Came across a “bug” with Salesforce Pardot yesterday while uploading new sales Users.
I’m writing this as a warning to other Pardot customers, and as a suggestion to Pardot.
Suggestions:
Change the User Import process to automatically dedupe existing Users.
Add functionality so that Salesforce Users are automatically synced to Pardot Users, including User Role.
Here’s the sitch:
I had a .csv of all of our Full License Salesforce.com Users that I needed to import to Pardot.
Pardot Users Menu Animation
Once I selected the .csv file in the import window, and matched the correct fields for import, I finished the process, and clicked “Confirm and Save.”
A couple minutes later, when I got the email saying the import was completed, something crazy happened.
I lost Admin access to Pardot.
Unbeknownst to me, when I imported the .csv file, I indicated that the User Role should be Sales. Because I didn’t indicate the User Role in the original .csv, Pardot used “Sales” for all imported Users.
Where the mistake happened.
You might ask yourself, if I saw that under User Role, I’m specifically warned, “If the Role field is not mapped, all users imported will be assigned this role.” why did I continue to import?
Because, earlier in the process, Pardot specifically notes “Any users who already exist within Pardot will be skipped during the import process.” So, I thought, this is not going to affect any current User in Pardot.
I was wrong.
It took several hours for Pardot Support to provide me access back to the account. For those several hours, our team had no Admin access to our Pardot account. Yikes!
Today, everything is resolved and back to normal.
Here’s what YOU can do to help:
If you’re a Pardot customer, click on both links below and “upvote” the two ideas for this situation (or related situations).
Let’s make it clear to Pardot and Salesforce that we need to see greater connectivity between the two systems at a default, and not as a higher-priced add-on.
Evan Selinger, a professor of philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology, is skeptical of outsourcing apps like Hello Alfred. He urges us to look at the bigger picture. Is it truly giving us more time or just the illusion of it? What do we lose when we stop doing the little things? (via PBS Newshour)
Tech-age butlers aren’t just for superheroes anymore – PBS Video
A year ago, an app like Hello Alfred would have been extremely attractive to my household. We were in the middle of trying out services like Plated,Hello Fresh, and Club W, hoping to avoid the doldrums of planning ahead and choice with the latest app.
PBS Newshour looked at Hello Alfred, a seeming clone of services like Taskrabbit, where you pay to have someone else take care of the less pleasant tasks in life. In a certain light, this is the natural progression of the “lifehacking” movement into the app world.
But what does lifehacking bring to our lives? What happens when we outsource our lives to Others?
Lifehacking is a larger symptom of the value our society places on doing more, on being busy. We value the illusion of living more than actually living.
1. “As a society, we are so overworked and so stressed out that we need to outsource as many tasks as possible.”
Description of Plated
“…so you can create great food with less effort.”
When we tried Plated, it was because we wanted to outsource tasks in our lives. We felt too busy to shop, too busy to plan ahead. When we came home, we didn’t want to think, so we found and paid someone else to think for us — Plated.
Plated is a great example of the current wave of “life outsourcing” because it’s stated aim, creating great food with less effort, is something that is attractive to many families.
My wife and I, however, learned some valuable lessons from Plated.
One, it’s great food. Two, you still have to cook it yourself. Three, it’s pretty damn easy to create great meals, you just have to have the right recipe and ingredients.
So, what happened? We learned to simplify our grocery shopping and meal planning and stopped using Plated. We did, because of financial necessity, what many other families do: build your week’s menu out of ingredients you can use in multiple ways for multiple meals.
We’ve simplified our breakfasts and lunches, so the only meal we need to plan for each week is dinner; everything else is pretty much on regular rotation – autopilot.
And the reason for this was the same reason why we chose to use Plated, to stop thinking and stressing over our meals. We now have a healthy balance of eating out, convenience foods/meals, and home-cooked dishes.
We still outsourced, but instead of using an app, we simplified the entire process instead.
2. “Silicon Valley is trying to disrupt friction in our lives. We should avoid friction.”
To me, this is one of the main theses of Silicon Valley and/or VC investment culture today:
Take a common pain point and create an app or service, providing your company recurring revenue to solve that pain point in a person’s life.
But why?
Why do I need to pay a subscription service for replacing my furnace filters? Really? Buy a six-pack, put them next to your furnace, create a monthly reminder on your phone. Done. And you know what? It costs a lot less than a subscription.
So many of these apps and services seem to be coastal phenomena, rather than actual game-changers; they address extremely local problems that make venture capitalists seem to think these coastal problems (and “solutions”) much far-reaching than they are in real life.
Once the real world evaluates the “solutions” that Silicon Valley proposes, more often than not, the solution fails. Only when the solution affects a larger population, or solves a “real” problem, can it truly succeed long term.
Laundry services as apps cannot scale. They merely switch out one solution for a complete copy, just with a prettier app (or app, period.) Wine subscription service? A swap for a visit to the local liquor store (or gas station, here in Iowa) would be warranted instead. Take any of these service-based apps, and you’ll find that the solution proposed doesn’t hold much of a candle to services already provided by society at-large.
3. “What kind of person do I become as I outsource more of my life?”
I thought this was the more intriguing question posed by the Newshour article, and one that I hadn’t fully thought about until coming upon the question.
The idea the question poses to me is the precursor to the feelings and emotions I now have towards services like Plated and Club W. If I were to outsource more and more decisions of my life, what do I have left?
Yes, I do like the utopian idea that the more I outsource, the more I can focus on what is “meaningful” in my life. Or the idea that the monetary value of my time outweighs my own time spent on menial tasks.
I can see the points and values of those arguments.
But, I think the Newshour article wants us to go deeper than that first level question. What I think we need to ask ourselves is this, “What creates meaning in our life?”
The goal of outsourcing tasks is to simplify.
I see two ways of accomplishing the goal of simplification.
One: Hire out.
Two: Cut out.
What our society tells us today is that we need to hire out, we need to be constantly and consistently doing more. We need to watch more television shows, then read the books those shows are based off, then read the blogs, be on Twitter, pick up our kids, cook meals, read bedtime stories, do laundry, walk the dog, pick up dog poo, clean the litter box, go to happy hour, work on a side business, write our blog, you name it.
Tired just reading that list, aren’t you? I am.
In the long run, hiring out, outsourcing, is worse than doing the task ourselves; outsourcing hides the real truth from us and from society.
We do too much. We are too busy.
4. “I don’t have to worry about <insert concern here> because <app or service> will take care of it.”
When does it stop? When do we stop outsourcing our lives and start living them? When we outsource our lives to apps and services that allow ourselves to ignore what happens in our lives, we lose a part of our humanity. That statement may seem a little too “pollyanna” for some, but please recognize that this comes from a family that has tried these apps and services.
There is no quick answer, no easy way to “not be busy.” An app, by itself, is not going to make your life easier. A service, by itself, is not going to make your life easier. What is going to make your life easier and seem less busy is to focus on the items of importance.
Frankly, our society is so preoccupied with quick fixes that we stop working towards a better future if the fix takes too much work. This preoccupation permeates our society all the way from the individual and family level, to the heights of corporate and political leadership. We’re looking for the quick buck, the quick solution to our problem, the diet pill, and so forth.
The easy solution?
Focus on living. Focus on life. Your family. Your friends. Your community.
Don’t live a Facebook life, or an Instagram life. Live your life.
He makes acrylic faces, copper body parts, printed circuit boards, and wiring, all by hand. It’s a perfect fusion of analog and digital technologies — a clock that displays hands to tell time, yet with guts that are completely digital.
There is a futuristic, extra-terrestrial feeling in his work. To see one of these glowing spheres floating in a dark room is like peering through a portal to another world, or like viewing something underneath a microscope.
Go and look at the photos of Rohde’s clocks. Maker Masterpieces.
The Rays will be the first team to install Kinatrax, a markerless motion-capture system, in their stadium, sources told Yahoo Sports. An announcement touting the move is expected Monday.
Would love the job of data-wrangling for KinaTrax. Article says there could be upwards 2 terabytes created per game. Wowzers.
Earlier this year I took 12 weeks’ leave from my company, Toms Shoes, to help my wife, Heather, care for our newborn son, Summit. It’s an experience I wish every new dad could have, but I realize how lucky I am.
So, from a non-parent, but hopeful future-parent, here goes:
1. Family is Number One.
Growing up, my family was only 4 people: my parents, my sister, and me. As an adult, I happily married into a much larger family – basically, the complete opposite of family dynamics I was used to having. Both families now give me the much needed perspective of how important it is to keep family close to you.
Our puppy, Belle, at less than 3 months.
In December, we welcomed Belle, a chocolate lab puppy, into our lives. She was only 7 weeks old at the time. Coincidently, my sister-in-law was also on leave with her new daughter. I remember both of us comiserating over our Facebook posts at 3AM. In our household, there were many restless nights, messy kennels, constant puppy barking, and plenty of cuddling. I think that sounds familiar for lots of parents.
But even with all of that love and newness, there was still something missing: time at home to bond and take care of the new puppy. I was very lucky to have an accommodating supervisor who allowed me to telecommute for 2-3 days and adjust my vacation time accordingly. That was a godsend for many reasons:
lowered my stress level,
exercised puppy,
trained the puppy, and
got work done at home.
Having a puppy (and now a new puppy again, recently), completely opened my eyes (and my mind/body) to the struggles of being welcoming parenthood to our lives.
Belle, the chocolate lab, waiting at the patio door.
2. Stay-at-Home-Dad
Why not?
My early professional career centered around women, literally. I worked with the Women’s Volleyball team at University of Northern Iowa. I interned with “To the Contrary,” a PBS program centering on women’s issues. I remember doing a story about stay-at-home dads, and telling my co-workers, “That would be the best job.”
Obviously, as I’ve grown up and seen my nephews and niece be born and grow, I realize there’s more to staying at home than what you see on television; it’s certainly not all roses. However, the impulse for more focus on family and family life continues to be there today.
Many anecdotal stories like that of Mycoskie, along with countless paternity leave studies from companies and Scandinavian countries alike show the incredible benefits paid paternity leave brings to both families and companies. [1][2][3]
Why not provide the opportunity for dads to have the same opportunity as women? Yes, this flips the normal argument, but it does beg the question: Why are men so important that they need to stay at work all the time? By not providing paid paternity leave, society continues to lessen the value of women in the professional world. [4]
Isn’t there more?
I’m certain there is a lot more to the argument for paid parental leave. But alas, I’m not a parent yet, nor am I familiar with the trials and tribulations that millions of new parents face every day. I hope that when I do get to face those obstacles, I can do so with my wife by my side, and with paid paternity leave giving our family the support we deserve.
Most of us have heard about “The 4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss at this point. If we haven’t, it probably means we’re not interested in working smarter, or we’ve been living under a rock or in a cave. Now, this post is not about creating a 4-hour work week. No, there’s been plenty written about that digitally and otherwise.
The study found that productivity per hour declines sharply when the workweek exceeds 50 hours, and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours that there’s no point in working any more. That’s right, people who work as much as 70 hours (or more) per week actually get the same amount done as people who work 55 hours.
To me, the most important part of the article is the idea of “Numero Uno comes first.” And definitely not in a selfish, “I am the most important person in the world, everything must bend to my will” Mussolini-type of “#1 comes first.” No, what I’m talking about is making sure that you and the most important parts of your life come first.
What are the aspects of your life you care most about?
Family
Friends
Hobby
Vacation
Experiences
These are some of the most important parts of my life, and they come first every day. Work, money, those are just tools to help us achieve what is truly important. The Quartz article does a good job of reminding us that success comes in many forms.
Funny how being successful at work means that we’re usually successful at home.
Stainless consciously calls to mind the realm of theoretical physics, with its references to the thought experiments of Albert Einstein. Magyar’s stationary camera aimed at a moving train bears echoes of Einstein’s hypothesis that “distant simultaneity”—the idea that two spatially separated events occur at the same time—is not absolute, but depends on the observer’s frame of reference.
Joshua Hammer‘s Einstein’s Camera is a terrific exposé on experimental photography. Einstein’s Camera paints the portrait of a man determined to explore his world, through travel, photography, and experimentation.
Magyar seems to be many things at once: a maker, a philosopher, an artist, a photographer, computer scientist, computer programmer, and mechanical engineer to name a few. He is, literally, a man on a multi-year, nay, multi-decade quest to find new ways of seeing the world around him.
Your competitors hope you keep saying about patterns found in consumer products "but this is B2B… that stuff doesn't apply here."
It's easy to say that certain tactics, strategies, or tools won't work for your business because you're B2B, B2G, or some other acronym.
It's important to remember, though, that your competitors are more than likely trying to figure out how to make it work for them. And one of your competitors will get it to work for them.
I got up early this morning to work on a post about misleading email content. Exciting, I know!
The thing was, I wasn't excited about it, at least not at 5:30am. And I wasn't excited about it LAST night when I sat down to work on the post then. What I do remember is the feeling of excitement when I first created the note in Evernote, the feeling of "Everyone needs to know about THIS."
That feeling wears off.
And then what do you do? If you're like me, when that feeling wears off, it's extremely difficult to get back into the "excitement phase" and bash out that post. You say, "I'll write it tomorrow night," or "It wasn't worth writing about anyway."
The thing is, though, that post may be worth writing. There may be another person out there who was thinking the same thing about that THING you were going to write about.
You're the kid who's afraid to raise his hand in class, thinking no one has that question, when in fact, you need to be the one who has the courage to ask the question for everyone else.
Just do it.
So, when it came to actually writing something this morning, I just wrote. I wrote for a good half-hour, just stream of consciousness pouring onto the screen of the iPad. The quiet taping on the screen, my dog curled up at my feet, and the soft "pitter-patter" of rain on the windows.
And you know what? It felt good. *REAL GOOD.*
What I learned this morning…
In our lives we get caught up in the idea of something so often that we forget to create that idea.
I loved the idea of a post about misleading email content. I loved the idea of sticking it to the company, publicly, that they screwed up. But I loved the idea more than the actual post. And I created this instead.
Hook the attention of your customer with the email subject line. That’s step number one of email marketing, right? One of best ways to do that is to provide something useful or helpful to your customer, and over my years of email marketing I feel that one of the best ways to do this is through a reminder of a free gift, coupon, or sale of an item that you’ve shown interest in. What you don’t want to do, however, is to use misleading and deceptive email subject lines!
Here’s one example of an email subject line gone bad.
I got an email from Snapfish the other day telling me I had “Free Product Credits” waiting, I was all over it! Open that email! Here’s what the email showed when I opened it:
Pretty good, right?!
Here’s the misleading part of the subject line
As intended, this email provided the needed incentive to go and create the new photo book I wanted to create, so I clicked on “Create free photo product” to see what I could create.
When the page loaded in the browser, however, I was sorely disappointed in what I found. Not only did the original email never tell me what the free credits were good for, the credits themselves were pretty lackluster.
Free 1-Month Video Subscription Trial
First hi-res photo FREE
Those were the two free credit offers. And mind you, that “hi-res photo” wasn’t a print or any physical product.
That’s it.
Don’t use deceptive subject lines. Period.
Was this a bait and switch? Not to the point where it harmed the customer or tricked me into buying something that I didn’t want, no. What Snapfish did do, however, was that Snapfish set high expectations for a premium reward. The body of the email shows three products, a calendar, a mug, and several photobooks. It’s easily assumed that the free product credits apply to a similar product. When the wool is removed from our eyes, however, we see that the product credits are for a trial and one free download of a photo we probably uploaded in the first place.
While I continue to order products from Snapfish, it’s examples like this that continue to show we have much to learn when it comes to marketing.
