I'm Rob: a developer + designer turned marketing executive.
I try to write two poignant essays per month and make them really worth your time. I always publish to my subscribers first, and will never claim that my advice will get you "195,013 visitors a month without spending a dollar on ads."
December 29, 2018
In this article, I explore the best marketing automation tools for startups and small businesses based on price and six essential features.
October 16, 2018
My candid thoughts on HubSpot’s INBOUND18 product announcements.
December 31, 2017
I don’t usually write a year in review post, but I thought I’d give it a go for once. Let me know what you think! Varonis Running the digital marketing team at Varonis is always my number one professional focus. I don’t let any other projects steal my attention unless I feel like I’m doing […]
December 4, 2017
Most articles about the HubSpot COS are written by biased agencies, so I did a massive 2,200+ word breakdown of the pros & cons of using the COS to host your website.
October 15, 2017
I recently integrated Clearbit Reveal for Google Analytics via Segment and ran into some issues. Here’s how I got past them.
September 8, 2017
An inside look at my marketing team’s framework for setting and tracking goals with OKRs (objectives and key results).
July 11, 2017
Facebook’s ad product is world-class, but their conversion attribution is about as clear as a pint of Guinness. I explain how it works, in plain English.
May 22, 2017
In which I call out a blogger for unfairly accusing HubSpot of engineering reports to make it appear that their customers are succeeding when they aren’t.
April 27, 2017
Mike Volpe, former CMO of HubSpot, sat down with the crew over at Seeking Wisdom to chat about startups and marketing. The part of the interview that really stuck with me is about marketing playbooks, and how everyone is looking for a repeatable formula. BREAKING: there is no magic formula.
March 20, 2017
This is the eulogy I gave for my father, Robert A. Sobers, Sr., at his funeral on March 7th, 2017.
November 18, 2016
My unfiltered take on the new product announcements from HubSpot’s INBOUND16 conference. I focus on the big marketing features, but will include my thoughts on some of the Sales and CRM stuff as I start experimenting with them more.
October 14, 2016
A few months ago, I gave a talk titled 8 Things I Wish I Knew to a group of students at Drew University. My goal was to short circuit many of the key lessons I learned over the past 15 years. Here’s what I told them.
October 9, 2016
This video lesson will give you a good handle on how to interpret the Sources report, tell you where it can deceive you, and explain how it compares to its zany cousin, the Google Analytics Channels report.
September 4, 2016
The thought process behind pricing my online course, Mastering HubSpot. Includes a side-by-side pricing breakdown of 6 popular online courses.
September 3, 2016
I’ve noticed a growing trend of fuzzy business advice and I’ve come to the conclusion that a.) it’s easy to give non-specific advice and b.) people eat up inspirational stuff.
September 1, 2016
A step-by-step walkthrough that teaches you how to automate NPS surveys with Drip. Includes a free Drip-ready NPS email template.
August 28, 2016
A step-by-step walkthrough that teaches you how to do full-fledged NPS surveys with HubSpot (and nothing else). Includes a free HubSpot-ready NPS email template.
June 20, 2016
Innovating on an existing idea, instead of inventing something new, is one of the best ways to increase your likelihood of making something people want.
September 25, 2015
State of the Munchkin as of September 2015: iOS development is underway and we start scripting our explainer video.
August 18, 2015
Tracking form events on your “thank you” pages is ideal, but it has some limitations. Another option is to track the event when it happens via JavaScript. Here’s how.
January 28, 2015
A step-by-step guide that shows you, in painstaking detail, the exact steps I used to configure a marketing and analytics stack for my SaaS app Munchkin Report.
January 28, 2015
This article is out-of-date. It may still be helpful to you, especially if you’re using ActiveCampaign.
January 6, 2015
With the proliferation of marketing tools over the past few years, we’re desperately in need of some default marketing stacks.
December 30, 2014
My detailed notes on Nathan Barry’s money-minting book Authority.
December 30, 2014
Austen Allred wrote a creative, yet somewhat link bait-y, post called Rules of Growth. I object.
December 29, 2014
State of the Munchkin as of December 2014: we’re struggling with the decision to build a mobile app and launched a new email course.
December 28, 2014
There is no such thing as overnight success. There is only stacking the bricks.
October 30, 2014
The email etiquette my team follows to promote effective and respectful email communication.
October 7, 2014
Three hard-to-face truths about the state of marketing from Gary Vaynerchuk. It’s getting harder and harder to hide behind vanity metrics and engineered reports.
October 1, 2014
PG thinks growth hacking is bullshit. Is it? Depends on your definition.
October 1, 2014
Here are five excellent resources for those who want to learn about software and web design, but don’t fancy themselves designers.
September 18, 2014
A growth hacking Trello board template and accompanying Google docs which you can copy and use with your team.
September 9, 2014
Growth hacking is experiment-driven marketing executed by people who don’t need permission or help to get things done.
March 26, 2014
Quick and dirty status update on my creative side project: a SaaS app called Munchkin Report.
January 2, 2014
Why I believe the bootstrapper community would greatly benefit if individual founders joined forces, Voltron-style.
December 23, 2013
My name is Rob and I had trouble understanding Ruby blocks.
August 28, 2013
Many entrepreneurs can’t focus on one thing because they get bored too quickly.
August 19, 2013
How to capture the signup source for each MailChimp subscriber so you can segment your list based on how they subscribed.
August 18, 2013
Building an audience from scratch is, in my estimation, one of the hardest things about bootstrapping. It’s slow going right now, almost depressingly so.
August 13, 2013
I’m going to publicly share all of my steps toward building, launching, marketing and selling my first software product. Come follow along!
August 11, 2013
One the most fun and useful things I’ve ever built is the Fog Creek Big Board.
August 7, 2013
If you don’t pay close attention to your form settings in HubSpot, you could end up with undesirably merged leads.
July 30, 2013
Projection is a dangerous thing in business, especially when it comes to marketing.
July 24, 2013
Gmail’s new tabbed inbox is a pretty radical change, and it’s got many email marketers in a tizzy.
December 13, 2012
Using Trello for GTD has been very effective for me, especially when I’m disciplined about defining my next physical action.
December 7, 2012
Tumblr has a great feature that lets you create multiple blogs beneath a single umbrella account. However, your primary blog–i.e., the one you create first–is special.
November 5, 2012
If you ever talk to young developers, designers, or product managers about career path, please dog-ear this presentation by Joel Spolsky and pass it along.
January 19, 2012
The proliferation of online code schools is a wonderful thing, and I for one love teaching people to code, but programming is not for everyone.
March 21, 2011
When you clone a repo, Mercurial will recursively clone all of its subrepositories as well, so the developer (or build server) doesn’t need to know about the dependencies — the source control system handles it all.
November 3, 2010
I used CSS to make sticky notes, here’s how.