Welcome to My Blog

My favorite part of the writing process is when my editor reviews my work. By the time I’ve submitted the first draft of most of my blog posts, I’ve invested so much time and effort into my piece that I’m too emotionally attached to it. I need to distance myself from it.

My editor also has fresh editing eyes, so she can discover any overlooked errors and new creative opportunities to sharpen my piece. After I address her edits, my piece always looks more polished.

Asking other people to evaluate your work applies to almost every discipline, especially user experience and design. It’s not smart to rely on yourself when evaluating your own product or website design. You’re partial towards it, and that can skew your perception of reality. Learning directly from the people that your work is actually for — your users — is what enables you to craft the best user experience possible.

UX and design professionals leverage usability testing to get user feedback on their product or website’s user experience all the time. So we interviewed some of HubSpot’s Senior UX Researchers and Designers to teach you what exactly usability testing is, its benefits, and how to effectively conduct your own study.

UX researchers will usually conduct usability studies on each iteration of their product from its early development to its release. This allows UX researchers to uncover any problems with their product’s user experience, decide how to fix these problems, and ultimately determine if the product is usable enough.

Identifying and fixing these early issues saves the company both time and money: developers don’t have to overhaul the code of a poorly designed product that’s already built, and the product team is more likely to release it on schedule.

During a usability study, the moderator asks participants in their individual user session to complete a series of tasks while the rest of the team observes and takes notes. By watching their actual users navigate their product or website and listening to their praises and concerns about it, they can see when the participants can quickly and successfully complete tasks and where they’re enjoying the user experience, encountering problems, and experiencing confusion.

After conducting their study, they’ll analyze the results and report any interesting insights to the project lead.

Benefits of Usability Testing

Usability testing has five major advantages over the other methods of examining a product’s user experience, like a questionnaire:

• Usability testing provides an unbiased, accurate, and direct examination of your product or website’s user experience. By testing its usability on a sample of actual users who are detached from the amount of emotional investment your team has put into creating and designing the product or website, their feedback can resolve most of your team’s internal debates.
• Usability testing is convenient. To conduct your study, all you have to do is find a quiet room and bring in portable recording equipment. If you don’t have recording equipment, someone on your team can just take notes.
• Usability testing can tell you what your users do on your site or product and why they take these actions.
• Usability testing lets you address your product’s or website’s issues before you spend a ton of money creating something that ends up having a poor design.
• For your business, intuitive design boosts customer usage and their results, driving demand for your product.

The 9 Phases of a Usability Study

1. Decide which part of your product or website you want to test.

Do you have any pressing questions about how your users will interact with certain parts of your design, like a particular interaction or workflow? Or are you wondering what users will do first when they land on your product page? Gather your thoughts about your product or website’s pros, cons, and areas of improvement, so you can create a solid hypothesis for your study.

2. Pick your study’s tasks.

Your participants’ tasks should be your user’s most common goals when they interact with your product or website, like making a purchase.

3. Set a standard for success.

Once you know what to test and how to test it, make sure to set clear criteria to determine success for each task. For instance, when I was in a usability study for HubSpot’s Content Strategy tool, I had to add a blog post to a cluster and report exactly what I did. Setting a threshold of success and failure for each task lets you determine if your product’s user experience is intuitive enough or not.

4. Write a study plan and script.

At the beginning of your script, you should include the purpose of the study, if you’ll be recording, some background on the product or website, questions to learn about the participants’ current knowledge of the product or website, and, finally, their tasks. To make your study consistent, unbiased, and scientific, moderators should follow the same script in each user session.

5. Delegate roles.

During your usability study, the moderator has to remain neutral, carefully guiding the participants through the tasks while strictly following the script. Whoever on your team is best at staying neutral, not giving into social pressure, and making participants feel comfortable while pushing them to complete the tasks should be your moderator

Note-taking during the study is also just as important. If there’s no recorded data, you can’t extract any insights that’ll prove or disprove your hypothesis. Your team’s most attentive listener should be your note-taker during the study.

6. Find your participants

Screening and recruiting the right participants is the hardest part of usability testing. Most usability experts suggest you should only test five participants during each study, but your participants should also closely resemble your actual user base. With such a small sample size, it’s hard to replicate your actual user base in your study.

To recruit the ideal participants for your study, create the most detailed and specific persona as you possibly can and incentivize them to participate with a gift card or another monetary reward.

Recruiting colleagues from other departments who would potentially use your product is also another option. But you don’t want any of your team members to know the participants because their personal relationship can create bias — since they want to be nice to each other, the researcher might help a user complete a task or the user might not want to constructively criticize the researcher’s product design.

7. Conduct the study.

During the actual study, you should ask your participants to complete one task at a time, without your help or guidance. If the participant asks you how to do something, don’t say anything. You want to see how long it takes users to figure out your interface.

Asking participants to “think out loud” is also an effective tactic — you’ll know what’s going through a user’s head when they interact with your product or website.

After they complete each task, ask for their feedback, like if they expected to see what they just saw, if they would’ve completed the task if it wasn’t a test, if they would recommend your product to a friend, and what they would change about it. This qualitative data can pinpoint more pros and cons of your design.

8. Analyze your data.

You’ll collect a ton of qualitative data after your study. Analyzing it will help you discover patterns of problems, gauge the severity of each usability issue, and provide design recommendations to the engineering team.

When you analyze your data, make sure to pay attention to both the users’ performance and their feelings about the product. It’s not unusual for a participant to quickly and successfully achieve your goal but still feel negatively about the product experience.

9. Report your findings.

After extracting insights from your data, report the main takeaways and lay out the next steps for improving your product or website’s design and the enhancements you expect to see during the next round of testing.

The 3 Most Common Types of Usability Tests

1. Hallway/Guerilla Usability Testing

This is where you set up your study somewhere with a lot of foot traffic. It allows you to ask randomly-selected people who have most likely never even heard of your product or website, — like passers-by — to evaluate its user-experience.

2. Remote/Unmoderated Usability Testing

Remote/unmoderated usability testing has two main advantages: it uses third-party software to recruit target participants for your study, so you can spend less time recruiting and more time researching. It also allows your participants to interact with your interface by themselves and in their natural environment — the software can record video and audio of your user completing tasks.

Letting participants interact with your design in their natural environment with no one breathing down their neck can give you more realistic, objective feedback. When you’re in the same room as your participants, it can prompt them to put more effort into completing your tasks since they don’t want to seem incompetent around an expert. Your perceived expertise can also lead to them to please you instead of being honest when you ask for their opinion, skewing your user experience’s reactions and feedback.

3. Moderated Usability Testing

Moderated usability testing also has two main advantages: interacting with participants in person or through a video a call lets you ask them to elaborate on their comments if you don’t understand them, which is impossible to do in an unmoderated usability study. You’ll also be able to help your users understand the task and keep them on track if your instructions don’t initially register with them.

How to Ask Usability Testing Questions

Following one script or even a template of questions for every one of your usability studies wouldn’t make any sense — each study’s subject matter is different. You’ll need to tailor your questions to the things you want to learn, but most importantly, you’ll need to know how to ask good questions.

The tips below from one of HubSpot’s Senior UX researchers, Julie Fischer, will teach you how to ask the right questions during a usability study:

– Don’t ask leading questions that insert your own bias or opinion into the participants’ mind. They’ll end up doing what you want them to do instead of what they would do by themselves.

– Ask participants how they would complete a goal or task in the product or on the website instead of telling them what to do next.

– When participants ask “What will this do?,” it’s best to reply with the question “What do you expect it to do?” rather than telling them the answer.

Your Work Could Always Use a Fresh Perspective

Letting another person review and possibly criticize your work takes courage — no one wants a bruised ego. But most of the time, when you allow people to constructively criticize or even rip apart your article or product design, especially when your work is intended to help these people, your final result will be better than you could’ve ever imagined.

Have you ever heard people refer to themselves as “Apple people,” “Nike people,” or “Trader Joe’s” people?

This is what brand awareness can do for a brand: embed itself into people’s lifestyles and purchase habits so that consumers don’t have to think twice before becoming a customer, time and time again.

This guide will help you better understand brand awareness, establish it among your audience, and build campaigns that allow it to continually grow and morph with your business. Let’s dive in.

Brand awareness might seem like a vague concept, and in truth, it is. For those marketers and business owners out there who like to gauge success with neat and tidy numbers, brand awareness will likely ruffle your feathers.

But just because it isn’t a metric that can be perfectly determined doesn’t mean it doesn’t carry value. Brand awareness is incredibly important for business success and overall marketing goals. Here’s why.

Brand Awareness Fosters Trust

In a world where consumers rely on extensive research and others’ opinions before making a simple purchase, brand trust is everything. Once a consumer bonds to your brand, they’re more likely to make repeat purchases with little to no forethought –– which then bridges the gap between trust and loyalty.

Brand awareness establishes that brand trust. When you put a proverbial face to your brand name, consumers can trust easier. Brand awareness efforts give your brand a personality and outlet to be sincere, receive feedback, and tell a story. These are all ways that we, as humans, build trust with one another. The human/brand relationship isn’t any different.

Brand Awareness Creates Association

When you’ve had a paper cut, I bet you’ve put on a Band-Aid. When you had a pressing question, I’m sure you’ve Googled it. When you needed to make a few copies, I’m guessing that you Xeroxed them. And when you’ve packed for a nice picnic, I’m willing to bet you grabbed a Coke to drink.

Am I correct? Most likely. But … notice how the some of the words above are capitalized. These are brands, not nouns or verbs.

Speaking in brand-less terms, Band-Aid should be referred to as bandage, Google, as a search engine, and Xerox as a copier. But it’s more fun to refer to the brand itself, even if we aren’t using their specific product.

That’s what brand awareness does. It associates actions and products with particular brands, subconsciously encouraging us to replace common words with branded terms. And before you know it, simple paper cuts or picnics are doing the marketing for us.

Brand Awareness Builds Brand Equity

Brand equity describes a brand’s value, which is determined by consumer experiences with and overall perception of the brand. Positive experiences and perception equal positive brand equity, and the same goes for negative notions.

Here are a few valuable things that come from positive brand equity:

• Higher prices due to higher perceived value
• A higher stock price
• The ability to expand business through product or service line extensions
• Greater social impact due to brand name value

How does a brand establish (and increase) brand equity? By building brand awareness and consistently promoting positive experiences with the brand. Brand awareness is the foundation of brand equity.

Once a consumer is aware of a brand, they start to recognize it without assistance, seek it out to make a purchase, begin to prefer it over other similar brands, and establish a loyalty that not only spurs on other purchases but also inspires recommendations to family and friends.

That, my friends, is why brand awareness is so important. It establishes trust with your customers, creates positive associations, and builds invaluable brand equity that allows your brand to become a household name and consumer staple.

How to Establish Brand Awareness

Brand awareness among your audience and the general public doesn’t happen overnight. It also doesn’t happen from a simple advertisement or marketing campaign.

Strong brand awareness is a result of multiple simultaneous efforts that extend beyond trying to get paying customers.

If you expect to raise awareness of your brand by running a few product advertisements on Facebook, you won’t get very far. Not only will the consumer be focused on the product (not the brand), but the ad will also lack impact beyond a simple sale.

Here are some ways to establish a solid brand awareness foundation and make a lasting impact with your audience:

Be a Person, Not a Company

When you get to know a new friend, what do you like to discover about them? I like to learn about hobbies, passions, likes and dislikes, and more. I also pay attention to how they speak, what they like to talk about, and what stuff gets them excited.

These are the traits your brand should determine and promote about itself. To leave an impact with your audience, you’ve got to define yourself as more than a company that sells stuff. How else would you define yourself? What words would you use if you had to introduce your brand to a new friend?

Socialize

Introvert or extrovert, outgoing or quiet, all humans benefit from social contact and spending time with one another. It’s how we stay connected, learn new things, and become known by others.

The same goes for your brand. If you only attempt to connect with others when trying to make a sale or get support, you won’t be known as anything beyond a business with a singular intention (and the same goes for a person).

To raise awareness of your brand, you’ve got to be social. Post on social media about things unrelated to your product or services. Interact with your audience by asking questions, commenting on posts, or retweeting or sharing content you like. Treat your social accounts as if you were a person trying to make friends, not a business trying to make money.

Over 50% of brand reputation comes from online sociability. Being social leads to greater awareness and simply being known.

Tell a Narrative

Storytelling is an incredibly powerful marketing tactic, whether you’re marketing products or promoting your brand. Why? Because it gives something real for your audience to latch onto.

Crafting a narrative around your brand humanizes it and gives it depth. And weaving this said narrative into your marketing inherently markets your brand alongside your products or services.

What should your narrative be about? Anything, as long as it’s true. It can be the narrative of your founder, the tale of how your business had its first product idea, or the little-engine-that-could story of how your small business made it in this big world.

People like hearing stories about each other. Authenticity is impactful, and it can lead to a big boost in brand awareness.

Make Sharing Easy

Whatever your industry, product offering, or marketing strategies, make it easy for your audience to share your content. This could be blog posts, sponsored content, videos, social media posts, or product pages. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as it’s shareable.

Word-of-mouth marketing is the most effective way to establish trust and familiarity among customers. If someone sees that a friend or family member is recommending a product or service, they’ll take notice of that product … and brand. Is this a brand worth exploring? Do they have other great products I can rely on? What are their social accounts like, and what do they talk about?

If you make it easy to post about your stuff, consumers will raise brand awareness for you by simply clicking “Share”.

Brand awareness is about impact.

It’s about interacting with your audience in ways that don’t only ask for money, participation, or loyalty.

Imagine if you met a new person who wanted to be your friend. If they asked for any of the above, you’d probably laugh and walk away, right? Not only is that a shallow approach to friendship, but it also leaves no lasting impact on you.

The same goes for establishing brand awareness among your audience.

How to Increase Brand Awareness

What about expanding your established brand awareness and building on that strong foundation? What can you do as a brand to campaign for awareness and constantly increase it?

Here are a few campaign ideas to boost your brand awareness:

Offer freemium

Freemium is a business model that offers a basic product or product line for free, only charging for any products deemed premium or enterprise-level. It’s a popular pricing strategy for software companies, like HubSpot and Trello.

Offering a freemium option allows customers to get a taste of your brand and product before making a purchase. It’s a try-before-you-buy opportunity that can, technically, last forever (as opposed to a free trial period that some companies choose).

It’s common to offer a freemium option with the condition that the brand’s watermark will be shown on any public-facing parts of the product or service. This makes freemium a win-win situation: The consumer gets the product for free, and the brand gets free advertising when consumers use it. 

TypeForm is another great example of this. TypeForm offers a freemium option of its survey software, but customers must include a thank-you page that features the TypeForm logo and message.

Depending on your type of business and product offer, Freemium may be the best way to raise awareness of your brand among your audience.

Create free content

Nowadays, creating content is easier than ever … which is a good thing because today’s consumers turn to the internet for any and all questions, concerns, and DIY projects. 

Content is a fun way to raise awareness of your brand because it’s the easiest way to show personality and share opinions and positioning on issues — two major components that personify and humanize your brand.

Content doesn’t have to be in written form, either. You can also create videos, infographics, podcasts (which we’ll cover below), and more. Sure, written content like blogs and downloadable guides are arguably the easiest, but they’re definitely not the only option.

Content doesn’t have to live on just your website, either. Guest posting and sponsored content provide opportunities to get in front of new audiences and diversify the type of content you create.

If your brand isn’t creating content, you might be missing out on some major brand awareness opportunities. Content provides an amazing way to authentically connect with your audience while getting your brand name in front of people.

To learn more about content creation, check out our guide here.

Sponsor events

How many festivals, concerts, fairs, and exhibitions have you attended? These types of events are typically not possible without the help of brand sponsorships. (Take a look at a t-shirt, koozie, or string backpack you likely grabbed from the event. See any brand names?) 

Sponsoring events is a surefire way to get your brand in front of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people that likely fall into your target audience. From banners to flyers to water bottles, your brand name will be everywhere if you sponsor an event.

Sponsoring an event also allows you to pin your brand name on an event that matches your personality, interests, and passions, meaning consumers will then associate your brand with that event and its aesthetic and character.

Consider Red Bull. Red Bull is an energy drink, and without any brand awareness efforts, we’d simply consider it an energy drink. But, thankfully, Red Bull took their marketing to the extreme — literally — by sponsoring extreme sporting events like cliff diving and motocross. They also sponsor athletes. Now, we inherently associate Red Bull with daring and adventurous … and believe that, if we drink it, we can be the same.

Give your brand a personality

Treating your brand as a person and defining your narrative are the first steps to giving your brand a personality. The next step would be infusing this personality into your marketing efforts. 

When you market your products and services with personality, you can’t help but boost your brand awareness because your brand will shine right through. Sure, your consumers will take note of the pants or pasta you’re marketing, but they’ll also experience your personality through your advertising.

This is a great strategy when mixing your traditional marketing campaigns with brand awareness campaigns. They don’t always have to be one in the same, but they definitely can be. 

Consider Old Spice. (Did you just picture the man on the horse? I did.) Their advertisements for their hygiene products are overflowing with personality and humor, and they still mention their products throughout. The advertisement not only makes an impact on its viewers, but a mere mention of the “Old Spice man” also sends consumers back to YouTube to watch the commercial … and to the store to buy some deodorant.

Produce a podcast

In the last year, six million more people have started listening to podcasts. There’s no doubt podcasts play an important role in our lives … and marketing efforts.

Podcasts used to be a complicated process, only created by those with a studio and fancy microphone. Now, it’s easier than ever to create and release a podcast, and doing so can do wonders for your brand awareness efforts. 

Why? Because podcasts, like written or visual content, provide a way to connect with your audience authentically. Instead of blatantly promoting your product or service (which we’ve agreed isn’t the best way to go about boosting brand awareness), podcasts give you the opportunity to educate, inform, entertain, or advise your audience and build trust by doing so.

Here are some examples of great podcasts produced by brands you know and love:

• #LIPSTORIES by Sephora
• Trailblazers by Dell
• The Growth Show by HubSpot

See how these brands have chosen podcast topics that relate to their 1) overall brand message and 2) products or services? Doing this helps them relate the podcast back to their brand and continue to raise awareness, too.

For more information on podcasts, check out our guide here.

Building and growing brand awareness is a never-ending process, just as maintaining a friendship or relationship never really ends.

 Boosting your brand awareness through campaigns gives you a chance to dabble in marketing and advertising opportunities you’d otherwise not invest in — meaning new, powerful ways to connect with your audience.

How to Measure Brand Awareness

How do you know if your brand awareness efforts are working? How do you know if you need to change direction, top the competition, or fix a crisis? Just like any other marketing metric, you measure it.

Wait … I thought you said brand awareness couldn’t be measured!

Aha! You’ve been listening. I appreciate that.

You’re right — brand awareness can’t be measured in the traditional sense. But, you can still review activities and metrics that’ll help you gauge where your brand stands in terms of popularity and consumer awareness.

Here are a few ways to gauge your brand awareness and learn where you can tweak your efforts:

Quantitative Brand Awareness Measures

These numbers can help you paint the overall picture of your brand awareness. To measure quantitatively, check out these metrics:

• Direct traffic. Firstly, direct traffic is the result of people intentionally typing in your URL and visiting your website. Your direct traffic number will tell you how much your marketing is prompting people to visit your website. This is an important metric, as many consumers today discover brands through social media, advertisements, or by typing in keywords related to your brand or product. When consumers go directly to your site, it means they were aware of your brand beforehand.
• Site traffic numbers. This number just reflects overall site traffic, which will tell you how much of the general internet population is checking out your content and spending time with your brand. It won’t quite tell you where people came from, but that doesn’t matter, because they’re aware of your brand enough to check it out.

• Social engagement. Engagement can refer to followers, likes, retweets, comments, and more. It’s a reflection of how many people are aware of your brand and socialize with it, as well as how impactful your content is. For instance, sites like Sparktoro can give you a specific score for your Twitter impact.

Qualitative Brand Awareness Measures

This step is where your brand awareness “score” gets a little murky. But these tactics can still help you gauge who and how many people are aware of your brand. To measure qualitatively, try:

• Searching Google and setting up Google Alerts. Doing this gets you up to speed with how your brand is being talked about online. It will alert you to any news or mentions by third-party press. As your brand grows, its internet real estate will expand beyond your website, so keep an eye on that.
• Social listening. Social listening is monitoring social media management tools for organic mentions and engagement. Who’s tagging your brand, mentioning it in comments, or using your hashtag in their posts? These tools can help you discover that. And the more your audience is discussing your brand on social media, the more they’re aware of it.

• Running brand awareness surveys. This process involves getting direct feedback from your customers and audience and can be incredibly helpful with not only understanding who knows of your brand but also what they think of it. You can release surveys through SurveyMonkey or TypeForm and share them on social media or directly with your customers. This guide will help you create and promote them.

These quantitative and qualitative metrics will help you understand your brand awareness among your audience and the general public. It’ll never be a perfect number, but keeping your pulse on this measure will help influence campaigns and stay connected to your audience. Regardless of how you gauge brand awareness for your company, avoid these common mistakes when measuring brand awareness.

Over to You

Brand awareness is a powerful (albeit vague) concept that can have a major impact on your marketing efforts, consumer perception, and revenue.

Follow these techniques for establishing and building awareness for your brand, and you’ll find yourself with a loyal audience that recognizes your brand among competitors, chooses your products time and time again, and recommends their friends and family do the same.

By 2020, there will be an estimated 30 billion devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT). While many of these products will be cool on their own, imagine how much better they could become with some imagination?

With a little creativity, you can succeed in using IoT to enhance your marketing strategy, or even create a more useful product for your customers. For instance, Tide’s dash buttons (included in our list below) allow consumers to surpass the shopping experience altogether, ensuring long-term customer retention. Meanwhile, Uber and Spotify partnered up to make your next car-sharing experience personal and unique.

With IoT products, everything is new — this largely untouched terrain makes you as much a developer and inventor as anyone. Here are seven IoT marketing examples, to inspire you to investigate all the ways you can use IoT to take your brand and product to the next level. Plus, we’ve included some DIY IoT project ideas, so you can hone your skills.

Internet of Things Examples

1. Diageo

When you think of memorable and thoughtful Father’s Day gifts, you probably don’t often think of whisky. Diageo, a global leader in the alcohol industry with a collection of over 200 brands, attempted to change this for Brazil’s Father’s Day in 2012. They created an IoT-inspired campaign and embedded a QR code onto each whisky bottle. When the whisky was received, father’s could scan the code on the bottle to see a personalized video message from their son.

Diageo’s use of IoT enabled the company to trust their consumers to market the whisky themselves, by creatively sharing their own messages with loved ones. Diageo’s brand stood out as both innovative and thoughtful, and the results were incredible — Diageo saw a 72% uplift on the lead up to Father’s Day.

Image courtesy of
The Digitals.

2. Amazon and Tide

Amazon’s dash buttons, which connect to your wi-fi and link to the Amazon app, allow users to automatically order products when they’re running low. In cooperation with Amazon, Tide uses a dash button to help customers automatically order new Tide detergent, which then appears on your doorstep in a matter of days. The process is effortless — a simple touch of a button.

Tide’s dash button is undoubtedly one of the easiest ways to ensure long-term customer retention. In a supermarket, customers might surpass Tide for a cheaper non-brand-specific label, or mull over competitor’s similar products. By offering users the option to avoid that burdensome shopping experience altogether, users will likely choose Tide every time.

*Tide isn’t the only brand using dash buttons. Check out the complete list here.

Image courtesy of
Digital Trends.

3. Allen Solly

It’s not unusual for brands to ask customers to tweet something, but the request is not often met with much excitement or vigor, unless the customer feels he’s receiving something in return. Using IoT, connecting social media hashtags and product giveaways might be easier than ever — and a lot more fun.

Allen Solly, a clothing brand, created an interactive shirt billboard in Bangelore, India. As users tweeted #RainingSolly, the computer linked to the billboard would choose a solenoid (the coil wound behind a shirt) to push a shirt off the billboard for a random consumer to win.

Allen Solly found a unique way to encourage consumers to share their brand on social media, while enabling people to engage as a community in person, as well.

Image courtesy of
Allen Solly’s YouTube account.

4. Nivea

Print advertisements and IoT technology probably feel like two different ends of the marketing spectrum — the past, and the future.

But they might not be. Nivea Sun Kids created a campaign that combines both, by offering bracelet strips in a Brazil magazine print advertisement that parents could peal off and put on their children’s wrists. The bracelets had built-in locators, which, when paired with Nivea’s mobile app, allowed parents to set a maximum distance their children could wander. If the child wandered beyond the maximum distance, the app notified the parent. The radar also showed if the child was moving closer or further away.

Nivea’s creative campaign likely encouraged word-of-mouth advertising between parents in Brazil, and it also showcased the brand as being thoughtful and innovative.

Image courtesy of
Nivea Protege YouTube account.

5. Uber and Spotify

The Internet of Things is a remarkable opportunity to improve a product or marketing strategy, but it’s equally critical for enhancing your customer experience and beating out competitors.

Spotify and Uber, two major brands, teamed up to create a more enjoyable and seamless experience for their users. Users can now connect their Spotify account to their Uber app — then, when they get in an Uber, they can use their Uber app to automatically play their Spotify soundtracks through the car’s speakers.

This partnership between products undoubtedly improves the customer experience, which also likely leads to long-term customer retention. If a user is contemplating which car-sharing service to use, and she knows only one will automatically play her new favorite Taylor Swift song, well — which would you choose?

*You can also play your Pandora station in an Uber with the same IoT technology.

Image courtesy of
VentureBeat.

6. General Motors

Like I mentioned before, IoT can improve a brand’s product, leading to a more effective marketing strategy by elevating the brand’s level of innovation and uniqueness. Today, one way to surpass your competition is to integrate your product, in as many ways as possible, with your user’s everyday experiences.

Take General Motors, which, in 2017, rolled out the automotive industry’s first commerce platform. Using Marketplace, General Motors drivers can now order and pay for their favorite Starbucks coffee, make dinner reservations, and find the nearest gas station, all within the dashboard’s touchscreen.

General Motor’s Marketplace gives users the opportunity to complete their everyday errands in a safer, more efficient manner.

Image courtesy of
GM.com.

7. Walgreens

One of the biggest hassles of shopping today is finding and locating products in-store, particularly in bigger department or pharmacy stores. Don’t you ever wish your phone could direct you?

Now, in partnership with Aisle411 and Google Tango, Walgreens enables users to do just that by offering a mobile app to search and locate products within the store. Additionally, users receive personalized offers and loyalty points via the app, making the shopping process feel a bit more fun.

According to App Annies, Walgreens’ app is the third most popular retail app, topped only by Groupon and Amazon.

The consequences of such technology in advertising are abundant. You might use similar technology to create virtual games, where users follow a treasure hunt and receive points or discounts after visiting digital checkpoints. Your app might compel users to visit the store more often, as well, particularly if those mobile discounts are personalized based on a customer’s shopping habits.

Image courtesy of
Mobihealthnews.com.

DIY IoT Projects

Now that you’ve seen what your brand can accomplish with IoT, here are some DIY projects to help you hone your skills — plus, since most of these projects are open-source, you can tailor the product to best suit your own needs.

1. Alarm Clock: Using Rasberry Pi, you can set up an IoT alarm clock and link it to train times and adjust the alarm based on a selected train, enabling you to sleep later if the train is off-schedule. You can also link your alarm clock to various radio stations, so you can wake up to music on a weekend and the weather station on a weekday.

Click here for instructions on building.

2. Smart Mirror: Using a two-way mirror, a display panel, and a few other compenents, you can build yourself a smart mirror that shows you the time, date, weather, news headlines, and anything else you’re interested in seeing first thing in the morning.

Click here for instructions on building.

3. Weather Station: For less than $15, you can build yourself your own weather station that monitors temperature, humidity, light index, rain, and other weather-related information.

Click here for instructions on building.

4. Smart Thermostat: If you’re not interested in paying upwards of $250 for Nest’s thermostat, you might try building one an open-source version yourself for about $70. An IoT thermostat can change the temperature in your house without you needing to get up from the couch, making it a luxurious and fun project to try out.

Click here for instructions on building.

5. Netflix Personal Trainer: You can connect your elliptical or treadmill to your tablet or phone via Bluetooth, choose your favorite Netflix character, and use them as your personal trainer. Your Netflix character can serve up motivation words, and when you pause, your Netflix “coach” will pause, too.

Click here for instructions on building.

6. IoT Remote Soil Moisture Monitor: If you often forget to water your plants, you might want to set up a remote soil moisture monitor, which automatically monitors soil moisture and alerts you if your plants need to be watered.

Click here for instructions on building.

When it comes to the final days before vacation, people tend to fall into one of two camps: 1) those who watch the clock incessantly, and 2) those who are so busy before they leave, they might even forget to put up an out-of-office email message.

If you’re anything like I am, you probably fall into team two. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to get creative. But if you plan ahead, you might be able to craft some hilarity.

Out-of-office (OOO) messages run the gamut. From funny, to clever, to snarky, we’ve come across some of the best — from Google, and from colleagues.

Here are some of the gems we found. But first, grab our full collection of out-of-office email templates below.

Once you’re ready to write your own out-of-office email, try our free OOO email generator for some help drafting a message that perfectly captures who you are and where you’re going.

Out-of-Office Messages for Vacations

1. The Not-So-Tropical Getaway

We’ll give this guy first place, since we almost feel bad for him. Almost. Rather than using an out-of-office message for a tropical vacation, he used one to explain his absence during what would likely be a snowstorm. Not only did it give us a chuckle, but it also generated a certain amount of empathy — which is often the key to good content.

Source: New Relic

2. The Sorry-I’m-Not-Sorry

If your email client allows it, you could always just use an image to express your out-office-sentiment, like this one. After all, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words — and, visual content is still essential to successful marketing.

Source: Barry Moroney

3. The Popular Film Reference

Are you familiar with the film Field of Dreams? If not, allow us to fill you in. It centers around baseball and a family in Iowa, but saying any more might spoil the plotline.

Movie synopses aside, the opening line of this out-of-office message was taken directly from the Field of Dreams script — fitting, given the sender’s travels to Iowa. So before you leave, research some famous quotes about the place you’re visiting. It might test the recipient’s knowledge, but more likely, it’ll just make them smile.

Source: New Relic

4. The Scavenger Hunt

When my colleague Sam Mallikarjunan went on vacation, he set an out-of-office message that was both clever and smart. First, he sent the recipient on an imaginary scavenger hunt to “the highest peak of the tallest mountain.” He used humorous absurdity to make it clear that he would not be checking email while he was away.

Plus, he incorporated a delightful technique to let people know that if they really wanted him to read their emails, they should probably send them again after his return. Not only does that keep the sender accountable by saying, “If this is really important, you know when to reach me,” but it also helps Mallikarjunan truly vacate his work while he’s away. And that’s hard to do — And if you struggle with it, check out these tips.

Source: Sam Mallikarjunan

5. The Blunt Approach

Josh Kopelman, we salute you.

Not only did Kopelman manage to turn his out-of-office message into an epic poem of sorts, but also, he actually went through the trouble of creating a delightfully snarky, vacation-specific email address for his recipients.

Giving the option to contact an email address containing “interruptyourvacation” provides two things — 1) A dose of humor, and 2) discouragement from actually doing what the name suggests. Plus, he prefaces it with a request for empathy, by explaining that he promised quality time to his family.

Here’s where honesty is a helpful device. Sure, Kopelman is truthful about the fact that he’s on vacation, but he also lets the recipient know that he or she would be interrupting important family time if the first option is chosen. It states a point simply, and uses humor to avoid making it sound like he wants the reader to feel guilty.

Source: Gizmodo

6. The Third Person

When HubSpot Marketing Manager Karsten Köhler is out of the office, he doesn’t mess around. In fact, he’s turned his auto-responses into a running series of commentary for fictional cartoon character Troy McClure.

Each time McClure makes an appearance in these out-of-office messages, he “speaks” on behalf of Köhler and alludes to the previous auto-responses in which he starred. It’s a mild form of self-deprecating humor — as if to say, “I know, I’m out of the office again” — made only funnier by the made-up teaser title included in the last line.

As with the Field of Dreams example, don’t be afraid to use a pop cultural reference that audience would recognize. Instead of bemoaning your absence, they’ll have something fun and familiar to laugh at.

Source: Karsten Köhler

7. The Twitter Method

… and then, there was the out-of-office tweet. We’re not entirely sure where it originated, but it has two sides.

If you actually want people to be able to reach you, and you’re more likely to be checking Twitter than email while out of the office, it might be an effective way for people to reach you.

But if you tend to use social media during vacation and really do want to be left alone, we would suggest offering a different communication method in your auto-response.

I’m not in the office right now but if it’s important, tweet me using #YOUAREINTERRUPTINGMYVACATION pic.twitter.com/SgL97nof8L

— Philippe Khattou (@Phil_Khattou)
August 14, 2015

8. The Liquid Update

We wish we could find the original source of this one. It’s made several lists, and its author is likely a legend within his or her network.

That said, even though we’ve been preaching honesty as the best policy, be careful with messages that are this transparent. Make sure you’re familiar enough with your audience — and your boss, for that matter — to know that this sort of out-of-office message will be met with a snicker, and not with concern.

“I am currently out of the office and probably out-of-my-mind drunk. Enjoy your work week.”

9. The Guessing Game

There’s a term that we like to use around here called “snowbirds,” which is used to describe those who once resided in the northern part of the U.S., only to flee to warmer parts of the country during the winter.

And although my colleague had mixed feelings about her own parents joining that population in Florida, she couldn’t be too upset when her dad suggested flying down from Boston for a Red Sox spring training game.

Naturally, she had to take the day off — and couldn’t let folks know with any old generic auto-response. Instead, she made a guessing game of it in her out-of-office email, below.

Out-of-Office Messages for Holidays

10. The Warning Signal

Not only can colleges get in on the fun of an OOO message, but they’re talking to way more people — and can use the message as an opportunity to deliver tongue-and-cheek announcements to their students.

Here’s an out-of-office tweet by Acadia University, using Canada’s Civic Holiday on August 6 to remind students not to get too comfortable this month …

Acadia Students!! We will be out of the office Monday due to the holiday, but back on campus Tuesday!! We will be in training all day Tuesday and Wednesday though so you may experience a delay in response to your emails! Side note Its almost time for move in day hehe 😏 pic.twitter.com/pLPAavgToT

— Acadia Res Life (@residencelife)
August 3, 2018

11. The Thank-You Card

This holiday out-of-office email is definitely on theme, if not a little passive aggressive. If you’re getting emails during the holidays, why not treat everything you receive that season like the present it is, and send a thank-you note?

My snarky colleague sure did in his out-of-office message below. We send thank-you letters in response to holiday gifts, so it’s only natural to expect the same gesture in our work inboxes …

12. The Survey

Rachel Smith from Collective Hub stumbled across this message from one of our employees, and it certainly turns the tables on the email sender. Right when you thought you were the one requesting action, the recipient sent back an assignment — a fun one, at least.

While the sender waits for your response to their email, take the sting out of your absence by involving them in a holiday survey, like the one below.

13. The Thankfulness Template

This email comes out of our own collection of out-of-office email templates, which you can get at the end of this blog post. The purpose of this email is to intercept messages during Thanksgiving, and the way in which is does so is, well, with thankfulness.

The funny and charming email template below keeps the confidence of your colleagues with a list of things anyone who works in an office is thankful for. Of course, feel free to customize this list according to the quirks of your own workplace. Thanksgiving is the perfect time to reveal them.

14. The Classic Movie Message

There’s no shame in using Christmas to indulge in your childhood movie tastes, but there is shame in not sharing that adorable side of yourself when people are trying to reach you during the holidays.

So, take a lesson from @courtwhip, editor at PEDESTRIAN.TV, who wrote this hilarious out-of-office email, fully stocked with mentions of the best movies from the 1990s. (By the way, “Splinter” is from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and as we all know, he loves pizza).

15. The Sensitivity Template

This last out-of-office message is another template available to you within the full collection of fun out-of-office templates at the end of this article. And if it does anything particularly well, it’s respect the differing views and opinions of your coworkers — while amusing so many others.

Your HR department would be proud, or perhaps playfully irritated, at this email’s stereotypical impression of your most sensitive coworkers. Read it below.

Are you fully inspired by the creative out-of-office messages above? It’s time to write your own — your upcoming vacation depends on it. Try HubSpot’s OOO Email Generator here, and grab your free collection of email templates below.