WE BECOME WHAT WE THINK ABOUT

Have you ever wondered why so many people work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular, and others don’t seem to work hard yet seem to get everything? It’s because of goals. People with goals succeed because they know where they’re going. It’s that simple. But why do people with goals in life succeed and people without them fail? Well, let me tell you something that, if you really understand it, will alter your life immediately. You’ll suddenly find that good luck just seems to be attracted to you. The things you want just seem to fall in line. Here’s the key to success and the key to failure: We become what we think about. Now, let me repeat that. We become what we think about. Think about someone you know personally who seems to have “the magic touch.” Reflect on the goals this person has accomplished, and consider the trajectory of their success. What type of mindset or attitude does this individual maintain? Now consider, what do you spend your time thinking about? See any adjustments you need to make? "The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them.”- George Bernard Shaw

WHY MOBILE EMAIL HAS BECOME SO IMPORTANT TO BUSINESSES

One of the most challenging questions that an email marketer can have is how to send a cold email. But things have changed significantly in the smartphone era. The impact of the smartphone revolution is undeniable, and we are continuing to see it flourish more and more each day.

Not only has mobile usage grown as a whole, the way it continues to influence business and brands continues to change and develop as well. For most brands, this impact has been a positive one, but it is important to get a complete perspective to be able to make the most of the available opportunities. 

Key Mobile Email Stats

If you are building an email marketing strategy for your brand, make sure to include mobile into your plan. The following stats should demonstrate to you how important the mobile email ecosystem has become in the last few years.

i. Mobile Device &In-Store Retail Sales

Studies show that shoppers with mobile devices have almost 37% influence on in-store retail sales. Even when they are shopping in a physical retail store, they are interacting with their mobile device, which influences their final buying decision.

The reasons they rely on their mobile device when shopping include the following:

• Conduct in-depth research on the product they are interested in
• Search for special deals and compare prices
• Find out whether the retail store gives any self-checkout option using a mobile device

ii. Mobile Email Vs. Desktop Mobile

More users now access their email on their mobile devices than on their desktops. There are some variations in terms of the niche, product categories, and age and gender of email recipients, but overall more emails are opened on mobile devices.

• Mobile accounts for more than 50% of all email opens
• Mobile email open rates are much higher for younger audiences than their older counterparts
• Real estate, events, and media companies can benefit the most from mobile email campaigns

So if you belong to the right niche, it may be easier for you to find a better solution to the question of how to send a cold email. According to Litmus’s 2019 market share report, mobile clients accounted for almost 42% share in email opens during the first quarter of 2019. Webmail open rates were almost 40% and desktop rates were around 18%.

iii. Mobile Email Traffic has More Value Another study shows that mobile email traffic has more value compared to desktop email traffic. In other words, mobile conversion rates are higher. One of the main reasons is the increase in the percentage of people buying products on their mobile devices.  According to many of the top email marketing blogs, email conversion rates for mobile email have increased by 70% within a span of just one year. On the other hand, the conversion rates fell for desktop traffic during the same period. iv. Demand for Responsive Email Make sure that your emails render properly on mobile devices. Even now many businesses are unable to create and send emails that display effectively on mobile screens.  Studies show that when an email shows poorly on mobile, users are likely to delete it in 70% of the cases. This happens even when the content is of high quality. In fact, 15% users may also tap on the unsubscribe link.  Make sure that your emails render well on mobile devices: Images should not be oversized Avoid excess text without breaks Avoid multiple column layouts  Use a responsive email solution to ensure that your messages are rendered well on all mobile platforms and screen sizes. If you still think that mobile is not as important for email, there are many more stats to prove you wrong. Over 3 in 5 consumers today check their email on their mobile. Almost three-fourths of them claim that one of the main reasons they use their smartphone is to check their email more often.  Mobile users spend a significant amount of their time using apps. Over 70% of users will check their email on an app. And most of them will check it at least once in the morning. So you cannot ignore the importance of reaching out with your email campaigns to your audience on their mobile devices. This also means covering all the popular platforms including Android, iOS, and other less popular ones. So in summary… email has always been important for businesses and brands of all sizes, but it’s now more important than ever today.

DO YOU HAVE TO LOVE WHAT YOU DO?

It’s at the heart of so many inspirational aphorisms. You’ve probably seen some variation of it posted on social media in the form of a motivational poster. The idea is that it’s supposed to invigorate you, encouraging you to pursue your dream. If you love what you do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. Do what you love and the money will follow.
These certainly sound nice… if it weren’t for the fact that they’re not true. Or rather they’re completely deceptive and overly simplistic. Even if you are so lucky as to find a job that you enjoy doing, you’re not going to love every day of it.
And even if you love what you do, you’re still working. Unless you’re not “doing what you love” to pay the bills, and you’re just living off the proceeds of your inheritance, you still need to make money to maintain your lifestyle. You’re still working.

Living Your Best Life?

Let’s say, for instance, that you love playing music. You adore it. Playing music provides you with great joy and, through some miraculous stroke of luck, you’re able to strike out a career as a professional musician. But here’s the thing; it’s not like you’re going to spend every day just playing your guitar. There are so many other aspects to a career as a musician, from dealing with contract negotiations to songwriting to hiring support staff and all the rest of it.

Maybe you don’t feel like playing today, but you HAVE TO because you agreed to a paid gig. Maybe you don’t want to do the autograph signing today, but you HAVE TO because it’s part of your contract.

But you love music. You love playing music. So, you keep at it. And that’s if you happen to be so lucky as to be able to eke out a comfortable living as a musician, which is most assuredly a privilege that innumerable aspiring artists never attain. They’re doing what they love, but the money isn’t following. The same extends to practically any endeavor, including blogging, YouTubing and Internet marketing.

Hitting a Speed Bump

Perhaps the biggest problem with using the “love what you do” mantra as your guiding principle is that you are much more inclined to abandon the endeavor when you no longer feel like you “love” what you do. It’s not living up to its admittedly impossible promise. You can’t love everything, every day, about what it is that you do. That’s just life. And if you want the money to follow, you need to work for it.

This isn’t to say that you should necessarily trade hours for dollars or “work for money.” Absolutely, you should work on creating systems that make money for you, but creating and maintaining those systems is still work. And you may or may not love that work, even if you were initially driven by a passion for some aspect of that work.

A Better Mantra

Loving what you do is insufficient.

What you want instead is to love your vision. Love the idea of where you want to end up.

If you aspire to play your music in front of a sold out crowd at Wembley Stadium in London, England, that’s your dream. That’s your vision. And that grand vision can serve as your motivation when you’re still sludging along trying to get gigs at your local music venue.

You won’t love the minutiae of the everyday, but you can love where you want to go. That’s where you can derive your energy, your motivation, your perseverance to get through those rough patches, those tough times, those less than “I love my life” moments. Because, above all else, the one thing that separates the eventual winners from everyone else is their tenacity, their willingness to stick with it when everyone else is giving up.

What’s your grand vision? How are you going to get there?

WHAT IS SUCCESS? (AND WHY DON'T MANY GET THERE?)

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Put another way, only about 5% of Americans have reached financial independence or better by the time they reach retirement age. In the richest country in the world, 95% of us don’t manage to take advantage of all the opportunities available to us. Why is that? If someone is working toward a predetermined goal and knows where he or she is going, that person is a success. If they are not doing that, they are failures. In Rollo May’s Man’s Search for Himself, May writes, “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice… it is conformity.” Try this: Set aside an hour or two to review your life plan. Do you know what goal you are working towards? Not your next promotion or career step, but your ultimate goal. Say you want to retire by 55 and travel the world for 5 years before settling down in your seaside cottage in Maine (hey, we’ve all got dreams!). Do you know what financial resources you will need in order to make that happen? And are you working toward them? "All you have to do is know where you're going. The answers will come to you of their own accord." – Earl Nightingale