Learn How To Avoid Costly Mistakes In Email Marketing With Jessica Pupillo

Jessica Pupillo is a Client Services Manager at Katey Charles Communications, where she started working as a copywriter in 2005.
Jessica holds a Bachelor degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and lives with her family in Ballwin, MO. She has more than 15 years of experience as a freelance writer, journalist, editorial director, and digital communications consultant, which helps her see each client’s big picture and ensure that their business strategy enhances it.
At Katey Charles Communications, Jessica delivers expert insight on email metrics, subscriber engagement and deliverability. She is the person to turn to when it comes to email strategy, automation and customer email journeys.
During her session at MDMC18, called “Inbox Bloopers: 10 Big Mistakes in Email Marketing”, Jessica will show how common email marketing mistakes can cause big problems for subscriber engagement and deliverability. She will explain how to avoid these costly inbox oversights using quality assurance checklists and automation reviews, and how to put review and audit processes into play at any company.
Here are Jessica’s answers to the pre-conference Q&A session.
Q.1. What are some big mistakes a business could make when it comes to digital marketing?
J.P.: When it comes to email marketing specifically, I see many businesses settle for “good enough.” Most email programs – even bad ones – turn a profit, so it’s tempting to become complacent. Don’t fall into this trap! The opportunity cost of complacency is high. Always work to improve. What new automation can you layer into your email marketing program? What can you work on optimizing through testing? If you’re not always asking what you can do better, you’re leaving revenue on the table.
Q.2. What is your favorite marketing book you have read lately? Or, what are a few of your favorite marketing blogs?
J.P.: I rarely miss a blog post from Litmus. It’s tough to beat their practical, evidence-based advice on email design and strategy. The Sherpa Blog from Marketing Sherpa is also on my short list as I appreciate their commitment to customer-first marketing and case studies. For email deliverability tips and news, I read Laura Atkin’s blog.
Q.3. Share your favorite digital marketing case study. What did you like most it?
J.P.: We recently helped a retail client transform their poorly performing welcome email series into one that achieves revenue at levels above industry benchmarks. We made a few key changes to the email campaign:
• We recoded their template to be mobile responsive, even in the Gmail app.
• We determined the client had deliverability trouble caused by poor bounce handling. As a result, we migrated them to an email service provider with exceptional deliverability tools and scrubbed their existing list to remove invalid email addresses.
• We revised the welcome strategy to place focus on the discount code, which is the incentive provided for signing up for marketing emails.
• We refreshed the creative to focus on the company’s unique value proposition and their most popular shopping categories.
After just a month running the new welcome series, revenue per email was up 567% over the previous year’s average. I particularly like this case study because it highlights how important the marriage between technology and creative skills is in email marketing. One without the other is a missed opportunity.
Q.4. According to you, what are the top three mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging digital marketing?
J.P.:

  1. Many companies look to digital marketing campaigns to overcome operational problems. That’s a giant task for a marketer and one that’s nearly impossible to overcome. If IT doesn’t have data plumbed correctly or customers aren’t delighted with the products they’ve purchased, for example, marketers face an uphill battle. When organizations have cross-functional teams that collaborate and improve together, that’s when we see great success.
  2. Focusing on cool technology instead of customer relationships. People can tell when you’re not authentic. You have to get the customer relationships correct first, then use digital marketing technology to amplify your voice and deepen the relationship.
  3. Some email service providers, especially those catering to small and mid-sized businesses, would have you believe anyone can do email marketing. And while most people can get a bulk email distributed, they often get stuck with poor results when their engagement is low or they land in the spam folder. Companies are much better off hiring an employee or an agency with email expertise to help them maximize results.

Q.4. Which are your three favorite digital marketing tools?
J.P.: Being in email, I love a great email services platform. My favorites are Adestra and Cordial, though we’ve used many others. Adestra for its user-friendliness and easy automation, and Cordial for marketers who want to make the most of their data with triggered campaigns. I also rely on email testing and rendering tools, and Litmus is my current go-to. Finally, before reporting on split test results, I always hit up the statistical significance tester at AB Test Guide.
Q.5. If you were looking to hire a digital marketer, what are the top 3-5 skills you would be looking for in a candidate?
J.P.: When it comes to soft skills, I’m always on the lookout for smart, flexible, humble, creative problem-solvers. HTML and data management skills are important hard skills in this niche, too.

Learn How To Befriend Google With Chris Brewer At MDMC18

The co-founder of Online Marketing Giant & OMG Commerce, Chris Brewer is known to others as “The Idea Machine”. A superior problem solver and a highly creative business thinker, Chris has been a successful entrepreneur for over 15 years working with seven-figure companies in the digital, publishing and outdoor advertising industries.
Brewer’s company Online Marketing Giant & OMG Commerce is a Google Premier Partner agency based in Springfield, MO, which delivers online and offline marketing expertise, advice and education to businesses, franchise groups and e-Commerce brands worldwide.
Chris is the author of the book “Does Your Marketing Make You Money: 7 Quick & Easy Secrets to Create A Booming Business Now”. Brewer regularly coaches and speaks to entrepreneurs and small business leaders on business growth and marketing. He resides in Springfield, MO, with his wife of 22 years and two children.
During his MDMC18 session called “How To Befriend Google and Win”, Chris is going to share how a business can benefit from recent Google changes. Together with Brett Curry, Kasim Aslam, Michael Bartholow, and David Kidd, Chris is going to be a speaker at the SEO Panel.
Here are Chris’s answers from the pre-conference Q&A session.
Q.1. What are some big mistakes a business could make when it comes to digital marketing?
C.B. Failure to become educated about the basics of digital marketing is the number one mistake I see. Those that are educated don’t fall prey as easily to the wannabe’s and robo-callers so prevalent in digital marketing today.
Also, missing the basics of what Google gives you for free. I recently published a new playlist on our YouTube Channel that covers the 7 Ways To Optimize Your Google My Business Listing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjarl_N4Wzo&list=PLyhZzeaFTzwPRokVTnSJ7JSEs1dWxq5Bg
Q.2. What do you think is the next game changer in digital marketing, such as a new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing? How will it evolve in the coming years?
C.B. Voice-driven search has been a big one and SEO’s and businesses are still adapting to that. In 2018 Google is going to take more and more of the search traffic away from websites, so you have to be on your game in how Google wants to index your information. Over the coming years, audiences will continue to be fragmented and customized. Content tailoring to audiences will create some definite winners and losers.
Q.3. What is your favorite marketing book you have read lately? Or, what are a few of your favorite marketing blogs?
C.B. Purple Cow by Seth Godin.  It’s not new, but it is still very relevant.  Love Neil Patel…of course!
Q.4. What are some social media time management tips that help you stick to your campaign goals without losing a lot of time?
C.B. Plan, plan, plan. Failure to plan your social media strategy and reassess it regularly is the key. When you don’t plan, you will fire without a target and miss every time.
Q.5. Share your favorite digital marketing case study. What did you like most it?
C.B. It’s a recent one. It’s not a huge client, but it was very fun. We took a musical group in Branson, MO, that has regional and some national recognition and completely overhauled their digital presence. We started with their database and their YouTube Channel. We created custom audiences from their database of nearly 1,000,000 customer/fan emails. It helped them skyrocket their iTunes & Spotify downloads without any help from a label. We accomplished their goal of selling out a venue outside their main performing area in a matter of days using Facebook Ads to the custom audiences we created.
Q.6. According to you, what are the top three mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging digital marketing?
C.B.:

  1. Failure to map a sales funnel for what you want to accomplish.
  2. Failure to test smaller batches before launching a full-scale campaign.
  3. Failure to educate themselves enough to know that what a third-party or in-house marketing team is telling them is true/accurate.

Q.7. Which are your three favorite digital marketing tools?
C.B.:

  1. SEM Rush
  2. Bright Local
  3. Google Analytics

Q.8. If you were looking to hire a digital marketer, what are the top 3-5 skills you would be looking for in a candidate?
C.B.:

  1. Google Adwords Experience/Skills
  2. Google Analytics Experience/Competency
  3. Ability to think strategically within an open mindset

Q.9. Who are three people you respect when it comes to digital marketing?
C.B.:

  1. Ezra Firestone
  2. Brett Curry
  3. Roland Frasier

Q.10. What’s the industry buzzword that annoys you the most these days and why?
C.B. Anything related to bitcoins!
 

Work On Your Game With Dre Baldwin

Dre Baldwin is the world’s only “Work On Your Game” expert, who speaks, coaches and consults business professionals on Mental Toughness, Self-Confidence, and Self-Discipline.
Dre was a professional basketball player for 9 years. He has been blogging since 2005 and started publishing his videos on YouTube in 2006 – he posted a new video every day for 7 years in a row! So far, he has published over 6,000 videos: with more than 125,000 subscribers, his videos have been viewed over 40 million times.
Dre has given 4 TED Talks, published 14 books and more than 150 basketball programs. His “Work On Your Game” podcast is ranked among Top 200 Education broadcasts on iTunes.
Dre is going to be a Keynote Speaker at the MDMC18. In his talk, he will share how to apply the tools, which he learned during his career as a professional athlete, to the business world.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSz7UL4KDWk]
As usual, before the conference, we sat down with Dre to talk about social media and digital marketing.
Q.1. What are some big mistakes a business could make when it comes to digital marketing?
D.B.:
– Not doing it!
– Being too generic
– No human voice behind their material
– Having nothing unique and interesting to say
Q.2. What do you think is the next game changer in digital marketing, such as a new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing? How will it evolve in the coming years?
D.B.: Immediacy. With live streaming, stories and snaps, we can share more and more of our daily lives, and people will want more and more of it. Those who are best at it will have a following who is constantly awaiting the next update.
Q.3. What is your favorite marketing book you have read lately? Or, what are a few of your favorite marketing blogs?
D.B.:

  1. “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson
    1a. “Win Bigly” by Scott Adams

Q.4. What are some social media time management tips that help you stick to your campaign goals without losing a lot of time?
D.B.: I don’t try to manage my time! There are 24 hours; no amount of management will change that. I just get it done, period.
Q.5. Which are your three favorite digital marketing tools?
D.B.:

  1. Cameras
  2. . Stories/Snaps
  3. 3. Email/blog posts

Q.6. If you were looking to hire a digital marketer, what are the top 3-5 skills you would be looking for in a candidate?
D.B.:

  1. Clearly understand my brand and message
    2. Have innovative ideas aside from my own
    3. Look for an edge, a way to be creative and new

Q.6. What’s the industry buzzword that annoys you the most these days and why?
D.B.: “Influencer.” Everyone is always aiming to influence. And, having a lot of followers is not the same as having a lot of buyers. Companies are finding that out.
 

Learn About The Blogger’s Mindset With Mike Allton

 Mike Allton is a Content Marketing Practitioner at the Social Media Hat, and an award-winning Blogger and Author, who lives in St. Louis. He is also the Chief Marketing Officer at SiteSell – a company, which helps solopreneurs online. When talking about himself, Mike says: “My goal is to ensure that businesses are able to leverage the power and connectivity of the Internet to promote and grow their business.”
Mike has been working with websites and the Internet since the early ’90’s. Mike teaches a holistic approach to content marketing that leverages blog content, social media and SEO to drive traffic, generate leads, and convert those leads into sales. He is also active on all of the major social networks.
In his MDMC18 session called “The Blogger’s Mindset – Find Topics, Write Faster, And Reach More People”, Mike will share his techniques and insider tips that have propelled his own blog and brand to the top. Mike will showcase how he promotes his content to get the maximum amount of exposure, increase the reach and drive more traffic to the blog. He will provide an insight into his strategic approach to blogging that ensures each piece of content is created for a purpose that fits long-term business goals.
Here are Mike’s answers from the Q&A session before the conference.
Q.1. What are some big mistakes a business could make when it comes to digital marketing?
M.A. The biggest mistake that I see far too many businesses & bloggers repeat over and over is to make their social profiles all about themselves. They treat social networks and posts as a broadcasting medium when, in reality, they should be working to create relationships. That means sharing thoughts & ideas that promote discussions, and working to find ways to integrate their audiences into the posts themselves.
Q.2. What do you think is the next game changer in digital marketing, such as a new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing? How will it evolve in the coming years?
M.A. We’re watching Live Video become such a game changer for digital marketing.
Right now, it’s mostly businesses broadcasting and consumers, well, consuming. As the platforms evolve and consumer confidence and competence grow, they’ll begin to play a larger role in the creation of video. For instance, right now, the easiest way to broadcast live video to Facebook with guests is to use 3rd party tools like BeLive. That precludes audience members from joining the video. Yet the ability to allow audience members to “come in” was one the great features of Blab. As that, and other barriers, ease, businesses & consumers will be able to collaborate on video.
Q.3. What is your favorite marketing book you have read lately? Or, what are a few of your favorite marketing blogs?
M.A. I really enjoyed “Vlog Like A Boss” by Amy Schmittauer. And interestingly, I am *not* a vlogger and have no intention of doing that much video. I love to write! But, video is important, and I’m often a guest on videos or host other people in video interviews, and Amy’s book contained brilliant insights and clever ideas that even a rare video creator like me could appreciate and learn from.
Q.4. What are some social media time management tips that help you stick to your campaign goals without losing a lot of time?
M.A. One of the most effective practices that I’ve adopted over the years is to create two documents for every campaign: a rollout or campaign overview doc, and a retrospective.
The rollout doc contains all of the campaign details, tasks, and sometimes even the copy that’s going to be used. Whether that’s landing pages, social media, email or blog posts, this single place is where you can plan out and fill out all of that information. The more complex the campaign, the more essential this document becomes, particularly if you’re managing a team.
And the retrospective is a simple review of everything that you did and what the results were. How many sales. How much traffic. What emails were sent, when, and what the results were.
Taking the time to document all of those things not only helps you run a current campaign smoothly, but also gives you a starting place for future campaigns! Whether that’s to duplicate & edit the rollout doc, or refer to the retrospective to see what worked and what didn’t the last time around.
Q.5. Which are your three favorite digital marketing tools?
M.A. Agorapulse, Tailwind, Canva
Q.6. Who are three people you respect when it comes to digital marketing?
M.A. Peg Fitzpatrick, Rebekah Radice, Jeff Sieh
Q.7. What’s the industry buzzword that annoys you the most these days and why?
M.A. Authenticity – not because being authentic is bad, but because more often than not, it’s used in a way that results in the opposite of what’s intended. Instead of someone being themselves, they try too hard to be “authentic” and end up stressing aspects of their personality that normally would not be so strong. Like someone trying to be the life of the party when, in reality, they’re much more laid back.

Study Abroad with UMSL Business

“In Your Business”, which is an UMSL Business’s podcasting series yet again featured people who are experts in their areas, eager to offer guidance to prospective audiences on matters affecting them. In the recent podcast, UMSL Business talked with Dr. Joseph Rottman, Dr. Ekin Pellegrini, and Cassie Philip about the Study Abroad Program at UMSL.
Dr. Rottman is the Director of the International Business Institute and a professor of Information Systems at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. He also coordinated the Study Abroad programs aimed at UMSL business students. Dr. Pellegrini is an Associate Professor of Global Leadership and Management at the College of Business Administration at UMSL. She also teaches “International Business” and “Women and Leadership” classes in Bremen, Germany. Finally, Cassie Philip is a student at UMSL majoring in Accounting, who studied abroad in Germany in summer 2017.
At the beginning of the interview, Dr. Rottman spoke about the countries and universities which partner with UMSL and offer study abroad classes for business students. UMSL currently has partnerships with schools in Germany, China, Japan, Finland, and the Netherlands. He also talked about application deadlines and when the courses are offered. When it comes to costs, Dr, Rottman explained that they vary depending on the courses and travel fares. However, Dr. Rottman advised applying for scholarships that are available to reduce the costs for prospective students.
Dr. Pellegrini talked about the available classes which students can take, such as, for instance, Accounting, Finance, Marketing, Information Systems, Cyber Security, Digital Marketing, International Business, as well as Entrepreneurship. She explained that the structure of the program is very efficient, which allows students to complete six credit hours in less than four weeks. The program also entails field trips to businesses such as the Mercedes Benz factory to get a hands-on feel for the international business environment.
During the interview, Cassie Philip confessed that taking part in the study abroad program was beneficial for her personal and professional development. She spoke about the dynamics of the classes she was attending, as well as the cultural diversity of students there, that enabled participants to have a deeper understanding of various cultures across the globe. She also stated that taking part in the study abroad program was an opportunity for her to travel and see other countries.
When speaking about the benefits of studying abroad for future employment, Dr. Pellegrini highlighted that the program places students in an advantageous position since current employers prefer employees with a global experience of business and cultural diversity. At the end of the interview, Dr. Rottman also gave insights into the evolution of the study abroad program within the College of Business which now includes new partnerships in the United Kingdom and Asia.
The interview was generally very insightful for business students who intend to study abroad. Listen to the full interview here.

The Hands Movement On Social Media

By: Isela Sanchez
The hands-focused social media movement is on the rise! Hands have always been a big part of films and other on-screen productions, but recently they have started to play a huge role in social media. Hands are the symbol of artisanal craftsmanship and entrepreneurial zeal. What exactly is zeal you may ask? Zeal is a strong feeling of interest and enthusiasm that makes someone eager or determined to do something.
The number of videos using hands as the “stars of the show” is increasing at large rates. Thus, the trend of using hands as the focus in many cooking videos took off in 2014 with the rise of video sharing on Facebook. “A quarter of video views on Facebook pages of media companies go to these sorts of instructional videos. No faces. No bodies. Just hands,” writes Amanda Hess in her article for New York Times.
One of the most successful social media channels using hands-focused cooking are Buzzfeed’s Tasty and Proper Tasty, which feature short, fast motion videos that suck the viewer in. The hands which are in the focus of the attention, take the viewer on a journey through the cooking process. It makes you feel as if you are cooking the food yourself, which contributes to the high popularity of such videos with the audience. In August, Tasty reached more than 800 million viewers on Facebook, as well as 58 million more on YouTube. Buzzfeed’s DYI channel Nifty is another popular channel for those who are into various home lifehacks.
Hands go viral on YouTube as well. Honda released a hands-focused commercial called “Hands”, which was a tribute to the company’s automotive and technology innovation. By taking the viewer on an adventure and keeping in suspense for 2 minutes, the video shows the company’s innovations over the past 7 decades.
So, what is all the hype about? The hand is the most demonstrably human part of the body after the face. By using hands (which should be presentable and well-groomed) it is possible to capture the attention of large audiences and express the message in a convenient way. Hand are the drivers of modern communication: it is a new opening to social media, and its possibilities are endless.

How To Make Elephants Dance With Agile Marketing

 Meet Yuval Yeret – the Agile Marketing Practice Lead at AgileSparks. The aim of Agile Marketing is to help marketing organizations become faster, as well as more flexible and responsive to the business environment they operate in, and Yuval’s role is to help such organizations improve their agility and performance in the digital age using Agile principles and practices.
Yuval joined AgileSparks as the Enterprise Lean / Agile Transformations Consultant in 2009, when he was living in Israel. Six years later he moved to the US to manage all the company’s growth and operations in the country. His list of clients includes companies such as CA Technologies, Siemens, HP, Amdocs, Informatica, Intel, CyberArk, Nice Actimize, Mimecast, and many others.
Yuval Yeret is the recipient of the Brickell Key Award for Lean Kanban Community Excellence, and the author of “Holy Land Kanban” – a book created out of the collection of his blog posts.
Yuval is going to be a speaker at the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference 2018, talking about core aspects and effects of Agile Marketing. In his presentation called “Can elephants dance? Agile Marketing at Scale – CA’s story”, Yuval will explain how large, traditional marketing organizations can adjust and quickly sense and respond to customer needs and market changes.
Q1. What are some big mistakes a business could make when it comes to digital marketing?
YY: Digital marketing enables you to move faster, learn faster. Applying old-style static marketing thinking to digital marketing leaves a lot of competitive advantage on the table. A business moving to digital marketing should also learn to move faster and be more agile – try things and iterate until you nail a win. Take advantage of the ease of experimentation and abundance of data that the digital ecosystem provides you.
Q2. What do you think is the next game changer in digital marketing, such as a new, modern tactic, tool, or aspect of marketing? How will it evolve in the coming years?
YY: I think the big changer in digital marketing will be the ability to harness the power of digital marketing to hone in on what an awesome marketing experience or even more generally an awesome customer experience looks like. Call it agile, call it growth hacking, call it whatever you want. Businesses that develop this capability and learn when best to unleash it will win more customers and achieve more customer success.
Q3. What is your favorite marketing book you have read lately? Or, what are a few of your favorite marketing blogs?
YY: Hacking Marketing by Scott Brinker tells a good story of how marketing can change in the digital age. I also found “The end of marketing as we know it” by Sergio Zyman a useful background to the disruption currently going on in the marketing space.
Q4. What are some social media time management tips that help you stick to your campaign goals without losing a lot of time?
YY: I love to use the “Pomodoro” technique. This is sort of a personal agile approach where you prioritize your backlog of activities – e.g. campaigns to monitor/create/tune, then you set a timer for 25 minutes, and for that time you focus solely on the activity at hand, disabling notifications, muting phones and any sort of communication, so that you can achieve flow. After that timebox expires you take a short break and then consider next steps – whether to go back to the same activity or move on. I combine this with a personal Kanban board that helps me prioritize and manage the flow of work I’m doing. (I’m using either Trello or a new tool called flow-e which actually extends my google inbox with a Kanban board )
Q5. According to you, what are the top three mistakes committed by organizations today in leveraging digital marketing?
YY:

  1. Spreading too thin, trying to tackle too many channels and techniques at the same time.
    2. Relying on a few “digital marketing experts” that become bottlenecks rather than enabling everyone in marketing to do most digital marketing activities and letting the experts focus on both enablement work as well as really innovative, digital activities and breaking new ground.
    3. Forgetting that digital doesn’t replace the need for awesome creative. You can A/B test to death, but without awesome marketers that come up with good ideas to experiment with, you won’t get anywhere. The key to success in digital marketing is to mix the art and science.

Q6. Which are your three favorite digital marketing tools?
YY: MailChimp, Google Analytics, Buffer
Q7. If you were looking to hire a digital marketer, what are the top 3-5 skills you would be looking for in a candidate?
YY:
Flexibility/Versatility – the ability to work across a wide variety of tools/channels/activities – even beyond digital marketing. I believe in the concept of T-shaped marketers.
Wide perspective – I love to work with digital marketers that think like mini-CMOs. Analytic/Empiric thinking – Acknowledge they don’t necessarily know and naturally gravitate towards experimentation and trial and error.
Collaborative – they know how to work effectively with their peers in Product Marketing, Field, Digital Sales/SDRs.
Curious – always looking to learn or try some new approach/technique/tool
 

Entrepreneurial Program at UMSL: Preparing Students for Success

By: Isela Sanchez

UMSL Business’s podcasting series “In Your Business” always wants to expand knowledge to students by providing guest speakers with an amazing teaching capacity and insightful ideas. For the latest podcast we interviewed Dan Lauer, Chris Miller and Alex Zwibleman, who are all part of the UMSL Business Entrepreneurial program. They talked about the basics, history, future, and what the Entrepreneurial program can do for business students alike.
Dan Lauer is the Founding Executive Director of UMSL Accelerate and Founder of his company, Lauer Toys, Inc., which produces Waterbabies®. Chris Miller is the Founder and CEO of The Mission Center L3C, who serves as Assistant Teaching Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary Entrepreneurship at UMSL. Finally, the last guest speaker is a student from UMSL, Alex Zwibleman, who is majoring in Business Management and who is taking part in the UMSL Accelerate Entrepreneurial Program.
Dan Lauer began the interview by explaining what UMSL Accelerate is and what it does. First, he talked about the vision of the program, about its potential to be an entrepreneurial center that will become award-winning and nationally recognized, and in what way it will foster innovation. He also explained what UMSL Accelerate 3 pillars, namely, “Educate, Innovate, and Engage”, stand for. Business Entrepreneurial program at UMSL is part of the “Educate” pillar.
Chris Miller provided some insight on how the courses of the Business Entrepreneurial program are developed. He mentioned that the courses are developed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs: They are designed to teach things that he and other entrepreneurs wish had been taught earlier to save their time, money and energy. These courses are designed to help entrepreneurs make an impact a lot quicker in their businesses.
The last guest was one of the students from the program, Alex Zwibleman. Alex talked about why he was interested in taking part in the Business Entrepreneurial program at UMSL, and which valuable knowledge and skills he acquired by being part of it. Alex was excited about the opportunity he was given by the program, and he shared his plans about how he is going to use the skills he learned there in future.
Dan and Chris finished the interview by explaining what they think will happen to the future of UMSL Accelerate in general and the Business Entrepreneurial program in particular. Dan explained that he sees big things happening in the future, and hopes UMSL to be in the top 10 ranked universities of Entrepreneurship in the country. “With the leadership and support, we have a “white board” to explore and be successful, … it is a wonderful opportunity and a blue ocean to explore,” says Dan. Chris finished the interview by saying that it’s a program for everyone: nurses, musicians, anthropologist – for people of diverse backgrounds, who plan to start their own businesses and need the relevant skill set to be successful.
Go here to listen to the complete interview.

Why Marketing Is The Right Career Path For You

By: Afnan Tahir
Many people question whether marketing is a right career path for them to choose as they consider a degree in marketing.
Studying marketing presents various career opportunities that include advertising, public relations, brand management, and market research. A degree in marketing has proved to be essential as it equips students with knowledge that will enable them to contribute excellently to the business world and the development of the community. The marketing department is one of the most critical elements of every company, and students who pursue a marketing degree have career opportunities in corporations from varied fields. Therefore, career choices in marketing are limitless.
To succeed in a marketing sphere, a person requires a combination of various personality traits, such as creativity, self-motivation, optimism, being goal-oriented, and the ability to work in a team among others. Moreover, studying marketing equips students with communication skills, the ability to solve problems, and enhances their capacity to strategize. The market and the consumer needs are ever-changing, and good marketers should learn to respond timely to these changes and the associated problems.
UMSL College of Business Administration is committed to delivering exceptional marketing programs that prepare students for fruitful careers and responsibilities in the corporate world. The University of Missouri – St. Louis offers different marketing classes for students to choose, namely, international marketing, digital marketing, marketing analysis and many others. The faculty includes competent scholars that are committed to ensuring that the institution produces graduates who will contribute to the improvement of the society, and who will be successful in the business world.
A career in marketing is an excellent choice for those looking for creativity and dynamics as it offers exciting experiences with boundless opportunities. Marketing is vital to businesses, and all sectors need it.

Service Automation and The Robot Age In Business

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UMSL Business’s podcasting series “In Your Business” always features interesting people, who are experts in their fields, willing to share their expertise with broader audiences. For the latest podcast UMSL Business interviewed Dr. Mary Lacity to talk about the robot age, service automation, and how these systems impact business processes.
Dr. Mary Lacity is a Curator’s distinguished professor at UMSL, and a Visiting Scholar at MIT CISR. She has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Washington University and Oxford University. She is also a Senior Editor on editorial boards of multiple high profile trade publications on information technology, and most recently she co-published “Service Automation: Robots and the Future of Work” together with Leslie P. Wilcox from the London School of Economics.
Dr. Lacity touched upon an array of topics during the interview. First, she explained that the new types of service automation technologies appearing now are going to vastly impact the delivery of business services in future. Throughout her career, she has studied three different types of service automations, such as robotic process automation (RPA), cognitive automation, and blockchain technologies (e.g. bitcoin). Dr. Lacity gave an overview of each of them in the interview and explained how they interact with the existing systems.
Dr. Lacity also explained that instead of anticipated job losses which many people expect to happen as a consequence of automatization, such technologies deliver a triple win of value to business organizations and their multiple stakeholders, including customers and employees. What robotic automation really does is “taking the robot out of the human” and letting employees focus more on the added-value tasks instead. Dr. Lacity also spoke about thirty action principles that each organization needs to follow in order to get the triple win of value and what is necessary to be done to avoid erroneous applications, which can lead to negative results.
When talking about the importance of research and data analysis, Dr. Lacity talked about quantitative and qualitative research methods, how she applies them in her work and how she collects data. In the interview, she mentioned that she doesn’t believe in the technological determinism. Instead, she believes in a strong human agency, and the human ability to choose how to use all these contemporary tools to better customer service and to better mankind.
The interview was overall very informative with many great key topics when it comes to the business aspect of how certain things operate.  Go here to listen to the complete interview.