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We know that there are a lot of fans out there, so this list of best .io games for mobile phones and tablets will kick close to home for sure. It all started with a web browser-based game called Agar.io, made by Brazilian developer Matheus Valadares.

Top 25 best .io games list for mobile phones and tablets

Meet the Winners of Startups in North and Central America

THE EVENING SKY AT THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

FROM LYRA TO ERIDANUS

THE STARS OF SUMMER

The best podcasts that founders are listening to in 2018 Sometimes you win, other times you learn. Isn’t that what and business life is all about ? More so for the first time entrepreneurs. startup We are innumerable things everyday as founders, yet we struggle all the time. As important as it is to focus on sales, product, growth, funding etc, as much important is our health, personal relationships etc. learning There is really no magic formula to have it all in perfect harmony and balance and anybody claiming to have one is lying. What I do recommend is learning. Constant learning. Learning from the success, failure and in between of other founders who started their journey perhaps earlier than you did and succeeded in making some sense in the madness of entrepreneurial life. They help you shorten the journey or at least mentally prepare you for the roller-coaster. I’ve always been saying that there are two ways to grow. One is by talking to people smarter than you and second is reading books of people smarter than you. _In today’s day and age if you’re not constantly learning, trying new things and evolving, existing knowledge becomes…_medium.com These 67 books teach Entrepreneurship better than a Harvard MBA !!! While reading remains a great and amazing source of learning, I realise that in fast paced life reading is not always an option because it requires time. something which very less of us have to dedicate or earmark everyday. Hence step in audio books and podcasts that you can play and hear to while doing other stuff. A win-win. Books I leave up to you, but here’s a list of the best podcasts that i recommend for modern day founders on elevating their entrepreneurial game. Akimbo by Seth Godin This is Seth Godin latest podcast which discusses business, entrepreneurship, freelancing and life. Akimbo is an ancient word which means “the bend” in the river or an archer’s bow. It interprets to strength and flexibility. Akimbo’s a podcast about culture and about how we can change it. Like Seth says on how website — “The culture is real, but it can be changed. You can bend it” Indie Hackers Indiehackers is a popular podcast from Courtland and Channing Allen — the brothers who founded Indiehackers. The podcast features various startup world success stories and Courtland skilfully discusses and questions their journey and learning. Also check out Hackernoon on the Indie Hackers pod. How I built this with Guy Raz This podcast discusses how some of the most popular and successful companies succeeded and built the movements they did. It talks about the journey and story behind them. Business Wars: Excellent podcast dissecting companies on their success and failures, how decision making is affected by competition and long-term vision etc. Y Combinator Podcast Y Combinator is a startup cauldron beyond parallel. Their podcasts are too as they discuss the nitty gritty of startup life, success and failure and how disruptors emerge. Masters of Scale by Reid Hoffman Masters of Scale is a podcast hosted by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. The podcast is centred around Reid showing and discussing how companies grow from zero to hero while testing his theories with business legends. Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations It’s a podcast from the legendary Oprah Winfrey about understanding the deeper meaning of life and the world around. It features talks with Thought leaders, wellness and health experts etc. Its something to look up if you’re aiming at self-development and purpose within. Startup Hustle: As the name suggests, Startup Hustle is a podcast centred around the world of startups. Hosted by Matt Watson the podcast talks about various aspects of startup life from attending networking events to finding an assistant and everything in between about making money and growing MRR. Baremetrics Podcast Okay I stumbled upon this podcast but found it really useful with transparent addressal of various aspects of startup life. The podcast talks about simple stuff like whether to blog on medium or your website blog or reality of startups not crushing it. Not really regular with episodes but good quality content. Smart Passive Income Podcast This is Pat Flynn’s famous podcast where he talks about various strategies for running digital businesses, freelancing etc. Cardone Zone The sales maverick Grant Cardone talks about tips on entrepreneurship, sales, finance and motivation. and in case you’re still looking for the book recommendations — then this might be useful ! Originally published at blog.alore.io on June 1, 2018.

11 Best Podcasts For Founders

We’re always overdosed with choices, Image credit — Shutterstock.com Understanding the power of invisible choices we founders make which shapes our trajectory of success and avoid decision fatigue. startup Some days ago, I stumbled upon a post from Mikael Cho, CEO and Founder of Unsplash. Something he said struck home with me — “to be productive as a startup founder, choices matter”. Since it was minutes before a team conference call, I mentioned it in the call and it led to a long discussion on the topic. Post the call, in a milli-second, I could tie down a plethora of seemingly disparate things with a neat chord. As startup founders, our decisions make us who we are at that point, but our choices define what we become. It’s always about the choices we make — not just as a founder but as leaders. It’s what differentiates our highs from our lows and our stumbles from the sprints. Startup growth — The reality of it ! We have 24 hours in a day! and as a founder you owe it to yourself and the team to maximize your day by investing your time in the right places. To maximize your day you need to be making the right choices. What’s brilliant here is that this doesn’t just apply to founders alone but to anybody in a senior leadership role who wants to succeed. Every single day there are hundreds of choices we make and face — The founder’s dilemmas!! Some are obvious like what prospects to demo to, which one to chase, who to meet today etc. but there are plenty of hidden ones — The invisible choices which I feel matter more in shaping your day and week. At the cost of sounding a geek, I’ll share something interesting I read on this. Nobel Peace Prize Winning Economist, Herbert Simon classified people into two kinds of decision makers — Satisfiers and the Maximisers. — They’re the people who go to buy potatoes. They go to the nearest market, check if they like the potatoes, they’re fresh and then just buy a kilo or two. Satisfiers — These are the people who will first check if there are any deals going on at nearby markets, who is selling cheap, will probably even market hop to find the best deal and buy only 650 grams as per what was needed in the recipe. Maximisers Now imagine who of the two would face decision fatigue and feel stressed. For us to feel productive, we need to understand that we can’t be maximisers all the time. You may argue that these are the super -diligent lot but honestly, over-diligence is toxic. As a startup founder, time is the most valuable asset you have — not the team, not the VC funding but time. With your time spent on the right decisions and tasks you can move from zero to hero in months. an essential step in this direction is making choices that help remove the cognitive overload which is basically getting confused when presented with multiple choices. It starts with something basic — your sleeping hours. I have noticed that in general having standardized sleeping hours and time gives you a head start into productive day. Eg. I sleep at 12 and wake up around 4 AM on weekdays. It helps me create an early morning routine that I can use to create a plan for the day, prioritize, work on tasks that need undivided attention etc. On the contrary days when I’m sleeping later and waking up at 6 AM-7 AM, that routine gets into an imbalance. The invisible choice I make here was picking the time of those hours. Even your choice of wardrobe can play a part. I work on the principle of elimination here. I have about 20 black-round-neck tees and 7–8 denims that I wear to work every day. You might think “Oh he’s copying Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs” and its quasi-true. Them doing this was a validation of the idea being right. I wasn’t trying to copy them but the greater meaning and value in it that very few care to see. learning 56% of us take anything between 11 -30 minutes to decide what to wear and get ready in the morning ( Source: ) . That’s a scarily sizable chunk in the day of a founder. If you already knew what to wear you're saving time and could utilize it to do other stuff. e.g. I cook breakfast for my wife or do some running while hearing a podcast because I always get ready in less than 5 minutes! YouGov I really am in black all the time. From webinars to meetings to everyday at work. Of course, its crazy as per the fashion police but then its just one decision less I’m making and I prefer it that way. ( and I’m not gonna write about how my wife isn’t a fan of my wardrobe 😉 ) Next when stepping out for work — even taking an Uber or driving my own car can make a difference. I find myself more irritable and drained on days that I drive (and more so if I encounter traffic). These are just minor personal examples of how life is when you first identify the invisible choices you’re making subconsciously and then turn that into a positive conscious choice. There is this concept of learned helplessness that many of us face. It stems from us being passive, procrastination and decreased problem-solving ability which leads to irritation and may in extreme cases lead to depression. What I wanted to talk on in a little detail was the choices we make at work: 1. The Choice to be nice even when that’s not right I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard fellow founders not feeling right about taking a call and choose to fire an under-performing or mis-aligned employee. In fact, in many cultures firing or being fired is seen as a shameful and negative. It shouldn’t be, and it isn’t the case. Its just two people figuring out they are misaligned and meant for different things. Hiring an employee is not marrying them to take care of them at their worst but most of us choose to delay this decision in the hope things will change. Truth is if things haven’t changed in 100 days, they probably never will. Choose your business over choosing to bet its success on stumbling new employees. 2. The Choice to not delay Procrastination should be termed an epidemic. I’m serious! There are just sooooooooo many of us who defer things thinking “Hey today looks heavily booked for me, let me push this to next week” or “Let me do it when I have time.”. Business doesn’t run that way and surely not an early stage one. Recently we were interviewing Scott Sambucci, CEO and Founder of and a total genius of his trade. Mid-conversation he said, “Show me your calendar and I’ll show you your cashflows”. SalesQualia His one sentence really rattled me into thinking of how I’m guilty of doing this and guilty of seeing others do it and yet not alter that. Make a conscious effort to identify when you’re procrastinating. Pick out days which you will dedicate to tasks eg . 2 hours every day dedicated to something specific. Mondays — strategy and planning, Tuesday- prospecting, Friday — Hiring etc. Once you make this, stick to it and you will see 3. Not choosing specificity This is something we all know theoretically and yet in the real life we just loose control over. We start with making a bulletproof plan on what your business would be in Week 0 , week 10 , week 30 where you will focus specifically on persona a, persona b and persona a and C respectively but when you really get going you fail to get specific about who to target. Target audience when there is no strategy , Image Credit — marketoonist.com Not understanding who your target audience is well enough and going for an almost “spray and pray approach” The important thing to note is that you are the master of your time!! 4. Choosing to understand that Less is more Today there are a million tools available to ease your life. e.g. if you want to do social media scheduling you have the likes of Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, tweet Deck etc. If it was just one tool available, then it would be easy but when there are many there is an almost analysis paralysis. You’re so confused which one to go for and what features you may need in the future. Fear of Missing out (FOMO) takes over as well. Now listen and hear me right on this — Choosing means saying one yes and a hundred Nos. A simple thing would be to trust your gut and go for availing one solution only. e.g. when my colleague Deepika who heads marketing wanted to use Hootsuite and Buffer both I asked her to use one and not both to cut away the need to be hopping between tools. It helped us focus more on the right stuff. 5. Choosing technology to aid you and not lead you Okay this might sound a bit arrogant but the I am of technology is to aid us getting productive but define the direction. I’m talking of it in the terms of not falling victim to technology leading you astray. Okay, answer this truthfully, how many times have you felt drawn towards checking your email every few minutes or had the urge to check your phone every time it pings. I’m not saying go incognito but limit this behaviour. For e.g. you can check your email once every hour. make sure your phone is silent when you’re concentrating on something with only emergency contacts allowed to ring (yes, almost all smart phones let you do that! ) Also use technology that a majority of your customers use. Eg in B2B we all know that LinkedIn is an amazing platform, however for us at Alore CRM we felt Facebook helped us connect better with our customers and prospects through various groups and features. Since people tend to have their guard marginally down on Facebook and are more vocal there, we created our support forum in the form of a Facebook group community — . We also started a community IdeasThatScale to share sales and growth hacks and connect with the ecosystem interested in sales and growth in Uservoice IdeasThatScale This helped us harness technology and the right platform to create immersive experience for our users. I’d suggest, take a step back and see what technology can help you save time and get you away from the fluff and cough. It will not just help you save time but also save you mental exhaustion from hopping between ten tools and channels. To conclude I’d like to say that the founder’s dilemmas will always exist. Every step of the way you will feel you have a choice to make — spend time on X or do Y but eventually which step takes you towards the bigger goals is key to your growth. You will some days work 18–20 hours in the day and some not. All through your focus needs to be on if every day you’re adding value. Taking a break is not bad but if you can take a break and still benefit, then why not eg. you watch Netflix or you read Phil Knight’s autobiography Shoe Dog, go for drinks with friends every week or go to attend networking drinks at the co-working space nearby. The choice is yours. make it right, make it count ! I’d like to just quote John C Maxwell to close- “Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make, makes you !! “ Originally published at blog.alore.io on May 18, 2018.

The founder’s dilemmas — What we miss when making negative invisible choices

Most leading companies today rely on the power of Machine (ML) and Artificial Intelligence(AI) to understand consumer behaviour, turn data into information and propel themselves into a productive tomorrow. Learning Thought I’d write this short note on what Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are and their business relevance. If I look at it holistically, saving time and gaining insights are the two biggest gains from these technologies. let me give you a snapshot on why tomorrow’s business will belong to ML and AI What is Machine Learning? Machine learning gives computers the ability to program themselves without explicitly asking command for each and every task given to it. Machine learning develops programs that help the computer to access data, learn it and compute the tasks given accordingly. This helps computers to execute tasks automatically without human intervention. Machine learning algorithms come in two categories: 1. Supervised 2. Unsupervised Supervised algorithms require human intervention to provide an input and output whereas unsupervised algorithms do not require humans to provide an input and an output to the machine. This is an iterative approach called that helps the machine to read data and arrive at conclusions all by itself. Deep Learning Machine learning helps you in completing complex tasks that cannot be done easily by humans. Machine learning business applications: Machine learning is found everywhere in our daily lives and I’ll share some use cases: The online shopping recommendations that you get on your smartphone, Driver-less cars and advanced automotive technology Your Facebook feed that suggests your friends and the content that may interest you, Voice feature in your smartphones that recognises your speech and talks to you. Machine learning is also the key foundation of dynamic pricing and image classification and Machine Learning can identify sentiment analysis with 83% accuracy on twitter feeds. This knowledge in the hands of a marketer — priceless !! A classic often discussed example of Machine learning is, The Bayesian spam filter developed by computer Scientist and famed Startup Investor Paul Graham. It used ML to identify spam based on certain keywords. What is Artificial Intelligence? Coming to artificial intelligence, it is an umbrella term of machine learning. While artificial intelligence constructs machines that have cognitive power, machine learning constructs algorithms that mines data from a data set and learns from it and reasons according to it. Image credit-AllTechBuzz Machine learning factors into the development of AI, as it is an application of AI, which provides the intelligence and learning to the systems. Though machine learning counts as AI, all AI does not count as machine learning as it is far more vast than what machine learning does. AI mimics human intelligence which includes complex features like visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages. Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence have catalysed the pace of innovation in various fields with heavy data processing and heavy customer interaction. This was made possible with Chatbots for customer service, personalised communication, automatically generated replies for emails and much more. The tool we developed, , also harnesses the power of AI . feel free to sign up for a free trial for educational purposes to tinker around and see how AI is helping revolutionise sales productivity and the difference it makes. Alore CRM Artificial intelligence in business: AI has innumerable use cases in business. Listing some: Combined with machine learning, AI helps to detect fraud claims in insurance and related fields Sales and marketing teams can derive tremendous insights on consumer behaviour and customer lifetime value (CLTV) It detects and diagnoses diseases in healthcare. Provide great insights to designers Helps achieve price optimisation for products and services AI is also used in the to screen drug compounds as well as to determine what drugs work better for individuals based on their Biology. Pharmaceutical Industry Source: Tata Consultancy Services/HBR Awesome, isn’t it ?! : Wrapping up Machine learning involves applying certain logic and deriving results accordingly. It does not bother about the machine thinking intelligently, whereas, artificial intelligence needs the machine to think intelligently and derive solutions. Machine learning and artificial Intelligence will together provide a massive thrust to businesses. The game has begun but we are yet to exploit the potential these technologies hold. Most companies are yet to adopt AI and ML into everyday business decisions and unless they do so, we’re not really doing much to step into the future. About me: Chief visionary at who breathes his mission of an AI powered productive world. Alore CRM Originally published at blog.alore.io on March 21, 2018.

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence — What they are to business

Defining your ideal customer is the first step towards customer acquisition. Having this knowledge is critical for all your activities like product development, business strategy, sales followup, content creation, acquisition to even retention. anddddd please throw away the misconception that “its just for the people or for social media ” design marketing In my previous avatar of a VC and now an entrepreneur, I’ve seen that sales teams having clarity on each buyer persona they want to target has been a major differentiation factor between the hustlers and the drifters. What are you ? Let me tell you some more on why I think buyer persona is critical in sales and marketing. What is a Buyer persona ? To know your buyers you need to research and observe your target audience. Based on this initial brainstorming and research an imaginary person is created who vaguely inhabits the most common qualities of your audience. That’s your buyer persona. eg. you are a fashion shoe boutique owner. 31 year old Gabriela who works at Accenture and loves to dress up for your work could be one of your buyer personas. You can design your content marketing or email marketing campaign accordingly. Image credit- Neilpatel.com At times there is more than one buyer persona for your product. This happens when your product is good fit for many types of customers. So here, we need to make buyer persona for each group. How is Buyer persona different from an empathy map? Empathy mapping delves and functions out of the sensory information of your target audience. What they see, hear, feel, think, do etc. You can read all about empathy maps in detail . here On the other hand, a buyer persona is an imaginary picture of a buyer detailing the perceivable traits of a target audience e.g. Lifestyle choices, education, demographic etc. That way, when you are writing a blog post, email ,sales communication you would exactly know whom you are talking to and this would any day, help in higher conversion rate, as the message conveyed is more specific and personalised. Buyer persona provides direction to your outbound and inbound marketing. We now know Buyers persona is important for business. But, how do we make one?? The basic buyer persona template Ideally three to five personas are more a good number to represent your ideal customers. The template would contain the basic information like who the person is, what they value and how to speak to them. A quick overview of the same would be: details about the company, job role 1. Job Title: : Age, gender, household Income, Urban/rural, Education, religion, social status 2. Demographics Primary and secondary goals, how our product can achieve these goals, the challenges faced, can our company solve these challenges 3. Goals and Challenges: Value system, common objections and fear specified during sales pitch 4. Value/Fears: Here’s a fictitious sample of the template we use at : Alore How to create a Buyer persona? The first step to making Buyer’s Persona is to speak extensively to your existing customers as they are the ones who are using your product. Speak to a sizeable number (50+ people at minimum). You need to do it diligently at least once or preferably twice in a year. In case you are new player, try speaking to follow your nearest competitors social media followers and try to get in touch with them. The ideal situation would be to take an appointment with your customer for 10–15 minute phone call/meeting to understand them better or have them fill an e-survey. In case there are no existing customers, you can look at your competitor’s customers. Customers generally like when they are being heard, interviewing them gives them a chance to give you an honest opinion about your product. Moreover, when you interview them, they tend to feel their opinion are being valued and more often tend to become more loyal towards your company. Tip for Interviewees Use incentives wherever possible to lure your customers and prospects to speak to you. eg free survey results, free e-book, free templates, coupons etc. When you are dealing with your non- customers it is very essential that you make it clear in the beginning itself that this isn’t a sales call. You need to specify that you are doing to research to serve them better. How to use the data Once you are through with your research, you will have lot of data about your potential and current customers. The next important step would be to identify commonalities and patterns among these customer data. Give the persona a name. Similarly create 2–3 more personas and share it with your team to use it effectively. In conclusion I’d just like to repeat what I asked earlier. Take out minimum of a day to conduct the exercise on identifying your buyer personas and then working on solving their problems and fulfilling their needs. You have to reach a point where within 30 seconds you can identify your top 3 buyer cohorts and in order of their relevance. That’s when you’re onto something huge. Hoping this helped !! Do share your thoughts on what you think of creating buyer personas and how/how not its been of use. I’d love to hear. Originally published at blog.alore.io on March 7, 2018.

The Buyer persona — Why and how sales managers must use it

knows what you’re searching or even remotely interested in. knows what you share, who you’re friends with, where you hang out, where you holiday, which city you have roots in, studied in and where you live. Google Facebook Amazon knows what you buy, what you gift !! And all this is they help you with for free! — Basically, when you’re not paying them a dime and every platform is available for free, then “YOU” ARE THE PRODUCT! and what are you paying the companies with ? — Yes, Data !! Marketers today have mountain loads of data about you — You’re either a consumer or a prospect. However, this data that flows in through social media and various platforms is massively unstructured.A recent survey says that 80% of the data created in the world are unstructured. With tonnes of unstructured data flowing in at a skyrocketing speed, it is difficult for our good old relational databases to analyse them and give us the solution that we are asking for and that too in a jiffy. Who saves the day in this case ? Of course, Big Data !! So what is Big Data? The name is the game !! Big data is extremely large volumes of data which can be analyzed, sliced and diced to reveal data trends, patterns and even predict future growth and trends. It is not only enormous in volume but also is the foundation of modern and future marketing since it gives businesses the power to analyse human behaviour and interactions using it. How do you store Big Data? Well big data is data that's exceeding terabytes of space so makes sense to use specialized systems for it. Hadoop is a popular tool that allows you to store and save Big data which can later be used for querying. NoSQl is another popular option. Hive is a popular data management SQL query like way of accessing Big data. Presto is another Facebook developed query engine to handle Big Data. The Big Data stack , Source: Informatica blog Big data rose to fame in the early 2000’s and ever since more and more businesses have recognized it as a tool to aid employees work efficiently. With the help of big data, combined with the concepts of learning and deep computing, organizations are able to predict potential issues, understand interactions and come up with solutions and plans. machine Importance of Big Data: Big data doesn’t really relate to the amount of data you have but the result of the analysis that you derive: It helps you derive solutions on the following: Minimizing cost Eradicating failures Analyzing customer buying habits Reducing time Simplifying Decision making and much more Sharing some use cases for Big data in marketing from a : research done by Datameer Customer Analytics (48%), Operational Analytics (21%), Fraud and Compliance (12%) New Product & Service Innovation (10%) & Enterprise Data Warehouse Optimization (10%) How you can benefit from Big data as a marketer: Research showing how marketers can harness Big Data to form more meaningful relationships with customers, Source: Forrester Research showing how marketers can harness Big Data to form more meaningful relationships with customers, Source: Forrester 1. Pulling out outside data from other platforms for decision making Ad messaging and re-targeting are a huge benefit of Big Data. You’d argue its basic pixels at play but no, there’s more !! The pixels are identifying your last looked at shoes on Amazon among the millions of records when you step into a blog or etsy etc. In a time when marketers want to deliver everything faster, better, quicker, Big Data ensures you have that edge. 2. Customer service revisited Customer service has been replaced by new systems that read big data and this data is used to interpret and analyze customer responses and derive with responses and reports. 3. Risk identification Big data can identify fraud and risks faced by the organisations or to the product in a campaign. 4. Increase quality of data stored Big data lets you analyse which data is relevant and which isn’t. It helps you delete junk data that might not be required in future or those that are infrequent and less redundant. 5. Laser sharp targeting: The times of spray and pray marketing are dead. Today customers are targeted according to their behaviour, likes and interests. I.e. the marketers have started providing their customers a personalised version of their products and services. Big data lets businesses uncover the browser activity, web activity, search data, track social media activity and searches, demographic location and much more to target specific customers and campaign according to their likes effectively. This is totally going to improve user experience and increase customer satisfaction. Conclusion: With growth being centre-stage to a million strong user database, knowing what your users want or crave is key. Imagine knowing insights like “Next years summer fashion colour will be Blue” or “Men in Alaska are crazy about Movember” . As a marketer there’s a ton of activity you can plan around such insights if its your target audience. Big data is totally here to stay. Written in collaboration with colleague Deepika and Originally published at blog.alore.io on March 19, 2018.

Is your business utilizing Big data in marketing ?

Conversion rates as high as 20%. That’s the kind of results I’ve seen with some email campaigns so let me get this straight — emails are still the best way to target your audience. Image credit- Unsplash However, often I see sales and marketing managers debate on the type of emails. The image laden HTML emails or just simple plain text, when to send, and how many is too many etc. Since the newest product of our company provides email automation as one of its features, I think we at Alore can speak on it with a fair amount of authority because we’ve been breathing and living it day-in-day-out for the past few months or rather year ! Alore CRM So if you’re a sales or manager who is sending out regular emails, here’s the debate decoded. marketing What are HTML emails: HTML emails are the emails which have coded email templates. They are heavy in , color and imagery and come across like a webpage. design Screenshot of an HTML email from a subscribed McKinsey Newsletter What are plain text emails: Plain text emails are emails sent like you were typing it on a word doc and sending the text as -is. Lesser attractive than their HTML sibling but double as effective. Screenshot from a plain text email subscribed to from ace content marketer Tori Reid At Alore, we champion plain text emails. Its just simple, business needs to be about growth, growth comes from sales, sales comes from better reach outs and one of the best ways for great B2B reach-outs is emails — an opened email that’s been replied to!! And we’re not just theorizing on this but also seeing actual results. Alore customer AS shared the following with us. An open rate of 62% and reply rate of 35% !! — A simple plain text email campaign to a well segmented target audience. An Alore customer shared this screenshot from his campaign. Open rates of 62% and Reply rate of 35% Let me be clear on one thing though — There is no compromise to the quality of a subject line and email copy. You can’t sell donkey crap just because it’s on a clean white background. ALWAYS offer value in the content. So why are plain text emails better than HTML ones? Plain text emails are hands down winners. Here’s the collective wisdom on “why” : 1) Plain text emails end up where they should: The Inbox. When you have no HTML elements in the mail, there are higher chances of it not landing up in spam, promotion tabs etc. That’s not where you should aspire to reach. Plain text emails generally manage to squeeze and pave their way through to the primary inbox even if people have put in filters. 2) Consumer minds have become trained to evade salesy imagery. Highly designed HTML emails have become sore to eyes. Everyone sends them. To gather more attention you add GIFs, colors, images etc. More gimmicks to gather attention, more loss of trust. Eg B2C might need the imagery to entice its target audience but B2B audinece isn’t a huge fan of image heavy emails. When you send a plain text email, it appears like a fresh breath of air. You catch attention immediately. 3) It looks personal (even though automated). To most consumers, HTML emails = mass mail campaigns. People like it when they are given personal attention and plain text emails gives them that feeling. 4). They’re easy to skim and scan through. You are used to reading on white background. Books, Newspaper, everything. Easier to grasp things written in a plain white background rather than colorful text/ background. The focus is on content and not anything else. Shorter is better. 5) Higher open rates: Its proven!! . The images will need more bandwidth right? An HTML template with images had 25% lower opens than a Plain text version with no images 6) Device compatibility: Plain text emails are easier to read on any device compared to the HTML emails that need scrolling and device optimization for people who are reading on their hand-held devices. 7) Last but most important — email automation should NOT be about clicks !! When you write a plain text email, you tend to use shorter sentences and be precise and less salesy. You tend to not bait the reader with a hundred clicks but with information for none or one or maybe two meaningful clicks. Its about people. the real stuff . Pause and think, would you like getting an email from vikas@plash.in ? or from no-reply@plash.in ? So why move back to Plain text emails? No, its not some fancy-schmancy way to bring back email-retro. With the deluge of marketing content, we’re exposed to every effing single day, we’ve trained our minds to skip the clutter. Think. How many flyers do you read every day? or every offer that’s emailed to your inbox? We humans, try our quickest way to find the crux of every message. It’s because at our very core, we hate being sold to or marketed at (and imagine I’m a passionate marketer writing this !!). We all simplicity and authenticity. crave Why not just make it simpler and easier to communicate and be understood? Closing thought: Understanding the essence of your email should not be a maze hunt for the one reading it. It should be a poetic verse. _With the change in customer buying behavior, sales is rapidly undergoing transformation to meet the demands of more…_blog.alore.io Top sales trends you must know about ! - Productivity Revolution Article co-written with Deepika Singh and originally published at blog.alore.io on March 9, 2018.

Why plain text email ensures better growth than HTML email

While you sat in a comfy chair at Starbucks sipping coffee, mid-way you had a eureka moment and figured out the next best thing to offer humanity after sliced bread. You quickly jot down your idea on a napkin and finish the coffee quickly to rush home and think on it some more. Within an hour you’re not just dreaming millions, but you think you’ve even figured it all out right. Right? Wrong!! Often, we are so carried away by what we think is the greatest idea ever, we forget the core — test the real need of your product in the market- Idea Validation !! Idea Validation should be the foundation to your plan and executed in two steps -Internal and External. What is your idea? Before you embark on your journey there are few questions you must ask. Who is your target audience (TA)? Does your idea/ product help in solving the problem they are facing? How does the product add value to their lives? The final outcome of your data must come from action metrics and not vanity metrics. Clear there? I’m hoping you are! So lets have a quick chat on how to go about Idea validation? Internal Ideal Validation: When you’re figuring out what to offer the world, ensure you have done the following checks: 1. GOOGLE — Ask and you shall find!! Do a quick search on to see if there are competing products available already . If it’s a crowded market, then maybe you should re-think your idea unless you have a very new unique feature to differentiate you. Google 2. Scout your competition: Is there a need you’re fulfilling being fulfilled by somebody else in another geography? e.g. a DIY baking kits for kids are easily available in the US but not in India. So when Bake me India created a DIY baking kit for kids it became a success in India. 3. Research deep and smart: Go to and . Now check if the keywords around your idea have good search volumes. It will give you an idea how popular the need of the product/service is likely to be. High search volumes mean you should proceed on your idea, low volumes might indicate a rethink of strategy. eg you’ve invented a cool new watch, then check if people are looking to buy or gift the watch and does it have an all year demand or just seasonal. Google Keywords Google Trends People search for watches all year and highest demand is around Christmas. Graph shows how people want to gift watches more than buy for themselves around Christmas 4. Lurk and Listen: Observe people in the industry who might be nearest competitors, analyse their size, scale, outreach etc. to know if that’s something you can replicate. eg you’re planning on making some exotic teas which do not exist yet but there are players offering exotic coffees. Thats your nearest benchmark to see and analyse the demand for exotic beverages. 5. Gain knowledge: Do you have the foundational knowledge of what you are aiming to step into ? Eg If you’re making a tech product, do you understand the basics of to explain it to a developer and understand what limitations exist etc. or If you want to open a Biotech lab and have no clue of science then you need to learn a hell lot. technology External Product validation: 1. Research Let me get one thing clear — Friends and family don’t count when you’re looking for valuable feedback to validate your business idea. Its not that they’re knowledgeable but the regard and love in the relationships cloud and mask accurate (read brutal) feedback. Its only human!! Pitch your idea in the name of research to random people in cafes/ target audience hang out areas and ask them to give you some honest feedback to help a friend on his venture. You need not have a product in hand to show but a questionnaire would do. Notice people’s behavior and body language all throughout. 2. Idea protection (Optional) If you fear your idea may be stolen for its uniqueness and authenticity — filing a patent for it may be a great idea. Also, at this stage you can update you’re LinkedIn profile and declare yourself to be working on an idea on stealth mode. It makes people curious about what you’re up to and they look forward to you unveiling your product. 3. The Customer acquisition plan: Have a plan on how you get your 1stcustomer, 10thcustomer, 50thand 100th. That’s the real struggle. Thereafter it’s a game of scaling with example. To validate and ideas success this needs to be ensured. Know the cycle and its spokes. E.g. if you have a tech product do you know of Appsumo and product Hunt, If you’re creating a new energy bar, do you know how to get the product into Walmart or distribution channels etc. 4. Building your MVP Minimum Viable Product is the miniature of the final product. It has the minimum number of specifications and features for testing purposes. Building an MVP works on various assumptions and variables. Since its a testing stage, it help reduce risks, minimizes cost and effort. It also helps in giving a feedback about the usability of the product. You will know if the company should pivot or preserve on their path. A great example that comes to my mind that amazed me was the launching of Dropbox. Dropbox is the application that lets you share files across different platforms. It was launched by a trailer video by its founder Drew Houston, 2007 explaining the applications features and giving demonstration. After its launch, the beta signup crossed from 5000 to 75,000 overnight. Therefore, the assumptions of level of interest was validated even before the release of actual application. This testing created a much-needed demand for the app and soon Dropbox had million subscribers. The biggest test to validate your business idea: (Drum rolls please) Okay, so the biggest test for the idea validation stage is an advance payment. Yes !! If you can get even a token amount out of a future customer (non-family or friend) because he/she is so wowed by what you’re proposing and does not want to miss out, you know you’re on the right path!! Conclusion: Idea Validation is a process you should spend considerable energies on in the start of your idea. A product that meets consumer demand is more likely to succeed than one that's not wanted. P.S. — If you have any ideas to share on this or comments would love to hear back and add to this. Originally published at blog.alore.io on February 27, 2018.

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