Read These Articles to Better Your Mind
Here are the top five articles I read this week. You can see all my favorites at the iNate Instapaper feed.
Opening Day: Can't Buy Me Wins, but Can Buy Me Love
Number of the day: 0.59. That's the correlation coefficient between an MLB franchise's rank in spending and power ranking.
Email Marketing: Your Subscribers Are Your Customers
I work in a political non-profit, running our online operations. We’ve invested a lot of time and money in our email list. People subscribe to our messages because they agree with our objectives and want to do their part.
Most organizations send email to customers, donors, and other interested people. Even with the rise of social networks, promoting online action still starts with email.
A Little Logic Goes a Long Way (Weekend Reading)
Journalists, authors, publishers: all dying (?) industries whose introspection should be eminently readable. Most fail on this account: they are mostly unreadable because they lack sound logic.
Weekend read: I Found the Hero's Journey in F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Read that one next. It's the shortest."
Book: Endurance
As Louis CK said, people do what they are asked:
A Really Bad Unsubscribe Page
This is nothing new, but lots of organizations have miserable processes to unsubscribe.
Book: What's Holding You Back?
Robert Herbold, longtime P&G manager and later the COO of Microsoft, knows how to get things done in large organizations. That's the premise of What's Holding You Back.
Weekend Reads: Amish Baseball
My brother had a short-lived Tumblr called the Sunday Evening Post. It was a good piece of internet: a few links, some commentary, and regularly published on Sunday nights.