Pete Schott

Before a few days ago I had no idea who Nicholas Negroponte was. 

Tonight I attended his session titled “Beyond Digital,” held by the LongNow Foundation, which hosts monthly seminars about long term thinking.

Going into the event I really had no idea what to expect, though it seems that they’d planned it this way. My inspiration for attending was a combination of my high regard for the LongNow Foundation plus the intriguing title of the session (or just the fact that it had the word “digital” in it). 

Whenever I attend presentations, workshops, etc. I often feel obligated to leave with a “take-away” — a major lesson learned, a to-do that I can go directly apply to my own life. Yet I don’t think this is always warranted. I like hearing and seeing things that make me think, and hearing Mr. Negroponte gave me plenty to chew on. Among many topics that were covered in only 90 minutes, a few thoughts of his that resonated with me were:

• One major problem with education (among many) is that age is the deciding factor for when and what students are supposed to learn.  
• Nationalism is a cancer.
• Startups are a waste of human resources for bigger, more important ideas.
• He thinks very highly of non-profits and is not fond of how free market economics influence the decision making by for-profit businesses.

These are only four of many topics that were covered, and each one is worthy of debate and days’ worth of discussion. I’d like to sit here and carefully pound out my thoughts on each one, but what I think I liked most about the seminar was that the way in which the topics were covered was a great mix of both how technology has developed exponentially in the digital era, while other behaviors and processes seem to be stuck in the mud despite it. 

A front page Reddit post today titled “The real relationship test” featured a Redditor’s IKEA furniture assembly experience in meme-form with this image, 

and the IKEA marketing team didn’t miss a beat by replying, “You know our Youtube page shows you how to assemble most furniture.”

IKEA not only achieved the highest-voted comment in the comment thread (a win in and of itself for business participation on Reddit), but the comment actually pointed to the existence of IKEA’s Youtube channel where customers can refer to video instructions on how to assemble a variety of furniture items, while teasing at the fact that the videos could help prevent a frustrating assembly process fight with a significant other.   

Business participation on Reddit is not a new idea, but is often suspect and inorganic. Last week Reddit moderators were driven to respond to the discontent of the the Reddit community after an “AMA” (Ask Me Anything) thread that was supposed to have been held by Morgan Freeman, appeared to have been held by his PR representatives solely to promote his new film Oblivion.

A simple, boring comment by IKEA in this Reddit thread would have been buried and never seen. Instead, it wittily turned this unpaid social media opportunity into a highly voted, engaged, and well accepted participation while tastefully cross-promoting its Youtube channel.

You’re in the middle of doing something when out of nowhere you remember “oh shit that’s right I need to do XYZ!” Ideally you can write it down, but be honest - even if a task is on your to-do list you’ll forget about it sometimes.

My solution: create *odd* visual cues with common objects.

Tying a piece of yarn around your index finger is an old trick you may have heard of before - same idea. But who the hell has yarn, and using different objects makes it more effective (for me anyway). 

For example, I was already naked about to jump in the shower today when I remembered that I’d been meaning to send something to a colleague of mine. Not wanting to redress and go back to my room to write it down (I have roommates), my underwear quickly became the visual cue. By hanging it on the sculpture pinned our bathroom wall, I could finish my shower, brush my teeth, etc. and have my underwear that was now adorning our bathroom art remind me to send that email.

The key is to be thinking about your “to-do” while you put your device in an unordinary location, position, etc., triggering a “Why on earth….oh yeah!” train of thought when you see it again. 

I use this trick all the time - at my desk in the office, in meetings, while I’m at a cafe reading.

The most random objects will work, believe me. Turning a bottle or cup upside-down, folding a piece of paper and placing it in clear sight…I’ve simply moved my keys from the pocket they’re always in (front right), to my back left pocket, which is just enough to make me think “WTF?” and remind me what it was I wanted to remember to do.

Might this work for you? Or will you just end up spilling Tapatio all over your pants?

Marketing automation platforms have had a major impact on lead generation, lead nurturing, and lead qualification at today’s organizations. Thanks to the many advancements in these technologies, B2B marketers now have the ability to nurture leads automatically and with greater relevancy, and sales people are able to identify their “hottest” prospects in real time.

However, there’s no substitute for having a solid sales development team to complement your marketing automation platform.  Here’s why:

Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) are primarily responsible for doing two things:

Read more on the Bizo blog

Ghostery is a browser plug-in that, among other things, identifies what third party technologies, solutions, platforms, etc. are being used by the website you’re visiting.

Whether you’re preparing for a sales meeting, doing competitive research, or getting ready for a job interview, this tool enables you to better understand how their company does business, and gives you talking points that make you sound like you really know your shit.

I talk to marketers every day.  Before getting them on the phone, I’m already able to know or make inferences about what their marketing world looks like: whether or not they’re using a marketing automation solution and which one exactly they’re using, if they’re advertising with LinkedIn, using UX/UI intelligence tools, etc.  

I typically don’t come right out and say “I see that you’re using Eloqua, that’s really interesting,” but instead try to organically drop my knowledge to grab their attention.

Me: “…Yeah, we’re working with companies like Eloqua, Salesforce.com, and -“

Prospect:  ”- Oh interesting, we’ve actually been using Eloqua for a couple years now.”

Me:  ”NO WAY, what a coincidence!!!111”

Knowing what tools my prospect is using (before I even talk to them) gives me a better understanding of where they’re coming from, what they’re working with, and a realistic idea of whether or not my company’s solutions would make sense for them.  

This tool can also be extremely valuable for job seekers.  If you’re a good interviewee, you ask a lot of questions.  Using Ghostery, you might’ve seen that a prospective employer with whom you’re about to interview uses CrazyEgg, a UX/UI tool that provides heatmaps.  If you ask something like, “What made you guys decide to use CrazyEgg, and how big of a role does it play in how the company manages/develops the user experience on its website?”, you not only look like you really did your research before coming to the interview, but you also get the interviewer to share details about how stuff works at the company or better yet, you stump them all together so now you look even smarter.

Next time you’re doing research before meeting a prospective client, employer, business partner, etc., remember to install Ghostery in your browser to help you easily uncover interesting insights.

Last week I received a Happy Holidays “test” email from a digital marketing agency (I wont name names) which obviously hadn’t intended on sending to their entire database, or anyone for that matter.  I’m guessing they’re just starting to get comfortable with a new marketing automation solution.

Fortunately for them, the person that set up the test email didn’t include anything stupid or vulgar, and the only problem with it was instead of saying Dear Pete like they intended, it read:

This code is what automates the inserting of a contact’s first name into the email, allowing them to personalize each email they send without having to send them one by one.

Not a big deal, really.  But after promptly receiving an apology email from a marketing manager there, it made me wonder how I would respond to this problem if it had happened to me.  Is it better to apologize for this with another email, which adds even more clutter to the person’s inbox, or just live with the mistake and make sure it doesn’t happen again?

My gut feeling is that sending another email apologizing for the mistake isn’t the best way to go.  Maybe tweeting about it in a tasteful, joking kind of way would be a good way to go?  

Either way, this made me appreciate our marketing programs manager even more.  Setting up an email to go out to 100k+ people would make me nervous every time.