[THE LATEST] Customer Journey Mistakes, Personalization in 2019, & New Findings About Pay Inequality

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Customer Journey Mistakes, Personalization in 2019, & New Findings About Pay Inequality ...This Is THE LATEST! I am coming to you live today from beautiful downtown Denver!  I am not angry at this view. Not one bit. Granted, my journey here required me to get up before 4 a.m. to catch my flight out of Baltimore -- ugh -- but it was well worth it. I will be spending the next four days at Speak with Confidence -- a keynote speaker training retreat -- hosted by Melanie Spring, whom some of you may remember was a guest on Content Lab many moons ago! The festivities and trainings haven't gotten underway yet, but I have been spending my morning thus far in Denver with some incredible brand strategists and business owners.  And with all of those brains in one room, I decided to ask them what is one thing marketers do that drives you completely up a wall? Here are their answers: "Communicating in the way they like to receive information, and not the way their audience wants to receive their information." "Sometimes I've seen marketers use insider terms or jokes that -- when taken out of context -- go completely over everyone else's heads."  "When marketers complain about not getting engagement online and on social media, and then I look and they're just broadcasting stuff about themselves, not actually trying to engage in conversation." "I hate marketing that nags you. I hate it. Don't do it. Jerks do that. Don't nag me, bro."  "When marketers have all of their messages and photos automated to broadcast across all their social media channels with the exact same messaging. You need to speak totally different languages on all platforms. I want to tell them, 'You know that makes you look lazy, right? No? Just checking.'"  Griffin... had no opinion. Still need to be saved from yourself? (Be honest.) Here are a few articles -- and tons of resources -- that'll get you back on the right track. 🙄 What Mistakes Are You Making with Your Customer Journeys?  Want to hear something crazy? Gartner says that we're not too far away from a time where 89% of companies will be competing on customer experience. And another study says that, by 2020, customer experience will surpass price and product as the key differentiator for brands. Woopra's Vlad Bulvakher is here to help you prepare for this by sharing the top three mistakes marketers make in their customer journeys. 👋 Embrace Personalization as a Strategy in 2019, Not a Tactic Personalization has proven, time and again, to increase brand loyalty, boost engagement, increase conversions, shorten sales cycles, and improve the customer experience. And since we now know that, by 2020, the customer experience bit will be so critical for all of us to nail, now is the time for us to get our act together with personalization. In this article, Survicate's Kasia Kowalska breaks down the exact process for creating a magical personalization strategy for 2019 and beyond. And now a brief message from...     You Have a Ton of Marketing Data at Your Fingertips... Are You Making the Most of It?   As marketers, we collect a wide array of data about our customers; from basic demographic information and buying habits, to preferences and products used. But once we have all this information, are we making the most of it? Probably not. You can take the guesswork out of creating more targeted marketing campaigns by more effectively leveraging the data you already have at your fingertips. This guide dives into the holistic state of marketing data as it is today, the challenges we all face, and how you can start using your data to its full potential. 💰 [Research] What You Need to Know from Owl Labs' New Equal Pay Day Report This past Tuesday (April 2) was Equal Pay Day, a public awareness event created by the National Committee on Pay Equity that "symbolizes how far into the year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year." While strides have been made in recent decades, pay inequality still exists between men and women and there is more work to be done. To learn more, check out these three eye-opening pay inequality findings from Owl Labs' study on the wage gap.  👀 ... When You're All Ears (& Eyes)  "Best Podcasts for Marketers & Creatives to Listen to During Their Week" (Creator's Block) "Increase Sales by 15% With Customer Experience Ft. Todd Hockenberry of Top Line Results" (Inbound Success Ep. 84) "Online Community Management & Pillar Content Experimentation" (Content Lab) "How HubSpot's Database Works, Pipeline Permissions, & the End of Facebook Video for Business?" (Hubcast 219) 🚨 Save Your Seat How to Find Blog Topics Your Audience REALLY Cares About (Webinar): There are five key questions all buyers want answers to -- regardless of what they're shopping for. In this webinar hosted by SEMRush, IMPACT Content Marketing Specialist Kevin Phillips will show you how to solve the problems your customers have by addressing the topics and questions most relevant to them. This one-hour session on April 8 starts with a 20-minute long presentation by Kevin, followed by a panel discussion with Susan Moeller and Andy Crestodina. Sign up for the SEMRush webinar here. Who's in Annapolis and Needs a HUG? (A HubSpot User Group, that is!)On April 10, the Annapolis HubSpot User Group will be getting together to learn all about mastering LinkedIn advertising from IMPACT Paid Media Specialist Jason Linde. Registration is free, and there will be complimentary snacks and drinks, so reserve your seat now. (The room actually does have limited space.) ⏰ Throwback Thursday Finally, I'll keep this last bit short and sweet. One of the most common questions I get asked is how to measure the success of pillar content. Well, after almost a year of experimentation, I let the cat out of the bag last week on how we track performance of our pillar strategy for IMPACT -- and how I learned our pillar strategy has influenced more than $195,000 in revenue.  (What can I say? I'm a gal who loves to create content that makes money.) OK, it's time for me to get my speaker training on. I'll talk to you all next week, when I'm back home in Maryland!  "Wait, but Ramona said she won't be back until April 15... and if you're also gone, who is going to send out THE LATEST on Saturday?" Stay tuned -- we've got a very special guest taking over our weekend edition of THE LATEST. 😘 Later, squares!  Liz Murphy Director, Web & Interactive Content @naptownpint I'm not interested at this time Sent by IMPACT, 470 James Street, Suite 10, New Haven, CT