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We’re ringing in the New Year with NEW Pardot feature enhancements! The Spring ’21 release enables you to set up Pardot faster than ever, maintain engagement data streams with First-Party Tracking, and enjoy enhanced functionality in email personalization, deliverability, and reporting. We’ve also improved clone actions too, so you can easily copy email content or new asset types associated to your campaigns.
All features were released Feb. 15, 2021.
Here’s additional information and resources about our latest enhancements. To learn more, check out the full Pardot Spring ’21 release notes or watch our release readiness webinar.
Sync Prospects Safely with Cross-Business Unit Leads and Contacts
A new setting on the Salesforce-Pardot connector stops Pardot package fields from syncing to lead and contact records in Salesforce. Use this setting as part of a custom setup to sync prospects from different Pardot business units to a single lead or contact in Salesforce. There’s no need to maintain duplicate lead or contact records. We recommend working with a partner to implement this for your org.
Where: Applies to all Pardot Advanced and Premium customersWhen: Generally available Feb. 15
Repeat Marketing Success with Less Effort
When a Salesforce campaign is cloned, you now have the option to clone related Pardot marketing assets as well! Choose which types of Pardot marketing assets to clone:

Landing pages
Marketing forms (including forms and form handlers)
Marketing links (including custom redirects and files)

Plus, when Pardot marketing assets are cloned, their content and relationships are automatically updated to the newly cloned asset records. For example, the new landing page is updated to reference the newly cloned form instead of the old one and use the URLs of the new custom redirects.
Where: Applies to all Pardot editionsWhen: Generally available Feb. 15
Protect Prospect Activity Data with First-Party Tracking
Pardot’s first-party tracking is now generally available! First-party tracking helps prevent the loss of prospect activity data, gives you more flexibility with campaign attribution, and blocks traffic that doesn’t come from your domains. To protect consumer privacy, web browsers are moving away from supporting third-party cookies to track activity across assets and domains.
Where: Applies to all Pardot editionsWhen: Generally available Feb. 15
Pardot User Authentication is Going Away
Pardot’s user authentication system was discontinued on Feb. 15. All users must now use Salesforce single sign-on (SSO). If you haven’t already done so, take steps to prepare your Salesforce org and enable SSO for all Pardot users as soon as possible.
To support customers with Pardot-Only users who don’t need a full Sales or Service Cloud license, your Salesforce org is now bundled with 100 Identity licenses at no extra cost. You can use these licenses to transition any remaining Pardot-Only users to Salesforce SSO.
Where: Applies to all Pardot editionsWhen: User migration changes began Feb. 15 and were completed by Feb. 18
Ready to Learn More?
Check out the full Pardot Spring ’21 release notes or watch our release readiness webinar.

Knowing who you’re selling to is just as important as knowing what it is that you’re selling. And while you may think that you understand your target audience like the back of your hand, as strategies change and businesses grow, so do their audiences. Next thing you know, your ideal audience is no longer who…
The post How Well Do You Really Know Your Customers? Tips for Discovering Your Target Audience. appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

Email marketing is lucrative, but the pressure is on to stand out in an inbox. One of the best ways to get attention (and results) is to deliver visually stunning, modern, original-looking emails. Using, of course, HTML. 
But what happens when you don’t have the resources to code custom HTML emails? 
Fortunately, you can create HTML emails that stand out, improve retention, and drive conversions… without tons of time or in-depth HTML expertise. 
Here’s how. 
What makes a winning HTML email template design?
To create amazing HTML emails, you must know what your end goal is. In other words: What makes a good HTML email? 
Responsive design
Responsive design means that the email will look great no matter what size screen it’s being read on. Usually, responsive design is needed to ensure that email design looks just as good on mobile screens as it does on desktop screens. 
If you don’t have time to create two different designs (one for mobile and one for desktop), then choose mobile. Mobile design will look good on desktop, but desktop design doesn’t always render well on mobile. And with 47% of people across all demographics checking email on mobile, it’s vital that your mobile email design is perfect. 
Designed for each screen size
If you do have time to create different designs for each screen size, then we recommend you do. Create at least two different wireframes: One for mobile and one for desktop. If you have lots of time, you could create a third wireframe for tablets. 
Here are our best practices for designing for different screen sizes:
Designing for desktop screens
Designing for desktop allows you to be versatile because the screens are spacious. Choose from the design options below:

Inverted pyramid design, with wider content at the top tapering down into a single call-to-action
Single-column design, with all content at the same width down the screen
Two-column design, with one column text and the other column images

Designing for mobile screens
Mobile screens are much smaller and narrower, so design choices are more limited. Here are our recommendations:

Single-column layouts (more than one column will render too small on the narrow mobile screen)
Links/buttons at 44 x 44 pixels (so they are clickable with a finger tap)
Simple design and brief content (too many design elements can overwhelm a mobile screen)

Consistent branding
No matter how beautiful an email is, if it doesn’t match the rest of your marketing, consumers will be confused. 
Use the same brand colors, fonts, logos, images and design style when designing HTML emails.
Luckily, our new Branded Templates make this simple and easy. Simply input your website URL and Campaign Monitor will pick out your colors, logos, and fonts to include in one of our unique templates, meaning you can send your first email even faster.
Correctly sized images and content
Choosing the wrong size images can have them bleeding off the screen, and incorrectly sized content might be unreadable and cut off at the edges. 
HTML gives you plenty of freedom, but you should stay within the following parameters to ensure readability:

Stay within 600 pixels for the width of your content for most emails

Stretch to up to 640 pixels for the width of your content to have a bold look
Stretch background images or color blocks to full-width if it is okay that some email clients cut off the edges

Optimized subject lines
Before subscribers will see your beautiful HTML email, they must open it. And with inboxes crowded with marketing emails, it’s crucial that your subject lines drive open rates. 
Our best practices for email subject lines are the following:

Aim for 41 character length
Personalize the subject line (sometimes–not always)
Instill urgency 
Ask a question

Interactive elements
Interactive emails are those that invite the reader to directly engage with the email by tapping on an image to reveal text, taking a quiz, using a calculator, or more. 
Not surprisingly, interactive emails are on the rise because of how well they drive engagement. We recommend incorporating interactive elements into your HTML email to delight your subscribers and stand apart from the competition. 

Why interactive HTML emails are best

For marketers who want to make a splash with their emails, interactive HTML emails should be the focus. Here’s why.
Interactive emails help you stand out in an inbox
The average office worker receives 121 emails per day! It’s crucial that marketers create emails that jolt customers into paying attention. 
Interactive elements are a great way to do this because while the trend is growing, it’s not yet a “given” in customer inboxes. 
In 2017, the Content Marketing Institute surveyed marketers and found that 46% were using interactive content in their marketing. That was a 79% increase from 2016, and probably even more marketers are using interactive content now. 
But in that same survey, the vast majority of marketers reported that they were using interactive content in websites, social media, and blog posts–not email. So, implementing interactive content in your emails sets you ahead of this trend and enables you to stand out. 
Interactive emails drive engagement and conversions
Interactive content is built to drive engagement. Who can resist taking a fun quiz, especially when you don’t have to click out of the email? 
The data bears this out: Interactive content consistently gets twice the engagement of regular content. 
As people engage, they become more invested in your content and brand and will be more likely to not only open more emails from you, but also convert into paying customers. In fact, interactive content gets 3x more conversions than regular content. Additionally, 82% of consumers reported that they are more likely to click a link in an email if it has interactive content. 
Interactive emails provide more insight into subscribers
Every time subscribers engage, they make a choice, which reveals something about what they want. A high open on an email suggests that the subject line worked well, for example. 
But interactive content goes further: It often directly shows deep-level information about subscribers by asking for information. For instance, interactive content like quizzes, surveys, and calculators require subscribers to answer questions or input information. Marketers can then use that information to segment lists, curate content, or promote new launches. 
Wrap up
Interactive HTML emails are a must for any marketing team. For smaller teams—especially if that “team” is just you—interactive HTML elements help you compete with even the biggest businesses in your industry.
Just remember:

HTML email is a must-have in marketing, but interactive HTML emails is where to focus to drive engagement, improve conversions, stand out and compete with larger brands.

Interactive HTML can seem intimidating for smaller companies without a huge email team, but using tools makes it easy. 
Interactive elements can also be simpler than you might expect, like adding a video into your email or animating buttons. 
You can eventually experiment with more complex entertaining options like games!

To get started building interactive HTML emails today, check out our HTML email templates builder.
The post What Makes a Great HTML Email Template? appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

In March and April of 2020, work and life as we knew it was changing. I surveyed our team members (all 84 of whom are spread out across the globe) to understand the best way to help them cope with so many things shifting at once.I especially wanted to hear from parents about what could help them as many schools were shutting down and partners or spouses were also required to work from home. The results? Most people wanted more time to get through the new challenges they faced. As a remote organization, we already offer a lot of flexibility to our employees, and it’s one of the many benefits of remote work. The ideal solution for us at the time was to both lean into flexibility and offer more time at once, which is when we started considering a four-day work week.
The concept of a 4-day work week gained a lot of traction in early 2020 as many companies saw better flexibility and thus happier employees when moving from five eight-hour days to four. Microsoft trialed this in Japan and saw a 40% increase in productivity, and Unilever New Zealand also rolled out 32-hour work weeks.Given the stress, shutdowns, and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was also touted as a helpful way to address childcare, quarantines, and other things. The combined survey of our teammates and increasing global proof that the four-day work week could be a good solution is what spawned our one-month trial. After that trial, we saw that not only had happiness and stress improved, but productivity hadn’t dipped. We opted for a 6-month trial to validate if this was a sustainable practice, and it was. Now, we’re continuing four-day work weeks for the foreseeable future. Here’s a look at some of what we’ve learned from surveying our team about the four-day work week over the course of our two trials.
What our internal surveys have told us about a four-day work week
The four-day work week resulted in sustained productivity levels and a better sense of work-life balance. These were the exact results we’d hoped to see, and they helped us challenge the notion that we need to work the typical ‘nine-to-five,’ five days a week. It’s worth noting that though we’ve seen sustained productivity levels, we’ve been gauging that based on teammate feedback and not company-wide goals, that is changing in 2021. As we looked back on the impact of working a company-wide four-day work week in most of 2020, we decided to push forward with this model into 2021, with a few clarifications and exceptions. Here’s how we evaluated our six-month pilot program and why we decided to continue operating on a four-day work week.Starting in May of 2020, I measured the following:

output based on area deadlines and goals
teammate’s individual autonomy
stress levels
general work happiness

Here’s a bit more about how each of those measurements has gone.
Our output during a four-day work week
In our May trial, we saw that teammates felt overwhelmingly as productive or more productive on a four-day work week as they did on a five-day work week. That was only the one-month trial, so it could be easy to ignore, but we saw the pattern emerge in our six-month trial. Nearly 34 percent felt more productive than when we had a five-day work week, nearly 60 percent felt equally as productive, and less than seven percent felt less productive.
While teammates reported feeling more productive, I also spoke with managers. I rounded up the data from our managers around team output to help establish if the data matched the teammate’s feelings and what my recommendation would be for going into 2021.For our Engineering teams, the number of total coding days went down. However, we saw significant increases in output. Our Engineering Manager, Ivana, shared: “Weekly coding days went from 3.4 to 2.7 for product teams, and from 3.2 to 2.9 for Mobile and Infrastructure, while the productive impact increased significantly for product teams and doubled for Infrastructure and Mobile!”Many of the managers I spoke with echoed Ivana’s feelings of seeing an increase in output. The exception to these results in productivity was our customer advocacy team. We had a harder time maintaining productivity levels, which was to be expected because this role is unique in its unpredictability of volume. Anecdotally, our advocates still cited feeling they were about 85 to 90 percent as productive as they had been during five-day weeks outside of the customer inbox, i.e., on other projects. However, customers did wait a bit longer to receive an initial reply to their emails.As was mentioned earlier, we were asking teammates and managers to gauge overall productivity and not measuring it for ourselves based on company-wide goals. That is changing in 2021 as we’ve set down more specific company goals, so we will be able to see how well we achieve our goals each quarter, and it will be another key measure of the success of the four-day work week.
Individual autonomy
Reported autonomy and flexibility in May of 2020 was at 4.3 out of 5, with 5 being “total autonomy.” This increased to 4.7 by the end of our six-month pilot:
Reiterating that our teammates have control over their schedule has been a key goal of the four-day workweek.
Stress levels
Our stress levels in May 2020 (when we first launched the experiment) was 3.3 out of 5, with 5 being high stress. Reported stress dipped down to 2.7 at our June survey, and then only slightly up to 2.9 at our October survey.
General work happiness
Our overall happiness trend for the entire company stayed consistent, and given the volatility of the events of 2020, I felt this was a good trend.
Our exact quarterly numbers were:

Jan: 4.1/5
April: 3.8/5
July: 3.8/5
Sept: 3.7/5

How we’re continuing the 4-day work week into 2021
Given that the data was primarily positive for a four-day work week, we’ve decided to continue this practice into 2021. Throughout the year, I’ll continue to keep an eye on productivity and team engagement through our quarterly surveys to ensure that the four-day work week is ultimately helping Buffer’s business needs. Our guidelines for our four-day work week in 2021: We adjusted a few things based on our experience in 2020. Here’s what I sent to our team about our guidelines for the four-day work week:
We’ll continue with:

No meetings or expectation of communicating on Slack on Fridays.
Fridays as a default day off for most areas.
Customer Advocates’ workweeks will look different due to the nature of the role. More communication will follow on schedules and expectations.
Further defining weekly output expectations at the area and department level.
Clarifying performance standings. Teammates who are not meeting their objectives may choose or be asked to work 5 days.
Evaluating this schedule at least quarterly on the basis of overall team productivity, hitting OKRs, teammate stress levels and feeling ownership of your work schedule.

We will continue to reiterate that while this is a special benefit, we as a company must meet our collective deadlines. Some work weeks might need that Friday as an overflow work day to finish up what we’ve committed to do. Everyone is still expected to get their work done.While as a company we originally adjusted deadlines to factor in the four-day work week and the unique situation of the pandemic, we’ve since moved forward with establishing ambitious goals for the coming year and recognize that this will likely push the limits of the way we’ve been operating in a four-day work week and force us to keep adapting to this new way of work. Personally, I know every teammate at Buffer is capable and up to the challenge. Because our Customer Advocates don’t have as much project-based work as other roles, we have specific targets to meet:
Customer Advocacy 4DWW Strategy 2021
Goal: Successfully work four-day workweeks as a team whilst delivering an above the bar customer service experience customers rave about.
Measurement: Team members are expected to achieve their ticket targets each week (number of tickets replied to based on level + personal commitment/goal agreed upon with lead) as well as average 2.8 ACE score on tickets and/or team members working outside of the inbox will be expected to complete projects, hit deadlines, and achieve key results.
We’ll continue to craft and iterate on ways to both serve our customers well and provide flexible work weeks to our teammates.
Looking ahead
I will continue with periodic surveys around team productivity, personal stress levels, autonomy, and happiness. Buffer is also diving back into using OKRs as a tool to track our productivity and progression, which will give us another measuring stick to use in the overall evaluation of our four-day work weeks.We aren’t sure that we’ll continue with the four-day work weeks forever, but for now, we’re going to stick with it as long as we are still able to hit our ambitious goals.Want to keep talking about the four-day work week? Reach out on Twitter and use the hashtag #BufferCommunity. 😊

Contents of a Great Marketing Resume
A great marketing resume should be well written and formatted, one page in length, define your unique value proposition and contain details of your employment and education. Depending on the company and the job, you can also add an interests and hobbies section to your marketing resume.

It’s ironic, but despite knowing how to sell products and services, so many marketers have a hard time selling themselves. It can often be difficult to turn the spotlight inward, but creating a standout resume is a skill all marketers need to perfect if they want to grow their career.
How to Write a Marketing Resume
If you’re a marketer whose resume could use a little polish, don’t worry. With just a few resources and some actionable tips from hiring managers themselves, we’ll help you create a truly impressive marketing resume that’s sure to stand out to recruiters.
These free resume templates feature sample copy for 10 of the most popular marketing positions. Take a look at them, and then use the advice below to customize your resume and make it rise above the rest in the stack.

1. Know your target audience.
You never start a marketing campaign without knowing who you want to reach. That’s because once you know your target audience, it’s easier for the other decisions to fall into place.
The same logic applies to your resume. If you know who will read it and what’s important to them, you can shape your message accordingly. To do this, you need to think about the type of job and company you’re hoping to work for.
Ask yourself questions like:

Is the job purely in inbound marketing, or will it require both traditional and digital work?
Will you be a specialist or a generalist?
Who is the employer — an agency with a buzzing digital marketing team in place already, or a small company looking to leverage the power of social media to grow their sales? Or maybe it’s a marketing department within a large and established corporation?

Once you’ve outlined what’s most important to the company and job you’re applying for, you can carefully target your resume to them. You’ll know what skills or traits to highlight, what keywords to use, and which parts of your background will be most interesting to the hiring manager. (For clues about which skills different marketing roles typically require, read this blog post on marketing job descriptions. You can borrow phrasing from those for your own resume.)
2. Define your unique value proposition.
You have a unique blend of skills, characteristics, and experiences that make you different from every marketer. To create a truly effective resume, you need to define exactly what this unique blend is — we’ll call this your value proposition.
To develop your own value proposition, think about what separates you from other marketers. Is it your in-depth knowledge of marketing analytics? Your ability to write irresistible headlines? Perhaps it’s your talent for creating compelling videos? Or maybe you have an impressive record of using social media to drive sales growth? Whatever it is, you can use it to set your resume apart from the crowd.
To a large extent, your value proposition depends on the type of positions and companies you’re targeting. Large and small companies often look for completely different skill sets, as do companies in different industries. So as you think about what makes you uniquely valuable, and how that aligns with the jobs you’re applying to.
3. Determine your messaging strategy.
It’s crucial to determine your messaging strategy — before you write a single word of your resume. That’s what you do when you’re running a marketing campaign, isn’t it? Here are some of the things to think about:

What is the best structure for your resume in order to highlight your value proposition?
Which keywords will your ideal employer be looking for?
How can you give real world examples of your value proposition in action? (Think about campaigns you’ve run, social media successes, ideas you developed, etc.)
What is the best layout and design to reinforce your message?

All these decisions should be made before you start writing, and they should all be made with your target audience in mind. That way you can be sure that when potential employers read your resume, it will immediately strike a chord.
If you want an example of great messaging in a resume, check out the digital marketing executive resume sample among our free downloadable resume templates. Look at the progression of roles and key accomplishments in those roles — it tells his career story while also making him look exceptionally qualified.

4. Make sure your resume gets seen.
If you don’t already have a connection at the company you’re applying to, you’ll most likely need to apply through a computer system. This process is what makes it so critical to upload it in a format that allows all recipients to read it as intended, like a PDF. That way, none of the original formatting or spacing is lost in translation, making it really yucky to read from a recruiter’s perspective. Although they’ll still have access to your resume, confusing formatting might distract them from the content.
Many common applications have similar save or export options that let you ultimately save as a PDF. The most common are Microsoft Word and iWork Pages:

Microsoft Word: Choose File > Save as Adobe PDF

iWork Pages: Choose File > Export to > PDF

Once you send in your resume, the computer service will do is scan it for relevant keywords that have been programmed in advance by the recruiter. Then, the system will either “pass” or “fail” you, depending on how many keywords and phrases are included in your resume that match what the recruiter’s looking for.
Don’t worry: Even if you “fail,” it doesn’t mean your resume won’t ever get seen by a real human. But it doesn’t look great, either — so try to foresee which keywords the recruiter will be looking for by making a note of all of the skills you have that are relevant to the job description.
Keywords to include might be the names of the social media sites you use, analytics or CRM systems you know, and software programs or SAAS systems you’re familiar with. Make sure you’ve included these terms as seamlessly as possible throughout your resume (where relevant), and add any outliers at the very bottom under a “Technical Skills” or “Digital Marketing Skills” section.
9 Things Hiring Managers Are Looking For in Your Marketing Resume
Sure, computers may be used in the initial screening process, but it’s humans — with real feelings, pet peeves, hobbies, relationships, experiences, and backgrounds — who are ultimately reading and evaluating our resumes.
They’re also the ones who get annoyed when we don’t put our employment record in chronological order; who just don’t feel like reading paragraph-long job descriptions; and who get excited when you went to the same college as them. So to get a sense of what really matters on a marketing resume, I asked some hiring experts what they actually care about when they scan resumes, and here’s the inside scoop on the tips they shared with me. (By the way, don’t miss out on what they said about cover letters at the end.)

Length
Formatting
Writing Quality
Location
College/Graduate School and Major/Concentration
Companies and Titles
Top Few Bullet Points in Each Section
Dates of Employment
Interests and Hobbies

1. Length
Limit your resumes to one page if you can. It takes hiring managers six seconds to decide whether they like your resume or not. If they do, they’ll keep reading. If they don’t… well, it’s on to the next. So, chances are, they won’t even get to page two.
In some cases, bleeding onto another page is OK, especially if you have a lot of really relevant experience. But if you have to do that, just don’t exceed two pages. Remember, recruiters can always look at your LinkedIn profile for the full story. (Because you’ve completed your profile on LinkedIn, right?)

2. Formatting
Formatting speaks to the way candidates collect their thoughts and organize their ideas. As HubSpot’s VP of Sales Productivity and Enablement Andrew Quinn explains it, “A candidate’s resume is their ad to me. How are they structuring this ad so I get a clear picture of what they’re capable of?”
There’s a fine line, though, warns Marketing Team Operations & Strategy Manager Emily MacIntyre. “If you stray too far from normal formatting, it’s hard to read and understand your resume. Don’t get so creative that your resume becomes difficult to digest.”
Below is a snippet from a 2-page resume with great formatting that’s easy to read. If you like the format and want to use it as your own, you can find it among our free downloadable resume templates here under “Digital Marketing Strategist.”

Here’s another one, this time a one-page resume from a student seeking an internship. If you like the format and want to use it as your own, you can find it among our free downloadable resume templates here under “Inbound Marketing Intern.”

To explore other resume formats, download our free resume templates.
The creatives among you might be asking, “What about infographic resumes?” Here’s the general consensus: Don’t make an infographic resume. Every hiring manager I spoke with advised sticking to the classic resume form instead of infographics or other formats.
“Infographic resumes are impossible to understand,” says MacIntyre. “We appreciate creativity, except when it’s overkill and hard to follow. Keep it simple. Everyone appreciates a simple resume. If you’re a designer, showcase your creativity with a cool portfolio website in addition to your simple resume.”
Below is an example of a creative format that’s still easy to read and understand. It was made using the Apple desktop app iWork Pages, which can be exported as a PDF so none of that beautiful formatting gets messed up in translation.

3. Writing Quality
Hiring managers throw away resumes with spelling errors — but writing quality goes beyond just simple spelling mistakes. Writing and presenting data in meaningful ways is a critical skill for any position, from blogging to engineering.
Are the details you want hiring managers to know about you easy to consume? Do you use concise sentences to convey your performance and accomplishments? Are your verb tenses consistent (except for current positions)? Is your language overflowing with buzzwords, or does it sound natural? Are you making sure to use first-person without using “I” or “my”? (See #11 in this blog post to understand why that’s not okay.)
“Formatting, spelling, syntax, and structure are all evidence of attention to detail,” Quinn told me. “This is important for any job, but especially if you’re applying to a job where attention to detail matters.” If you’re applying for a writing position, this is even more important.

4. Location
Hiring managers want to know if you’ll need to relocate. If you already live near the company’s office, great! If you would need to relocate, then it gets a little more complicated. Technically, hiring managers can’t legally ask you directly where you live — but omitting location will raise eyebrows. Even P.O. boxes are a little iffy.
If you do need to relocate, you should still include your current, out-of-town address on your resume, but be prepared to answer relocation status questions in an interview. If the company doesn’t offer relocation packages, will you be able to afford taking the job and moving anyway? If not, you may be wasting time.

5. College/Graduate School and Major/Concentration
Which is more important: Where you went to school, or what you studied?
It depends on the job you’re applying for. In most cases, your degree should make sense for the role. Hiring managers are looking for the tie-in; what’s relevant about what a candidate’s done in school. That doesn’t mean only marketing majors can apply to marketing jobs — marketing teams might hire someone who came out of creative studies like liberal arts, graphic design, or writing. An engineering team, on the other hand, probably won’t hire someone without a computer science degree.
It also depends on how successful you were at the school you attended. While there are some hiring managers who only give interviews to graduates of top-tier schools, most say it helps to go to a top-tier school, but it’s certainly not a deal-breaker if you went to a lower-tier school or community college. A community college graduate with a 4.0 GPA could be more attractive than an Ivy League graduate with a 2.0.

Speaking of GPA — when to take it off your resume is subjective. If your GPA was below a 3.0, consider removing it altogether. If it’s higher than that, Quinn says, “The benchmark is five to seven years after graduation, which is when candidates tend have a solid track record of employment. If you did well in school but had lackluster job prospects following graduation because of, say, a bad economy, you could definitely leave it on longer.”

It goes both ways, he explained: “If you had great jobs and accomplishments following graduation but didn’t have a good GPA, consider removing your GPA earlier.”
Three to five years after college or graduate school graduation, you can move your “Education” section to the bottom of your resume — unless you connected with someone through an alumni network or if you know an executive there also went to your school.
Want to take your marketing education to the next level and make your resume even more appealing to potential employers? Become a certified inbound marketing professional with HubSpot’s free marketing certification. 

6. Companies and Titles
Hiring managers will look at where you’ve worked before (do they recognize the company names or know anyone who works there?) and your titles at those companies.
“If you’re applying for a sales position at a software company like HubSpot, we’re looking for experience selling software,” David Fernandez, former Recruiting Team Lead at HubSpot, told me. “If you’re applying for a services position, we’re looking for customer-facing experience.”

Yes, people tweak their titles at previous companies to more closely match the positions they’re applying for. If you do this, your “new” title should be close enough to what you really did that if someone were to call and check a reference, they wouldn’t be dumbfounded. Maybe “Clerk to the Surgical Waiting Room” becomes “Customer Service Clerk.” Also, make sure to change your titles on LinkedIn, too — hiring managers will check for consistency on LinkedIn, Fernandez said.

7. Top Few Bullet Points in Each Section
Each position you’ve had should be accompanied by no more than five to six bullet points. Remember, these hiring managers are scanning your resumes really quickly, so you want to make it easy for them to find and digest the relevant information by consolidating the most important points and putting them first. Paragraphs are a big no-no.
Luckily, you work in a profession where everything can be measured and analyzed, which means it’s relatively easy to tell an impressive story of success. Think about all the ways your work can be quantified through hard data and then fill your resume with action-packed bullet points that convey the value you’ve added.
Focus on accomplishments first before responsibilities and duties. If you had a senior management role, include the number of people you managed. If you built a program from the ground up, call that out.
Also, include goals and metrics that hiring managers can use to compare you against other candidates, and make sure those metrics make sense so you don’t confuse the hiring manager. Run the metrics by your mom. I’m serious. If they make sense to her, then they’re all set. If not, then you weren’t clear enough and you need to tweak the language.
Examples might be increasing social media engagement, improving SEO ROI, driving increased web traffic, reducing bounce rates, boosting landing page conversions, etc. Once you have a list of your results, choose the best four or five and turn these into bullet points like these:

Drove 37% improvement in newsletter clickthrough rates by rewriting sales copy.
Grew ecommerce sales 23% in just 6 months by redesigning and A/B testing all landing pages.

Here’s a more detailed example:

If you want more examples of actionable data points, download these free resume templates.

8. Dates of Employment
Hiring managers look for job hopping and large gaps in employment, which are both red flags. Job hopping is a sign of failure to commit, a quality no one wants at their company. A word of advice: You should try to stay at every job for at least a year, preferably two or more years. Otherwise, it’s a red flag.
And if you took longer than six months off of work, MacIntyre suggests you explain the gap on your resume. If it’s something like teaching or the Peace Corps that you can describe like a job, then you can insert it into your resume just as you would any other position:

If it’s something like traveling abroad or taking time off for family or personal reasons, you can simply add it in italics of parenthesis. “Travelled abroad.” “Took time off for family.” “Took time off for personal reasons.” Hiring managers just want to see a rational explanation — that you were doing something productive with your time.

9. Interests and Hobbies
Whether you include interests and hobbies on your resume depends on the company and the job. If you’re applying for a creative role, hobbies like photography and painting could be interesting to an employer. If you’re hiring for an accounting role, then a hobby like skydiving wouldn’t be good to include — hiring managers might categorize you as a risk-taker, and do they really want a risk-taker managing their money?
“Think about the conclusions someone could draw from your hobbies relative to the role you’re hiring for,” Quinn advises. “Do they enhance or detract from the image you’re trying to convey? If you know the culture embraces unique individuals that have a broad background and set of interests, then it could be useful information. But conservative organizations probably don’t care what you do in your free time — in fact, they could interpret outside hobbies as distractions.”
Companies with cultures like HubSpot’s want their employees to have some personality and invest in outside interests. So if you’re applying to join that kind of culture, an “Interests” or “Hobbies” section could benefit you. “They’re great conversation starters,” says MacIntyre. “‘You’re a skier? Me too! Which mountain do you go to?’ It creates common ground for conversation and helps us assess culture fit.”
Before including or omitting this section on your resume, gain some intelligence about the company’s environment and culture. (And check out HubSpot’s culture code if you haven’t already.)
Spend Less Time on These…
Personal Statements/Objectives
In fact, we recommend skipping these altogether. Frankly, they’re irrelevant — not to mention way too easy to screw up. I’ve spoken with HubSpot recruiters about numerous times where candidates put the name of another local company on there — huge mistake.
Instead, replace it with a “Skills” or “Key Skills” section at the top of your resume, in column format, that highlights the top six to nine skills applicable to the role you’re applying for. Be sure to change these skills for each job and use the job description as a guideline.
Don’t plagiarize the job description by any means, but you can pull out key phrases. For example, in the example below, one of the listed skills is “Deep understanding of the consumer lifecycle.” That’s because the job description asked for exactly that: a deep understanding of the consumer lifecycle and customer journey.

Pro Tip: Although you should leave this section off your resume, you should have something in the ‘Summary’ section of your LinkedIn profile. Focus this section on specific skills and achievements. It’s a good place to put a link to your portfolio, blog, SlideShare presentations, or examples of work you’ve created like open-source code.
Use that space to talk about specific achievements from previous roles, awards you’ve won, or projects you’ve worked on. The information and skills on here should be applicable to where you’re headed in your career, not irrelevant past skills. (When I first heard this tip, I immediately took “emergency medicine” off of mine.)
Cover Letters
Cover letters vary in importance, depending on industry, and even on individual company. Here at HubSpot, we phased out requiring one — and instead ask candidates thoughtful questions during our application and interview process. Many companies that require you to write a cover letter will read it, but they’ll focus mostly on your resume.
With this in mind, include important details on your resume, like gaps in employment, rather than relying on your cover letter — which may never get read — to explain it. And reallocate those hours you plan to spend writing and perfecting your cover letter to writing and rewriting your resume. Your resume is the most important tool in the first stage of the application process, so spend a lot of time on it and ask multiple people to critique it.
It’s Just Like Marketing
As a marketer, you have a talent for communication and a solid understanding of what makes people buy. The good news is that by applying this knowledge to your own resume, you can easily stand out from the crowd.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Every marketing team is challenged to do more with less — especially nonprofit organizations. Often times, resources are tight, and teams are small. Sound like your organization?
We want to help. That’s why we created this nonprofit marketing guide. Your organization might not operate for profit, but it can still value from the traffic, funds, and awareness marketing brings in.
Bookmark this guide for later and use the chapter links below to jump around to sections of interest.

Inbound Marketing for Nonprofits
Your nonprofit organization likely takes up all of your time, and building a marketing plan might seem like an added responsibility that’s just not worth it.
We’re here to convince you otherwise. Inbound marketing is all about creating valuable experiences that have a positive impact on people and your business.
Inbound marketing for nonprofits can help you attract new supporters for your cause, connect to valuable donors, engage your constituents, and inspire your community.
Boost your organization’s awareness and compel action. See firsthand how HubSpot can transform your nonprofit organization.
Here’s how else nonprofit marketing can help.
Nonprofit marketing raises awareness.
Your nonprofit organization is a brand, therefore you need to raise awareness just like any other business or company. Marketing raises awareness of your brand, and brand awareness spreads the word about your organization and your overall cause.
Nonprofit marketing raises funds.
Nonprofit marketing and nonprofit fundraising go hand-in-hand. The more people that know about your organization, the more potential funding you can bring in.
Nonprofit marketing drives donor memberships and recurring donations.
Many nonprofit organizations offer donation memberships and monthly giving programs, like this one from Charity: Water. These programs are valuable because your organization doesn’t have to fundraise so actively and so often, and they can actually help you raise more money — the average monthly online donation is $52 ($624 per year) compared to the average one-time gift of $128.
Marketing your nonprofit gets your cause in front of fresh eyes and informs your donors about how they can consistently contribute.
Nonprofit marketing recruits volunteers.
Nonprofit marketing isn’t just for funding — it also drives manpower (and woman-power!) to your organization. Regardless of industry or size, all nonprofits benefit from volunteers, and marketing your organization can help bring in new hands.
Moreover, volunteers are twice as likely to donate as non-volunteers.
Nonprofit marketing promotes your services.
Awareness, funding, and volunteers are integral to your nonprofit, but what about the purpose of your organization? What about the people, animals, or cause you’re helping? Marketing can help with that, too.
The more people who know about your nonprofit organization, the more people you can help.
These are just a handful of reasons you should invest in marketing (particularly inbound marketing!) for your nonprofit. Now, let’s discuss how to build a nonprofit marketing plan so you can start bringing in new funds, volunteers, and constituents.

Crafting a nonprofit marketing plan might not be too different than a for-profit marketing plan, but it’s debatably more important. Increasing awareness and constituent engagement without exhausting your hardworking team requires approaching your marketing systematically.
That’s where a nonprofit marketing plan comes into play. Putting systems in place to produce and distribute your marketing content allows you to focus on operating and scaling your nonprofit.
Here’s how to create a successful nonprofit marketing plan.

1. Define Your Marketing Goals
Your nonprofit marketing plan exists to transform your organization’s mission and big-picture objectives into strategic, actionable goals.

For example, let’s say one of your objectives was to protect the welfare of animals in your community (like one of my favorite local rescues, ALIVE Chicago). I’d ask you to brainstorm three to five marketing ideas to advance that objective.
Some ways you could use marketing to advance that objective include:

Create and publish content that educates your community on the state of animal welfare.
Post on social media about your organization and the animals you have for adoption.
Send a weekly email newsletter sharing your content, adoptable animals, and volunteer needs.
Host a quarterly event with educational resources, foster training, and adoption opportunities.

Next, I’d ask you to turn these ideas into SMART goals. Let’s use idea number one as an example:

Specific
Educate the community on the state of animal welfare by producing one blog post per week.

Measurable
Increase traffic by 15%.

Attainable
Our blog traffic increased by 10% last year when we upped our publishing frequency to twice a month. A 15% boost in traffic with a 100% increase in production seems attainable.

Relevant
An increase in blog traffic will boost awareness of our organization, educate the community, and alert more people of our adoption opportunities — thus, saving more animals and bringing in more funding.

Timely
We will start producing one post per week and the start of next month.

SMART Goal: By the start of next month, our blog will see a 15% boost in traffic by increasing our content production from two posts per month to one post per week. This increase will boost awareness of our organization, educate the community, and alert more people of our adoption opportunities — thus, saving more animals and bringing in more funding.
See how I turned the organizational mission into a marketing objective, and then into a SMART goal? SMART goals are especially important when it comes time to analyze and measure your marketing performance (which we talk about later), so be sure to finish this step before moving forward in your nonprofit marketing plan.

2. Understand Your Audience(s)
Nonprofit marketing is different from other types of marketing because your organization is likely targeting multiple groups: constituents, customers, volunteers, and donors.
It’s imperative to define and understand each of these audiences (a.k.a. buyer personas) because your marketing will differ based on who you’re talking to. (We’ll get into key messaging next.)
For example, following our animal shelter example from above, an email targeting donors will have different messaging than an email calling for volunteers.
One easy way to organize your different audiences is using a CRM to segment the different groups. By separating contacts with tags and lists, you can easily send marketing messages to the appropriate groups.

3. Craft Your Key Messages
Key messages encompass the information you want your audiences to hear, remember, and share about your nonprofit organization. Crafting these before you employ your marketing is important for a few reasons:

Key messages keep your organization aligned. No matter who’s doing the marketing, you can be confident the same thing is being said and promoted.

Key messages simplify your marketing. With these created ahead of time, you already know what you’re going to say in your marketing messaging.

Key messages help organize your different audiences (as we talked about above). As a nonprofit organization, you’re likely talking to donors, volunteers, constituents, and your community … more personas than a typical for-profit business. Developing key messages for each of your audiences informs your team and your marketing to make sure you’re targeting the right groups.

Continuing with our animal shelter example, here’s a look at how you can craft a key message for different audiences.
Key message: We protect the welfare of animals in our community through education, adoption and fostering, and animal advocacy.

For adoption customers/constituents: By adopting or fostering, or by alerting us of animals in need, you can help us protect the welfare of animals in our community.

For volunteers: We protect the welfare of animals through round-the-clock animal care and advocacy.

For donors: You can help us protect the welfare of animals by donating to support animal care, advocacy, and adoption promotion.

All of these key messages have the same purpose and undertone, but they vary slightly depending on your audience. Together with your nonprofit organization’s mission, vision, and goals, these messages will help effectively communicate and market your organization’s needs and purpose.

4. Choose, Plan, and Create Your Marketing Strategies
Many marketers jump right to this step — creating and publishing various marketing tactics. Marketing encompasses much more than an advertisement, blog post, or event. In order to execute successfully, you must complete all the steps prior to this.
Now that you’ve established your goals (what you want), your key messages (what you’re going to say), and your audience (who you’re going to say it to), you can determine your marketing tactics (how you’re going to say it).
Marketing tactics refer to channels like email marketing, social media, events, and more. We’ve dedicated an entire section to these marketing strategies — read about them in detail below.
Regardless of which tactic you choose, be sure to conduct thorough planning before and as you execute on it. Here are some questions to ask yourself as you prepare:

What will you do with this marketing tactic?
When will these marketing activities take place?
Why is this tactic important?
Who will be responsible for these activities?
How much do we plan to spend?
How does this tie to our organization’s marketing goals?

Tactical planning is an integral part of your overall nonprofit marketing plan. How you approach your marketing strategies and how they impact your organization is just as important as how you execute on them.
Before you hit the ground running on any of these strategies, be sure your team has a solid game plan and a full understanding of it.

5. Analyze Your Marketing Performance
Your marketing probably won’t perform perfectly from the get-go. That’s OK. Routine reporting and analysis help you figure out what’s working and what you need to change.
As you choose and establish your marketing channels, pay attention to the measurable performance indicators for each. Here’s a list of examples from our list of marketing strategies below:

Marketing Strategy
Performance Indicator

Email marketing
Email opens

Event marketing
Ticket sales

Video marketing
Video views

Social media
Shares and comments

Website
Page views

Public speaking
Referrals

Content marketing
Subscriptions

Remember the goals you defined in step one? The point of measuring your marketing performance is to stay aligned with those goals.
You can track these performance indicators using tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, and the analytics tools built into Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
If you know what you want to measure before you start marketing your nonprofit, you’ll know exactly what to look for — and how to determine success and impact — when your marketing is in play.

You’ve created your nonprofit marketing plan. Now, let’s talk about how to execute that plan with actionable marketing strategies.
Many of these nonprofit marketing strategies will overlap, like sharing your blog content on social media or releasing an event invite over email. These methods can and should be used in tandem, but we recommend introducing each strategy slowly so your team doesn’t overwhelm itself.
In fact, we recognize that your nonprofit is likely operating with a small (but agile!) marketing team. For this reason, throughout these sections, we’ll recommend tips for doing more with less. Ultimately, though, don’t hesitate to outsource your nonprofit marketing where needed.
Nonprofit Email Marketing
You might be using email sporadically to call for volunteers or confirm an online donation, but that’s not enough. Email marketing is a highly effective marketing resource, especially for nonprofit organizations. Why? It’s personal and powerful.
Here are a few ways to leverage email marketing to reach all of your audiences:

Send a weekly newsletter with your newest content, updates about your organization, industry data, and volunteer needs.
Send monthly emails with donation needs and opportunities.
Set up an email sequence for new subscribers thanking them for joining and educating them on your organization.
Set up an email sequence for new donors thanking them for their contribution and sharing how else they can support your organization.

Also, don’t forget to put information on your website about how to subscribe to your email list. Nonprofit organization Acumen does a great job of this by putting subscription opportunities on their homepage and in their main menu.

👉🏼Nonprofit marketing tip: Automate as much as possible. Email marketing automation (like HubSpot) saves precious time and energy for your team and can be the key to growing your email list, donations, and memberships. You can also automate an email sequence triggered by website visitor behavior indicating a high level of interest, such as downloading educational content.

Nonprofit Event Marketing
Event marketing is one of the most effective (and enjoyable!) ways to grow awareness of your organization, connect with your community, raise funds, and garner support for your cause.
PAWS, which stands for Pets are Worth Saving, is another local animal rescue that I’m a fan of. They hold a PAWS 5K race every summer to raise awareness and funding for the organization.

This type of event impactful for multiple reasons:

It inspires competition and physical activity. Runners raise money for the organization and participate in the run.
It brings people in the community together to celebrate the organization and bring awareness to the PAWS cause.
It provides PAWS a channel to promote their services and adoptable pets.
It’s fun to attend and be a part of! Many people go to the event to support runners, play with dogs, and simply be a part of the fun — all while supporting and sharing PAWS.

From fundraisers to auctions to competitions, there are many different kinds of events you can organize to market your nonprofit organization.
Nonprofit Video Marketing
Whether they’re consuming content for work, school, or fun, people prefer video content. As a nonprofit organization, video marketing is a surefire way to garner interest and support from all of your audiences.
Here are a few reasons that video can help you market your nonprofit:

Video is visual. We process visual content 60,000 times faster than written content. We also remember more content, longer.

Video is personal. It inspires empathy and emotions, which can’t be said about other types of marketing.

Video is educational. Many organizations need to educate their communities on their causes in order to garner attention and funding. Video can help you do that.

Video is shareable. 92% of consumers on mobile will share videos with others. Consumers love sharing videos, especially those that inspire and resonate with them.

Video is interesting. 60% of people are report that video is a media they consume thoroughly. Keep your visitors, followers, and supporters engaged and interested with video.

The Girl Effect, a nonprofit that works to empower girls worldwide, is a great example of video marketing. The organization’s homepage is a video, which captures visitors’ attention right away. Moreover, when you click “See more,” the site opens an informative video telling you all about The Girl Effect.

Nonprofit Social Media Marketing
Social media is a highly popular marketing strategy among nonprofits. Not only is it free, but it provides an avenue for organizations to show their brand personalities and engage with their followers and supporters.
Here are some ways to use social media for your nonprofit marketing, as inspired by a HubSpot study of 9,000 nonprofits:

Share news about your organization and cause
Boost brand awareness and recognition
Fundraise
Recruit volunteers and employees
Recognize donors, employees, and volunteers

Don’t forget to use the key messaging you crafted in your nonprofit marketing plan to keep your social media posts consistent and targeted. Also, make the most of each platform to promote your organization, such as the Donate button on Facebook.
HubSpot customer FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is a nonprofit organization that works to advance STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education among children.
FIRST makes use of social media in many different ways, such as using Facebook to post videos, news, fundraisers, and reviews — as well as making use of the Donate button. The organization has amassed almost 100,000 followers.

👉🏼Nonprofit marketing tip: Curate content from volunteers, customers, supporters, event attendees, and donors. Implementing a user-generated content (UGC) campaign not only lessens your workload, but it also acts as strong social proof. To enact your UGC campaign, put out a call for constituent stories, images, and videos. Create a hashtag that people can use to alert you of new UGC.
Also, let curation tools work for you. Use Google Alerts and social monitoring tools to alert you when your organization, hashtags, or relevant topics or keywords are mentioned. This provides opportunities to source UGC, get inspiration for new topic ideas, and participate in relevant conversations.
Nonprofit Website
Every nonprofit organization should have a website. A website serves as a digital home base for your organization and includes critical information — what you stand for and how visitors can participate and help.
Your website also houses important assets like your blog, social media streams, event information, videos, and more … basically the rest of your marketing strategies. Lastly, your website serves as a way to intrigue, inspire, and engage your audiences.
Nonprofit organization (and HubSpot customer) American Nursing Association (ANA) is an example of an organization with an outstanding nonprofit website. The site clarifies the ANA mission, shares news and educational content, and informs visitors how to get involved through memberships, events, certifications, or donations.

Nonprofit Public Speaking
It’s said that people buy into other people, not products. The same can be said about nonprofit organizations. If consumers believe in the people behind your organization, they’re likely to buy in your cause and donate money or time.
One of the best ways for consumers to get to know your leadership team, not to mention spread the word about your cause and organization, is public speaking. Whether you speak at a local event of 100 people or a multi-day conference with thousands, the impact is the same: telling a powerful story to real people who may not yet know about your cause.
charity:water founder Scott Harrison spoke at INBOUND18. While he shared some about the conception and organization of the nonprofit, he mostly talked about the people that his organization helps — and how the audience can support the mission. Harrison not only moved the audience of thousands but also effectively marketed the charity:water purpose and brand.

 
Nonprofit Content Marketing
Content marketing and blogging are valuable marketing assets for any nonprofit organization. Here’s why:

Content educates your audiences about your mission, cause, and industry news and trends.
Content (and SEO) bring in new visitors, subscribers, donors, and leads.
Content is shareable and serves as free PR among your audiences.
Content can be repurposed and made into different types of media, saving your marketing team precious time and energy.

Creating a nonprofit marketing blog isn’t always easy. Teams are short-staffed, budgets are low, and time is precious. Thankfully, there are lots of ways around those blogging challenges, such as sourcing story ideas from volunteers, donors, and customers as well as implementing an editorial calendar so you can plan ahead.
One of my very favorite nonprofit organizations is called Blurt Foundation, a UK-based organization that exists to increase awareness and understanding of depression and support those who struggle with it. There’s a lot of misconception and misunderstanding around depression, so Blurt Foundation uses their blog content and other content resources to educate constituents and supporters. They also incorporate these content assets into their emails, social media posts, and online store.

👉🏼Nonprofit marketing tip: Save time and resources by repurposing your content. Content is an appreciating asset that you can reuse and re-promote over and over. Repurposing content to create new marketing assets costs far less than creating entirely new content.
Outline all the ways you could repurpose the content you produce. For example, you could create the following list for your blog content:

Short version for use in emails or newsletters with link back to full post
Group with related posts for report
Two to three visuals images to share on social

Infographic with post information
Reaction piece to original post

Since you’re not going to promote and distribute each piece of repurposed content immediately, your content pipeline is never empty.
Check out HubSpot’s free nonprofit content today.
Strengthen Your Marketing, Promote Your Cause
Raise your hand if your organization has to constantly do more with less. 👋🏼
If that sounds like your organization, we recommend you use this guide to build a nonprofit marketing plan ASAP. Your organization might not operate for profit, but it can still value from the traffic, funds, and awareness that systematic marketing brings in.
And not only will these activities and strategies help promote your organization, but they’ll take a valuable load off the backs of your team and volunteers — freeing them up to dedicate more time to your cause and constituents.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.