Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Educator and computer pioneer Alan Kay once said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
If you work for a growing company, be it a startup or scale-up, you’ll know that attempting to “invent” the future isn’t a matter of waiting around for flashes of inspiration and eureka moments — rather, it requires proactive planning, excellent execution, and awesome alignment. You’ll also know that these ingredients aren’t easy to come by. Not by a long shot.

That’s why I swear by a simple, unique framework to help me and my team at HubSpot prepare for the future. It’s called ‘rhythm of the business,’ and it involves visually mapping out the key events, milestones, and activities scheduled across the business year and ensuring that every team is intimately familiar with the plan — or rhythm — for the months ahead.
As a member of HubSpot’s revenue operations team, understanding the ‘rhythm of the business’ is critical for our success. Our team’s north-star goal is to remove friction for our customer-facing teams and help them to pass that friction-free experience on to customers.
The RevOps model sets us up for success because it breaks down silos between operations professionals, unifies them as a central team, and allows them to work collaboratively on the systems and processes that power a business.
As a result, duplicative work gets weeded out, repeatable tasks get automated, and time is spent proactively improving the customer experience, not frantically reacting to glitches in the system.
As the RevOps model aligns teams around the customer, the ‘rhythm of the business’ framework aligns the entire company around key events in the business year — those moments where outsized impact is possible and execution is everything.
Together, RevOps and ‘rhythm of the business’ are greater than the sum of their parts; a combination of mindset and method that enables growing continually to delight customers, even as their internal operating model becomes more complex.
How I Became a ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Believer
It was during my time working for Amazon that I first embraced ‘rhythm of the business.’ I picked up the habit of keeping a record of important milestones throughout the year, noting on my calendar the “fire drills” that occurred during the year and color-coded them.
Annual kick-offs were highlighted in blue, big customer events were orange. I used a printed wall calendar, which I know is “old school,” but it allowed me to visualize the entire year in a nanosecond.
Later in my time at Amazon, when I was in charge of planning, strategy, and enablement, I looked at the previous year’s calendar and noticed that some events had gone well for my team while others should have been given more preparation time. In short, I realized that we needed to plan better for the next 12 months.
So, when the time came to map out our calendar for the year ahead, I was able to take the learnings from the past 12 months and provide some informed structure to what otherwise would have been, in essence, an act of guesswork.
By structuring my team’s year in this way, not only were we able to kick off earlier than most teams, we gained the time needed to develop and refine our hypotheses, test them, and lay out a defensible data-driven strategy for the future.
This in turn enabled us to pursue better investments, see greater returns on those investments, and then be in a position to make greater investments going forward. The process took the form of a flywheel, feeding off its own momentum.
When I joined HubSpot in 2018, I brought the ‘rhythm of the business’ approach with me. Although the company had been growing well, it was about to hit a new phase of scale and we had the opportunity to improve our operating model by taking a step back from the whiteboard and considering the ebb and flow of the year.
This enabled us to kick off planning at the right time and be prepared for major milestones throughout the course of the year.
3 Ways ‘Rhythm of the Business’ Helps HubSpot Scale Better
At HubSpot, we have an annual planning cycle, and we recently observed that there were some areas of misalignment between teams. That was causing internal friction, and where there’s internal friction, it’s never too long before that friction seeps into the customer experience.
For example, at times our engineering team and product team were at advanced stages of their annual planning before other teams had fully defined what they needed from them.
At best, this type of disconnect can lead to a lot of lost time in meetings trying to re-assess plans, and at worst it can lead to ineffective, disjointed strategic execution — a thought that would keep most operations professionals I know up at night.
We turned to the ‘rhythm of the business’ model to root out this misalignment and implemented it with three straightforward steps that are easy for growing companies of any size to replicate.
1. Map the milestones.
The first thing my team at HubSpot did when adopting the ‘rhythm of the business’ was to note on our physical calendar when other teams were doing their annual planning and when their key milestones were due to occur.
We worked backward from those dates to set deadlines for the deliverables we owned for other teams’ key milestones, and once finalized, we distributed the calendar digitally across the company.
That allowed us to align our activities and priorities with those of other teams, giving us a tightly knit strategy for the year ahead.
2. Look long-term.
As important as it is to have the rhythm of the forthcoming year mapped out, it’s just as important to have a long-term plan in place.
At HubSpot, we recently mapped out a three-to-five-year plan, which is critically helpful from a systems perspective — it enables us to build a business strategy that is consistent, coherent, and clear. It also gives us the opportunity to ensure we’re making investments in the right systems at the right times.
Without this foresight, each team would likely pursue its own agenda and strategy, leading to different departments pointing in different directions, fractured investments, and potentially a clunky, cobbled-together tech stack — something that’s deeply detrimental to the customer experience.
3. Be a theme player.
With the key milestones for the year mapped out, it’s helpful to group them together under certain themes or seasons. This makes it easier for teams to organize their work mentally and remain focused on the overarching business purpose of their activities at any time of the year.
Here’s an example of how we at HubSpot group milestones by theme:
Q1: Kickoff Season
We kick the year off, set targets, and make sure that people have a clear understanding of their goals and feel motivated by them.
Q2: Think-big Season
We step back from the business and explore big opportunities and plan long-term. We look at what’s working well, we think about the future that’s not yet illuminated, and we assess the external factors that could impact our business.
It’s one of my favorite seasons because we consider the trends that might emerge three to five years from now. And that thinking helps inform the company in Q3.
Q3: Compass Season
We plan for the next year and identify the big plays we want to make, as well as the opportunities we will omit.
These choices are made with the learnings from Q2’s “think-big” season fresh in our minds, helping us to make decisions in the short term that will set us up for success in the long term.
Q4: Planning Season
You wrap up the year, finalizing the subsequent years’ targets, goals, investments, and divestments…and take some time to recharge!
Alignment Over Strategy
The ‘rhythm of the business’ framework has allowed the revenue operations team at HubSpot ensure that all teams are aligned on not only our priorities for the year ahead but also our vision of the future.
This in turn allows us to effectively create processes, construct systems, and organize data for our customer-facing teams, setting them up to successfully deliver a friction-free experience to our customers.
As our Chief Customer Officer Yamini Rangan often says, “Alignment eats strategy for breakfast.” This has become a mantra for us RevOps professionals at HubSpot as we ride the rhythm of the year.
After all, a strategy is only as good as its execution, and execution is entirely dependent on alignment, particularly at a scaling company.
To get started with “rhythm of the business” in your organization, start by looking back through your calendar — whether print, digital or memory-based — and mark down when key milestones occurred over the course of the previous year.
Then earmark when you began planning for each milestone and assess whether your team’s preparation was adequate or if it would benefit from more time, information, or support next year.
Once you’ve constructed this simple plan, you’ll be able to give your team a clear sense of the rhythm of your business for the next year. And in doing so, you’ll not only be able to prepare for the future, you’ll be able to invent it.
Final Thoughts
If you’d like to look into visualizing the future with the “rhythm of business” model, explore whether your company has rhythm or how to create a rhythm of business model. I also recommend a book we use at HubSpot, “Playing to Win,” which helped us ensure that we were all using similar nomenclature and frameworks.
Ultimately, the specific nomenclature or framework doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone is on the same page and uses it – this speeds up communication, decision-making, and results.

Hi wondering if anyone can help me? I am trying to populate my Data Studio report with analytics from Sprout Social and haven’t found a way to automate it yet. I have thought about Zapier but I’m not well versed in it! Any suggestions to stop me screenshotting and copying it over? Thanks!
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Email marketing is a mainstay for marketers. But transactional emails are a form of email marketing that brings marketing, operations, logistics, and finance teams together to communicate important information with customers.  Essentially, transactional emails initiate, confirm, facilitate, and conclude transactions related to a brand’s product or service delivery. It’s a unique channel and very different…
The post Everything You Need to Know About Transactional Emails appeared first on Benchmark Email.

Last Updated on July 26, 2021 by Rakesh Gupta One of the biggest challenges companies face is the difficulty of making changes safely and quickly to their IT systems. As companies move to becoming digital enterprises, more and more departments are building competency in creating and managing their own systems.
The post Copado – Low Code DevOps Platform appeared first on Automation Champion.

When you begin implementing a social media strategy for your business, one of the first questions you’ll ask yourself is this one — Should my business be on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram?
Those three social media sites offer considerable opportunities to connect and engage with a network, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your site. But they’re also incredibly different in terms of purpose.
Ultimately, Facebook’s purpose is to connect people with their personal networks including friends and family. People use Facebook to share photos, videos, and general updates on their lives.

Twitter, on the other hand, is used to share ideas, real-time information, and trending news. While people may also use Twitter to connect with friends and family, they largely use it for a bigger purpose — to connect to the wider world and discover what’s happening (in 140 characters or less).
Instagram is used to share photos and videos. People mainly use this app to post their “highlight reel” and follow friends as well as influencers. This is how users become a part of a social media community.
Of course, this still begs the question — where does your business fit into all this? To explore the pros and cons of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we’ve created a comprehensive breakdown of the three platforms.
Keep reading to figure out which platform is a better business investment for your company.

And what about Instagram?

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Users
Let’s start by taking a look at Twitter versus Facebook versus Instagram users.
Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Demographics
To start, let’s consider the potential demographic your business could reach on each platform.
Here are some quick and informative facts:
Twitter Demographic Facts:

24% of U.S. adults are on Twitter.

40% of Twitter users are between the ages of 18-29.
Less than 20% of people ages 50 and up use Twitter.

Facebook Demographic Facts:

70% of U.S. adults are on Facebook.
80% of Facebook users are between the ages of 18-29.
65% of people ages 50 and up use Facebook.

Instagram Demographic Facts:

37% of U.S. adults are on Instagram.

75% of Instagram users are 18-24.

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Engagement
It’s equally critical you determine quality over quantity — how long does each site’s audience stay on the platform? Or, alternatively, how many minutes per day do they spend on each?
Twitter Engagement Facts:

As of Q1 2019, Twitter averaged 330 million monthly active users.
About 71% of Twitter users say they use the platform to get news. 
You have no choice but to engage users with quickly digestible content since the platform has a 140-character limit. 

Facebook Engagement Facts:

Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide. 
As of Q1 of 2021, Facebook reported nearly 1.88 billion daily active users. 
In the U.S., Facebook accounts for over 60% of monthly social media visits. 

Instagram Engagement Facts:

59% of Instagram users visit the app daily.

Accounts with 1,000-5,000 followers typically have a 5.6% engagement rate. On the other hand, accounts with over 1 million followers, average a 1.97% engagement rate.

With all of the above stats in mind, no matter how many followers you have, if you can appeal to your audience with the right content, you’ll likely have the best engagement rates on Facebook. Here’s some research by Statista to prove it. This is a look at the most popular mobile social networking apps in the U.S., as of September 2019, by user engagement (in minutes/ month). Facebook wins by a substantial amount. 

Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram Usage
Here are some points to consider while choosing the right platform for your business to use:

With less than 140 characters to convey your brand’s message, you might think of Twitter as your business’ “elevator pitch”. What do you want to get across to your audience quickly and succinctly?
Facebook is your opportunity to engage more in-depth with an audience. You can create full business pages, share videos, and images, and further incentivize prospects to engage with your brand (by offering 10% off if they “like” your business page, for instance).
With Instagram, you can create an interactive community. This is the platform where users are more likely to engage. People go to Instagram and expect to see influencers and follow brands they like.

Twitter Ads vs Facebook vs Instagram Ads
In general, advertising on Facebook and Instagram allows you to reach a larger audience. Since Instagram is owned by Facebook, they offer similar ad tools. Additionally, Facebook ads come with some impressive targeting tools, so you’re able to narrow down salary, purchase behavior, hobbies, Facebook communities, and more.
Facebook advertising’s interface is relatively easy and intuitive for the user. Facebook ads can be relatively cheap, as well — in fact, Facebook points out that, “Some people spend more on coffee each day than they do on their ad campaigns”. While it depends on the campaign you’re running, you can often set a budget as little as $2 to $3 per day.
Twitter also offers targeting capabilities, including purchase behavior, language, interest, and followers. However, Twitter advertising is typically more expensive than Facebook.
It may be worth the extra money, though — engagement rates for Twitter ads can be as high as 1-3%, much higher than Facebook’s average CTR of 0.119%.
Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Instagram for Business
Ultimately, it’s likely best to try Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for a while if you’re unsure which one works better for your brand. Over time, you’ll gain valuable insights into how well your posts perform on these sites, enabling you to dedicate more time to one over the other. Since they’re free to use, there’s no harm in initially trying all three.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.