Email is far from dead. With billions of emails sent to and from individuals around the world each day, there is more email now than ever before.
The new book "Mailed It!" is due out on August 20 and changes everything by:
showing how to craft and send the most effective emails possible
assisting email marketers in improving results
demonstrating how to use emails to build trusting relationships
It's a guide book on crafting emails that build relationships and get results written by Ashley Budd and Dayana Kibilds.
We’ve followed the creation of the book closely (see Using email for action from December) and in a recent members’s call we celebrate the new book with the two authors and heard more about what's inside.
To get the conversation started, the authors shared a few slides on how email is changing and we also briefly covered a few helpful templates.
Read moreA new, efficient approach to building digital experiences and a much improved live demo from Toronto-based software start-up Kajoo is what edged them to win a very close race at the CMS Idol contest held at the CMS Connect 24 conference in Montreal earlier this month.
Kajoo offers an AI-powered digital experience builder, which converts sketches, Figma designs and legacy websites to modern Jamstack code.
It’s a solution to a well known problem in the crowded CMS space: How do I bring down the time-to-value and also the cost of implementation.
Read moreThe mission for Scale Consortium is quite simple: To inspire more enterprise companies to choose WordPress.
The Scale Consortium is a newly formed group made up of representatives from some of the most prolific and successful enterprise WordPress agencies. It was created to address the evolving landscape of the enterprise layer of WordPress and was formed in 2023 after a multi-year attempt at getting a collaboration off the group between WordPress agencies.
It makes good sense for the WordPress community to work more formally together, but specifically getting agencies to collaborate through ups and downs remains tricky. From the customer point of view, it’s long been confusing to navigate the immense WordPress community and we’ve often heard from group members that getting the implementation right remains tricky, in particular for those complex challenges faced by large, global organisations.
Since being formed, several other enterprise agencies have joined the Scale Consortium, so that as of writing 10 agencies are a part of it.
In a recent members' call we heard from two of the founding members Karim Marucchi at Crowd Favorite and Tom Willmot at Human Made. The conversation started with the problem they are trying to solve, so let’s dive in.
Read moreWith “Seeds of Change” as the conference theme, PSEWeb 2024 focused on innovation and progress. A perfect venue to learn more about how those pushing digital forward in higher education are thinking differently.
The event was held in Olds, Alberta (<1 hour from Calgary) and brought together digital communicators and marketers in particular from Canada. The program was well curated and avoided the current trap of only talking AI, but rather packed with sessions covering most of the moving parts at the moment, including sessions on social media, internal communications, digital marketing, journey mapping and reducing your university’s digital carbon footprint.
I gave a presentation on how we might make digital smarter, safer and more sustainable based on insights from our peer group meetings in both North America and Europe.
Before moving onto my talk (see further down for recording and slides), let me share a few other highlights from my conference experience.
Read moreFor many years now, the developers and marketers in charge of digital experiences have been at odds. While the emergence of headless technologies freed developers from the restraints of legacy CMS frameworks, they left marketers in the dust, unable to manage their business-critical content.
Both personas have unique needs, but no one CMS to serve them all.
According to Preston So from dotCMS, that era of CMS is over, and recently industry momentum has gathered around this emerging concept of Universal CMS.
In a recent member's call, Preston introduced us to Universal CMS and told us what it is all about.
Read more“The Narrative Age” is a new book that came out in April written by our friend and Staffbase co-founder Frank Wolf. It provides compelling insights into how successful narratives go beyond storytelling to create messages that inspire change and support success
In a world where story and narrative are often used interchangeably, understanding their distinction holds the key to giving organizations a significant edge in building compelling, authentic connections with their stakeholders. “The Narrative Age" explores how the world's most successful organizations and movements, from SpaceX to DeBeers to the Barbie movie, have harnessed the power of narratives to inspire their audiences.
The Narrative Age makes you think differently about the way you perceive the role of communications in shaping organisational vision and direction. It offers a roadmap to navigate the complexities of modern communication and stakeholder engagement with confidence and clarity.
In a recent members’ call Frank joined us for an informal book launch. He shared a few slides (download as PDF) and we talked about the book. The conversation, as per tradition, started with ‘why’ - what was it that triggered our dear friend Frank to write 200 pages on narratives?
Read moreWhen we make decisions our thinking is informed by societal norms, “guardrails”, that guide our decisions like the laws and rules that govern us. But what are good guardrails in today’s world of overwhelming information flows and increasingly powerful technologies, such as artificial intelligence?
Based on the latest insights from the cognitive sciences, economics, and public policy, the new book "Guardrails" offers a novel approach to shaping decisions by embracing human agency in its social context. In brief: The book explores the importance of establishing guardrails to manage the power dynamics in the digital age.
Written by Urs Gasser (Professor of Public Policy, Governance and Innovative Technology at TU Munich) and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford), the book shows how the quick embrace of technological solutions can lead to results we don’t always want.
The two authors explain how society itself can provide guardrails more suited to the digital age, ones that empower individual choice while accounting for the social good, encourage flexibility in the face of changing circumstances, and ultimately help us to make better decisions as we tackle the most daunting problems of our times, such as global injustice and climate change.
In a recent member’s call we were joined by Viktor who took us through the thinking behind the book, how human decisions are flawed and also how just looking at AI through the lens of misinformation, bias or privacy is short-sighted. The problem is bigger. The book is about principles for good decisions, and Viktor shared quite a few memorable examples.
Read moreI recently attended the annual CMS Experts meeting in New York, where artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as a recurring theme despite not being the event's primary focus. Influential speakers such as Sree Sreenivasan and Alan Pelz-Sharpe offered insightful viewpoints that inspired me to share my thoughts on this technology.
Sree’s talk was provocatively and timely titled: “We have no idea what we are doing with AI, but we are clearly going to do it.”. He argued that using the term "hallucinations" to describe issues with AI technology lets developers off the hook for addressing these problems. Sreenivasan also points out that in the AI industry, users are both the product and the lab, creating a more dangerous situation than social media.
Alan’s talk was “Is your Organization ready for AI?” and the brief answer is no. He explained that organisations must identify the processes that they think AI will improve, the tasks that will power those processes, have the inputs have been quality controlled, does the organisation which people and skills are required to build and operate the solution, and have decision-makers agreed on the metrics for success.
AI has become a buzzword, promising dramatic advances in various areas, including healthcare and transportation. However, it is crucial to maintain a balanced perspective and be aware of AI's advantages and disadvantages.
Read moreGerman software vendor Staffbase is eying the broader market for corporate communication and indeed many talks and themes on the agenda at their VOICES 2024 conference in Berlin went far beyond the usual intranet topics.
Known for changing the game with their employee app approach, Staffbase has made it to the top of the charts for delivering modern intranets in a packaged solution. Or to be blunt: An alternative to the SharePoint intranets that tend to come up short and which historically has been loved by few.
We’ve followed them since the early days a decade ago, when they were called eyo and mostly delivered features like forms, calendars, and menu plans. Still back then they did more than just ship features, but looked broadly at the pain points of internal communication.
With ‘Inspiration’ as the key theme at VOICES 2024 coupled with some major product announcements, you don't need to be a seasoned industry analyst to see that they are going after a bigger market. Also, similar to the movement we are seeing from other software companies, winning the hearts and minds of the agencies is key and Staffbase also used their conference to share a new partner program. This also resonates with customers increasingly turning to their trusted agencies to make vendor decisions.
Based on conversations and the presentations I watched in Berlin, I'll share my perspective on the conference, key takeaways from some of the major customers who shared their experiences and finally how the Staffbase narrative is changing and what it means for you.
Read moreWith a new promise to deliver “an unparalleled return on your content”, CMS vendor Kontent.ai takes a different approach in a marketplace where many vendors, for good and bad, have turned to tech talk on AI, composability and going headless.
Recently they’ve introduced Mission Control, a dashboard for your content value chain, and now they’ve also completed a remarkable rebranding positioning them to firmly carve their place in the crowded marketplace.
Kontent.ai is certainly a VC-backed vendor looking for next level growth, but besides product launches and marketing changes, I also sense they are accommodating the changing ways how enterprise customers select a CMS.
A focus on your content requires changes to how you manage content, so let’s start with looking at what they’ve delivered in the product.
Read moreWe live in an era when healthcare is getting more complex, not less. Health literacy is low, due to a combination of the complexity of the system, the complexity of the human body, and the state many people are in when they get to their providers.
Patients and their families or friends are stressed, scared, and struggling to focus at the times they most need to use our websites, read our articles, or interact with our devices. This can lead to anything from higher costs to misused prescriptions.
Where do content creators come in? In our digital world, content strategy can be the key to educating and guiding patients and families, helping them to better work with their healthcare providers.
Marli Mesibov works as a content strategy lead at life sciences firm Verily and in a recent member’s call, she introduced us to the concept of health literacy and shared examples of how content strategy can impact health.
Read moreAdobe Experience Manager (AEM) is widely recognized as one of the market leaders in the enterprise CMS space and they don’t seem to be resting on their laurels.
Last year they released Edge Delivery Services, which had a big impact for AEM customers to help deliver websites at top performance and also Project Helix (earlier referred to as Franklin) enabling marketers and content teams to use their favorite tools, such as Word, Excel, Google Docs, and Google Sheets with GDrive or Sharepoint, to create stunning, responsive websites with perfect lighthouse scores.
Fast forward and Adobe unveiled the Universal Editor for AEM with Edge Delivery Services at Adobe Summit 2024 in late March. With Universal Editor, they’ve changed both how content creators and developers interact with the CMS.
As you might expect with a new component model there are migration challenges and the previous AEM components do not work with the Edge Delivery Services in the Universal Editor.
Adobe recommends using one authoring method; for most existing organisations shifting to the new world there are many changes to be made, this is similar to replatforming your website, if your organisation uses multi-sites then all sites must be migrated at once.
Let’s look closer at why the Universal Editor matters and the implications for customers.
Read moreAcross all industries, organizations are exploring how to leverage the power of Generative AI. Everyone is talking about AI today, but how can you take advantage of this in the content management world? How can you leverage all the content you’ve created and combine that with AI to provide a great experience for your customers?
In a recent members’ call we heard from Nicole Rogers from "Generative AI Copilots" - startup ai12z. Nicole shared how Generative AI can be combined with your content and your CMS to enhance your site visitors’ web experiences. Examples of how you can incorporate this technology right on your website includes:
A chatbot in the corner of your website to answer your site visitors’ questions about your products and services.
Digital assistants (aka “copilots”) to help them along their journey, providing personalized recommendations and assisting in completing tasks like making a purchase.
AI-powered search to respond to your users’ search queries with detailed summaries.
Read moreDigital product equity is at the intersection of futures thinking, inclusive design and product accessibility.
In a recent members’ call, Toronto-based UX researcher Christina Scriven from our design leadership community looked at how the tech industry leaders are approaching the concept, and offered ideas about how you could bring product equity practices into your organisation.
Christina most recently worked as Customer Segments Manager at Scotiabank reporting into the Head of Accessibility and Digital Product Equity.
During the summer of 2023, Christina did an extensive industry scan of digital equity best practices to both consolidate key themes and to better inform customer experience leaders on industry approaches and in our call she shared her findings.
Read moreIt's now been two months since CMS Kickoff 24 in January in Florida and for a recent member's call we heard reflections on the impact of AI from seasoned CMS consultant Tom Cranstoun who joined us from the UK.
While CMS Kickoff 24 wasn't all about AI, the speakers made Tom rethink AI's role in content management. Given the translation, bias, regulation challenges and lack of trust in AI, one needs to employ reviewers and editors to correct the content; AI is better suited for consuming content.
Let’s think that the current state of AI creating content is a beta experiment, best left to the tech guys; we have a business to think of.
In this call, Tom shared how AI Simplicity affects your business, the need for better content modelling and also the key responsibility of an emerging team role: The AI evangelist.
Read more