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clansayeed · 3 years

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any chance for some positive vibes from the world today guys?

I have my first appt. with a psychiatrist in a long time today and I have a lot riding on it and the anxiety is starting to bubble up bad, and still with 4 hours to go...

details under the cut if anyone is interested, otherwise just some well wishes would really help my spirits

basically it took some timeTM but at the end of 2019 I finally found a doctor who undid some damage another careless doctor who left that practice did and she was the first and only person to be like dude... have you ever considered you have adhd?

and like no, I hadn’t, but she had me do some in-office assessments and having adhd herself she was really insightful in showing me things I had written off as my own personal shortcomings and failures all my life (thanks mom and dad, turns out I’m not being willfully defiant my brain just works differently but go off) were actually really telling signs of adhd

so since 2019 I’ve been on the same dose of adderall, while switching antidepressants to try and find the right one for me. but for over a year now I’ve had the same adderall prescription and honestly looking back on my life before I even considered adhd as a reason for a ton of my cumulative issues I was... a fuckin mess

well anyway her office is too busy and the higher ups have decided to cut controlled substances from what they provide, so I have to see a psychiatrist and try to convince her this treatment plan I’ve worked up with the same doctor steadily for over a year now has really worked for me and basically idk I feel like I’m gonna end up begging for her to keep me on the adderall?

but I know it’s highly addictive and I don’t want to come off as someone like that. I just think back to the nonfunctional mess I was beforehand and I’m terrified of being forced back to that, it feels like?? I’ve never discussed adhd with a psychiatrist before so I don’t know how this is gonna go down, esp since it’s a teleconference

that and I had a really bad experience with a psychiatrist in this state in early 2019 already, where she latched onto the first careless doctor’s (FALSE) bipolar diagnosis (dude had me on an anti-seizure medication [with no history... ever], an antidepressant, and when I said they made me too sleepy together he just wrote me a prescription for ritalin... which led to my considering adhd in the end but it was BAD and FALSE) and I felt like that first psychiatrist really didn’t listen to me at all, and I’m just scared of that happening all over again

but this time it feels like after finally starting to get my life together and feeling like I can set goals and achieve them instead of the alternative... it might all get ripped away from me if I can’t justify myself properly?

all this boils down to the fact that adderall is highly addictive and I get that but my anxiety is so bad I’m terrified they’re gonna see me as an addict trying to stay on it for that instead of someone who was a disaster before it helped even my brain out and let me get my shit together

so... yeah, good vibes and well wishes would be really helpful before 7AM PST...

edit:: the big reason I’m so anxious about being seen as an addict is bc my dad was addicted to adderall. one of many things at different times but he was lying his butt off to get a prescription and while he’s no longer on the stuff and I’m very diligent and meticulous about my medications and keeping them and myself in line, my mum is all but convinced I’m lying and am addicted too when I’m not, she just doesn’t understand what it’s like to deal with mental illness so bad it stops you from actually functioning at all. so that anxiety is spreading to this visit and all of it in general...

#;; rambling #;; personal shit #medication tw #adhd tw #anxiety tw #mental health tw #psychiatry tw #addiction tw #;; sorry wow there is a lot of TMI here but I guess I needed to vent it all more than I knew

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blacknovelist · 4 years

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Hi 👋 I love the ageswap AU it’s cute! So what’s the relationship between Mentor Shigaraki & Student All For One is like compare to canon? Sorry if this has been ask before but I’m curious to see your opinion? (Thank You For Reading.)🙏

Hi!! I’m so glad you’re enjoying Ageswap – content for the AU’s pretty inconsistent in coming around (the au itself is pretty inconsistent sometimes but shhhhh we’re just here to have a good time) but it always makes us happy, haha. This isn’t a question that’s come up, actually, tho I’m really glad u asked?? Because I only got caught back up to the manga recent-ish, so me n @guardianlioness got to hammer out a whole bunch of details on that end out while we were conferrin’ about this

hang on to ur seats folks bc im here to finish my school work and talk a lot

and i’ve just finished my school work

(also, as an aside: me and lioness always want to talk about ageswap. I don’t think i’ve deleted a single ageswap ask, they’re still here, waiting for me. they’ll happen eventually, probably, I guess, one way or another, and thank u to everyone for bein’ patient

Also also, spoilers abound bc of some names I’m dropping! If you haven’t made it through that one League of Villains arc with the Liberation Army and don’t want spoilers, this isn’t the post for you.

So in the much broader sense, we’ve at least discussed the history of One for All and All for One to some degree over here, but we’re gonna expand, add, and shift stuff around a smidge probably, in actual AU context. The important tl;dr is basically that the League is just a group that opposes the users of One for All after a vendetta when One for All first manifested, and All for One (who henceforth will be referred to as AfO, probably, because although Shigaraki’s his name it’d be confusing, I think, to just leap wholesale into that) was the child of Izuku’s as-of-yet unspoken of OfA mentor, who was assumed dead along with the rest of the mentor’s family but was instead taken in by Tomura (as we’ll be calling Mr. Shimura Tenko from here on out, to try and reduce confusion still and also bc in the beginning he didn’t have the name Shigaraki ) when Tomura lead the league to wreck OfA mentor’s shit bc he’s petty like that.

Now I don’t necessarily need to get into the big details – for the sake of brevity, I’ll make a separate post on AfO, his goals, the brother whomst he loves a lot that we’re giving him for canon parallels in spite of how much we’ve already bungled stuff up, and AfO’s relationship with Toshinori now that that’s all been hashed out – but I do want to point out that, for a time AfO was unaware that Tomura was the one who destroyed his home, only that Tomura was there and saved him and his little brother. OfA mentor hid/went underground/stopped using their family name of Shigaraki after the rest of the family died in grief, so Tomura used that to persuade AfO to not run back to his parent until AfO was swayed to his side, so to speak.

For the most part, Tomura and AfO’s relationship in Ageswap is something of a twist again on canon. See, and this is fun because we love drawing those lines between characters, Tomura (in both Ageswap and canon) is a fascinating emotional sort, both in relation to his mentor/student AfO, but ALSO to Izuku, who does studies on quirks and mumbles a lot and has incredible observational skills, whereas Toshinori is a beast of instinct and feeling, which again foils him to the far more calculating AfO and his logical student! That is to say, the parallels are criss-crossing: Toshinori could be attributed towards Tomura, where AfO could be towards Izuku. Now, obviously, it’s not a 1:1 ratio because nothing is, but it means that when we flip the dynamic we get something just as dysfunctional and unhealthy as in canon, but in a totally different way!

Tomura’s something of the Worst Mentor Slash Elder Sib Figure Ever in this world. He’s a hot mess to AfO’s young meticulousness, and through him AfO kind of. learns to live a little, so to speak. Or at least, relax and also take what he deserves w his quirk bc hey, he has the power, why not?

The general attitude we’re giving Tomura in this AU is kind of…. unnervingly touchy-feely or close physically, esp given what his quirk is. AfO isn’t quite so scared of it, because it’s Tomura, who’s a beloved teacher and friend, but it’s something of a (possibly unintentional, haven’t decided) way for Tomura to keep the League metaphorically close. Because he acts so relaxed and familial, it draws the League together and makes them less inclined to leave, later. And even if they wanted to, well… Tomura’s right there, and we all know what his quirk is. The relationships he’s fostering are just as unhealthy as in canon, just differently.

I think the dynamic might be that Tomura’s encouraging AfO to go apeshit, basically. Kind of like “you have this quirk you barely use/barely know about, and you can do all these things, so why don’t you?” ish, pushing him to overhaul a world/society that condemns his quirkless brother and keep his own power so tightly wrapped he suffers, you know? There’s a weird extra-close obviously openly familial aspect to the League, which is meant to parallel how awkward Izuku is with Toshinori and how they maintain a distance even though they also care and love each other a lot, and it has everything to do with the way Tomura acts and holds himself. Also, the League all refers to him as Tomura in private, to kind of…. sit on those close pseudofam vibes.

As for what AfO thinks of his mentor… well, AfO is the one who offered his family name “Shigaraki” for Tomura to use, a name that even Izuku hadn’t known because his own mentor never told him in their attempt to separate from their grief. So, you tell me what his thoughts might be.

#Boku no hero academia #BNHA #My Hero Academia #MHA #Ageswap AU #whiteroes1977 #BNHA Spoilers #Novelist Answers #BNHA AU #SUP FUCKERS WE'RE BACK #kind of #i only live here on weekends but my brain tends to interpret the time im at home in specific spaces as ''weekend'' so. there's the problem #anyway thank u for askin and also enjoying ageswap <3 it's such a weird indulgent au and by god it's the hill i'll die on #All for One #AfO #Shigaraki #hurgle #DON'T AT ME I KNOW I TALK ABOUT THE WEIRD EMOTION/LOGIC PARALLEL A LOT IN AGESWAP OK

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shimyereh · 5 years

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Mostly putting this here for my own future reference, but who knows, maybe someone else will also find it interesting. My translation philosophy has been evolving rapidly over the past 6 months, ever since I started this project, and I want to document that in a way that’s easy to find again later.

A friend on my other social media asked why I’m making such a point of staying far, far away from other English translations of Onegin while I work on mine. For instance, Emily Wilson apparently read a number of other English Odysseys while working on hers. My response:

But the Odyssey is blank verse, isn’t it? If I were translating something like that, I’d probably be reading other translations, too. The Onegin stanza is such a rigid and meticulously-defined form, it sticks in my head really well. Almost everything I’ve written within the scope of this project (translation, or original response poetry) is memorized on some level. So if I want my translation to be my own, I need to come at it as fresh as possible.

It’s not that I’m not reading other things for insight and ideas! I’m just not reading other English Onegins. I’ve been reading a truly absurd amount of early-19th-c. Russian poetry, doing translations of other things in Pushkin’s canon, reacting to things in my own voice using some of the forms I’ve observed. (Totally in the spirit of things! Pushkin and his contemporaries were constantly pulling out lines from things they read to use as a jumping-off point for a new poem.) I’ve even been reading Byron’s Don Juan, because Pushkin keeps referencing it. If Pushkin references something, I go read it! And in some cases, translate an excerpt to add to the footnotes so people reading my translation can be in on the reference. I’ve been reading primary sources, esp. memoirs from people who knew him personally. It’s so fascinating whenever I come across some biographical detail and go “huh — there’s a parallel there to such-and-such stanza of Onegin”. I’ve also been digging up as much discarded and related material as possible, and translating a lot of that, because I think these side paths give fascinating insights into what was going on behind the scenes.

It’s like when I’m playing a role onstage, and I try to come up with some theory of why my character does all the things they do, and what’s passing through their head at any given moment. Is my theory *objectively right*? Who knows. But it’s an underlying thread through everything I do, to give a consistent sense of character and all those little nuanced reactions. Translating Onegin feels like playing a stage role, I think you have to play Pushkin’s narrator character to some degree.

This same friend also commented that he’d been reading the Arndt translation and liked that it felt like Byron. I had to respond to that, too:

It’s interesting to hear that Arndt may have been trying to style his translation after Byron, because that’s pretty different from my approach. I find Byron flourish-y in a way that Pushkin isn’t. Pushkin is more direct and has much cleaner rhythms. (The 19th-c. Russian poets are cleaner with their rhythms in general. Advantages of a morphologically richer language: word order is more flexible.) Part of the puzzle for me has been trying to figure out my own set of tricks to get my rhythms cleaner, and to walk that line between lyrical and conversational. Pushkin also plays with sound a lot. Even before I could understand a lot of Russian, there was something about the way he uses sound that just… got to me. So I pay attention to that, and sometimes manage to mirror things he does, but at the end of the day English is not Russian, it flows differently, and so I mostly just try to stay open to letting similar kinds of soundplay creep into my translation wherever it feels natural. I think that’s the best way to be faithful to the flavor of the text.

So that’s apparently where I stand right now. I’ve still got a little over half the novel left to go (plus a certain amount of the discarded and related materials I’ve gathered), and I’m sure my views will continue to evolve.

#shimyereh translates

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thefederalistfreestyle · 7 years

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Interview: Alex Lacamoire (Keyboard Magazine):

Hamilton has won 11 Tony Awards, a Grammy, and a Pulitzer Prize. Its soundtrack went to Number One on the Billboard Rap chart, and the newly released collection of covers and remixes of the show’s songs just debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200 chart. Hamilton is a phenomenon, and Alex Lacamoire is its musical director and orchestrator.

But before his name became synonymous with that “ten-dollar Founding Father without a father,” Lacamoire had already built a reputation as a musical wunderkind, with an ESP-like ability to accompany, arrange, and wrestle a musical idea into shape. From his humble beginnings as the rehearsal pianist for The Lion King to storied successes with shows like Wicked and In the Heights, Lacamoire continues to be one of the most sought after musicians on the planet.

Backstage before yet another sold-out performance of Hamilton, Lacamoire talked to me about his unquenchable quest for musical excellence.

[. . .]

I read a quote by you about your work with Lin-Manuel Miranda in the show In the Heights where you said, “We had a Latin-American artist writing Latin-American music, as opposed to someone else trying to write in that style and pay homage to it…” As someone who grew-up in Latin family, did working on the music for that show feel familiar, or did it feel strangely foreign to you?

It was both. It felt natural in the sense that I recognized the music. I felt it in my bones from having grown-up listening to Salsa music. It wasn’t something that I ever put-on - I just listened to it because I was exposed to it. When I was in a car, my parents would be listening to it. Or when I was at a Christmas party, somebody would be blasting music to dance to for four hours. So you can’t help but just hear that hypnotic, trance-like tumbao. That became part of my DNA.

But in terms of the mechanics of writing it down and trying to notate it? I absolutely studied books. I read Rebeca Mauleón’s book [The Salsa Guidebook] about writing for Latin music—what it looks like and the terminology, like “Oh, this is what the bongos do,” and, “This is called the martillo,” etc. So I absolutely had to explore and listen, and it was very foreign to me, in terms of expressing to someone how to do it. Because that’s my job as an orchestrator: to notate it. It’s precision work, being specific about what something needs to be so that it can be consistent from night to night, and that it delivers what the story needs to deliver for the people on the stage and for the audience watching. You don’t leave a lot up to chance.

That brings us to the phenomenon of Hamilton. There’s a great video online of you delving into the title song, showing how you dance around a melody and lyric. How do you develop and prod it without ever stepping on it?

Well, in theater, what the actor is singing and speaking about is king. That’s where the focus needs to be, so you can’t step on that. I’m in a service industry; you know what I mean? I’m writing charts for a producer who needs me to write them, and I’m doing arrangements for a composer who needs me to do them for him. I’m doing something for somebody else, so it’s not really about me saying, “Look at me!” My job is really to help a story be told. Leave a hole, get out of the way of the melody, make sure the lyrics are being heard—that’s why I do what I do.

It seems like the collaboration must be a thrill for you.

Yes, because I feel like you make better music when you have someone giving you encouragement, or a critique to make something better for whatever reason. I think you come up with better things that way. I don’t think it’s as fun to be in a vacuum. I think that’s why the theater aspect of music felt so fun to me. The solitary aspect of being in a practice room and practicing your scales and modes gets to be very lonely! I’d much rather be with people, and also, I know what I’m good at, and that’s enhancing something. I’m much better at working with something than creating something out of nothing.

Can you talk a little about the way you and Lin collaborated on Hamilton?

Lin leaves that space for me because he doesn’t get bogged-down in the details so much of the actual writing down of the music or the sounds. He’s more like a “big picture” guy, as in, “Here’s the melody, here’s the lyrics, here’s the chords, here’s the structure. He does that in a demo, and then he hands it off to me.

Are his demos on piano?

He uses a keyboard and he works in [Apple] Logic. He finds the sounds, he finds the drum loops, he plays the bass lines, he plays the hooks. But then it’s up to me to actually have other people do that for us. Lin knows that he can give me the keys to the car. He would send me his Logic demos so I could then go in and solo all of the different parts and see exactly what sounds he used. In terms of gear, I use an 88-key, weighted Yamaha keyboard along with Logic. I also use [Apple] Mainstage and I like sounds from Massive and Kontakt. I’ve also dabbled with sounds from EastWest. I orchestrate in Finale, and I can poke around in Pro Tools, but Logic is my main software.

Why do you use Logic over Pro Tools?

Well, I think Logic is more for songwriting. I think Pro Tools is great for recording, but I don’t think their MIDI capability is nearly as expansive and intuitive as Logic. In Logic, I’m able to find a bunch of loops easily. I don’t know how to do that easily in Pro Tools. I find it’s a pain in the butt just to call up a piano sound. You have to open-up two different windows in Pro Tools! I just like the palette in Logic, and I find it to be user-friendly.

Does Lin give you a finished enough demo that you know what’s going on?

Absolutely. And his demos are so clear that you know what things are supposed to sound like. Even if there aren’t complete vocal harmonies, I’ll be like, “Oh, that’s where harmonies can go.” And even if it’s a very spare demo with just a bass line and a piano playing one note, I can tell what the chords in-between need to be so I can discern what the guitar should be playing, or what strings should be playing in that middle register. So if he’s done the extremes of the bass and the treble, I can do the midrange.

We don’t always do a lot of “side by side” work. He lets me do my thing, and then he hears it when it’s pretty much done, like when the band is finished rehearsing it, or after I’ve taught the vocals to the ensemble or the cast. Then he’ll hear it and either give his approval, or he’ll say, “I liked this but I didn’t like that,” or, “That was great, but let’s try this instead.” It’s a collaborative process.

Hip-hop has found its way into just about every conceivable musical scenario, including Hamilton, where you marry programmed beats with live performance. Is that the happy medium for you—the intermingling of both disciplines?

It’s interesting because I think that’s where music is heading. I like the human element; I’m old-school in that respect: I still like that human connection that you get from playing. But obviously, the world is moving in a digital direction, so finding ways to harness that [musically] is fantastic, because it sounds modern. It sounds hip and it sounds current.

Do you play other instruments besides keyboards?

Yes. You’re not going to hire me to play a gig on guitar, although at one point, I did have enough guitar chops to sub on the show Rent. On that show, the way it’s orchestrated is that the second keyboard player has to play keyboards, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar. So I can get around enough on guitar to be able to write out specific voicings, and play things out and have them be guitar-istic. I can do the same thing on bass and drums too. I can figure out what it is that I’m looking for because I’m always listening.

It seems like all of the musical investigation you have done, even early on, prepared you for what you do now.

Yes. One thousand percent, because what I do isn’t just about playing piano – it’s about theory and harmony, and colors, and listening and playing – the totality of everything that I’ve learned. All of that trial and error led me to where I am. Being a music director is so much more than just sitting down at a piano.

I think the best way to describe it for me is that I know when something feels right. Someone may listen to a chart that I consider half-done and think, “Oh, that’s done!” But there’s something in me that is uneasy and won’t rest until it’s right. It’s about asking myself, “What can I do to make this better or sound fuller?” I feel like a musician knows when they’re done and when a piece feels complete.

HAMILTON CREATOR LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA ON ALEX LACAMOIRE

“If Alex Lacamoire didn’t exist, I’d have to invent him. He came along in my life at a time when I was looking for a musical director as conversant in Latin styles as hip-hop, R&B, and the musical theater of my youth. And in walks Lacamoire, spoon-raised on Miami-Cuban rhythms, with his heart in the far out prog rock of Steely Dan and Rush. We just sort of started working together and never stopped.

“Musical sensibilities aside, Alex’s meticulousness both as an arranger and orchestrator is always invaluable. He has the same patience when staffing musicians as he does filling out a four-part vocal harmony in a chord. He is beloved by actors and musicians alike because he loves them, and brings out their best. “What else? He’s just the f—king best there is. And I’m so lucky to be on his team.” – Lin-Manuel Miranda

read the rest of the interview to learn how he got his start in the industry!

#hamilton #alex lacamoire #lin manuel miranda #hamiltunes #keyboard magazine #interview #magic music hole

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itswomanswork · 6 years

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10 Skills An Email Marketing Manager Needs To Succeed [2018 Update]

A lot has been written about the importance of email marketing.

And that’s for good reason: if we look at the ROI, email is the best-performing channel, with much higher conversion and retention rates than social media.

Email marketing is like a headed cabbage. It might seem like a simple concept, but it has many layers. Anyone who wants to become great at email marketing has to understand multiple concepts and juggle many skills at a time.

In this post, I’ll walk you through 10 areas of expertise that are essential to email marketing, and give useful tips for each one.

I’ve also prepared a special bonus for over-achievers at the end of the post, so be sure to read all the way through to the end.

1. Deliverability

If your email doesn’t get delivered, it doesn’t get opened. If it doesn’t get opened… well, you know the rest.

Making sure your emails get to their final destination is the first essential step in email marketing.

There are many variables that affect deliverability of your emails, including ISPs, MTAs, throttling, bounces, bulking, spam issues, and the quality of your content.

Here are a few simple rules that will help you achieve 99.5%+ deliverability:

Avoid SPAM complaints

Don’t spam

Use double opt-in

Set expectations upfront, so subscribers know how often they’re going to hear from you

The new “hot” SPAM law is the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The law is designed to safeguard data privacy for EU citizens, and applies to any business with EU users or customers, regardless of whether the business is based in the European Union or not. The penalty for non-compliance is “up to €20 million, or 4% of the worldwide annual revenue of the prior financial year, whichever is higher.”

If you do email marketing, lead acquisition, or referrals, you should become very familiar with the GDPR.

Avoid hard bounces

Use double opt-in

If you don’t use double opt-in, verify validity of collected email addresses in some other way:

If you’re collecting emails in exchange for a freebie, send that freebie to their inbox vs. putting it on a thank-you page.

If you’re collecting emails in a giveaway, send your first email to participants from a different account, so the wave of unsubscribes and bounces doesn’t affect sender reputation of your main account.

Purge your list

Every 6 months or so, delete all your inactive subscribers. If they haven’t opened any of your last 20-50 campaigns, they probably won’t open the next 100. Such subscribers and you don’t need each other, so let them go.

Know how the Gmail Promotions tab works

The Gmail Promotions tab adds a new layer to email deliverability. If your email is delivered but ends up in the Promotions folder, the subscriber might only get to it much later, if ever.

The problem is that Gmail got pretty good at distinguishing personal emails from everything else, so whether you need to stress over the Promotions tab is debatable. However, it’s still good to know what can cause your emails to land there: bulky images, fancy styling, excessive links, different reply-to address and email header markup.

2. List building

Growing an email list is one of the most rewarding efforts you can take in your business. Good marketers should have a grip of different subscriber acquisition mechanisms available to them, such as:

Content marketing (i.e. blogging coupled with content upgrades)

Guest blogging

Lead magnets (steal a few ideas from the bonus at the end of this post)

Webinars

Giveaways

Opt-in tools like popups, slide-in forms, and top of the page ribbons

Social media (see section below)

3. Social media integration

Social media is not only good for building your brand image and gaining exposure; it can also help you add subscribers to your email list.

The good news is that almost any social media channel can be leveraged to grow your email list.

Here are a few ideas:

Create a Twitter website card showcasing an irresistible lead magnet, and pin it to the top of your Twitter profile (check out mine here)

Have a sign-up button + sidebar apps on your Facebook page

Ask Instagram followers to leave their email address in the comments to receive something juicy (and relevant to your brand) — this works surprisingly well

Talk about your email list and the benefits of joining it in your Instagram stories

Give a sneak previews of (exciting) emails in Instagram stories

Drive traffic to the opt-in freebies in your blog through Pinterest

Collect leads in slide presentations on Slideshare

Essentially, plug your email list sign-up in all of the storytelling you’re already doing on social media.

4. Subscriber engagement

Everybody wants a big list, but few realize that it’s not a panacea for your business.

Even small lists can work magic if they are healthy and engaged. This is because engaged subscribers open more, click more, and buy more. Your top 1,000 customers can generate $8.6 million in revenue (if you’re Ramit Sethi).

The best part is that once you learn how to engage your email subscribers you can apply that to a list of any size to optimize its effectiveness.

The top rule of email list nurturing is “give more than you ask for”.

Especially in the first 2-4 weeks after someone subscribes to your list, make sure you surpass all expectations of being helpful and overdeliver on a regular basis.

Once you establish trust with your new subscribers, continue your communication keeping in mind why people join and stay on email lists: they love the feeling of being on the “inside” of a private club.

Cultivate that feeling by:

making them the first to hear new announcements;

sending them exclusive content that’s not available on your blog;

offering special deals to your subscribers.

Here are a few more tips on keeping your subscribers engaged:

Segment your list and send more relevant info to segments

Don’t lose your voice in automated emails

Find the right “send” frequency: be on their radar without being annoying

Make your emails feel like a continuous conversation (vs. a series of one-off emails)

5. Open rate

If you’ve ever sent an email campaign to a list of people, you might have engaged in the “open rate watching” behavior that looks at least somewhat like this:

Just 2 minutes after hitting “go” on my email campaign, I start refreshing my browser to watch the open rate stats roll in…

I know I’m not alone. We’ve all been there, right?

Email open rate is not just the subject line (although it’s important). It depends on a whole host of reasons, including:

“From” name

Preview text

Send time

Your list quality

Your content

The more people open an email, the more people click, the more people buy, so make sure you always optimize your emails for a higher open rate.

6. Click rate

Most marketing emails get sent to trigger some action, whether you want people to buy, share, or engage with your stuff.

Any action in an email is measured by the click on your CTA (call to action). That’s why click rate (along with the conversion rate) is the ultimate metric in email marketing.

The “big secret” of achieving a high click rate is making a truly valuable offer. If your end product is not good, no tactic will save you.

However, if your fundamental offer IS good, then there are a few tips for optimizing your click rate:

Make your CTA crystal clear

Readers must immediately recognize the call to action even if they simply skim through the email. The easiest way to make your CTA stand out is to use buttons.

PRO-tip: use HTML-based buttons for best results. They’ll get displayed even if subscriber’s email client blocks images.

Use one CTA per email

Too much choice can be demotivating. The fewer options your subscribers have, the more they are likely to act. Using just one call to action eliminates the paradox of choice.

There are lots of resources to back this. Whirlpool got a 42% click-through-rate increase by dropping the number of CTAs in its emails from 4 to 1. HelpScout increased click-through rate by 17% by keeping the number of CTAs in its emails to one.

Evoke powerful emotions in your copy

Marketing is based on psychological principles, and the most effective campaigns take advantage of such powerful emotions as:

Scarcity

Curiosity

Social proof

Authority

7. Analytics and data

Any email marketing manager has to feel comfortable in the analytics dashboard of their ESP (email service provider).

Email marketing stats like open and click rates, bounces, unsubscribes, list growth and conversion rate can give powerful insights at what’s working (and what’s not) in your email marketing strategy.

Looking at the numbers and seeing trends, and with that, opportunities for experiments (A/B tests) is a skill that distinguishes a successful email marketing manager from someone with stagnant results.

The first step to a more thoughtful email marketing strategy is determining exactly what you want to achieve — your number one goal. Based on that goal, decide what your primary and secondary metrics should be and track them meticulously.

8. Automation

Email marketing automation is growing fast and is no longer a novelty or an option. It is a must for any email marketing strategy.

And for good reason. Automated emails are timely, personalized and hyper-relevant to the reader. As a result, they drive open and click rates and positively affect subscriber engagement. The bottom line of all that — more revenue for your business.

Most ESPs these days have automation features, but you can also get sophisticated software to create advanced workflows. No matter what tools you’re using, you should be able to set up simple email workflows that get triggered in a number of different ways:

when a subscriber gets added to a list,

clicks a link in an email,

views a page on your blog,

clicks on one of your ads,

becomes a qualified lead,

downloads one of your lead magnets (freebies),

any combination of these and more.

9. Segmentation

Segmentation is a powerful mechanism that lets you subdivide your list based on a certain set of characteristics. You can then send highly targeted emails to subscriber groups within your list.

According to eMarketer,

39% of email marketers that practice list segmentation see better open rates;

28% see lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates;

24% see better email deliverability and greater revenue.

There are a number of ways you can segment your list simply based on campaign activity. Look at the following groups and see how you can serve them differently:

subscribers who open most of your emails but don’t click

subscribers who click but don’t convert (send them a new campaign with more reasons to purchase your product)

subscribers who didn’t open the last email (if it was an important email, re-send it with a new subject line after a few days)

subscribers who have consistently replied to your emails (they are your biggest fans, so treat them accordingly)

Skillful email marketers should also be able to segment based on past purchases, interest level, demographics, and much more.

I have included 7 smart ideas for list segmentation in the bonus at the end of this post.

10. Attribution

Attribution is one of the most advanced topics in digital marketing.

A good email marketing manager wants to know the exact payoff of each tactic they use. When you know how your marketing efforts covert, you are better informed to develop further strategy and allocate budget.

Although email marketing is highly trackable, email attribution is not a straight line. For many companies, a linear A-to-B-to-C email interaction is increasingly rare.

Today, consumer behavior looks more like this:

Someone hears an ad in a podcast and then googles the company. They are not ready to buy yet, but they sign up for the newsletter. At some point in the future they receive an email from the company and forward it to a colleague who is interested in the product. The colleague is then walking down the street and sees the product in a window. She remembers the email and goes into the shop to purchase.

It’s hard to attribute this conversion to any particular event, and the truth is that this might only get messier in the future. However, email marketers need to keep attribution in mind to continue making the right decisions when they analyze reports and develop strategies.

Want to become a better email marketer?

Woof, we’ve covered a lot here. Don’t get discouraged if you’re not an ace on all 10 of these topics – you can always improve.

To help you with that, I prepared a special bonus. It includes a few key resources for taking your email marketing to the next level:

A list of 15 lead magnet ideas to help you grow your email list faster;

7 smart ways you can segment your list to keep it healthy and engaged;

A video tutorial on how to delete inactive subscribers from your email list (to keep your open rates high).

To get access to the bonuses, sign up here (it’s completely free).

Guest Author: Kasey Luck runs Bold & Zesty, a free newsletter & blog about email marketing. Previously she did marketing at the most active venture fund in the world, 500 Startups, where she grew email list by 25,000 subscribers in one year. Say hi to Kasey here.

The post 10 Skills An Email Marketing Manager Needs To Succeed [2018 Update] appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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