ReadyTalk Blog

Until Drupalcon Denver (the annual Drupal convention), I still felt relatively new to Drupal (read: n00b).  Drupalcon featured sessions ranging from design, UI and layout to system administration and performance and scalability.  Many of the top Drupal contributors were in attendance, including module developers, core developers, and even the founder himself, Dries Buytaert.  This offered a great opportunity to learn more about the CMS we’ve been operating our website on for roughly a year now.

Since that time, we’ve seen great improvements in how quickly we can get new content and features up on the site.  Standard maintenance tasks common with our old site are now automated.  Different members of the ReadyTalk marketing team now own sections and can make updates without waiting for me to publish content for them.  This makes everyone happy!

So what did I gain from going to Drupalcon?  First, the knowledge that if I did it all over again I would go to Drupalcon before – not after – starting a Drupal project.  Drupalcon offers a great place to meet people who have been through it all – site developers from government entities to news organizations to corporations were all in attendance.  For instance, CU Boulder’s team gave a great presentation on their rollout, which due to the requirement of supporting years of legacy material from their schools made it many times more complex than our own.

Second, it was great to hear people say, ‘yeah, I’ve been through that.’  Finding out that I’m not the only PHP nerd in the world is comforting, much to the chagrin of some of our developers.

Third, I learned about some pretty advanced configurations and modules and got to see the future of Drupal 8.  The efficiency at which so many contributors can work together to make these things happen is mind-blowing, and the future looks bright.  It’s great to know that the next time we update our site, the next version of Drupal will be ready for us and will be awesome.  I also hope that we get to contribute back at some point.

In any case, now I’ve been there. I’m feeling much less like a Drupal n00b, and much more ready to tackle the world of nodes and entities.  We’d like to hear your experiences with Drupal.  After all, Drupal’s greatest asset is its community.  If you have any tips, headaches, or questions, please share!

 

Daniel has been managing ReadyTalk’s website since 2008 and helps make marketing collateral easy on the eye.  When he’s not hacking away at VIM or tweaking the website, he’s busy improving his Denver Victorian, making/enjoying good brew and offering expertise to local non-profits.

Today’s post is provided by Yun Oudaha,Quality Assurance Engineer.

One of the benefits that attracted me to ReadyTalk was the opportunity to volunteer in the community during work hours.  ReadyTalk gives each employee up to 20 hours of paid volunteer time per year.  It allows us to offer our time at places that are only open during business hours.  I recently volunteered at SAME Café, which is open for lunch Monday through Saturday.

I met the owners, Libby and Brad Birky, at a friend’s BBQ around the time when they had received funding to open a restaurant.  Their idea was that people could pay what they could, and if they had no money, they could help out in the restaurant.  I didn’t see Libby or Brad again until last year when Libby spoke at TEDxMileHigh.  Inspired by her talk, I thought it would be a great place to get a group of people from work to volunteer for the day.  Since then, we have had volunteers helping out at SAME Café on a few occasions, with five volunteers participating each day.

Most of our work is done in the kitchen: prepping the food, cooking, and washing dishes.   We wipe down tables and clean the floors at the end of the day.  They have a standard menu of salad, soup and pizza.  But this year, they were able to renovate their kitchen and hoping to expand their menu selection.

The people we are helping range from college students to the elderly, and from the unemployed to business people.  Usually, Brad or Libby greet people that come in and know many of them by name.  They want to build a community and part of this is getting to know the people who lunch there.  Some who visit need a good, healthy, home cooked meal that they may not be able to get because they don’t have the money.  Others come in and donate money to help out the cafe.

It is a great feeling to know we are helping out people who just may be in a rough place in their life right now and need a little assistance until they can get back on their feet.

I’m writing this post at 4:30 on a  Friday afternoon at ReadyTalk. The engineering team is winding down from a busy week. There are numerous activities going on and I can’t decide which one to join.

In deciding what to do, I carefully take into account where is the easiest place to go without being pegged by a million darts on the. Nerf wars are a very common occurrence late in the day in ReadyTalk Engineering, but on Fridays they seem to take on a life of their own.

So, I think to myself…The closest option would be the 2^nd Floor Great Room where there is an intense session of Rock Band going on. With a number of our engineers coming from a musical backgrounds, it is always a pretty impressive showing. Rock Band is also great practice for the Battle of Bands that is supposed to take place between our Sales  and Engineering.

My second option would be to stop off in Team Room A to get a first row seat for a secondary jam session that’s taking place. Several of our engineers have grown up perfecting the art of strumming the guitar…all they need now is a lead singer to join the group! Let me know if you are a viable candidate.

My 3^rd (and safest option), would be to stay right here at my desk and join in the Open Arena game that takes place every Friday. The only problem with this option is that I have no idea how to even start playing that game. All I know about it is there a lot of people and a lot of guns involved.

My 4th and final option would be to join a couple engineers on an afternoon jog. The only problem with this is that my idea of a jog is a light run/walk around the park and most of the engineers idea of a jog is  similar to a full sprint around several blocks.

Looking over my options I think I am going to grab a beer off the fresh keg that was just delivered from Wynkoop and get ready for my try out as the lead singer in Team Room A.

If you interested in trying out for the lead singer spot or any of our open engineering positions http://www.readytalk.com/about/careers-readytalk please e-mail me directly at Catherine.harrison@readytalk.com.

 

Accidents happen. At ReadyTalk we’re committed to helping our customers prevent accidents and mistakes. Each month, ReadyTalk’s Account Managers share a recent accident and tips for how to avoid it in the future.

 

Because Marty was a novice ReadyTalk user, he was a bit nervous about hosting the large audience, which had pre-registered for his upcoming webinar.  He had decided to use ReadyTalk’s Event Services so he could have an experienced ReadyTalk Event Manager on his call to reassure him as well as address any technical issues or questions as they arose.

As part of his training webinar, Marty planned to use application sharing to walk his participants through his company’s online software.  Prior to his live event, in order to ensure he was prepared to switch over to the appropriate webpage after starting his live web conference, he navigated to his company’s homepage on the already open internet browsing window.  Earlier in the day, Marty had used Google to search for something rather personal – something most folks would likely rather not broadcast to a group of colleagues, customers and prospects.

When the live webinar started and Marty switched into application sharing mode, the Google toolbar at the top of his browsing window was displaying awkward search he typed in the search field earlier in the day.  The ReadyTalk Event Manager quickly noticed this, and was able to send a private Chat to the chairperson to advise him to delete what he’d typed in the search field.

Marty could have avoided this error and embarrassment either by opening a new browsing window for his ReadyTalk webinar, or simply clearing out any Google searches from the toolbar prior to starting his web conference.

Are there accidents or tips you would like our account managers to address? Share your questions below and we’ll provide some insight. You can also check out the best practices section of the website for more ideas.

You may or may not have a marketing automation tool, but likely you do have a number of leads that are falling out of the sales and marketing funnel because of a lack of quality interaction. Scenario: a prospect shows interests, marketing passes them to sales, sales reaches out and sets up a free trial. Free trial eventually ends. What happens if the prospect decides not to purchase? Maybe they weren’t sure about price or maybe they just need more time?

 In our webinar this Thursday at 2:00ET, we’ll speak to the above questions and then some. I sat down w/ our speaker, Kelly Hall, Business Impact Director at 90Octane, and asked her to give us a sneak peek into what she’ll be presenting. Ultimately – when it comes to lead nurturing, where do we start, what are the best channels to use, and why does it even matter in the first place?

 

Nurturing = Prospect and Customer Relationship Management

What does it really mean to “nurture” a lead, and where does it fit in your marketing mix? The term “lead nurturing” has been front and center in the marketing world for some time now, but there are varying definitions as to what it means, when it makes sense to undertake and what, exactly, you need to create a successful lead nurturing program.

What is lead nurturing?

The easiest way to conceptualize lead nurturing is to think of personal relationships. We don’t leap immediately from dating to marriage, but rather through developing and nurturing the lifecycle of the relationship. Your personal and business relationships are a conglomerate of communication touch points, from face-to-face interaction to phone calls and more. This is also the case for lead nurturing. We would be remiss to define lead nurturing as exclusively an online activity. Conversations with sales or customer service representatives, attendance at tradeshows, and participation in events all factor into nurturing a prospect or customer relationship.

Where (and when) should you nurture?

Lead nurturing is the natural evolution from pure-play demand generation. Regardless of whether you are operating as B2B or B2C lead nurturing can, and should, be utilized. At its most fundamental, lead nurturing is the management of the relationship. Leads aren’t just leads, they are people who need communication before, during and after making purchase decisions.

How should you approach it?

Strategy is the single most important thing you need to undertake lead nurturing. That means you must answer these questions:

• Why am I asking them to engage with me?
• What do I have to offer?
• What is the best way to communicate with the prospects?
• How often should I communicate with these prospects?

Unfortunately, there’s a misconception that lead nurturing is equal to marketing automation, or that the only way to nurture is through a tool. And, while the help of a marketing automation tool may be great (and frankly, sometimes mandatory), often you can undertake lead nurturing strategies sans the tool. In fact, we recommend for those new to lead nurture strategy that you undertake the strategic side of things, and then use your findings to inform whether you need a marketing automation tool, and if so, what the best tool given your business requirements is.

Once you have established your strategic goals and defined when and where you need to nurture, you’ll be well on your way to determining how lead nurturing can work for you.

 

Be sure to register for the webinar and if you are seeking additional information, check out our sneak peek interview with Kelly on what you can expect to learn and who should be attending. Hope you can join us!