Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches. Getting the like is easy, email marketing helps create trust with the client.
Charley.io
Where are you based?
We are based in Atlanta, GA USA though we also have team members in Florida, as well as India.
How has Charley helped organization optimize marketing efficiency using your software?
When we developed Charley, our goal was to create a product that was easy-to-use yet powerful enough to drive an organization's email marketing efforts. We focused on features like SmartSend and Recycler to give small businesses the opportunity to use enterprise level solutions designed to optimize and improve campaign results.
In addition to Charley that handles all of your email marketing, we also developed Rekko, which is a complete online marketing platform that allows marketers to deliver dynamic content to your website to visitors based on behaviors. The combination of the two is the perfect platform for marketers that want a single solution that can handle the online and offline marketing needs.
What is your competitive advantage in digital marketing?
The main advantage of Charley and Rekko is that it is a singular platform with shared, real-time analytics that gives marketers an overall view of both their website marketing and their email marketing in one easy-to-use platform.
We have developed some great features for both Charley and Rekko providing enterprise-level tools to smaller businesses that would not normally be able to compete with companies like Amazon as it relates to marketing. Here's an article that gives a rundown of the features for each.
How much does your software cost?
Charley pricing is based ont he number of subscribers on your list(s). Our platform start from $19.95/month and go up from there. If you would like a better pricing, feel free to check out plan calculator here. Here's a feature comparison list to give you an idea of what kind of features are included - http://rekko.com/charley-vs-mailchimp-email-marketing
How many countries do you cover and plan to cover by the end of December 2016?
We are continually growing into new countries each day as we introduce Charley to marketing teams searching for a much easier and powerful way to execute on their email marketing strategies. Our solution is not designed of any specific area or country so as long as companies can access the solution via the web, they are able to use Charley.
What's the future for Charley.io?
Our goal has always been to develop a solution that makes marketer's lives easier and allows them to compete with much larger companies like Amazon. A great deal of our development is driven by our clients needs. At this point, we are working on our APIs that will allow Charley to communicate with other solutions, social marketing and web push notifications.
Advise you can give to organizations that want to or is using your software?
For organizations that do not have an email marketing platform, are looking for a change or simply want to see what else is out there, we would be happy to walk you through the platform because we love sharing what we do and hearing how we can improve.
Email is still the #1 way of communicating with your customers and prospects. Having the right tools in place will not only make you more effective but also yield much better results. Since we all have 100 things to do on a daily basis, email marketing is one thing you can do very easily and quickly so you can get to the rest of your to-do list.
Current customers using Charley have some great tools at their disposal but I would recommend also trying out some of the Rekko features to help with website marketing. We have features like email capture to help build your subscriber list and echo campaigns to reinforce the message that you delivered via email (i.e coupon code) where we have seen conversion rate increases of nearly 65%!
Aside from creating a super-easy email platform, we also developed some awesome new features unique to Charley aimed at improving your conversion rates and helping you get more stuff done.
SmartSend: SmartSend is an exclusive Charley feature that optimizes the delivery times of your email blast campaigns. How does it work? When turned on, SmartSend will look up each recipient in Charley’s database and see when they last opened an email from you or last visited your website. Based on this information, SmartSend will deliver the email at the hour closest to the recipient’s activity. This insures that we catch them when they’re most likely to check their email.
Email Capture Form Wizard: Here’s the other option to adding email addresses to your list(s). Our wizard takes you through a simple step-by-step process to delivering a beautiful email capture form on your site as a pop-on using smart delivery profiles, custom designs with no coding required. And don’t worry! It’s responsive. You can read more about customizing an email capture form pop-onhere.
How emailsare captured from wizard
Marketing Widgets: Easily create messages and promotions inside a Rekko Marketing Widget (banners, pop-ons, toolbars, and interstitials) to be displayed on your website. The widgets range from simple html banners inserted into pages to eye-catching pop-ons and full-page interstitials.
Inline HTML Banner: Deliver HTML banners inline with your page based on visitor behavior. Simply insert HTML and CSS into editor and Rekko can deliver it as part of the web page. Banners can be inserted into page by identifying a Div ID or CSS Selector. Rekko also features a WYSIWYG editor that allows you to mouse over page and select area to insert content.
Deliver HTML banners inline with your website based on visitor behavior
Popon/Lightbox: Deliver any HTML as a popon on your site. Great for intervention type campaigns where you want to interrupt the browsing session with a message/creative. Popons are delivered as a layer on top of current page so not impacted by pop-up blockers. Creative is centered on page with background grayed out to focus user on delivered message.
Rekko Popon Targeting Repeat Shoppers
Toolbar: Toolbars are essentially banners that attached to the top or bottom of page that slide open to reveal any message you like. The message can be simple text or rich HTML for a more graphic heavy presentation. Configuration options allow you to specify exact size, position and slide behavior to best fit your needs.
Benefits Of Email Marketing
Maximizes marketing ROI (Return on Investment).
Increases customer loyalty and profitability.
It gently leads a prospect through the sales process, providing important data and drives the prospect to your Website.
Improves tracking and feedback.
Most types of marketing and advertising are difficult to measure, with email, everything can be tracked.
Lower cost compared to mainstream marketing channels.
Sign up with Charley http://charley.io/ and focus on growing your list of the time as newer subscribers are more engaged adding to healthier open rates and higher ROI.
A vision board is a tool used to help clarify, concentrate and maintain focus on a specific life goal. Literally,a vision board is any sort of board on which you display images that represent whatever you want to be, do or have in your life. The idea behind this is that when you surround yourself with images of who you want to become, what you want to have, where you want to live, or where you want to vacation, your life changes to match those images and those desires. WHY A VISION BOARD? “Give no one in all the world the power to deflect you from your goal, your aim in life, which is to express your hidden talents to the world, to serve humanity, and to reveal more and more of God’s wisdom, truth, and beauty to all people in the world. Remain true to your ideal. Know definitely and absolutely that whatever contributes to your peace, happiness, and fulfillment must of necessity bless all men who walk the earth. The harmony of the part is the harmony of the whole, for the whole is in the part, and the part is in the whole. All you owe the other, as Paul says, is love, and love is the fulfilling of the law of health, happiness, and peace of mind.” ― Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind Vision Boards Help Provide Clarity
For example, to say “I want a better life” is a fine goal, but have you given serious thought to exactly what that means? Try to envision what your “better life” looks like. For those of us who find that somewhat difficult, making a vision board can be a tremendous help.
In order to create my vision board, I must actively seek images that represent specific details of this wonderful new life. That means narrowing it down to specifics.
For some, a better life might mean having a new car or home. Others may be seeking a new relationship or improvements in existing relationships. Doubtless you have heard it said that most of us never get what we want because we don’t know what we want. Making a vision board is a wonderful way to bring clarity to that general desire and turn it into an achievable goal.
Use a Vision Board for Your Daily Affirmations
Once you dream it, the next step is to believe it. In addition to images, vision boards can include words, phrases or sentences that affirm your intentions.
Somehow, we must silence the mindchatter that plagues us all every minute of every waking hour. You know that little voice in your head that never shuts up, the one that supports and promotes all your limiting beliefsby repeating an endless litany of every shortcoming you could possibly have (and some you couldn’t possibly have) and every reason why you can’t or shouldn’t or won’t ever be, do or have what you really want. Affirmations are that little voice’s worst enemy.
Affirmations express who you really are, release you from those limiting beliefs, and allow you to know that the possibilities really are UNlimited.
A Vision Board Keeps you Focused
Finally, another key purpose that vision boards serve is to help you stay focused. It isn’t difficult to start each day with a positive attitude – until you get out of bed.
How quickly that fresh “new me” attitude can sink back into oblivion beneath the tasks and challenges of everyday life. How can you possibly remain focused on any goal while people and circumstances constantly pull you in dozens of directions at once? By using a vision board, of course!
No matter what happens during your day, your vision board is a constant reminder of where you intend to be. Appealing to you on both conscious and subconscious levels, a vision board can work wonders toward keeping your mind focused on your goal, your attention on your intentions, and your life headed in the direction you choose.
Getting Started
Reflect upon your goals. Most of us have some general or vague idea about what we want out of life, what our goals are, and what makes us happy. Nonetheless, when asked directly about our conception of the good life, we may struggle to come up with specifics. To make sure that we're on track, and that we won't look back on our lives with regret, it's a great idea to regularly set time aside to clearly identify our goals and aspirations in as much detail as possible, and to then come up with plans with concrete steps for achieving our aims. Creating a vision board can be one way to help us with this important task.
Think about the big questions. Before you get started making your vision board, spend some time thinking about the following general questions:
What, in your view, is a good life?
What makes a life valuable or worth living?
When you are on your deathbed, what will you have hoped to have accomplished?
Break down the big questions. To help you answer these big questions (which can be overwhelming!), break them down into smaller questions:
What activities do you want to learn how to do?
What hobbies and activities do you already do, but want to continue doing or get better at?
What are your career goals? What steps will you have to accomplish along the way to be able to eventually land your dream job? (For example, do you need a particular degree, or will you need to secure an internship?)
What are your relationship goals? Don't think just in terms of whether or not you want to be married, be in a long-term relationship or have children: think more specifically about what kind of person you want to be with, how you'd like to spend time with your partner, etc.
How do you want to be remembered by others? For example, do you want to write the next great American novel? Do you want to head a charitable organization that positively impacts the lives of others?
Choose your theme. Based upon the discoveries you've made after completing the above steps, it's now time for you to decide what you want the focus of your vision board to be. Don't feel as though you must limit yourself to creating just one vision board to reflect all of your dreams. You can make as many separate vision boards as you want, each with a different focus.
You can decide to make a vision board which focuses on a very specific goal that you have. For example, if want to be able to afford your dream vacation within the next year, you can design a Jamaica-themed dream board.
You can also make dream boards which have a more general theme. Perhaps after reflecting about the type of person you want to be remembered as you determined that you want to work on becoming a kinder, more generous person. Your dream board can be devoted to this theme. Among the things you include can be pictures of inspiring role models.
Success in school calls for a specific set of skills—for instance, time management, reading comprehension, and the application of learned abilities in narrowly defined contexts. In the world beyond school, however, the problems you face are rarely well defined.
One of the best things that you can do is to think of your time in school as base-building. Once you graduate, it is your job to figure out how to apply your book learning to the real world. Mastering these less common school lessons will help you make the transition in little or no time at all:
Communicating
Entrepreneur are only as successful as their ability to explain their vision. Communicating with other people is likely the most important skill of any entrepreneur. Knowing when to communicate -- and when not to -- is the difference between the business have’s and have-nots.
Your communication skills will be needed in every aspect of your job. You will have to inspire your employees with your words, build confidence with your investors and explain your actions to your shareholders.
Find Your Focus
Entrepreneurs tend to have what I call EADD: Entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder. They are all over the place, they have shiny object syndrome… and that’s because they’re creative! Entrepreneurs are visionaries. One thing they are often missing, however, is follow-through. If you’ve got a bakery, you’re a business coach and you also make jewelry, where is your passion? Where are you really able to dive deeply in order to see something through to its best outcome? You can certainly build more than one thriving business over your lifetime, but if you’re trying to do them all at once, you aren’t giving your all to any.
Multitasking
As an entrepreneur, you are going to be expecting to know everything, about every part, of your endeavor. In the early days, you will be the “chief cook and bottle washer." As your enterprise grows, so to will your personal tasks.
In the early days, you will have to run the company and take care of shipping / receiving. As your business grows, your tasks will change, and you will still have a multitude of them. If you are lucky enough to get into the big leagues, you will eventually get to manage your business and your shareholders at the same time.
How to lead a team
There is a difference between being a boss and being a leader. A boss is a figurehead, where a leader is an inspirational, motivational, and respectful guide. If you don't possess leadership skills it will be impossible for you to manage your team effectively, or build a team at all. People want to work for someone who betters them, who invests in their future, and whom they aspire to be like, not someone who simply sees his or her role as a prestigious title.
Money management
The average college student worries about money, even if he or she is fully supported by his or her parents. After graduation, these worries may only increase. You will need to worry about earning a wage, paying your taxes, beginning a retirement fund, paying for health insurance, and so on. The cost of not understanding how to manage your financial life can be immense, but fortunately, a simple Google search can uncover many resources that can help you improve your financial literacy.
Contingency planning
One of the universal truths of the modern world is that no job is guaranteed. Positions are outsourced, businesses are sold or closed, and technology replaces human workers. Do not assume that your career or job will always exist. Keep your network thriving, and watch emerging trends in your field. Learn skills that augment your present abilities. Being computer literate, for example, will always add to your value. Your secondary abilities may help you survive a round of layoffs, or they may help you make the jump to a better opportunity.
Don’t take “no” for an answer.
When we start planning something really big, we can expect to encounter big resistance -- people telling us it will never work and rejecting our ideas. Stick with it! Don’t take “no” for an answer. When people tell you no, or tell you that your idea can’t be done, take note that the path you started down hit a roadblock but keep your focus and find a new way forward. Maybe your product does need work. Maybe you’re talking to the wrong market. Maybe the packaging isn’t right. None of these mean that it won’t succeed; it simply means that you have to go back to the drawing board on some aspect of your idea to find that “yes.”
Learn to say “no” for yourself.
We’ve covered how important it is for entrepreneurs to know how to say yes, take leaps of faith and be brave in their decision making, but we also need to learn how to say no. When distractions come your way, such as exciting side projects that pull for your attention, it is important to be able to stay focused on your main goals. Say “no” so that you have more time for “yes” in the area that you most need that energy and creativity to make your goal a success.
Forget about perfection.
A lot of business owners get stuck on perfectionism. That is just not how business works. You simply need to move forward, throwing things at the wall to see what sticks and tweaking along the way. Be okay with making mistakes. Otherwise, you will be stuck in the development phase forever and you’ll never get your product or service out there. Most successful entrepreneurs have numerous failures before they finally find their ultimate success. The same goes for authors who send out their manuscript to rejection after rejection before finally getting published. Keep moving, and don’t give up!
Focus on sales.
It can be all too easy to get stuck in a romantic view of your business when you are doing what you love, forgetting about the simple fact that it also needs to be profitable. You have to have enough money to pay for a support team so you’re not doing everything from cleaning the office to balancing the books while also trying to generate new leads. You need money to have the freedom to thrive while you are focusing on getting your gifts, ideas and products out there. Point blank, you’ve got to be focused on revenue every single day.
All techies on skunkworks for a networking cocktail are invited. Lets meet discuss and exchange ideas on the various issues affecting Information technology in Kenya and the world at Large. Listers shall be asked to do a product review on Imanage, the hosts for this event.
WHEN
WHERE
westwood hotel - Eldama Ravine Road, Off Peponi Road, Nairobi, Central
IDEAL HOSPITALITY EXPO is an experiential hospitality-suppliers’ business focused event targeting the East African marketplace, reckoned as the hub of business opportunities. WHEN
Thursday, August 18, 2016 at 1:00 PM - Sunday, August 21, 2016 at 4:00 PM (EAT)
The Healthcare NOVELTY is a platform where Health professionals shape trends in Healthcare by exchanging fresh knowledge to improve public health services and produce social value. WHEN
WHERE
Tangaza University College - Nairobi City, Nairobi
