Happy Fourth of July Weekend! I know I haven’t written a blog post in a while aside from these “roundups,” but I’ve got something in the works! In the meantime, here’s some of the articles I’ve been reading the past week.
And let’s be honest, I’ve been reading a lot this week, so a thousand apologies for the thousand links. On the other hand, it’s some good reading material for you for a long weekend! đÂ
Pardot
“Introducing Enhanced Social Posting” – Pardot
Pardot definitely is not meant to be your daily social media management tool. But their recent update to the tool makes Pardot one step closer to a one-stop shop.
Email Marketing
“8 B2B email marketing examples that deserve a trophy” – Emma
Some pretty amazing email marketing examples in here. The Caterpillar example is one that you don’t see every day from the construction industry.
“What is Emmet?” – Litmus
Emmet is an amazing tool for those who need to craft marketing emails on a regular basis. This isn’t Taxi for Email or anything like that. Emmet is meant to help you with the coding of your emails. Personally, I haven’t dug into it yet, but will definitely need to see how this could help my team.
“The Top 3 Items to Consider when Logging Pardot Emails in Salesforce” – Paul B. Fischer
Paul hits on something here that I come across daily with my company, how do you choose what’s important or not important for your reps to see in Salesforce. I think the best point made is regarding the visibility of the information in Salesforce. I may have to write a follow-up post to that end. Thanks, Paul!
“Marketing Automation Needs The Human Touch, Too” – GetResponse
The first of two posts from Kath Pay. This GetResponse post does a great job of reminding us that our marketing needs to be person-to-person, and not business-to-consumer or business-to-business.
“Email Marketing Should Become Customer Service” – Mediapost
A second post from Kath Pay. This one is near and dear to my heart, even if it’s short. Great customer service is great marketing. And the reverse is also true, great marketing should be about great customer service. To that end, Kath Pay stresses that we marketers need to respect the expectations of our customers and “must deliver the promises they make when a consumer signs up for the email program.”
“3 Ways the Job of Email Marketer Will Change by 2020âand How to Prepare” – Litmus
Some scary stuff in here if you or your company isn’t ready to change. If you are ready for change, some really fun stuff! I’ve been reading a bit about machine learning and email marketing, and this post from Chad White at Litmus brings up machine learning as one of the biggest changes coming to email marketing in the next 4 years.
“The Importance of Email List Building” – Social Fusion
Short and sweet article with some basic steps on how to build your email list, and how to properly nurture your list.
Marketing
“What You Need to Know About the Voice Search Revolution From Microsoftâs Purna Virji #MNSummit” – TopRank Blog
Fascinating! While I don’t focus much on search in my current role, as a consumer and techie it’s always fun to see where tech is heading.
People
I’m not necessarily going to write about each of these, but I love reading articles on how other people work. My favorite spot for that is “Ways We Work.” Be sure to hit that up!
“How the creative team at Favor works” – InvisionApp
“Ways We Work – Becky Simpson” – Ways We Work
“See Girl Work, Podcast Episode 12: In Conversation with Amandah Wood, Founder & Editor, Ways We Work” – See Girl Work
Politics
“Could Trump Be Nurturing the Next Hitler?” – History News Network
There’s a lot of hyperbole in politics, so it’s hard to sometimes decipher the crackpots from the conspiracists from the actual historians. I don’t know much about the history of the US prior to World War I, nor the history of Adolph Hitler, but to me, the theory presented here seems more plausible than Trump actually being the next Hitler.
“What the 1880s tell us about why the rich are moving to cities today” – Washington Post
“We have 80 years of essentially zero production of neighborhoods with these qualities,” Grant says. “Weâve spent the last 80 years building car-oriented suburbs. Then when the elites decide they want to go back into the city, thereâs not enough city to go around.”
I’m a huge Jane Jacobs and Richard Florida fan. Huge. One of my favorite memories of my first job out of college was getting to tape Richard Florida speak at Iowa State University. Awesome. So, whenever I read a great story about cities, how they’re built, how they’re designed (or not designed), and how people move, well, I eat it up like my dog eats peanut butter.
“What a real âBrexit Britainâ would look like” – Washington Post
A lot of noise these past few weeks about Brexit. While my personal stock portfolio has already jumped above pre-Brexit, there are several articles going around about the future. This is a fun little piece, not too based in reality, but fun nonetheless.
“The Blogger Who Saved the Economy” – The Atlantic
GREAT short documentary. On par with the writing of Michael Lewis. Wonderful.
The blog of the aforementioned blogger. Good stuff.
For Fun
“Yes, The Infield Shift Works. Probably.” – Fivethirtyeight.com
I love 538. Been reading since pre-Obama. They do great write-ups on sports as well (given they’re owned by ESPN these days, not the NY Times.) The Infield Shift is a weird aspect of baseball. Does it work? Is it baloney? Check it out.