video Chat Functionality
The last couple of years of lockdowns has revolutionized the world of video chatting. Adding in video chat interactions ups the connection between your agents and customers, potentially improving customer experience and satisfaction.
Video chats can also simplify tech support by providing agents the opportunity to see the products that need repairing. In short, this is a great option for any type of customer support, repair, or issue resolution department.
6. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM systems are designed to help you get to know your customer on a deeper level so you can provide a tailored service experience. Contact centers can use a CRM system to gather and store customer data in a way that’s helpful to their bottom line.
Salesforce is one of the most well-known CRM systems on the market, but there are plenty of others that could be a great fit for you, too. Make sure to look for mobile access, simple team adoption, customizable reports, and automatic contact syncing.
Don’t Just Follow Trends–Find the Tech that Suits Your Contact Center Best
What’s our number one tip about contact center technology? Do your research and find the tech that suits your specific needs. Before you dip into your budget, be sure you understand your needs and do comparative research about the different products on the market.
There’s so much to choose from but no one knows your contact center as well as you do. You’ve got this!The post Essential Technology for the Virtual Contact Center in 2022 first appeared on Fonolo. -
Avoiding Burnout as a Social Media Manager (With Advice From Our Very Own Social Media Manager)
Social media has seen rapid growth in the past decade and along with it has grown the role of the Social Media Manager. Even though it seems glamorous from the outside, the job can be exhausting. Social media managers are often alone in their role depending on the company and are expected to wear many hats. Along with the pressures, it’s just not healthy to be constantly plugged in the way social media managers often are.Burnout is a growing phenomenon among social media managers, with people in the role pointing out the platforms they manage as major contributors. If you are or want to become a social media manager, it’s important to understand how to manage your relationship with your job and the platforms you work with to avoid burnout. And better than just telling you myself, we included advice from our very own social media manager, Mitra Mehvar on what she does to avoid burnout.What causes burnout in social media managers?Burnout is a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged and repeated stress. People experience burnout in their regular day jobs all the time. In fact, burnout rates are at an all-time high. And regular work-related burnout is only compounded when met with the exhaustion that could stem from anyone spending too much time on social media.The frequent changes to platforms can be difficult to keep up with and can contribute to burnout as well. We asked Mitra if any specific platforms make the stress worse and she said, “Instagram is one platform at the moment that is CONSTANTLY changing. The second you feel like you’ve got the hang of things, they change things on you.”In 2022 alone, Instagram has made at least four major updates – and all of them change how users experience the platform. Mitra adds that “You feel like you put so much time and effort into your posts and then you find out that all that work you did isn’t what the platform is focusing on anymore. It can be a lot to keep up with.”A study by Harvard University, suggests that as long as people are mindful users of social media, strong social networks are associated with positive mental health and well-being. However, disconnecting and mindfulness are extra difficult to do when it’s your job.So, how can you identify if you or a colleague are starting to feel burned out? In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that burnout is an occupational phenomenon “resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. Burnout was characterised by the WHO in three dimensions including:Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustionIncreased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s jobReduced professional efficacyEssentially, if you don’t feel like you can log off at the end of the day or on weekends, or you’re hesitant to take time off or leave your phone for fear of missing important moments you might be burned out or at risk of burning out.4 ways to avoid burnoutJust as social media managers can take personal steps to avoid burnout, companies also have a responsibility to their employees to mitigate the effects on their employees. Here are some tips for avoiding burnout for social media managers (and their organizations).Mitra recommends allowing yourself to set boundaries and disconnect fully. She says “There’s always something happening on social media so it can feel like you need to be “on” all the time, so I try to remind myself that it’s ok to take a step back and if I miss out on a trend, it’s ok!” She also takes the time to remind herself that it’s just social media. Nothing horrible will happen if you miss posting for one day.It’s just social media2. As the account grows, companies should hire different people for different roles or outsource certain responsibilities. Some things that can be outsourced include strategy, copywriting, graphic design, and community management. On this note, Mitra recommended understanding that “being a social media manager is not just doing posts – we do so much more: graphic design, video editing, copywriting, customer service, and strategy just to name a few. It’s a lot!”3. Once your company can afford to, you can also consider hiring more social media managers and rotating them like you would a customer service team. If your team can’t afford to hire someone to handle each aspect of social media management, then focus on creating a support system for the existing social media manager. Can another employee take over replying to comments for a few hours each week? Are custom images necessary for every single post? Working with4. Companies should also create safe spaces and psychological safety for employees to air their stressors and grievances. Social media managers shouldn’t feel bad that they can’t keep up with creating perfect posts and a rigorous posting schedule – and that’s okay. Create a culture where it is okay if you miss posting on #TacoTuesday.Mitra also underpins the responsibility of companies in mitigating burnout saying, “Let your social media managers fully disconnect. There’s always something happening on social media so it can be easy to feel like you need to always check things to make sure you don’t miss out. It’s ok to step away for a bit. Let your social media managers have a real break from their job – keeping up with everything on social can be exhausting.”Incorporate time off from social media into your work routineWhere regular social media users may take time off from their accounts every other year, social media managers need to consider doing this more often. Manage your relationship with different platforms by detoxing once in a while, as well as stepping away from the accounts you’re in charge of more frequently.A final word from Mitra: “Social media is such a big space that it is incredibly easy to burn out when it’s your job. It’s important to set clear boundaries with your clients [or company] from the beginning so you can make sure to take time away and recharge.”📌It’s easier to disconnect when you have posts queued up to publish, so take advantage of Buffer’s scheduling capabilities to help manage your social media. Get started here.