Wrike Wins the Red Herring Top 100 Global Company Award
This year, Wrike project management software has been awarded as one of the Red Herring Top 100 Global Companies! Out of 1,800 successful and highly eligible companies, the Red Herring editorial team deployed a detailed process to drill-down the best companies first to 200 finalists, then to the top 100 winners of this global award. “We were so pleased to announce Wrike as a Red Herring Top 100 Global Company,” commented Red Herring publisher Alex Vieux. “Wrike has proven to be a company excelling in their industry and its ripples have turned into waves. It was difficult for us to narrow down, but we are pleased to have included Wrike in our list of promising companies. We look forward to the changes it make to its industry in the future.”
Cook Storage Uses Wrike To Prevent Order Delays For Hundreds Of Customers
Cook Storage offers the highest quality self-storage facilities and space planning in the U.S. and Canada. Wrike helps the firm keep track of tasks in many areas from finance to facility maintenance. John Gabaldon, managing partner of Cook Storage, says, “To me, the real beauty and powerful concept of Wrike is enabling us to monitor and modify the progression of work and tasks from inception to completion. That's really simple and at the same time really powerful. Wrike helps me to control the process, and it lets our team collaborate. Our miscommunication rate has dramatically decreased." Since Wrike is Web-based, John's team can contribute to their tasks not only from their workplaces, but from home as well. This is particularly helpful, since the business is distributed among several locations and time zones. For hundreds of customers, no delays occur, thanks to the simplicity and agility of Wrike. Read the full story “Transparency of projects brings smooth collaboration.”
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14 Essential Books for Content Marketers
Whether you’re just starting out in content marketing, or you're a veteran looking for a few new tricks, add these 14 titles to your bookshelf for a shot of inspiration, a review of the fundamentals or some information on marketing tools to add to your arsenal. Content Marketing Basics 1. Epic Content Marketing: How to Tell a Different Story, Break through the Clutter, and Win More Customers by Marketing Less (2013)From Joe Pulizzi, head of Content Marketing Institute, this book is the perfect primer on all things content marketing. Pulizzi explains why good content is essential for attracting customers, and takes readers through the process of curating and creating effective content. 2. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, eBooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business (2012)CCO at MarketingProfs, Entrepreneur columnist, and keynote speaker Ann Handley offers tips to find your company’s unique voice, discover which topics resonate with your customers, and get the most out of social media. She covers all kinds of content, from podcasts and webinars to eBooks and blog posts, and presents concrete strategies for producing each. 3. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video, Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly (4th ed., 2013)Online Marketing strategist David Meerman Scott wrote nearly 400 pages of advice on developing your brand's reputation and authority online. He covers case studies and real-world examples of companies with successful content marketing strategies (and a few examples of what not to do), plus platform-specific tips for social media sites like Google Plus, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 4. Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand (2011)“Be a publisher.” “Engage your customers.” You may know the core principles of content marketing, but how do you actually do them? Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi (again!) offer a practical 12-step guide to building a content engine, from developing a personal strategy to finding the right distribution channels. Writing Tips 5. Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (2014)Another bestseller from Ann Handley, this book includes best practices, tips for reluctant writers, and a “Things Marketers Write” section with guidance on 17 kinds of content that marketers are most often asked to create. 6. How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times (2013)In the age of microblogs, Tweets, and status updates, marketers need to be convincing and concise. Pick up a copy of writing professor Roy Peter Clark's book for a guide to crafting compelling headlines, Tweets, blog posts, and more. Social & SEO 7. Social Media Explained: Untangling the World’s Most Misunderstood Business Trend (2014)Social media consultant Mark Schaefer dives into the psychology and sociology behind social media. He not only explains why you should be doing social media marketing, he helps you formulate a real plan of attack. Each chapter ends with a series of questions to help you apply the book’s principles and create your own social media strategy. 8. Big Book of Content Marketing: Use Strategies and SEO Tactics to Build Return-Oriented KPIs for Your Brand's Content (2013)SEO pro Andreas Ramos teaches readers how to boost content marketing results with effective SEO strategies. He also covers a range of distribution strategies, and outlines key metrics to analyze your success and make improvements. 9. Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing (2012)Lee Odden gives his top tips on how to combine SEO and social media with content marketing to make your content marketing efforts more effective. Learn how to plan a content strategy that will get the best results for your company, and measure the business value of every effort. Getting Your Content to Stand Out 10. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World (2013)It’s not enough to develop high-quality content — it must be placed in the right context in order to grab your target audience’s attention and spread to new potential customers. Social media and brand building expert Gary Vaynerchuk teaches you how to create content tailored to succeed on social media. If a “jab” is a touchpoint, and a “right hook” is the knockout punch that’s sure to convert, Vaynerchuk shows the best combination of jabs and hooks to nurture leads and win new business. 11. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2006)This classic from renowned psychologist Dr. Robert Cialdini gives a peek into the psychology of persuasion. Learn what drives people to say “yes” — and how to use principles like social proof and perceived scarcity to create effective CTAs that get audiences to take the next step. Absolutely essential for email marketers! 12. The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One (2013)Brand strategist and award-winning business blogger Bernadette Jiwa explains how to tell your brand’s story and establish powerful emotional connections with your target audience. Pick up a copy to learn how to differentiate your brand from competitors and earn the loyalty of your customers. Creating Visual Content 13. The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to Use Visuals, Videos, and Social Media to Market Your Brand (2014)As the average attention span continues to shrink, visual content is becoming more and more important for grabbing and holding your customers’ attention. Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Giolio outline strategies for the best marketing videos, infographics, Slideshare presentations, and other visual media. 14. Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don't Work (2011)Sometimes words just aren’t enough. Explaining complex concepts, making ideas memorable, and snagging your audience’s attention needs the perfect visual. Dan Roam's book shows you how to liven up your content and engage your audience through visual media. What are your content marketing must-reads? Even in an industry that changes quicker than you can turn the page, these books will keep your marketing skills sharp! What content marketing books have you read? Share your recommendations in the comments! And if you're looking for more great reads, check out these 5 Best Project Management Books for Beginners and Accidental Project Managers and 15 Books Every Manager Should Read.
How to Optimize Client Projects With Performance Management Tools
A good performance management process plays a big role in the success of individual projects. Find out how to measure project performance and learn why performance management tools can boost your projects today.
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18 Top Networking Sites for Startup Founders (Infographic)
If you're founding a startup, networking isn’t optional. It’s your lifeline. Entrepreneurs need support from all sorts of people — partners, investors, customers and employees — but most importantly, they need to tap into great communities to make those connections in the first place. We found 18 thriving networking sites especially for entrepreneurs to help you find advice, capital, co-founders, or just have some fun! Find the best sites for you in our latest infographic: Share this infographic on your site with this embed code: Wrike Project Management Software Read Next: • The Ultimate List of Legal Resources for Startups • 7 Ways to Fund Your Startup (Infographic) • Top 10 Reasons Startups Fail (Infographic)
44 Productivity Hacks to Turn Procrastination Into Action
If your to-do list is like mine — longer than the Great Wall of China — you’re probably desperate for productivity tips and shortcuts to help you squeeze a few more hours out of every day. Since we’re all about boosting productivity here at Wrike, we’ve compiled a compendium of productivity hacks to help you zip through your to-do list in record time. Without further ado: Focus 1. Unplug. Put your phone on airplane mode or Do Not Disturb (or use an Android app like Shush). Black out background browser tabs and notifications with an extension like StayFocusd, and mute your email with Inbox Pause for Gmail. 2. Tidy up. Did you know that the average worker spends 76 hours every year looking for lost stuff? Cleaning up your work area lets your mind focus. 3. Write distractions down. Free up some brain space by taking note of every reminder and distraction that pops in your head. It'll silence that nagging "I'm forgetting something..." feeling and let you focus on the task at hand. 4. Read/watch later. Use Pocket or the Wrike Chrome extension to save interesting links and videos that would ordinarily trigger a marathon link surfing session. 5. Take a hike. Periodic breaks refresh your brain, so go for a walk to boost creativity, sharpen your focus, and brighten your mood. 6. Change your scenery. Work from a coffee shop, library, or your backyard to improve focus and creativity without any office distractions. 7. Be healthy. Losing just 1.5 hours of sleep reduces alertness by 32%, and avoiding junk food can raise your productivity 20%. Exercise helps you better handle stress, makes you more alert, and gives you more mental energy. 8. Get comfy. An office that's too chilly or too warm (outside the 70-77 degree range) lessens productivity by 5%. The pleasant smell of lemons improves focus and reduces errors 54%. And sitting by a window keeps you focused 15% longer. 9. Go green. Houseplants improve creativity by 45% and overall wellbeing by 47%, while sharpening focus and concentration. 10. Grab some headphones. Listening to ambient music or white noise improves focus 35%. 11. Practice meditation. It teaches your brain to tune out distractions and focus longer. Even 5 minutes a day can have an impact! 12. Say "Awww!" Looking at pictures of cute baby animals or photos of nature increases your attention span and memory. Want to improve collaboration on your team? Start a 2 week trial of Wrike today! Save Time 13. Quit meetings. If you can't cut them completely, keep them to short stand-ups, or make at least one whole day a week meeting-free. 14. Say no. You can't do everything! Just make sure you say no the right way: “I don’t” is more effective than “I can’t”. 15. Delegate whenever possible. You've got a slew of talented teammates around you, so use them! Just don't dump tedious busywork on them — make sure every task you and your team take on is truly worthwhile. 16. De-clutter your inbox. Unroll.me compiles all your newsletters and subscriptions into a single daily digest. 17. Track your time. RescueTime shows how many minutes you spend using various applications. By productivity tracking, you'll get an accurate picture of your daily work habits and discover where you can improve. 18. Quit Facebook (partially). Move everyone from your “friends" list to "acquaintances" — you'll still get the important updates, but you'll spend less time scrolling through quiz results and food photos in your newsfeed. 19. Automate! Create standard email responses to common inquiries, set your browser to automatically open your favorite tabs, set up an RSS feed to monitor essential news outlets and use Zapier or IFTTT to automate other routine tasks. 20. Batch similar tasks. You'll get in the zone and power through several items in less time. 21. Quit typing. Try speech dictation software to get your thoughts down faster, or record new ideas and communications on the go. 22. Keep a "Stop Doing" list. It'll help you watch out for and eliminate the fruitless time sucks from your day. 23. Stop multitasking. Not only is it less efficient, it drops your IQ 10 points. That means more mistakes, which you'll only have to go back and correct... wasting even more precious time. Prioritize 24. Try the “Must, Should, Want” method. You identify three tasks that will help you accomplish your immediate and long-term goals, plus keep you from burning out. 25. Don't check your email first thing each morning. Instead, spend the first hour or two of each day tackling high-priority items. Too often emails derail our plans for the day, and what we intended to do gets pushed off or lost in the shuffle. 26. Do that ONE thing. Ask yourself: "If I could only get ONE thing done today, what would it be?" Do that first. 27. Pick 3 "Most Important" tasks. Write them on a Post-It, and keep it within sight all day long. 28. Prune your to-do list. If it can’t be done only by you and it's not important enough to delegate, rethink whether it's really worth doing at all. Don't waste time on unproductive tasks! 29. Do creative work first. Take advantage of a fresh brain and leave paperwork, meetings, and follow-up tasks for later. 30. Be picky about the work you accept. Write down your mission (or company's mission) in one concrete sentence, whether that’s “Build useful software” or “Bake beautiful wedding cakes.” Will that task help you achieve your mission? Only take it on if the answer is a firm “yes!” 31. Write tomorrow's to-do list tonight. List 3 items to jumpstart your day with a sense of purpose. And make at least one of those items something fun to get your day started on the right foot. 32. Use Stephen Covey's prioritization matrix to sort tasks. Important & Urgent at the top, then Important but Not Urgent, followed by Urgent but Not Important and finally Not Urgent and Not Important. 33. Ask yourself 5 questions: Does this get me closer to my goal? Is it important to my boss? Does it make me money? Does it make my life easier? Does it have to be done today? Sort your list based on the # of yeses. Get Motivated 34. Break big tasks into bite-sized pieces. This should kill your procrastination. Or, commit to working on a big project for just 30 minutes, and then stop. 30 minutes a day can add up to significant progress pretty quick! 35. Try David Allen's two-minute rule. If it takes less than two minutes, do it now. Yes, right now. Checking small items off your to-do list boosts motivation. 36. "Eat the frog." You know those big tasks you always dread? Crossing one off first thing in the day gives you a sense of accomplishment and makes you motivated to get even more done. 37. Find your “biological prime time.” This is the magic hour where your energy, focus and motivation align at a high point. Schedule your most important tasks for that window. 38. Make progress visible. Check off tasks or keep an anti-to do list (see #38). It’s easy to lose motivation when you feel like a hamster running on its wheel, going nowhere. Celebrate your successes! 39. Create an “Anti-todo list.” Keep from getting down on yourself for not completing your planned to-dos by keeping a running list of all the stuff you did get done. 40. “Don't break the chain.” Mark each day you accomplish an important task with an X on your calendar, and watch the chain grow. Then don’t break the chain! 41. Start a StickK contract. Name your task or goal, give yourself a set amount of time, and then put up some cash as stakes (optional). If you achieve your goal, you keep your money. If not, it goes to charity. 42. Strike a power pose. Think Wonder Woman or Superman — wide feet, hands on hips, chest out, chin up. The right body language can boost confidence, lower stress, and help you get "in the zone." 43. Eat some chocolate. You'll get a rush of dopamine, a hormone that boosts motivation. Chocolate also releases chemicals that promote calm and stimulate your brain, perfect for buckling down and getting things done. 44. Be happy! A good mood makes you 12% more productive, so joke with a colleague, watch a funny cat video, or chat with a friend. With these productivity tips bookmarked or pinned to your wall, your list of accomplishments will be more impressive than ever. Get Work Done - 17 Workplace Productivity Hacks from Wrike Related Reads:• 10 Encouraging Productivity Proverbs for Your Office Wall• How to Create Productive Work Habits (Slideshare)• 8 Lessons in Increased Productivity from Wrike Customers• 10 Free Productivity Apps for Getting Things Done
Email Management: 10 Clever Tricks to Hit Inbox Zero
For those of us staring down hundreds of unread emails each morning, the concept of inbox zero can start sounding like a mythical achievement — like finding the Holy Grail or stumbling across buried treasure. We look at our colleagues who regularly achieve it with a mix of envy and suspicion: there must be some kind of sorcery involved, right? Give these 10 tips and techniques a try to not only accomplish inbox zero, but actually stay there. No magic required. Trick 1: Use Tony Hsieh’s Yesterbox technique. The basic idea is this: today, you only read and respond to yesterday’s emails. The vast majority of emails don't require an immediate, same-day response, so you can let today's new messages come in without being distracted or distressed by every one. And tomorrow when you get up, you’ll already know exactly how many messages you have to get through and can more accurately plan your day. Zappos CEO Hsieh says he’s actually more responsive with this approach: everyone gets a reply the day after, instead of a week, month, or... never. Obviously, legitimately urgent emails can be addressed today — but true email emergencies are a pretty rare occurrence. Hsieh’s Pro Tip: If you’re using Outlook, just collapse your “Today” section to stay focused on yesterday’s messages. Read more details here: http://yesterbox.com/ Want a tool to help improve your productivity? Start your free Wrike trial today! Trick 2: Apply the 2-minute rule. Take a cue from David Allen’s GTD method: if it'll take you less than two minutes to reply, do it now. Don't wait! Trick 3: Schedule a meeting with your inbox. Set aside time each day to go through your email, whether it’s one hour-long chunk mid-morning, or three 20-minute check-ins at the beginning, middle, and end of the day. Then don’t look at your email any other time. Don’t keep it open in a browser tab, lurking in the background as you work. Turn off notifications. You may even be away from your desk at the time you choose, but as long as you are aware of how to access your messages, like, for example, how to access Outlook work email from home, you'll be fine. By dedicating scheduled time to your inbox, it won’t be on the back of your mind all day long, but you'll still stay on top of your messages. Wish you knew the best time to check your email? This article says that the best time to clean out your inbox is two hours after you’ve started working. Trick 4: Try Unroll.me. This app consolidates all your email subscriptions and newsletters into a single daily digest. Instead of dozens of daily emails to sort through, you have one. It’s easy to unsubscribe from lists en masse, and since you can quickly scan all the offers and updates in one message, you get through your "junk" mail that much faster. If you follow a lot of blogs via email, consider using an RSS reader like Feedly or Inoreader to monitor them instead of clogging up your inbox. Trick 5: Reschedule your emails. Install Boomerang for Gmail to schedule emails to reappear at a set time. It’s great for messages that require some research before a response, and for batching similar to-dos together. Say you’ve got a job posting up and emails from potential candidates are streaming in. You routinely sort through new resumes on Friday mornings. So reschedule every email from job seekers to show up in your inbox Friday am. They won’t be sitting in your inbox, distracting you or weighing on your mind, but you’ll still get them done and clear them out. Trick 6: Don’t be afraid to delete. If it’s that important, someone will follow up with you. So if there’s even a question about whether you need to keep the email, just delete it. Your trash bin will typically save deleted emails for 30 days, so if you deleted something by accident, you can always retrieve it. But trust us: 99% of the time you won't need to. Trick 7: Modify your Out-of-Office message. Vacations are great, but returning to a terrifying number of new emails can be really depressing, and can take forever to dig your way out of. Even worse is neglecting your work-life balance by figuring out how to access my work email from home. Replace the boilerplate out-of-office message with this: "I’m out of the office from 11/10-11/18 and won’t see your message. Please resend your email after 11/18.” Then filter all incoming messages straight to the trash while you’re gone. If it’s important and the deadline hasn’t passed, they’ll get back to you — and you’ll come home to a clean inbox. Trick 8: Put all your action items in Wrike. Move your to-dos out of your inbox and into your workspace with the rest of your tasks. Wrike’s Outlook/Apple Mail add-ins and Gmail gadget quickly turn emails into tasks, so you can clean out your inbox and actually get to work on to-dos instead of letting them languish in inbox purgatory. You’ll benefit from better organization, and manageable email. Trick 9: Move conversations out of your inbox. Keep your inbox uncluttered by limiting the amount of email you generate. Prevent a chain of email responses by stepping away from the laptop and holding conversations face-to-face, picking up the phone, or sending an instant message. Trick 10: Play the Email Game. The above tips will help you stay at inbox zero, but how do you clear the current mountain of unread emails to get there in the first place? Cleaning out your inbox doesn’t have to be a chore — make it fun! The Email Game gives you a set amount of time to act on each email: reply, forward, label, archive, delete, or skip to look at later. Collect points for beating the timer, which is set according to the length of each email. After you’ve powered through a batch of messages, you’ll get a status report showing how much time you saved and your rank on the leaderboard. Just try not to get addicted to beating your high score! "Inbox Zero" means zero time wasted in your inbox. Did you know that the real definition of Inbox Zero, as originally coined by Merlin Mann, doesn’t actually have anything to do with your number of unread emails? It’s the amount of your attention that’s preoccupied by email, the extent to which your inbox weighs on your mind. Yes, having zero emails in your inbox is one way to do that, but it’s not the only way. So don’t get down on yourself if you don't hit this productivity benchmark every day — or at all. The real achievement is in figuring out a system that works for you, so email doesn’t rule your life. Give these tricks a try, and be sure to let us know how it goes! Wrike can help you organize and manage all your to-dos and reminders. Start a free trial today and make your inbox a more productive place.
Google for Work Q&A: FootSteps Marketing
FootSteps Marketing — a digital marketing agency that specializes in providing websites and services to retailers in the hardware, outdoor, or archery industries — took time to share their experience using the integrations between Wrike and Google for Work. Their main focus as a company is partnering with larger organizations to provide affordable marketing solutions for their members and retailers, so they need the right tools in place to help their team work efficiently. This how Google for Work and Wrike have helped them reach success: 1. Tell us about your team and the role it plays in your company. Our initial need for Wrike stemmed from our Marketing Services (MS) department. They work as an external digital marketing agency for many retailers. Currently, we have 5 people on the production team for the MS department. Day-to-day, this team creates email marketing campaigns, social media posts and campaigns, and website landing pages. They also update websites on behalf of our clients. There is a high level of interaction that has to take place between them, as well as a high volume of tasks that need to be filtered through the team. 2. What were the goals that led you to connect Wrike and Google for Work? We work with many retailers in hardware, the outdoor industry, etc., and much of the content we use is repeated in our campaigns. Since not all of our clients participate in the same promotions at the same time, we needed a system that would allow us to keep track of a large volume of similar tasks. Due to the crossover, we needed the ability to segment our tasks by activity, and mass-edit tasks (such as rescheduling, etc.). All of our marketing requests are sent to us via email, so the Wrike Gmail gadget was a critical feature for us to efficiently get these requests into a tasking system. 3. How have Wrike and Google for Work helped your team reach its goals? Since implementing Wrike + Google Apps, we've become much more efficient in our workflows. The ability to create tasks directly from email is the biggest time-saver. To make work easier to track, we have now created a digital marketing plan template for our clients to make selections. Their selections are sent to us in a spreadsheet, which we then directly import into Wrike, rather than manually logging every marketing plan (as we did before). Our web development team is also able to use Wrike to keep track of our web development whiteboard, completely eliminating our prior system of passing around a document. This helps with efficiency, as everything for our teams can be kept in one place. 4. What improvements have you seen since implementing Wrike + Google for Work? Our overall collaboration, organization, and management of tasks has improved drastically. Wrike and Google Apps have helped each department gain transparency into other departments, alleviating the need for more emails or lengthy discussions. Share your story in the comments. How are you using Wrike + Google for Work to gain transparency into your projects? If you're a lover of Wrike + Google for Work, join our Wrike Google Apps Partner Program. You can learn everything you need to know about the program here.
5 Tips to Make Collaborative Problem Solving Work for Your Team
By taking on collaborative problem solving with clear goals, leaders are more likely to discover smart, creative solutions to help the team progress in its mission. Here are 5 tips that can make the difference in coming up with powerful, collaborative problem solving techniques that work for your unique projects.
5 Practical Tips on Making Virtual Collaboration Efficient
My post about The Secret Ingredients of a Successful Distributed Team turned out to be quite popular, so I decided to follow up on it by sharing a slide deck I recently presented to the Information Management Forum members (IMF). I was invited to speak about virtual teams, as well as how companies can easily overcome challenges connected with their set up. The presentation has 5 practical tips on how to manage remote team more efficiently. The list is not complete, and there’s always room for more! I hope to extend this list in a future post with your help. Easy and Effective Remote Collaboration What secrets of organizing a successful virtual team can you share? Please share your thoughts in the post comments.
Improvements in User Interface: Fields for Sorting
The value of columns is always displayed now. Previously, this value was hidden to give you more space for the list of tasks. However, many users asked us to make this more visible. Now you can see at once by which status, responsible party, due date your tasks are sorted. I think the sorting interface is very convenient now, isn't it? As for sorting by the due date, you can choose three options: display tasks that are due on the exact date, earlier or a later date. For this, you choose the sign: = < or > accordingly. If you want to work on all tasks that are due before your vacations, on February 28, you can do that easily. You choose the sign < and the due date: February 28. Moreover, we added the ability to search tasks by their names within the concrete folder. You simply type the part of title and wait 2 seconds. The tasks that contain this combination of letters are shown. Then you can combine filtering criteria as before. This feature might be very useful if the only thing that you remember about the task is some keyword in the title. Works very well.
Why Your Marketing and Creative Teams Can't Get Along (Infographic)
Marketers: Do you bang your head against the wall after receiving yet another "final” design that completely disregards the creative brief and your feedback on previous iterations? Designers: Have you ever strained a muscle rolling your eyes at marketers who leave vague feedback or stretch the original scope of the project? Marketing and creative teams must work closely together simply due to the nature of their work. But working side-by-side, day-by-day doesn't automatically mean those teams have a strong collaborative relationship. Like any relationship, it takes commitment to nurture and maintain. Take heart, however, if you're on either of these teams and struggling to work well with the other. A few simple tweaks to your communication style can make all the difference. As this infographic reveals, most of the major sticking points between marketers and creatives boil down to poor communication: Fewer than 40% of marketers say design teams follow the creative brief or ask questions to clarify expectations. 70% of marketers say their creative team doesn’t follow a transparent process, so marketers are left in the dark until the final product is delivered. Fewer than 30% of creatives agree that marketers give useful and timely feedback. However, 46% of marketers say they do. Fewer than 23% of creatives think marketers brief new projects clearly. Source: Visually Moving forward as a team With a more mindful approach to communication and a little honest self-reflection, marketing and creative teams can start working together to achieve better results — in less time and with fewer headaches. The right collaboration tool can also go a long way in improving communication and transparency, and achieving productive integrated marketing communications. For help finding the right software solution for your team, check out Wrike for Marketers.
