The Relentless Pursuit | November 2020

We’re a little more than a month out from ending what has been the most challenging and transformative year of my career. We have weathered some incredible storms this year and helped our clients do the same. But those storms have taken on the road we’d laid out for ourselves and we can’t ignore that. So my goal right now is to lay a strong and clear path for 2021. A big part of that is creating stronger communication lines with our clients, which is where the BP’s play a critical role. They need to be able to translate and advocate for both WesTech and clients, so please continue to keep them in the loop whenever possible. If you don’t have time to check their Wiki, you can include the usbusinesspartners@14west.us email CC’d when working with clients.

As much as I’d like to lean into the holidays and encourage all of you to do the same, the truth is that we’ve got a lot of hard work still to do before we ring in a new year. And to get it done and done well, our communication has to be at its all-time best. So, lucky you… I’m bringing back my weekly newsletter. More to come on that.

Now, here’s what your teams have going on this month.

IN THIS EDITION:

• What’s After Spamhaus Delisting
• Lytics Huddle Recordings
• LinkedIn Revamp
• OneDrive Progress
• StatusPage Customizations
• Lightning Talks
• Performance Management Survey
• 14 West Contacts
• Message Central Update

WE’VE BEEN DELISTED FROM SPAMHAUS… NOW WHAT?

Being delisted from Spamhaus is an incredibly huge Hell Yeah but the efforts to keep the businesses off the list from here on out have only just begun.

Our focus now is to work with impacted businesses to warm IPs and build a positive reputation for the ability to send mailings through SparkPost. At this time, over 90% of email traffic has migrated from the blocked IP space to SparkPost.

Due to our collective efforts, delivery has increased by 22% after making the needed changes to our mailing and list hygiene efforts. The focus now will continue to be strengthening each company’s reputation by following best practices and to support the push to implement engagement-based mailing strategies.

We know that these changes don’t have an end date, but we feel optimistic that incorporating the new practices will improve deliverability and allow our clients’ messaging to get into their customer’s inbox.

– Amanda Haughwout, Director of Email Deliverability

LOB | THE FUTURE OF PRINT

Last month, I gave a brief presentation during one of our OKR webinars regarding our newest print vendor, Lob, so for those who missed it, here’s why the Renewals team chose it. With the implementation of Blueshift for Email and SMS notifications, we now have faster and more efficient communication. But we know that print communications should be no different. That’s where Lob comes in.

We understand that it’s crucial for our clients to get in front of their customers from Day One in order to strengthen the quality of service that’s provided. Our previous system had an outdated content editor and a one-size-fits-all design, and we needed something that was able to be customized to suit our print needs. Although we’re in the rollout phase now, we’re excited to migrate each client over to Lob so that we can update dynamic content in real time, automate workflows, and have access to precise tracking and intelligent mailing metrics. We’re rolling this out for Renewals first, but once the content has completely migrated over, we look forward to opening the platform to new print ideas.

– Jenelle Ketcham, Manager of Renewals

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE DATA SCIENCE CAPABILITIES IN LYTICS

Our latest Lytics Huddles focused on their newest data science features: Laboratory, Content Classification, and Lookalike Models. If you weren’t able to watch them live, we’re sharing both recordings below.

LABORATORY SUMMARY | With Lytics Predictive Audiences, you now have the ability to build, fine-tune, troubleshoot, and validate these models on your own. You don’t need support from in-house data science or the Lytics team. With Lytics Predictive Audiences’ intuitive interface, you can. Watch here with access passcode: 6%c5?E8n

CLASSIFICATION SUMMARY | Much like we’ve done with lookalike models, we’re also updating the content area of Lytics’ dashboard with the addition of a Content Classification section to provide users with more transparency into how Lytics classifies content. This enhancement improves your visibility into content “health” and is a first step towards making content easier to curate and our content affinity engine easier to use. Watch here with access passcode: aZ9$8uj4

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the Customer Intelligence team via our JIRA portal or customerintelligence@14west.us.

– Kathrin Simmons, CI Solutions Specialist

IT MIGHT BE TIME TO REVISIT YOUR LINKEDIN

As we strengthen the 14 West brand, we’re relying less and less on the “Agora” name. In fact, as an organization, we’re putting a greater focus on our independent brands and less on The Agora’s. Therefore, if you still use the language “14 West, an Agora Company” in your headline on LinkedIn, it’s time to revisit this, as it’s worth removing “, an Agora Company.”

While you’re there, it’s also a good time to make sure you have 14 West as your current employer. The more you identify with this brand on LinkedIn, the stronger it is.

REMINDER: If you would like to mention “WesTech” somewhere on your LinkedIn that is fine, but it’s a good idea to put quotations marks around the nickname. This will help avoid any confusion around people thinking WesTech is a company or independent entity.

If you have questions about this or would like pointers on how to strengthen your LinkedIn, you can reach out to our in-house social media expert, Paige Tester. She will work with you 1-1 to review your profile and make updates.

YOUR FILE STORAGE IS GETTING AN UPGRADE

Last month, we began the migration from Box to OneDrive and SharePoint for all of your documentation and file storage. The transition will be done in small groups and stages, organized by company and location, so if you share Box files with another group, there’s a chance you may not migrate at the same time. In that case, we recommend letting them know that shared files have moved. You will be notified both two weeks prior to your migration, and we’ll send a reminder the following week. Right now, everyone has access to their OneDrive and SharePoint accounts via your desktop app or OneLogin, so we also encourage you to begin exploring each before your migration occurs to help ease your transition.

PROGRESS SO FAR | At this time, the 14 West IT teams have migrated our files to OneDrive and we are currently in the process of moving the International groups over. Up next are the remaining 14 West teams, NewMarket Group, and Omnivista Health.

To learn how to work with OneDrive and SharePoint like a pro, you can find all needed training resources and information in the Microsoft 365 Evolve Workspace. If you would like a demo of each application, please reach out to help@14west.us.

– Lance Sturgis, Application Integration Specialist

CUSTOMIZE YOUR STATUSPAGE COMMUNICATIONS

Most of you are well aware by now of our support application, Status Page, which serves as the centralized communication platform for our incident response management. The support systems in place have been setup to quickly detect errors in WesTech’s applications so you may notice an influx of emails from the trusty info@statuspage.io address. In an effort to lessen the influx of emails to your inbox, we wanted to remind you that the Status Page notifications are completely customizable on the Product level, so if you don’t need to receive error, maintenance, or incident communications on a certain product, you can take the following steps.

1. Head to https://14west.statuspage.io/

2. Click the blue button: “Subscribe to Updates”

3. Enter your work email and click “Subscribe via email”

4. This then takes you to a Preference Page where you can check boxes next to the Products and Services you wish to be notified about

5. Click “Save” at the bottom of the screen

SCHEDULING MAINTENANCE WINDOWS ON STATUS PAGE | In an effort to remain consistent across all Products and service communications, we encourage you to keep posting your planned maintenance and scheduled downtime through Status Page. If you have any questions about how to set this up or to get access to Status Page, please reach out to globalcommandcenter@14west.us and we can help get you started.

– Randy Woolford, Enterprise Support Manager

LIGHTNING TALKS | NOVEMBER 17 & 18

UX Designers from both WesTech and Threefold are hosting a conference later this month aimed to help you improve the user experience on everything from your website to email to mobile that will enable you to drive your business forward. We know you’re busy, so we’re taking the “lightning” in Lightning Talks quite seriously by having each presentation take five minutes so that you’ll only need to spend 20 minutes each day. Speakers from internal teams will be sharing their UI/UX expertise, and we’re happy to announce that Paul Boag, CX Consultant with over 25 years of experience in Digital and Web Design, will be a guest speaker. You can find more information on the event here or sign up for each day below.

LIGHTNING TALKS

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18 | WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19

BEGINS 9AM ET

SURVEY REMINDER | PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

If you haven’t already, there’s still time to fill out your pulse survey to let us know how your quarterly reviews went. We want to know if you are getting the feedback and facetime that you need with your manager.

This survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete, and your responses will be kept strictly confidential. We will never share individual responses, only statistical summaries of results for groups to keep in touch with trends within the organization.

IMPORTANT: The survey will be sent out via SurveyMonkey, so you can expect an email from orgdev@14west.us via SurveyMonkey with the subject line PULSE SURVEY | We Want Your Feedback on Performance Management.

We appreciate your feedback and participation as we continuously strive to provide you with the best support and resources.

As always, feel free to reach out to the OD team if you have any questions or concerns.

A CONTACT CARD WORTH SAVING

14 West offers a vast array of services from technical support to maintenance requests. We now have a revamped list that you can refer to if you ever need to reach the right team for something you need.

MESSAGE CENTRAL UPDATE

You may have received a reminder from Daryl last month regarding our progress sunsetting Message Central. In case you missed it, beginning Sunday, November 15, your role within Message Central will only allow you to view scheduled mailings, and all mailings* will need to be sent through Blueshift. Any updates to existing, scheduled mailings in Message Central should be requested through a Support ticket.

IRIS | Mailings created in IRIS are also going to be affected by our November 15 change. You may still use IRIS for tagging and split testing creation, but mailings created in the IRIS platform will no longer send. As for Lead Gen efforts, please contact the Support team for assistance with any mailings you need to send.

*As mentioned in previous communications, your API Triggered mailings (including Auto-Renew Notices and Credit Card Declines) and SMS mailings are an exception to this timeline.