Pamela Becker's Blog, page 3

Publishing Memoirs of a False Messiah

I am thrilled to publish my debut novel Memoirs of a False Messiah.

The ebook, paperback, and audiobook will be available on Amazon and Audible by June 3.

It’s been a long road to publishing my debut novel.  It started when I was 24 years old with a BA in creative writing, a couple of short stories published in literary magazines, and a hunger to write long fiction. Accepted into an artist residency program in southern Israel, I left my belongings in a storage facility outside of NYC and flew to Israel to focus on my writing without the pressures of earning a living. That lasted eight months. Once the book was written, the not-so-fun work started. Writing to agents. Getting rejected by agents. Getting accepted by an agent only to be rejected by her later. This was not the writing life I wanted.

The program ended and real-life with its real-life pressures seeped in. Still in Israel, I took a job. Then I started a Masters degree. Then I fell in love and we got married. We had kids. He got sick and I was his caretaker. He died and I was a widowed mom of three young children. Writing fiction felt like a luxury I would never be able to afford again.

The kids grew older. My career in high tech matured. I remarried. And then an unexpected window opened. The company where I was working was sold, and as I mentioned in a previous blog post, I was not part of the deal. I knew it would take time for me to find another job, and I had a small cushion so I could focus on reworking my novel and publish it before starting another full-time position.

I have been working in marketing for years. While promoting a book is very different from marketing an online platform to businesses, certain principles are the same…I think. I decided I preferred to spend my time learning to self-publish over shopping my book to agents or publishers.

And of course, I started writing the next one…

I hope you will read and enjoy Memoirs of a False Messiah. Stay tuned. There is more coming.

You can add the book to your Goodreads shelf here.

The post Publishing Memoirs of a False Messiah appeared first on Pamunications.

What to do when your company is sold?

Over the past few years, my latest employer sold several of its business units. In each case, some teams joined the acquiring company while some did not. The tips below are what worked for many to find their next jobs, in most cases in even better positions than they left.



First step: Breath.

You worked hard at building this brand/product/service and you succeeded in making it valuable enough for another company to want it. Pat yourself on the back for a bit as the news sinks in. Now open up a clean sheet and let’s start on moving toward your next adventure.



Second step: List your successes. 

List the accomplishments you are most proud of during your tenure at the current job. Can’t think of anything? Are you one of those people that don’t recognize the value of their own work? So ask your boss what she thinks was the most important thing that you contributed to the team. Ask your co-workers.  Since you are all going to go your separate ways soon, this is a unique opportunity to gain honest insight into how others value the work that you do. Did you provide a unique solution to a problem? Achieve exceptional results? Create something particularly smart, creative and effective? Are these accomplishments quantifiable? Make a list for yourself. Besides a lovely ego boost when you might need one, this will serve as raw material for interviews and your CV in just a beat.



Third step: Take a good look. 

Look around you. What were the things you liked most about your current job? The least? What is important to you? What do you want to be the same or different next time around?



Fourth step: Update your social media profiles and CV.

With your list of successes in hand, update your LinkedIn profile and CV with your proudest accomplishments. Check them for grammar and spelling mistakes using the built-in tools in Word or with apps like Grammarly. (This is a pet peeve of mine – I will never invite someone for an interview if they write that they have strong communications skills but the CV is full of errors.) But it’s not just about grammar. Get feedback on the content of your LinkedIn profile and your CV from people you trust.



If you haven’t updated your other social media profiles in years, now is the time. You don’t need to show yet that you are leaving your company, but the profile pictures should actually look like who you are today.  



Fifth step: Make a list of your top tier contacts to update.

These might be the headhunters you worked with in the past, the professors who always gave you an A, the former colleagues that just-so-happen to work in companies you’d love to join and more.  Update them with your status. Be honest. Many of us have been raised to feel embarrassed about being imminently unemployed, but there is no shame in not being part of an acquisition. Tell them, “I just wanted to let you know that my company was sold and I will be available for a new adventure in the next few months.” Invite them to coffee. Catch up. Ask them which websites or headhunters they would check out if they were you. And in this way you are letting the market know that you are available for something terrific.



Sixth step: Reconnect over coffee.

So you updated your CV and you applied to every relevant job that pops up in your job alerts on LinkedIn (you did assign alerts in LinkedIn, didn’t you?).  You have started wrapping things up at work, and you have more free time than you have had in years. Awesome! Take this time to meet friends and other contacts that you might not have seen in a while because you were too busy working. Meet them for coffee. Go to a Meetup together. Take a workshop and learn something new. Having time between jobs is a GIFT. While change and uncertainty can be stressful, we spend so much of our adult life working, it’s a shame not to enjoy the breaks, no matter the reason.



Now what about me?

Mobfox was recently acquired, leaving me in the position of trying to figure out what to do next.  



About a hundred years ago (it feels), before my high tech career, before the five kids, before the MBA and even moving to Israel from the US…I completed a degree in creative writing and published a number of short stories in literary journals.  



So…while I follow the steps above and keep my eyes and ears open for my next VP Marketing/CMO gig where I can have real impact…I am also doing something completely different. Part of writing this down is a kind of contract with myself to pick up my writing where I left it so many years ago. And I will document my journey here on this blog. I plan to write fiction as well as blog posts on marketing best practices and tips, gentle parenting, and well, all the other stuff that pops into my head and only writing it down will sort it out.



I invite you to come along on my journey by subscribing to this blog.

UPDATED Feb 19, 2019 to add: I am very excited to share that my debut novel Memoirs of a False Messiah will be available soon. If you would like me to ping you when it’s available, sign up here: https://bit.ly/2DHxSLO

 

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How to Wake Up Inactive Users with Email Automation

How do you use email automation to encourage your inactive users to become active again? It’s pretty easy – and I outlined the steps for you.

Step 1: Pick your email automation platform

The platform you pick will impact how you build or tag your email list for this campaign. I prefer Mailchimp for easy, basic automations, but there are plenty of tools out there, and your company might already have one in place. 

Step 2: Build your list

Your app or platform or service is fantastic, but some of your users have grown quiet. Define the time range for an inactive user. More than one month? More than six months? And on the other side, up to two years? All you need is their email address and possibly their first name if you want to personalize the emails. That said, make sure that you have permission to send them emails. Only email people who have expressly given permission either by opting-in to receive information from you or have agreed to terms and conditions that included receiving information. 

Step 3: Draft the campaign

So what do you have to offer these inactive users to get them to come back? What is better about your product than before? Did you improve a key feature since they were last active? Introduce a new feature? Do you have a compelling case study? Maybe you have a particularly interesting blog post to share? Build a series of 4-5 emails with fresh information. They can be short and straightforward. No need for a lot of marketing blah-blah. After all, you won them once. Now it’s time to look them in the eye and tell them in plain language an excellent reason to come back.

Step 4: Create the campaign

If you are in Mailchimp, simply click CREATE -> EMAIL -> AUTOMATIONS and you are there. For a wake-up campaign, choose the “email your tagged contacts” option for the initial trigger.  Select your list. It can be your master list – you don’t need to create a special one.  Don’t worry, you won’t send these emails to everyone. You will tag or segment only the inactive ones before the campaign goes live. So go ahead and create your series of emails with strong subject and preview lines to encourage your sleepy users to open them.

Step 5: Set the triggers

Set the trigger for the first email to “immediately after a tag is added to the subscriber.” This means that as soon as you add your defined tag to your inactive users, Mailchimp will add them to a queue to send the first email. You can further define days of the week and time of day to send it. 

Now set the triggers for the subsequent emails. Here you have plenty of options. To  I suggest 2-3 working days between each email, so users don’t feel spammed. Depending on your goals, you can choose who will get the subsequent emails. For example, if you are trying to identify your most engaged users in the list then only send to those users who open the previous ones. However, if you are sending a series of offers – each one more enticing than the last, then you might only want to send subsequent emails to those users who did NOT open or click.

The most effective way to tag your inactives in Mailchimp is to create a list of the relevant emails and re-add them to your master list. You will be asked if you want to update existing contacts – say yes! You will be asked if you want to tag these contacts – and again the answer is yes. Tag the inactive users with the same tag you defined to trigger the campaign.

Step 6: Measure 

You set up your campaign. You pressed go. Two weeks have gone by, and all the emails have been sent…so now how do you measure what worked and what didn’t?

Take a look at your campaign results within the platform. Each email will show an open rate and a click rate. If you are sending a campaign that only sends emails to people who opened the previous ones, it stands to reason that your open rates will rise with each email because these users are engaged. If the open rate does not increase, then this is a clear signal to rethink your subject lines. Similarly, take a look at the click rates in the emails themselves. Which emails had the lowest number of clicks? Take another look at that email to make those call-to-action links more appealing.

The most important measure is whether any of the original “inactives” have become active in your app, platform or service. This is your number one measure of success. 

Good luck!

This was originally posted on the Mobfox blog.

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How We Leveraged CSR To Engage Tech Talent

Corporate social responsibility is nothing new. The concept of CSR first came into vogue midcentury. What is new is the true commitment to social justice that millennials have brought to the workforce. Motivated by a desire to work in jobs that allow them to make a positive impact on the world, this generation expects its employers to act as responsible stewards of society, turning CSR from a nice-to-have to a must-have.

While CSR activities often show what is important to the company’s management and audiences, it can serve another purpose, too – while doing good. Finding and keeping top talent for technology firms is fiercely competitive, and today’s hot fields like blockchain, autonomous vehicles, and IoT dominate headlines and scoop up the top-flight experts. CSR, on the other hand, can make a difference for other tech companies as they position themselves to attract skilled employees.

Millennials Make the World Go Round

As the Brookings Institution notes, millennials will account for more than one third of the American adult population by 2020, and will comprise 75 percent of the workforce by 2025. Eight in 10 millennials expectbrands to make public declarations of their “corporate citizenship,” and recent attention to gender discrimination and other social inequalities has magnified their focus on how companies integrate social consciousness and action into their corporate cultures.

Moreover, broader public opinion trends show a widespread appetite for CSR. According to the 2017 Cone Communications CSR Study, 78 percent of Americans want companies to address important social justice issues, while 87 percent said they would do business with a company based on its advocacy on issues they cared about. Employees who work for companies prioritizing CSR may not only find a greater sense of personal fulfillment at work but may also enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that the larger public appreciates their company’s commitment to social action.

Tech companies can gain a leg up in the competition for top talent and ensure that their workers remain happy with their jobs by integrating corporate social responsibility into company culture. Not only is CSR a vital resource for revitalizing communities and attracting mission-driven talent, it is also uniquely suited to the tech industry. Leveraging the exceptional skills that tech employees offer can maximize philanthropic impact, expanding the reach of CSR initiatives in new ways.

Tech’s Vital Role

Technology fulfills a crucial function in how we give back and raise impact. One-on-one tutoring with underprivileged youth, for instance, no longer has to take place in the cities where the children live; it can cross neighborhoods and even international borders with the ease of a Skype account. Elderly recipients of food packages can now log into apps that allow them to indicate their preferences and personalize their shipments.

Another example of this is Mobfox’s hackathon to benefit the Israeli animal welfare charity SOS Pets. The event not only positioned the company as one with an active and involved CSR program to current and potential employees, but also as a target-oriented and effective organization offering solutions to real-world problems.

Mobfix the World

Prior to the hackathon, Mobfox engaged in a dialogue with SOS Pets to discuss the challenges the charity faces in its everyday work and to help them narrow these down to actual pain points. This provided the “hackers” of Mobfox with a framework to optimize the solutions they would design. Divided into cross-departmental teams, Mobfox employees applied their specialized skills to bring greater precision, efficiency, and impact to SOS’s work.

The results checked many boxes. The non-profit received personalized, tech-driven solutions and the Mobfox team members were thrilled to have an opportunity to use their skills creatively and contribute to a good cause.

This strengthens two simple, time-tested principles: first that it’s essential for companies to do their part in addressing social challenges, from global climate change to world hunger to animal welfare. Second, employees who are engaged with their work are happier and more productive employees – and creating a workplace culture that emphasizes giving back is a surefire way to boost employee engagement and job satisfaction.

As the workforce evolves, and as the challenges society faces demand our concerted attention, companies cannot afford to give short shrift to CSR. It’s time for technology companies to use the skills at their disposal to give back with impact. Not only does it invigorate the team, raising creativity and productivity at work, but it just might make them feel good too.

This article was originally published in ChiefExecutive in May 2018.

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Married Again

On Sept 20 I got married, again.

I am very lucky to have found great love – the kind of love that I want to celebrate and announce to the whole world – twice.

The first time I was a 29-year-old bride, focused on building my career, wrapping up a Masters degree, and most of all, dreaming of building a family.

At 48, getting married is something completely different because I already have a family. We stood before the rabbi, with our kids – most of them taller than us – and officially merged our families.

When I think about the future that we will create together, it is a calmer future. It is less about building a family and more about developing and enjoying the family we have.

I can’t think about marriage without also thinking about Jeremy. I was Jeremy’s wife for nine years. Now, just two weeks shy of what would have been our 19th wedding anniversary, I have been Jeremy’s widow for ten.

The truth is that Jeremy, and Alon’s late wife Miri, are very much a part of this marriage and family. Beyond helping to create and shape who our kids are today, they taught us how to make a marriage work and how to function when the worst happens. Alon and I met as we both struggled with their loss and the weight of raising our children without them. It was a long, dark time for both of us, and we helped each other, and our kids through it.

When I was a lot younger, my mother, wisely said to me, “anyone can be a great boyfriend when things are great.” And she was right. It doesn’t take much character or strength to be wonderful in wonderful times. But before our relationship even started, Alon proved wonderful even in the very worst of times.

Now today, we are back to wonderful (“tfu tfu”) – we are happy and healthy with established careers and a warm, beautiful home. I look at these amazing teenagers. Each one of them incredible in his or her own right. The fact that they all look gorgeous is nice but superficial. The truth is that each of them is gorgeous on the inside. They are kind, supportive siblings filled with wonder for the subjects that interest them, whether it be music, sports, gaming, acting, politics or medicine, and I am immensely proud of them.

I look at Alon. My handsome, strong, seemingly tireless partner who despite his never-ending “doing” – whether its working or cooking or driving or running – also knows how to just be…with me. And I am thrilled to spend the rest of my life with him. And I want to celebrate this love and announce it to the world.

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