Tag: New Year’s Resolutions

What’s Your Marketing Resolution for 2016?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on What’s Your Marketing Resolution for 2016?

I’m totally stealing this idea from smartie Beth Brodovsky, who emailed me this same question recently for her Driving Participation podcast series.

My resolution for association marketers would be for us to stop talking about segmentation and personalization and start doing it.

We know it’s important, but we’re full of excuses for why we don’t do it (and no, by personalization, I don’t mean sending an email to “Dear Elizabeth” as opposed to “Dear Colleague”): we don’t have the data, our systems won’t support it, it takes too much time, our members respond to our “spray & pray” tactics so we don’t need to worry about it, we don’t know how…

It’s 2016! No more excuses! Figure out how to collect and use the necessary data to allow you to find out what your members and other audiences care about, need, and want to know, and then serve that – and ONLY that – to them.

What would your 2016 marketing resolution be? Tell me in the comments!

Resolution Time!

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

It’s that time of year – the time when we look back and look forward and decide what we want to change. Most of the time, people think about bad habits they want to stop (like smoking) or good habits they want to start (like eating more vegetables).

And that’s all fine, if a little dull and, let’s be honest, likely to get broken.

Or….

You could join me in resolving to do something fun that will stretch you in some unexpected way:

Won’t you join me?

 

Resolutions, Fresh Starts, and Lasting Changes

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

A few days ago, Amber Naslund took on the topic of resolutions. Her take was pretty interesting: resolutions made at New Year’s actually contain the seeds of their own failure. She makes the point that nobody checks up on you at the end of the year to see how you did, and that a much better attitude to take would be:

I can do this, today and every day, if I want it badly enough.

And I get her point – it’s why I use New Year’s for fun resolutions (under consideration this year: circus camp, learning how to “cab whistle,” and learning how to ululate) and, if I want to change or be better, I just do it when the idea occurs to me.

But there’s a reason the week between Christmas and New Year’s is commonly known as clean out your desk/email inbox week: fresh starts are nice. Sure New Year’s is kind of an arbitrary time (why not, for instance, the first day of spring?), but it’s a commonly agreed upon arbitrary time, and that’s why it works for people.

So how do you help yourself stick to your resolutions? Well, you could take my route and only resolve something fun. I started doing it probably about 10 years ago, and I’ve kept every single New Year’s resolution I’ve made since.

But the answer’s right in front of us: accountability. If you want to make a more serious resolution, find someone who’s willing to hold you accountable for the results, and see the change you wanted to create become a permanent part of your life.

And whichever direction you choose to go – fun resolutions, serious resolutions, or no resolutions at all – have a very happy New Year!