Giant Voices is excited to welcome Abby Neutgens on as an intern this spring! Get to know her in this intern spotlight. Learn more about where she went to school, her degree, favorite hobbies and more.
Hi there! My name is Abby and I’m a spring 2023 intern at Giant Voices.
This semester, I’m excited to gain some real-world marketing experience and get a closer look at how the Giant Voices’ team builds campaigns to meet clients’ sales goals.
Where are you going to school and when are you graduating?
I’m on track to graduate from the University of Minnesota Duluth in May 2023 with a Bachelor’s degree and major in Marketing and Professional Sales.
What was your favorite class?
My favorite class was Advanced Professional Selling with Dr. Castleberry. It was really interesting to dive deep into the art of selling and learn key communication techniques to improve sale opportunities.
What interests you most about marketing?
Problem solving! I love that marketing allows me to figure out solutions for business AND be creative at the same time.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
I’m Catholic! That’s a big part of who I am. Ask me about it sometime!
What are your hobbies?
In my free time, I like to take up photography and videography, painting, reading, water skiing and wakeboarding (honestly, anything that involves a lake) and swing dancing.
Giant Voices is excited to welcome Peyton Krause on as an intern this spring! Get to know him in this intern spotlight. Learn about his education background, marketing interests, hobbies and more.
Hey, my name is Peyton Krause! I’m an intern at Giant Voices this spring and I couldn’t be more excited to learn more about marketing, especially the advertising side of marketing.
I plan to take full advantage of this great opportunity to work side-by-side with the creative Giant Voices team!
Where are you going to school and when are you graduating?
I recently graduated from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in December 2022 with a major in Marketing and Graphic Design.
What was your favorite class?
My favorite class was called Marketing and Advertising Communications. In this class we had a semester-long group project where we picked a real company and created a strategic marketing and advertising campaign for them.
What interests you most about marketing?
My favorite part about marketing is the psychology of buyers and uncovering how people think. I’m very interested in what makes people trust and feel connected to certain brands, and what persuades them to choose one brand over another.
What is something most people don’t know about you?
Most people don’t know that I can play the guitar.
What are your hobbies?
I have many hobbies that I like to do in my free time. I love to exercise, run and play sports like lacrosse, hockey and broomball! I also coach a youth lacrosse traveling team. Other than that, I love to travel and spend time with family and friends at my family’s cabin.
It’s been a whirlwind year for the Giant Voices team, and we’d like to share some of our favorite strategic marketing moments from 2022. Here’s to hustle, excellence, passion, our incredible Giant clients and the amazing Giant team.
A Decade of Giant Voices
In July, Giant Voices celebrated 10 years in business under Pascha Apter, our founder and CEO. Giant Voices evolved from The JPG Group—a marketing and advertising firm founded in the mid-80s in Virginia, Minnesota.
Pascha joined The JPG Group in 2005 as an account executive. She purchased the company and rebranded it Giant Voices in 2012, becoming one of the first women to wholly own a marketing firm in northern Minnesota.
“When I look back over the past 10 years, I’m filled with pride for the enterprise we’ve grown. What began as a small but mighty team in Canal Park has grown into a powerful firm with a national client presence. I’m incredibly proud of and grateful for my partners and the team of Giants who have contributed to our growth and success.”
– Pascha Apter
Ready, Set, Travel! Digital Advertising Campaign for Visit Cook County
Now that we’re easing out of the pandemic, travelers are itching to explore. When the Visit Cook County team was ready to promote the stunning northeast corner of Minnesota again, they tasked Giant Voices with creating a fun, welcoming and pointed digital advertising campaign.
Our “Ready. Set. Travel.”campaign highlighted popular adventures and locations throughout Cook County. The campaign ran through every season and drove impressive results:
87% increase in year-over-year website sessions
118% increase in website users
540% increase in year-over-year lodging page sessions
560% increase in new users to the lodging page
.14% average digital ad click-through-rate (2x above the industry average)
Giant Thrills—Celebrating, Teambuilding and Whitewater Rafting
In August, the Giant team continued our 10th-anniversary celebrations with a whitewater rafting trip through Swiftwater Adventures!
After we tumbled and twisted down the St. Louis River, we headed to Carlton Streetcar for some celebratory drinks, delicious food and time with the Giant crew.
We couldn’t be more proud of our courageous team. We approach challenges—both in and out of the office—with tenacity and drive. We’re excited to grow our team and expand our services as we embark on our second decade in business.
Involta—Ambitious Growth Under New Leadership
Involta, an award-winning data center, hybrid IT and cloud-forward consulting firm (and Giant Client for over a decade), had an incredibly transformative year.
The company completed an acquisition by the global investment firm Carlyle and made significant strategic shifts to its executive leadership team. Jim Buie, former Involta President, became President and CEO to lead the company into its next growth phase.
Bruce Lehrman, Involta’s founder and former CEO, continues to guide the company as the Vice-Chair of Involta’s Board of Directors.
Lisa Bodine, Giant Voices President and Partner, along with a team of Giants, supported Involta throughout these transitions and is helping set ambitious growth goals for the next phase of Involta.
Strengthening the Giant Team
We feel so fortunate to have curated an incredible team of Giants. This year, we added Joann Puglisi to our accounting team, and she’s been an essential behind-the-scenes part of our company.
Heather Wink transitioned from account assistant to account executive, and she’s taking on big clients and having a blast.
Mary Aimone became a full-time account assistant, jumping in to assist with content creation, traffic management, project management and more. We wouldn’t be where we are today without our team, and we’re grateful for the lot of them.
Green Building Initiative Certifies Over Half a Billion Square Feet
The Green Building Initiative (GBI) reached a major milestone this year. The organization has officially certified over half a billion square feet of commercial building space!
GBI achieved this milestone with the certification of the IDS Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which has taken significant actions to reduce climate impacts and promote health and wellness for building occupants.
Two Giant Clients Listed to TCB 100
Twin Cities Business recently announced its TCB 100 list. Key business leaders, trailblazers, and newsmakers poised to make an impact in 2023 were evaluated and selected, and we’re incredibly proud that two of our Giant Clients made the cut!
Rachel Johnson, President and CEO of the Area Partnership for Economic Expansion (APEX), has ambitious visions for Minnesota and Wisconsin’s roles in a greener and more sustainable future. Collaboration across industries is key to business attraction, retention and growth.
Julie Lucas, Executive Director of MiningMinnesota, understands that responsible domestic nonferrous mining development is critical to achieving the nation’s climate action goals. Nonferrous projects in Minnesota can set the standard for the rest of the world.
Please join us in congratulating our outstanding Giant clients!
Bags & Brews Blood Drive for Memorial Blood Centers
Between the Giants and our clients, friends, families and networks, we surpassed our goal and collectively donated 33 units of blood—enough to make a lifesaving impact on 99 patients.
We’d like to send a Giant THANK YOU to all who participated. Stay tuned for future opportunities to support our community.
Due to recent weather events in Minnesota, blood supply is critically low heading into the holidays. Give a life-saving gift this season—please consider donating soon to help MBC prepare for patients in need.
Cheers to an Ambitious New Year
We hope you enjoyed a happy, healthy and fun holiday season, and we wish you an ambitious start to the new year. Thank you for being Giant!
If email marketing is a part of your marketing strategy (hint: it should be!), here is how the right template, copy and call-to-actions can up your email game and help you meet your business goals.
In an ever-evolving digital world, sending the right emails can improve your marketing campaigns in a Giant way. In fact, it’s one of the most efficient ways to move prospects through the marketing funnel and provides an impressive ROI of $36 for each dollar spent.
For some, creating the right template for copy and knowing how to use and place a CTA (Call To Action) button effectively, can feel daunting. We tapped the minds of our digital strategists here at Giant Voices for a few tips to help you get the most out of each email you send.
Importance of Segmentation
When creating a plan of action for your email strategy, it’s important to first consider the audiences you’re trying to engage.
Even the most beautifully designed, thoughtfully written email could end up in the trash folder if you’re not providing the right value to the right person.
Before drafting your templates and copy, make sure you ask yourself the following questions:
Who are my target audiences and how do they differ?
Where is each audience in the buyer’s journey and what content will be most relevant to them?
What action do I want them to take and how will my email inspire them to take it?
Not every email you send will be applicable to your whole contact list. By using a contact database and segmenting your contacts, you can deliver the right message to the right people at the right time in their buyer’s journey.
Don’t only take our word for it, though. Mailchimp found that segmented email campaigns provide 14.31% higher open rates and 9.37% lower unsubscribe rates than unsegmented campaigns.
Strategies for segmentation and grouping prospects together are endless, and it can be difficult to maintain clean and accurate lists without outside help from CRM software. A good CRM should provide valuable insight and tools to help marketers visualize their prospects’ positions in the sales funnel, track customer interactions and manage prospect timelines.
Many CRMs use smart lists, which automatically remove or add contacts when they begin or cease to meet list criteria. This makes it easy to tailor the resources and emails being sent to each prospect, ensuring they get information that will advance their position in the sales funnel.
With a CRM that automatically analyzes your prospects’ journeys, you can stop manually updating lists and avoid sending the wrong information to the wrong person.
Laying the Groundwork
Creating templates that align with your branding across other platforms sets a strong foundation on which to build your email copy and design. Maintaining a consistent voice and appearance makes it easy to shift conversations between platforms.
Keep in mind that not all emails you send will have the same end goal or apply to the same audience. To ensure you’re getting the most out of your templates, consider your segmented contact lists, which content they find most relevant and the specific types of emails your company will send.
The same template that works for product and service promotions likely won’t work for sharing company newsletters or blog posts, and they likely won’t be delivered to the same prospects.
Having a cache of ready-to-use templates that align with your brand standards will provide your prospects with a uniform experience across all of your communication channels. This will foster productive conversations that can be easily moved to different platforms when needed.
Planning Your Copy and Design
Each piece of your email should drive prospects toward one specific goal, and they should be able to skim the copy for important information easily.
By writing strategically, you can funnel readers down your written content to take the desired action that will fuel your goal.
1. Grab Their Attention
The average person receives 100-200 emails per day. And that’s not even including spam!
When inboxes fill up that quickly, it’s important to make your emails stand out with a personal, relevant subject line, enticing preview text and a sender email account that feels human.
Subject lines should be concise and provide context about what the reader can expect from your email. Keep word count and device compatibility in mind—mobile device screens can only fit about 45 characters, and prospects are less likely to click in if they can’t see the relevance.
If you’re finding it difficult to cut down your subject line, think about what pieces could be displayed in your preview text instead.
Preview text appears next to or underneath the subject line in your inbox and is an excellent opportunity to grab readers’ attention. Most email clients will self-populate this text directly from the body of your email, but we encourage marketers to customize and share valuable information that inspires prospects to open the email.
2. Keep Their Interest
To keep reader’s moving down the funnel, they should be able to immediately identify why they were sent the email and how it will benefit them.
This is where segmented contact lists come into play—by tracking the contacts’ position in the buyer’s journey, you can build and send relevant content that drives action.
This is a great place to plug in your brand’s story, details about your services or how you can be the solution for a key problem. This section will look different at each step of the buyer’s journey, so it’s essential to keep content relevant.
3. Inspire them to Take Action
Once you’ve piqued the reader’s interest, you can motivate them to take action. They like what they’ve read so far, but now is the time to make them want it. This is a great place to include special offers or customer testimonials to inspire that last push toward your desired action.
Every email you send should provide readers with a clear next step: a call-to-action (CTA). At this point in the email, prospects know what you’re offering and they’ve decided they want it.
By providing them with clear direction, they can finally take advantage of the value you’ve provided.
We recommend using only one clear CTA that directly links the page or product you’re promoting. You can still provide relevant links in the email copy, but they shouldn’t compete with the primary CTA.
Use a bold color, and keep competing imagery to a minimum, so readers can skim the copy to find their next step.
Your CTA copy should provide a clear, concise direction, but this doesn’t mean you have to use “Buy Now” or “Learn More” every time. Have some fun with your brand’s voice to find different ways to inspire action, but be sure to measure how they’re performing with your audience.
Hit Send!
You made it! Now that you’ve perfected your email process, you can be a bright spot in your audience’s inbox. Before the official send, test your email to a small internal team who can check for image loading, layout and mobile compatibility.
The email marketing world is only growing from here, and the fight to be the 1% of emails that prospects click into will only get more competitive.
Regularly tracking email performance will provide insight into what is or isn’t working, so you can adjust accordingly. Trends and interests change fast, so parts of your strategy will need to adapt and evolve.
Giant Voices helps clients perfect their digital marketing strategies through email marketing, lead generation, content marketing and strategic website development. Don’t let an outdated email strategy drag your company down—get in touch and let us help you make the most out of your marketing!
Need to add some books to your summer reading list? Giant Voices founder and CEO, Pascha Apter, recommends 3 compelling, growth-focused reads that’ll transform your thoughts, empower your next steps and ignite your ambition.
I’m not one to lounge around and watch TV. That’s just not my style. I’m at my best when I’m busy and productive. Whether I’m leading Giant Voices, coaching my team, guiding clients or keeping up with my young adult kids, I’m always moving.
When I “slow down,” I’m filling my brain with knowledge I can apply to all of the above. So, what have I been reading this summer? So glad you asked.
There is no single way to achieve profitability, and a business model that works in one industry may not be as successful in another.
In The Art of Profitability, Adrian Slywotzky explores 23 different ways to structure profitable enterprises with a master-to-student narrative that instantly grabs (and keeps) your attention.
The book contains 23 short chapters, each with a compelling story to support a business model. It’s easy to consume in bursts, and you’ll close the book feeling empowered to drive profitability in your business in a way that makes sense for you.
This book has helped me approach client work from many different angles. By learning more about what inspires and motivates my clients, I can better recommend a business model that will drive their success and profitability.
It’s also been key in helping grow the Giant Voices account executive team. We’re more focused on removing communication roadblocks and meeting our clients where they’re at than ever before, and it’s showing in all our up-trending KPIs. Give this book a read and discover strategies for transforming your business from flat to growing.
Gino Wickman’s Traction is required reading at Giant Voices. Truly! We’ve operated under the Entrepreneurial Operating System for many years, and this year we’ve taken a Giant leap to bring more of our team in on the process.
All the Giants have read the book, and we’re rotating teams through the EOS® process. The insights gained have been invaluable, and our team feels more connected to the company and empowered in their roles than ever before.
Read Traction. Connect with an EOS® implementer. Then watch your company grow beyond what you ever dreamed possible.
This book is transformational. It will change the way you run your business, engage your team and drive growth. Wickman has developed simple, practical tools that allow leaders to focus on the big picture without losing sight of the day-to-day activities that must be completed to achieve the company’s growth goals. I’ve read this book several times, and I pick up new nuggets with each re-read. It’s that powerful.
Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
With a title like this, I’m pretty sure Kim Malone Scott wrote Radical Candor for me specifically—or at least for entrepreneurs just like me.
Those who care deeply about developing their employees and want to balance being “obnoxiously aggressive… and ruinously empathetic,” as the description on GoodReads so aptly put it. There’s a balance; it takes serious introspection and internal reflection to bring it to light.
Being a good manager isn’t a skill that happens overnight. It takes practice to hone the skills and your personal style into a coaching and management method that uplifts employees to unleash their greatest strengths, capabilities and potential.
It is always my, and my business partners’ goal to bring out the Giant in every team member—and that looks different for everyone. Managers will read Radical Candor and see a bit of themselves in between the lines. They’ll also learn strategies for becoming Kickass Bosses that become driving forces for both company and employee growth.
What are you reading this summer?
If you’re reading anything enlightening that can help fellow entrepreneurs achieve their ambitions, share it in the comments below! Be Fearless! Be Ambitious! Be Giant!
