Starting on June 7, this two-day virtual conference will highlight how proven marketing practices might be leveraged by those in the learning and development industry.

As tech + education professionals who develop online learning programs, we particularly appreciate how the intersection of industries can produce valuable insights, tools, and best practices to take learning to the next level.

Catch these exciting talks!

• What Can L&D Learn from Marketing? with Lynne McNamee
• Cohort Learning Challenges: Meeting the Engagement Needs of Hybrid Workers with Adam Weisblatt
• How to Create Emotionally Engaging Learning Journeys with Mingming Jiang

Check out the full lineup and conference program

Save your seat

Tickets to the Learning & Marketing Online Conference start from $395 USD, with group and organizational discounts available.

Register today

Looking to improve your employee training program?

With our approach to building flexible, responsive, and accessible eLearning programs, we can help you to increase reach, drive engagement, and uncover new growth opportunities.

Get in touch

The post Learning & Marketing Online Conference June 7-8, 2023 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Compensation: CA$38,400/yr – CA$60,000/yr

The ideal candidate possesses a passion for writing and an innovative ability to create successful marketing campaigns and aid in creating company growth. You will be responsible for generating exciting and compelling stories on both digital and print sources of media.

The goal of your role is to assist in defining and writing content, including online courses and related media, articles, and marketing copy/scripts to promote Say Yeah’s educational and accessibility-focused content and courses to learners and professionals. You’ll take time and care to research our users and the education and course development space to write engaging copy that compels our audience and learners.

Beneficial experience

• Marketing writing, including understanding writing for audience and tone of voice
• UX copywriting, including helping guide people through online interfaces
• Online course writing and knowledge of instructional design
• Multimedia scripting for informative or engaging video content

We don’t expect any one candidate to have strengths in all of these areas.

Responsibilities

• Create new content to assist marketing campaigns
• Work closely with marketing team members
• Optimize content using SEO best practices

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing or relevant work experience
• Experience in full life cycle project management
• Proficiency in major digital and print platforms

The details

What you’ll be doing

• Aid in developing online courses and related marketing content pieces.
• Collaborating with our product team to fully understand our products and their offerings to deliver great marketing copy about each product and to help walk people through the product interfaces.
• Researching our potential customers and understanding their needs to determine the best way to communicate with them.
• Executing any content updates as we continue to grow our products and our offerings!

What you bring to the table

• Content writing or marketing copy experience.
• You’re a great writer with an eye for detail, style, and engaging copy.
• Ability to work autonomously and collaboratively.
• Knowledge of education or accessibility is considered an asset.
• To meet current grant requirements: you have graduated within the last 2 years.

We welcome applications from all qualified individuals, including, but not limited to women, persons with disabilities, visible minorities (racialized), aboriginal (Indigenous) persons, and persons of any gender identity and sexual orientation. We are committed to a positive, supportive, and inclusive culture and workplace environment.

We offer accommodation for applicants with disabilities in our recruitment processes. Please advise if you require accommodation throughout the recruiting process.

Interested in joining our team to create inclusive educational courses and services?

Apply now with a resume and read the full job description at the link below.

Apply now on Linkedin

The post We’re hiring a Content Writer appeared first on Say Yeah!.

This event is dedicated exclusively to digital marketers in the financial services industry, the only one of its kind in Canada. As a proponent of digital excellence and customer experience, particularly in the financial services sector, we are excited to attend this unique summit and see how we can further connect the dots between marketing and digital product strategy.

Immerse yourself in two days of interactive sessions, keynotes, panels, and lots of networking opportunities. Here is your chance to build connections with 600+ financial marketing leaders and like-minded peers.

Discover what digital marketing strategies top financial companies are implementing, explore the latest industry trends, and learn best practices from 40+ senior FinServ marketers.

We can’t wait to hear these talks:

• Ready, Set, Digital: Accelerating Engagement for FSI Organizations with Jill Grozalsky, Wednesday at 9:40 AM
• Optimize Your Self-Service Customer Experience: Proactive, Seamless, Intelligent with Peter Tessier, Wednesday at 11:10 AM
• Building Organizational Agility to Minimize Roadblocks and Achieve Long-Term Digital Process Excellence Success with Annu Gulati and Julian Mills, Thursday at 9:30 AM
• Is Your Future Digital Marketing Strategy Robust Enough for the Next 5 years? with Nathan Gervais and Elizabeth Walford, Thursday at 3:15 PM

Full summit schedule

Don’t miss out

Get tickets for virtual and in-person access starting at $995. Limited availability. All attendees will have on-demand access to view sessions for 3 months post-event.

Save your seat

Ready to grow your business and excel in the connected age?

With our approach to digital transformation, we can help you improve organizational efficiency, drive customer engagement, and uncover new growth opportunities.

Get in touch

The post Digital Marketing for Financial Services Canada Summit, June 8-9, 2022 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

What is the CMO Academy?

An exclusive executive program, sponsored and designed by Google in partnership with Columbia Business School, the CMO Academy offers participants access to top International MBA institutions and insights on surmounting marketing challenges and discovering the latest trends.
We’re flattered to be selected from North and South American applicants, and look forward to learning about the latest industry practises so we can keep taking digital transformation further within our organization and clients.

The following speakers are on our must-see list:

Adam Anger, Director of Americas, Google Marketing Solutions, Google
David Rogers, Faculty, Executive Education, Columbia Business School
Liz Austin, Senior Digital Consultant, Google
David Chen, Global Creative Strategist, Google

These service delivery and digital transformation sessions will be especially compelling:

Digital Transformation: It’s Not About Technology
Managing Disruption: Applying Digital and Audience Insights to Your Business
Targeting, Personalization and Marketing to a Segment of One
Google Insights Toolkit
Workshop Series: Formula for Digital Brand Excellence
Leading Digital Transformation

Reach out to Lee for insights!

Say Yeah’s CEO Lee Dale looks forward to sharing his experiences from the conference with you when he returns to Toronto.

Email Lee

or call our Toronto office at 416-642-9693

The post We’re at the CMO Academy in Chicago, Nov 7-8th appeared first on Say Yeah!.

On April 20th, local Toronto business owners filled the Council Chambers at City Hall for a day of transformational insight and the digital best practices at the Digital Main Street Forum hosted by Digital Main Street (DMS).

The Digital Main Street Forum was organized to encourage growing main street businesses to apply technology in ways that can take their business to the next level. From online marketing to customer research to data practices and emerging technologies, the forum challenged business owners to reach outside their comfort zones to consider new opportunities for their businesses.

Jesse Hirsh started the day off by highlighting technology’s impact on the workplace, focusing on automation, robots, co-working, blockchain, and more.

“Technology has created an accelerated society,” said Hirsh, “There are always new services and apps, and that means new opportunities.”

Social media is the new marketing

Dani Gagnon of Dani G Inc. is a mastermind behind some of the most clever social media tactics that businesses can use to drive customer engagement. She highlighted how deftly adapting your content to pop culture trends has the power to drive meaningful interactions.

By intertwining relevant pop culture with organizational objectives, you can ride the wave of a current trend. She shared an example from the time she headed social media for an insurance company. On the same night, the popular television series Game of Thrones had aired, she shared a poll, “What Game of Thrones character most needs life insurance?” This effort of practically tying the business’s offering into this trending content brought relevancy, which was quickly followed with awareness and engagement.

Tip: practice connecting your business back to a trend regularly. Pick five trends and see how you can shape your offering to be relevant to the trend.

Data is the new oil

Data Scientist Corrine Sandler had desired to fill a gap she noticed while working in the research market. With Fresh Intelligence Research, she and her team are able to produce fast, cost-efficient research with actionable truths.

Sandler says understanding data and how to put it to its best use is the secret to creating experiences that customers are willing to pay for.

“Your greatest asset is your customer. Your second greatest asset is your data.”

Sandler emphasized that data is a great asset that can be used to find conversion opportunities. She shared an example of a pool company that found customers converted better when two consecutive days of temperatures were above the historical average. In this case, data helped the company discover the best time to advertise and the most effective ways to do so.

All in all, data is a big deal and it’s extremely important to know how to use it to your advantage.

Millennials and the new-age workplace

Cheri Chevalier, General Manager of Cloud Services & Software at Microsoft, probed businesses to seek millennials for talent in the workplace, and how this will economically benefit them.

“Millennials will be about 50 per cent of the population very soon, and it’s understanding how to engage and get the most out of that talent that’s going to be really important for businesses, both to engage their employees but also as you sell to those customers as well.”

Chevalier also quoted that millennials are becoming the prominent buyers in the ecosystem.

Digital Main Street Forum was a great opportunity for business owners to learn about technological advances that are shaping the way Torontonians are doing business.

We encourage businesses of all sizes to explore how digital can help improve product and service delivery and customer experience!

The search for digital best practises starts here

If you’re looking to discover how digital can effectively transform your business, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

The post Digital Main Street Forum 2018 Highlights appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Held at Toronto City Hall, the forum is expected to address key practices businesses should implement to strengthen and broaden their reach. Attendees will learn about online marketing strategies, how to leverage data and better engage clients, and e-commerce approaches that will help their businesses grow their customer base.

Keynotes include:

• The Future of Commerce: Automation, Consumer Loyalty, and Data Driven Businesses by Jesse Hirsh
• There’s No Such Thing As “Social Media Marketing” by Dani Gagnon
• Demystifying Data by Corrine Sandler, founder and CEO of Fresh Intelligence Research

Break-out sessions

The afternoon is packed with insightful and intimate breakout sessions with a mixture of top digital, financial, and e-commerce organizations in Canada. These sessions are expected to equip attendees with insider knowledge on how leading companies have used digital to transform how they operate, while highlighting how trends in digital continue to evolve and impact this millennial-dominated, consumer world.

You can look forward to discussing topics like machine learning, mobile technology, customer interactions and relationships, and forging millennial-friendly environments in the workplace.

Sessions are as follows:

• Is your business millennial-friendly? by Microsoft Canada
• The Future of Loyalty in Canada by Mastercard Canada
• Digital Marketing in the Age of Assistance by Google Canada
• Empowering the modern mobile workforce by Rogers
• Run your business with Shopify! Learn about how Shopify can literally transform your business by Shopify

Who’s attending & why you should attend too

Whether you’re a business owner, strategist, analyst, or content creator, the DMS Forum is for you. Leave this forum with new knowledge on how to leverage digital across your business, and truly achieve digital excellence.

Get complimentary access to the DMS Forum

We’d love to see you at the Digital Main Street Forum! Feel free to use our promo code dms-sayyeah for complimentary access and share this post with your colleagues so they, too, can attend.

Get tickets

We hope to see you there!

Caroline and Lee

The post Friday, April 20, the Digital Main Street Forum is here to encourage businesses to adopt digital technologies and practices appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Published as “Correlating marketing with mobile products: Your path to conversions & engagement” in: Direct Marketing Magazine by Lee Dale, February 2016

With over two billion smartphone users projected in 2016, the mobile space is growing far more competitive, with increasingly savvy consumers expecting more from mobile experiences.

While ad spend for mobile is projected by eMarketer to reach $101.37 billion in 2016, an increase of almost 50% from 2015, alignment between marketing and mobile product experiences seems to be decreasing.

Increasing the amount of spend on mobile marketing is not nearly as important as improving the quality of engagement as users move from marketing channels to your site, app, or other mobile product. The evidence, as highlighted by Google: one in four apps are never used and 29% of smartphone users will switch to another site or app if their needs aren’t satisfied.

Let’s look at three key phases where marketing must be aligned with product to reduce abandonment and increase engagement.

1. Product discovery phase

The product discovery phase is the foundation for all ongoing efforts to drive customer engagement. This is the most critical phase for aligning marketing and product, as the tone of the customer experience is set during these early customer touchpoints and product aspirations are defined by awareness-focused marketing initiatives.

To move from awareness to engagement, marketing-led product introductions must align with the real world value of the product. As product experience and value is defined by the audience the product serves and how the product is designed to meet the goals of those target users, it’s vital marketing understands and is able to frame a story reflective of the product narrative.

To accomplish this, the key task at this phase is to have marketing and product teams work together to understand the primary use cases of the product and ensure that the promise being marketed to the user is delivered by the product itself.

2. First use phase

The key to succeeding in this phase is to ensure a natural segue between the product marketing and first impression of the product. The transition from marketing to product can be as instant as clicking from an ad or direct email to a website, or it could involve going from in-store to a mobile site on the commute home, or installing and launching an app after a visit to the app store.

In each case, moving from marketing channel to product should feel familiar. Where the user first lands in the product needs to correlate with the marketing that lead the prospective user to the product in the first place.

Capturing that look and feel in product begins with identity standards for logo, colours and value statements shared amongst marketing and product teams, along with considering how the introductory marketing campaign will tie in with the related product landing page.

That sets the tone for your product launch, but with both marketing and product continually iterating to drive awareness and engagement, ongoing marketing campaigns and product updates need to be coordinated to align product first use with current marketing language and visuals.

There are two first use aspect at play: users who have had past interactions with a brand bring a bias to the table based on their experience, and users who are new frame their expectations of the product through the introductory marketing channel. When there’s a disconnect between those experiences or expectations and the product, it’s shown that anxiety, doubt and frustration build. This leads to abandonment. Ongoing collaborative planning between marketing and product is your path to ensuring conversions at this critical handoff point, where users are moving from a marketing channel to becoming a product user.

3. Engagement phase

Once a user is in the product, the focus shifts to retention. Engagement tactics drive retention, which is established through an ongoing series of interactions.

For products that encourage new behaviour, self-discovery is the enemy of engagement. This is where an onboarding process becomes the most important tool for establishing an affinity to the product. Onboarding takes the user from spectator to participant by outlining product capabilities, values and goals, while encouraging interaction.

Ongoing engagement involves consistent, worthwhile communication and interaction with product users. This engagement should be aligned with the value of the product so that it is not perceived as spam. Ongoing engagement may occur across a variety of channels, including targeted email, in-app notifications, OS notifications and in-site messaging.

Opening up two-way engagement through live chat and on-site support services shows you value your customers and encourages valuable feedback for your mobile products.

In this phase, marketing has the opportunity to drive bottom line value by leveraging communications best practices to connect with users as they work through a site, app or other mobile product. Whether communicating with new users who are looking to get the most out of a new digital product, helping experienced users reach their goals faster or introducing an unexpected new feature, working with the product team on in-product messaging not only helps drive retention, it also helps marketers become better storytellers during the product discovery phase.

Each phase plays a role

Creating a marketing plan that is aligned with mobile products across each marketing channel results in more effective and profitable campaigns. Marketing and product teams who consider the discovery, first use, and engagement phases will see these results with higher conversions and more engaged users.

You can get started now by reviewing how your current marketing initiatives compare to the first use experience with your product, then get marketing and product working together to craft an even more compelling story across each phase.

Lee Dale helps companies bring digital products to market that make a bottom line difference, ensuring that all consumer touch points in a product lifecycle meet their promise for the business and its users. As co-founder and director of product strategy at Say Yeah, Toronto’s multi-channel experience design studio, Lee delivers award winning digital products, each with a focus on driving real-world business value while engaging users in unexpectedly magical ways.

View article in issuu.com/dmn.ca

The post Key phases where marketing must be aligned with product to reduce abandonment and increase engagement – Direct Marketing Magazine appeared first on Say Yeah!.

So you’ve purchased your new website domain and you’re ready to build your site. Or are you? “Just” having a website and domain are not enough to drive visits, leads, or sales. There are other components in the digital lifecycle that must be considered.

The internet has made starting a business possible for everyone. And every day new entrepreneurs decide to take the leap and go into business, publishing a website that acts as their virtual headquarters. But before an entrepreneur invests any capital into designing a website, there must first be a clear understanding of what a website is and what purpose that website serves.

Understanding Website Fundamentals

Not everyone who starts a business online understands what the purpose of their website is. However, every successful business owner or marketing professional can answer that fundamental question— what purpose does my website serve?
Let’s start with the basics to understand why this is so important. At its most basic, a website is an internet-browsable digital property or digital asset that hosts one or more pages of content. It is crucial to understand the website as a collection of content because this content helps search engines and, most importantly, people, first find the website, and then take action.

Fundamentally, content is the lifeblood of any site looking to drive consumer engagement as content both shapes a user’s perception and experience, and encourages them to click. As a result, before designing a web site, the business first needs a clear vision of what content will be required to drive engagement and action.

In order to form a sound content strategy, the business first needs to ask itself the following:

1. Who is the business targeting?

By understanding who your target audience is, you can better determine how to deliver value to them, how you can best engage them with language and visuals, and what you need to offer to drive engagement and clicks.

You do this by providing an:

Offer: Understand what you have to offer your target (be able to clearly state what your product or service does).

Promise: Promise your target something of value to them (“more this” “better that”).

2. What does the business need to achieve?

Understanding your business goals allows you to focus your content on driving users towards these goals.

Here are some examples:

Awareness: Does the company want to build awareness? This is perhaps the first crucial step for a new online business. If the product or service is new to an industry it needs to make people aware it exists. The business needs to demonstrate that it offers value to its prospective customers.

Retention: Once a business is established, does the business want to retain its clients to grow loyalty and promote advocacy?

Profit: Is the goal to increase revenue or decrease cost? A website can have a fundamental impact on the bottom line through the alignment of sales efforts and marketing initiatives, along with the optimization of conversion funnels and other calls to action (CTAs), all of which shape the content of your website.

3. How does my website fit into my existing business model?

The content and function of the site will rely heavily on what other channels the business operates in. For example, there will be differences based on whether the business operates primarily online or at physical locations. Perhaps the business is selling a product or service, perhaps it’s an information or news source, and perhaps it drives people to download an app or visit a real-world location. Each of these criteria leads to different business goals, different content, and different calls to action.

By answering these questions, a business will gain insight into how they need to tailor the content of the site, ultimately leading to a relevant and engaging user experience for visitors who reach a specific website landing page.

Starting the machine and getting momentum

With the strategic foundation set by answering the questions above, you’re now ready to start shaping the content of your website. The first priority now is to consider the homepage and any other landing pages which may act as a user’s first click into your site. How will you capture those users on each landing page? Given this entry point and the channel that brought the user to that page, what information and CTA needs to be on each landing page to drive engagement?

You’ll find a framework for answering just these questions (along with a number of homepage and landing page examples) in our free Effective Landing Pages book.

Now that you’re ready to take the first steps with your website, download Effective Landing Pages and ensure you have the foundation to continually attract and grow your customer base.

Product strategy as a foundational skill

If you’re looking to bring fundamental product strategy methodologies and execution to your team, we’re here to help.

Get in touch

The post Getting started with your website: from domain to landing page appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Marketing is setting the expectation for your site. What promises are you marketing and is your site (or product) delivering those marketing expectations?

That’s Pamela Pavliscaka noting how expectations lead experience in her Data-Informed Design O’Reilly webinar.

Your customer’s expectations absolutely set the tone for any experience. Be sure your sales, marketing, product, and support teams are on the same page so each customer interaction is setting the same tone and delivering on those marketing expectations.

Not sure if there’s a disconnect with your product? Find out now by downloading Say Yeah’s free existing or new product questionnaire and working through it with your team.

The post Marketing, the right way appeared first on Say Yeah!.