Wrike's API Helps a Marketing Team Create Custom Reports Automatically
Northcutt’s team of inbound marketing experts takes care of several simultaneous projects for each of its multiple clients. No wonder they need to collect and analyze large amounts of data on a daily basis. But fortunately, Wrike's API made marketing efficiency much easier for them! Before adopting Wrike, Northcutt used Base?amp without much success. According to Corey Northcutt, the team’s project manager, it seemed to slow the team down even more, instead of making it easier to work on several ongoing projects at the same time. What the team was looking for was an easy way to track the status of each campaign and to report on the progress to the clients easily. Now, with Wrike’s help, they have a complete overview of tasks in the pipeline for each client. But the main key to success turned out to be Wrike’s API, which saved them more than five hours of work per week on creating reports. Since the team needed to get detailed information on the progress in each area of work, Wrike’s API helped them to retrieve this data from each folder automatically. Here are more details of how they achieved such great results. Pulling custom data with Wrike’s API. First, Corey Northcutt created folders to indicate each area of inbound marketing: Building external links, creating social media content, website optimization, etc. The integration they built with Wrike’s API automatically pulls the data from each folder into the special Google Drive spreadsheets. By looking at the spreadsheets, the project manager instantly sees the number of tasks assigned to each team member in each area of work, as well as the percentage of completed goals and the number of days left until the end of the current project. There are separate tables for active, backlogged, completed and deferred tasks. Whenever the task is updated in Wrike, the new data automatically gets updated in the corresponding table cell. Since the updates are collected in real time, team members are always sure that the table data is up-to-date. This way, Northcutt's team creates detailed and accurate monthly reports for clients much faster than ever. Additionally, Corey Northcutt set up custom widgets with tasks of each stage on his dashboard. As a result, with every login, Corey Northcutt instantly sees all current marketing initiatives at each stage and the people who are responsible for them. If some of the assignments become overdue, they are highlighted in red at the top of the list, so it's easy to quickly track them and adjust the deadlines appropriately. What about your team? Have you considered using Wrike’s API to integrate it with your favorite tools and optimize your work? Then let us know in comments! “Wrike succeeded at simplifying some of our really complex problems. It allowed me to manage tasks via simple task lists and a Gantt chart while letting all the complex organization happen in our reports. We also now use the Wrike API to help generate our monthly digest summaries for reporting, which is a better alternative than paying for a solution that wasted someone's time by forcing them to manually re-compile data by hand each month.” —Corey Northcutt, CEO at Northcutt
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The History of the Word 'Hack' (Infographic)
Odds are, the word hack immediately brings to mind either cybercrime and stolen passwords or tech shortcuts and everyday timesavers. But did you know the word's history stretches far back into the middle ages, centuries before computers and the internet? It first appears as early as the year 1200, meaning "to cut roughly, with chopping blows." So how did a word that originated with hewing down trees become so entwined with modern tech? Discover the fascinating history in our latest infographic: Share this infographic on your own site by copying and pasting this embed code: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Read next: Origin of the Hashtag in Social Media (Infographic)
SayitRight Marketing Solutions Use Wrike To Manage Busy Marketing Office
Do you manage various projects for numerous clients? Do your projects imply a lot of time communicating with clients? Are you tired of e-mail mess in your inbox? SayitRight Marketing Solutions solved those problems with the help of Wrike. “No matter how many projects are active or on hold at the moment, Wrike lets me keep my fingers on the pulse of the business and see where we stand. Since the progress and requirements are tracked, there is no ground for miscommunication. Kudos, Wrike!” says Joseph Andrade, the owner of SayitRight. Read the full story “Seamless collaboration saves time and enhances working process.”
7 Secrets of the Best Marketing Operations Teams
By Lynn Hunsaker and Gary Katz, President/CEO and Chairman/Chief Strategy Officer, respectively, of Marketing Operations Partners Value creation is the ultimate measure of success in business: value to customers, shareholders, alliances, employees, and the community at-large. In the quest to be best, follow the money, or better yet, be the one that enables value (money, capability, opportunity) to be created. Marketing Operations is a role that can facilitate the whole marketing department responsibilities in value creation. Here are 7 secrets for success: 1. Know which side your bread is buttered on It’s a fact of life that you get ahead faster when you cater to whoever holds the purse strings. For Marketing, that’s first and foremost your customers. If your marketing is out of sync with content, timing, and methods that customers prefer, there’s not much point. Always start with WHO. This applies not only to messaging, but also to your strategic plans, tactical plans, process designs, people, tools, performance measurement – really, everything that Marketing does. This analysis and management of stakeholder needs is also known as ecosystem. 2. Set your CMO up for success Going hand-in-hand with the big picture of the ecosystem, the next layer in the bread-buttering hierarchy is enterprise objectives. Your CMO will be successful to the extent that the C-team perceives strong fit and contribution to their strategic goals. This is the WHY of the Marketing organization. You can align everything in Marketing with what the C-suite cares about by using a technique called cascading objectives. It’s the logical starting point for all marketing plans and performance monitoring. This orientation is the basis for your Marketing strategy. 3. Be a strategic enabler Someone needs to ensure the strategy comes to life, and that’s you. See yourself as a facilitator of Marketing’s success. Standards and oversight to help all marketers achieve enterprise goals are the WHAT of your role. It’s not about bureaucracy, but rather, connecting dots between strategy and execution, connecting people, connecting diverse data, and connecting interdependent processes. This is also known as governance or guidance. 4. Formalize the methods to your madness Process diagrams and procedures go a long way in accelerating necessities like onboarding, minimizing duplication of resources and effort across geographies and lines of business, and maintaining know-how when key persons depart. This is the HOW for your delivery of the why and the what for the who. Everyone’s work methods in Marketing comprise processes. 5. Remember: What gets measured gets done Help every Marketing sub-function select metrics that monitor early signals in their work. Typically, metrics are focused at the extremes of the spectrum: click-throughs (activity) and revenue (outcome). Don’t confuse outputs of a process to be early signals. These are junctures within a group’s work that signify potential re-work or scrap, or otherwise, potential successful outputs and outcomes. This is the SO WHAT? of everything Marketing does. By monitoring early signals before stakeholders can see outputs and outcomes, marketers are empowered to make adjustments that are efficient and effective. Measurement of progress is commonly known as metrics. 6. Prevent accelerators from becoming imploders Technology is intended to be an accelerator of everything. Select technology per who, why, how, what, and so what. When it’s selected in a vacuum, or without a firm understanding of the preceding, technology often derails strategy. Rushing to technology prematurely typically requires people and processes to bend in ways that aren’t sustainable. Conversations are taken over by what’s needed by the technology, instead of what’s needed for strategic opportunities. Make technology choices wisely to ensure Marketing’s strategic impact. 7. Ensure the horse is before the cart The combination of processes, metrics, and technology forms Marketing’s infrastructure: the vehicle to get from point A to point Z. This is the means for all the moving parts to function as intended. Remember that who, why, and how – ecosystem, strategy, and guidance – inform the necessary characteristics of infrastructure. The seven secrets of the best Marketing Operations teams fit together as shown in this framework.Notice the flow beginning with the ecosystem. Metrics, especially early signals, indicate what needs to be adjusted in every component of the framework. In our benchmark study, Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity, this framework represented the secrets of the best Marketing Operations teams, and is your path to value creation. It’s the lifeblood of your enterprise. In turn, it’s the ultimate measure of your success. These seven secrets can take root in your Marketing organization readily through our new Marketing Future Forum, which allows you to personalize these ideas to your business, access them on-demand in half-hour bites, and share them across your marketing organization. Join our Leap Day announcement webcast to learn how you can ready your Marketing organization for the future. Register now at http://ow.ly/YDCV1 Author Bios: Gary Katz, Chairman/Chief Strategy Officer and Lynn Hunsaker, President/CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, an organization that aims to transform marketing organizations as a value center via Accountability, Alignment, and Agility.
Anatomy of the Perfect Blog Post (Infographic)
Blogging may seem like one of the easier ways to market your product or your service, but if you’ve ever found yourself staring down a blank page, you know it’s not as simple as it looks. There are many factors that go into a successful post, from length, imagery, subheads, social sharing messages, and much more. Whether you need help getting started with this special type of content marketing, or just want an easy way to keep track of blogging best practices, iSpionage has the perfect cheat sheet. The infographic below includes all the details you need to write an article that’s sure to attract and engage your audience, from a gripping headline and hook to the perfect call-to-action — and everything in between. Infographic by iSpionage Further Reading: 4 Ways to Arm Your Team for Content Marketing Success How to Use Wrike for Content Planning 10 Elements of a Successful Content Marketing “Engine” (Infographic)
Marketing Operations: A Primer on the Fastest Growing Role in Business
For businesses looking to stretch their marketing dollars, marketing operations is a hot topic. In order to keep up with the current speed of business, organizations need to leverage technology and gain insight into customer needs and business performance. And while marketing operations has quickly become the fastest-growing role in business, there are still plenty of questions surrounding this relatively new field: What is marketing operations, and why bother with it? How does it fit into the broader marketing discipline? Is there a conflict between operations management vs marketing? And what strategies can businesses use to improve their marketing campaign results? What is Marketing Operations? First things first: what is the role of marketing operations? A typical marketing operations director or coordinator has many responsibilities, including measuring and evaluating marketing performance, strategic planning, budgeting, developing and improving the overall marketing process, selecting and implementing marketing technologies, and providing professional development for the marketing team. So the operations and marketing relationship is really that of a partnership. Marketing ops focuses on behind-the-scenes activity to ensure processes are running smoothly and campaigns reach their goals. Digital marketing operations may be a relatively new field, but its beginnings can be traced back to the 1920s. This infographic shows its evolution, and growing importance to various marketing disciplines: Popular Marketing Operations Tools As with any branch of the marketing world, there are a zillion options when it comes to marketing operations software. In fact, in his annual Marketing Technology Landscape super graphic, Scott Brinker of chiefmartec.com identified a whopping 3,874 marketing technology solutions. If you want to zoom in for a better look at the landscape, you can view a hi-res version here: 2016 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (PDF) To save you some time looking through thousands of tools, we've rounded up some of the most popular software used by today's marketing operations managers: Kissmetrics: Build customer funnels and sort website visitors into groups based on common actions and triggers so you can understand how potential customers are engaging with your site. Unbounce: Use A/B testing to discover which features, website elements, or marketing messages are most successful when it comes to eliciting a desired response from potential customers. Hubspot: Analyze and improve landing pages and forms to collect the right information from potential customers and automatically plug them into the appropriate nurture tracks. Clicktale: Heat maps track website visitors’ mouse movements, clicks, and scrolling to determine which parts of your site they’re paying the most attention to — and what’s being overlooked. SEM Rush: See top organic keywords, keyword rank, and search volume for keywords that are driving organic traffic to your competitors’ websites, and discover opportunities for gaining ground. Wrike: Give your teams a collaboration and work management tool for organizing incoming requests, delegating tasks, and tracking project progress and results. Get 10 more must-have marketing operations tools, plus details on the metrics you should track, here: Marketing Ops Tech & Tools for a Customer-Centric Organization Marketing Operations Strategies Most bad marketing decisions come down to one simple mistake: not having the right information about your target audience. This is where marketing operations strategies become an essential ingredient to marketing (and business) success. A common myth about marketing operations is that it’s all about crunching numbers and automating processes. In fact, a good marketing operations analyst has the skills to interpret a mess of numbers and fill in those knowledge gaps. They use their data-driven insights to help the marketing team improve customer experience and boost engagement. Marketing operations also focuses on improving processes and cross-team collaboration. By coordinating the various arms of the marketing organizational structure and product management roles, marketing operations management can connect the dots between strategy and execution. They can ensure that inbound and outbound campaign messaging is aligned, content managers are on the same page as the Lead Gen team, and all efforts line up with the CMO’s priorities and business objectives. Ultimately, marketing operations works to combine processes, metrics, and technology to support the entire marketing organization. For more marketing ops strategies, both the CEO and the Chief Strategy Officer of Marketing Operations Partners give their best tips here: 7 Secrets of the Best Marketing Operations Teams The Future of Marketing Operations In an effort to make their marketing efforts more efficient and effective, more and more companies are turning to marketing operations. And in turn, marketing operations teams are focusing on a central goal: value creation — for customers, employees, and business owners alike. This focus will continue to make marketing operations a global discipline used by successful organizations worldwide. The Road to Successful Marketing Operations By Diederik Martens from MarTech Conference Ready to Get Started with Marketing Operations? If you think your company needs a full-fledged marketing operations department in order to have effective marketing operations, think again. You can improve your marketing operations today, with resources you likely already have. Radius provides advice on identifying someone within your current marketing team that would be a good fit for taking on some marketing operations responsibilities, Emmsphere explains how you can improve your current marketing operations processes without spending a dime, and industry leaders offer 10 suggestions for marketing operations success.
11 "Internet of Things" Startups to Watch (Infographic)
It's poised to become the largest device market in the world. One research group estimates that by 2019, it will be more than double the size of the smartphone, PC, tablet, connected car, and wearable markets combined. Samsung even pledged a funding pool of more than $100 million for startups that want to help build the South Korean manufacturer's vision of an entirely open ecosystem for these Net-enabled devices, so that they all speak the same language. We're talking about the Internet of Things (IoT) — a term referring to consumer devices, appliances, and services that connect to networks to send and receive data. When you use your mobile device to access a remote wifi security camera you've installed in your home, you're using IoT. Brands like Nest thermostats and Dropcam wifi cameras (both now acquired by Google), or Jawbone and the entire wearable devices industry are IoT. And there are several hundred more companies in the space. We took a look at eight of the hottest, most interesting, most buzzed-about IoT startups, plus 3 established brands to compile this infographic of companies we think will make it big in 2015. Like our infographic? Share it easily using our embed code: Infographic brought to you byWrike Do you agree with our predictions? Or are there other IoT startups you feel are more poised for success this year? Hit the comments and speak your mind.
How to Automate Marketing Project Creation with Duplication
It's Friday afternoon and a new project has just landed in your lap: a new banner for SXSW must be submitted by Tuesday, and yet you're still dealing with your backlog of work from this week. To get the banner done quickly, you'll probably have to copy and paste all the information from the tasks you used in the most recent banner project, right? Wrong. With Wrike you have the power of templates and duplication at your fingertips. What are Templates, and Why Use Duplication? Quick Recap: Templates are easily duplicable projects that include all attachments, tasks and subtasks, text descriptions, assignees, time durations, and work dependancies — all of which can be included or removed. If you find yourself constantly repeating the same multi-step projects over and over, then you will greatly benefit from creating a batch of project templates. This will mean you can easily pop into your 'Templates' folder in Wrike, bring up the banner design template, and quickly duplicate it for your 11th-hour project. Beyond mere speed and convenience, templates also help your team be thorough in your work. Using an existing, tested template ensures you don't accidentally overlook crucial steps which could have led to delays, errors, revisions, and general confusion (e.g. who is working on which part of the process). Easy Duplication Using Project Templates in Wrike Here's the step-by-step process for quickly duplicating projects from templates: FIND IT: Head into your template folder in Wrike and find the "Banner design template" folder/project that your team created in the past. DUPLICATE IT: Right click on the "Banner design template" folder/project and choose "Duplicate." With Wrike's latest update, you can immediately select the destination folder for your duplicated project. CUSTOMIZE IT: Name your duplicated project (e.g. "SXSW Banner Design"), and specify the appropriate prefix to include before the name of every task and subtask (e.g. "SXSW"). Prefixes will help you create Reports or Dashboards, and they'll keep your work organized and concise — instead of creating an ambiguous "Design draft 1" task every time you duplicate, using your prefix you'll create "SXSW - Design draft 1" for easy identification. You can also specify whether you want to copy tasks with or without their descriptions, attachments, assignees, custom fields' values, and more. Once created, the new project will be highlighted within your folder tree. Learn more about creating project templates in Wrike Check out our blog post for more info on creating and duplicating project templates in Wrike. And as always, if you have any questions feel free to get in touch with our Support team.
Marketing Agencies: Are You Showing Your Clients the Love?
True story: my colleague was preparing a launch video for one of Silicon Valley's tech giants, and when they were 90% done, their project manager finally showed the clients the almost-complete version of the final deliverable. The clients said they hated it. It wasn't what they wanted. Change it or else. The marketing management was a disaster on so many levels: the team wasted time working on something the clients didn't want, the project manager failed the team by waiting until the 11th hour to ask for client feedback, and the clients waited for something they could've easily outsourced to a different, more communicative agency. As it stood, the team was able to pull some last-minute all-nighters to get the video up to the client's standards. But it was a close call. And yet, this is a situation that is all too common in any creative services organization. So how can a marketing agency manage client expectations better, and avoid such stressful situations? The simplest answer: nurture your client relationship like you would a sweetheart. Here are 3 ways to treat your clients like your sweetheart (and win big in your clients' eyes). 1. Get to Know Them How do relationships start? You get to know the other person. You go out on a date and find out what movies he likes, what hobbies she's into, what he's all about, what values she believes in. If you ever hope to serve your client to the best of your ability, then you have to know what motivates them and what they hope to accomplish. That means investing time to meet your clients face to face, take them outside of the office for drinks, and discover why they do what they do. Insights like these will help you understand where they're coming from when they ask for revisions to your project, or if you get into difficult standoffs about project direction. 2. Communicate Constantly We all know relationships don't work without constant communication. You have to call/text/Snapchat your better half, tell her you miss her, and talk about your day so that you can stay involved in each other's lives, even when you're apart. Managing clients properly means seeking client feedback early and often. You collaborate with your client in an ongoing process to produce something you and the client can both be proud of. By keeping them in the loop you avoid surprises, and you feel like you've accomplished something together as opposed to handing off a completed project as part of a one-sided relationship. By proactively sharing status updates with a project management tool like Wrike, you can also head off persistent “checking in” messages. Clients see how a project is developing at every stage, can look in on progress whenever they want, and are able to give you their insight as needed. This transparent communication will reassure your client. 3. Give Them Something They Want When birthdays and holidays come around and you want to give a gift to proclaim your love, do you give something cheap and generic? Absolutely not. You have to find out what he really wants and then to the best of your ability (and budget) you get it customized with his name, or find something that’s just the right look. Managing a client’s expectations is the same. Ideally your marketing project will have a clearly defined scope and a list of very specific deliverables that the clients have agreed upon. Your job as an agency is to deliver exactly what they want — on time and under budget. Solicit client feedback early and often so slight adjustments can be made throughout the process. The end result should be a deliverable that's exactly what they were looking for. Show your appreciation this Valentine's Day With Valentine's Day just around the corner, take this opportunity to express your appreciation for your clients' business. But more than that, take the appropriate steps to make the relationship work long-term. That means excellent communication skills and excellent service. Read Next:Project Manager from Hell [Slideshare]4 Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Stakeholders
65 Essential Tools for Digital Marketers
Marketers are a busy bunch. Every day they manage a slew of projects, campaigns, and clients, all while coordinating efforts with other teams and immediately reacting to change. The right tools can make a marketer's life a lot easier, but with the overwhelming number of options, where do you start? Take a look at our list of top marketing tools and marketing project management software that will help you build leads, opportunities, and revenue. Inbound & Content Marketing Inbound & content marketers work to attract, nurture, inform, and entertain potential customers to earn their business and loyalty. They examine how today’s consumers make buying decisions and place helpful, interesting content at each stage of that process. Hubspot's inbound marketing platform Up Close & Persona to help generate marketing personas A/B testing tools like Optimizely to analyze and tweak your current inbound strategy Google Analytics to examine where your traffic is coming from and how customers are interacting with your website Content discovery tools like ContentGems, Scoop.it, Triberr, or Trapit Collaboration tools like Wrike for brainstorming, writing, peer editing, and task delegation Online publication tools like Paper.li, Flipboard or Kuratur to organize and distribute your content Disqus to respond to readers who comment on your blog Tools to help recruit and recognize brand advocates, like Influitive Graphics & Multimedia Did you know that YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network? As the content landscape grows increasingly crowded, more marketers are turning to engaging visuals and videos to grab customers' fleeting attention and stand out from the competition. Video platforms like Brightcove or Vidyard Webinar platform like GoToMeeting or BrightTALK Piktochart to create infographics Canva to make instant graphics for web or print Slideshare, List.ly, YouTube, and Pinterest accounts for distributing and curating content AdWords for Video and YouTube TrueView for creating video ads Search Engine Marketing & SEO Search engine marketers increase a site’s visibility in search results pages, either through search engine optimization (SEO) or paid advertising. SEO experts determine the top keywords that people are searching for about your topic or market and then include those keywords in strategic spots on the website and blog. Google Keyword Planner to find top keywords, as well as long-tail and niche keywords Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing Ads to post ads on search results pages, blogs and websites Optimization, reporting and link building tools like Moz, Raven SEO Tools or SEMRush Social Media Marketing & Social Advertising Social media networks help marketers increase brand awareness, engage with customers, and direct traffic to the company website. Marketers package and post updates readers will want to share, manage online communities, and run paid advertising campaigns to reach new customers. Social media accounts or pages on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. for sharing internal and curated content Sprout, Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule social media posts, determine the best times to publish, and discover the most popular types of posts Followerwonk breaks down followers into specific demographics Mention and Social Mention track where brands — or certain keywords — get mentioned across the web, including social media sites, discussion forums, and blogs NinjaOutreach identifies influencers based on keyword. Filter by tags to find bloggers, influencers, and companies to refine your search Sprinklr or SocialBakers analytics tools to determine click-through rates, cost-per-click, and overall reach and engagement Viral Content Buzz account to share stories that interest you, and earn tweets and likes on your own content Mobile Marketing Mobile is overtaking desktop internet usage, as more customers are defaulting to digesting content on smartphones and tablets. And because people carry their devices with them, marketers can send personalized messages directly to them via SMS, push notifications, in-app ads, QR codes, and more. Digital Advertising Alliance Principles to check opt-in and privacy guidelines MailChimp Mobile to manage your MailChimp email campaigns while on the go Mogreet Express or Textus.biz to exchange SMS messages with customers Mobile ad creation and distribution tools, like Huzzah Media and Adagogo Location-specific mobile marketing tools like MobSav and Thumbvista Mobile app creation and testing tools, like BuildFire and TestFlight Email Marketing & Marketing Automation 82% of consumers open marketing emails, and 66% of them have made a purchase as a direct result of an email. In order to attain that success, email marketers must send helpful, relevant messages to recipients and respect customers’ inboxes by not sending spammy emails. AWeber, MailChimp and Constant Contact are popular tools to manage email marketing Hubspot, Marketo, ExactTarget, Eloqua, and Customer.io are marketing automation tools to help with email campaigns as well as other marketing channels MailChimp's subject line suggestion tool to refine your all-important subject line copy Email Spam Test checks to make sure messages are compliant with applicable SPAM laws See how the email looks on various clients and devices with Litmus The marketing landscape is constantly shifting as new strategies and tools arise. Stay ahead of the curve with these 6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch.
The Ultimate Creative Process Checklist
Creativity is no mystery, rather it is a series of stages. This ultimate creative process checklist is a step-by-step procedure for engaging in creative work. And is based on the 4 stages of the creative process outlined by English social psychologist Graham Wallas, namely: preparation, incubation, illumination, & verification.
10 Skills Required for Great Digital Marketers (Infographic)
"Great men are not born great, they grow great." —Mario Puzo, The Godfather Being a great digital marketer is partially intuition and the ability to speak the language of your audience; but a larger part is continually studying and learning new skills to make sure your marketing team is evolving at an equal pace with the ever-changing digital world. Below are 10 skills you need today to go above and beyond in digital marketing. Take a look, and see what you can improve. Follow a project management methodology Understand SEO best practices Communicate with technical staff and upper management Be able to create or provide direction on creating a digital marketing strategy Understand email marketing best practices Manage your marketing staff and the costs incurred to provide the best outcomes Evaluate your social media options Be able to continually provide business justification of your projects Understand Google Analytics to interpret and communicate data, metrics and marketing analytics Know and drive the entire team toward your project goals Source: Premium IT Solutions What else does it take to be great at digital marketing? If you've worked with great marketers, or you've honed your own skills year after year, share your wisdom in the comments. What does a great digital marketer need these days?
