Here are 6 SMS facts and tens of statistics that will reinforce the importance of including text messaging in any marketing strategy.

1. SMS has a high potential reach.

SMS is still the most used data in the world. In fact, 4.2 billion people globally are still sending texts, sending about 8 trillion text messages every year or 16 million messages per minute on average.

Even though messaging apps are all the rave today, 94% of smartphone users were found to still use SMS, with brands reporting to reach 95% of both smartphone and non-smartphone users successfully.

Nearly every single device on the market is also SMS-enabled, making texting the mobile channel with the highest potential reach. Finally, 98% of text messages are read, compared to 22% of emails, 29% of tweets, and 12% of Facebook posts.

Reach is an important element in every marketing campaign, which is why marketers measure impressions on web ads or get numbers on foot traffic at physical store locations. With SMS, marketing professionals can reach the most number of customers—new or existing.

2. SMS has instant deliverability.

While most forms of digital communication today are delivered instantaneously, no channel compares to SMS. It’s so immediate that it has an open rate of 97% within 15 minutes of delivery (90% of them opened within 3 minutes of delivery).

Text messages are also, on average, read in 5 seconds or less. On a related note, it also takes a person an average of 90 seconds to respond to a text message.

With other brands competing for your customers’ attention on every available platform, SMS gives marketers the reassurance that their messages will be sent directly to them and be read almost instantly.

Moreover, if you are trying to gather customer feedback in the shortest possible time, texting is the best way to go.

3. SMS has a better click-through rate than email.

For marketers looking to improve website or landing page visits, look no further than SMS. It’s been found that the average SMS marketing click-through rate is 36%. So, for every 100 customers that receive a text with a hyperlink in it, 36 of them will click on that link. This is very high, especially since the average click-through rate of emails is only a measly 3.2%.

Combined with a wide reach and high open rates, SMS is an excellent tool to use to drive traffic to your website, app, social media page, or details on an ongoing promotion. Just be sure to use short, trackable links to see how your campaign fares.

4. SMS has a high conversion rate

A study by Leads360 has found that sending text messages only after an initial contact (say, a user account registration or in-store signup) provides a conversion rate increase of as high as 112.6%. In fact, sending three or more text messages to a lead after initial contact goes up to 328% in any industry.

The high conversion rate provided by SMS gives marketers an opportunity for high ROI, but it must be noted that texting a customer or prospect before you build a relationship with them can result in a negative conversion rate.

Moreover, sending SMS to someone you have not made an initial contact with yet lowers the chance of converting that person ever again.

5. SMS can be automated.

While SMS is a lot older than other mobile marketing channels, it can also be automated. With many reputable mass SMS services available to marketers today, you can send text blasts with first names, exclusive promotions, birthday specials, and other personalized campaigns automatically.

Particularly valuable for marketers who already have a customer information database on hand, doing SMS automation can be very convenient. By segmenting your subscriber list by demographics, purchase history, or any other group, you can start sending individualized text campaigns that are relevant to your target audience.

6. Customers like receiving SMS offers.

Contrary to popular belief, only 10% of SMS marketing messages are seen as spam. More importantly, more than 40% of consumers prefer to receive text offers versus barcode scans and coupons from push notifications—with 50% of the same group responding to a text offer.

It’s also been found that coupons sent via text are redeemed 10 times more compared to printed coupons being it the top reason of 77% of consumers who opt in to a brand’s text messages to receive coupons or deals.

These are some powerful numbers for marketers looking to run promotional campaigns. Customers actually want to receive and redeem offers sent to them via text, so it’s important to include SMS in your marketing mix to meet their expectations.

Including SMS in any marketing strategy is critical in building a relationship with your customers and prospects. SMS trends and statistics have shown that it provides the widest reach possible among all mobile marketing channels and is read almost immediately.

Customers also engage with SMS marketing well, as they click on links they see on marketing texts and respond to and redeem text coupons. With the cost-effective SMS automation tools available today, there is really no reason for marketers not to include text messages in their current strategy.

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So, what’s the difference? Let’s quickly find out

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence is what allows computers and machines to mimic human behavior. It’s been present in people’s lives for a few years now, from simple things like Facebook’s facial recognition capabilities on your pictures to the more obvious examples like Apple’s Siri or Samsung’s Bixby. AI technology studies patterns in human behavior through deep learning and natural language processing.

Internet of Things

On the other hand, the Internet of Things is all about device connectivity. Nope, this doesn’t refer to person-to-person connectivity, but instead, it’s how smart objects are continuously talking to each other through data sharing. Some favorite examples are m2m solutions or wearables such as the Fitbit or VR goggles. The information they communicate with each other is used to improve user experience and ensure that all systems are functioning well.

Key Differences in Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things

• The focus of artificial intelligence is to get data from humans, while the internet of things focuses on storing data and communicating with devices.
• Majority of the consumption of AI is for consumers while tech innovators and companies currently utilize IoT.
• Data from AI is essential in the operations of IoT.

When unraveling the two concepts, it may seem like they don’t have anything in common. However, their team-up spells out a lot of possibilities in the tech industry, as well as improved quality of life for consumers.

How will AI and IoT Work Together?

It shouldn’t be surprising to see these two concepts work hand in hand. Wired claimed that IoT wouldn’t work without AI. Some AI products will work better with the infusion of IoT, and IoT will communicate more complex data from AI machines.

The food and health industries are good examples to illustrate this point. Smart refrigerators exist, but can you imagine what it would be like if they could order food for you or alert you when you’re low on stock of a particular food item?

Then, there are fitness wearables. These gadgets already do a lot of health tracking for you. To take it a notch higher, it could regularly communicate your vital signs to your doctor without the need for physical checkups, or even notify you to refill your prescription medication. Science Mag reported on a study that shows AI beats doctors at predicting heart attacks—this could change the medical industry significantly.

Final Thoughts

Artificial intelligence and the internet of things are just two of the many revolutionary tech concepts in use today. It’s clear that the world is barreling towards the normalized use of gadgets and smart tech that will make our lives easier. The developments are genuinely fascinating and inspiring, as some of the devices today were only dreamt of years ago. It begs the question, what new M2M solution will come out next?

The post Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things: What’s their Difference? appeared first on Tech Web Space.

The term “millennials” is anything but a buzzword. Millennials represent a large demographic that is fortunate to have better opportunities in life compared with the generations before them. This edge comes from the fact that millennials grew up in a technological, socially connected, and inclusive world.

These privileges also afford millennials good financial prospects, especially in their investment options. Unfortunately, despite knowing the importance of financial stability, millennials do not consider the investment a priority. In the age of YOLO and FOMO, millennials prefer spending their money on life experiences rather than preparing for the future.

But, don’t worry. Here are investment hacks for millennials that can get you started on your financial journey.

#1 Pursue further education

They say that a diploma is your ticket to success. When you have a degree tucked under your belt, your career opportunities are much more secure. However, educating yourself doesn’t need to stop the moment you step out of university.

Instead, you need to continuously update your knowledge and skills based on current demands and trends. Do as much self-study as you can. Enrol in an online course. Attend graduate school. Get certified in your industry. These steps can add to your competitiveness and competence as a professional.

As you continue building on your career, better income opportunities would be available to you, eventually opening up the path toward your financial growth.

#2 Set up an online business

Nowadays, a popular way of earning extra money is through e-commerce or online business, which could be something worth exploring yourself. If you have special interests or hobbies, you could turn them into a business opportunity quite easily by creating a web page on social media or other online channels.

With consumers becoming more and more digitally oriented, an online business can be a profitable channel that could ensure a steady stream of income for you. It’s up to you if you will concentrate on putting up your e-commerce shop or if you will do it on the side to augment your income from your full-time office job.

#3 Get into the real estate space

When it comes to investing, no age is too early, and no goal is too ambitious. Ideally, you should start investing as soon as you’re regularly earning from your career or your business. Once you have the means, you can upgrade your investment and diversify your portfolio. So, it’s not uncommon to see millennials and their real estate investments become successful.

In real estate, becoming an investor is possible whether your funds are small or large. You could buy property in its pre-selling stage, or you could purchase a foreclosed property by pooling funds from your own pocket and reputable lending institutions. You could use the property as your own living space, or you could rent it out to give you passive income later on.

#4 Participate in peer-to-peer lending.

Lending might have some negative connotations, but it’s a different case for peer-to-peer (P2P) lending.

With P2P, you’ll be making your money available to borrowers, such as startup entrepreneurs, via a legitimate lending platform. In return, borrowers will pay the principal amount that you loaned to them within an agreed repayment period. By becoming a P2P investor, you could gain an estimated average return of 24%.

Any investment guide will tell you that all types of investment come with risks. In the case of P2P lending, conducting transactions on the dedicated platform provides a way to protect the funds that you would invest in the marketplace.

#5 Put your money in intangible assets.

Intangible assets pertain to possessions that you don’t see in their physical form, unlike tangible assets such as a house, a car, jewelry, and the like. Nevertheless, they are equally valuable and lucrative as investment products, especially because they have the potential to grow your money through compounding interest.

The following lists some of the many types of intangible assets you could invest in:

• Savings Account – A savings account is one of the easiest ways to achieve your personal finance goals since you’re able to keep track of how much you’re saving.
• Certificate of Deposit (COD) – A COD is similar to a savings account, but it has higher interest rates since the idea is to lock up your money in your bank account for a specifiedcertain
• Unit Investment Trust Fund (UITF) – In UITF, your money goes to a pooled investment fund that is managed by a commercial bank, which decides where to invest your money.
• Stocks – You could also buy stocks to own shares in a company, from which you can collect profit.
• Variable Universal Life (VUL) Insurance – A VUL is a life insurance with an investment component tied to it, so you get benefits from your insurance and at the same time earn profit from your monthly payments.
• Bonds – Investing in bonds means you’re lending your money to governments and corporations for interest rates that are higher than that of your savings account.

Final Words

Investing is a major life decision that you could embark on. The earlier you grab the opportunity, the better it is for your future. When done with caution, investment can help you become the financially wise millennial of your generation.

The post 5 Investment Decisions Millennials Won’t Regret appeared first on Tech Web Space.

A blog will give you an opportunity to present your works and words to the world and help in establishing your brand. Whether you’re a newbie in photography or already a pro at it, you can benefit significantly from these tips that can help improve your photography skills for your blog.

Know your audience

Blogging is a form of communication, so it’s important to know who’s visiting your blog. Determine the kind of audience you want to attract: who are they, what do they want to read or see, and why are you blogging for them.

If you’ve decided on your target audience, it means that you’ve understood their personality and knew how to communicate with them effectively via the blog.

However, don’t just rely on what your readers want to see. It is also important to let your personality shine. If your blog conveys a very different personality as compared to your own, it may create a disconnect that may harm your brand.

Visit places to learn and for inspiration

As a photographer, you need to learn how to appreciate art. Bring your camera (or a smartphone with camera) to different locations and find something to shoot, whether it’s everyday things or moments in time, and find a way to make those interesting.

Some other places that you can visit is a museum or a zoo. Study the work of other artists and understand why a particular work grabbed your attention. Zoos are cheap, and you have different subjects available to photograph.

Find a mentor and think like a beginner

The moment you believe that you’re already the best at what you do is the moment you stop learning. Being a good photographer means being willing to learn from other creatives. With that, find a seasoned photographer who may be willing to teach you some things.

Form a relationship with them and ask if they’d be willing to let you shadow them by doing something as simple as holding lights during photoshoots and carrying their gear. It will expose you to the kind of work they do and learn along the way.

Freshen your perspective

A new perspective can give you a creative boost. Change up your photo angles and see if it makes a difference. Experiment with different angles, especially those that you may not have done before.

Go out of your comfort zone even if it means climbing a tree or getting down and dirty. Sometimes, you may find angles that can make photos look more dynamic compared to what you usually do.

Choose your backdrops and props

Add props and backdrops to your photos if you want, as long as they work with your subject and achieve what you want to see in the picture. It can also boost your creativity because you can create your own props from the materials you have on hand.

An editing software can help

There’s nothing wrong with touching up photos if it’s needed, but as much as possible, do not overdo it. Adding filters is acceptable nowadays with the advent of Instagram, but it’s still a no-no to do heavy editing to hide flaws on your subject or to mask your mistakes in photography techniques.

Don’t forget to promote on social media

Having a social media account should coincide with having a blog because it’s a quick way to promote your new posts. Tweet about your blog updates or set up your Facebook so that it automatically imports your latest post.

If you’re a professional photographer like Ralph Wunsch, having a blog is a great way to market your business and build your reputation as a brand. It also lets you engage with both prospects and clients and present them your work.

Simple hobbyists can also benefit from it because you’d get to share your passion with your loved-ones. Maybe it can even attract potential clients that would want to work with you.

The post 7 Ways to Step Up Your Photography Blogging Skills appeared first on Tech Web Space.

IoT’s brief history reveals that it wasn’t until four years ago that the world witnessed breakthrough development in IoT. It was in 2013 that the concept started evolving into a system that uses multiple technologies that range from the internet to wireless communication and from micro-electromechanical systems to embedded systems.

The vision of IoT can be summarized by a quote from 1999 MIT Executive Director of Auto-ID Labs, Kevin Ashton, “If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things, using data they gathered without any help from us, we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost.”

Indeed, IoT envisions a totally interconnected world. In this world, devices are manufactured with “smart” capabilities that enable them to communicate and interact with other devices; collect, store, and exchange data; make autonomous decisions that correspond to those data; and perform tasks based on preset conditions.

Real world applications of IoT tend to sound like it’s plucked from science-fiction, but they are as real as it can get. By now, there is a plethora of smart devices making waves in the market. To name a few we have:

• Home automation systems that range from locks, outdoor cameras, to shades that are connected and remotely controlled via an app on your smart phones.
• Wearable devices that monitor and collect data about the user.
• Industrial internet that enables tracking goods, real time inventory data exchange among suppliers, and tracking and automation of deliveries.
• Smart city applications that boast of smart surveillance, automated transportation, energy management systems, water distribution, urban security, and environmental monitoring.

Understandably, the tech world is abuzz in discourse over the seemingly limitless potential applications of IoT and the various questions on the viability of the technology.

In the excitement over this discourse, facts are often muddled with misconceptions. Although not entirely baseless, these misconstrued arguments could use a little clarification.

In an attempt to clear the waters, here is a rundown on the common misconceptions surrounding the Internet of Things.

IoT will connect all devices

Connecting all devices is the dream. The truth of the matter, however, is that IoT devices typically only work with other devices from the same vendor. Meaning, IoT devices will only connect, collect, and exchange data and interact with other devices that come from the same vendor. Coming up with an overarching IoT standard is highly challenging considering today’s IoT politics.

The situation is comparable to how Apple insists on having their own charger type instead of joining other smart phone manufacturers in allowing a universal standard charger. By doing this, Apple ensures that the get all the profit from iPhone charger cables.

Likewise, in IoT, there are multiple networking standards that don’t work together. This is because there is no single IoT standard-there are multiple IoT standards.

These standards are built on existing standards such as the 802.15.4 wireless protocol, embedded control protocols, and the IPv6 communication protocol. However, even though they provide a certain level of compatibility between devices, it is the vendor’s discretion whether to allow data or control to be shared using these protocols.

IoT is a Security Threat

The truth is that any device with internet connection is a security threat. Personal computers and smartphones entail serious privacy and cybersecurity risks.

IoT magnifies these threats. But as computers and any connected devices have solutions to those threats, so do IoT devices.

There is where the irony lies. Because the threat in IoT is undeniable, manufacturers, standards organizations, and policy-makers are all working to continuously make the systems more secure.

In fact, solutions such as incorporating hardware-based security support have already surfaced. Furthermore, security experts are already developing methods to protect embedded processors, which are expected to cripple attackers from intercepting data or compromising networked systems.

And because full system level security and optimization are necessary to provide a truly secure IoT environment, new security protocols are also on the way to ensure end-to-end encryption.

IoT devices and environments can be made more reliable if developers take extra care when implementing, deploying, and maintaining the software. Like most software, security will come down to the preliminary design requirements and carry on through the implementation and long-term support.

IoT is just M2M

Undeniably, IoT has several aspects of M2M. However, the two are not synonymous. The core commonality between them is that they both feature remote access to machine data and both exchange information among machines without human intervention.

However, IoT ups the game by integrating device and sensor data with big data, analytics, and other enterprise applications which M2M rarely does.

Moreover, Iot and M2M differ in in how they achieve remote device access. M2M relies on point-to-point communications with the use of embedded hardware components that communicate through a proprietary cellular or wired network to a dedicated software application.

In contrast, IoT solutions rely on standards-based IP networks to interface device data to a cloud or middleware platform. More importantly, the communicated data are incorporated into enterprise applications to enable only improved service and operational improvement.

M2M employs isolated systems of sensors and islands of remotely collected and measured data, while IoT converges disparate systems to enable new applications.

Furthermore, the cloud-based architecture in IoT makes it inherently and considerably more scalable than M2M. Cloud-based architecture eliminates the need for additional hard-wired connections and SIM card installations.

It is M2M’s reliance on these hard-wired connections and SIM card installations that led to the solution being referred to as “plumbing,” whereas IoT is dubbed as a universal enabler because it is cloud-based.

Conclusion

Indeed, the Internet of Things heralds a new level of connectivity. While connecting devices is a primary feature behind IoT connectivity, simply connecting products is not its true business value.

More importantly, the significance of IoT lies in how the data gathered through this connectivity is leveraged. The intelligence gleaned from data analytics allows companies to develop and enhance their strategies, improve customer experience, and optimize businesses processes and products.

As with any new technological innovations, it raises scepticism and many legitimate questions including misconceptions above. While they are valid to a certain degree, it is good to note that the technology continues to develop.

Soon enough, these misconceptions will no longer be relevant with new solutions surfacing to addresses them. Other issues may arise, but remember, technology never stands still.

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