This week we feature Tony Chan, Director of Customer Success at PerfectAudience. Perfect Audience is a retargeting platform that lets marketers bring back lost web visitors through Facebook ads and banner ads in the web.

In this interview, you can read more about his work at PerfectAudience, favorite marketing tools, productivity tips as well as his advice for budding marketers.

Your location: Chicago, IL.

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Your favorite gadget: 15" Macbook Retina.

You start your day with: Reddit

Your favorite time-saving trick: Focus on one task at a time.

Your top 3 blogs you read daily: AdExchanger , Gizmodo , Grantland

“Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Work hard for every penny.”

Describe an average day at PerfectAudience?

The mornings before lunch are reserved for answering emails and making sure misc operational tasks are in order and complete that needs to be completed on a daily basis. I try to have all phone calls and meetings during the afternoon so it separates my day and mind a bit. Throughout the week, I do one on one meetings with my team to make sure everyone is taken care of.

As a marketer, what is your favorite productivity hack?

• Wake up early: I wake up everyday at 6:30AM and find some “me” time to have my mind ready for the day. I hate rushing into the office and feeling “rushed. If I can come in with the right mindset, the rest of my day is ready for me.
• Set Specific Daily Goals: I find myself with a million ideas and tasks that I need to complete for the day. I always write down 5 tasks/goals that I want/need to complete for the day and complete them. Theres something satisfactory about crossing things off on a piece of paper.
• Focus on one task at a time: Its easier said than done. When I first started working, I would have a million tabs and a million tasks that I would try to multi-task and complete at once. I try to focus myself on a singular task at a time now and prevent myself from dabbling in something else until I complete that task. I find myself being more productive when I set a focus.
• Keep your Desk Clean and Organized: There is something satisfying w/ keeping your desk organized. I always spend at least 5–10 minutes/day to ensure my desk is organized and not cluttered with “stuff”.

As a person who is well-versed with online marketing/ inbound, I’m sure you rely on a few marketing tools to automate your efforts. What are the top 3 tools you use?

• Gmail — Best email tool out there. With Chrome Extensions, its even more powerful.
• Yesware — Great way to remind me to follow up with emails if I did not get a response.
• Evernote — Notes notes notes notes! With a busy day, very easy for me to organize my notes and find them quickly.
• Things — Helps me stay on task for the day and things need to be completed short term and long term.
• HipChat — Great communication tool with our team and also awesome notification tool. We use Zapier to monitor our customer activity in our app.

Your company has a growing community of users. How do you use this treasure trove of customer insight to power your marketing efforts?

Customer Feedback is key for us. We value our customers input and we are never hesitant to ask “what can we do better?”, “how can we improve?”. We are constantly asking questions and getting feedback on how we can improve as a product and also as a Customer Success team. Its important to always be self aware vs believing everything is fine. By doing this, you are looking always to improve yourself, the product, the service provided and overall experience for the customers.

What is your strategy for getting people to your site and then converting them to a customer?

• One of our strengths from the start has been taking care of our customers and ensure they get the best and most positive experience with us. A lot of customers have heard of us through word of mouth and a lot of is attributed treating customers right.
• We provide tons of documentation and training to ensure customers can find an answer quickly to their questions. We have videos and a weekly introductory webinar that we run as well. These are delivered through email drip campaigns we run through Intercom. We have a pretty awesome support team as well :).
• We have a Trial Account Manager that helps advertisers through the process of becoming a customer and that they are setup for a success. I like to call this person a tour guide of all things in our app.

Is there any advice you’d like to give to budding marketers to help them work smart and stay productive?

• Be Humble — You don’t know it all and its okay to recognize that. Find people who are smarter than you and ask questions! Its important to also hire people who are smarter than you. There is always new opportunities to learn whether its from reading or from another person. Find and SEEK the opportunities to do so.
• Always Be Curious — Ask questions! No question is a silly or dumb question.
• Hustle — Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Work hard for every penny. No work should ever be “beneath” you.
• Balance — Be sure to have a good work/life balance. Your loved ones are the ones that keep you sane through the process and on the right track. They always remind you whats important in life.

A big thanks to Tony for taking the time out to answer these questions! If you haven’t already, we highly recommend that you check out PerfectAudience.

The ‘How Marketers Stay Productive’ series asks marketers their tips & strategies for staying productive. Every week we’ll feature a new guest and the tricks that keep them working smart. Know someone you’d love to see featured? Email Us.