Every business has to have a marketing strategy for ensuring its target market is aware of its products and service. No marketing strategy is complete without email marketing, which has become an important tool for extending beyond your website’s reach and creating new sales opportunities. A lot of businesses make the mistake of believing that email marketing is no longer relevant, but the truth is that it can be a very powerful tool if it is used the right way. Email marketing campaigns can make it possible for a business to communicate with prospects and build relationships with them. They are also useful for gathering important data and can also increase the marketing return on investment (ROI).

However, this can only happen if you do it the right way. Here are some tips that every business can use for launching a successful email marketing campaign:

Build your subscriber list for email marketing

One of the simplest ways of building your subscriber list is put up an email opt-in form on your website. You can either have a pop-up form or make sure one is integrated on the homepage, Contact Us page and the About page as well. Keep it short and to the point and don’t ask for too much information. Statistics indicate that people are more likely to sign up when less information is required because it can be done quickly. It is best to just ask for the name and email address. Also, make use of an email validation tool, such as ZeroBounce to check if the email address is valid for ensuring your campaign efforts are not wasted.

The calls to action should be obvious

The purpose of a call to action is to convince a reader to click-through to the product or service you are trying to market and sell. But, such a call to action is useless if you simply bury it in the content or you make it too difficult for your audience to understand. Make sure that these are within the natural line of sight of the reader and images and buttons should also be used along with them to make them obvious and prominent.

Message should be mobile-friendly

In the last decade, the use of smartphones has skyrocketed and almost 43% emails are now opened on mobile devices. Therefore, it would be rather foolish for a business to launch an email campaign that’s not mobile-friendly. If you don’t take this step, it is possible that your email will end up in the trash. As the real estate on smartphones is limited, it is best to stick to a simple layout and not use many images because different smartphones handle images differently in an email and this only creates confusion.

Use compelling subject lines

Most people decide their response to an email after reading the subject line. Thus, you need to create a compelling and short subject line that should appeal to your audience and get them to view the entire email rather than just marking it off as spam.

Automate email sending

As the name suggests, “Big Data” is used to refer to the enormous quantity of data that controls a business on a regular basis. But it is important to be aware that big data is more than only the number of information being transmitted, it is what the organization does to this. Wherein, with IoT engineering, this data can be analyzed for insights to make better choices that would permit the business to proceed.

It’s Utilized to Monitor, the Performance of an Organization

One good example of how significant info is shaping the future of IoT engineering is the construction of an office block. As a way to capture readings on temperature, humidity, stress, and other related factors, sensors are installed in the building. Readings may be done on a daily or hourly basis, which would be transmitted to a computer or central system running in the cloud.

After a while, this data would accumulate and be categorized as “significant data” which would be monitored to analyze the operation of the building and when there would be no necessity to refurbish it later on.

Besides that, big data may also be used in commercial construction also. This may be via the CAD documents, and project scheduling data gathered through recent years. Likewise, it may also be in a customer relationship agreement.

How’s Big Data Utilized?

To determine how big data is employed in the business, it is important to focus on this design-build-operate lifecycle. This defines most organizational jobs today.

For instance, in the construction business, significant data could be seen within the design and modeling. Environmental information, social networking talks, and stakeholder input can be used to understand what should be constructed, and the ideal place of where to make it. Plenty of major companies have already been using massive data analysis to decide where to develop new engineering facilities which would be helpful for the organization and the surroundings.

Additionally, big historical data could be evaluated to familiarize oneself with the routines and probabilities of building risks. This would decrease the incidence of accidents.

How Big Data Is Shaping IoT Technology

A few decades back, most customers didn’t heavily rely on technology, but things have now changed. Nowadays, consumers are creating and churning data at a remarkable rate. Most phones and tablets are equipped with different sensors which are capable of transmitting information on a regular basis. In a house setting, there are various automation devices, such as drop caps and thermostats that bring about the information glut. Don’t overlook the Worldwide widespread of social networking– just one great example of how large data is affecting IoT Technology

The Challenges

As a way to assist organizations and business analytics and process the vast expanses of unstructured data brought by SMAC-centric actions, big data solutions have been introduced in the marketplace. Since extensive data is cloud-driven, it is important that the infrastructure remains dynamic to adapt with the horizontal climbing for related solutions.

Additionally, even information centers must be prepared to offer underlying infrastructure capable of addressing the massive compute and storage requirements connected using extensive data. This isn’t limited within the network itself, but with the power– reliable and renewable energy that leaves a smaller carbon footprint, but could still handle the requirements of the technology.

Big Data and Self-Driving Cars

If you’re still unsure how autonomous automobiles ‘operate,’ it is because of significant data. Yes, you heard it correctly. Self-driving cars, for example, Google’s driverless vehicles, use a broad variety of environmental and traffic information on a regular basis to know their status on earth.

These cars have sensors that allow them to track some things, such as the closeness of pedestrians, traffic safety cones, traffic manuals, and a lot more. Unlike human motorists, autonomous vehicles are capable of analyzing their surroundings continuously, which gives them the benefit of detecting vehicular problems as early as possible.

Not just that, what is right about these cars is that they drive much better than human drivers– self-driving vehicles do not experience exhaustion, diversion, and the like. Thus, it makes the road safer for everyone.

What Can the Folks Expect?

In the subsequent years, clients can expect commercial construction companies to delve deeper in the usage of large data– just like what other businesses have already been doing. Among the first applications where this can be observed would be via the extraction of facilities management data digitally from a BIM program.

Author Bio: Chris is a Digital Media Strategist in Orlando, FL and is an experience freelance writer, PPC management, and SEO strategy.  Chris is also passionate about startup marketing, environmental issues, and emerging technologies.

Information security is evolving as hackers try new tactics and bring back old ones to cope with improving information security. Here are three information security trends to keep an eye on.

Human Intelligence Makes a Comeback

Human intelligence, spying on people and manipulating them to collect information, is making a comeback. It is difficult to hack a network. The process is easier if you send what looks like an industry survey to their IT department and ask what firewall they use, what antivirus software they use and whether they have intrusion detection systems.

Another issue is the return to cloak and dagger work, such as leaving USB drives in the parking lot of the business in the hope someone what they think belongs to a co-worker in a work computer, infecting the network with monitoring or malicious software.

Wikileaks used a variation of classic human intelligence techniques. Why hack a network when you can identify a disgruntled person inside an organization and get them to give you the information?

Those earning information assurance degrees should learn from these examples. Some colleges, such as Norwich University, have whole modules dedicated to the impact of human error insider threats. Norwich University‘s information assurance program stands out for teaching you how to design systems against accidental deletion or alteration of data as well as malicious changes.

Ransomware on Everything

There have been jokes about people’s smart appliances being hacked. The hacker’s vulnerability probing software finds an open port. This vulnerability can be exploited to put ransomware on smart devices.

What could hackers do? Pay us $150 via this convoluted process or we’ll turn off the fridge, ruining all the food on it while you’re on vacation.

We might see the hackers doing it as much for fun as for profit, threatening to play music you hate or random screams through the information appliance if you don’t pay $20.

Automated and Built-In Security

Routers with built in firewalls are an established industry standard. Intrusion detection software is starting to be rolled out installed on servers and imaged laptops. These automated tools and devices with built-in security reduce the risk of infection via viruses and malware while freeing up IT security to cope with attempted intrusions or infections quickly. Unfortunately, hackers are now targeting as many devices as they can to get on the network. They infect someone’s wearable device, which lacks the same level of security, and then infect their Apple computer via the compromised Apple Watch.

Conclusion

Automated tools to monitor for hack attacks and built-in security and data storage are freeing up IT workers to deal with problems quickly. Yet hackers are targeting the second tier of devices without these protections, so your computer’s infection is as likely to be from an infected child’s toy to USB drive from someone pretending to be a vendor giving out freebies. To get around security improvements, hackers and foreign governments are returning to human intelligence, because there are relatively few tools to stop the insider from intentionally leaking information. Study for a MSIA degree to learn more.

Depending on your source, between a third and three-quarter of software development projects fail. These failures range from projects that spend forever in development before being abandoned to brand new software releases tarnished by bugs that shouldn’t have made it out of development. Here are four common software development mistakes people keep committing, as well as advice on how to avoid them from hurting your project.

Assuming Software Development Is Easy

If software development was easy, we wouldn’t pay software developers, coders, and project managers this much. If software development was easy, we wouldn’t have tools like Doors specifically for managing software project requirements and multiple suites for managing code libraries as they are changed. You wouldn’t see software development raised to its own, unique discipline exemplified in the online masters in software development the same way international business and big data analysis are worthy of their own MBA programs. The online MSSD degree by Maryville University is unusual for specializing in software development, but it builds on the IT management MBAs that are becoming commonplace as a whole host of IT development standards, laws, and liability rules are applied to IT projects.

Anyone Can Manage a Software Development Project

One common mistake in software development is to put the senior developer in charge of the project. This is akin to asking your best surgeon to head the hospital. Just because they are an expert in their field doesn’t mean they are qualified to manage other experts. And adding management to their list of tasks takes your best talent away from the work that needs to be done. The better solution is bringing in experts in software development project management. You want someone who is familiar with managing technical people and implementing the controlled, structured approach that maximizes the odds of a successful software development project.

We Can Add These Little Changes before We’re Done

It is the rush to add a few more things to the software release that kills far too many projects, by taking time away from the testing and debugging of the major software changes and implementing changes without the proper resources to prevent problems with these additions.

Another variation of this problem is failing to define the user’s needs properly, so the solutions implemented get changed at the last minute, regardless of the risk.

Poor Resource Management

Software development projects regularly fail because of poor resource management. One example of this is assuming that your IT department, already fully loaded with software support, can develop software patches or new products without cutting something, somewhere. Another problem is the tendency to only add team members after the project is behind schedule instead of assigning them at the start.

Conclusion

Software development isn’t easy, which is why professionals are well paid and so many software tools exist for niches like requirements management. There is a bad habit of adding on extra “little” functions that either slow down the project or take away from the appropriate testing to ensure success. Too many managers assume that anyone can manage a software project and that it can be done by your existing team with the headcount and resources they already have.