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Month: December 2017

Date Night Appetite, Because Writing & Eating are Fun

Published by Will Chatham on 12/20/2017

Just over a year ago, Rachael and I decided that we’d like to combine our love of escaping the house sans-children with our love of writing. Being fans of fine food and environments that enable us to focus on each other during rare, precious date nights, we thought it might be fun to share our experiences in Asheville with other couples who might be looking for a great spot to escape to, if only for an hour, or if for a whole evening. Plus, it would be a team effort that would allow us to collaborate on something we both love: writing and geeking out.

Thus, Date Night Appetite was born and officially launched back in September. To date, we’ve reviewed four local spots, but we also have some Instagram and Facebook posts to help share smaller delights that we find between date nights.

Check it out, and help add your ratings to what we have posted. And let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!

Why You Should Bring Video Gaming To Your Phone

Published by Will Chatham on 12/20/2017

A lot of people like to sit down with a gamepad and tell the XBOX to turn on, and others like to hit the switch on their computer and head straight to using the AMD graphics card they had specially installed. There’s a lot that goes into gaming, and video games are quite an art form in the modern area. However, they’re getting more and more untraditional due to their unusual medium.

Video gaming serves a variety of purposes in the modern world. A relatively new innovation, roughly beginning in the 80s, it can act as a distraction, a hobby, or a way to bring the family together, amongst other things. With the year almost out, let’s take a look at why bringing video gaming, a traditional stationary activity, to your phone is a great idea, and what the future of gaming can bring to the mobile table.

Because it’s Accessible

There’s a lot of porting going around when it comes to games nowadays, and anytime a triple A studio releases we await multiple console use with bated breath. However, if it doesn’t release well on PC and the like, we tend to forget all about it. That’s where iOS and Android ports come in!

So your favorite game decided to hit a niche market and release an app that either complements the game they already have or is a straight up mobile version. For example, if you like legacy games, you can even download them to your favorite devices and carry them around with you at all times. Head to places like https://www.finalfantasyxvapp.com/, and then download it and play to your heart’s content! We can’t all afford those portable consoles in the shape of a Nintendo Switch, and you already have plenty of storage laid out in front of you.

In the most physical sense, mobile gaming is one of the easiest interfaces to get on with. If you can’t handle a gamepad, or a keyboard and mouse are a bit difficult to keep up with, having something handheld and available to use with just one set of fingers is incredible. You can also use voice commands because of the inbuilt microphone in all phone models, and accessibility is made more and more common because of these ready features.

Because Mobiles are Gaming Ahead

Sites like https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com have a lot to say about this! The mobile stage can offer a lot. A whole story can be fit into a mobile app, and that only amounts to about $20 when you go to buy it for your device. That’s about half the price you get in the game stores on the ground!

Similarly, the versatility of a mobile game means 3D features can be included in its UI. Your own movement can dictate what an onscreen icon does, and it adds a whole new level of functionality to a gaming experience. On the other hand, minimalist concepts where you only have to use a finger are really brought into their own, as people don’t expect to be able to do much else and thus are not disappointed by a lack of functions.

Creators can show off level design skills and include a great score, and it’s these elements that players pay attention to more than frustration of not being able to bypass a level or remembering everything they have to do.

It Brings People Together

In a survey of over 20 thousand mobile users, across the five player segments, the most cited reason as to why someone played a game was because friends recommended it. This element of interconnectivity cannot be ignored as a result; alongside following the general trends of the web, using personal recommendations is going to find you the most app customers.

If someone likes a game, they’re going to tell people about it, so word of mouth advertising matters more here than anywhere else. So, get your game on someone’s phone to move your idea up and up.

Gamers the world over can share and share alike in the same game in different formats thanks to mobile gaming. The entire globe has mobile phones, and using them to play on is a universal behavior that keeps us occupied and discovering new things. No longer can you focus on just one demographic when you design a game, as everyone you could think of is involved, so pay attention to that if you’re thinking of trying your hand at gaming app development!

Marketing Automation With SendPulse

Published by Will Chatham on 12/18/2017

SendPulse is a popular email service offering a wide range of features. It suits small and medium businesses the best. With the help of this service, you can send email, web push notifications and SMS, or you can use them all together.

Why did I start using SendPulse?

I looked for a service with the lowest prices and the most features available. I noticed SendPulse because they had free pricing plan which could be used by small businesses. Web push notifications are free forever and that is one of the reason that made me choose this service. Having read more about it, I realized that I can use the email sending service for free. They offer 15,000 emails monthly if your mailing list is not more than 2,500 subscribers. So, I started using SendPulse. I applied personalization, segmentation, used ready-made templates and created my own templates with the drag-and-drop editor. After sending every campaign, I monitored its statistics and it helped to optimize my work. A short time afterwards, my target audience grew and I realized that I needed to find ways and methods to automate my business, and I did it.

Why did I upgrade my tariff to a paid one?

When your business grows, you look for ways to automate your work as it is difficult to send personalized, segmented emails with the special offers for every subscriber. Besides, you can’t use email marketing as a tool for your business without triggered and transactional emails. To establish friendly relationships, you should send a welcome-email after the registration. If you’re engaged in e-commerce, you want to segment your subscribers according to their gender, place of residence or preferences. This data can be requested in the welcome email. After a user makes a purchase, a thanks-email is usually sent. You can send special offers and discounts for loyal customers at this time.

For this purpose, SendPulse has recently developed a new functionality – Automation 360.

Automation 360

As written on the site, Automation 360 is a flexible event-based automation flow. To cut a long story short, this functionality allows to perform advanced email marketing strategies in order to maintain relationships with the clients.

This is the interface of new functionality. As you can see, there are 7 elements to work with. With Automation 360, you can create series of messages taking into account different conditions, filters, actions, goals and personal information about your customers. Besides, you can make your communication multichannel by adding web push notifications and SMS to the series.

How do you create an automation?

There are 7 elements to use:

  • Email
  • Web push
  • SMS
  • Filter
  • Condition
  • Action
  • Goal

Let’s take a quick look at each of these elements.

Email

It stands on the 1st place since you will mostly send emails. After dragging it to the working field, specify when it should be sent, create subject-line and template, and attach files if necessary. Then, click “Apply”.

Web push notification

You can send a web push only if a user allowed to receive them from your website. Web push is a good chance to raise conversions or to inform customers about sales, new arrivals, etc. If a user didn’t open your previous email, send them a web push notification. They are supported almost by all browsers and are convenient to get to know about important things.

SMS

SMS is another good way of informing people. You can use them to tell your customers about their shipping status, for example. Be sure that you have the phone numbers of all the subscribers.

Filter

Filter allows to send personalized and segmented emails according to conditions set. To use it, create and add variable, set condition and its value.
For example, filter your emails by gender. Thus, women and men will get only relevant content. Or, you have special offer for subscribers from different countries, you can also specify it.

Condition

Condition shows what happens next after the predefined action, the following actions depend on the condition. You react to these actions by sending emails, for example. It is shown below.

Action

Action is what happens after following the condition or not. For example, if a subscriber didn’t open your email or didn’t follow the link, you can copy them to another mailing list to send a web push notification or a reactivation campaign.

Goal

Goal is the place where your series can stop. Set the goal to track the effectiveness of your work. You can either stop the series after reaching it or continue it. For example, if your goal is a purchase, you can send a thanks-email after it.

Automation 360 allows to track the conversions of the whole flow and of particular emails.

It is great functionality that will surely bring benefits to your business. SendPulse constantly develops new features to make email marketing easier and much more pleasant.