#94. Collaborative Tools to aid your Email Marketing Strategy | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 94 of email Einstein Podcast. I’m Vira Sadlak, an email marketer at an email marketing agency called Flowium. And here at Flowium, we are very passionate about email marketing. And because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. We specialize in delivering the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. And today I have a special guest for you guys, so stay tuned. 

Vira: 0:54

I’m so excited to be here today with one of my colleagues with Amara Ricord. Amara is actually our chief operating officer here at Flowium, Also mom of four beautiful kids and a bunch of fur babies too. Say hi, Amara.

Amara: 1:25

Hi everybody.

Vira: 1:27

I’m so excited to have you here because the topic that we will be discussing, I felt like you would be the best person honestly to talk about because today you guys will be talking about all kinds of email marketing and marketing technology and different like, tools that you can use to basically make the most, most out of your email strategies. I like to think that email marketing and technology go together like gin and tonic or peanut butter and jelly or mustard and ketchup. You decide. So it’s really hard to go without them. So, Amara, I’m really happy that you’re here with us today on this podcast.

Amara: 2:06

Excited to be here.

Vira: 2:07

Awesome. Awesome. Before we go to all of the juicy and serious questions, Amara, let’s do a quick blitz Q and A just to get to know you better. Okay?

Amara: 2:33

Okay. I live through this.

Vira: 2:35

I feel like I will know the answer to a lot of them. But let me, let me check how well I know you. Okay. Texting or calling?

Amara: 2:44

Texting. It’s a lot more efficient.

Vira: 2:46

For sure. Texting all the way. Cake or pie?

Amara: 2:50

Pie. But it has to be hot right out of the oven.

Vira: 2:53

Yes. And with the bit of an ice cream on it. That’s my.

Amara: 2:56

Unless it’s chocolate pie. Chocolate pie can be cold.

Vira: 3:00

I don’t do chocolate pies. Why. Why would you do chocolate pie if you can have chocolate cake? Right? I don’t know. It’s like, it doesn’t sit well with my chocolate.

Amara: 3:09

Like, you have chocolate ganache and you have chocolate shavings, and you have, like, chocolate creams, and you can do white chocolate mixed with cool whips and berries. Go well with chocolate.

Vira: 3:20

And I feel like our blitz Q and A is not so blitz anymore because we can be talking about, like, chocolate sweets for long time. Okay, cool. This one is kind of an interesting one. Cat person or dog person? Amara.

Amara: 3:36

That one is a really tough one for me because I do. I have a family of cats and I have a family of dogs, and they both serve purposes. So I’m gonna say I’m probably more of a cat person in the sense of relating to them a little bit more. But I love dogs. I love all living things.

Vira: 3:53

So awesome. Awesome. Place you want you most want to travel to?

Amara: 3:58

Denmark.

Vira: 3:59

Denmark. Nice. That’s a good one, Amara. That’s a good one. Do you have some, like, Danish roots?

Amara: 4:05

I do, so I do have Danish roots, and so my family is Danish on both sides. And also Denmark has amazing history to it as well. So, yes, I would love to go and explore.

Vira: 4:19

I’m sure you would love it there. Okay, the last one is kind of. Kind of random, but can you name all seven dwarfs? Do you know them all? So you have Sleepy, Grumpy, and that’s pretty much it. The other five doesn’t matter.

Amara: 4:37

Then there’s the one that’s goofy, and then there’s the one that is short. There’s Doc. Yeah, no, I cannot. I cannot name all.

Vira: 4:44

Grumpy, Dopey, Dog, Happy, Bashful, Sneezy, Sleepy. I was preparing for this podcast. I know. I’m, like, reading them from my notes, actually. So, so awesome. Okay, cool. Amara. Okay, now let’s go to, like, serious and juicy questions. When it comes to, like, collaboration and organizing the processes, you are definitely the queen in our team. So why do you think collaboration is sometimes so challenging? Both, like, in person teams and for remote teams? Like, why do you think it’s so challenging?

Amara: 5:20

Well, I think collaboration is really a key point of any team, and in any workplace, it becomes both a focus and a challenge. And so when teams collaboratively work together to make decisions and deliver services, they experience extraordinary outcomes. But the difficulty is, how do you branch that both in. In person Teams and remote teams. And the importance is that once they understand decisions or collaborations and the how and the why, teams are more likely to accept and be committed and implement any of those key collaborations that a team needs to make. So when they collaborate together, team members bring their own perspective, they bring their own ideas, they bring their own energies. And it enables everybody to challenge one another to have functional, if you would, exciting conflicts around different ideas and to create better solutions overall as a team. So ultimately, our goal as leaders is to foster collaborative behaviors. And I always say that there’s three elements to it. So the first is the purpose of the team that has to be identified, right? So the group identity. And that’s why collaboration is so important, because you need to have the feeling that you belong to something unique, worthwhile, and really team building. And then the next is the attributes of a team. So collaboration is so important. Every single team member brings different skills, different knowledge sets and how to accomplish their roles and their goals together. To contribute to projects. And the services that you deliver is so important. And the third thing is the belief and trust in the team. So belief that, like, working together is effective and that you can perform well together rather than apart. And really trusting team members to work are so important in collaboration, which is why it can be so challenging. So really, the way that team members connect through both interpersonal means and technology really needs to be examined in any organization. And then just guided in that executive role is making sure that your team has all of the tools that they need in order to collaborate well. So virtual teams, they actually have a whole different challenge. So there’s a. According to data From Cornell University, 80% of virtual teams fall short of their goals and only a third rate themselves, or I should say a third rate themselves as unsuccessful in completing team collaboration. So I think the right team is extremely important. And then the touch points that we allow that team to have together in collaboration is so important. And technology is a key aspect of that right now.

Vira: 7:55

Collaboration, like when done right, collaboration is definitely a powerful force. But unfortunately for many teams, especially during the pandemic, and for other teams that are just generally work as remote teams, organic collaboration is almost impossible when you work remotely. So can you just briefly tell us how do we, as team of flowium, navigate it internally, both with our team and how do we work with our clients? What are some tips and tricks you can give to teams that are trying to collaborate remotely?

Amara: 9:01

The first aspect is really strong connecting skills. So how does our team connect together day in and day out with each Other and then how do we allow them to connect with clients? I think we’re going to talk in a minute about what we use kind of internally. But that’s the first aspect is the strong connecting skills. The next I would say is awareness and sensitivity of different cultures and environments. So Flowium is a global, global team. All of our team members are across the globe. And so taking in that time, awareness, trying to coordinate meetings can sometimes be difficult. So having the right technology where you can communicate where it might not be live is ultimately really important as well. And then I think also the ability to work independently as a team member with the desire to be neck connected to a team is also extremely important. So here at Flowium, I would say that we use the right culture that we create as a team and then make sure that we’re in the right working environment in our own personal space. And then using the technology really drives that force with collaboration. And I think any team really has to take that at core is how are you allowing your team to work together and how are you allowing them to connect with clients?

Vira: 10:16

For sure. No, I love that culture of being there for each other, the culture of not having the micromanagement here, that’s for sure. And you already like briefly manage the tools that we are using like the technology stack. And like for those of you guys who don’t know what the technology stack is, this is basically the marketing jargon that you will hear more often probably if you haven’t heard already. Essentially marketing technology stack is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a group of different like tag based tools that we as marketers and like businesses use to improve our marketing activities and marketing strategies and stuff like that. But also that word stack means that all this like technology, they like work really well with each other. Emera, can you just like briefly tell about our email marketing stack or like marketing stack in general? I know we have like gazillion different like little super helpful tools and probably one podcast and is not enough to cover them all. But like briefly, what is in our email marketing stack?

Amara: 11:23

Sure. So we use Asana, which is a project management tool. We use Slack for a communication tool. We use Zoom with our clients especially, but also as internal meetings and to really collaborate live. We use Loom, which is also a video recording app. I mean I use it as an extension on my Chrome and it’s nice because that one is also a video app but you can record videos and send them back and forth with ease, which makes it nice when our team is so Global and not always on the same time zone. We use Google Drive quite often for several reasons. And then we also use Miro, which is an online whiteboard, if you would, that the teams can collaborate on as well.

Vira: 12:06

And honestly, some of those tools I use in my personal life too. Like, I cannot imagine my life without loom. My friends probably hate me for all of the loom videos that I send to them. Trying to like explain stuff, you know, and like asana. I have asana for my like home projects now, believe it or not. Like, I just like, I love those tools. They’re like so helpful. Probably like you as a mom of four are using some of those tools too, no?

Amara: 12:31

Oh, absolutely, yeah, no, sorry. I even have my own little asana page of private things that I’m trying to keep track of my kids and I have totally hopped on a zoom call. We live in a. No, there’s, there’s four stories and so we have totally connected with a zoom link from the top story to the bottom story to relay what’s going on day. I used to totally be against that, but now I totally am for it. So. Teenagers are hard. We use, obviously we use Google Drive a lot as well. Just internally with keeping track of programs. I mean, it’s a great, it’s a great thing to have on a business level. And I love that you can turn it personal too.

Vira: 13:09

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about some of those tools in depth. You’ve briefly talked about the Asana, like the planning tool Asana. And for those of you who don’t know asana, basically, okay, you’re probably going to be a better person to explain what asana is and like how, how it works. But for us, this tool is amazing. It allows us to efficiently and transparently organize and plan projects and deliver the projects. So Amara, briefly explain what is Asana and how does it help our entire team to stay in sync.

Amara: 13:45

So Asana is that project management tool. And so what I like to think of it is especially in operations or if you have any type of organ, you would probably be familiar with the term, what’s called mapping. Where a great something even for smaller teams is if you take a whiteboard and you pin post it notes on the whiteboard in the order of what happens next for a certain task. So it’s always the question is the what comes next? Right. So if you were on a whiteboard and you said the first thing that I need to do, here’s one for you. If you were mapping out how to do Dishes for your children. You would start out with post it notes of first turn on the water and use the sponge. Then scrub the dishes relatively clean before loading the dishwasher and then adding the soap and then pushing the start button. But ultimately, when you start mapping those, there’s a lot of questions that come. So you’re going to turn on the water. Well, what comes next? And you would be able to describe it. So taking that small example and then turning it into a business perspective. So for a lot of us, we do campaigns, for example, and so the campaign is, well, we’re going to first start with the appro strategy and then what comes next? Well, the next thing would be that we need to create the guidelines, which means that a document needs to be created. And ultimately, if you tell a team to do these things, each person is going to have a different method or a different structure to it that they would get the end result done, which allows for little mistakes to be made in the process or for things to get left out. So Asana allows us to map each task with what we call a parent task, which would be do the dishes. And then underneath would have all of the subtasks which would be use soap, use a sponge. And it gets great for even the more detail oriented steps, you know, what kind of sponge should you use or what kind of sponges are you allowed to use? Can you use soap on stoneware? The answer is no. Can you use soap on cast iron? The answer is no.

Vira: 15:48

So wait, what? You can’t use it on cast iron? I didn’t realize that.

Amara: 15:52

No, no. So cast iron, you just wash with a sponge and hot water and then you pull it out and you put a little oil on it. But if you just said to wash but if you just said to wash dishes, right, you would assume that that meant everything. So for us, the importance of having a map for each task is so important. And being able to also hold yourself accountable is also really important. In other words, checking off those tasks are great. So we have a parent task. In the parent task are all the subtasks, and sometimes in those subtasks are more subtasks. So it allows it to make it so that several team members across a wide variety of areas and different, you know, just systems that they use can ultimately deliver the same result by following that process. And asana is what helps us to do that. So we can see what is left to be done in a task or what has been done in a task already. And all of us can see it internally. Right Organize it by project, per client as well as per department. So asana just really helps us to ultimately see the broader view of what’s going on internally. And I will say it’s also great too, if you have multiple team members working on one task or on something similar together, any of them can come in and be able to pick up where another person left off simply because we have a process in place. So asana is great for just mapping all of the tasks that you need to get done.

Vira: 17:16

Right. And I love that it’s very like flexible. It can be honestly like some people I know use it more like a calendar for strategic planning. You know, they have the calendar view and they plan when what should be done. Some people use it more as a to do list. But I love that our system that we have internally is kind a combination of both. We do have this strategic planning aspect, but also all of our tasks are very like templatized. So you can like copy and paste the same parent task with a bunch of little like to do list tasks in it. So the margin for error is very like small. That’s. That’s what I love about how we like use asana internally. Yeah, that’s for sure.

Amara: 17:59

Yeah.

Vira: 18:00

Amara, do you have any like asana tricks that you love or like, is there any like asana functionality that you love in particularly or you can like recommend to everyone to use?

Amara: 18:12

So I think that when you are. When you have a paid seat in asana, so several users can be a part of your asana and when you have a paid seat and you’re creating the templates, my favorite aspect of that part will create a little new section in the task, which is one of my favorite features. But even if you are just using it as any type of member or user, you can hit tab s and create the new subtask. So it goes really fast. And ultimately that’s what I really like is all of the, the little cheat codes. Is that what they are? Little cheat buttons that just help making the creation faster. So that’s. That’s probably my favorite aspect of asana is just really the organized structure. So if you, if you’re somebody who likes to color code your clothes or roll your pencils in a drawer, my mom used to take all of her number two pencils and roll them in a drawer so that the lettering was all facing on the top. So if you opened it, it all looked right. Really pretty. Yeah. So I would say asana is great for that.

Vira: 19:13

So for sure I just got myself a Label maker. So I hope to be at your mom’s level one day, but for now it’s just the label maker. So we’ll see how it goes.

Amara: 19:25

By using your label maker in your fridge. This is food, this is milk.

Vira: 19:30

I honestly, I don’t have anything to label. I got, like, so excited. I created two stickers for my, like, garbage, organic and recycling, and that’s it. And I have nothing else to label, but I will figure something out, so. Okay, cool. Let’s go to the next sort of group of tools that we are using, the visual collaboration tools. This is like, so powerful. And I want us to specifically focus on the tool called Miro that you already mentioned briefly. So what is Miro? How do we use it and why we use it at all? Like, can you, like, briefly talk about it?

Amara: 20:07

Yeah. So Miro, and it’s spelled M I R O for anybody who tries to look up this program. So it is probably one of our key tools. We use it internally as a team, we use it with our clients. It’s really an open board for projects to collaborate or team members to collaborate. And it includes client teams and our internal teams too, so we can kind of talk about those in a different aspect. But what’s great is think of it like a big whiteboard. And on the whiteboard you can build in every single aspect. But even more so, it’s kind of like if anybody here has ever played Minecraft or the Animal Crossing, where it’s just an open, open world platform and you just create all of these little towns and all of these little sections and all of these little things, it’s exactly like that. Like, I don’t know where it ends. We have built. We open it up and it just seems to go forever and ever and ever end.

Vira: 21:00

No end so far, yeah, no end.

Amara: 21:03

It’s like its own little universe. And then what’s great is that you can organize by departments or by projects or by team teams. So each one of our clients is given a dashboard and we do this through Miro. So we have one Miro board per client, and our team can go in, open it up, and see what’s going on in that project visually. So we have everything from. So on the client side, we have everything from the strategy, their entire flow strategy, what’s in each flow, the time delays. We have their campaign calendars in there so that they can easily see it. We have the quarterly goals that are broken down by month and the priority lists. We can see what’s being done in those priorities. So we can see the progress of each one. And we can also add in. Geez. Images, documents, everything. Yes, Slides. It’s great to just add in. And I’m not talking like a little link. I mean it integrates great with Google Drive to where if you put in a Google link, it turns into the doc that you can just click on. So visually it’s aesthetically pleasing as well. And it’s really easy to navigate.

Vira: 22:14

Yeah, really easy to learn it too. It has a very like low learning curve, you know what I mean? It’s like very intuitive. Everyone, like anyone can use it. So I love it. Awesome. Yeah.

Amara: 22:26

For our team, we do a lot of like brainstorming sessions which are. Oh my gosh. I mean, it’s such a great instrument because we pull in, what would you say, Vira, 10 to 15 people. And you can do more too, but we pull in 10 to 15 people who all have access to, to this board at the same time. So we love combining it. So we’ll, we will all be on zoom and then we will all hop on the Miro board and so we can talk on Zoom at the same time that we are all on the Miro board. So you’ll see 15 little different arrows or 15 little different pointers and we can pull in post it notes around an idea and brainstorm different campaigns or monthly flow ideas or we can, can pull in new ways to segment and really brainstorm together how to solve any of the issues or any of the challenges that we have internally too.

Vira: 23:17

Right, Right. And I love how Miro allows us to basically communicate the big picture to the client because very often clients like forget how much work do we put like internally as a team into email marketing and like what email marketing consists of. Right. Because you, you usually can see like the big, you usually can see like the campaign that we’re sending or like a beautiful flow, cannot really see the strategy behind it. It’s very easy to explain, for example, the life cycle of emails without showing it visually to the client. And my clients love Miro boards probably just like as much as I do. Yeah.

Amara: 23:56

Oh yeah. And it’s the same thing too. I think what’s nice is you can screenshot, say a campaign in Klaviyo. Often what we do and we will put it into the board which then allows the client to leave comments in specific areas of those images or the, and ask for maybe edits or ask for clarification and then the whole team has access to it so that we can go in and resolve or collaborate even on A smoother, just platform that makes it easier to, you know, talk to them as well. So I think the, the visual aspect of it is great. The usability. Right. The ease and the use of it. So. And I also think that it just, it does, it allows you to see an overall view, view of what’s going on internally too. So. And that was one thing that, you know, we really wanted to make sure to relate to clients is the value of what we offer, but also what’s being done on the back end without having to open up our asana and, and showing that. I always say that asana is like your, your desk. Right. It’s like your office. But Miro allows us to present it in a very structured, almost pretty sense. And we get a color. Yeah, you can all sorts of different colors on it. It’s fun.

Vira: 25:08

Oh, you can do so much with Miraboard, honestly. And I love how we also use it like internally for our team. We have this board called, I think it’s called Miro Universe or like Flowium Universe or something or basically every team member who joins our team, they have their own little mirror board where they can tell about themselves so they can talk about their hobbies, they can talk about like what’s important to them. They can share some pictures, some videos, some fun facts about themselves. This is just like the way to get to know, I guess. But it’s also funny to see how beautifully designed are boards of our designers and like how sometimes very like simple the boards of other team members are. Mine is like so simple. Like honestly, my 5 year old niece would probably do a better job. But hey, I communicated the information. That’s, that’s all that matters. But yeah, you can do all kinds of beautiful things with Miro. Your opportunities are endless there.

Amara: 26:10

I love that universe though, because people put in their personal photos too. So you just upload your personal photos, things that you like to do, like hobbies you can share. I mean, it’s such a fun visual way to get to know your team, especially remotely. Right. Where we’re not in the same office, but we can kind of see each other on a more personal level through using Miro and that if you would Flowium universe that we have. So that’s a lot of fun.

Vira: 26:34

And you can kind of see a person’s personality by, by their board. Some boards are very like colorful, some are very like minimal. Some are super, like organized. Some are like bursting with like colors and pictures. That’s, that’s like a fun, fun little experiment to do. Definitely do it. With your teams. If you, if you use Miro board, that’s super fun. Cool. And another feature that I honestly love about Mirror Board is how seamlessly it integrates with like, other platforms. Like you mentioned, like Google Drive or like Google Docs. Right. We usually just like pull the link from the Google Doc or even like import the entire Google Doc into. And I think you can do the same with like, videos. I personally haven’t tried it, but I think it integrates with like Vimeo and like other video platforms as well. But since we started talking about Google Docs, can you like, briefly talk about, like, how do we use Google Docs and like, for what purposes? As email marketers.

Amara: 27:30

The nice thing about the Google Drive is that it’s not just downloaded on an individual’s computer, right? So it’s downloaded in the cloud in that, like, magical place where everything lives. And that’s where Google Drive lives. So it’s handled by a wizard somewhere high. And everybody can access everything that is being designed or made on our team drive. And so we have both an executive drive where leadership members can kind of post all of their items, and then we have our flowium team drive that all of our Flowium team members can access. And within those we can actually set different team accesses. So the sales team can have access to the sales folder and design team can have access to all of the designer folders. And it gives us a really good way to organize our files internally. But then it also allows us to create a project folder for every client and share that project folder with our clients at the same time so that they can share their images and share their brand guides and see all of the copy docs if they really needed to, or that our team has it all in one location. And then of course, just like you said, the fact that we can integrate that into Miro and Asana is fantastic. Right?

Vira: 28:42

And even Slack.

Amara: 28:45

And Slack. Yes.

Vira: 28:46

Yes. That’s what I like about this idea of having the tools stack, basically. Not just like separate little tools that don’t communicate together, that don’t communicate with each other, but more like a bunch of different tools that help each other. And kind of together they make sense. Yeah, that’s. That’s what I like about it.

Amara: 29:05

I think it’s beneficial that we do it on a team level as well. Right. Because we have, say, everybody who is at flowium has a flowium email address and it’s connected to our drive so that on our calendars I can go at any time and I can type in Vira’s name and see her schedule on her calendar so that we could set one on one meetings together in that same organization too. So, I mean, that’s how we schedule all internal meetings is through the calendar. And it, I mean, it’s so easy to do. And it’s collaborative in the sense that we can also add documents there if we needed for reference. But being able to say, I think one of the struggles that you have as a remote team is knowing when everybody is available. And in using Google Calendars, for example, we can type in five different team members and see all of their schedules and then pick that open spot where all five of them would be available. And that’s really, it’s really beneficial to us internally too.

Vira: 30:02

Yeah, no, we, we really do use probably all the Google suite products. So like the calendar, the email, the drive, except for probably the Google Meet or what’s the name of that Google call link, like, as alternative to Zoom.

Amara: 30:17

It’s true.

Vira: 30:17

Yeah.

Amara: 30:20

We are Zoom fans. We are Zoom.

Vira: 30:22

We are Zoom people. We are Zoomers. No, Zoomers. It’s something different. Zoomers. It’s like a generation, right? I guess. But we are Zoom people. And since we started, like talking about Zoom. Amara, like what communication sort of like tools do we use internally? So it’s Zoom. And there are like two more also, like.

Amara: 30:43

Yes. So we use Zoom and we use Loom and we use Slack.

Vira: 30:48

Zoom. Loom. Slack. They sound like name of puppies or something. I don’t know. It’s like a great, great name for your next animal, Amara.

Amara: 30:56

I was like, huh? When will I have some more animals? Just kidding.

Vira: 31:00

I think soon. I think soon. Really soon. Any, Any day now. Amira. It happens every, every few months. You get a new animal to your house. You’re adding new animal to your animal stack. I guess.

Amara: 31:12

Yeah. It’s an animal attack. It’s. Yeah. For every child that turns 18, I’m going to replace them with an animal that.

Vira: 31:20

Yeah. Oh, hilarious. Okay, cool. So Zoom. Let’s talk about Zoom and why we use Zoom and not the other like, like platforms.

Amara: 31:30

So I think that Zoom is one that does not have a learning curve. I mean, people have to learn how to click on the link that ultimately they come into the room, they can turn on their mic, they can turn on their camera. There isn’t any special settings that anybody has to make. And that makes it really easy for our clients to use or for even in the sales department for prospective leads to just join our sales calls. They don’t have way so much as Other, other programs might be not as user friendly. And then I mean we use it for just being efficient, for being easy, they’re reliable. It’s a, we’ll use it for quick check in calls whether we’re doing, you know, simple or we’ll use it for longer team meetings if we need to for more collaborative work. And I love the screen sharing part. So the screen sharing in Zoom is so easy to do. It literally is a button that lives on the bottom of the Zoom screen and so you can share your screen. You can even just a portion of your screen to share in Zoom so that if you have a ton of items up or if you don’t want to show maybe the, the bars within a Google Doc, for example, you just want to show the document you can select and just share that portion of the screen. I think that while ultimately there are other platforms that you could use for videos, we have found Zoom to be the most user friendly and the easiest application. Plus it integrates in Google Calendars really well. So anytime that we schedule a meeting we can just connect it where our Zoom autom automatically pulls in.

Vira: 32:57

Automatically creates a link. Yeah, and you pretty much can have like unlimited amount of people on the call and it will not slow down the video or whatever because I know that’s the issue with like other platforms. When you have like a lot of people it’s, it’s harder to share screen because yeah, that’s the struggle that we had with other platforms. No, like Zoom is really, is really easy to use and I don’t think we need to talk more about Zoom because probably like 90% of you are using Zoom anyways. It’s great. We love Zoom. But the other tools that you briefly mentioned, Slack. Like why do we use Slack at all? Like how do we use it and like how do we organize it internally?

Amara: 33:38

So I think of Slack as basically text messaging, which is what I prefer except for you do it on a big group aspect and so, and nobody gets annoyed. Like if we were to text on our phones. So the group messaging in Slack think of it like a communication platform and you can choose to see everybody as individuals. So I can see all of the team that is on Slack and you can change your availability. So you can put, if you’re available, if you’re in a meeting you can say if you’re in deep work, we have one for those and so that’s on the individual side and then on top of that we actually can put in different projects channels. And so in Slack we have a Project channel for every project we have, for every client’s brand, if you would, that we have. And. And we also have a Slack channel for each department. So the sales department, marketing department, content, production. You think of the, you know, finance channel, the HR channel, with only those selected team members that need to know about those conversations. So it’s a really easy way to group different individuals like the project teams. So for the project team, you have the project manager, the senior project manager manager, you have the copywriter, the designer, the klaviyo pro, and the assistant all in one channel. So anything that really needs to be related can be done in that one channel versus messaging each individual. And that makes it great. It’s also nice because you can hit the app button and tag different team members within Slack or within the channel or personally. And I also love that you can do the emojis. So when somebody comments, you add in different emojis. My favorite one is Keanu Reeves. Somebody created a Keanu Reeves emoji is my favorite one. It’s just like Keanu Reeves and party.

Vira: 35:27

Keanu Reeves. It doesn’t necessarily look like Keanu Reeves. It’s like, briefly reminds me of.

Amara: 35:34

I think it could look like Keanu Reeves, like, in a John Wick way. I could totally see it if John Wick was in a club. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Vira: 35:43

Okay. Yeah, Yeah, I think you’re right.

Amara: 35:46

We also have little emojis. You know, it’s fun. It’s fun.

Vira: 35:51

Yeah, yeah. My favorite one is the dancing panda one. I use it all the time. Like the little dancing. Yeah, I live. I live for those emojis. Yeah. No, like, seriously, like, organizing conversation into various channels. Super, super helpful. I think back in the day we had, like, maybe like, few channels, just like, the project ones, and then one big channel for everything else. Well, everything. It was a mess because you were, like, getting those, like, messages. Relevant, irrelevant messages altogether all the time. You’ve been, like, bombarded with those messages. So now I really like how we organize it, like, by projects, by interest. Because, like, for example, we have this, like, fitness channel. I don’t even know the name of it because I don’t belong to it anymore. Because, like, I’m not a. I’m not a fitness person myself lately, but yeah. Or we have, like, a random channel where our Klaviyo pro, Arpit, always shares, like, the best memes ever. So shout out to you, Arpit, if you’re listening.

Amara: 36:47

I do love.

Vira: 36:48

I do love that.

Amara: 36:49

It helps, like, the teams to be funny, like, with. Well, to be funny. We’re all funny. We’re all great. But I do love that like the random channel is a great place to post memes and it keeps it out of necessarily like the project or Flowium team channels. Right.

Vira: 37:04

And then pretty much shouldn’t be called like nuts them memes, but children memes and puppies. That’s what we’re using it for pretty much 99% of the time. That’s great.

Amara: 37:17

And I think that you need to go check out the interest ones. Just type in interest and slack. There’s like three of them. Interest. Music is in there. Interest. Health and fitness. Interest. Yeah, there’s. There’s a few of them.

Vira: 37:29

Do we have interest food? No. Do we have interest food?

Amara: 37:33

Maybe we need to have interest.

Vira: 37:34

Maybe I need to start and lead it or like. Yeah. Interesting. Yes. Cool. Okay. And now the Loom one. Zoom Lumen. Slack. So what about Loom? Like how do we use it? Why do we use it? What we love about it.

Amara: 37:50

You know, I was first introduced to Loom when I applied to Flowium and they asked to create a two minute Loom video explaining who you were. And I had never used Loom before. And I think I figured it out and a matter of downloading it, adding it as an extension and turning it on. So the once again I go back to just being user friendly. Super easy on Loom. It’s a video sharing platform, but you can choose to show only the camera view of yourself. You can show just the screen view of what your screen is showing. Or my favorite and what we probably use the most is the combination. So you can show your screen with a little circle image in the corner there, that is you in the camera. So it combines both, so you can show what’s on the screen while also talking and kind of making it a little bit more personal of a video going back and forth. And so it’s just a easy way to capture your screen and face. And you can share quick info, you can share tips. We do full training videos on Loom. Anything that we can do to kind of record it. And then it’s great too because it’s loom.com basically. But loom, you can pull it open and you can organize it. So we have ours sorted into folders as well. Once again, we have it sorted by projects, we have it sorted by departments, we have it sorted by trainings. And so it’s really easy. Also, if we ever needed to find a video that may have been recorded some time ago, we can easily go into Loom open the folder and search for that video or you can even type it in as well. So it’s nice. We just have a great, easy way to sort the videos that we record. And it’s all done online. So when you use Loom, you don’t have to necessarily, like, wait for it. As soon as you record it, there’s a link ready for you to send and you can upload videos. So even if you recorded a video, say on Loom, or you recorded a meeting, you can also upload those into Loom and sort them and place them where they need to go as well.

Vira: 39:44

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I usually use it as a replacement for like emails. I like hate writing emails, but like sending a quick loom video, like explaining what is happening to make sure that we are all on the same team. Because communication is a big thing. Especially when you’re like working with remote teams sometimes it’s probably. For me, it’s like the most challenging. Challenging part of remote work is to be able to communicate it in a very efficient way and so everyone are on the same page. Loom is super helpful in that instances. I love it. I love it. I can’t imagine my life without it. Cool. Okay, Amara, I know we’re almost out of time, so the last and very quick question. What would be your number one recommendation or tip for a successful remote collaboration?

Amara: 40:34

Oh, if I could just choose one tip, it would be to, nope, see, you can’t do one. Okay. So the first tip that I’m going to give is the right team. Truly, it does take a lot of work to find the right people. And we really do have like a hiring process that’s extensive and thorough. And part of that is because we work remote, we want to find the right team members who can work independently as well as within a team and use the tools that we provide to be collaborative with the rest of the team. And then just going back to those three elements, you know, really knowing your purpose, your mission, finding the right team members that have the right attributes, but also believing and trusting in both. So believing and trusting in your purpose and your mission as a company and really believing in the skill sets of your team members and then of course, the collaborative tools that you need to accomplish your mission. So you can’t expect your team to deliver a product if you don’t provide the right tools to do so. So having that right tech stack for your organization is so critical to make sure that you guys are delivering your services and really working as a collaborative team.

Vira: 41:41

Awesome. Thank you so much Amara. Really, really appreciate you being today on this podcast and talking to us about all of the tools. And by the way guys, we will link all of the tools and apps that we talked about in the description box down below. So scroll and find those tools there. Thank you so much for being with us, Amara.

Amara: 42:02

Bye everybody.

Vira: 42:03

Bye. I hope you enjoyed listening to this podcast just as much as we enjoyed recording it. So as always, if you have any questions, any thoughts, any like fun stories you want to share with a fellow email marketing geek, definitely reach out. My email is vera@flowium.com and if you have questions to our guest Amara, you can reach out to her amara@flowium.com and as always, don’t forget to to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. And if you leave us a review, we’re going to send you a pair of beautiful branded Flowium socks. So go to flowium.com/socks leave your review and we’re going to send you your very own pair of your Flowium socks. And of course, as always, come back next week. Next week we’re going to be talking to a very cool guest. Spoiler alert, the podcast have been recorded already. The guest name is Derek Haney and he’s basically helping to connect E Commerce Store with the right tech apps and partners. And that’s all for free. So come back next week to learn like how to build your technology stack and to learn more about what Derek does. Thank you for listening and I’ll talk to you next week.