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In our continued effort to increase transparency around government demands for user data, today we begin to make available to the public the National Security Letters (NSLs) we have received where, either through litigation or legislation, we have been freed of nondisclosure obligations. We previewed this back in October when we updated our Transparency Report.

As we have described in the past, we have fought for the right to be transparent about our receipt of NSLs. This includes working with the government to publish statistics about NSLs we’ve received, successfully fighting NSL gag provisions in court, and leading the effort to ensure that Internet companies can be more transparent with users about the volume and scope of national security demands that we receive.   

In 2015, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act, which allowed companies like Google to make more granular disclosures  about National Security Letters they receive.  In addition, the Act restricts the use of indefinite gag restrictions that prevent providers from ever notifying customers or talking about the demands. The Department of Justice (DOJ) must now regularly review disclosure restrictions in NSLs and lift those that are no longer needed. The United States Attorney General approved procedures to do this, and as we mentioned recently, the FBI has started lifting gag restrictions on particular NSLs.

We are now making copies of those NSLs available.  Our goal in doing so is to shed more light on the nature and scope of NSLs. We minimized redactions to protect privacy interests, but the content of the NSLs remain as they were when served.  We are also publishing the correspondence reflecting the lifting of the nondisclosure restrictions. We have links to the documents below.  In the near future, we will establish a more permanent home for these and additional materials from our Transparency Report.  

Redacted NSLs and FBI correspondence

NSL-10-272979 (FBI notice)

NSL-13-375880 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-394627 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-395838 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-396103 (FBI notice)

NSL-14-396300 (FBI notice)

NSL-15-417535 (FBI notice)

NSL-15-418313 (FBI notice)

While we are encouraged by this development, we will remain vigilant in opposing legislation that would significantly expand the universe of information that can be obtained with an NSL.

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Biko spent his life fighting South Africa’s apartheid policies and racial injustice.

The post Steve Biko Google doodle honors anti-apartheid activist & founder of the Black Consciousness Movement appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Everyone in an organization is (hopefully) aware that marketing is essential to a company’s success. However, when asked to define what the marketing team does and how it impacts business, answers tend to come up short.

Responses such as “social media, graphic design, advertising, emails and brochures,” are going to be most common – but chances are, if someone isn’t on the marketing team or doesn’t deal directly with the department, there’s probably some mystery to what’s being done there.

What Do Other Departments Think Marketing Does?

In fact, a recent survey revealed that only 13% of non-marketing employees think marketing drives business strategy, with 53% saying marketers are responsible for advertising and promotion and 43% saying its brand management. Marketing was noted as the least important department within the organization. As marketers, we know this simply isn’t true.

While all departments have their individual functions, without marketing, a company would be an anonymous entity operating with a limited customer base. The purpose of marketing is to bring in more customers, encourage and cultivate growth and discover how to better serve customers.

To do that effectively, marketers must make the rest of the organization aware of their jobs, their importance and their function in conjunction with each separate department.

Marketers have undoubtedly mastered their field and are constantly evolving it to be more insightful and efficient. Now it’s time to put the same amount of energy into informing the company about what marketing does well – and how they can collaborate as a team to increase the role the department plays in driving strategic change.

Data Analysis and Insight

One of the most crucial shifts in marketing has been the advent of data analysis to gain customer insight. It is also one of the lesser-known activities of marketers – with only 18% of non-marketers identifying it as a marketing function.

Within a business, 48% of data analytics are used to gain a better understanding of the customer. Much of that usage falls to the marketing department, who then becomes responsible for collecting and mining the data for better insights into how customers are responding to the company’s offering and what they are looking for from the industry.

Non-marketers are aware that customer insight is critical to achieving competitive advantage, but what they don’t realize is that the marketing department is the one that puts it in action. 

Analytics help improve the overall view of a company’s performance and are used to develop content and strategies that resonate with customers to generate leads and increase revenue.

For 58% of CMOs, analytics are important for SEO and email marketing research. Another vital area that benefits from data is customer segmentation, with 49% of CMOs citing this as a key marketing function. Knowing which customers are relevant to which areas of the business can make a huge difference in reaching them effectively.

If a company wants to know what their customers are feeling, thinking and saying about their products and services, marketing analytics serve as the direct line between an organization and its customers. Marketers need to bring this to the forefront of their responsibilities to prove to the company that the department is invaluable to overarching success.

Marketing the Marketing Department

To say it’s only the fault of the non-marketers for not knowing why marketing is essential is a false sentiment. It is a shared failure between marketers and their colleagues alike.

Just as a company shares customer-facing mistakes, they should also own up to their internal ones. Members of the company are only familiar with website copy, email marketing and social media because these are the most visible aspect of marketing.

Likewise, marketing is probably only familiar with R&D’s end product because it’s what they interact with most. With this logic in mind, marketing must do more to share their ways of working, their successes and their failures with the rest of the company. That takes increased dedication to internal communications.

It’s acceptable to be narrowly focused on customer-facing material, but it shouldn’t be the sole focus of marketing. Outlets like intranets, forums and internal newsletters help spread the word about all on goings of an organization. Even better than those options, marketers should be participating in presentations or discussions.

To improve internal communication, marketing needs to start small, think creatively and lead the organization with innovation and approachable subject matter. Instead of presenting those important analytics in detail, simply give the bullet points and summarize the resulting benefits.

Once you’ve gained the attention of the company, you can tailor the communications to their interests and  avoid useless weekly reports by taking a step back and looking at the big picture scale.

Driving Strategic Change

Once you’ve acquired the attention of the other departments and have effectively communicated the results created by the marketing team, you can drive strategic change.

Strategy is very much a collaborative process that takes into account all the diverse aspects of a company’s performance and needs.

Marketing is positioned to have the most influential effect on the strategy. Armed with insight about customers gained from data analysis and a general understanding of the other departments, marketing can inform the strategy to be grounded by analytics, customer demands and operational efficiencies.

Marketing holds the cards for both analytical insight and creative power. Approaching strategy with these two ways of thinking can lead an organization to more innovative and effective solutions for serving customers and increasing the bottom line.

It’s also a strong way to make decisions and help other departments develop their own strategic plans. But to leverage that power, marketing must establish themselves as a go-to entity and a critical piece of organizational change.

Marketers excel at making the unknown not only known, but also popular. They must start thinking of themselves as a product that needs launching across the company.

Using the foundation of data and insight, strengthening internal communications and playing an active role in developing company strategy, marketers can deliver lasting results and become the most well known group within the company.

Customer service, sales, finance and R&D will no longer wonder what’s behind the graphics and catchy copy. They’ll understand that marketing is in the game to help the company achieve its fullest potential.

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Since joining the Google Cloud team in August, we’ve been hard at work bringing Orbitera to Google Cloud Platform customers and partners. Today, we’re excited to announce that Orbitera supports Test Drives that run on GCP and we’ve completed a successful Test Drive beta that includes software providers like Barracuda, DivvyCloud, Looker, and Vormetric. Thanks to the support of our partners and great team we continue to provide immediate value to customers looking to experience third-party solutions on GCP.

Orbitera Test Drives are fully functioning and interactive software demonstrations offered on the cloud. This is a popular way for businesses to try software before buying it — no software license, credit card or even cloud account required.

At Orbitera we make it easier for businesses to try, buy, deploy and manage complex software in the cloud. One-click Test Drives empower businesses to try software before buying it, and comprehensive consumption billing management gives corporate IT unprecedented visibility and control.

Here’s what some leading software providers had to say about their Orbitera Test Drives on GCP:

Looker is a Data Platform that makes it easy for everyone to find, explore and understand the data that drives their business.

“First impressions are very important, and that’s why we chose Orbitera Test Drives to increase lead-to-deal conversions. Trying a fully-functional instance of Looker’s Analytics Platform with just a few clicks and no procurement or deployment hassle is a great introduction to Looker.”

– Keenan Rice, VP, Alliances at Looker

Vormetric’s comprehensive high performance data security platform protects data wherever it resides with transparent encryption, powerful access controls, and centralized key management.

“Comprehensive solutions like ours can be a challenge for prospective customers to get up and running in a test environment, making it hard for them to really get to know the product and its capabilities. With an Orbitera Test Drive on GCP, customers can get a fully functional environment in minutes, and that makes for a very favorable first impression and gives our sales team a real head start on closing the deal.”

– CJ Radford, VP, Cloud at Vormetric

DivvyCloud’s BotFactory is a simple point-and-click tool for users to configure, build and deploy bots that automate cloud management tasks.

“We’ve worked with some of the leading cloud adopters in the world to solve common cloud problems through automation of policies. We’re very excited to bring this solution to the broader market through our bot system in BotFactory. This Test Drive will show customers how they can connect a cloud account to BotFactory and find and fix these cloud problems in a matter of minutes.”

– Jeremy Snyder, VP of Business Development at DivvyCloud, creators of BotFactory

Test drive Orbitera today

See how easy it is to try full-stack software with Orbitera — take a Test Drive for yourself. Try Looker and BotFactory by DivvyCloud, and come back soon for more Test Drives by leading software providers.

Google Cloud Partners: for a limited time, we’re running a promotion to let you create, operate, and run a Test Drive of your software on GCP at no cost for up to one year. Follow this link to sign up.

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The food industry is a $5.32 trillion dollar business. The alluring profitability of the food business along with increasing competition has inspired a new discipline: menu engineering. As the name suggests, it is a deliberate construction of menus to generate greater profits per customer.

When asked about the rise of menu engineering, value perception expert and author of Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value William Poundstone explains that it is driven by our mental instinct to look for shortcuts: “Almost anyone in the marketplace today has too much information and not enough time to decide.”

And menu engineers – masters of misdirection, as Poundstone calls them – offer just the right kind of shortcuts our brains crave for. For SaaS marketers who rack their brains trying to figure out a way to increase customer lifetime value (LTV), there is a lot to be borrowed from menu engineering to increase SaaS profitability.

And the best part? You don’t need to tweak your product to achieve a breakthrough in your revenue. Treat your pricing page like a menu, and optimize for profitability like a pro.

Shoot For the Stars

Before you roll up your sleeves to revamp your pricing page, do the homework and segment your products by sales volume and profitability first.

Is your most pricey product the one you should sell the most? Not necessarily. According prominent menu engineer Gregg Rapp, two criteria decide the importance of a dish: profit and popularity. Profit is calculated by subtracting cost from price, while popularity is indicated by numbers of the items sold.

Once you’ve mapped out the profit and popularity of all your products, categorize them into what the menu engineering industry calls the matrix of “plow horses, stars, dogs and puzzles”.

Stars are the most popular and profitable, while dogs are the least popular and least profitable ones. Plow-horses are popular but low in profit (salad and soups, for instance), and puzzles are highly profitable items that need investigation on why they aren’t more popular.

Image Source – Recreated with Visme

Obviously, we should first of all shoot for the stars: highlight the star items on your menu, at the same time unleash the star power in your “puzzles” and “plow-horses”.

Engineered For Success

When it comes down the designing the menu that brings in roaring sales, below are some strategies menu engineers have used that SaaS marketers can learn from.

Reduce “pain of paying” by removing dollar signs in prices

Research done at Cornell University (Dr. Kimes et al.) found that customers spent significantly more when prices were displayed in numerals without dollar signs. The sight of dollar sign reminds consumers that they’re spending money, says restaurant consultant Aaron Allen, so they started getting rid of it and using numbers only.

In addition to using dollar signs and even spelling out the word “dollar”, other common mistakes by restaurateurs include putting dotted leader lines between the food item and price, and grouping prices in a column.

Bad example of using dotted leader lines, leading diners to go up and down the menu without a clear direction (Image Source)

These practices draw diners’ attention away from the food and focus on the price, according to Rapp. One solution is “nested pricing”, where the price (in numerals without dollar sign of course) comes right after the description.

Example of nested price (Image Source)

What SaaS marketers can learn from this is to reduce the pain of paying by making the dollar sign less noticeable. Considering the international distribution of most SaaS companies nowadays, it’s probably a good practice to use currency code (such as USD) instead of dollar sign symbol.

Example of subdued dollar sign: Contentful did a great job at minimizing dollar symbol in their pricing.

In the example above, Contentful did a great job at highlighting values for user by minimizing the perception of cost – the grey color and small font size made the dollar sign almost imperceptible. While it’s not yet a common practice for SaaS products to remove dollar signs, as the competition gets tougher, we can expect to see more and more SaaS companies start doing this as a way to win over consumer preference.

Amplify value by using large numbers

Using price ending in numeral 9 is a common practice in retail. Poundstone dissected 8 studies between 1987 to 2004 and concluded that number 9 is the “magic number” that trumps rounded numbers: an average of 24% sales increase was reported by using charm prices ($49, $79, $1.49 etc).

In this study by MIT and University of Chicago, researchers examined the impact of prices ending in 9 on retail sales. The same standard women’s clothing was displayed at price $34, $39 and $44. As you could have guessed, the $39 sold the most, even though $34 is cheaper.

Example of SaaS pricing ending in 9

There are many investigations among academics and marketers why these “just under” prices work better yet no conclusion has been drawn. It is speculated that large numbers like 9 communicate value for consumer and better quality. That explains why the MIT study found that prices ending in 9 are less effective when there is a “SALE” sign next to it.

While using 9 in prices still works, Rapp recommends ending with .95 instead of .99, as price ending in 95 may seem “friendlier” to customers.

Use visual cues to highlight the most profitable items

Colorful texts, highlighted boxes, fancy fonts and designs are all gimmicks menu engineers use to direct diners’ attention to the most desirable items. Research has shown that users tend not to recall more than one or two highlighted items. Choose what you want to highlight carefully, or your users won’t remember anything at all.

Example of menu engineers using box to highlight items (Image Source)

White space is also critically important when it comes to building visual cues. A clustered web page with dense information makes it very hard to read. White space, otherwise known as “negative space”, is the empty space between elements. Research has shown that use of white space can increase comprehension by almost 20%. Space your content generously, and users will find your page easier to read.

Box uses a highlighted box and wide spaces between content to highlight items.

Use of color is another effective tactic. According to Eiseman’s research in 2000, color “accelerates learning, retention and recall by 55% to 78%”. Use of color also “moves people to action up to 80%”.

Does color influence purchase decisions? Absolutely. ChartMogul analyzed 40 SaaS pricing pages of companies who have done a LOT of conversion rate optimization, and found out that most used CTA button color is green, followed by blue.

Most used CTA button colors

There is no hard and fast rule about which color converts the best. It depends on various factors: the color scheme of your sales page, your product branding, etc. The best practice is to narrow down the colors you want to test for CRO, and run A/B tests to decide on the best one.

In this example Wistia is using individual colors for each pricing tier to help distinguish between the three options.

Use descriptive language in pricing plans

According to Rapp, a mouth-watering description is another effective strategy to make the food item instantly more desirable. A controlled study done by University of Illinois compared using basic labels such as “chocolate pudding” with descriptive ones such as “Grandma’s homemade chocolate pudding”.

The association of flavorful (Grandma) and sweet (chocolate) and smooth (pudding) not only influenced research subjects’ purchase (27% increase in sales), but also their post-purchase satisfaction.

Example of a descriptive menu. (Image Source)

For SaaS marketers, being technically competent is not enough to stand out from competition. Tell a story in your product description – emotional benefits, product origins, customer successes – anything that takes your target buyers on an emotional journey.

Zendesk does a great job on their product page: they make it all about what the product can support – you, the customer – to be the hero that you needed to be. The feeling of empowerment comes with a compelling statement like “Everything is possible”.

Example of Zendesk’s emotive product description page.

SaaS marketing thought leader Lincoln Murphy has said, “every pricing plan you offer should have a story behind it.”

It’s never about features and technologies; what you are selling is a desired outcome and pricing should match the value that comes with achieving said outcome.

Understand your target users’ eye movement patterns and cater to it

Scan path by William Doefler in the 1970s is one of the earliest and most cited studies about eye movement patterns. It suggests that menu readers’ eyes zigzag across the page like below.

Image Source

What Doerfler concluded was that the upper-right corner is the “sweet spot” of a two-panel menu where most profitable dish should be displayed.

However, recently studies done by SF State University (with a more advanced retinal eye scanner) challenged the validity of menu sweet spot. Their research suggests that readers scan a two-panel menu like a book: from left to right and then down the pages.

Although no “sweet spot” was found in this study, they did discover that readers gave least attention to restaurant information section and salad lists, which they dubbed as “sour spot”.

Rapp still looks to the upper right hand side as the prime real estate of the menu. What today’s data-driven SaaS marketers should take away from these studies is not the conclusion, but rather the mindset: study where the “sweet spot” and “sour spot” of your sales page is, and place items strategically.

Heat map and click tracking tools (Crazy Egg and Hotjar are good options) can provide you with insights such as which areas of your page is most clicked on, how much do they scroll, mouse movement etc. This data will empower you to make optimization decisions.

Leverage the “Decoy Effect” for your desired outcome

According to industry experts, the most expensive item on the menu is mostly used as decoy. It works when you place it next to a less costly item you actually want to sell. The effect of it is that customers will perceive the less expensive one as higher value.

“You probably won’t buy it,” says Gregg Rapp in an NBC Today Show interview: “what will happen is that you will find something else a little bit cheaper, and it will look reasonable.”

In the interview, he used a menu that displayed a $20 asparagus right beneath a shockingly pricey $1,000 Lobster Frittata. The $20 asparagus dish became a very good deal compared to the lobster, even though it’s overpriced for its own sake.

The common practice in SaaS pricing is the 3-tiered high/low/middle pricing table, with the intent to prompting buyers to choose the middle one. But what could be a more intelligent strategy is to insert a fourth “decoy” plan, such as what Crazy Egg did below. By using a expensive “Pro” plan that costs almost twice as much as the most desired “Plus” plan – highlighted in blue box – it makes the “Plus” plan appear as much better value for your bucks.

Example of price decoy in CrazyEgg’s pricing page.

Another success in decoy pricing is Shopify. Back in 2013, their pricing had 4 tiers: Lite, Basic, Pro and Unlimited. Earlier this year, they made a drastic move to their pricing plans: got rid of starter plan (Lite) and dramatically increase highest tier price (from $179 to $299).

Example of price decoy in Shopify’s pricing page.

Now the price difference between their 2nd and 3rd tier is 67%, which makes the value add in the 3rd tier very attractive, and at the same time retaining a robust mid tier user base (small businesses).

Get your point across – fast

When consumers open a menu, they are immediately overloaded with information. This can trigger analysis paralysis. A well-designed menu takes the guestimation work off of the customer: the less time a consumer has to spend on understanding the choices and deciding to buy, the better the outcome.

Our subconscious brain habitually searches for shortcuts. It’s a survival instinct. So instead of reading word for word, most people end up scanning menus. Gallup organization has reported that most consumers spend less than two minutes scanning a menu, and studies by Panitz have shown that 60-70% of sales come from fewer than 18-24 menu items.

Similarly, limit the number of items on your product page. It helps your target buyers when there is less to choose from. Also, rather than listing out every bit of information about your product, only highlight the important bits that will help your customers differentiate value.

Mailchimp does a great job at eliminating unnecessary information. They got rid of long lists of product feature descriptions like most SaaS companies do, and simply used a one-paragraph description in each plan. It is simple, straightforward, and takes seconds to digest.

Use visual hierarchy in your pricing page to let the most critical information stand out. Research tells us that visual clutter delayed information processing. Group information into different levels. Arrange design elements in clear visual order. This will help your target buyers organize information and make a purchase decision faster.

Conclusion

Cutthroat competition in the food industry has inspired innovative ways to optimize revenue. When we look at the novel ways menu engineers are using consumer psychology insights to reshape the dining experience, SaaS companies pale in comparison.

As consumer SaaS market gets more and more competitive, we hope to see an uptake in adopting innovative pricing strategies such as the ones discussed here.

Is your company struggling with finding the right pricing strategy? Have any of the techniques here worked for your product? Share your thoughts and comments below.

About the Author: Lucia Wang is currently leading Growth Marketing at Visme, a drag-and-drop design tool for everyone. Previously she led growth marketing at Call Levels, an Appster award-winning FinTech app. Prior to her career in tech, she has worked in marketing and communications role at big corporations and media agencies. As a marketer, she is fascinated by persuasion science and consumer behavior.

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Editor’s note: Today we hear from John W. Penney, creative director and CEO of Miami-based BlackDog Advertising. Read how the company used Chrome devices to build engaging signage for Evelyn Hill, a vendor on New York City’s Liberty Island.

The Statue of Liberty towers 300 feet above Liberty Island, where visitors can admire its grandeur and explore the history leading to its construction. While most people know some of the statue’s history, few know Evelyn Hill, the family-owned business that has been selling food, refreshments and souvenirs beneath the Statue of Liberty for three generations. We took on the challenge of transforming Evelyn Hill’s gift shop and restaurant, the Crown Cafe, into a visitor destination, and driving traffic to thestatueofliberty.com.

Evelyn Hill wanted to replicate a photo contest my company, Blackdog Advertising, had created for Dry Tortugas, a remote national park off the Florida coast. This time, we’d be creating a live photo feed so visitors could see images as they were uploaded. My company had a great experience using Chrome devices before, so we decided to use Chrome digital signage devices because they are easy to deploy, cost effective and make content management a breeze.

The photo contest has driven incredible engagement — both in person and online. Over 21,700 photo votes have been cast so far, and thestatueofliberty.com saw a 270 percent traffic spike as a result. Evelyn Hill is considering ways to expand the photo contest to other locations on the island because of the success we’ve seen so far.

To drive high engagement, we created live-updating digital signs to draw visitors into the Crown Cafe and engage them in the photo contest. Monitors are powered by Google Chromebits that are remotely operated using Chrome Device Management, so the cafe can easily display contest results. Meanwhile, visitors can use the #PictureLiberty hashtag to share their photos on the Statue of Liberty website and encourage their friends to vote for their submission.

The flexibility of Chrome lets us optimize signage solutions. With Chrome Device Management we were able to easily install WooBox, which collected contest photos from social media, on all of our managed devices (in this case, Chromebits). We don’t want to deliver cookie-cutter solutions to our customers, and Chrome enables us to build solutions that stand out from the crowd.

Using Chrome also helped keep the campaign cost effective. Since Chrome Sign Builder is free to use and the photo content is user-generated, hardware was the only cost. Each of Liberty Island’s four units cost just $109, including access to Chrome Device Management, which allowed us to easily install apps on the Chromebits. Achieving this low cost would have been impossible with any other digital signage solution.

Visitors remember their time on Liberty Island for the rest of their lives, and Evelyn Hill is part of that experience. Chrome helps make that experience better. The #PictureLiberty contest and others like it will ensure the Crown Cafe remains a visitor destination for decades to come.

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No matter how much careful planning goes into a project, disaster can still strike when you least expect it. And when it does, it’s important for project managers to know how to minimize the damage and keep the team moving forward.

Sometimes, the signs are obvious: deadlines are being missed, your communication channels aren’t keeping everyone on the same page, and team members are confused about the scope of their individual responsibilities.

Other times, the signs a project is headed for trouble are more difficult to spot. Maybe team morale is a little lower than usual, or the project’s output doesn’t exactly meet your agency’s quality standards.

If your latest project seems like it’s spinning out of control, we’re here to help. We’ve outlined a basic project recovery plan to stop the bleeding and steer your team back on track. It won’t necessarily fix everything, but it’s a good place to start. 

How to Save a Project That’s Gone Off the Rails
1) Acknowledge that things aren’t going so great.

It might seem painfully simple, but admitting there’s a problem with the project’s current trajectory is the first (and often most difficult) step to getting things back on course.

Whether you’re dealing with a big problem or some smaller difficulties, the earlier you acknowledge them, the better. If you leave those seemingly less urgent issues to fester, they could cause major project disruptions down the line. Be vigilant for signs of potential catastrophe. 

Avoid playing the blame game. Gather your team for an emergency meeting to discuss exactly what’s going wrong and assess the damage. As the project manager, it might mean an ego hit to call out a project’s shortcomings, but it’s a necessary blow to get things back on the right path.

2) Reevaluate the project’s core objectives.

The best way to get things rolling again is to bring your team’s attention back to the project’s original purpose and primary goals. When things get chaotic, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, and people can get bogged down in the stressful details. The purpose can get lost in the frantic shuffle. 

As the project manager, it’s your job to keep an eye on the ultimate goal — especially when the project isn’t headed in the right direction. At the kickoff meeting, you likely went over the project’s targets and milestones with your team — but it might be time for a refresher.

When you meet with your team, don’t just rehash everything from the initial kickoff meeting — make sure you take the time to identify where things have fallen off course. Are there any particular areas of your project plan that now seem unattainable? Any areas that require some careful reevaluation? Maybe something you thought would be a small component is actually demanding a lot more attention. 

At this point, you can’t be afraid to be flexible.

It can seem absolutely terrifying to pull a 180-degree pivot midway through an important project, but sometimes it’s the only way to salvage things. Think about it this way: You know more about the project now than you did at the outset. At this point, you know what doesn’t work, which makes you better equipped to formulate a better — more realistic and informed — approach.

3) Audit your team’s communication channels.

If your project isn’t going as planned, there’s a good chance that poor communication deserves a significant chunk of the blame. It’s pretty simple: For your project to succeed, you need to have a communication infrastructure that allows team members to stay on the same page, even when they’re working on different areas of the project.

Take the time to examine your current communication process and look for any gaps or weak spots. What channels is your team currently using to communicate? How are you sharing information about individual team members’ work? Is there a central place where team members can track the project’s overall progress? How often are you checking in as a group?

One of the easiest ways to keep your team connected is investing in a project management tool. There are a ton of tools available at various price points, making it a great option for agencies of all sizes.

If onboarding your entire team onto a new piece of software midway through a project sounds like it might overcomplicate things, make the best of your existing tools and channels. Create a single place (such as a shared document) where team members can report on their progress and keep track of how the project is doing overall. Establish regular times to meet in person and discuss what’s working, and what isn’t.

4) Schedule one-on-one meetings with team members.

Group meetings are a great way to share information and confirm everyone is focused on working towards the same goals, but individual, one-on-one meetings are still necessary to ensure the project is headed in the right direction.

If you haven’t already been doing so since the outset of the project, set up weekly one-on-one meetings with each of your team members. Regular one-on-ones give your team the chance to discuss how they’re feeling, how their work is going, and what they need from you to be successful.

These meetings also give you the opportunity to get a feel for where the project currently stands and address any concerns directly and discreetly. If a project isn’t going well because a few people seem to be slacking in their contributions, this is your opening to dig into why, and help them start pulling their weight again. 

5) Address stakeholder concerns.

When a project starts going south, it’s your responsibility to keep your client (and any other relevant stakeholders) in the loop. Transparency and honesty are key here. If you attempt to hide the project’s issues, things will only get worse down the road.

Acknowledge any mistakes that might have occurred, and own up to them — don’t try to pass the blame or throw around excuses, because they won’t be received well. Instead, explain the issues straightforwardly and share your action plan for getting everything back on track.

The most important thing to emphasize here is that you fully understand the situation and you’re in control of it. It’s much better to inform your client something will be a little late and explain why, rather than keep them in the dark and have them get frustrated when the deadline is missed.

6) Learn from it.

It’s important to fully recognize what exactly went wrong so you can do your best to prevent it from happening again in the future.

After the project is over, you should orchestrate a project post-mortem with your team. Send out a simple questionnaire before the meeting to give team members the opportunity to reflect and share insights they might not feel comfortable sharing in front of the whole group. This is a great chance for people to dig into both the project’s weak points and successes (however small).

The post-mortem meeting itself should ultimately be a frank but civil discussion of the project from start to finish. Try to acknowledge even seemingly small points of frustration, and plan on putting processes in place to avoid issues in the future.

Remember: This meeting isn’t the time to put anyone on the spot, point fingers, or assign blame. It’s ultimately a chance to unpack the project’s trajectory and make your team is stronger for next time.

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After a holiday season full of delightful indulging, millions of people make an optimistic New Year’s resolution to stay fit or lose the extra pounds they put on from those festive parties and family get-togethers. To help, starting today we’re piloting a new way to easily book fitness and wellness classes. Reserve with Google will be available in Los Angeles, New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area, to make keeping up with your resolutions easier than ever.

To book a fitness class, visit the Reserve with Google site on desktop or mobile web. There you can search for fitness studios near you, get great recommendations for fun new classes, or book a spot in the session you already know and love.

Over the coming days, you’ll be able to do this right from Google Maps and Google Search, as well.

Reserve with Google is possible through deep partnerships with top scheduling providers you may already use, including MINDBODY, Full Slate, Front Desk, Appointy — and we’ll be adding more, like zingFit, MyTime, and Genbook soon.

So pull out your yoga mat, dust off your running shoes, and fill up that water bottle. Reserve with Google will help make completing your New Year’s resolution as easy as click, click, booked.

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A look back at the content that “made it” in content marketing, with tens of thousands of shares, is the perfect recipe for inspiration as we end 2016.

The post A Year of Content Marketing in Review: The 15 Top-Shared Posts of 2016 by @JuliaEMcCoy appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

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From the subject line to the closing, there’s a science to writing the perfect email.

Include too many pictures, and your clickthrough rate may decrease. Write too much text, and your message may overwhelm your reader — especially considering 48% of emails are opened on a smartphone.

In our ebook, How to Write the Perfect Email, we’ll walk you through the 14 key steps to optimize your marketing emails for opens, clicks, subscribers, and more. We’ll cover how to:

Prioritize the goals of your emails
Nail the tone of your email to build trust with your audience
Time your sends to make sure your email is actually read
Segment your emails by lifecycle stage, content engagement, and more
Choose an impactful call-to-action

With each email send, marketers make countless decisions that influence whether your message gets opened, tossed, skimmed, or clicked. Don’t send your next blast without the latest optimization tips and industry data.

Check out our email optimization guide and learn how proper email optimization can boost your content downloads, convert more prospects, and increase your ROI.

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