Focused on expanding my horizons the last couple of week by reading about some topics that I am not familiar with. One I focused on was the concept of being awake, living in the moment. Being awake you say? But I am awake 12+ hours a day you say!
Are you really awake or are you just going through the motions? Do you live in the past, present and future all at the same time? When you are engaged in a discussion, are you thinking about something that has previously happened or other things that you need to do? Or are you truly focused in the moment with all attention on that one idea, thought, person or event?
Initial thoughts:
Focus solely on what you are doing – this will not be easy at first but keep trying
Look people directly in the eye and listen hard to what they are saying – As my friend Brendan says, God gave you two ears and only one mouth, so listen twice as much as you speak
Give the gift of attention – focus on the present/the moment
Great new stuff from Return Path on mobile open rates and what is happening around the globe.
Return Path is the worldwide leader in email intelligence. Their solutions utilize the world’s most comprehensive set of data to maximize the performance and accountability of email, build trust across the entire email ecosystem and protect users from spam and other abuse.
In their most recent study, mobile continues to extend its lead on open rates.
But behavior by country differs considerably. North America leads in mobile opens:
And Apple’s IOS is by far the dominant operating system for mobile opens.
We often talk about what is happening in mobile. Well, with the holiday shopping season now in full swing, we will cover some of the more recent trends in mobile shopping and the ever increasing impact of how these little hand held devices are changing everything we know about how people shop.
I found a great new web-site, Quartz, www.qz.com, that covers a variety of interesting topics including mobile. The facts below were provided in an article by Christopher Mims. He is the science and technology correspondent for Quartz. He believes that the most interesting things about the universe have yet to be discovered, and that technology is the primary driver of cultural change.
55% of mobile users buy products on their devices, but 80% research purchases on them
When you are in a meeting it is your responsibility to participate. That is why you are there.
In order to effectively participate, you need to follow the conversation closely and consider every point being made so that you can comment and add value to the meeting. If you are not prepared to add value, why did you go to the meeting? If you are multi-tasking your ability to add value drops dramatically.
Always focus on value creation and making a difference. If you are reading your tiny screen, you are not contributing and it is obvious to everyone else in the meeting that you are not contributing.
When you are juggling e-mails, calls and texts your IQ falls 10 points. Don’t let your IQ fall 🙂
My first e-mail account was with AOL. I admit it. That just means I have been around a few years longer than many of my readers. Like many folks, I actually still have an AOL e-mail, but I never use it for anything. Occasionally I will check it and clean out the spam, but certainly not a priority in-box. For my personal e-mail I use Google and iCloud primarily.
So I was a bit surprised when I learned last week that AOL was introducing a new e-mail solution called Alto. Alto, which launched on October 18 is a complete re-imagination of e-mail. New users can sign up for an invitation at www.altomail.com.
“People need a new email address like they need a hole in the head,” David Temkin, AOL’s senior vice president of mail and mobile, told CNNMoney in an interview. “What they need is an email service that addresses the way we use email today.” “Email hasn’t had a serious rethink really since Gmail came out,” says Temkin. “We wanted to take a swing at that and not be tethered by the existing 20 million or so people using AOL Mail. The idea was to create without scrutiny and questioning.”
To AOL’s product team, that meant focusing on two key points: quick organization, and a stylish, ad-free design that Temkin said was “created with the iPad in mind.”
Check out some of the images from Alto:
Alto’s uses “Stacks,” a system for sorting incoming emails. The tool works like a filter — automatically pulling in emails based on sender, recipient, keywords, etc. — and places messages in icons that appear in the inbox view. New stacks are created by dragging and dropping emails. Alto also creates some stacks automatically: Photos, for emails with any in-line or attached images (excluding newsletters); Attachments, which lets users preview thumbnails or view documents without opening a new program; Social Notifications, for sites like Facebook (FB)or Twitter; and Daily Deals, which includes coupon emails from sites like Groupon (GRPN) as well as retailer newsletters.
Other cool stack features include a visual analytics display. Alto analyzes the emails categorized into a given stack for the last 30 days: how many messages were received and sent, how many went unread, and how many came from each sender. Also, stacks can swap places based on which have received new emails — or users can “pin” stacks to keep them in their place.
Alto’s search capabilities let users look for contacts or keywords across all synced email accounts. Clicking on a contact’s name pulls up a slew of information from email and social accounts: recent messages, the stacks with which that person is associated and their general contact information. If you link up your social media accounts, Alto will also drops in links to your contacts’ accounts on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn (LNKD).
I have signed up for the beta. Could it be that “I’ve got Mail”?
Much of the content for this article was sourced from Fast Company, still my favorite magazine. www.fastcompany.com
Where are people opening their e-mails? This is a critical piece of information for all e-mailmarketers today. E-mail access has changed radically over the last couple of years with the rapid emergence of mobile and of course new devices such as the iPad. Well, we have a new number 1 in where people access e-mail. And the winner is:
In a recent study completed by Litmus, www.litmus.com, a leading e-mail testing and marketing analytics company located in Cambridge, MA, the iPhone and the iPad now represent 28% of all opened e-mails. The results of this study were sourced from over 1 billion e-mail opens from Litmus’ global e-mail analytics solution. Take a look:
Even more amazing is that mobile is now the number 1 platform for opening e-mails:
So for all companies using e-mail to drive business and customer satisfaction, what is your responsive design strategy to capitalize on this rapidly changing trend? Your competitors are surely looking at this opportunity with a keen eye.
Thanks to the folks at Litmus for the awesome analysis and infographics.
As we have covered, the iPad has totally changed the market for personal computers. For a device that supposedly no one needed, it appears as if these forecasts were a bit wrong. Just a bit outside 🙂
The growth of the iPad continues to be staggering. Looks like it has become pretty important for consumers:
So the iPad is now used by 46.7% of those surveyed as their primary computer. Impressive!
Looks like it has become a real favorite for non-work related activities.
And people are using their iPads for many different things:
Last week we touched on some of the amazing technology we are now dealing with as consumers and business people. The touchscreens on our smartphones and tablet devices have enabled amazing things with regard to your creativity, productivity and overall engagement with the content on these devices.
These devices and the rapid emergence of social networks have provided an incredible amount of new advertising inventory for businesses to reach their consumers while also significantly increasing the difficulty of communicating with their customers. So what is a business to do? How engaged are consumers on these new devices and how responsive are they to advertising?
The IAB is the Internet Advertising Bureau and they have just published a new study about consumer responsiveness to advertising on touchscreen devices. Ads that appear on touchscreen devices like tablets and smartphones are showing some of the highest levels of engagement of all digital ads.
Before we delve into some of the detail, let’s pop it up a level and frame the different types of the mobile value proposition and consumer engagement.
Mobile value propositions vary by device type:
Smartphones are mission-critical devices for life, with nearly 70% of smartphone users saying they “won’t leave home without it.”
By contrast, tablets are a media consumption hub, with nearly 70% of tablet users reporting that their tablet is an “entertainment device.”
Engagement on tablets surpasses engagement on smartphones. Across key dimensions – use/consumption, the receptivity and action related to advertising, and the activity of shopping – tablet users are more easily engaged.
Although smartphones are more likely than tablets to be used outside the home, there is a clear reliance on their smartphones across high-value activities at home as well, for example while reading print media and watching TV.
Mobile affects traditional media consumption in distinct ways. Two audiences are emerging – one that drives traditional media through mobile (so mobile complements or augments their traditional media usage); another that detracts (so mobile substitutes for or replaces traditional media). Almost half of tablet owners say having a tablet has had an impact (positive OR negative) on the amount of time they spend reading magazines and newspapers.
Here are some initial headlines from the report:
Size matters. Between tablet and smartphone users, the IAB found that those on tablets are actually more engaged in advertising. When asked if they engage with ads more than once a week — that is, click on an ad for more information — 47 percent of tablet users responded yes, compared to 25 percent of smartphone users. Tablet users were also more likely to “take action” on the ad (that could mean buying something, downloading something, filling out a survey, or visiting another site): 89 percent of tablet users took action versus 80 percent of smartphone users.
The medium is the message. Also, as we’ve seen from other tablet research, people are more likely to be using their tablets to read and consume entertainment media for longer periods of time, while smartphones are about short bursts of use. Those shorter bursts imply that users will be less inclined to spend time clicking around on ads than on the tablet. Among smartphone users, 47 percent of smartphone users say they “never” interact with mobile ads, compared to just 23 percent on tablets.
Context is king. The top three categories for mobile ads, as ranked by respondents, were the same across tablets and smartphones, although their rankings differed. They were coupons related to things users were already browsing; ads for products that were already being shopped for; and favorite brands (again possibly related to your browsing activity).
Since the beginning of our computing experience, we were tethered to the computer either through a mouse or a touchpad on the computer. This devices enabled us to interact with our e-mail, games, browsers etc. and enabled us to navigate through the many options that exist in this wild, wild world. But now all of that has been changed by the touchscreens available on our smartphones and tablets. And what a new phenomenon this is. We push, we pinch, we use all five fingers to make new and even more amazing things happen, all with our phalanges.
And this reminds me of a song:
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Now touch me, baby
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?
What was that promise that you made?
Why won’t you tell me what she said?
What was that promise that you made?
Now, I’m gonna love you
Till the heavens stop the rain
I’m gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/doors/touch+me_20042756.html ]
Come on, come on, come on, come on
Now touch me, baby
Can’t you see that I am not afraid?
What was that promise that you made?
Why won’t you tell me what she said?
What was that promise that you made?
I’m gonna love you
Till the heavens stop the rain
I’m gonna love you
Till the stars fall from the sky for you and I
The touchscreen has two main attributes. First, it enables one to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than indirectly with a pointer controlled by a mouse or touchpad. Secondly, it lets one do so without requiring any intermediate device that would need to be held in the hand (other than a stylus, which is optional for most modern touchscreens). Such displays can be attached to computers, or to networks as terminals. They also play a prominent role in the design of digital appliances such as the personal digital assistant (PDA), satellite navigation devices, mobile phones, and video games. (Sourced from Wikipedia)
There are many forms of touch technology. The first touchscreen appeared in 1965, and while we think of them as a relatively recent development, it’s easy to forget we’ve been using them in devices like cash machines for nearly 30 years.
More recently, we’ve seen two main types of touchscreen technology. The older resistive type uses a screen comprising two separate layers with a small gap between them. Pressing down on the top layer makes it touch the bottom layer, and the connection is recorded as a tap. The biggest drawback with resistive screens is that they’re far less accurate than other technologies, and most don’t support multi-touch.
Capacitive touchscreens use glass displays insulated with a conductive layer. As our fingers are also conductive, touching the screen produces a small charge that produces a disruption in the screen’s electrostatic field, which is recorded. Capacitive technologies are more accurate than resistive, and support multi-touch gestures.
Despite their obvious advantage, capacitive screens have their disadvantages too: they rely on the charge in your finger, so they won’t work with gloves.
These days, a new technology based on old standards is gaining ground. Optical touchscreens are developed by a company called NextWindow. Working together, two optical sensors track the movement of any object close to the surface by detecting the interruption of an infra-red light source. The light is emitted in a plane across the surface of the screen and can be either active (infra-red LED) or passive (special reflective surfaces).
At the heart of the system is a printed circuit controller board that receives signals from the optical sensors. Its software then compensates for optical distortions and triangulates the position of the touching object with extreme accuracy.
Some techno babble for you today. All I know is that I love my iPad and my iPhone and the touchscreen capabilities are just awesome.
So you are working on your e-mail marketing campaigns and have noticed a seismic shift in where folks are now accessing your incredible content and compelling offers. People once opened their e-mails primarily on their desktop or laptop computers. But now new devices such as your smartphone and tablet, primarily the iPad, have become primary access points for e-mail. Take a look at the following chart:
Webman's View 
