Archive October 7, 2025

How to build an email list from scratch: 15 incredibly effective strategies

By in Email Marketing

Written by: Tom Orbach When I set out to build an email list from scratch for MarketingIdeas.com, I didn’t have a product. No pricing page. No polished brand. Just a one-liner and a waitlist. Use HubSpot's AI Campaign Assistant to Create Emails Within a few weeks, that waitlist had grown to hundreds of people, and that list became the foundation for everything that followed. Since then, I’ve helped others build email lists from scratch using straightforward, repeatable tactics that don’t rely on paid ads or massive audiences. Building an email list gives you something most platforms can’t: a direct, lasting relationship with…

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Employee Becomes Ill at Work: Now What?

By in Human Resources

By Michael P. Maslanka It will happen. Sooner or later, an employee becomes ill at work. What are your obligations legally? Ethically? Recently, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (the federal court of appeals covering Texas) adopted an earlier case from a Texas court. The answer—a manageable standard. Previous Texas Case David Welch worked as a desk clerk at Holiday Inn in Round Rock, Texas. One day, he felt ill, experiencing issues with his speech, motor skills, and walking ability. But he was lucid and able to continue working. His boss offered to drive him to his doctor when…

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The end of “Hey {First_Name}”: AI personalization strategies that convert

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Email Marketing

Written by: Rachel Leist Remember the last time you got an email that started with ‘Hey {First_Name}’ and immediately felt like deleting it? That visceral reaction isn't just about poor execution — it signals a fundamental shift in buyer expectations. HubSpot research shows that 78% of customers expect more personalization in business interactions than ever before. Yet only 47% of business leaders say their customer service experiences are highly personalized. You can no longer rely on old-school personalization tactics like adding basic customer details to a holiday card or making a generic comment like “I love what your company is doing” in…

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Redefining Performance Reviews: Why Traditional Systems Are Failing—and What to Do About It

By in Human Resources

By Lin Grensing-Pophal New data from Acorn’s “2025 Corporate Performance and Learning Survey” reveals a troubling reality: performance reviews, learning programs, and competency frameworks are often failing employees—so much so that they’re pushing talent out the door. After reviews: 27 % of employees report feeling uninspired and less productive. Fewer than half say their review clearly outlined improvement or advancement paths. 68 % of individual contributors and managers without direct reports believe they’ll need to leave their organization to advance their careers. This disconnect stems from disjointed systems—isolated performance tools, inconsistent evaluation metrics, and no centralized management framework—leading to fragmented development and disengaged employees.…

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I tried 8 AI project management tools to see if they’re worth it

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Operations

Written by: Lipsa Das Choosing the right AI project management tool for your team can help you save hundreds (even thousands) of dollars per year. I’ve managed projects across a variety of businesses — scrappy startups, agencies with 50+ team members, and enterprises like Dell. Regardless of the company's scale, I noticed a common problem: rapid growth without proper infrastructure. Download Now: The Annual State of Artificial Intelligence in 2025 This often costs businesses far more than they realize. Projects running late, managers being stressed about deliverables, and tasks falling through the cracks. While the team was in firefighting mode, the…

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LLM traffic converts about the same as organic search: Research

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Written by Danny Goodwin LLM referrals convert no better than search and make up less than 1% of traffic, challenging claims of higher-quality clicks, new data shows. Traffic from large language models (LLMs) doesn’t convert significantly better than traditional organic search, according to new research from digital marketing agency Amsive. What they found. Across 54 websites analyzed: Organic traffic converted at 4.6% vs. 4.87% for LLM referrals. That slight edge disappeared under statistical testing – the difference was not significant. Even on higher-volume sites, LLM conversion lifts didn’t hold up. LLM traffic made up less than 1% of overall sessions, compared…

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Google AI, ChatGPT rarely agree on brand recommendations: Data

By in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Written by Danny Goodwin Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode and ChatGPT disagree on brand picks nearly two-thirds of the time, new data shows. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode and OpenAI’s ChatGPT often give consumers different brand recommendations – a potential warning sign for marketers chasing AI visibility – according to a new BrightEdge analysis. The big picture. ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews disagreed on brand recommendations nearly two-thirds of the time (61.9%), according to BrightEdge’s analysis of tens of thousands of identical prompts. Only 17% of queries produced the same brands across all three platforms. This underscores the fractured…

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Spam trigger words: How to keep your emails out of the spam folder

By in Marketing

Written by: Jeanne Jennings Back in 2003, I was working with my first big consulting client, Hasbro. (Yes, that Hasbro. And yes, it was as fun as you'd imagine.) Sitting on my desk at the time — dog-eared, tea-stained, salsa-splotched — was a multi-page document I treated like sacred scripture: the spam trigger word list. Use HubSpot's AI Campaign Assistant to Create Emails This wasn’t just a list of naughty words. It came with spam scores — weights assigned to each phrase based on how likely it was to get your email flagged by filters. Before any copy went to the client for review, I’d…

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Reversing the Employee Disengagement Trend with Interactive Technology 

By in Human Resources

By Sean D'Arcy Employee engagement is at its lowest point in a decade—less than one-third of employees in the U.S. say they feel engaged at work.   This is according to the latest annual reporting from Gallup, which cites several key contributing factors—including rapid organizational change, inadequate performance management, and the transition to an increasingly hybrid working world.  As a result of this concerning downtrend, some business leaders have reflexively pointed to technology as the cause of employee disconnect. There is some reason to believe that, as employees have admitted that virtual meetings, presentations, and training are where they’re most likely to…

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Email Marketing Reliability vs. Social Media Uncertainty

By in Email Marketing, Marketing

by Martha Bitar, Rebecca Shostak Social media platforms have become the cornerstone of many businesses' marketing strategy. But such an approach is unstable and unpredictable. Consider TikTok. Its future ownership is unclear, and it faces a possible ban or ownership change; many brands that have built their audience on the app are facing uncertainty. But it isn't just a TikTok problem—it's a loud reminder that social media space is rented, not owned. What happens when the platform you've invested thousands of hours and dollars into changes overnight? The hard truth is that your social media following never truly belongs to you. As a result, savvy brands…

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