B2B Blog

Gastric Sleeve Surgery

What Is Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

In gastric sleeve surgery, a surgeon removes part of the stomach and makes a narrow tube or “sleeve” out of the rest. The new, banana-shaped stomach is much smaller than the original stomach. After the operation, a person will eat less, feel full sooner, and be less hungry.

Who Gets Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

This surgery can really help people who are very overweight and have serious health problems because of their weight.

To be considered for surgery, a person must be committed to changing his or her eating and exercise habits over the long term. Not everyone who wants surgery will be eligible to get it.

Doctors consider a number of things when deciding if weight loss surgery is the right choice for teens. These include whether a teen:

is at least 14 years old and near adult height with more than 100 pounds of extra weight to lose
is healthy enough to handle surgery
has medical problems that could improve with significant weight loss, such as sleep apnea , diabetes, or heart problems
has proved that he or she can stick to a healthy diet and get regular exercise
has family members who will provide emotional and practical support (like driving to every doctor’s visit or buying healthy food)

If you’re worried about your weight or think you may benefit from weight loss surgery, talk to your doctor.

Endoscopic Sleeve Gastroplasty

Endoscopic Sleeve Gastroplasty (Accordion) Procedure

Endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty, also known as the accordian procedure, is a weight loss procedure that uses an endoscopic suturing device to reduce the size of your stomach. The procedure recreates what would occur at a surgical sleeve gastrectomy though without the need for surgery.

Endoscopic sleeve gastroplasty (ESG) is performed in the hospital under general anesthesia. Before your procedure, you will need to follow specific preparation instructions, which you will discuss with your doctor in advance.

During ESG:

The procedure is done using an endoscope, a flexible tube with a camera and an endoscopic suturing device attached, and it will be inserted down your throat into the stomach.
The tiny camera allows the doctor operating the endoscope to see and operate inside your stomach without making incisions in your abdomen.
Using the endoscope, the doctor places approximately 12 sutures in the stomach. The sutures change the structure of your stomach, leaving it shaped like a tube.

After ESG:

You will not be allowed to eat for eight hours.
After the initial eight hours, you will be allowed to start a liquid diet, which you will continue for one week.
Approximately two weeks after the procedure, you will move on to semisolid foods, and then to a normal, healthy diet.

Gastric Sleeve Surgery

What Happens During Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

Gastric sleeve surgery is a major operation. Doctors will give you anesthesia so you sleep through the surgery. After you’re asleep, the surgeon will take out three-quarters of your stomach, leaving you with a smaller banana-shaped stomach called the gastric sleeve.

Are There Any Risks With Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

Because it’s major surgery, a gastric sleeve operation has some risks, including:

too much bleeding
leaking of stomach contents into the belly from where the surgeon cut the stomach
a bad reaction to anesthesia
blood clots
infection

What Happens After Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

Gastric sleeve surgery makes your stomach smaller — permanently.

For the rest of your life, you’ll always have to eat much smaller portions. You’ll also feel full faster.

To ease into having a much smaller stomach, you’ll need to follow a special diet that starts with liquids only. Your dietitian will give you an eating plan that gradually works up to solid foods; for example:

For the first 2 to 3 weeks after surgery, you’ll get all your nutrition from high-protein drinks.
For the next 2 weeks or so, you’ll eat puréed foods.
Finally, you’ll move on to soft foods for another couple of weeks before you can eat regular food.

Your dietitian will teach you how to put together a healthy, balanced diet that includes fruits and vegetables and emphasizes protein. Snacks like chips and candy are high in calories and don’t have the nutrition you need, so try to avoid these foods. Your dietitian also will recommend vitamin and mineral supplements so you don’t miss out on key nutrients.

Gastric Sleeve Surgery

What Is Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

What Happens Before Gastric Sleeve Surgery?

Preparing for this major operation takes months of work. Patients need to show that they are willing and able to make big changes in their eating and exercise habits before the surgery.

For several months before surgery, you will work with the medical team to build the skills needed for success. Here are some of the people who work as a team to help teens prepare for gastric sleeve surgery:

Doctors and surgeons.

Several months before your surgery, you’ll meet with a medical doctor and surgeon. Your doctors will also let you know about some of the things that can go wrong (you’ll probably hear doctors call these “complications”).

Psychologists.

People go through lots of emotions before and after surgery. A psychologist can help you understand your feelings and help you prepare emotionally for surgery and the changes that will follow.

Dietitians.

Because patients often depend on parents or other family members for meals, a dietitian will teach you and your family healthy eating basics like good nutrition, how to get regular meals, and the right portion sizes.

Exercise specialists.

These experts help patients get more active. They’ll work with you to develop an exercise program you’ll like and workouts you can stick with. This will make recovery easier.

Talk to your doctor and exercise specialist to get their advice on how to gradually get back into your exercise routine.

5 Simple Steps To Sending GDPR-Compliant B2B Cold Emails

The GDPR is not about cold emailing. It is not about businesses. It is about personal data protection.

However, sending business emails does mean processing personal data so there are some key things you need to keep in mind when emailing in a post-GDPR environment.

Here are the key points I’ll be running through:

Step One: Ensure Your Prospecting Is Targeted and Appropriate
Step Two: Explain Legitimate Interest In Your Email Copy
Step Three: Make It Quick And Easy To Unsubscribe or Opt-Out
Step Four: Regularly Cleanse And Maintain Your Database
Step Five: Prepare An Informative Reply For GDPR Complaints And Questions

Step One: Ensure Your Prospecting Is Targeted and Appropriate

Lead generation and prospecting are essentially sourcing personal data to use in sales campaigns.

Despite protecting personal data, the GDPR doesn’t stop people prospecting or collecting leads, it simply demands a greater level of care and accuracy from lead generators.

Step Two: Explain Your Legitimate Interest In Your Email Copy

With effective targeting your reasons for contacting a prospect should be self-evident, but always follow through in your email copy and explain exactly why you’re offering is relevant and why you are reaching out.

Step Three: Make It Quick And Easy To Unsubscribe or Opt-Out

As someone sending cold email campaigns, you need to inform your recipients how to exercise their right to erasure and their right to restriction.

Step Four: Regularly Cleanse And Maintain Your Database

Beyond simply removing people who have opted out or unsubscribed, the GDPR also means that you shouldn’t be holding onto leads for months on end or inaccurate contact information.

Step Five: Prepare An Informative Reply For GDPR Complaints And Questions

Finally, expect some pushback from your prospects. There is a lot of misinformation about the GDPR and what it means for sales and marketing strategies going forward. Some people are going to be angry you emailed.

5 Steps To Writing Personalized Cold Emails

The best part is these have far broader reaching applications and can be utilized on any sort of online, written communication, such as LinkedIn inmails.

Here are 5 easy steps:

1) Cold Emails start with your buyer persona.

It’s key to understand your buyer persona before you start searching for a person to reach out to or message to send.

Once you fully understand the details associated with your ideal buyer, you can start pulling together leads.

2) Generate your list of leads.

The lead builder function lets you filter by industry, company size, region and keywords and then searches the entire LinkedIn database to find profiles that match that criteria.

If the initial list you get is overwhelming, you can continue to add criteria to shorten it. From here, start examining individual lead profiles.

3) Three takeaways in less than 3 minutes.

As soon as you pull up a specific person’s information, try to identify three relatable things in less than three minutes (a rule of 3×3, if you will). By relatable, I mean anything that you have in common or that creates a human connection with that other person.

4) Generate Personalized Email.

This is both the most important and probably the most fun part of cold emailing.

Sure, you might get a couple of people who bite if you send out 1,000 mass emails with the same message, but if you spend a little bit of extra time and send out 50 really personalized emails.

Here are the key elements of your personalized email:

Subject line: Don’t make this too sales-y. Try to keep it casual, yet catchy and fit one of your three relatable facts in there.
Greeting and intro: Casual again, and start with the relatable piece of information.
Transition: Transition from the relatable aspect to your main point. Explain the reason for your email.
Snapshot: Provide a brief overview of what your company does and how it could help this person.
Network: Share a few customers they might have heard of.
Call to action: Suggest a specific day and time to have a phone conversation.

5) Follow up and take action.

If you don’t get a response the first time, follow up. Add another personalized comment — maybe even a joke, but only if you can find a smooth way to fit it in. Tools like PersistIQ can help you set up campaigns for this.

Email Marketing Tips and Tricks

Email marketing is not going anywhere. According to a study by ExactTarget, 77% of consumers prefer to receive permission-based marketing communications through email.

Make the most of your email marketing efforts by following these quick and easy rules:

1. Consider the format.

43% of emails are read on mobile devices—that’s up from 10% in 2011—according to research conducted by Litmus, an email-testing and analytics firm

2. Rethink the “From” line.

The verdict is still out on this one. Some marketing experts recommend using your brand or company name; others suggest using the actual name and email address of someone within your organization because it is more personal.

3. Write a killer subject line.

That fancy template you chose and great copy you wrote won’t matter one bit if people don’t open the message. Increase your open rates by writing intriguing yet concise and direct subject lines.

4. Establish a clear call to action.

Recipients should know exactly what you want them to do with the message.

5. Watch your language.

If your email is caught in a spam filter, your messages will never reach potential customers.

6. Don’t botch your first connection.

When you make initial contact with an email subscriber, avoid the hard sell. Don’t offer a sales pitch or attempt to close a deal in the first sentence. Instead, build rapport and familiarity.

7. Add a personal touch.

Personalization goes a long way. Some people choose to invest in systems that will allow you to add people’s names to the subject line and body of the messages, but this approach is not for everybody.

8. Offer valuable freebies.

You have to give customers a reason to open your messages, so whether you choose to offer coupons or discounts, sponsor free events, invite readers to sign up for a free content newsletter, or dole out special reports or industry insight, just make sure that you offer something of value.

BirdEye Review Management Services

BirdEye is a complete review management platform that has all of the tools needed to acquire and manage your online reviews. The service handles a wide range of tasks, including:

Review acquisition:

The platform gives you numerous ways in which you can reach out to your customers requesting them to leave reviews. You can contact customers via text message, email, Facebook, a form on your website, an in-store mobile kiosk, a BirdEye microsite or the BirdEye mobile app.

The platform also integrates with hundreds of different apps and programs you are already using to make it even easier to access your customer databases in order to reach out for reviews.

Review monitoring:

In addition to helping you acquire reviews, the BirdEye platform makes it simple to monitor and track all of your reviews, regardless of the website they are posted on. The software’s dashboard displays reviews from more than 150 websites. It also sends you a text or email notification each time a new review is posted.

Review management:

Besides being able to see all of the reviews that come in, you can also reply to them straight from the BirdEye platform.

You can create set responses to say thank you for as positive review or to apologize to a negative one. You can then automate the process based on rules you set up, such as a thank you note when a 5-star review comes in.

Review marketing:

BirdEye also allows your easily promote your positive reviews across your social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as on your website. The service also builds you a microsite for all of your reviews. This can help boost your overall online reputation.

BirdEye can provide include the ability to manage all of your business listings across the web and options to allows customers to start a text message chat with your business.

Podium Review Management Services

Unlike some online reputation management services that provide a wide range of services, Podium focuses the majority of its efforts on review acquisition and management.

There are several different components to the Podium platform:

Reviews:

Through the platform you can set up the system to send text messages to your customers asking them to leave you a review. This ensures reviews are being left only on the sites you want. You receive instant notifications when reviews have been posted so you can quickly respond.

Messaging:

The Podium platform gives you one central location from which you can communicate with your customers, regardless of the online outlet they are reaching out from. The platform allows you to manage all of your text messages, Facebook Messenger messages and Google Click-to-Chat messages from one spot.

The message tool also allows you to send automated messages to customers who reach out after your business is closed for the day and assign messages to the employees who should be replying to each of them.

Webchat:

Podium allows you to add a widget to your website that encourages people to leave their name and mobile phone number in order to get questions answered via text message.

You can manage all of the messages that come in from the platform, quickly see which messages haven’t been read or responded to and assign messages to specific employees.

The Podium platform is also mobile friendly, with a mobile app available on iOS and Android devices.

Grade.us Feature Summary

Grade.us is a reputation management software which is used to manage the reputation of a business, organization or brand. It focuses on using reviews as a marketing medium to acquire more customers

“Review funnel” landing pages get customers sharing reviews
Media to convert reviewers on Google+, Yelp, 70+ other sites
Filters to recover unhappy customers, preempt bad reviews
Customizable behavior and design to support any campaign
Copy/paste widgets to embed your assets anywhere
Responsive, mobile-optimized everything
Easy multi-location setup to manage large deployments
Easy WordPress, Joomla, Drupal integration
Monitoring for reviews everywhere, not just the big sites
Automated “review stream” to amplify latest greatest reviews
Detailed on-page analytics to optimize campaigns
On-demand and scheduled PDF reporting to demonstrate ROI
Easy and automated new client setup
Scale to manage thousands of clients’ reviews in one place
High-performance cloud infrastructure with global presence
Thorough white-labeling to operate under your brand