Vincent's Reviews: February 2017

Tuesday 28 February 2017

Facebook Lead Ads: 6 Ways to Automate Your Campaigns for Success

As an advertising tool, Facebook Lead Ads is in a league of its own, with a reach of over 1.8 billion users and the ability to drive qualified leads to your company without ever forcing users to leave Facebook.

Many advertisers find that Facebook Lead Ads offers the best cost per acquisition (CPA) in their advertising arsenal. With this tool, you can create forms within Facebook that let potential customers request info or sign up for things like newsletters, coupons, price estimates, and more—all without leaving Facebook.

But there’s a catch. Since only seven Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems—out of more than 30 on the market— provide native integrations with Facebook Lead Ads, most advertisers have to manually download and import their leads before they become usable.

Luckily, there is another way. Facebook Lead Ads' Zapier integration now allows you to automatically retrieve leads directly from Facebook Ad Manager and add them to your favorite CRM apps, email lists, and more.

In reaching out to over 40 of Zapier's users, we actually found out that many of them were on the verge of giving up on Facebook Lead Ads altogether, before they found the way to automate the process.

One advertiser, Costin Geletu, Paid Traffic Manager of Cave Tools, went so far as to say: “From my point of view, Facebook Lead Ads without Zapier is like gun with no bullets. We didn't used FB Lead Ads until we've found an automation solution like Zapier. If we had to do all that stuff manually, it would probably have taken us a lot of time and more money. Now, it's set it and forget it. Definitely a must have in any business.”

Here's how you can do the same for your business with Facebook Lead Ads and Zapier, with stories from Zapier users that share how they've built automated workflows to grow their businesses and gain new customers.

Quickly Get the Right Leads to the Right People
Provide a Better User Experience
Nurture Leads with Autoresponders
Make Good on Your Lead Magnet’s Promise
Use Efficiency for Competitive Advantage
Automatically Register Leads for a Webinar

Quickly Get the Right Leads to the Right People

Downloading your Facebook leads and distributing them to your team several times a day is a huge time sink. But exporting once a day means that, by the time your outreach team gets ahold of these leads, they’ll be lukewarm.

For National University of Health Sciences webmaster Rachel Campbell, it was a long process to get the university’s Facebook leads into the hands of their Admissions team. Every week, Rachel would download leads, upload them to Hubspot, and then send them to the Admissions team, which use a different CRM. Now, she lets Zapier handle all that.

"Without this Zap, I don't think I would be able to use Facebook Lead Ads, to be honest."

“It literally saves me hours of work every week,” she said. “In addition to ensuring we don't lose any leads due to manual error (of download/uploading sets of leads), it also saves me time. Our Admissions team is notified instantly, and our prospective students are contacted within 24 hours.”

Rachel had almost given up on Facebook Lead Ads altogether, before streamlining her process.

Without this Zap, I don't think I would be able to use Facebook Lead Ads, to be honest. Facebook Lead Ads have turned out to be our best performing source of online advertising, so it would have been a huge opportunity missed had we not used them.

To start streamlining your own team-to-team workflow, use one of the Zaps below or create your own.

Provide a Better User Experience

We love the internet, but it has created an expectation of instant gratification. You click on a link, you expect no delay in page load. You trade your information to an advertiser, you expect the promised response. If this doesn’t happen quickly, you become indifferent to the advertisers—at best.

But for many advertisers like Siera Rejcek, an Account Executive at social media management company SocialStrategy1, sometimes processing your leads daily is the very best you can manage when the process is manual. Siera would download leads daily, manually input them into the company CRM, then copy and paste this data into Google Sheets. Users would have to wait at least 24 hours to get their requested information. Now, she does things differently.

"If a lead requests information, and you contact them within 10 minutes, it is highly likely that you will still be top of mind. "

“We use Zapier to input any leads that we receive from Facebook ads into a MailChimp list,” she explained. “We have also connected our MailChimp lists to our Google Sheets, so that when a lead is added to our MailChimp list, they are then added to a lead spreadsheet. Because these Zaps are performed every 5 minutes, we know that as soon as an individual requests information, they are going to receive a welcome email and then be contacted by our customer service employees via our Google Sheet.”

In addition to cutting out a lot of busywork every day, Siera’s Zaps help the company know that:

Their CRM system is constantly being updated,
Leads are receiving information within a timely manner, and
The customer service team is reaching out as soon as leads request information from us.

But with all the other priorities that come with an advertising campaign, some advertisers wonder: Is user experience for a Facebook-hosted campaign really worth the energy companies like SocialStrategy1 put into it? Siera thinks so.

As we know, user experience is hard to quantify in terms of ROI, but has a huge ripple effect on the bottom line at any business. However, we do know that because our process is now streamlined, it has saved us anywhere from $300 to $600 a month!

Build a better user experience for your Facebook leads in just a few easy steps.

Nurture Leads with Autoresponders

One of the best uses for Facebook Lead Ads is to drive signups to your email list. Whatever lead magnet attracts these new subscribers in the first place, it’s important to acknowledge their addition to your list and give them a warm welcome—before you become one more email in their Gmail’s “Promotions” inbox.

For author Shannon Kuzmich , it’s very important that her new subscribers get their lead magnet and welcome email quickly, to build their long-term interest in her newsletter. This proved difficult when she was handling every lead herself.

“Several times a day, I was having to check whether there were any new leads in the Facebook forms library, download them, and then copy and paste them manually into the correct MailChimp email list,” Shannon explained.

“My Facebook Ads performed well, generating tens of leads a day, so I had to repeat this process four or five times a day to avoid delays in delivering the reader magnet to the lead. Added up, this took a great deal of time and focus away from my writing.”

"No more worrying about whether a lead is feeling frustrated because they haven't received their reader magnet and welcome email."

When she discovered Zapier, Shannon set up a Zap that automatically transfers leads generated from her Facebook Ads directly to her MailChimp list. Once transferred to the list, an automated email welcome sequence is triggered, sending a series of 5 emails over a period of 30 days, including a link to a reader magnet in the first email of the series.

Now, she says, “I’m able to leave it to Zapier and let the workflow run, allowing me to remain immersed in my writing. No more worrying about whether a lead is feeling frustrated because they haven't received their reader magnet and welcome email.”

Easily set up autoresponder triggers for your new Facebook leads in Zapier by using one of the templates below, or by creating your own.

Make Good on Your Lead Magnet Promise

One sticking point with Facebook Lead Ads is that it’s difficult to quickly and efficiently follow up on leads. This is a problem especially if your lead magnet promises a download or coupon. People today expect fairly instant results if they submit their information in exchange for something.

Butter Maid Bakery faced this problem while trying to drive more email traffic during a high-opportunity season—and learned that, by emailing coupons instantly to new Facebook leads, they were able to achieve drastic results:

Thanks to Zapier we were able to offer a coupon on Lead Ads that was instantly emailed [through MailChimp] to the lead, increasing our Click Through Rate by over 6,000%, and significantly reducing our ad spend at $4.47 per lead.

Use Zapier to connect Facebook Lead Ads and your CRM or email platform of choice in just a few simple steps.

Use Efficiency as a Competitive Advantage

If you’re an agency that runs Facebook Lead Ads for your clients, you’re among hundreds of similar services. It’s tough to stay competitive, but one way you can rise above the pack is to emphasize efficiency and real-time service.

"Zapier's integration with Facebook Lead Ads has allowed us to get into the 'NOW,' as the in-real-time lead alert is one of the main selling points we have for our agency."

Michelle Via is the Vice President of iVelocity Marketing, and her team uses Facebook Lead Ads with Zapier to deliver real-time lead notifications to their client—something that’s a major attraction for their clients. Michelle and her team use a creative Multi-Step Zap with Facebook Lead Ads.

“With sending the leads to Aweber and Google Sheets we are able to alert our clients of a lead in real time, versus having to manually export. Zapier's integration with Facebook Lead Ads have allowed us to be able to use [the real-time] ad style as a truly viable opportunity. Our business relies on real-time integration,” she said.

Prior to integrating with Zapier, iVelocity Marketing didn't consider Facebook Lead Ads a viable option, since the manual process of exporting leads and sending to clients throughout the day was simply too slow. This lag time kept them from rolling it out as a service to all of their clients. The impact their new workflow has had on their business? Michelle says, "It has allowed us to continue to be innovative with a new ad platform while integrating with our existing systems and software that are vital to our operational flow.”

Automatically Register Leads for a Webinar

For some companies, Facebook provides a great platform for prospective webinar attendees. But asking users to click away from Facebook to a landing page—and from there to a form—heightens the risk of losing potential leads before they complete the registration process.

Shopify found a better way to leverage Facebook for driving webinar traffic:

“Shopify has been using Zapier’s Lead Ad integration to push Facebook users that sign up through our ad to our webinar and email list,” says Corey Ferreira, Shopify’s content marketer. “Instead of having to build out a landing page and send users to it from an ad, Zapier’s integration removes that step, creating less friction.”

This Zap is simple to set up: use the template below to get started in less than two minutes.

Maybe one of these solutions was the exact one you needed. That’s great! You can get started on your own success story right now.

Or maybe you have a unique situation or an unconventional business model, whose struggles don’t really fit with any of the stories we shared. That’s also great—it means you’re trying something new and facing new challenges.

Zapier is made for people like you—people who want to keep improving and innovating. So have fun, experiment with your own Zaps, and come up with some new ways to automate success with Facebook Lead Ads!

Have your own story about Zapier and Facebook Lead Ads? We’d love to hear it—share with us in the comments!

Lightbulb image designed by Freepik. Facebook Lead Ad image courtesy of Facebook.

source https://zapier.com/blog/automate-facebook-lead-ads/

Monday 27 February 2017

The NPS Playbook: Why Your Net Promoter Score Matters to Your Entire Team

Your Net Promoter Score or NPS is the "one number you need to grow". It's a super simple survey that asks customers just one question: on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend the company to a friend or colleague. That's it.

Yet the NPS is a powerful metric. With it, your whole team can improve your customers' experience and find new customers just like your most loyal one. Back when I was working at a marketing agency, I learned a saying for that: Your next best customer is just like your current best customer.

Below, learn how everyone on your team can take action on that Net Promoter score, curtesy of a free eBook from Promoter.io:

One of the biggest misconceptions about NPS is that it is the sole responsibility of the customer success/customer service department. However, EVERY single employee in any given company has an impact on the customer’s experience and can ultimately benefit from their feedback.

Here’s what I mean:

Marketing

For marketers, it’s critical to understand who are the most loyal customers and what about the brand/product drives their advocacy. NPS helps identify market position as well as the key message behind the product, what resonates with prospects, where they win and what messaging they should possibly shy away from to reduce detractors before they even touch the product.

In addition, with enough customer data, marketers can get a very clear picture of what an “ideal” or best customer looks like. NPS will help surface what customer stories or personas should be targeted and focused on. This can be a massive win for many marketing teams who aren’t always sure. It will help them spend more effectively, focus their message and convert at much higher rates (not to mention having customers they know are going to likely be Promoters from the start).

Sales

Promoters are a sales rep’s best friend. They provide insight into the key motivations of future buyers. They help identify the top drivers of their product/service and how best to leverage them. Not to mention their ability to make solid introductions and serve as convincing references for future prospects.

Imagine for a moment the benefit of lead scoring if you can easily take into consideration similar attributes that a lead has in common with existing promoters of your brand/product. Gone are the days of “industry” and “number of employees” being the main data points there.

Sales staff can get a ton of value from detractors as well. They help to prepare for any potential objections and product shortcomings that may be surfaced on sales calls. Additionally, detractors can provide insight into which type of prospect is most likely to drive down life time value and absorb ongoing support resources.

Customer Support/Success

For this department, NPS is all about routine account engagement and proactive identification of issues that may be related to churn, reduction in usage, etc. NPS allows the support/success team to triage issues before they become more significant. In the process, they benefit by often reducing the volume of future support needed. NPS also provides the why in most cases behind a user’s behavior, something pure data analytics do not.

CEOs/Founders/Execs

Used as a KPI, NPS provides one simple metric that impacts the entire company and provides a clear picture to the health of the organization. It’s also highly predictive which gives the company the ability to have a reliable forward-looking metric (if measured and acted on correctly that is).

Product/Engineering

NPS provides feedback that can be associated to brand/product sentiment and broken down clearly into different categories. Since one individual customer can’t necessarily speak louder than others, categorization normalizes the data and removes the issue of the vocal minority driving product direction. More passive users/customers that may not go out of their way to leave feedback, tend to become more engaged with NPS as well.

The insights gained from NPS can provide individual trends/ feedback themes which can be looked at alongside usage and revenue impact to help weigh product decisions. This will often times lead to some very clear drivers of detractors and promoters within the product which helps to identify new opportunities.

Data Science

NPS can drastically enhance data-driven analysis by applying the ‘voice of customer’ into the model. When matched with the verbatim feedback from the customer, data scientists can better align the numbers with the human personas that exist within any given customer database.

With Promoter.io’s integration with Segment, loading NPS data into Redshift or any customer data warehouse for that matter is incredibly simple.

Finance

When tied to an LTV (Lifetime Value), NPS is a great indicator of both future growth and churn. In fact, the in-dashboard calculator provided within Promoter.io can be used to quantify your short and long-term revenue at risk, as well as any potential new revenue.

Simply put, your finance department can drastically improve financial forecasts based on your NPS profile.

HR

If you weren’t already aware, NPS can be used to measure employee satisfaction as well. It’s called eNPS (Employee NPS) and it’s a tool that’s available to any Promoter.io customer. While the wording of the question is changed slightly, the methodology remains the same. HR can use utilize the framework of NPS to measure the satisfaction of their employees, determine the likelihood to recruit new hires and make departmental or company-wide improvements based on candid feedback.

Learn more about the Net Promoter Score or register to download the rest of the free eBook to get started with NPS today.

This was a guest post from Promoter.io. Want to see your work on the Zapier Blog? Check out our guidelines and get in touch!

source https://zapier.com/blog/net-promoter-score-uses/

Sunday 26 February 2017

Grizzly G0513ANV Review: A Factory Grade Powerhouse?

The Grizzly G0513ANV is a bandsaw that takes up a lot of space, delivers a lot of power and that can generally up your game when it comes to cutting things.As woodworkers, we love cutting things, and so any tool that promises to cut things faster, more effectively or more deeply is always going to be a winner. The Grizzly GO513AN is just such a tool, offering the kind of power and performance that you would demand as a professional working in full time production.

Unfortunately, the price also reflects that somewhat – at $925 this is pretty cutting too! Even for a professional, that’s a serious investment and when you’re spending that amount of cash it’s highly important that you ensure you’re getting a tool that is up to task.

In this review, we’ll be assessing the Grizzly GO513ANV to see if that is the case…

A Heavenly Tool for Experts

The Grizzly GO513ANV is a hefty looking piece of equipment but is also clearly well made with great production values. Right away, you will feel as though you are getting your money’s worth at least in terms of the size and weight of the thing. That weight is pretty good for keeping the unit stable too while you’re working, so you don’t need to worry about it rocking and wobbling around like some other bandsaws are prone to doing. The colorscheme is black and orange which looks nice enough and should blend into most workshops nicely.

There’s a big stable surface for working on here, which should help to make your work considerably easier and give you the easy ability to move pieces around underneath. It’s made from cast iron, so there’s no flimsy plastic to be found. This feels very solid too so you won’t feel considered leaning your weight on it. The blade is also impressive at 17-inch, allowing you to cut nice and deep through very thick woods. With 12 foot cutting capacity and a 16-¼ inch throat, this will make mincemeat out of most jobs that you task it with.

And on that front, of course it is the 2HP motor that is the real star of the show. This will power through wood and a lot of other materials and in our review period with the tool we found that extra power to be really rather impressive and very useful indeed. The tool has an ISO 9001 factory designation, so you know it can perform.
It’s not all about power though! Fortunately, the Grizzly GO513ANV also delivers in several other regards and has a lot of extra features. There’s the deluxe fence for guiding straight cuts for instance, the micro-adjusting geared table for getting everything aligned just perfectly and the miter gauge. All this makes it very easy to set up the tool just as you want it and to make precise cuts.

There are also two dust ports as well as an easy quick-change mechanism for the blade. You get two blade speeds (1700 and 35000) and a fair bit more as well. In short, this comes with the full roster of features.

Pros and Cons

While this might seem like a lot of money if you aren’t used to buying factory grade equipment, it’s actually very good value for what you’re getting. This is an incredibly powerful, versatile and feature-rich tool and one that will be capable of handling pretty much any task you can dream up.Of course nothing is perfect. While there aren’t too many complaints here, the included saw could have been a little bit better. Likewise, you might need to make some of your own readjustments to get it to perform optimally out the box.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Grizzly GO513ANV is one of the best value propositions out there if you are looking for a factory-grade bandsaw. It has all the power, functionality and performance that you could expect for the price, it’s very well made, very solid and all-in-all just a fantastic product that won’t see you wrong!

So what do you think about the Grizzly GO513ANV? Will you be adding it to your own arsenal? Let us know in the comments below!

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/grizzly-g0513anv-review-a-factory-grade-powerhouse/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/157726546480

Grizzly G0555LX Bandsaw Review: Cheap & Good ?

A good bandsaw can make all the difference to any workshop by giving you the means to make precise cuts through a wide range of materials and to the extent that you are able to cut precise shapes and even intricate patterns. Bandsaws are also particularly easy to use as they have their own base and their own plate for working on. This means you can simply take your piece of material over to them and start cutting; there’s no need to clear space where you’re working or to struggle trying to manually saw without knocking things over with your elbow.

Adding a bandsaw to your repertoire is definitely a good call if you are a DIYer or woodworker then, but the question is how you go about choosing the right one. There are a lot of different options here and they can range quite drastically in terms of their power and their versatility. Some will take up a good half of your workshop and have their own stand. Others are small and can be added to any existing table top. Knowing the kind you need and getting the right one is key if you want to avoid wasting money while ensuring that you are able to tackle every task that you need to.

Read on to find out if the Grizzly G0555LX is the bandsaw you’re looking for.

All about the cutting Depth…

The Grizzly G0555LX uses a cast iron frame with a precision ground cast iron table. That should tell you right away that this is a powerful tool with some serious build quality going on. Cast iron tables make a big difference over plastic alternatives, as they allow you to put some real pressure on the table without worrying about it bending, warping or wobbling. Likewise, the weight of the bandsaw itself is also ideal for putting some pressure on and still feeling like the thing is stable enough to allow for perfect precision. This is a big machine too, with a floor to table height of 43”.

The saw itself is 14 inch, which gives some great cutting depth. The maximum cutting height is 6”, while the throat is 13-1/2”.

The Grizzly G0555LX is CSA C22 certified, so you know you’re getting a good quality product that could potentially be used in a professional setting. Of course, for the relatively low price though, you know that you’re not going to get the very highest power. This is a 1HP motor, which is certainly better than a lot of hobby-grade bandsaws but at the very lower end of what you might consider using professionally. It’s still a good value proposition in terms of pure power-to-cost ratio though and for that reason alone it is worthy of praise. It has two speed settings, which are 1800 and 3100 RPM.

Numbers can only tell you so much, but we can report happily that this is a great tool to use that really glides through most things you throw at it. It feels sturdy and stable and for the money, you really couldn’t ask for more.

Pros and Cons

The advantages of this device largely revolve around its relatively low price compared with the power that you are getting. This is a great performer and it will impress time after time. It is heavy, weighty and powerful and comes with all the extra features you’d expect like the dust port, fence and miter gauge.

The only drawback for some will be that this is a 1HP and not a 2HP. It’s perfectly understandable for the price but the question you might ask is whether it’s spending just a little bit more in order to get something that does offer that slight upgrade in power.

The other thing to be aware of is that it does not come with the stand, despite it being shown in many of the pictures.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a fantastic bandsaw that really delivers in terms of the power, the build quality and the weighty construction. It has plenty of features and in short, does everything that you could hope it to for a relatively low price. This will be more than enough for hobbyists and ample for most professionals too!

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/grizzly-g0555lx-bandsaw-review-cheap-good/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/157726546300

Delta 28-400 Band Saw Review: Does it have all the features you need?

The Delta 28-400 is a bandsaw that takes up a lot of space and that can handle professional tasks for any advanced hobbyist or small professional service. Bandsaws are tools that hold a saw taut between two large wheels and drive it with a powerful motor. This then allows you to move a piece of wood (or sheet metal in some cases) around underneath in order to make straight cuts – or even shaped or patterned cuts.

This is one of the easiest ways to cut through wood and the fact that most bandsaws come with their own, large table for resting the material on only makes life easier for you. This is a brilliant addition to any workshop for all those reasons. Let’s take a look at whether the Delta 28-400 is the right choice for your own workflow…

A heavy Duter Miracle Worker or a complete dud ?

This is a large machine that comes with a heavy duty steel frame and an aluminium trunnion table support. It is made in an industrial looking silver/grey and has the kind of heft and sturdiness that we like to see from more expensive tools. Of course, this does have quite a large footprint, so if you’re going to be slipping it into your home office then it may pay to take some measurements first to make certain that it is going to fit in nicely!

Size wise this also has some benefits. It’s very heavy, which ensures that it’s not going to wobble and rock while you use it. That cast iron table also benefits from being ‘oversized’ at 15 ¾ inch by 18 7/8 inch. This gives you plenty of room for moving things around and getting the right angle and it’s a very welcome inclusion. That table also tilts up to 45 degrees, meaning you can use it to make bevelled cuts. And to further mimic the benefits of a compound miter saw you also get a positive stop so that you can quickly find the right angle.

What really matters though is the way that a bandsaw cuts and this gives you plenty of power thanks to its 14inch saw and its 1HP motor. That’s enough to cut through thick wood with ease, as well as non-ferrous metals. There’s a two-speed pulley, which is an important feature on any bandsaw if you intend on cutting through metal (faster saws do not work with sheet metal). Of course 1HP isn’t quite as powerful as 2HP and for some people that’s going to be a downside. But it is still plenty powerful and will be more than most hobbyists need and enough for a lot of professionals too.

Pros and Cons

The advantages of the Delta 28-400 revolve around its stable construction, it’s good cost-to-power ratio and the fact that it’s a 1HP motor driving a 14” saw – which is more than enough for the vast majority of tasks. This is a large, powerful machine that is going to give you a lot of scope when it comes to cutting through things.

In terms of the build quality though, the blade does rattle a little which is slightly disappointing when everything else is so strong and durable feeling. Likewise, it’s a bit of a shame that it doesn’t come with a fence. You can fit this yourself of course, but it’s something that you would get with a lot of other devices included. And speaking of value, it is also not quite as affordable as some other 14” bandsaws with 1HP.

As long as these issues aren’t deal breakers for you though, then you’re going to find that this is a well-made and very capable bandsaw and one that makes a big difference to your cutting capabilities.

Conclusion

Overall, this is a good choice for anyone that is looking for a bandsaw capable of handling all but the very most challenging cuts. It’s obviously less powerful than a 2HP with a 17” blade but it’s going to be more than enough for most people and certainly for hobbyists. It’s good value for money even if it lacks a couple of features.
So, what do you think? Will you be picking up the Delta 28-400? Let us know in the comments below or feel free to check our many other reviews for more bandsaw options!

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/delta-28-400-band-saw-review-does-it-have-all-the-features-you-need/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/157726546025

Saturday 25 February 2017

Read this Review to find out why the WEN 3975 is a unique band saw !

There are several tools that every woodworker or DIYer should have in their collection. Most will want a router for instance, you’ll probably have a jigsaw and you’ll likely find that a bandsaw comes in handy occasionally too. But then there are those other tools that perform specific jobs. These are a little more exciting in some ways because they provide you with something unique and they help to make your workshop stand out from the crowd.

The WEN 3975 is just such a novel example of a tool. This is a benchtop bandsaw, meaning that it holds a saw taught between two wheels and that it can be used to make detailed cuts. What is a little different though is that it is aimed at cutting metal and is only 5”. If you’re someone who cuts a lot of metal then, you might well find that this is a useful tool to add to your collection. But is it well made? Who is it for? What are the specifications like? We’ve reviewed the product so that you can decide if it might be right for you…

Product Description

The WEN 3975 doesn’t look a whole lot like a traditional bandsaw. It has a much more horizontal design and looks a bit more like a pivoting orange ring attached to a black metal base. It’s well made though and the orange and black colorscheme (typical of WEN) gives it a nice, professional finish.
The WEN 3975 looks different because it is different. The smaller wheels are useful here because cutting through sheet metal of course requires slower cutting speeds. But the WEN 3975 gives you plenty of option so you can rest assured that you’ll be just fine cutting through woods and other materials as well. Specifically, the WEN 3975 can cut at anything from 125 to 260 feet per minute. That adjustability is very important here, because it gives you the option to tailor the speed for the precise metal that you are going to be cutting.
The pivoting nature of the main body of the unit is also important as it allows for bevelling meaning that you can make a range of angled cuts. This lets you cut anywhere from 0 to 60 degrees. The WEN 3975 can be used to cut pipes up to 5” in diameter or can cut rectangular materials as large as 5 x 4-7/8. That is surprisingly thick for a 5” bandsaw and especially when you consider that this device is so compact for easy storage. Numbers can only tell you so much though. What’s more useful is to know what a device actually feels like to use. And in that regard, we are happy to say that during our review we found it very easy to cut through brass, aluminium, copper, steel and a range of other metals. The light weight and portability is a really nice additional benefit and the 4.5amp motor is more powerful than you probably expect it to.
There’s also a two year warranty and a lot of very positive reviews from other users.

Pros and Cons

There is very little bad to say about this bandsaw. The only downside is that this is not going to replace your tabletop bandsaw or even a regular handheld. Rather, this is a specific tool for a specific job and as long as you are aiming to cut through metal, you are going to find that this is an excellent addition to your repertoire.

The positives then are that this device cuts so easily through metal, that it is so portable and that it is so well-made and comes with the guarantee from WEN. It’s a great addition to your workshop.

Conclusion

To conclude, the WEN 3975 is perfect for anyone who needs to cut through metal regularly. It’s a bit of a niche product but if you happen to need that niche, then you’re going to be very happy with this excellent tool. We can highly recommend this tool and think it will come in handy in many different scenarios.
So, will you be adding this to your own workshop? Let us know in the comments below and feel free to let us know if we missed anything!

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/read-this-review-to-find-out-why-the-wen-3975-is-a-unique-band-saw/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/157687128520

Should i buy the WEN 3962 bandsaw? Read this Review!

When reviewing tools, I like to think of them in terms of possibilities. Sometimes a tool is simply there to make life a little bit easier: it helps you to perform jobs more quickly and easily and thereby takes away a little stress and brings some more joy to the act of building furniture and other wooden items. But other times, a tool actually increases the number of things you are capable of doing. Sometimes, a tool will present you with exciting new opportunities and allow you to make stunning items that you never could have made before. Perhaps that means you can make something more intricately decorated, or maybe it means you can work with materials that were otherwise off-limits.
And this is the case with the WEN 3962. This is a bandsaw that gives you a decent amount of power and lets you slice through different materials. It comes with its own stand and takes up a lot of space in your workshop, making it a definite ‘presence’. And when you look at it, you just know you’re going to be able to do all kinds of things that you couldn’t before.
But does it really open a world of possibilities? Or is it disappointingly limited?

Product Description

There is always something nice about getting a tool with its own stand. It makes a big impact to the layout of your workshop and means that you can work with it much more quickly and easily – without having to move all the bits of wood and piles of sawdust out the way first.This is an imposing figure with four legs and a large, powerful looking bandsaw sitting on top. It provides a generous amount of space too, with a 14-1/8 x 12-½ inch work table that can bevel to 45 degrees for making bevelled cuts or finding a more comfortable angle. The design is sleek and black and the whole thing has a certain heft that makes it feel good quality as soon as you start using it.This bandsaw takes 72 inch blades and powers them with an impressive 3.5 amp motor. This gives you some real cutting power and is capable of going six inches deep and 9-¾ inch wide. The two available speeds are 1520 and 2620.

Also in the package are a dust pot, a fence for making straight cuts and a miter gauge.

Pros and Cons

When you read the official description from the manufacturer, the phrase that sticks out is:
“Remember when tools were actually powerful?”
It’s true: you certainly can’t fault this thing in terms of its power and the power-to-cost ratio is very good indeed. If you’ve been looking for something that will make it possible to make precise and detailed cuts through tough materials, then the WEN 3962 might just be the tool you’re looking for.The tool is also well made and the extras are welcome too.On the downside though, this thing can be a real nightmare to adjust. Having read other review, we were ready for this but we still found that it could be very hard to find the perfect angle and making adjustments was tedious. Installing new blades is likewise a fiddle and a struggle.
This is a real shame as the tool is otherwise a fantastic value proposition for someone who yet doesn’t have a bandsaw. The problem is that if you are relatively new to woodwork and DIY, then you are likely to find that this is a bit of a challenge to use and that means we can’t recommend it to absolute beginners. This is a very good bandsaw but only if you’re willing to put in the time and effort.

Conclusion

Overall then, the WEN 3962 is a great bandsaw with spectacular power-to-price ratio. It is well made and has lots of settings and features. The downside is that it can be a fiddle to use and adjust and this can take some of the joy out of using it – not to mention potentially leading to imperfect cuts. If you’re willing to work with it and you’re confident in your ability though, then it is highly recommended.

from Toolerant http://www.toolerant.com/should-i-buy-the-wen-3962-bandsaw-read-this-review/

source https://toolerant.tumblr.com/post/157686646020

Friday 24 February 2017

3 Free Apps That Make Time Blocking Easy

Time Blocking. It’s a simple productivity method—just schedule time to complete each your tasks, just like you’d schedule time for meetings. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most strategies difficult to actually implement in your daily life.

The value of time blocking is that it helps you build your day around your priorities. By scheduling your time in advance, you are able to more easily say no to non-priorities.

The downside, of course, is that your tasks are everywhere—your inbox, your to-do list app, your team’s project management tool, the notepad beside your desk. You need somewhere to pull them together and schedule them in order. Luckily, there are some great free apps that will help you master time blocking without taking up more time than they’re worth.

These apps were selected based on three criteria:

Cost. These apps are either free, or their free versions include all the core functionality you need to use them effectively.
Scheduling Capability. There are a lot of task management and scheduling tools out there, but very few tools that combine both those functions. We wanted to find tools that combined both in some fashion, to maximize efficiency for time blocking.
Simplicity. Since the point of time blocking is to focus on your most important tasks, we wanted to find tools that didn't go overboard with bells and whistles or complicated interfaces.

Plan (Web, iOS)

Best for quickly scheduling time blocks.

If you just want a simple, powerful way to block your time, you’ll love Plan. It’s part to-do list, part calendar, and all business. With a clean user interface and little in the way of extra features, Plan is perfect to quickly set up blocks of time for priority tasks and projects.

Plan is a “Grocery List”-type to-do app with a twist: The app shows your Google Calendar side-by-side with your to-do list, so you can drag-and-drop tasks into your calendar. (You decide whether or not others can see these focus blocks on your calendar.)

It also includes Day/Week/Month view options, as well as the ability to create lists and projects to further organize your tasks. Plan also offers data insights into key activities like taking lunch or exercising (by pulling keywords like 'walk' or 'lunch' from your calendar appointments), as well as the average time spent on a task.

If you appreciate the simplicity of the grocery-list style of to-do management, but want to be more consistent about blocking focused time for your tasks, Plan is definitely a great option.

Week Plan (Windows, iOS, Web)

Best for comprehensive prioritization and scheduling for all your tasks.

For the worker who prefers the Getting Things Done style of to-do management, Week Plan offers a tool that emphasizes smart weekly planning for every aspect of your life. It shows your schedule by day, week, or month, and helps plan out your tasks accordingly.

More than just planning, however, Week Plan offers several tools to help you actually accomplish the plans you make. These tools are based on several of the most popular productivity techniques:

A built in Pomodoro Timer tracks your time in 25 minute sprints, prompting you to take a 5 or 10 minute break every half hour so you don’t burn out.
The Quadrant feature offers an Eisenhower’s Matrix to sort your daily, weekly, or monthly tasks by priority and urgency so you can visually prioritize your workload.
Following the concepts taught in Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Week Plan also prompts you to create weekly goals based on your various roles in life: Spouse, parent, friend, group leader, etc. This is useful for keeping all your tasks in one place, and making sure you’re giving priority to all the important roles in your life.

Week Plan is a great tool if you struggle with focusing on prioritization, or if you are a visual organizer. In addition to being able to block your time, you will also be able to track time and keep up with your priorities, all in one simple interface.

Want to see Week Plan time blocks in your Google Calendar? Set up a simple Zap that automatically creates a new calendar appointment when you create a task in Week Plan. All you have to do is make sure you set start and end dates and times in Week Plan.

For a deeper look at Week Plan's features and pricing, check out our Week Plan review.

PomoDone (Mac, Windows, Linux, Web)

Best for tracking and implementing time blocks.

The Pomodoro Technique is a favorite among productivity enthusiasts—and for good reason! The simple concept of focusing your full attention in 25-minute bursts, and taking brief, deliberate breaks, is a powerful tool for turning big tasks into manageable ones.

It’s also an important part of the concept of time blocking. Personally, I find that splitting my focused time-blocks into Pomodoro sessions is a sure way to make sure I actually stay on task during my scheduled time, while still getting up to stretch my legs and refresh my brain every half hour.

And while there are a lot of different Pomodoro timers available (we wrote about 12 of the best ones), one that is particularly useful for time blocking is PomoDone.

PomoDone is a Pomodoro timer with a twist: the app is task-focused, and tracks time spent on tasks and projects. Its native integrations with Trello, Wunderlist, ToDoist, Evernote, Asana, Basecamp, Slack, and JIRA make it easy to import tasks from your existing task management tool.

From there, it’s as simple as choosing your task from PomoDone’s interface and starting your timer. You can control the timer settings to allow for various lengths and break times, as well as how the timer is displayed on your desktop once you turn it on.

PomoDone’s ability to manage and track time by task is a big plus when you’re trying to block focused time for yourself. By providing analytics on your focused time, PomoDone enables you to better plan and execute on your time-blocked schedule.

If you’re not sure which of these apps would be right for you, you can follow these 4 steps for choosing the right app—or just experiment to find the balance of tools that works best for you.

Is there another great free tool for scheduling your to-do’s that we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments!

Image by Eric Rothermel.

source https://zapier.com/blog/free-time-blocking-apps/

Welcoming Human Resources/People Operations Specialist Meghan Gezo

A note from Wade Foster, Zapier CEO: People are at the heart of building great organizations. When the HR responsibilities got too big for me to handle on my own, we wanted to find someone who could help us scale the team and bring the same sort of care and attention to Zapier that Bryan, Mike, and I have always strived to have. After working with Meghan for a few months, I'm excited we've found that person. Already Meghan has helped us organize one of our best team retreats yet, and I'm confident that with her help we'll be able to grow a company where smart and hardworking people will be able to thrive.

Hey there! I’m Meghan Gezo, and I recently joined the team as Zapier’s first Human Resources/People Operations Specialist.

Prior to joining Zapier, I spent two years helping a Biotech startup nearly double in size by streamlining the hiring process and improving the onboarding experience for employees, all the while trying to make sure we preserved some really neat parts of the company culture while the company’s growth exploded.

As the company did grow, some things I really loved about working there started to fade away so I embarked on a mission to find a company that provided the ideal company culture for me. Working in Human Resources, company culture is not only important to me as an employee, but it also vastly affects the way I get to do my job; when employees are happy and feel valued by the company they work for, Human Resources gets to spend more time cultivating an even better work environment and less time trying to win back their employees.

After a few months on the job hunt I was beginning to get discouraged and thought maybe this ideal company only existed in my head. Unwilling to compromise, I kept searching and eventually found Zapier. The name sounded familiar, the product seemed super useful and the company culture seemed downright unreal - a 100% remote team, company retreats, top-notch benefits? Sign me up.

I originally applied for a non-HR position because I absolutely needed to get my foot in the door here. Luckily, the stars aligned and Zapier started looking to fill their very first People Ops/HR role just a couple of weeks after I submitted my original application.

At Zapier

My favorite part about working in Human Resources has always been helping people and seeing that smile on my coworkers faces when I make their day. At Zapier I help plan our awesome company retreats, oversee our recruiting processes, optimize procedures so that we can grow sustainably and do everything in between to make sure that all of our employees love working here on day 1000 as much as they did on day 1.

It feels great to work with such a bright group of people that always check their egos at the door; I can’t wait to find ways to make their workdays easier and more enjoyable.

source https://zapier.com/blog/welcome-hr-meghan-gezo/

Thursday 23 February 2017

Close More Sales with ProsperWorks CRM: 5 Teams Share Their Tips

It's easy to keep track of client relationships when you're just starting out, but those Post-It notes and memory tricks can't scale with your business. ProsperWorks is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that's seamlessly integrated with the Google apps you already use to manage your workday—your Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. That means you can tame your task list, schedule a followup call, and track the progress toward your team's sales goal all in one familiar place.

ProsperWorks' familiar design flattens the learning curve and makes it easy to get started.

ProsperWorks was built using Google's material design principles so it looks and feels like the G Suite tools you already use. Best of all, the lightweight CRM fits right into your email so once you download the Gmail Chrome Extension, you never have to leave your inbox to manage your customer relationships.

One of the biggest hurdles when teams adopt a CRM is the data entry needed to track sales activity. ProsperWorks eliminates that hassle by letting you add new contacts, track email opens and views in real-time, and create new opportunities right from your inbox. For example, when you get an email from a new prospect, you can hover over their email to get a snapshot of their contact info. From there you can quickly add to your contacts, and add a new opportunity to a stage in your pipeline.

ProsperWorks puts email at the core of your workflow.

When you log into ProsperWorks, you'll find visual pipelines of your deal activity, so you can easily see what's hot and what's lagging. From pipeline status, conversion rates, win rates, and sales activity, you'll never have to guess if you're on pace to meet your goals.

Stay in the know and track your deals visually with beautiful, clean pipeline graphics.

Harness the competitive energy of your sales team and set clear goals for them to be measured against. ProsperWorks makes it easy to set goals for individuals and the company as a whole. Then, check in on the progress towards those goals without having to pull a report and crunch the numbers.

Never wonder whether your team is on track.

No matter what you're selling, the day-to-day admin of the sales process can eat into your day. Reclaim your time by setting up an integration between ProsperWorks and Zapier, an app automation tool. Connecting ProsperWorks to Zapier unlocks access to 750+ other business tools so you can automate the tedious steps of your pipeline—like updating deal statuses, sending calendar invites, and emailing proposals—freeing up your time to focus on closing the sale.

Want some inspiration? We talked to five teams to learn how they're using ProsperWorks and Zapier to sell more, faster.

Close Deals Without a Sales Staff

With each new lead, there are product demos to schedule, proposals to send, and contracts to sign. But although your business depends on turning prospects into clients, a dedicated sales team is a luxury many early-stage companies don't have. No matter how good you are at multi-tasking, juggling a million tasks is a surefire way to tank your productivity and lose leads through the cracks.

That's why so many small teams use Zapier to hook up ProsperWorks with the other tools they use to generate leads and close deals. Instead of your team losing time hopping from task to task, automations can build a bridge from interested buyer to happy customer.

Privo, a Boston-based company that helps businesses migrate to Amazon Web Services (AWS), has a sales team of zero. Without a dedicated salesforce, their pipeline was clogged with manual data entry, delayed proposals, and unnecessary phone calls to assign accountability. In short, it was inefficient and left clients hanging in the balance.

Now, a series of Zaps between ProsperWorks unblocks their pipeline and helped the Privo team make gains of 10% growth each month. Not too shabby for a non-existent sales team.

To kick off their automated sales process, leads are captured via a Gravity Form on their website. Then, Zapier adds that lead directly into ProsperWorks, notifies the team via Slack, and invites the lead to an introductory call. In the blink of an eye, that new prospect has moved up one step in the funnel without any manual intervention from the Privo team.

As the opportunity moves through the later stages of the sales pipeline, Zaps at each stage of the deal save the team countless hours that were previously spent on paperwork and followups. For example, when an opportunity gets to the "Needs Proposal" stage, Zapier will automatically upload the client information to Proposify and create a new proposal from a template.

When clients sign the proposal, Zapier sends along an agreement using the HelloSign integration. Receipt of a client signature automatically sets the opportunity to a status of "Won" in ProsperWorks and kicks off a series of onboarding actions, including uploading the signed agreement to Google Drive and adding the client to the accounting system.

Keep Your Customers in the Loop

No one likes to be left in the dark—especially your customers. While most teams use CRM tools to communicate the status of deals internally, if you connect your CRM to Zapier, you can shed some light on a sale to your customers as well.

Most new orders for custom apparel company A&R Screening need to be delivered before an event, and as the deadline creeps closer, it can be stressful for customers to be in the dark about the status of their order. That's where Zapier and ProsperWorks come in. When an order gets moved to a new pipeline stage in ProsperWorks, an email is automatically sent to the customer letting them know the status of their order. Zapier pulls in the data from opportunity fields in ProsperWorks and inserts that data into the email template to personalize the delivery.

Automatically send emails using info from your ProsperWorks opportunitites

"Our company has been growing over the past few years," says marketing manager Joe Ramirez. "More customers means more orders to track and more time spent taking care of our customers. Zapier makes it easy to delight our customers by helping us preemptively answer some of the more common questions our customers have about their orders."

The result? More time to spend on delivering a great product and less time calming the nerves of stressed out event managers.

Get Marketing Insights

"If it weren't for Zapier, I would literally need two people to do my job."- Christopher Notley-Smith, marketing manager at Donesafe

To your sales team, it might feel like new leads appear magically out of thin air. But behind every qualified lead is the sweat of a marketer. Workplace compliance and safety software company Donesafe, merges their marketing data with ProsperWorks to develop a holistic view of their lead capture data. This helps clearly identify high-value, low-cost lead sources without a marketing intelligence platform, which is out of their budget.
New activity in ProsperWorks is added to a Google Sheet and compiled with details of the company's marketing spend. Combining lead source data with the marketing dollars spent to capture those leads gives the team the ammo they need to calculate key metrics like monthly recurring revenue (MRR), the lifetime value of a customer (LTV), cost per opportunity (CPO), and profit-to-date, among others.

"Using Zapier and ProsperWorks combined with other business intelligence platforms gives me an amazing amount of insight into how our marketing programs are performing overall—something I wouldn't be able to do otherwise," says marketing manager Christopher Notley-Smith. "If it weren't for Zapier, I would literally need two people to do my job."

Celebrate Team Wins

It can be a grind to get a deal over the finish line, but as soon as the ink dries, it's time to celebrate a job well done. The team at Ubilabs, a German-based interactive map company, doles out virtual high fives with a congratulatory GIF. Whenever a deal in ProsperWorks is moved to the "Won" stage, Zapier pings the details of the deal and a random celebratory GIF to the team's Slack channel. That way, the whole team gets the happy news at once and can chime in on the excitement.

"Towards the end of a quarter, everyone is feeling the pressure to meet their goals," says managing partner Michael Pletziger. "This integration helps us stay on top of things, focus on what we need to know, and reminds us to take a minute and celebrate the wins as a team."

Even though the GIF selection is random—the Zap searches Giphy for a GIF with the search term "FTW" (for the win)—they were surprised by an unexpected personal touch to a recent Slack message. One of the team members is a big Louis CK fan. After finally closing a tough deal, he was rewarded with this random—but perfectly matched—GIF.

Celebrate won deals with a Giphy party

Media company Cazamba also uses Slack to notify the team of ongoing and new activity in ProsperWorks. With all deal information available in their public channels, meetings are shorter and there's no confusion about the status of current prospects. Of course, their favorite Zap is the one that notifies the channel of a closed deal.

"Knowing right when a deal is closed is exciting for the team," says CEO Victor Cano. "The efficiency this integration provides is priceless."

If you don't use Slack, you can kick off a celebration over email, with a Zap like this.

These are just a few ideas on how to automate your sales pipeline with ProsperWorks and Zapier. With powerful and flexible tools, the sky's the limit. Feeling inspired? Build your own ProsperWorks workflow on Zapier or use one of the templates in this article to get started.

How do you and your team use ProsperWorks and Zapier? Share your ideas with us in the comments and don't forget to sign up for our webinar on February 28

source https://zapier.com/blog/prosperworks-automations/

Wednesday 22 February 2017

How to Find Anything in Google Apps

Google is synonymous with search, and for good reason: It's good. So good, in fact, many of us don't bother bookmarking sites anymore. Surely Google can find it again whenever we need it.

Files, contacts, and that random quote you're trying to remember from last year's Q2 planning session, though, are a bit harder to unearth. If your team works together using G Suite—including Gmail, Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides—it shouldn't be that hard, though. They each have Google's search tools baked in, with advanced options to help you find that exact presentation you're looking for. And on Business or higher plans, the new Google Cloud Search can even proactively find things when its AI thinks you'll need them.

Here's how to find them and more in any G Suite account, with Cloud Search or Google Drive's built-in advanced search tools.

Automatically Find Info with Google Cloud Search

Google Cloud Search helps you find the data you're looking for across your team's G Suite (GIF via Google)

For the longest time, if you wanted to share documents with your team, you'd run your own internal server perhaps using Sharepoint, and store documents there. Google could even help you search for the right file, using their Google Search Appliance, a server they sold for the past 15 years that you could mount along with your company's other servers. It would index your files, and help your team find exactly what you're looking for.

Today, odds are you don't keep very many files—if any—on a private server. You're far more likely to store your team's files in Google Drive, your email in Gmail, and trust Google to keep it all synced. And now, with the just-released Google Cloud Search, you can find those files easier than ever.

Cloud Search is similar to the old Search Appliance, redesigned for your online files. As long as your team has a $10/month per user G Suite Business plan, you can find contacts, emails, and files from one place at cloudsearch.google.com. Just type in what you're looking for, and Google will auto-suggest documents you've shared and people in your team. You can use Google-style filters to see, say, just Google Docs files shared this week, or can use standard search operators like AND to find items containing two phrases or from to find items shared by a specific person.

Google will try to find the files you need to work on today

You might not even need to search for files. Google Cloud Search includes a bit of Google Now-type AI. It'll watch Google Calendar for your upcoming meetings, and suggest files that it things are related so you can quickly pull up your meeting notes and presentation. And, at the top of the search page, it'll show a Pick up where you left off pane with the files you and your team have most recently worked on, so you can jump right back in without needing to search.

Google Cloud Search just might become the first page you open when you start work.

Find Any File with Google Drive Advanced Search

Google Drive includes many of the same tools in a less-fancy interface

Don't have a Business-level G Suite plan? No worries. Google's baked most of the same search tools into Google Drive and the other G Suite tools that you use to get work done. You can use them from any Google Account, including free personal Gmail accounts and basic G Suite team accounts.

Start your day with the right files

Open drive.google.com, for instance, and you can sort your files by Last Modified. This will show the files along with Docs documents, spreadsheets, and presentations—and will sort them by when they've been updated by anyone you've shared them with as in the screenshot above. That's a simple version of Cloud Search's Where you left off, and an easy way to know where to start your work today.

Search for any file you need

Then, the ever-present search bar at the top of Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides' landing pages let you search through all of your files. Type in a phrase you're looking for, and Google will look at the title and contents of the file, and show everything relevant. It'll try to auto-complete contact names to find files they've shared with you, and will even check for the word you're searching for in their email address.

Looking for a file with a specific date in the name, or edited in a specific timeframe? Type it however you want; Google Drive knows that April 15 and 4/15/16 and 15/APR/16 are all the same.

The only thing it can't search through, right now, is comments. As long as the text you're looking for is in the file name or contents, though, Google should be able to find it.

Dig deeper with Google Drive Advanced Search

Did that first search bring up too many results? Just like in Google Search, you can use advanced search to trim down your results and find exactly what you want.

There are two ways: Search operators, or the advanced search menu. For the latter, click the down arrow and fill in the form for the file you want to find. You can look for files by type, owner, and date, and you can look for them by their name or specific phrases in the document. Once you've filled that in, Google will turn those options into text operators in the search field, so you can copy that search and use it again next time.

Or, you can use standard advanced search tricks to find files on your own. Put the phrase you're looking for in quotes to find exactly that phrase, or add a - before a word to find files that don't contain that word. AND will find items with both words; OR will find files with either word. There are also some Google Drive-specific operators that are handy—check Google Drive's documentation for more:

owner: or from: — find files made by a specific person, with their name or email address
to: — find files you've shared with a specific person
before: or after: — find files edited before or after a certain date
type: or app: — find specific types of files, aka document, or files that can be opened in a specific app like "Google Docs"
title: — search only by files' titles

Use Zapier to Find Google Drive Files from Anywhere

Want to find files without opening Google Drive? You can do that, too, thanks to Zapier search workflows.

Zapier's multi-step workflows let you watch for text from any app, then search for it in Google Drive and share the file it finds back to any app you want. Say you want an easy way to find files right from Slack. Just make a new Zapier workflow and have it watch Slack for a new message in a channel. Add the next step, selecting Google Drive's Find a File action, and have Zapier search for the text you'd entered in Slack, as in the screenshot above.

Then, add one more step, this time selecting Slack's Send a Channel Message action. Have Zapier send the name of the file and the link to open it in Google Drive back to Slack. Now, whenever you post a message to that channel, Zapier will find the file you're looking for and post it back to Slack in seconds.

Want your file elsewhere? You can make your own workflow to, say, look up files from Zapier's Chrome extension and send them to you in a Pushbullet push notification, or to have a team member fill out a form and get the file sent to them in an email. It's a powerful way to search Google Drive from anywhere.

You can even use Zapier workflows to make sure all of your important files are stored in Google Drive. Zapier can watch Gmail for emails with attachments or specific keywords, and save those files to Google Drive for you. Or, it can copy files from your other favorite apps to Google Drive to make sure they'll be ready the next time you search for a file.

Google Search is so reliable, it's the place where most of us start our days. When you're starting your work day, though, odds are you'll need team files and documents more than random stuff on the web—and with Google Drive and Cloud Search, you just might have a new page to start your work day with.

source https://zapier.com/blog/google-drive-cloud-search/

Net Promoter Score: Your Guide to NPS, the "One Number You Need to Grow"

Last week, some college friends came to visit from out of town, and asked me where we should eat. Such a simple question, but there I was sitting with my wife for half an hour going through options. But we kept coming back to the same choice: Rudy's BBQ. Their creamed corn is to die for and if you are ever in San Antonio, you have to try it.

That made me think of the many people we have recommended Rudy's to over the years. Wouldn't it be amazing if you could identify that type of loyal customer for your own company—the ones who would lead dozens of new customers to your business?

It turns out there is actually a way you can scientifically measure and encourage customer loyalty, so you can work to grow your customer base and encourage your best customers. If you identify the customers who love your products the most, you'll be able to turn your passive fans into active promoters.

That's where NPS—the Net Promoter Score—comes in. And it only takes two questions to calculate that score.

What Is the Net Promoter Score?
A Brief History of the (Sometimes Controversial) NPS Loyalty Metric
How to Calculate Your NPS
How to Get Started with NPS
The Art of the NPS Follow-Up

What Is the Net Promoter Score?

The Net Promoter Score® (or NPS, as we'll sometimes refer to it in this article) is a deceptively simple surveying technique to find customers who love your company and products, one that can get you 8-10 times more actionable data than traditional surveying methods.

It's simple because you only ask your customers one question: How likely is it that you would recommend my brand/product/service to a friend or colleague? (Answers are based on a 0-10 scale). That's it.

Here is an example email you might send to a customer to get their Net Promoter Score:

Then, once people answer the first question, there's a second question you'll send: What's the most important reason for your score? You could ask it in a followup email or show it on a webpage after customers click the survey question in the first email. Here's how that could look:

That's all. Ask those two questions and you'll have the data you need to calculate your Net Promoter Score.

NPS is deceptively simple because, to the respondent, it doesn't appear to be a burden to answer. In fact, you can even ask this question in an email or text message and ask for a direct response without sending them to another web page. Compared to traditional surveys with pages of questions, it's far simpler.

Why is this important? Because every time you ask someone to do something (click somewhere, reply to an email, etc.), you create a barrier to your goal, and intrinsically fewer people will complete it.

With each added click or question, your chances of someone opting out of a survey drop 50%.

Here's a general rule of thumb from our experience of sending out over 5 million surveys at Promoter.io: With each added click or question, your chances of someone opting out of a survey drop 50%.

For example, if you ask people to click a link to your survey and fill out four questions—five total actions—only around 3% of people will finish the survey, since 50% * 50% * 50% * 50% * 50% = 3%. This is about average for a typical survey response rate of 3-5%, depending on the study.

If you ask only two questions, then you can expect a 50% * 50% = 25% response rate–eight times more data. You'll possibly get an even higher results, as the average response rate for users of Promoter.io, an automated NPS platform, hovers around 40%. That matches up with studies conducted by Bain & Company about the effectiveness of NPS and its two simple questions.

It seems so simple, so why isn't the Net Promoter Score more widely known and used?

A Brief History of the (Sometimes Controversial) NPS Loyalty Metric

In 2003, business strategist Fred Reichheld published an article in Harvard Business Review titled "One Number You Need to Grow." It discusses how the Net Promoter Score was developed by testing various questions to find which one was best aligned with customer loyalty. NPS was then developed further and eventually trademarked by Fred Reichheld along with Bain & Company (a global management consulting firm) and Satmetrix (a customer experience management platform).

In Reichheld's original proposal for the Net Proposal Score, the worst score you can get is -100 (for example, if everyone gives you a 0, 100% of people are against you, hence -100) and the highest score you can get is +100 (for example, if everyone gives you a 10, 100% of people are promoting you, hence +100). However, any score that is above zero is good, anything above +50 is excellent, and over +70 is considered world-class.

In the decade since that article was published, NPS has become one of the most popular loyalty surveys in use, in large part because of Reichheld's bestselling book "The Ultimate Question 2.0" that expanded on use cases for NPS. Hundreds of Fortune 500 companies have incorporated NPS surveys into their regular course of business. Apple employs NPS in their retail stores. GE used NPS to prompt growth of its stock price. Intuit even started reporting its NPS scores in conference calls with analysts.

Loyalty isn't earned with a number. Loyalty is earned by creating authentic relationships with people post-survey.

But all this adoption didn't come without controversy. Critics of NPS say there isn't any connection between NPS and customer loyalty, that NPS fails to predict customer loyalty, and that it isn't any better than other loyalty-related surveys.

For example, in a study presented at the Annual Conference of the World Association for Public Opinion Research in Berlin titled "Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: Improving the 'Net-Promoter' Score," the authors found that the 0-10 point scale advocated by Reichheld had the worst predictive value of the scales tested.

Still, a major part of why the Net Promoter Score has been so popular is due to its simplicity, both for the surveyor and the surveyee. There's only one (apparent) question that is easy to answer in just a brief moment, which makes it easy to quantify your satisfaction score in a single number. That simplicity can also be its shortcoming.

You should never treat customers as a number.

Many companies, small and large, make a big mistake by fixating on their NPS score. This is where most of the controversy arises. Everyone wants to be like Apple Retail with a +76 Net Promoter Score, or they make a big deal about making sure their score keeps going up every quarter.

While the score is generally a useful metric to track, I find it to be by far the least interesting part of measuring NPS. This is because you should never treat customers as a number. No matter what your score is, when someone takes time out of their day to give you some feedback, it's an opportunity to engage and deepen your connection with them.

People who complain that the Net Promoter Score doesn't do a good enough job predicting customer loyalty are missing the point. Loyalty isn't earned with a number. Loyalty is earned by creating authentic relationships with people post-survey. If you don't engage your customers strategically based on their sentiment and feedback, there won't ever be an impact that connects to your bottom-line metrics.

If you measure your Net Promoter Score, though, you have the opportunity to open the conversation with customers, improve your business, products, and services, and then perhaps see your satisfaction score grow. NPS is a means to an end—to a happy ending for you and your customers—not an end in and of itself.

How to Calculate Your Net Promoter Score

Now that you understand what NPS is and how to effectively use it, how do you calculate your score? The math is actually pretty easy, but you will need a calculator. Here's how it works:

1. Calculate the total number of respondents who replied
2. Calculate the total number of respondents who gave you a 9 to 10 (promoters)
3. Calculate the total number of respondents who gave you a 0 to 6 (detractors)

Before we go to step four, you might have a couple questions:

What about respondents who give you a 7 or 8?

Though both good scores, these people aren't fanatical one way or another, so we leave them out of the final score.

Why are respondents who give you a 6 considered detractors? Isn't 6 a good score too?

Think about it as the person giving a 6. If you gave a "6" to someone else's product/service, you likely think there's something wrong with the product or the way a company operates. If someone asked you about it, you might bring up its problems instead of its benefits. Not good.

Also, negative sentiment, even to a small degree, has much more impact that positive sentiment. We all experience this every day, whether in personal conversations or product reviews online. There's no reason to include any negatives in your Net Promoter Score.

With that out of the way, here's the rest of the math:

4. Subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters

Therefore, Net Promoter Score = % Promoters - % Detractors

For example, let's say you get the following scores as responses: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Only two out of 10 were enthusiasts (20%), and six out of 10 were detractors (60%). That makes your NPS score -40.

How to Get Started with Your Net Promoter Score

At this point, you know what questions to ask and how to calculate your score, but you might have a few more questions before you get started. At Promoter.io, we frequently receive the following four:

So, I just send an email?

Yes, basically. Just ask the main question (How likely is it that you would recommend my brand/product/service to a friend or colleague? Answers are based on a 0-10 scale) and tell people they can just reply to the email directly.

Of course, you could send them a link to a NPS form in a form builder like Typeform or a survey in Google Forms or SurveyGizmo or any other survey app, but the response rate will not be as high.

The survey won't feel as personal to your customers, either, especially when you follow up with the second question: What's the most important reason for giving us that score? If you ask that in a personalized email, people will be more likely to give you honest feedback.

Alternatively, another option is to use a service designed for NPS, like Promoter.io. Apps like that will help you send the emails and follow-up questions, so you won't have to do so much manual effort collecting responses, tracking replies, looking at trends and looking at historical score changes over time.

How many customers should I survey at a time? How often?

Most people want to send a survey—whether a full-length survey or a simpler NPS email—to all their customers at the same time once every quarter.

Though you are welcome to do it this way, you tend to get a better perspective if you spread out the survey and send it to 1/90th of your users every day for 90 days. If you have 1,000 users, say, you would only send around 11 surveys per day.

Here's why you should spread out your emails. If you send all the surveys at once, the responses will only represent that moment in time. Add new features or change the pricing of your products, for example, and your score won't take that into account for another 3 months. Spread the surveys out, though, and you can act on the feedback and see your score change in nearly real-time.

Logistically, sending out a few a day is hard unless you use an automated NPS platform that supports it though. But the benefits might make it worth spending a bit more time setting up your surveys.

Do I send NPS surveys immediately after someone places an order (for transactional businesses)?

It depends on what you want to measure. If you want to understand customer loyalty for your shopping cart process, sending a survey right after someone orders can be an effective way to measure that since they will have the experience fresh in their memory.

However, if you want to know how likely people are to recommend the product they purchased (the main purpose of the Net Promoter Score), you will want to schedule the survey a bit further out.

Give your customers enough time to receive and start using the product without completely forgetting that you exist. They'll then be able to give you relevant, actionable feedback.

Do I send an NPS survey after every purchase?

Again, it comes back to what you want to measure: loyalty for individual products they are purchasing, or loyalty to your company in general.

I typically recommend to measure brand loyalty over individual product loyalty, when our customers ask us this question. That means no matter how many products your customers purchase (0 or 1,000), you send them an NPS survey once a quarter—something that's already standard for subscription-based businesses. This helps you measure what people think of your company overall, not just about each individual purchase.

We've found that surveying customers once a quarter on a rolling basis is the most effective frequency that is not too invasive or annoying. Wait longer and you can miss critical feedback or changes in customer sentiment that can lead to churn; wait less and you may annoy people with too many emails.

A big part of NPS is getting a predictive indicator on the health of a customer and their thoughts on your company directly from their mouths, instead of relying on obscure behavioral metrics. This is extremely powerful insight, one that's worth waiting to get right.

Bonus: "The Art of the NPS Follow-Up" PDF Download

The magic of NPS is not in the score, it is in the follow-up. This is the part that most Net Promoter Score critics miss. How to respond and engage after someone sends you their feedback is what really brings value out of NPS.

If you master the art of the NPS follow-up, you can get people to publicly review and recommend your product or service, or discover new business opportunities and product features you hadn't thought of. You can also proactively reduce churn with a higher success rate than any other method.

For a 9 or 10 score, the response is pretty straightforward. Since they are volunteering the fact that they are happy or willing to recommend your service, you can naturally write a response like this:

Thank you for your score of 10! You honestly made my day! If you have just 30 seconds, would you be willing to write a quick review to make it easier for other people to discover the service? Here's a URL: …

For other scores, there are equally effective scripts you can use to kick-off a deeper conversation. Exclusively for Zapier blog readers, we have created a free PDF that gives you templates for how to respond to NPS surveys no matter what score they give you. Download the "NPS Follow-Up Cheatsheet: 11 Customizable Templates To Turn Survey Responders Into Actionable Promoters" from Promoter.io for free, to start putting NPS follow-ups to work for your business.

Do you use the Net Promoter Score in your business, or do you use another metric to help find your most influential customers? We'd love to hear your story in the comments below.

Credits: London Underground photo courtesy Anna Dziubinska via Unsplash. Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

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