A call that changed my life

Around two years into the launch of teensafe.com, we had just started our call center for customer service and my colleague and I received a call that changed my life at many levels. I think it’s important for me to share this story.

The caller was the father of a teenager and all he wanted to say was – thank you. Since these were the first days of our direct communication with our customers, we got excited and asked him the reason. The answer, the explanation and the testimonies of a lot of other customers henceforth (see the video) provided me with the level of professional satisfaction and gratification that I have never experienced in my 20 years in this industry.

The father was in tears and said that our tool had saved his daughter’s life. He didn’t need to elaborate and we were speechless as well. There was nothing more he could add at that point that would have made the conversation more meaningful, after all, what is more important than a life? We thanked him and left the conversation at that.

These and many stories since have made me realize the importance of a small window into the digital world of our kids. If you think this story will help someone else, please feel free to share it. God bless our world and our beautiful innocent children.

https://vimeo.com/112419844

E-Mail Marketing Basics for Small Businesses

Marketing is one of the biggest challenge and a money consuming exercise for a small business. With the increase in marketing on the social medium, is email marketing still a good option for small businesses?

Yes, it’s still one of the best marketing tools available. According to a recent study by Pew Internet, 59% of adult users in the US spends time reading and sending email, 11% more than the time spend on social medium.

E-mail marketing, if done correctly, can be an inexpensive way to reach a large audience. The most important starting point is to make users want to receive your emails, or as they say have them opt-in and subscribe to your newsletter service on your website.

In this way, you can collect e-mail addresses without buying a list that may be created and/or sold illegally.

E-mailing advertisements, sent with the express permission of the recipient, can still become redundant, and therefore ineffective, unless you:

• Offer new discounted products or services regularly
• Provide very targeted mailings
• Offer some content or information which is useful to the user

Even two or three sentences of original content can give a reason to read your e-mail. It can also support the advertising that otherwise may be deleted. Short bits of information, such as five tips for saving on electricity bills by a HVAC company or suggestions for “dressing for occasions” from a clothing retailer are ways to keep your audience interested in your e-mails. Establishing your own newsletter, which may only be a few paragraphs, can draw the attention of your readers.

When e-mailing customers, you also need:

• A catchy headline
• A recognizable company name in the “from” box so they’ll know it’s from your business
• A simple one-click manner in which they can get more information on specific products or services
• A means of reaching customer service
• A link for them to un-subscribe

Since you may only have one second to capture the reader before he or she hits delete, it’s to your benefit to highlight an interesting item in your subject line or immediately in the body of the text. This window can literally give you a “window of opportunity” to grab their attention. Make this about them.

A few e-mail marketing rules of thumb:

• Make sure that everyone on the list has agreed to be there — don’t add names
• Reassure readers that their information will not be shared
• Give readers an opportunity to opt off of the list
• Keep information concise, to the point, and focused on their needs
• Don’t blitz — e-mailing more than once or twice a week is annoying
• Provide a choice of HTML or TEXT version

Landing pages are also important. Readers should be able to get more information by clicking on various places on the initial marketing e-mail or newsletter. Don’t send them to a home page and make them search for the specific information that brought them there. For example, on Amazon.com if you click on a specific book, you’ll get a page with details and reviews of that book and suggestions of similar books. That landing page provides information including pricing or purchasing and then leads to a sales page or shopping cart. Your promotional e-mails should do the same thing and give the reader an opportunity to go to your home page.

5 critical factors to consider when offshoring software development

The benefits of offshoring or outsourcing your technology needs has some direct advantages which we all know about. Having said that it can back-fire big time if we are not diligent about selecting the right partner/provider for the needs. I have been on the both sides of the table and would love to share some of my knowledge which hopefully will help you in selecting that “Right” technology partner.

First and formost, there is a huge difference between an offshore provider and an outsourced provider. An outsourced provider may or may not be offshore, and  that has a major impact on how things would turn-out for you, which we are not covering in this article today, we will focus on the factors that you need to consider while select an offshore technology partner.

1. Communication: 

One of the most important issue in all the failures, more so in offshoring. The linguistic barrier or the lack of it, can be a major contributing factor in your success. And by communication at this stage I mean plain english (this article assumes that you are from a majority english speaking community). Ask two simple questions:

• Can I explain/describe my needs in plain & simple english?
• Can the provider and it’s employees understand and convey messages in plain and simple english?

If the answer to the above is YES, then you can move onto the next issues. Basically, if it takes anybody more that 3 tries to explain/communicate a simple scenario then its a big problem.

Example of how a small thing can confuse everybody involved: “I want this report to be kickass”, the term “kickass” is very commonly used. There is a high possibility that this term is not that common in the country of your provider and I will leave it to your imagination of what a developer can make out of that statement.

2. Company DNA

You need to know following for sure:

• Size of the Company: Matters because you want to know if they can expand if you need them to.
• Age of the Company: How long they have been around? Will they be still there if you need them to support the software post the release or sometime in future.
• Internal Culture: Is it employee friendly? Do they exploit? If the developers are not happy they may leave the company while working on your project, which will most definitely have time and potentially cost impact.
• HR and Recruitment policies: Confirms their hiring policies, do they hire lot of freshers of the campus? Ask them for the resumes of the people working on your project.
• Working hours: If they say that the team will work US hours for the whole project, trust me its a bad idea, the team/developers are not gonna like that, they would do it because they have to, but again they may leave as soon as they find a better opportunity. Instead, have an hour or 2 of overlapping time each week or daily in the beginning.
• Certifications and Associations: Lot of these companies have DnB numbers in various countries now, plus countries like India have a government body that manages the software exports, ask them for their affiliations to these organizations, It’s a good sign if they have all these in place.

3. Business Domain Expertise

This is a big plus, if the provider has worked on something similar in the past, then it will make your life much easier. But you need to be careful, the company may have the domain expertise, that may not necessarily help, the idea is to ask for the team that has worked on similar project.

4. Project/Task Management Process & Quality Assurance Standards

I have seen and experienced that lot of small to medium size development companies tend to ignore this. I recommend that even if the provider does not have a magnificent and out of the work project management process, they need to have a simple task/issue/people management tool which can be used by both the parties to achieve following:

• Add/Describe tasks
• Add/Describe issues
• Team management – task and issue assignment

Most important, do you as a client have access to the tool or not? This will provide you greater visibility into the workflow and will force the provider to stay focused and honest.

For the quality standards even if they do not have ISO or other quality certifications, ask them what their process is, if a development company has a well documented quality assurance process then the chances of things going down south is reduced. Check if there are ways for you to make sure that your team is following those processes frequently.

5. Travel Possibilities

Check how easy it would be for you to travel if possible? Check the visa issues if any? Confirm if any of the team members, especially the lead or the manager has a travel visa in place in case they have to travel. It may not be part of your budget, but trust me there could be a situation where you would have to choose between extend dev time of 1 month or a lead coming over for 1 week.

Cost benefit is one of the major reason we offshore our technology needs, but if any of the above mentioned factors are not even satisfactory then in my experience, the cost advantage that you had at the beginning of the project is reduced by 50% by the time you are close to the end of the project.

One of the best models of offshoring is a hybrid model, select a provide that has a local presence and can provide you with the leader or manager locally. Your point of contact should be the leader/manager and he/she can manage the team that is located offshore. This model increases your cost but dramatically increases you chances of project success within the planned time and budget.

History of internet marketing

The definition:

“Internet Marketing also refered to as web marketing, online marketing, emarketing, social marketing or new media marketing is the marketing of the products & services on the internet platform.”

Let’s see how it all started!

Internet Marketing today has become an integral part of people’s lives.When internet was first introduced not a single business house recognized the huge potential it had in store as a marketing tool. As early as 1993 it was just a tool used for emailing & data transfer. The best of the business units had declared it unfit for marketing purposes.

Then in 1995 Netscape the ISP went public and bought the online world into prominence by exploring its commercial potential. The wide reach, cost effectiveness, capabilities to measure the spending and easy accessibility made internet as the most feasible marketing tool.

The flood-gates opened after that:

Spending on Internet advertising in 1996 totaled $301 million in the U.S. While significant compared to the zero dollars spent in 1994, the figure paled in comparison to the $175 billion spent on traditional advertising as a whole that year. Online advertising grew to an industry worth nearly $1 billion in 1997.

Today, the latest study by emarketer says that the online marketing spend in the US will reach $40 billion this year and is going to cross the traditional print spend which is projected to be about $33.8 billion.

Online vs print media ad spend

On the other hand the ad spend on the TV is not greatly affected by this and seems like it will keep its top spot for few more years to come.

Online vs TV ad spend comparison

Pros and Cons of Technology Offshoring

Being in the IT industry for 15+ years, most of which, I have also been an integral part of the technology offshoring, I can share some basic pros and cons of offshoring your technology needs…

The technology offshoring matrix:

Factors	In-house	Off-shoring	Side-Effects / Comments
Cost	High	Comparatively Low	Possible Impact on Quality because of communication issues Possible impact on cost at the later stages
Quality	Medium	High-Medium	If the needs are communicated efficiently then the quality from a service provider is very high In-house employees sometime tend of let it slip, but the control is higher
Specialized Skills	Low	High	Easy to find providers with the skills needed on contract in comparison to hire someone with the skills
Communication	High	Low	Linguistic barriers A bad communication can lead to ngative cost and quality impacts.
Business and Company Knowledge	High	Low	A definite impact on quality, especially if the provider does not understand your business
Contractual Obligation	Medium	High	The provider feel obligated to complete the work, having said that my experience has been that if pushed it has a very bad impact on quality.
Social and Cultural Knowledge	High	Low	Again major impact on the outcome and quality of the work as the provider or it’s employees do not understand the needs as a consumer
Staffing Issues	High	Low	No HR, Insurance or payroll issues Having said that don’t forget that the provider also has employee retention issues, which may have a big impact on your projects quality
Managerial Control	High	Low	Possible impact on Cost and Quality
Security and Confidentiality	High	Low	Could be a business issue
Transparency	High	Low	Cost impacts

Hope this matrix helps, also read my article on Parameters to consider before hiring an offshore provider

Are we born destructive?

Have you noticed? Nobody teaches kids to break things, stomp on ants, swat flies or just throw things around when they are hungry. Does it mean that we are born destructive?

All the acts of destruction seems like are part of us from birth, we have to learn how to construct but breaking things … nah we already know it. Is there a reason for this? Did the super-power or god made us negative so to speak for a reason?

Most critical 10 email marketing mistakes

E-mail marketing has almost become too easy to execute, given the proliferation of bulk-e-mail providers. It’s critical for organizations to be strategic in this tactic and avoid these common mistakes:

1. Not having a strategy. You must have a strategy detailing reasons for the e-mail, content, audience, key messages and metrics.

2. Using an outdated list. You need a permission-based list of opt-in subscribers to increase open rates and reduce undeliverable e-mails. If contacts haven’t opted in, you may be flagged as spam and prohibited from sending future e-mails.

3. Focusing on nonrelevant content. Your message must be important to the audience. E-mails with the highest opt-in and open rates are most often thought-leadership topics or personal insights into industry trends.

4. Missing an opportunity in your top-line message. Your message may be viewed in a preview pane with images turned off or on an e-mail system or PDA that doesn’t support HTML content. Your top-line message must include a link to a Web-based version—just in case.

5. Being too text- or graphic-heavy. Adding visuals improves appeal, but you need a balance of images versus HTML text. Too much text can be overwhelming if not supported by interesting graphics to move the reader along.

6. Being “salesy”. If your readers sense a sales pitch, it will not only get deleted but they may even unsubscribe from your mailings. Worse yet, they could report your e-mail as spam.

7. Forgetting to drive your Web traffic. Editorial-driven newsletters are best developed with content directing Web site traffic. Include a portion of the story with a link to “read more” and have contextual links relevant to specific Web site pages.

8. Testing only on one browser or operating system. All e-mail systems will not display your message the same, so test it on a PC versus Mac and Internet Explorer versus Firefox. Format consistency is critical for HTML-based e-mails.

9. Sending at the wrong time. Whether your contacts are domestic or international, think about recipients’ time zones and business hours. Recent data suggest higher open rates occur on Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

10. Ignoring metrics. Metrics reveal whether your message was successful. An initial report will show bounce rates so you can scrub your list. An evaluation the day after will begin to show open rates, opt-outs or spam reports.

What is viral marketing?

Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that relies on individuals rather than traditional campaigns to pass along a message to others. It usually refers to marketing on the Internet. Viral marketing is so named because of the tendency for messages to use “hosts” to spread themselves rapidly, like a biological virus.

The term “viral marketing” first became prominent when used to describe a marketing campaign for the e-mail service Hotmail.com. When the company launched, every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As people e-mailed their friends and colleagues, they were also advertising the service. Recipients could simply click on the link and sign themselves up, and as they e-mailed friends from their new account, the message spread within existing social networks and was passed along with little effort from the company.

This example demonstrates all the key elements of viral marketing. Its cost to the advertiser is minimal. Instead, it takes advantage of existing resources by making everyone who uses the product an involuntary spokesperson. It exploits common behaviors, such as sending an e-mail. Viral marketing uses communications networks that are already in place. In the case of Hotmail, it implies endorsement from a friend. People who received an e-mail from a friend using the service learned that the product works and that their friends use it. And most importantly, viral marketing offers the ability to spread a message exponentially faster and to more people than conventional third-party ad campaigns.

There are different types of viral marketing, all using the same fundamental principles. Pass-along messages encourage users to send them along to others, such as e-mails with instructions to forward at the bottom or humorous video clips. Incentive-driven messages offer rewards in exchange for providing e-mail addresses. Undercover viral marketing presents messages in an unusual page or false news item without any direct incitement to pass it along, in the hopes that word-of-mouth will spread the message. Gossip or buzz marketing seeks to get people talking about something by creating controversy.

Viral marketing has come under criticism from consumers, privacy advocates, and marketing pundits because of concern over unsolicited e-mails. The best campaigns, however, use the principles of viral marketing tactfully to avoid negative reactions and ensure a high pass-along rate – the number of recipients that will pass the message to others. Much like the common cold, effective viral marketing uses people to unwittingly transmit a message within their social network. It takes the concept of word-of-mouth and enhances it with the instant global communication afforded by the Internet.

What is Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant’s products or to send potential customers to the merchant’s website, all in exchange for a share of the profits.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Click — Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by “clicking” on the link leading to the merchant’s website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate’s account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

Pay Per Sale — Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

Pay Per Lead — Every time a potential client registers at the merchant’s website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate’s account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate’s account.

For many website owners, this is a great way to earn some extra money without actually having to “do” anything. All it involves is placing an ad on the affiliate’s website. There’s no selling or promotion of any kind. The affiliate can just sit back and wait for the profits to roll in.

It’s also beneficial to the merchant. By placing affiliate marketing advertising on websites all over the Internet, he has free advertising and doesn’t need to do much selling on his own. The more websites a merchant is affiliated with, the more exposure his products get, and all he has to do is allow ads for his products to appear on someone else’s website.

While affiliate marketing has its benefits, there are also a few cons. For instance, the merchant has to share the profits with an outside party. If an affiliate uses unsavory means to bring customers to his website and sell the merchant’s products, the merchant will also have to contend with doing a little damage control on his reputation.

The affiliate has to do thorough research on the merchant before agreeing to affiliation. To not do so can mean ending up with a merchant who refuses to pay commission fees or packs up his business and moves on without informing any of his affiliates. This is rare, however, and most merchants and affiliates have a pleasant and profitable business arrangement.

It’s important to choose wisely. In some cases, an ad can be placed on an affiliate’s website for months before a potential customer “clicks” or purchases something. If the commission is only pennies, this can lead to a frustrating relationship. Both the affiliate and the merchant are well advised to ensure the relationship will be mutually beneficial.

Affiliate marketing is considered one of the best ways to earn money online. If this is an avenue you wish to pursue, you’d be well advised to research each merchant thoroughly. After that, there’s not much else to do except wait for the profits to roll in.

 

CPC, CPA, CP.. what??

CPA (Cost Per Action) – The cost paid per qualified action (click, sale, registration) from an online advertisement or affiliate link.

CPC (Cost Per Click) – The cost or cost-equivalent paid per click through from an online advertisement to the advertiser’s destination.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) – Total cost of online advertisement campaign divided by the number of leads generated.

CPM (Cost Per thousand impressions) – An agreed upon price paid to a content site for displaying an advertiser’s banner a thousand times. “M” represents the Roman numeral for 1000.

CPS (Cost Per Sale) – The cost paid per sale generated from an online advertisement or affiliate link.

CR (Conversion Rate) – Percentage of site visitors that take a desired action.

CTR (Click Through Rate) – The percentage of visitors that click-through an ad impression/link compared to the total number of visitors that viewed the ad impression/link.

Click through – The process of clicking on a link to visit another page or site.