Category: Marketing Automation

We know that email automation can be a daunting task for owners of eCommerce websites, but there are plenty of benefits to making this a part of your marketing strategy. In this article, we’ll take a look at the basics, from building an email list to the different types of emails that you should be…
The post The Beginner’s Guide to Ecommerce Email Marketing Automation appeared first on Benchmark Email.

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Many marketers use Microsoft Excel every day, whether it’s to create a chart, analyze data, or run a report to present at the next team meeting.
Creating reports like these in Excel is time-consuming enough. How can we spend a little less time navigating, formatting, selecting, and entering formulas for our data? Wouldn’t it be great if there were keyboard shortcuts that could help us get our work done faster?
So glad you asked.
We’ve put together a list of 43 keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Excel. Although you can do all of these maneuvers manually, knowing these tricks will help save you time so you can focus on the stuff that really matters.

All of these shortcuts can be accessed on PC and Mac, so we’ve included both types below where applicable.
(Note for Mac users: To access the F keys (F1–F12), you’ll have to hold the Fn key before pressing any F key — unless you’ve enabled those keys as standard function keys.)
43 Excel Shortcuts You’ll Definitely Want to Bookmark
Navigation Shortcuts
These simple shortcuts can help you navigate between workbooks, sheets, rows and columns:

Move up through a selection
Shift + Enter (PC and Mac)

Jump to the top of a column
CTRL + ↑ (PC); Command + ↑ (Mac)

Jump to the bottom of a column
CTRL + ↓ (PC); Command + ↓ (Mac)

Jump to the corner of a selection (Note: Rotate to each corner by repeating this keystroke)
CTRL + . (PC and Mac)

Close the active workbook window
CTRL + w (PC); Command + W (Mac)

Switch to previous workbook window
CTRL + Shift + F6 (PC); Command + Shift + F6 (Mac)

Switch to the next open worksheet
CTRL + Tab (Mac only)

Switch to the previous open worksheet (Mac)
CTRL + Shift + Tab (Mac only)

Start a new chart sheet
F11 (PC and Mac)

Insert a new sheet
Shift + F11 (PC and Mac)

Repeat the last action
CTRL + y (PC); Command + Y (Mac)

Fill selected cell with the content in the cell above selected cell
CTRL + d (PC and Mac)

Fill selected cell with the content in the cell to the left of selected cell
CTRL + r (PC and Mac)

Format Shortcuts
Formatting in Excel can be difficult if you don’t know of what you’re doing. Here are a few shortcuts that to help you easily format your cells. To start, here’s a featured formatting shortcut you might not have known about:

Excel Strikethrough Shortcut
The Excel strikethrough shortcut will strike a line through the middle of the value or text in a highlighted cell. To strike a line through a cell, highlight the cell and press CTRL + 5 on your keyboard.

Find and replace values
CTRL + F (PC); Command + F (Mac)

Show all values as percentages
CTRL + Shift + % (PC and Mac)

Show all values as currency (Note: Replace $ with your own country’s currency key)
CTRL + Shift + $ (PC and Mac)

Show all values in general number format
CTRL + Shift + ~ (PC and Mac)

Apply or remove bold formatting to selected cells
CTRL + 2 (PC); Command + b (Mac)

Apply or remove italic formatting to selected cells
CTRL + 3 (PC); Command + i (Mac)

Hide selected rows
CTRL + 9 (PC and Mac)

Unhide selected rows
CTRL + Shift + ( (PC and Mac)

Hide selected columns
CTRL + 0 (PC and Mac)

Unhide selected columns
CTRL + Shift + ) (PC and Mac)

Insert current date
CTRL + ; (PC and Mac)

Insert current time
CTRL + Shift + : (PC); Command + ; (Mac)

Insert a hyperlink
CTRL + k (PC); Command + k (Mac)

Apply an outline border to selected cells (see screenshot below)
CTRL + Shift + & (PC); Command + Option + 0 (Mac)

Here’s what cells look like with (left) and without (right) a border:

Shortcuts for Selecting Rows & Columns
Save yourself the manual dragging and selecting rows and columns with these handy keyboard tricks. To start, here are two featured rows-related shortcuts you might not have known about:

Excel Insert Row Shortcut
The insert row shortcut in Excel will create a new row below a highlighted cell. To insert a new row, highlight a cell or entire row and press CTRL + Shift + + on your keyword, literally pressing the plus sign after Shift. This will open a small window of options where you can insert a new row or column.

Expand the selection by one cell either upward (↑) or downward (↓)
Shift + ↑ [or] Shift + ↓ (PC and Mac)

Expand the selection to the last non-empty cell
CTRL + Shift + Arrow Key (PC); Command + Shift + Arrow Key (Mac)

Select entire column
CTRL + [spacebar] (PC and Mac)

Select entire row
Shift + [spacebar] (PC and Mac)

Select entire sheet
CTRL + a (PC); Command + a (Mac)

Select only the visible cells in the current selection
Alt + ; (PC); Command + Shift + z (Mac)

Formula Shortcuts
Formulas are a huge part of every marketer’s Excel toolkit. Here are a few shortcuts that’ll make you a formula wiz:

Start a formula (e.g. “=A4+A5”)
= (i.e. press the “equals” sign; PC and Mac)

Insert AutoSum formula
Alt + (PC); Command + Shift + t (Mac)

Edit active cell
F2 (PC); CTRL + u (Mac)

Display the Formula Builder after you type a valid function name in a formula
CTRL + a (PC and Mac)

Miscellaneous Shortcuts
Here are a few more time-saving shortcuts. To start, here’s a final featured shortcut for managing the size of your Excel worksheet:

Excel Delete Row Shortcut
The Excel delete row shortcut will delete the row below a highlighted cell. To delete this row, highlight a cell or entire row and press CTRL + – on your keyboard, literally pressing the minus sign after CTRL. This will open a small window of options where you can “shift cells up.”

Save your work as…
Control + Shift + s (PC); Command + Shift + s (Mac)

Open spelling & grammar check
F7 (PC and Mac)

Insert a comment (see screenshot below)
Shift + F2 (PC and Mac)

When working on a project with Google Docs, you may be required to change the default margins, and if you’ve never done it before, learning how to change all margins in Google Docs can seem complicated.
If you need to change only the left and right margin space, simply click and hold the small blue triangle on the left and right side of the ruler at the top of your Google Doc, and drag it to another position (it’s important to note you must drag the blue triangle, not the rectangle right above it. The rectangle on your ruler changes a paragraph’s indentation, not the margins.)

This is useful if you have to alter the left and right margins, but what do you do when you need to change all the margins at once?

How To Change All Margins In Google Docs
1. Navigate to Page Setup

Go to
File >
Page Setup. This will allow you to set parameters for your document including orientation (portrait or landscape), paper size, and custom margins.

2. Enter Margin size

In the text box beside Top, Bottom, Left, Right (under Margin), type in a margin size. You may want to try a few different sizes first to see which work best for your document. Don’t worry, you can always go back and change these settings.

3. Click “OK”

If you plan on using the margins often, you could also click “Set as default”. This will set up your Google Docs account to use these margin settings each time you create a new document. If this is only a one-time fix for this particular document, best to ignore the “set as default” button.

And that’s it! Hopefully, this will help you create more customized Google docs to fit your needs. 

 

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in [Month Year] and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The first time I was prompted with “Tell me about yourself” in an interview, I reeled off a canned spiel about how I love helping people – I was positive it would impress my interviewer. But after my cliched answer triggered a disappointed look on her face, I panicked.
I ended up rambling about how “fun” I was, citing my time as the lead singer and guitarist for a Blink-182 cover band in the sixth grade as compelling evidence. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance at first impressions. So to nail your interview, learn how to answer the question, “Tell me about yourself.”
What Interviewers Really Want to Know
If you’re in the process of interviewing for a new role, you know how difficult it can be to find a unique and compelling answer to this common prompt.
“Tell me about yourself” is very open-ended yet one of the most popular ways interviewers start the conversation. This answer has a huge impact on your interviewer’s first impression of you and can shape the entire conversation.
To gain some insight on the best way to respond to “Tell me about yourself”, I asked Claire McCarthy, a recruiting manager at HubSpot, about the best way to respond to the prompt.
“There’s no ideal answer to ‘Tell me about yourself,’” she says, “but I always encourage candidates to create a value proposition for themselves that touches on a couple of things.”
According to McCarthy, the ideal value proposition covers:

Your motivation
The specific challenges that excite you
What you can bring to the table
Why you want to work for the company you’re interviewing at and why now
Why this job is a good fit

Armed with McCarthy’s advice, we’ll help you develop a strong, cohesive value proposition that answers all of these questions.

1. Be honest.
The most important thing about answering this question is being honest.
If you start your interview by embellishing details about your experience or lying about your skills, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
Even if the hiring manager doesn’t realize it at the moment, they’ll likely detect inconsistencies later on.
It’s hard enough to get this question right, don’t make it harder on yourself. Instead, skip the games and bring your full self to the interview.
2. Tell a story.
Think of this question as an opportunity to tell the interview a short story about yourself.
Just as a story has a clear beginning, middle, and end, yours should too – except you’ll be covering the past, present, and future.
Throughout your answer, you’ll weave in several elements that will highlight your skills, motivation, and future goals.
3. Weave in personal details.
This step requires a delicate balance.
You’ll want to weave in personal details about yourself that will help hiring managers discover what drives you and have a holistic view of who you are.
However, you don’t want to do a deep dive into your personal life.
So, only highlight personal details that tie back to a professional skill or goal. For instance, you might mention your love of storytelling from early childhood and how that led you to start a career in content creation.
4. Describe what motivates you.
One of the most important (and common) traits hiring managers typically look for in candidates is their intrinsic motivation. Research suggests intrinsically motivated employees produce a higher quality of work than extrinsically motivated employees do.
So if you can recount a personal anecdote that proves you’re a craft-driven professional, and not just someone who is enamored by the company’s lucrative stock options, you’ll immediately grab the hiring manager’s attention.
To do so, lead off your value proposition like this:
“As I approach my five-year anniversary working in the content marketing space, I’ve learned a lot about myself. More specifically, I’ve realized I feel the most fulfilled when I can craft gripping stories that actually help and inspire people.”
5. Explain what challenges excite you.
Hiring managers don’t generally hire candidates to maintain their team’s status quo. They hire candidates who will challenge it and propel their team to greater heights.
To show that you can be a catalyst on the team, speak to the challenges in your industry or this particular role that excite you, just like the example below:
“Today, we both work in an industry where countless brands fight for a limited amount of attention, saturating our space with mediocre content. It’s never been harder to cut through the noise. But this doesn’t intimidate or discourage me. It actually excites me because it forces me to keep innovating and finding new ways to connect with an audience.”
6. Highlight your most relevant skills.
Once you explain what challenges pique your interest, you can then naturally segue into how you possess the necessary skills to overcome them and excel at the role, like the example below:
“There’s a fierce battle for attention in content marketing right now, and it has pushed me to master both my writing and analytical skills. Data drives decisions in our industry, and I know if I want to make an impact on a team, I need to be both a creative and a strategist. Thankfully, my ability to adapt has allowed me to pick up the necessary skills to accurately extract insights from data and weave them into a compelling story.”
7. Spell out why you want to work at the company you’re interviewing at.
Highlighting your most relevant skills will capture your hiring manager’s attention. But to truly impress her, communicate how your passion and skills align with the company’s interests and goals, like the example below:
“That’s why I think I’d be a high-impact employee here – you care a lot about doing two things right: making objective, data-driven decisions and telling great stories. I believe I can help you get better at both of these things.”
8. Illustrate why you want to work for the company right now.
After you spell out why you want to work for the company, delve into why you want to work for them right now.
This shows that you took initiative to learn about the company’s most recent updates, and the hiring manager will definitely take note of your proactiveness. Check out the example below:
“This is also one of the best times to work at HubSpot – I was at INBOUND in September and was impressed with all your new product launches. It’s clear that HubSpot is doubling down on innovation and strives to propel to the top of the industry. I’d be pumped to be a part of that.”
9. Prove that you’d be a good fit for the job.
To pack a punch at the end of your value proposition, show the hiring manager how you’ve used your skills to improve your current team by quantifying your accomplishments.
These previous experiences will prove your worth and qualify you as the employee who can take the team to the next level. Cap off your answer with something like this:
“And as the top-performing content strategist at my current company, where I’ve doubled blog views and grown our email subscription list by 40% in only one year, I think I could help you develop a killer content strategy, write some of the best stories in MarTech, and build an even more loyal audience than you boast now.”
What Not to Do When Asked “Tell Me About Yourself”
Just as there’s a long list of things you can say when answering this question, there’s also one for mistakes you should avoid.
When answering “Tell me about yourself,” don’t:

Wing your answer – Memorize the key points to hit so that you can ensure a concise answer every time without sounding rehearsed.

Focus on your personal life – Given the context in which this question is asked, focus on your professional journey instead your personal one.

Discuss contentious topics – Topics like politics, religion, and sex have no place in an interview, much less during this question.

“Tell Me About Yourself” Sample Answer
Altogether, a strong answer to the “Tell me about yourself” prompt would look like this:
“As I approach my five-year anniversary working in the content marketing space, I’ve learned a lot about myself. More specifically, I’ve realized I feel the most fulfilled when I can craft gripping stories that actually help and inspire people.
Today, we both work in an industry where countless brands fight for a limited amount of attention, saturating our space with mediocre content. It’s never been harder to cut through the noise. But this doesn’t intimidate or discourage me. It actually excites me because it forces me to keep innovating and finding new ways to connect with an audience.
There’s a fierce battle for attention in content marketing right now, and it has pushed me to master both my writing and analytical skills. Data drives decisions in our industry, and I know if I want to make an impact on a team, I need to be both a creative and a strategist. Thankfully, my ability to adapt has allowed me to pick up the necessary skills to accurately extract insights from data and weave them into a compelling story.
That’s why I think I’d be a high-impact employee here — you guys care a lot about doing two things right: making objective, data-driven decisions and telling great stories. I believe I can help you get better at both of these things.
This is also one of the best times to work at HubSpot — I was at INBOUND in September and was impressed with all your new product launches. It’s clear that HubSpot is doubling down on innovation and strives to propel to the top of the industry. I’d be pumped to be a part of that.
And as the top-performing content strategist at my current company, where I’ve doubled blog views and grown our email subscription list by 40% in only one year, I think I could help you develop a killer content strategy, write some of the best stories in MarTech, and build an even more loyal audience than you boast now.”
Framing ‘Tell Me About Yourself’ as ‘Pitch Yourself’
“Tell me about yourself” might be one of the most dreaded prompts in the history of interviews.
But if you understand why hiring managers prod candidates with it, you can turn your answer into your pitch.
From there, structure your value proposition the way we did above and you’ll make a strong first impression.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in Nov. 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Email marketing is often praised as the most effective marketing channel to date. With an impressive ROI, it’s hard to find a company that isn’t utilizing it to some degree.  However, that’s not to say that everyone is hitting it out of the park with their email marketing strategy. In fact, many business owners and…
The post The Biggest Email Marketing Hurdle (and How to Overcome It): Interview with ZeroBounce COO Brian Minick appeared first on Benchmark Email.