Category: Marketing Automation

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How do you send a direct message to the account owner on Slack via Salesforce Flow?  Slack is a messaging app for businesses that connects people to the information they need. Its workspaces allow you to organize communications by channels for group discussions and allow
The post Send A Direct Slack Message Using Flow appeared first on Automation Champion.

We recently launched direct Instagram carousels scheduling in Buffer. Now you can scheduled carousel posts to be published automatically in Instagram—no need for reminders. Buffer customers have been asking for carousel direct scheduling for a while (it was the most requested feature in our last customer survey), and we’re not surprised! There’s lots of evidence suggesting that carousel posts generate more engagements than image or video posts.But is this really the case? To find out, we analyzed the 184 posts @Buffer published on Instagram over the past year. TL;DR, here are the results:Engagement rate for carousels was 2.37% higher than other posts.Our best performing post of the year was a carousel post.That’s despite only 1/4 of posts featuring carousels.Carousel posts were also saved 2x more than other posts.Looks great, right? Well, it’s a little more complex than that. On average, our carousel posts received fewer comments and likes. But that’s likely due to our posting schedule rather than the carousel itself. Read on to learn more. 👇Focus on engagement rate, not average engagementThe engagement rate for our carousel posts was 2.37% higher than other posts. Engagement rate for carousels: 3.45%Engagement rate for other posts: 3.37%And yet, on average, carousel posts received fewer likes and comments. Average likes for image posts: 129Average likes for video posts: 128Average likes for carousel posts: 87How can this be?Well, it’s important to look at impressions when analyzing engagements. Your audience can only like and comment on your posts if they see the post in the first place. If your audience can’t see it, they can’t engage. But, why might someone miss your post? Well the Instagram algorithm won’t show every post, to every follower. Instead they’ll show a custom feed based on when posts were published and how posts perform. This means our audience might miss our carousel posts if we don’t publish consistently, or if we publish at the wrong time of day. That’ll reduce the impressions, and the engagements. So, instead of measuring average engagements, we measure engagement rate: Engagement rate = (comments + clicks + likes + reactions) ÷ impressionsBecause the engagement rate takes into account impressions we can see how our audience acts once they’ve seen the post. Now we know that if our audience sees a carousel post (vs. a video or image), they’re more likely to engage with it.Consistently creating carouselsBefore Instagram carousel direct scheduling was available in Buffer, we had to set reminders to schedule carousels on Instagram—opening up the Instagram app every time we wanted to publish.Rather than making carousels a core component of our social media calendar, we had to shoehorn them in when we found time. With this infrequent posting schedule, we think our carousels weren’t always published at the optimum time. Meaning they didn’t get the impressions they deserved.Today, we can directly schedule Instagram carousels. We can add them to our Buffer queue to make sure they are published at the optimal time for engagement. Rather than publishing whenever we are online and available, we can let Buffer take care of the scheduling and publish at a time that’s right for our audience.We’d love your feedbackDo Instagram carousels perform better for your account? Will you use add carousels to your queue? Do you have any suggestions for what we should build next? Let us know by sending us a tweet @buffer or by dropping us a note, using our feature request form.

Today, more than ever, digital marketing is a gamechanger for small businesses—new or old. With a digital presence through different marketing platforms, small businesses can now compete with top players in the industry in order to secure their share of profits from the target audience. Marketing platforms can help you to generate revenue for your…
The post Best 18 Marketing Platforms for New Businesses appeared first on Benchmark Email.

https://preview.redd.it/a0fjnxyznk191.jpg?width=651&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=74426410ca5d61ce7a798cd09d58b8426d2adca8 SAP Business One provides a solid backbone to your packaging operations. SAP B1 ERP software helps to meet the requirements of the Business. The software is flexible and highly scalable. submitted by /u/Select_Fly6327 [link] [comments]

A Free WordPress course teaching how to build websites with WP. A Great course beginners to learn about WordPress. This course by Twitter creator Nat Miletic. Grab it here! A free course on Building A successful Bootstrapped Business by Timstodz. A great course with amazingly free value and new modules are added time to time for free. Check now! State of Email – A Free Guide about trends and innovations in email marketing in 2021 and know what will happen in 2022. I found Easlo, A notion creator on twitter and he has launched 2-3 free templates for websites, resumes and freelancers. You can check those for free by visiting this link. The best of all found a A huge collection of growth marketing checklists by Dan Siepen. One of the best free marketing resource you need to check. Visit now! hunter.io is an amazing directory of Cold email templates and it’s a great resource to find inspiration for email campaigns. Check it now! Principles.design – An open source collection of Design Principles and methods. That’s all from now. I’m Jaskaran and if you want receive One free resource, 7 Content Ideas and 4 SaaS tools every week. You can subscribe here for free. I try to curate best content for my subscribers every week. submitted by /u/lazymentors [link] [comments]

As marketers, we thrive on data.
Data can help us identify when content is underperforming, and pivot to provide the highest value to our prospects and customers. It can also enable us to explore new, underutilized channels, and discover the best platforms to connect with our audiences.
All of this is to say: Any changes to the existing data collection ecosystem will create uncertainty around the future of marketing, and make some marketers fearful about how their current strategies will perform in a privacy-first world.
But a privacy-first world doesn’t inhibit a company’s ability to know and better serve their customers — it improves it. A privacy-first world is a world in which creating and maintaining relationships directly with your customers is the only way to truly understand them.
Here, we’ll explore how the future of privacy will impact your business. Plus, how you can prepare for it.
What is a privacy-first world?
A privacy-first world means that a company’s strategies, technologies, and solutions will need to adhere to a consumer’s right to data privacy and security, first and foremost.
This shift has been a long time coming. Consumers no longer trust corporations with their data — in fact, only about one-third of customers believe companies are currently using their data responsibly.
Additionally, in the past year alone, 76% of consumers feel they don’t know what companies are doing with their data.
To combat consumers’ concerns, regulations such as the EU ePrivacy Directive CCPA, and LGPD are increasingly requiring transparency around data collection, making a privacy-first marketing strategy necessary to reach global audiences.
Certain industries have always taken a first-party data approach when it comes to building relationships with their audiences . Nonprofit and advocacy organizations, for instance, have always leveraged data collected directly from their supporters and donors  for marketing materials. So while a privacy-first world might be new for some businesses, it’s not new for all.
Why Privacy-First Matters
As consumers raise their standards in regards to data privacy and security, it’s vital that the advertising industry adapt to meet these needs.
A privacy-first approach ultimately encourages marketers worldwide to develop stronger and more transparent relationships with prospects and customers.

First-party data allows you to better understand your customer based on information they have consented to share with you, which in turn allows ads to be more relevant.

Plus, caring about your customers’ data is simply good business practice. A privacy-first strategy will become a competitive advantage in the years to come.
So the real question here should be: how can you prepare for a privacy-first world? Let’s dive into that, now.
How can you prepare for a privacy-first world?
We need to reimagine our marketing and advertising strategies to ensure company growth doesn’t come at the expense of consumers’ trust.
As Google’s Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust, David Temkin, puts it, “Developing strong relationships with customers has always been critical for brands to build a successful business, and this becomes even more vital in a privacy-first world.”
To invest in and prepare for privacy-safe growth, companies need to shift to a first-party data model. Marketers that effectively use their first-party data can generate 2X the incremental revenue from a single ad placement or outreach.
To adjust to a privacy-first world, marketers will need to ensure they have systems in place to collect and measure first-party data effectively. A CRM, for instance, allows you to collect, track, and analyze your first-party data while providing your visitors with the transparency and knowledge that their data is being used for more personalized messaging and a better user experience — not for following their every move across the web.
First-Party Data Use in Action
There are tremendous advantages to first-party data when it comes to marketing. Let’s say, for instance, that you recently eyed a Casper pillow, filled out a form with your email, but got distracted and abandoned the site. Later, you spot this email in your inbox:

Here, Casper marketers are using first-party data to analyze your behavior on their site. Once they’ve identified that you might be interested in a pillow, they can send a targeted, personalized abandoned cart email to encourage you to complete the transaction.
HubSpot and Google’s New Integration for Better First-Party Data Collection
For HubSpot customers, we have good news: HubSpot will be offering an integration with Google’s Enhanced conversions (EC) for web in the coming months. Among other benefits, Enhanced Conversions allows companies to increase the amount of observable conversions they can measure, and ultimately improve their return on ad spend. Visit this page to learn more and stay up to date on HubSpot’s Enhanced Conversions launch.
Zoe Financial, a wealth planning platform, has seen a 200% increase in revenue by leveraging the current integration between Google Ads and HubSpot. With the addition of Enhanced conversions in the coming months, Zoe plans to continue to take full advantage of the suite of products Google and HubSpot have, thereby optimizing their marketing and client acquisition strategies.

The Founder and CEO of Zoe Financial, Andres Garcia-Amaya, said, “Our north star is the client, and clients value their privacy. Partnering with Google and HubSpot helps ensure the two-way communication of our client’s data in a safe way.”

To excel in a privacy-first world, marketers need to leverage clean, first-party data to measure and optimize their advertising and audience strategies. And they need to realize the full value of investments in first-party data solutions.
Change is always difficult. For marketing teams that have relied for years on third-party data for their advertising strategies, it will take time to adjust to this ‘new normal’ when it comes to data privacy. However, this privacy-first shift should empower marketers to use their privileges to gain trust, rather than to lose it.

SMS is an essential marketing channel for all kinds of businesses. But, it can be tricky to nail down what kind of message is appropriate for SMS, and what kind will annoy and drive away your customers. Read this post for five incredible SMS marketing examples of messages your audience actually wants to read.
Everyone likes getting gifts. But everyone also has that one weird family member. You know, the one who makes you ugly crocheted “fashion statements” for Christmas and gets you underwear for your birthday.
Usually, they have good intentions, but they’re probably unaware and out of touch with what people actually want. In short message service (SMS) marketing, many brands, unfortunately, become just like your Great Aunt Margaret. Someone told them that “Those hip young people like text messages,” and they started sending SMS marketing messages that are the equivalent of a crocheted necktie and tighty-whities.
According to Zendesk, the popularity of using SMS messaging to contact businesses grew by 75% in 2020. However, just like gift-giving, it’s key that you actually give people what they want when they start a text conversation with your brand.
For example, according to SimpleTexting, only 9% of consumers want to hear about your customer satisfaction survey via text. (Which, let’s be real, makes up like 99% of text messages people receive from businesses. Annoying much?) On the other hand, according to the same survey, 35% of consumers would love to get special offers or promotions via text.
Text message marketing can feel invasive and unwelcome if it’s not personalized and valuable to your audience. If you’re still not sure what consumers want to receive, you’re in luck. This guide covers five SMS marketing examples your audience actually wants to receive so you don’t become the marketing equivalent of Great Aunt Margaret. You’ll increase your conversions and your bottom line.
1. Event updates
It’s hard to beat text message marketing campaigns for timely updates you know your audience will see. Americans are constantly checking their phones — about 344 times a day, according to Reviews.org. And McKinsey reports SMS messages have the highest read rates out of any commercial messaging channel, with an open rate of 42%. This combination makes SMS text messages the ideal channel for time-sensitive event communication.
You can use SMS messages to hype event lineups, send ticket QR codes, provide attendees with session time updates, or even provide interactive content during the event.
For example, event attendees may opt in to receive messages, so they can be the first to hear who the headlining speaker is or receive a mobile ticket. And then, once they have opted in, you can notify them of important information via SMS throughout the conference, such as which conference space their sessions are in.
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2. Special offers
According to SimpleTexting, 50% of consumers said they would be more likely to opt in to SMS messages from a business if they knew they would receive time-sensitive promotions. Through audience segmentation and marketing automation, marketing teams can personalize the promotions to each consumer, increasing the value and connection to the brand.
SMS marketing for special offers could be as simple as promoting flash sales or as specific as sending a discount code to a customer on their birthday. The key to maintaining the value for the consumer is to use it only for timely or personalized offers, rather than constantly bombarding them with texts.
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3. Product launches
Consumers have the world at their fingertips with the internet. If you want your product to stand out from the beginning, you need a unique promotional mechanism. According to a survey by Harris Interactive, 77% of consumers view companies that offer texting more positively (not to mention those impressive read rates we mentioned previously). So, if you want all eyes eagerly on that new product launch, SMS is where you should start.
The timeliness of SMS provides brands with a chance to roll out their products in stages to increase the hype. For example, you should start a launch with a VIP and influencer early-access message before opening sales up to all customers.
Besides the timeliness of SMS, it also has the advantage of having very measurable outcomes. Campaign Monitor’s SMS reporting dashboard shows a comprehensive view of your launch campaigns, including audience responses to both email and SMS. Instead of guessing at interest levels in your new product or the success of your campaign, you can easily assess them at a glance.
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4. Community building
SMS messages provide a unique opportunity to build brand affinity by personally connecting with your audience and creating a community around your brand. In this way, you can promote your brand without promoting your brand.
For example, you could send daily health tips or mindfulness prompts if you’re a wellness brand, or links to interactive brand content such as how-to videos and online communities. All of these things promote user-generated content, which 79% of users say highly impacts their purchase decisions, according to Stackla.
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5. Donation drives
People get bombarded with organizations asking them for donations. If it’s not the Boy Scout down the street, it’s the fundraiser in the mail or the grocery store clerk asking them to “round up for the cause.” So how do you break through the noise? SMS.
The key to using SMS for donation drives and fundraising is to craft a message that won’t be just banging cymbals in the cacophony of fundraising campaigns. Gone are the days of cold-calling telethons. Today, consumers expect personalized and timely communications. And that is where SMS shines.
For example, you can tailor each message to the individual donor with Campaign Monitor’s subscriber list upload feature and customizable fields. Segment your list by region, income range, age, or any other custom qualifier you choose. Personalize every message with the subscriber’s name for an added personal touch.
With SMS, you can respond within minutes to any community or worldwide crisis, giving people the opportunity to act as soon as the news breaks. You no longer have to wait for the mailer to reach their house weeks later or cross your fingers your social posts reach them. Hit your donor base when it’s still fresh and before they are bombarded with other organizations asking for donations.
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Once you have your audience’s attention, it’s important that you give them an easily accessible and immediate way to give. Relying on dated payment options isn’t going to cut it anymore. When was the last time you wrote a check for anything? It’s probably been a while. According to the Federal Reserve, the use of checks and cash is decreasing dramatically YOY, and mobile payments are taking the place of most payments previously made via check or cash. In short, if you want people to donate to your campaign, you need to offer mobile payment options.
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Combining SMS and email marketing strategies
There’s no arguing the benefits of SMS marketing, but it has an even greater impact when used in combination with an email marketing strategy. Each serves your customers in a unique way and enhances the impact of the other. What they share in common is the ability to grow your customer base and your bottom line. If you want to learn more about how to use SMS marketing strategies in combination with email marketing, check out our guide.
The post 5 SMS Marketing Examples Your Audience Actually Wants to Receive appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How do you post a message to a Slack channel via Salesforce Flow?  Slack is a messaging app for businesses that connects people to the information they need. Its workspaces allow you to organize communications by channels for group discussions and allow for private messages
The post Post a Message to a Slack Channel using Flow appeared first on Automation Champion.

There’s a common misconception that it’s impossible to make money as a business while also supporting a larger mission. Either you’re having a real impact on a cause you care about but never turning a profit, or you’re bringing in the cash but your activism is performative at best. As the co-founder of advocacy restaurant group iFoodGroup, known for Immigrant Food restaurants, I can tell you that profitability absolutely can co-exist with helping people. Since opening our first restaurant in late 2019, we’ve managed to grow to three locations in Washington, DC, with more expansion in the works. Along the way, we’ve built a business that supports a deeper cause: celebrating the vibrancy of what immigration has already brought to our country while also positively impacting today’s immigrants.  These are the two beating hearts to Immigrant Food: Bringing people around the table to celebrate immigrants through a successful restaurant group, while also creating an effective advocacy platform. Here’s how we’ve made them work in tandem and how other founders can think about bringing their beliefs into their business.We Worked With Experts Instead of Trying to Become the ExpertMy co-founders and I all bring different expertise to the table: Chef Enrique Limardo and Chef Mileyda Montezuma bring culinary traditions and a history of cooking at award-winning restaurants, Peter Schechter has a history as both running political campaigns all over the world and as a successful business leader, and I’ve worked in journalism, strategic communications on the policy side, and corporate social responsibility for large financial institutions. But, despite all being proud immigrants ourselves, none of us bring expertise in immigration policy or the most effective ways to solve the challenges immigrants face today. We are not in the trenches every day, providing housing, legal, and social services to immigrants. After all, we need to be dedicating our skill sets to building a successful restaurant and brand. So, rather than doing that work, we’ve aligned ourselves with immigration experts on policy, advocacy, and service. Early on, we decided we’d work with impact partners—five local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) who we felt were doing really powerful work to help immigrants—instead of trying to develop solutions ourselves. As we see it, they’re the real heroes, and we’re here to support them and make it easy for others to make a difference. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Immigrant Food (@immigrantfood) Our impact partners bring decades of experience on how to truly help immigrants. We also didn’t want to pretend to know what help these organizations needed. Instead, we’ve worked collaboratively to understand how we could have a real impact on their work. Some of our very first meetings were with our NGO partners, pen and paper in hand, listening to how they could benefit from business support. They told us they need more visibility, more volunteers, more resources, and more space to hold meetings and events. So, we looked for ways to support in those areas (more on that below). Instead of spreading ourselves too thin by trying to become the expert, we focused our efforts on building a stable company that creatively integrates organizations and local leaders who are already working on the cause.We Looked for What We Could Afford to GiveHaving worked with large companies during a time when the financial industry was going through a new wave of interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR), I knew that when I started my own business, I would look for creative ways to integrate a mission, rather than simply donate parts of proceeds once we hit a certain financial milestone. Don’t get me wrong, donating millions of dollars to a cause is surely helpful for non-profit organizations. But it was always our intention to start with the mission right away, not to introduce it once the business was up and running (and profitable). Especially as restaurants are an industry that runs on hyper-thin margins, we wanted to balance what we could afford to give and what our NGO partners needed so it would be sustainable growth. For instance, our impact partners told us they need space for meetings and events, so we looked for real estate that could support that. Offering these NGOs a room in one of our restaurants at prime locations at no costs for English classes, citizenship lectures, volunteer training, and board meetings saves these resource-strapped organizations tens of thousands of dollars. The NGOs also told us they need more volunteers, and we have more than 3,000 people a week coming in across our locations. To help get our guests involved, we created an “Engagement Menu” next to our food and drinks menus at each restaurant. Each week, our team finds five ways anyone can support immigrants and puts them on the menu, such as volunteering at one of our partner organizations, joining a march or event, or even just watching a movie or reading a book to learn more about an immigration issue. We have an internal team that works on finding these resources every week, and more than 100,000 people have scanned the QR code for this menu since our first restaurant opening.🧵Each week, we pull together 5 tangible ways you can engage with the #ImmigrantCommunity around you. In this week’s menu, you can help by listening to immigrant’s stories, celebrating the contributions of immigrants and more! This is your weekly #EngagementMenu:— Immigrant Food (@immigrantfooddc) May 15, 2022

We share our Engagement Menu on social, too, so everyone can get involved.Providing more visibility for these issues and experts on our platforms also became an obvious path forward: We needed to market the business anyway, so why not use this as an educational opportunity? There is so much misinformation out there on immigration, and we wanted to make a small contribution against it. Every month, we publish an online magazine called The Think Table, where we produce original content about immigration issues. Whether it’s about DREAMers, immigration courts, sanctuary cities, or voting rights, we create videos, social media posts, and columns that boil down a lot of information and make it easy to digest (sorry for the food metaphor!). This creates a deeper connection to our consumers, while giving a new platform to the smartest people working in immigration today. We also put on a lot of events with our partners, hosting them at our restaurants and educating the public on these important issues. All of this is incredibly valuable for getting their message out, with the side benefit of helping grow our brand. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Immigrant Food (@immigrantfood) My “Téa’s Coffee” videos are great social media content for us while also spreading important information about the mission.Recently, we also introduced a new initiative: #PlateitForward. It’s a way for people to help people by allowing restaurant guests to donate a bowl to feed someone in need. In 2020 and 2021, we have donated more than 25,000 bowls to our community. If we were just donating a portion of our profits, I can see how supporting our mission could have felt like a burden on our business at times—especially when things got tough, like during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. Instead, by finding the opportunities that naturally integrate into our day-to-day without putting too much of a strain on us, it’s always felt like a win-win for the cause and for our company.We Decided Standing For Our Beliefs Makes Us StrongerOne of the questions I get asked most often is whether we’re worried about losing customers because they don’t agree with what we believe in. The opposite is true. Standing strong behind our values has made our business more successful than if we tried to be everything for everyone. Sure, some people may decide not to come, but ultimately, we have a more dedicated community that feels passionate about dining with us. This is really evident in the fact that, during the pandemic, five of the eight restaurants on our block of Pennsylvania Avenue closed, but we were one of those that made it through (the others were large chains). I’m convinced the reason we were able to stay open was because of the mission: People kept coming back because they wanted to spend their money where their values are. (The fact that the food is delicious didn’t hurt, either.)There are so many surveys out there pointing to the fact that consumers want to support brands that take a stand about issues they care about, and we’ve really experienced that firsthand. Our managers are shocked by how often new customers walk in the door who are already deeply familiar with and invested in our brand, even though they’ve never eaten with us, because of the advocacy work we’re doing. If I haven’t already convinced you that a business can prioritize both money and mission, maybe this will do it: The two restaurants we opened most recently reached profitability in less than six months (which is very unusual in the restaurant industry, where this usually takes a year or more to turn a profit). I truly believe we were able to achieve financial success because we’ve created our own definition of corporate social responsibility, one that works for our business operations and for our ideals. Obviously, it feels good to know our business is doing well financially, but it feels even better to know we’re doing so while also helping immigrants succeed every day.

We’re humbled to announce that GetResponse won the Friendly Workspace 2022 award for efforts to create a harmonious and nurturing company culture.