Category: Marketing Automation

Terminology is everything. Marketing, Sales, Product, Service — virtually every function in a business relies on some common terminology to do their best work. One area where alignment on terminology is essential is goal setting.
Whether you use the OKR model, the KPI framework, the Golden Circle, or another methodology, everyone in the company should understand the difference between a goal and an objective. Without this shared knowledge, teams could risk wasting time on irrelevant activities, at best, or working against a common purpose, at worst.
“Goals” and “Objectives” often seem like two interchangeable phrases on the surface. “We have ambitious goals for 2019,” you might tell your marketing team, following up with, “Our objectives are aggressive but entirely possible.”
To make your strategy crystal clear and gain alignment, it’s vital that your employees are up-to-date on the two most-used terms when outlining your quarterly and yearly strategy.
Here, we’ll explain the difference between goals and objectives and discuss some of the most effective goal-setting frameworks used by marketing professionals today. You’ll also find measurement tactics to track your progress. By the end of this post, you can wave goodbye to ambiguity when it comes to your long-term and short-term marketing plans.

Goals are undoubtedly critical to your business’s success. Ultimately, your company’s goals should align with your vision and mission in order for employees to best guide their own actions and decisions.
For instance, let’s say this year your leadership team has outlined three broad goals for your company:

Create a more inclusive workplace culture
Grow international brand awareness
Increase customer retention by 40%

Great…now what?
Here’s where objectives come into play — objectives are essentially the measurable actions you can take to achieve your overall goals. Typically, you’d use the S.M.A.R.T. criteria to define and measure specific objectives.
Featured Resource: Free SMART Goal Template

Download this Template for Free
“Create a more inclusive workplace culture” is an admirable and important goal to have, but it’s vague and too broad to measure. Does “more inclusive” mean one diversity and inclusion panel discussion, or does it mean a 10% increase in women in leadership positions?
Ultimately, your objectives will help your employees understand exactly what you expect from them.
In another example, let’s say you inform your marketing department that your overall goal is to “grow international brand awareness”.
Now, when your social media marketing manager is crafting her quarterly video campaign, she’ll think to herself — Hmm. How can I increase international brand awareness?
She can cater her objectives to fit company goals, as well as her own personal vision. Perhaps she decides, “To demonstrate my success at increasing international brand awareness, my objectives for my video marketing campaign will be a) 10% of all form submissions come from outside the U.S., and b) an increase in engagement from Spanish-speaking Facebook fans by 5%.”
Your social media marketing manager can then use her unique objectives to measure whether or not she’s contributing to the larger company goal of increasing international brand awareness.
As you can see, objectives can be uniquely tailored to fit each departments’ needs, and allow for a large amount of autonomy. By instilling clear and firm company goals, you can feel confident that your employees are all working in the same direction, but taking largely different steps (e.g. objectives) to end up at the same finish line.

There’s one more term differentiation you need to know — objectives versus strategy.
Referencing our example above, let’s say your social media marketing manager decides one of her objectives will be “an increase in engagement from Spanish-speaking Facebook fans by 5%”.
This is aligned with your company’s goal to increase international brand awareness.
A strategy, then, tells your employee or team how she can accomplish her objectives. For instance, your social media marketing manager might decide to focus her paid efforts on Spanish-speaking countries, using Facebook’s location targeting features. Alternatively, maybe she decides to cultivate partnerships with international companies and posts videos in Spanish on Facebook specifically highlighting the work of those international organizations.
Both of these options are examples of strategies.
Her strategy might change over time. She might decide her paid efforts aren’t working, and try something else. Ultimately, however, her objective (increase engagement from Spanish-speaking Facebook fans by 5%) should remain the same.
Types of Goals
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to communicating goals. There are many things businesses want to measure, especially from a marketing perspective, so it’s important to have several types of goals to choose from when setting the course for the year ahead.
Time-Based Goals
The first type of goal that businesses use to set a strategic direction is the time-based goal. This goal type provides a high-level explanation for what teams or individuals should be striving toward within a certain timeframe. Time-based goals can be short-term or long-term depending on the needs of your organization.
Time-based goals help teams and individuals plan and execute urgent tasks. Some goals are time-sensitive and the primary outcome of achieving these types of goals is that they’re completed on time.
An example of a time-based goal might be “Increase revenue by 10% to qualify for the best-in-class awards ceremony in August.” Because the award’s ceremony has a fixed date and the action stated in the goal is a requirement of the ceremony, this goal should be time-bound to increase the likelihood of reaching it.
Outcome-Oriented Goals
Outcome-oriented goals are independent of a specific timeframe and typically outline what the business is aiming to achieve at some point in the future. The objectives for outcome-oriented goals provide more context around when this goal should be completed and how to measure the success of the goal.
For big picture changes, leadership transitions, and other types of major business milestones, outcome-oriented goals are used to communicate a new vision and era within a company. Objectives for this type of goal communicate actionable changes for employees, and therefore, pair well with process-oriented goals which we talk about next.
Process-Oriented Goals
If your business is aiming to set the direction for new workflows and processes, a process-oriented goal is the best choice. A process-oriented goal does not explain what outcome is being achieved. Instead, this goal type is prescriptive and explains what the team is responsible for doing in order to achieve an outcome.
Objectives that are process-oriented can provide the tactical guidance employees need to do their day-to-day work. This goal and objective type works well during transition periods where change management is underway in a company. Process-oriented goals may be short-term or even temporary because once they’ve been achieved, the new and improved processes can be put into action on a regular basis.
How to Measure Goals
Measurement is a key component of any S.M.A.R.T. goal, but how exactly do you measure one? There are a few ways to determine if your actions yielded the desired outcome of your goals. Let’s take a look at them below.
Ask a Closed-Ended Question
First, the simplest way to measure a goal is by asking whether or not you met it. If your goal was written clearly, this should be fairly simple. Process-oriented goals are the easiest to measure in this way because they’re usually yes or no answers.
For example, if your goal is to hold a quarterly alignment meeting between your department and another, you can answer “yes, the two teams had a quarterly alignment meeting” or “no, the quarterly alignment meeting didn’t happen.” For goals that weren’t met, be sure to note the reason why so that you can revisit the goal at your next planning session and determine if it’s worth trying again in the future.
Use a Points System
Multi-faceted goals can be difficult to measure, but if you have a guideline to follow when writing the goal, you can use that same guideline to measure it. For example, if your goal is to launch a new website by quarter three, you can split this goal into two measurable parts: the action and the deadline. If the team launches the website on time, the goal can be measured by awarding it two points — one for the action, and one for completing the action on time. If the website was launched late, the goal can be measured by awarding it only one point for completing the action and none for the deadline.
The points system should be specific to your organization and align with a larger measurement system that is connected to performance or revenue. Don’t forget to communicate the points system before you begin planning goals so that everyone is aware of how the goals will be measured.
Follow a Rubric
Qualitative goals and goals without strict deadlines are difficult to measure because there are fewer numbers involved. In this case, you may find a rubric system useful when measuring these types of goals. With a rubric, you’ll have an opportunity to evaluate the context surrounding the goal and adjust the way it is measured.
For instance, your team was working toward a process-oriented goal that, unfortunately, didn’t make the process easier. Instead, the team has reported longer workflows and more bottlenecks than they had before. In this case, a rubric can help determine what you expected the outcome of this goal to be and document what actually happened in order to report this goal as unsuccessful.
How to Measure Objectives
Because objectives are more specific than goals, they’re more straightforward to measure. To measure objectives, you can use one of the following concepts.
Measure Attainment
Most objectives will feature quantitative data like units, numbers, and figures. This means you can measure the progress you’ve made toward the outcome you expected to achieve.
Let’s say your team wanted to generate 500 leads from a marketing campaign, and they managed to get 475. The attainment of that original 500-lead goal is 95%.
(475/500*100) = 95% Goal Attainment
As with any measurement, your organization can determine what is below average, average, and exceptional attainment which may differ by team or department.
Measure Qualitative Data with Surveys
For objectives that aim to change behavior or are affected by people in another way, quantitative measurements may not tell the full story of whether or not you met your objective. Surveys, focus groups, and other behavior measurements can provide the data you need to measure success.
In HR functions, the team may want to improve employee satisfaction within the sales team. There isn’t a sole quantitative metric that can be used to measure this objective. Surveys like the eNPS can be a great way to measure a shift in culture that leads to changes in the company culture.
Measure Past Performance vs. Current Performance
Can you name a company that doesn’t want to improve its brand awareness? Neither can I. This is one of the most common objectives to measure on marketing teams, but it’s also one of the most difficult to measure. Everyone tracks it differently, so how do you know for sure if you’re measuring it correctly? How do you know if someone is aware of your brand now compared to a month ago without asking every single person in your target audience?
For objectives like this that hold valuable insight, you’ll have to get creative and define your own metrics to measure. In this example about brand awareness, one way to measure it is by comparing how many direct searches or branded search terms you’re receiving now compared to a point in time in the past. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it is constant — that means you’ll have a fixed number to compare against. As long as your stakeholders agree on what metrics and numbers to compare, you’ll find that measuring these types of objectives isn’t so hard after all.
Examples of Goals and Objectives
Scenario 1: A Milestone Goal
Goal: Open a new company HQ in Phoenix, AZ by Q4.
Objective: Obtain all licensing and permit documents by Q2.
In order to open a new HQ, you’ll need to do a lot of planning before Q4 to achieve the goal. Objectives will help keep you on track so that every step of the way is accounted for.
How to Measure a Milestone Goal
To measure the goal and objective in this example, you can use either the “closed-ended question” framework or the “points” framework. Did you open the new HQ? If so, you’ve met the goal according to the “closed-ended question” measurement. Did you open the new HQ on time? If not, award yourself one point for completing the activity and zero points for completing it late.
By the end of Q4, each objective will have been built upon one another to reach the overall goal of opening the new HQ.
Scenario 2: A Growth Goal
Goal: Increase company market share by 10%.
Objective: Grow customer base by 22% month-over-month for the next 12 months.
We see that the goal and the objective are dependent on one another, and one way to grow market share is to acquire new customers.
How to Measure a Growth Goal
Because this goal is high-level and slightly vague, you may try to measure it by itself using the “closed-ended question” framework, but I’d suggest you don’t — here’s why. A goal like this can be affected by several other factors that aren’t outlined in your objectives. Those factors may even be outside of your organization’s control.
When Popeye’s launched its chicken sandwich campaign, it didn’t expect to gain market share in the chicken sandwich category so quickly. Due to factors outside of its control, the company met its goal, but that success probably had little to do with the objectives the company originally set to achieve that goal. While it’s not a bad thing that the company achieved its goal, it’s important that your objectives explain why that goal was achieved.
Measuring the objective in this example using the attainment framework will not only give your stakeholders an idea of how closely you met the goal due to activities within your control, it’ll highlight any factors that affected your goal but weren’t included as objectives. This will inform your team on what to include during the next goal planning session.
Scenario 3: A Quantitative Goal
Goal: Reduce donut cost by 18% in the next five years.
Objective: Switch to a lower-cost sugar provider in the next six months.
The goal in this example is outcome-based and time-based while the objective is process-oriented. The goal and objective are closely related to one another, but the two will need to be assessed differently in order to measure success.
How to Measure a Quantitative Goal
Use the attainment framework to measure the goal and the past vs. present metric for the objective. As each objective focuses on lowering the cost of the materials that make up the product referenced in the goal, the closer you’ll be to achieving the goal. Therefore, you’ll want to make sure to compare the new vendor’s price of sugar, in this case, to the previous vendor’s price. At the five-year mark, use measure attainment to the goal of 18% to determine if you met or exceeded the goal.
Set Effective Goals and Objectives For Your Team This Quarter
Goals and objectives are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes in business. Using the same language to describe the direction and progress within your organization will keep everyone on the same page and working toward the same outcome.
Although these two terms have specific definitions, don’t get too caught up in the semantics — remember the most important part of goal-setting is getting the work done and showing results. If you’re not sure where to start, we’ve got you covered. Download the free marketing goal-setting template below to get your team moving in the right direction.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

So I just learned how to use it, I’m the only one in our country’s branch that has an account and the ones in other countries aren’t responding. I have local admin permissions. I’m trying to add some contacts but I’m getting an error that says “E-mail is already in use” when trying to add a new contact manually. I tried to add it by uploading but it doesn’t work. Thing is, I’ve searched for that email address and it’s not in the database. I cannot add it to a segment and I cannot figure out what I’m supposed to do. Help?
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👋Hi r/MarketingAutomation Here’s a blog post I wrote a while ago, hope you find it relevant and useful. Data Science in Marketing – Case Studies from Airbnb, Lyft, Doordash Drawing from official engineering blogs of several well known companies, it’s a summary of data science approaches to online marketing. The article gives an overview of marketing automation systems, campaign performance measures, and algorithms for bidding optimization. It’s somewhat technical (data-sciency) at some places, but I hope general points are not obscured by technical details.
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Seven. Improved resources and new links You may also want to consider adding new links to better resources while you are updating your old content. Experts, statistics, infographics, events, and breaking news are all sources of content research, according to Crazy Egg. Links to new content can be added to old content as you review it. You added a lot of value to your article by introducing new resources that weren’t available when you first wrote it. Additionally, Google sees a much higher value in your content. You can create a more valuable resource that way, as outbound links play a key role in ranking. You’ll get more traction with Google if you link to the best content online. You will become the information hub for others rather than simply linking to those resources. As a final step, link to your own resources in your content. You should link to any recent articles you’ve written on related topics. Additionally, make sure your current call to action is still relevant to the content you’ve updated. Your blog posts can be revived and ranked highly in Google by including fresh resources and in-depth content. Creating new content or updating old ones is the best way to increase search engine traffic without wasting time or resources. The eighth point. Rankings can be improved by including multimedia By adding different kinds of media to your website, you can greatly improve your search engine rankings. New content that comes with different types of images and audio or video is given special privilege as the content online becomes more diverse. Depending on your preferences, you may wish to use a variety of types. You can see how you can add media to your posts in this illustration from Salesforce. Every 350 words or so, it would be wise to include an image. This makes the content easier to read and skim. (I actually aim to include an image for every 100 words.) All images should be linked back to their original content. By indicating where an image comes from, others are better able to identify it. In addition to viewing the images, the application lets you locate updated pieces more easily. By searching sites such as StumbleUpon for graphics that are sure to grab attention, you can easily find interesting images online if you have difficulty creating them yourself. You can use this method to make your content attractive without spending a lot of time on it. Utilizing new types of media will improve Google’s search engine results and make your content more engaging. P.S. My goal is to help provide the best information I can. I do not participate in spam an always look to improve. If this was any help please feel free to join our newsletter for all up to date content. Join here
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Email marketing is always evolving, but the events of 2020 have created more change in the marketing landscape than usual. It’s up to marketers to respond accordingly.
Let’s take a look at the email marketing goals you should plan for in 2021.
5 email marketing goals to build trust with subscribers in 2021
The upheaval of 2020 means that it’s time to get back to solid foundations with our audiences. Rather than focusing on a single vanity metric to improve, we’re recommending a holistic look at your audience and marketing strategies to end 2021 with a strong, engaged list of brand evangelists.
1. Know where you stand
How can you know what you should improve if you don’t know your own numbers? Rather than looking to external experts to tell you which metrics to focus on this year, do a deep dive into your numbers from last year and compare them to the averages in your industry. This will give you a clear idea of where you stand and where you should put your focus for growth in 2021.
In 2020, we analyzed hundreds of emails across the globe and across different industries. Here are the averages overall:
Average open rate: 18.0%
Average click-through rate: 2.6%
Average click-to-open rate: 14.1%
Average unsubscribe rate: 0.1%
Are any of your metrics significantly lower than the average? If so, that’s where you should start your planning for the rest of the year.
2. Optimize send time
Improving your subject lines will only go so far if you’re sending emails at a time when the majority of your subscribers aren’t online. Picking the wrong day of the week to send your newsletter could lead to it being buried by the dozens of other emails people received in between the time they received yours and the time they checked their inbox.
That’s why one of the foundational goals for 2021 is to optimize your send time. Like always, you should test different send days and determine which day is best for your audience.
But on average, we found that Fridays are the best day to send email newsletters and Saturdays are the worst.
3. Don’t use tricks
In 2020, we saw the rise of ethical marketing tactics. This suggests that consumers are tired of feeling manipulated by less-than-transparent marketing.
In your email marketing, it’s time to eliminate any tactic aimed to capture email addresses without conscious consent and instead embrace full transparency.
At Campaign Monitor, we don’t automatically check an email list opt-in checkbox and expect customers to uncheck the box if they don’t want to join our list. Instead, we leave it unchecked and invite customers to check the box if they do want to join our list.
Additionally, we also use a double opt-in. Subscribers have to click a “Confirm” button in an email before they are added to our list.
Finally, we have an easy-to-find preference center, where subscribers can decide which types of emails (or none at all) they want to receive.
This avoids any confusion and ensures that everyone who opts-in has consciously and enthusiastically wanted to.

4. Keep your list clean
Cleaning your list is the process of deleting inactive subscribers.
This foundational practice benefits your email marketing strategy overall because it ensures that your metrics are accurate, rather than weighed down by subscribers who never even see your emails. This way, you can make informed decisions about how well your campaigns are improving and what to adjust for better results.
To keep your list clean, we recommend first running a re-engagement campaign to see which inactive subscribers may want to stay on your list. Those who don’t re-engage can be bulk-deleted from your list using our new bulk-delete feature.
Animoto sent this re-engagement email to inactive subscribers:

Source
5. Honor diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments
Many companies renewed or initiated diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments in 2020 as a response to acts of systemic racial injustice. This year is a good time to ensure your marketing is honoring those commitments, including your email marketing. 
Last year, it was reported that as much as 54% of people don’t feel they are represented culturally in online marketing. 
So, double-check your emails. Are your visuals representative of all people (including POC, LGBTQIA, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z, and people with disabilities)? Are you avoiding assumptive language and stereotypes?
Wrap up
In 2020, marketers were simply trying to keep up with everything going on in the world. It may have been challenging to track metrics and keep commitments to 2020 goals that were made before the onset of the pandemic. 
Now, in 2021, it’s a good time to slow down and focus on email marketing goals that will help your brand stay relevant no matter what’s going on in the world.
The post What Your Email Marketing Goals Should Look Like in 2021 appeared first on Campaign Monitor.

Big Idea or Enduring Question: How do you configure a record link dynamically in Flow? Can I create a dynamic clickable link in Salesforce Flow that can be used with a Screen element – one of the most common questions that gets asked quite often!  There are various ways to
The post Getting Started with Salesforce Flow – Part 68 (Configure a Record Link Dynamically in Flow) appeared first on Automation Champion.

As Matt Blumberg puts it, “Reaching the inbox isn’t your goal, engaging subscribers is.” And sending mass, generic emails aren’t going to get you there. To keep subscribers engaged, you have to send personalized emails that feel like messages between friends. It all starts with email segmentation.  This article covers what email segmentation is and…
The post Email Segmentation 101: What it is and How to Put it in Practice appeared first on Benchmark Email.

I have a full-time agency job but want to start freelancing on the side. Made a fiver account, what other sites are good for getting work and building my portfolio?
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