Email Is Not A Tool, It's A Platform

The new age startups would have you believe that email is dead and would convince you to move on and adopt a multitude of tools in its place. The truth though is that email is not going anywhere and that is because email is not just a business communication tool - it is a platform, a platform where you can market your business, attend to customer support, manage your projects, make cold calls etc.
It is a platform that, with right enhancements, can help you run your entire business, especially for small businesses and startups.
It is, in fact, an open, and a multi-faceted platform on which innovative things are being built.
Email is not dying but is transforming, tremendously. It has gotten much smarter and easier to use, without losing its interoperability or its ubiquity.
If you are wondering why the hell should I try and enhance email through add-ons and extensions when I can simply use tools that don’t depend on email, consider this - instead of using a separate tool for each operation such as customer service, task management, email marketing etc., if you were to enhance your email and base your operations on this platform, it can serve as the common centre for all your business operations. Instead of having to shift from one tool to another, all the information you need will be right there, in your inbox.
Why do I call email a platform?
I call it a platform because of its ability to let us conduct multiple operations right out of the inbox.
Project management
Emails contain a lot of information essential to running a project. For example, a request from a client via email is a task you will assign to one of your team members. You will either do this by forwarding the email to the team member or by using a task management tool.
On that note, there are some innovative tools out there, which can partially or completely integrate with email and work in tandem with the inbox. These enhancements allow you to design your project management workflows, delegate tasks to team members, monitor the status of these tasks and more.
We anyway conduct most of our project management operations from the inbox; complementing this process with the right set of tools can help you perform better. In fact, you can run a whole bunch of virtual teams quite effectively, if you equip yourself with the right set of tools.
Customer support
We already conduct a number of customer support activities through email. Especially for small to mid-sized businesses, email is the go-to customer service platform. You can use an email response management solution to ease your job. You can also enhance your service by using simple features such as email templates (which maintain consistency across all reply emails) or use automation to follow-up on customers after you provide your customer service.
You can also make use of tools with features like Shared Mailbox which allow you to maintain a centralized inbox from where you can assign customer support emails to you team members.
Client management
Email is the best way to manage your relationship with your clients/customers. Here’s why:

• It’s ubiquitous - everyone uses email, you can be sure that all of your clients have an email ID.
• It’s interoperable - doesn’t matter which email client your customer is using (Yahoo, Gmail, Outlook etc), you can still reach them.
• Unlike other Instant messaging options like text messages or Whatsapp, email doesn’t butt into the personal space of the customer/client (which can be quite annoying!)

Sales management
Sales management is another important aspect of your business and yet again, with the right set of tools and features, email can turn into a powerful sales management tool.

• Features such as email templates can make the job easy for your sales team and can help you maintain a consistent tone in all your email replies.
• Using email, you can maintain your relationship with old customers either through follow-ups or through email newsletters.
• It is definitely easier and more appropriate to make cold sales outreach via email than any other means.
• Personalization is an important aspect of sales emails and by equipping your inbox with tools like Rapportive, which provide additional information on a lead, you can personalize the content of the email.
• Tools with features like shared contacts allow you to maintain a centralized list of  contacts for the team.

Also, consider this - email is well-suited to the mobile age.
Another remarkable aspect to consider is that email does mobile really well. Emails are generally lightweight and they can easily be downloaded in the mobile inboxes of the readers and they can respond to these emails (forward, reply, delete etc) with just a couple of clicks - very mobile user-friendly.
Also, for email marketers, the newsletters, if optimized well, will load without any format disruption as email is generally mobile ambient and convenient.
Wrapping up: Email is evolving rapidly and unbundling itself to meet the changing demands of the people and is absorbing more of the technology around it. More often than not, it’s the simple email management tricks like using labels, filters etc. that can help you boost your performance by many folds.
Additionally, don’t underestimate the power of using right tech tools that integrate with your Gmail. They can help you get through the day faster, manage email quite efficiently, communicate better, and run your business effectively.

Google CHanged World How

It’s incredible that it took just 18 years for Google -- the company reached this milestone of adulthood on Sept. 27 -- to create a market capitalization of more than $530 billion. It’s perhaps even more amazing to recall how the search engine has changed life as we know it.
Google, now a unit of holding parent company Alphabet Inc., began in Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Stanford University dorm in 1998 before campus officials asked them to find a real office after the Stanford IT department complained Page and Brin’s were sucking up all the university’s bandwidth.
By the time I joined the company in November of 2001, it was apparent that we were changing the world. As an early employee at Google -- the second attorney hired there -- there were times when shivers ran up my spine thinking about what we were building. Democratizing access to information, and bringing the real world online -- it was an inspiring place to be.

Having grown up in a working class neighborhood, I had to travel to an affluent neighborhood to access a good public library, spending countless Saturday afternoons with volumes of reference books to learn how to apply for financial aid to attend college. In those pre-Internet days, a good library and a kind-hearted librarian were my keys to advancement.
After the printing press, the first major democratization of access to information had been driven a century ago by steel baron Andrew Carnegie. He became the world’s richest man in the late 19th century and then gave it all away, donating $60 million to fund 1,689 public libraries across the United States. To my mind, Google took Carnegie’s vision of putting information in the hands of the general public and put it on steroids, creating a virtual library akin to those found only in sci-fi movies in 1998.
Google indexed the internet extraordinarily well without human intervention, unlike previously curated outlets such as Yahoo! or LexisNexis, and in such a way that the user did not have to know how to use the index or Boolean search methods. Google enabled free searches of words or terms, making all manner of information instantly retrievable even if you did not know where it was housed. With Google, you could find any needle in any haystack at any time. Unlocking that data has indeed been a great equalizer: any individual can arm him or herself with relevant information before seeing a doctor or applying for government assistance, housing or a job.

Machines Impact on Financial Services

This includes the hassle of accepting payments in India which still remains in cash. However, merchants today have realized that accepting cash is not the most seamless way for payments. “Merchants have realized that while it may not have an upfront cost but the overall lifetime cost of handling cash is really expensive compared to going cash less,” says Harshil Mathur, Co-founder, Razorpay. Bengaluru-based payment gateway solution provider, Razorpay was part of winter 2015 batch of world’s top seed accelerator Y Combinator.

“With the launch of unified payment interface, Aadhaar etc., in the next two years, the way payments are done will be changed in India. It will also be critical as more and more people enter the banking ecosystem,” adds Mathur.

Gurgaon-based Eko India Financial Services that offers payment and money transfer services to customers and retail merchants believes that data generated by these digital transactions will in-turn help merchants cope up with their working capital issues. “We share the data generated by merchants’ earnings with alternative lending companies who can offer working capital loans to these merchants based on that data as traditionally merchants have been unable to raise working capital loan from formal institutions like the bank,” says Abhinav Sinha, Cofounder & COO, Eko India Financial Services.

Clearly, fintech is the way forward in such cases even as vast Indian population remains bereft of banking services. “A government in favor of dematerialization and online on boarding of the rising rural middle class could only augment the fintech growth,” says Nikhil Kamath, Co-founder and Director, Zerodha – Bengaluru-based discount brokerage firm. However, banks too are undergoing digital restructuring to avoid being on the edge of their seats courtesy fintech start-ups that have been unbundling
banks’ various services. On the face of it, banks, however, term fintech start-ups as partners rather than their possible nightmare.

“Banks have the wherewithal of putting the right governance structure, audit mechanisms, settlement and reconciliation processes in place where as start-ups are good at knowing how to work on the user interface and user experience design. This is a perfect combination to offer better services. I often joke about it saying that if fintech start-ups are to be WhatsApp of today then banks have to play the role of Internet service providers. So both have to go hand in hand,” concludes Ritesh Pai, Senior President and Country Head - Digital Banking, Yes Bank.

There is no astonishment as to how meaningful push notifications have become for mobile. We all understand that a significant amount of a company’s success hinges on their presence in the mobile world. This means that a plausible portion of your business strategy should be based around mobile marketing, while push notifications should be a front runner within that section.
What I learned while managing push notifications at Facebook is that there are a few things to consider when trying to create a mobile presence through push notifications. You should be able to measure it, increase the impact of your program once established and also determine what other channels you should utilize.

1. Measure success.

The question many have is what metric should you use as your KPI to measure the success of your push notifications? The open rate of your notification is the biggest performance indicator when utilizing push. In other words, what percentage of push notifications were opened by users?

The higher the better.

Of course, it’s inevitable to not lose users as they go down the funnel. However, getting users to open your notification to begin with at least brings them into the funnel. Push notifications are more effective when going down a funnel anyway. Therefore, open rate is the metric that is crucial for you to examine, and optimize accordingly.

Open rate does, however, depend on the platform they’re getting delivered to.

Android Vs. IOS

When deciding which platform works best for push notifications on mobile, we can analyze data from Android and IOS. Leanplum.com shows that the open rate for push notifications is roughly 1.77 percent for iPhones, and 3.48 percent for Androids. Meaning, delivering your push notifications to Android Users will create more engagement with your brand and/or app by placing them in your funnel.

This statistic is due to user experience, another important part of making push notifications successful on mobile.

Android and IOS notifications function in different ways. With IOS, as soon as a user unlocks their phone, the notification is out of sight. While Android users have no other option but to acknowledge the notification eventually since it sticks in their notification section.

2. Personalize.

When increasing the impact that your push notification program has, your first objective should be to educate users on the benefits of receiving these notifications. This allows them to think about whether or not they want to opt out of receiving these.

Your second objective should be looking at how many people you currently send them to. While there’s no right or wrong push frequency, you need to experiment and see what frequency works best for your particular platform. If you notice that users are opting out, then maybe you’re being to spammy and need to lower how many you send. If not, you should increase the number you send out.

However, my recommendation to guarantee a much more prodigious impact is personalizing your notifications. It has been discovered that brands who personalize their push notifications leads to an increase of open rates to roughly 800 percent.

3. Leverage all channels.

After you’ve developed an app for your brand, you begin sending push notifications and utilizing techniques to increase the impact of your program. Now what? Do you stick to this method of bringing individuals into your funnel or do you utilize other channels as well?
Many companies are wondering whether or not they should send an email, after they’ve already sent a push notification. The fact is that you should be utilizing multiple channels besides push. You want to send these notifications to every channel possible to maximize reach.
What other channel can you use? As I mentioned above, email notifications are one, along with SMS and in-app notifications.
Email notifications is second to welcome emails when it comes to open rates as well. A push notification coming to a user’s phone is fine and all, but how about also sending it to their inbox, a tool many Americans check every day. By doing so, you maximize deliverability as well.
But what if you’re scared that you may annoy users by sending to multiple channels?
It would be worse if a user missed a piece of information than if they got it twice. Ultimately, you should think about your notification channels (email, push, in-app, SMS) holistically as a “universal inbox.”


Push notifications are influential drivers to maximizing mobile presence. Measuring the open rate, utilizing multiple channels to reach your users, and personalizing your notifications are surefire ways to receive the full benefit of push notifications.

Samsung Gear 360- Catch Any Angle from 0 to 360

Until now, virtual reality footage could only be produced with one of two extremes: high-end rigs that cost thousands and require a film degree to figure out, or cheap cameras with more blur than a Britpop festival.
The splash- and dust-resistant Samsung Gear 360 camera is a much-needed Goldilocks option: It’s smaller than a baseball and mixes pro-level HD video with a consumer-friendly price point, and footage is instantly editable (when paired with select Samsung smartphones, of course).
Don’t be mistaken: A decent 360-degree camera for the masses is a big deal—especially when new YouTube and Facebook features also let viewers explore these videos from their web browser. “As more consumer 360 cameras become available, more content producers will bring us past the current landscape of kitsch and cliché,” says Dillon Morris, a director at Pivot Studio, which creates 360 content.

Low Cost Businss Ideas

These are few franchises with lower costs of entry can make it easier for you to plan to be your own boss. Here's a look at the strategies behind low-cost franchising and some resources on where to find successful opportunities.

Creative Ideas

• Arts & crafts business
• Creativity consultant
• Interior designer
• Jewelry

Doing What You Love

• Freelancing your expertise
• Hobby business
• Sports business

Product Sales

• Cart/kiosk
• Direct sales
• eBay
• Gift basket
• Swap meet sales

Even More Ideas

•  Senior Care Ideas
•  Pet Businesses
•  Part-Time Business Ideas
•  Service Businesses
• Weekend Businesses Ideas

B-to-B Businesses

• Bookkeeping
• Business support
• Consulting
• Desktop publishing
• Manufacturer's rep
• Medical claims
• Security specialist
• Seminar production
• Transcription service
• Virtual assistant business

Personal Services

• Child-care
• Elder Care
• Financial Advisor
• Organizer
• Personal concierge
• Personal shopper
• Remodeling contractor
• Tutoring service
• Wedding consultant

Other Services

• Cleaning
• Event planning
• Mobile photography

Google Allo and Virtual Assistant Introduced

Google has launched its new chat app with weaker privacy protection measures than previously promised.

The company had originally said conversations within Allo would be only temporarily stored on its servers, restricting the authorities' ability to request access.
However, the Verge news site revealed that Google now holds on to the data unless users take active measures to stop it.Google has confirmed the U-turn.Privacy campaigners say the public must be kept informed about how their records are handled.

"It's important that citizens are given enough information about what will happen to their data for them make an informed choice about whether or not they want to use this service," said Daniel Nesbitt, research director at Big Brother Watch. "This includes who may be able to access it and where the data will be stored".

Virtual assistant

Allo was first announced at the Google IO event in May.
At the time, it said chat records would be "transiently" stored on its servers.
This was required to provide the app's standout feature - the inclusion of the Google Assistant, a tool that provides context-relevant suggestions.

For example, if two people are discussing Italian food, the Assistant can be asked within the conversation to give details of nearby restaurants or how to prepare a dish.
Google's support documents state that a user can opt to wipe their chat history and add that it holds onto people's data to provide them with "a more personalised experience".
But when first asked, the firm was unable to clarify whether it had abandoned plans to delete chats without being prompted.
Allo itself handled privacy queries by providing a link to the Verge.

Image caption Allo refers requests about privacy to the Verge's news site

However, a spokeswoman later confirmed the change of policy.
"We've given users transparency and control over their data in Google Allo," she told the BBC.
"Our approach is simple - your chat history is saved for you until you choose to delete it. You can delete single messages or entire conversations."

'Smarter experience'

Allo does offer an Incognito mode - which encrypts the chats in a form that prevents the Assistant listening in or the authorities being able to get an unscrambled copy - but this is not enabled by default.
That contrasts with the approach of Whatsapp, which holds on to messages only until they have been delivered, and Telegram and Apple's iMessage, which promise never to scan users' communications.

"Google has a challenge as there are already a lot of big players with chat apps with very established audiences," said Jack Kent, from the IHS Technology consultancy.
"With messaging it's not just about acquiring one user, it's about acquiring the network of users.
"Google is trying to do that by offering a smarter messaging experience, and to do that it needs the data to learn about its users.
"But it needs to be careful about how it communicates that."

Google Smart Phones

Google has placed a virtual assistant at the heart of its latest smartphones and first voice-activated speaker.

The two Pixel handsets are the first mobiles to trigger Google Assistant by pressing their home buttons, somewhat like Apple's Siri.
The Home speaker lets the same artificial intelligence tool be controlled without use of a touchscreen. It rivals Amazon's Echo.Google also unveiled new virtual reality kit and a 4K media streamer.


The Assistant has two key advantages over rival systems:

• it can hold a conversation, in which one question or command builds on the last, rather than dealing with each request in isolation
• it draws on Google's Knowledge Graph database, which links together information about more 70 billion facts, and has been in use for four years

However, the US company will have to overcome privacy concerns and convince users that chatting to a virtual assistant has advantages over using individual apps.

Google already offers the Assistant as part of its chat app Allo - but the software has been installed on only a small minority of phones that support it as yet.

 

Smarter phones

The decision to brand the phones with the Pixel name, rather than Nexus, marks a break with the past, and is intended to signify that they were designed in house rather than by another manufacturer.
The devices come in two sizes - with either a 5in (12.7cm) or 5.5in (14cm) OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen - but otherwise have similar specs.
Google said the 12.3 megapixel rear camera they share was the best on the market - basing its claim on an independent test by DxO Labs. And as further enticement, it is offering unlimited storage for the photos.

Google also drew attention to the devices' glass-and-aluminium bodies, and specifically noted they featured a headphone jack - unlike Apple and Motorola's latest models.
Unlike most Android phones, the Pixel and Pixel XL will automatically install operating-system and security updates as soon as they are released.
But it is their ability to access Assistant as a standalone facility that makes them unique, at least for now.
"It goes one step further than tapping on the microphone in the Google Search app and getting a bunch of responses - it gives a conversational feel to what you are doing," Google executive Mario Queiroz told the BBC.

How to Start Networking your Small Business

For successful small business owners, it’s not what you know -- it’s who you know. Networking is crucial for growing your customer base and professional connections. You need to have contacts, not only for possible customer referrals, but also for professional resources you can turn to when you have questions or issues related to your industry.
It’s always a good idea to build a relationship with your customers in order to increase word-of-mouth referrals. But reaching out in various ways to build new relationships with others in your industry will make you look more trustworthy, and ultimately help your business grow. Here are six easy tips to help you make that happen.

Be Active in Online Forums
As a small business, your online presence is crucial. It’s the first place potential customers will look when they’re in search of a specific product or service. But, it’s also where other small business will turn to for information.
Staying active in various online forums will not only build your reputation as a knowledgeable industry leader, but it will also allow you to build relationships with other industry professionals. Sure, it may feel like you’re being friendly with the competition, but the chances are that their small business, even though it’s similar, isn’t close enough to your location to steal any potential customers.

Stay in Touch With Your Local Community
For SMBs, sometimes the local community is the biggest and most active customer base. For that very reason, it’s important to stay in touch and engage with the local community and give them a face behind the business. It’s more personal, and it makes your place of business seem more open and inviting to questions or inquiries.
Plus, you might be surprised to find out how many other small business owners are in your area. Building a relationship with fellow business owners gives you the opportunity to collaborate on “shop local” campaigns that can build awareness and benefit everyone involved.

Go to Networking Events
For some, going to a networking event may be too impractical or expensive. But, if the opportunity arises, networking events are a great way to build professional relationships with others in your industry, especially if they aren’t necessarily close enough to be your competition.
By networking in the same industry, you’ll be able to discuss various strategies that have or haven’t worked, and the reasoning behind these successes or failures. But remember, at a networking event, it’s quality over quantity. You don’t have to meet everyone. It’s best to scope out the people that would be most beneficial for you to meet, and then focus on building a relationship with them.

Look for Opportunities Everywhere
Networking doesn’t only happen at a special event or gathering. Sometimes, a networking opportunity can arise just from striking up a conversation with the person standing behind you in line at the coffee shop. Networking can happen at any place and at any time, so it’s important to be open to them, and try to strike up a conversation whenever possible. Be sure to keep some business cards handy wherever you go.

Join Social Networking Sites
There’s no denying that social media is essential to a strong online presence. If you haven’t joined any social networking sites, you should. Facebook and Twitter are great customer service platforms. But, social sites are also useful for finding and interacting with new industry leaders.
While LinkedIn is better for the more professional side of networking, Twitter and Facebook are great for sharing content and interacting with what others post. You can also join various industry-related groups where you can discuss small business tactics or any recent changes in the industry with fellow owners.

Follow Up
It’s extremely important to follow up, not only with customers, but with new connections. For any new professional connections, you should reach out within 48 hours. You can start by connecting on LinkedIn, and then call or send an email. With professional networking, it’s all about speed. You want to make sure you follow up quickly in order to keep your business front and center in your contact’s mind.
When you’re following up with either customers or new connections, the most important aspect of the follow up is to give back. Yes, the ultimate goal is for you to improve your business and gain more customers. But the most successful networkers are the ones who give back to their customers and network, either through promotional offers or educational material.

How Google Transformed Our World

It’s incredible that it took just 18 years for Google -- the company reached this milestone of adulthood on Sept. 27 -- to create a market capitalization of more than $530 billion. It’s perhaps even more amazing to recall how the search engine has changed life as we know it.
Google, now a unit of holding parent company Alphabet Inc., began in Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Stanford University dorm in 1998 before campus officials asked them to find a real office after the Stanford IT department complained Page and Brin’s were sucking up all the university’s bandwidth.
By the time I joined the company in November of 2001, it was apparent that we were changing the world. As an early employee at Google -- the second attorney hired there -- there were times when shivers ran up my spine thinking about what we were building. Democratizing access to information, and bringing the real world online -- it was an inspiring place to be.


Having grown up in a working class neighborhood, I had to travel to an affluent neighborhood to access a good public library, spending countless Saturday afternoons with volumes of reference books to learn how to apply for financial aid to attend college. In those pre-Internet days, a good library and a kind-hearted librarian were my keys to advancement.
After the printing press, the first major democratization of access to information had been driven a century ago by steel baron Andrew Carnegie. He became the world’s richest man in the late 19th century and then gave it all away, donating $60 million to fund 1,689 public libraries across the United States. To my mind, Google took Carnegie’s vision of putting information in the hands of the general public and put it on steroids, creating a virtual library akin to those found only in sci-fi movies in 1998.
Google indexed the internet extraordinarily well without human intervention, unlike previously curated outlets such as Yahoo! or LexisNexis, and in such a way that the user did not have to know how to use the index or Boolean search methods. Google enabled free searches of words or terms, making all manner of information instantly retrievable even if you did not know where it was housed. With Google, you could find any needle in any haystack at any time. Unlocking that data has indeed been a great equalizer: any individual can arm him or herself with relevant information before seeing a doctor or applying for government assistance, housing or a job.

Getting archives online

Soon, Google could trivially retrieve any piece of data on the World Wide Web. Crucially, Google started indexing information that was previously offline, such as far-flung archives (imagine a very old text in a tower in Salamanca) to make that knowledge searchable. People’s photos and videos followed. Then, of course, Google cars began cruising and mapping our streets. That paired with GPS granted us all a new superpower -- being able to find our way in almost any small town or big city in the world.
Now Google is a global archive storing our history as it is made. It is as though a virtual world is being created right alongside our real world, a simulation of reality that grows more robust by the day. Because of Google, the creation and storage of information itself has expanded exponentially as people and scholars have access to information that enables them to make new discoveries. Those discoveries, in turn, are shared with the world thanks to the culture of sharing that has been central to the internet and Google’s philosophy. All this has sped the pace of discovery.
Of course, there have been casualties. Google has changed the business of newspapers forever and virtually single-handedly run most publishers of maps out of business. It transformed advertising, using and perfecting A/B testing to understanding our tastes and what makes a person click on an ad. Sometimes I worry that technology companies have become almost too good at this, building upon and applying these lessons to other ways of collectively sucking us into our devices more and more.
This access to information without the curation of trained journalists carries other costs too, leading to an internet rife with misinformation and untruth. Nowhere is that more evident today than in our rancorous U.S. presidential election, where it seems little value is placed on objectivity, making organizations such as factcheck.org essential reading. The growth of Google and the diminution of the role of the established media in our society at such crucial moments might cause Alexis de Tocqueville, who believed newspapers “maintain civilization,” to turn in his grave.

One thing’s for sure: With Google, the future will bring the unexpected and sometimes delightful. Autonomous cars, robots, gesture-sensing fabrics, hands-free controls, modular cell phones and reimagined cities are among the projects that lie ahead for the search giant that even as it is one of the world’s largest companies, has maintained a startup culture at its offices, which now employ more than 61,000 people.
In breaking out beyond the constraints of the online world into the physical universe, Google has made us believe (and even expect) that when one is inspired by some great purpose, we can transcend limitations. Anything becomes possible.