Overwork

When snow accumulates on a rooftop, it builds up in huge, thick piles. If it snows enough, it makes the roof  start to look comically large. But at some point, the pile can't get any bigger. And just a bit more snow is all it takes to cause

Read it later

Now might not be the time to read that meaty 5,000 word op-ed, but it sure sounds like an interesting read. You can of course save this to your bookmarks, or with a purpose built "read it later" app like Instapaper or Pocket. But then something weird

Start copying Mailchimp

One of the biggest gripes I hear from new users of marketing automation systems is how hard it is to navigate their bizarre, counterintuitive interfaces. How even simple tasks are made more complicated or not even possible at all. It's fair criticism, especially when you look at polished,

Moving targets

No one listens to the safety message before their flight. So Virgin (and other copycats later) decided to shake up the boring old safety video with something unexpected and fun. But now "quirky safety videos" are the new normal. And now once again, no one listens to the

Don't let sunk costs hide

It should come as no surprise that an ops guy like myself loves a good system for organization. Wikis, notebooks, task lists-- I love building and optimizing systems for both productivity personally and within my team. But there comes a time when I come to recognize we've simply

RSS is back in style

If you find yourself frustrated with increasingly algorithm driven news feeds on your favorite social networks, you've got an alternative: RSS. It's relatively ancient by internet years, it's not trendy, and it's super predictable. And that's why I love it.

Personalization vs Privacy

Marketers are obsessed with personalization. It's heralded as the solution to standing out in the marketplace and earning the attention of your target audience. It's baked into nearly every piece of technology we use, and it's frequently pointed to when results are below expectations—

Plumbers and firefighters

As a consultant, I mostly worked on projects solving specific issues for my clients. Their lead scoring model was out of whack. Their CRM and their marketing automation platform weren't talking together properly. They needed a better way to nurture leads. They wanted a new lifecycle model to

Disagree and commit

There comes a time in marketing teams where the debate has to end. Where it's time for everyone to start rowing in the same direction on a campaign. When that moment happens might change from campaign to campaign, but that it needs to happen is a necessity. Yet

Fake Data

New York Magazine shared an interesting article on the fake internet.  The article has much deeper aims than just implications for marketing, but it's a worthwhile reminder that much of what we marketers obsessively track isn't all that close to reality. Much of the web'

Manipulative or best practice?

A recent Litmus article highlighted some of the some usual suspects in manipulative email marketing: passive aggressive opt in or opt out language, clickbait subject lines, etc. When read from the perspective of the subscriber, most of these are obviously annoying. But if you flip the perspective to that of

The flaws in perfect

I've been playing what is probably one of the most expensive video games ever made, Red Dead Redemption 2. Every detail of the game is painstakingly polished. It's hard sometimes to find the seams in the game and see it for the bundle of code that