Charlie McAtee's PR Blog

What do employees want? What do they expect from their employer?

Based on a recent survey by Deloitte, employees aren’t always motivated by money. As OtterBox founder and CEO Curt Richardson explains in a great Inc. magazine article, recognition and opportunity for growth can go a long way towards creating a thriving and exciting company culture.

At ExactTarget, we’re offering employees growth opportunities to adapt to the global marketplace, while at the same time improve our company culture that contributes so much to our overall business success.

During Connections 2012 we announced our new...

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ExactTarget employees, clients and partners got an early start to Connections during Monday's Volunteer Day. Through partnership with Gleaner's Food Bank, volunteers helped meet the needs of hungry senior citizens and students in the community.

The volunteers, who are visiting Indianapolis for ExactTarget’s global client conference Connections ‘12, partnered with Gleaner's Food Bank of Indiana to pack and provide more than 2,000 meals to at-risk senior citizens and local students in grades K-6.

“Indianapolis has been a great city for ExactTarget and we want to give something back to help our...

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It’s one of the greatest challenges facing email marketers: How do I grow my email list and gain new subscribers? This fundamental still challenges marketers, as the need for cross-channel marketing puts greater emphasis on integrating email with social, mobile and other channels.
 

At Connections 2011, Eastman Kodak’s Entertainment Imaging Division and Catalyst (Rochester, New York),  a direct and digital marketing agency, shared their story on how they attracted new, high-quality email subscribers by focusing on three elements:

• Organic Email Growth
• Cross-Channel Integration
• Ancillary Plan

 

Lora Downi...

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Facebook, Twitter, Email and mobile continue to change the face of online marketing.  eMarketer Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder Geoff Ramsey fueled the conversation to more than 3,000 global marketers during his recent Connections ’11 keynote presentation.

The author of Digital Impact: The Two Secrets to Online Marketing Success,Ramsey outlined the unique challenges online marketers face in connecting with customers in today’s digital world, explaining how driving online marketing success requires two essential ingredients: Measurement and “Magnetic Content.” 

The first ingredient...

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As we gear up for Connections UK, the learning from Connections 11 in the US certainly continues.

Living up to Joel Book’s claim that B-to-B marketers are some of the smartest marketers around, Laurence Rothman of Nationwide Insurance and Jeff Robinson of the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association led a lively, tips-filled discussion on best practices for email marketing to dealers, franchisees and sales agents. Here are five simple yet effective ideas they shared during a packed session at Connections user conference.

1.       From line.
From their own personal experiences, Jeff and...

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Connections 2011 was all about the “Power of One,” and Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer and co-author of Digital Impact: The Two Secrets of Online Marketing Success lit up his keynote session with a witty and insightful presentation full of real world examples and great cross-channel marketing strategies.

 

Here are four key strategies for digital marketers that Geoff recommends.

1.    Personalize your media

Studies show the No. 1 priority of marketing executives for this year has been to improve segmentation and targeting efforts. Email is among the best medium for personalizing messages, generating the...

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With over 50 breakout sessions during Connections 2011, interactive marketers had access to hundreds of actionable ideas, proven strategies and success stories in every room. One of the highlights for me was a session that examined international email marketing campaigns. 

 

Here are five of the great ideas fellow marketers shared with their peers.

1.  Make training easy. Sean Mattson of Hitachi Data Systems stressed that robust training is a key. When rolling out a global email marketing initiative, Mattson found the best training tool was to create short video clips to build a robust library...Read More »

Durring ExactTarget's recent Connections '11 conference, we launched the ExactTarget SocialPages application. This is an amazing new product because it takes the headache out of creating branded Facebook pages, and makes it easy to integrate them into cross-channel interactive marketing campaigns.  This will certainly change what brands can do on Facebook.

NASA was one of many customers that helped shape this new product. And on top of that, Stephanie Schierholz, NASA’s social media manager, delivered an awesome presentation during Connections, walking us through NASA’s latest Facebook...

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Looking for best practices to organize your social team? The recent Connections ‘11 session, The Social Staff: People & Structures for Authentic Social Media Engagement offered tremendous insight and lessons learned to build a world-class team. Eric Rinebold of Ally Bank, Morgan Johnston at JetBlue, and Jordan Williams, REI explained how they built their teams and offered key takeaways for successful social media teams.

Here’s a quick look at the highlights:

• Trust – ensure that everyone agrees with the social strategy and is on the same page.
• Focus on the customer –the brand doesn’t own social...

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Chances are, even if you haven’t seen the Oscar-nominated film 127 Hours, you’ve heard about Aron Ralston’s story.  Facing almost near-certain death in the bottom of a canyon after his right hand was trapped by a boulder, Aron ultimately made the decision to save his life by amputating his right hand.

 

“I look at what happened on that day and yes, I left something behind that day, but I didn’t lose anything.”

 

Talk about the power of one incredibly moving story delivered by one inspirational person. 

 

Aron shared the important life lessons of relationships during those 127 hours of survival...

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16 million articles. 270 languages. 100,000 unique visitors each month. And yet, as one of the top websites in the world, Wikipedia employs only 70 people. How is it possible to manage this much content with such a small team? As founder Jimmy Wales said today at Connections 2011, “The power of communities is the power of one.”

Wikipedia is a passionate community of people who care. Each contributor truly believes that if you have knowledge, you should share it. And as a non-profit, the content can be reused and repurposed however people like.

I used to hate encyclopedias. Now I’m listening to... Read More »