One Two Three Movie Review - Laughter Riot – You will roll and fall, laughing in your chair!

One two three - Movie Review

After working 60 hours a week, all I expect from a movie is something which can make me laugh and make me enjoy my 3 hours in a movie hall. One two three has been a brilliant Riot of Laughter and I got what I wanted from this movie, 3 HOURS OF ENTERTAINMENT AND FUN. I don’t carry my brain to the movie hall, I use it in my office place where it works well for me and if you are looking for a serious plot and a well construed sequence of events, better watch a thriller. This movie is a hilarious riot of laughter and keeps you busy till the fag end.

I watched this movie, this Sunday evening in Vision Cinemas, Bangalore. PVR was running full house and I didn’t get the tickets for the same. I got the tickets in the morning for the evening show in Vision cinemas. The movie was running house full here too and to top it with, I saw 2 extra chairs being laid down in the hall.

It’s a slapstick comedy by the debutante director Ashwini Dhir. He is an award winning writer of the “office office” fame on TV. This entry into the Big Screen is a well thought of “safe formula” of masala and comedy (of errors) for the entry into the big screen entertainment. Thinking from the perspective of director you would want to break-even in your first movie, you need to ensure the movie has some entertainment value, which this movie does.

The story revolves around 3 people who have the same name: Lakshmi Narayan
1) An amateur wannabe DON (Tusshar Kapoor) supported by her mom, who begs in front DON to give Tusshar a chance to murder someone.
2) An over inquisitive employee in a company (Suniel Shetty) who keeps asking questions (even when the DON is about to kill him).
3) A veteran sales man selling Lingerie (Paresh Rawal) who sells it in his car and can see and tell the size of the UGs that a man or women wears.

The movie runs around these 3 main characters and the comedy of errors starts when these three go to Pondy for respective work and land up in the same hotel and their identities get exchanged as all of them are supposed to get information on reaching the hotel. So ONE wannbe DON on a mission to kill, gets the pic of lingerie designer[Esha Deol]. TWO gets the pic of actual DON, Mukesh Tiwari, (to be murdered) and THREE gets the pic of car dealer [Sameera Reddy].

I am not going to reveal the story or the plot. Better you watch it in the movie hall.
Though here are some pointers:

-Witty one liners (makes you rock n roll in your chairs) coupled with comedy of errors in name.
-Individual notable performances by Suniel Shetty (funny), Paresh Rawal (good as usual) and Tusshar Kapoor (Ok, nothing great).
-Also notable performances by Neetu Chandra (impressive), Vrajesh Hirjee(cool), Sanjay Mishra(rocking as always) and Mukesh Tiwari (Papa - was a good concept), Manoj Pahwa (a lil nonsense one liners but they were funny).
-Unable to impress: Esha Deol, Sameera Reddy, Tanisha, Upen Patel (oh BTW tanisha and upen patel had a full dialogue in the movie, that too in hindi ;) )
-Music – Title track was good and catchy, though rest of the songs were very OK, I would say the esha deol song was not even required. So nothing great on the music front.
-Interesting was the background music usage, with 1-2-3 running throughout the movie and Bhen Da Takaas theme.(this was funny, watch it to know it)

The screenplay was average and the direction was fair for the 1st time director. A better and tighter control is needed the next time!

The best part was Suniel Shetty’s non stop questioning sequence all around the movie and that is something which keeps your funny bone tickled! And Paresh Rawal’s ingenious acting with his straight face talk about “kachha-baniyan”.

As I said earlier, if you wish to enjoy and laugh for a change, it’s a must watch! Though if you are of those serious kinds who look for a very serious plot and thrill, this is not for you!

One two three or 1 2 3 is the stepping stone for Ashwini Dhir in the cinema and it’s a welcome step is all what I can say!

Creative Labs PR 2.0 Debacle + Microsoft’s shoddy VISTA OS = Lost Customers

Creative Labs PR 2.0 Debacle + Microsoft’s shoddy VISTA OS = Lost Customers

On 28th March 2008, Creative Labs, makers of X-Fi series of Sound Cards which are known for it’s good quality and Dolby Digital LIVE experience, faced the worst PR ire. I would call it a PR 2.0 debacle.

Good product + BAD OS + Bad Drivers + Bad Support – Customer empathy = Worst PR 2.0.


The public admonition on blogosphere (creative’s forums) worked against the company’s product and services marketing efforts.


All this PR 2.0 debacle started when Phil O'Shaughnessy, VP Corporate Communications, Creative Labs Inc., openly on the forum posted the message below, pointing it out to Daniel_K a regular contributor to the forum, who modified the code of the drivers to make the X-Fi cards work properly on Windows Vista.


Daniel_K:We are aware that you have been assisting owners of our Creative sound cards for some time now, by providing unofficial driver packages for Vista that deliver more of the original functionality that was found in the equivalent XP packages for those sound cards. In principle we don't have a problem with you helping users in this way, so long as they understand that any driver packages you supply are not supported by Creative. Where we do have a problem is when technology and IP owned by Creative or other companies that Creative has licensed from, are made to run on other products for which they are not intended. We took action to remove your thread because, like you, Creative and its technology partners think it is only fair to be compensated for goods and services. The difference in this case is that we own the rights to the materials that you are distributing. By enabling our technology and IP to run on sound cards for which it was not originally offered or intended, you are in effect, stealing our goods. When you solicit donations for providing packages like this, you are profiting from something that you do not own. If we choose to develop and provide host-based processing features with certain sound cards and not others, that is a business decision that only we have the right to make.
Although you say you have discontinued your practice of distributing unauthorized software packages for Creative sound cards we have seen evidence of them elsewhere along with donation requests from you. We also note in a recent post of yours on these forums, that you appear to be contemplating the release of further packages. To be clear, we are asking you to respect our legal rights in this matter and cease all further unauthorized distribution of our technology and IP. In addition we request that you observe our forum rules and respect our right to enforce those rules. If you are in any doubt as to what we would consider unacceptable then please request clarification through one of our forum moderators before posting.Phil O'ShaughnessyVP Corporate CommunicationsCreative Labs Inc.

Even though I do not have personally anything against them, and I do understand that there action was primarily to support IP protection of their own company products, however, the communication message and the behaviour adopted was un-customer friendly and obviously the potential and existing customers have punished it openly.

However, the sound cards, which work fine on Windows XP, yet lose some functionality on the new Vista operating system. Forum member Daniel_K made some modifications to the code used to run the sound cards, and released drivers of his own that allowed Creative Labs users to take full advantage of their sound cards on Vista.

Daniel_K was recently able to "fix" many drivers, enabling the "incompatible" features as well as fixing some bugs. He made a few mistakes, however, as in asking for donations. Making a profit off his modded drivers was asking for trouble. Now Daniel_K probably shouldn’t have sought donations for his work - that’s the main thing that most likely attracted attention to his efforts. But otherwise, he was only trying to ensure that other users like himself were able to get their sound cards to work properly on the sometimes-unstable Vista OS.


However, Creative's announcement, as well as Daniel_k's indicating he was quitting the modding business drew still more ire - from Creative's customers.

For example, this one:
I am sure I am not alone when I ask this. Once and for all, we want the truth:After your disrespectful messages to Daniel_K, will you be fixing your own drivers? Or are you going to leave it as it is?


And this one:
I'm happy to announce that by your recent actions AGAINST your customers I have decided NEVER to purchase a Creative product again. I'm also happy to say that within 30 minutes of your horrible news I've managed to convince 3 people to NOT purchase planned Creative products.It's indeed not a lot but at least I'm doing something.
And finally:
Can we (Vista and X-Fi users) request for a refund as Creative has failed to deliver the necessary drivers and materials in order for the Sound Card to work as advertise?
I have to admit, Daniel_k has a good point in his post I linked above, one that Creative should take to heart:
The funny thing is that you are faster "protecting" your technologies and intelectual properties than providing improved drivers and softwares for your customers.
You purposedly crippled and ruined the Audigy/Live! (Emu10kx) and the Audigy LS/SE/Value/Live!24-bit (P17) drivers for Windows Vista.
This just proves you don't really care about what your customers and what people think about you.

Immediately following their VP’s blog post, the rants against Creative Labs begin - and as of this writing, continue for 80 pages - almost 700 comments - nearly all of them negative. Most posters are saying that they will either return their Creative Labs product, or that they will never purchase or recommend the purchase of a Creative Labs product again.

What Creative Labs does not seem to get is what they have been hunting themselves, it's called ROI, return of investment. Something the folks that who have invested over $200 for a high-end Audigy card with a breakout box did not get back when they moved to Vista.

A complete PR 2.0 Debacle. My advice to Creative Labs, firstly fix the drivers and provide it on a priority and reassure the customers, that they will get the ROI on the cards they have bought. And then go public like this, they way they have.

Healthy Mobile Office, of Tomorrow?

This Wednesday night I picked up my parents from the airport who are on an India wide holiday trip and while I was on my way back to home, we were discussing the bad traffic situation on Bangalore roads(it took us 1 hour to reach from bangalore airport to my house~8 kms).

And then discussion turned out that it’s not just Bangalore but every city in India or outside which is having these traffic qualms.

So it gave a birth to another discussion. I mentioned that it used to take me 40 minutes to travel from BTM Layout in Bangalore to my Wipro office on Hosur road which was exactly 4.5 kms away. The situation is even worse in Mumbai and many such cities.

So what’s the solution? Well I put forward an idea that let’s not go to our office, so we will not have to face the traffic. And the traffic will automatically decrease. Obviously I do not mean that stop working. But what I mean is work from home.

In today’s world, what’s needed to do your job, mostly a PC, Internet connection and a phone? So, you can have most of it at your home and you can start working from home. Is this, what is going to happen in the future? Are offices of tomorrow going to be your homes?

I mean it makes perfect sense, you can work from home and for any collaborative activity you can go the office if needed.

And BTW I was reading another interesting post and say a very interesting video of a Truly Mobile Office. So now you can give 3 cheers for good health and a healthy business!

CLAIM - Collaborative Learning and Involvement Marketing

CLAIM - Collaborative Learning and Involvement Marketing to claim more and more customers with confidence and pride.

Today I am introducing this concept in marketing, called, CLAIM and I will try to explain, how, you can acquire more customers and convert more prospects into customers by using this CLAIM concept.

Collaborative learning

What do you see people doing around you? From a CEO to a desk manager, from a machine shop owner to a software engineer, from a marketing professional to sales guy, every one is involved in a day to day task of there own. To accomplish that task they are communicating and applying knowledge or their skills. Either they are using their previously acquired knowledge/network or they are learning new skills/building new network. They are talking to each other, talking to customers and prospects, keeping in touch professionally or socially, they are searching information, they are reading or writing they are leveraging everything possible to collaborate and accomplish their tasks, everyday.

How different are the things from earlier days and now? Well in 1970s if you were to acquire accomplish any task, you would be talking to someone senior, spending time with them and learn from their experience. However, with fast paced life in today’s world, it’s getting difficult to do that. So what do people do today? People leverage the knowledge networks and their professional networks. They learn from the knowledge already available to them. There are multiple sources of knowledge today from learning from the case studies, whitepapers, research reports, survey analysis, personal network, professional network, open question and answers online and vast knowledge available in terms of best practices on Internet.

People are collaborating with each other to help each other learn and grow much faster than they could have otherwise.

As Graham Jones pointed out in his post “online advertisers are failing to understand people”, it is partially evident, that ads are disruptive. This means: you can catch the attention once; however, does that have a positive effect? No.

So what does the marketer DO?

Re-focus on customers!

It’s becoming simpler to answer this complex situation, Collaborate with the customers/prospects and keep the Learning process ON always. Open up your ears and eyes and whatever possible to learn from the customers. And be genuinely interested in making the customer successful.

Make it a 3 way learning process.

New Customer/Prospect <-----> Marketer <----->Existing Customer

Learn from your existing customers, learn from your new customer or prospect and then share the knowledge from an existing customer to another customer and repeat this cycle.

Come up with solutions to present issues that a customer is facing. Make your present customer successful and make the successful customers your sales people.

Involve the customers and prospects in your marketing by interacting with them and making them do the Word of Mouth.

Getting your intentions correct – Though it’s a long term strategy and many organizations are ignoring it in the pretext of short term sales and revenue, the genuine intention of making your customers successful is dying. While your customer is struggling with an issue in their work, you as a marketer is showing benefits to the customers and not projecting the genuine intent for a solution. Collaborate with them to showcase the best solutions out there from your research and learning from other customers.

Reach out as a support in communities and professional networks. Provide research and best practices at no charge and make people successful in their jobs. Does this need time and money from your side? Yes it does, however, it is important now to collaborate and involve people in your marketing effort.

With Collaboration and Continous Involvement of your customers and prospects in the marketing process, you CLAIM more and more customers with pride!

HSBC Bank - Marketing promotion reaches New “Greener” Heights – Shameful Marketing promotion

HSBC Bank - Marketing Strategy reaches New “Greener” Heights – Shameful Marketing promotion.

Yesterday night while on my evening walk I noticed the "New Green Ways" of marketing adopted by some Employees of HSBC bank. As if the annoying calls for personal loans were not enough, the Sales Executive at HSBC bank decided to NAIL posters on the trunks of trees to sell Personal Loans.

As John Muir said, “God has cared for these trees, saved them from draught, diseases, avalanches, a thousand of tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”

I wonder what they are thinking when they came up with this brilliant Marketing Plan. Will posting a personal loan ad on a tree trunk get people to call you? It is ridiculous. Isnt there a law againt this somewhere in the country?

I was just wondering, if you post something on a billboard, you pay the billboard owner rent. Considering HSBC posters are on trees which are public property should'nt HSBC be paying the public. Will HSBC give out company shares to every bangalorean? Will they atleast pay-back society in some way instead if ruining the environment. Is there anything at all the Bank is doing for the society in which it operates?

Enough of complaining. On one hand while there are no-brainer promotion tactics like this, there are some people who really care for the city and planet’s green face. They have started planting trees for free across the city. They have left a name www.treesforfree.org humbly and they have a blog which is full of action and it speaks for them.

What I am doing here is to take their action to masses and spread their to the people:

“We plant trees for free to heal the earth. As of now, we do this in Bangalore only. So if you know any place where a tree can take root and flourish, let us know. We'll do the rest. You're welcome to join us, I as a volunteer or a "tree planting member"(one who gives 100 rupees to plant a tree, every month). We also plant trees as a living tribute to your birthday, anniversary, or any other day that you want us to. If you like what we do, and then feel free to spread the good word about our work. Speak to your friends, family, and your company's CSR department. Do whatever it takes to spread some greenery and heal the earth.”

I have contacted the people behind this to put my personal efforts to help promote and contribute in this initiative.

For once, let’s stop complaining and DO this. And for the people at the private banks, please put some thought into your Marketing exercises.

Holi - Indian festival of colors brings freshness in Subways from Mumbai to New York!

Do you stink? Please take a bath this Holi ... :)

We casually joke in India, pointing at the lazy bums, “You take a bath from Holi-to-Holi?” Not sure how true that joke is, but with people stinking in sub ways and public transports, it sometimes looks like it is true.

Holi - for once in a year everybody takes a public bath, quite literally :). Holi is an Indian festival which is played with colors and water with a lot of enthusiasm. It has a rich cultural history, read more about it here. On the first day it’s celebrated by a bon-fire signifying burning the demoness Holika and on the second day (dulhendi) with colors and water. Even though it is a little dirty festival (as many people might say) it at least cleanses the dirt off your body and at the end you smell good. I would say it’s more of a mass cleaning operation :).

Why don’t people play holi every month in Mumbai and New York? I think it’s more important for people to adopt this festival considering the increased stink in the subway trains. Just a few days ago while I was talking to my friend in New York and he pointed that people stink in sub ways and it seems as if they haven’t had a bath in ages. It made me reminisce my days of travel in local DTC and Blue line buses in Delhi, and the journeys in local trains in Mumbai, even some of my early job days in Chennai, the stink on these public transport systems was so bad that I sometimes almost killed myself pressing my nose hard to escape the smell.

Our politicians don’t stink: They all love holi. In India, right from politicians to small kids, people of all ages, castes, creeds play holi. UP and Bihar have a unique style of playing holi called “Kurta Faad” holi. Our favorite railway minister, Laloo Prasad Yadav, is known for this style. Recently The Hindu reported that Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and AB Vajpayee all enjoyed holi.

More facts on Holi: Holifestival.org gave tips on how to make natural colors (I hope these colors take the stink off the subways). Also I saw a holi calendar till 2021 which tells you when holi is (you can visit here). I was wondering if I can rewrite the calendar and celebrate Holi every month. More facts about holi can be found here.

BTW: For social service I do play holi and here is the proof!

Tradition Marketer? Online media can help your ROI tracking.

My online media evangelism is making me more generous towards the traditional media marketers or you can call it’s a sympathy gesture to myself (for the time I spent in traditional media). Here is a piece of advice for the traditional media marketers to track the ROIs from the offline media campaigns (which is a hard nut to crack otherwise).

Let’s say you are running TV, Radio, Print ads for certain campaign and you wish to track your ROI. Neither this is a fool proof method nor will it give you an accurate tracking, however, it can act as an add-on to your regular media tracking tricks. Assumption made here is that you would be using some call to action in your campaign and tracking it back to your results.

Try to use a “keyword” or a “buzzword” in your campaign as a call to action. Now, much before launching your offline campaign, you can look at the search engine volumes for the specific keyword which you are going to use in your offline campaign.

Identify some popular search engines in your region and start running a fixed time SEM campaign. Buy out certain keywords that you are going to use in your offline campaign and you expect that those keywords will be searched by people in search engines.

Now bid for those keywords and keep a close track on the search engine traffic coming to your website through those keywords before launching the offline campaign. This is the base setup which will work as the platform for you.

Once you start your offline campaign monitor the post campaign increase in search volumes of your keywords and the increased traffic to your website. Determine whether your offline media has a positive ROI impact by evaluating whether this incremental search traffic got you additional searches, enquiries, sales, etc.

Was it worth investment on your offline media initiatives? In case your business is not at all online, and you know, for example, that majority of your business is done by phone or in stores; you could look at increased search volumes when calculating ROI.

This is how Online Media and search engines can help you measure your ROI and track the results a little better than what you might be doing now!

naseba Videos on Youtube and Technorati

naseba product lines




Ambition RAW




Naseba Logo



Naseba Dubai

New Marketing Mantra for India INC - Incentevise | Nurture | Capitalize

Online media evangelism - How online media can augment sales when traditional media gets the beating.

INC Philosophy: Incentivise Nurture Capitalize

I was reading an article this morning on how the surrogate advertising might just get blocked completely in India, thanks to our minister Anbumani Ramadoss. I met him during an ICT in healthcare event in Baramati. He is a learned man and gets very passionate about certain issues, especially with younger generation.

This is a roadblock as well as an opportunity for the marketers. Obviously one channel (TV) for promotion of such brands as well as brand extensions might get blocked. However, the channel which opens for India Inc. is the online channel. Fortunately the Indian minister does not have control over the online channel (Yet). So obviously this channel can be leveraged effectively for the promotion.

Incentivise: Give more reasons for people to move online and see the benefits like Cost or better and quicker service etc.

Nurture: Provide more benefits, create a conversation and nurture the audience by collaborative community based discussions.

Capitalize: Capitalize by spending the least amount of advertising dollars and still convert them to revenue.

INC is the new marketing mantra in a age where the traditional media fails.

TV 2.0 eating into Traditional TV time?

Is TV 2.0 or the web based video channels cannibalizing the traditional TV watching time? Would Internet replace the traditional box?

I was recently reading the survey report on media consumption and noticed that 37% of the audiences between the ages of 12-28 on an average are hooked online for up to 5 hours a day. The usage varies from news, office work, matrimonials, jobs, social networking, online videos, online and music download, blogging, commenting, reading, file sharing, mobile messaging and mobile media usage and more…It is evident that there is a cannibalization of TV time with Internet/Mobile time. Another interesting piece by Times of India, 17th March 08 on Video Blogs and how there is a general behavioral shift towards internet.

However in another media and entertainment household survey fact sheet by IBM showcased DVR as one of the key reasons to have increased the TV usage. The key thing to look at is that video recording or playback is driving this behaviour of media consumption. This means people want to choose the time and want to have the convenience of watching TV or digital media as per their own will. Can we call it ON-Demand digital media?

Now in this case people are paying for the media and a small number is also ready to pay a little extra for ad free viewing. However, considering that there is a large focus group which is online and would like to get access to digital TV 2.0 or WEB TV 2.0 at their will, that to free of charge all supported by the ads, they wouldn’t mind watching that, would they?

Here enters Vuze an open platform for digital music and video on demand! Vuze is the world's most popular entertainment platform for high-res digital content: video, music, and games. With an installed base of 18 million unique client downloads in its first year, 500,000 new downloads per week and 150 content partners to date, Vuze is experiencing unprecedented organic growth. I have seen small webseries like roommating is getting popular already and there are many similar series which are presently running on Vuze.

It won’t be an exaggeration if I call Vuze the next standard of Web TV or the TV 2.0. It’s a P2P based video and music sharing platform. You can simply download the video by opening the torrent file. Also you can publish your own content by creating torrents. Vuze attracts and features high quality content from a growing roster of global television networks, premier production studios and thousands of maverick content creators, on the most advanced, most open entertainment platform ever created. Another finding in the survey sheet was that 23% responders liked user generated content which gets fulfilled in an open platform like this.

The new commercial-grade platform is supported by powerful peer-sharing technology, enabling its vast global community the ability to browse, share, search and discover unique multimedia entertainment in a high-resolution format. And Vuze is supported by text and video advertisements.

Then you have websites like youtube.com, yahoo video, google video, MSN Video, AOL Video, Veoh.com which offer a variety of online video series to watch online.

So the battle just boils down to Bandwidth. Do we have strong enough networks which can support these heavy video streaming sites? Can we actually stream LIVE Video as smooth as our traditional TV? Obviously looking at the benefits that I get where I can choose what to watch, when to watch and for how long I want to watch, I can pretty much control my buying behavior for entertainment products. And if offered well, I can even buy into a service provider for eg: there can be a bundling of packages with news, entertainment etc for online Video viewers. Presently Tata Sky is one of the leading organized cable operators on on-demand TV which is a digital, DTH via satellite TV, in India. This can become a threat to Tata Sky if they do not look at their online strategy of on-demand TV.

Would TV 2.0 become a threat to traditional Cable and TV operators or the traditional way of watching TV and replace the Traditional Idiot Box?

Google - “A Prediction Shop”?

Google is almost “Human”.

Internet psychologist Graham Jones in his post on his website on 13^th March’08 says psychologists prove Google is almost “Human”. He supported his conclusion on the research done by researchers at University of California, Berkley.

An excerpt of the research report said:

“Human memory and Internet search engines face a shared computational problem, needing to retrieve stored pieces of information in response to a query. We explored whether they employ similar solutions, testing whether we could predict human performance on a fluency task using PageRank, a component of the Google search engine. In this task, people were shown a letter of the alphabet and asked to name the first word beginning with that letter that came to mind. We show that PageRank, computed on a semantic network constructed from word-association data, outperformed word frequency and the number of words for which a word is named as an associate as a predictor of the words that people produced in this task. We identify two simple process models that could support this apparent correspondence between human memory and Internet search, and relate our results to previous rational models of memory.”

So now my question is: Is this good or bad for me, as a search user?

Good Side: If I am thinking of some specific term in my mind and I google that term, in most probability google shows me the most relevant response. Wow it is good! Well it’s based on there algorithms, their experiments, their learning from data of masses and billions of queries and web history and many more reasons. So in a way I am happy that I got what I wanted. So google is not evil and truly giving me very precise search results.

Bad Side or Not? If google can give me the relevant search results of the stuff that I am searching for, does that also mean that they knew at one point of time in future I am going to search that? Something like a predictive search? And if yes, if they know what I am going to search for that means, they are going to serve me that even without me searching for it eg: If they know that I won a online marketing contest and previously I have been searching for a vacation in Thailand, so are they not going to serve me ads on Vacation Planning and special tours in Thailand?

Now this is debatable. Should I be happy about Google knowing that I am planning for a holiday in Thailand and they offering me relevant tour operators who can help me find a good package or should I be left alone to decide on my own through my research to find the best for me?

Last but not the least…So will a Machine algorithm take over Human Mind, and will google become a prediction shop?

Download Top 10 Email Marketing / Database Marketing Resources | Forrestor | Gartner | McKinsey

Top 10 Email Marketing / Database Marketing Resources

Keywords: Email Labs, Gartner, Forrestor, McKinsey, Reports, PDF, Download, Email Marketing, Marketing Sherpa, Benchmarking, Resources

As a marketer I keep a tab on what's new in the marketing world and a lot of resources are available online. All this information is scattered all over the place so I thought to combine most of the stuff in a common place on my blog. All companies and trademarks are their registered names and copyrights, I have nothing to do with it. These reports are freely downloadable from Internet from their respective websites and to bring it to a common platform, I have brought them here. You can download these email or database marketing resources and get s stronger hold on the email or database marketing scenario.

1)Download the 4Rs of Email Marketing Detailed Guide in PDF format. A practitioner's guide to Email Marketing. Tips and tricks on creating Call to Actions (CTAs), Subject Lines, Email Deliverability enhancement and more.

2) Email Labs Online resources this link provides access to best practices in Email Marketing from various people contributing a large number of articles, articles on day-to-day email marketing needs and more...

3) One detailed guide on ensuring your email gets delivered. Download the Email Labs Deliverability Guide a must read for every email marketer and strategic decision maker.

4) Download the Email Labs Opt-in List creation Guide which is a comprehensive compendium for creation of Hygenic email marketing lists from various banner ads, other campaigns etc.

5) Email Marketing Service Providers Q4 2007 Forrester Wave report, A good analysis on how to choose your email solution provider.

6) Gartner report on Email Security Boundary - Magic Quadrant. A little old report on security and deliverability.

7) McKinsey report - How companies are using online marketing? A good report to understand the worldwide usage of online media.

8) What personalization tools work in e-commerce and why? A Forrestor report on what personalization tools work and why.

9) Marketing Sherpa's Email Marketing Benchmarkeing Guide 2008 - Excerpts. An enriched guide to quickly benchmark your company's performance and see how you fare on the metrics. Also watch the latest trends in Email marketing. Buy the detailed guide here.

10) The Forrester Wave™ report: Database Marketing Service Providers, Q4 2007 report a detailed analysis on what are the expectations from MSPs and how are they faring on the same.

Keywords: Email Labs, Gartner, Forrestor, McKinsey, Reports, PDF, Download, Email Marketing, Marketing Sherpa, Benchmarking, Resources

Key Email Marketing Metrics – CTRs, Opens, Forwards, Leads, Quotes, Revenue, Market Share

Key Email Marketing Metrics – CTRs, Opens, Forwards, Leads, Quotes, Revenue, Market Share - Part of 4Rs of email marketing

While marketers do all this jazz of email marketing, tracking, optimizing, testing the core objective in my perspective should be sales revenue. Whether it is marketing leads to sales closure or its direct marketing online closure.

So certain key metrics to be looked at can be: Clickthru rates, Open rates, Forwards (if it’s a viral), Website visits, Leads generated, Leads getting converted to quotes, and finally how much revenue is generated.

Also some of the CMOs metrics should be the market share attained. How much share holder’s value enhanced?

Clickthru rates shows 2 things:
-Whether you communicated to the right audience or not?
-Also whether your CTAs were well planned and executed?

Leads generated on the microsites or websites show if you were really able to give the experience to the prospects or not. These leads truly showcase how marketing can add value to the organization’s business objectives as well as it adds to the brand awareness.

Leads getting converted into quotes and finally into revenue is the true marketing success. Though there is element of Sales skills involved in it, however, online closure of deals is a pure, honest marketing success!

An annual review of market share expansion should be conducted by the CMO to understand the impact of the marketing and ROI analysis through various media should determine the future expenditure planning and budgeting.

Email Opt-in techniques and Deliverability

Email Opt-in techniques and Deliverability - Part of 4Rs of Email Marketing

Opt-in means that your prospects and customers have chosen to communicate with you. Opt-in status “yes” means that the user wants to communicate with you or your company so its fine your communication is not unsolicited. Also your email should comply with the CAN SPAM act.

There are a lot of ways that marketers leverage to create an opt-in status of a user.
Some of the questions that you should ask to see how you are building database.

· How do you collect consent from recipients to send commercial or promotional email: double opt-in, opt-in with verification; opt-in; preselected option with verification; or other?
· How do you collect consent to share email addresses with third parties or affiliates: double opt-in, opt-in with verification; opt-in; pre-selected option with verification; or other?
· How do you determine whether third parties who provide you email addresses have obtained their users’ consent: in writing; reviewed their consent method; reviewed the URL where the third party obtained consent; or other?
· Do you send commercial or promotional email based on prior business relationships but without prior consent?
· Do you require users to accept your commercial or promotional email as a condition of doing business with you?

You can run whitepaper, survey, e-book, research reports, webzines, webinar download campaigns, and generate opt-ins. You can look at even banner ads or you can hire in some space in newsletters or run a contest or even better may be a viral campaign etc depending on your business needs.

Here are two email opt-in and deliverability guides from Email Labs which are a must read.
-EmailLabs – Grow Email Opt-In List

-Email Deliverabilty Guide

Email Design – Is your CTA Actionable?

Email Design – Is your CTA Actionable? - Part of 4Rs of Email Marketing

CTA or Call to action is like the button on your TV remote which when triggered makes your TV do the things which you want it to do. Similarly your CTAs should be punchy and actionable. Well crafted too, so that when you take an action by clicking some link on the email you should be able to drive the relevant action from the customer/prospect.

Your CTA should be placed well in the email which is easily located. Also, it should come at a point in time that there is some suspense element, some kind of need that is created and should create urgency.

Examples:
-Using quick links in the newsletter.
-Offers should be highly visible.
-Probably using colours, images, or simple text (but should be punchy and actionable)
-For European, Asia and American geos, preferably left aligned or centre aligned
-For Middle Eastern geos, preferably right align.
-CTAs like click here should be avoided as they trigger spam filters.
-Read more…, Learn more…, Get this whitepaper here, Get your own copy, Click to continue… and more…

Email Marketing - Email Design and Subject Lines

Email Design and Subject Lines - Part of 4Rs of Email Marketing

46% of Marketers take 15 secs to create email Subject Lines

One of the most important things in email marketing / website content development is the subject lines. Even though the above statistic is just an example to showcase that how a good subject line should be, simultaneously, it’s an indication that a lot of marketers do not spend enough time in creating subject lines.

I have created subject lines which have got me open rates as high as 40% and clickthru rates as high as 20% however, I have also created bad subject lines which yielded open rates as bad as 8% and clickthru rates of 0.7%.
It’s very evident from my experience that a good subject line can really decide the success and failure of a campaign. Just imagine you spent hours all together with teams in brainstorming and coming up with the right strategies and communication messages. But while executing you forgot to test the subject line and spent like 5 secs. in creating something that struck you at that moment and suddenly the entire campaign fell through as people didn’t open your emails at all.

Damn it’s annoying but true, that, something as simple as a subject line can kill the productivity of a brilliantly crafted message and designed campaign.

Some examples which work … mostly:
-Personalization
-Questions
-Emotive words
-Using statistics
-Using numbers
-Using company name
Put Whitepaper: , Survey: , Tech Report: , as the starting words.

Here are some examples:
-Hello {firstname}, are you among the TOP 100 {jobtitle}?
-Hi {firstname}, 5 mins Step-by-Step approach to plan your vacation.
-77% of the {jobtitle}s have registered with us, {firstname} have you?
-Are you weak like your colleagues?
-Whitepaper: Garbage the future of energy?
-Survey: 86% of HR heads are outsourcing recruitments.
-Majority Declared: 91% of mothers spread the word.
-{Companyname} Weekly Round-up: Customers want synergy at low cost.

Email Content – Keep the promise!

Email Content – Keep the promise! - Part of 4Rs of Marketing Series.

How do you build a relation with your friends? May be you get introduced by someone to a friend or may be you met someone somewhere (online in this case) or may be you just make a promise and live up to it and strengthen your relation with friends and over a period of time convert them to loyal friends.

It’s something similar in case of a customer relationship management through email marketing. Let’s say you were running an ad in a website or hired some space in a targeted newsletter and you were offering something useful for a prospective customer, you started generating traffic to your website through it and got people interested and started increasing your list size. Now, what is important is that you should remember to “keep the promise”, the promise that you made while gathering the information of the prospect. You made a promise to deliver a useful and relevant piece of information like a whitepaper, survey, research report etc. Obviously you should focus on your business, definitely, however, keep your promise by investing in the promise that you made continuously. Or else, you would be not more than anyone else in the same business. The only way you can differentiate is by keeping your promise to the customer during the time you acquired that customer’s relation.

As relevancy is taking the utmost importance in today’s time, it’s imperative to deliver highly relevant content. There are various ways to achieve this. You can manage your CRM system effectively and capture various details about your customers and prospects and leverage that date for delivering highly relevant content. This is no rocket science. It’s something which Google.com, Amazon.com, Yahoo.com and many other companies do, by learning about your preference and delivering what you need.

Additionally you can look at Omniture Segmentation Guide, Docmetrics - Document Optimization, Silverpops – Testing Methodology, Forrester’s Web Analytics report, Geographical optimization, Behavioral Triggering and Instance based triggering.

So let’s say while you are building your CRM database, keep a field open which says “Acquisition Source” which can be a pick list with values like: Banner Ads, Ad Words, Referral, Forward from a Friend etc. However, important thing to notice is to keep another field which says offer chosen like: Whitepaper, Survey, Research Report, Tech Paper, Event registration, Tips and tricks, Videos etc.

Just by doing this small activity you know later on what the interest type of the person was, so that the next time you wish to roll out some offer, you can just bundle it with another Whitepaper, Video, Survey etc and you were able to deliver on your promise while keeping your relation and relevancy.

Some important things to keep in mind are not to use potential SPAM words in the content or else your email deliverability will get hurt. Find the list of TOP 100 potential spam words here.

4Rs of Email marketing – A Practioner’s Guide!

4Rs of Email marketing – A Practioner’s Guide!

An in-depth tutorial or a hand-book on email marketing or a practitioner’s guide to email marketing. I have covered various components of email marketing. I have tried to put together resources from various email marketing or lead automation solution providers in a single place.

3 years ago I got introduced to a simple yet effective concept of marketing, “Email Marketing” or “Inbox Marketing”. As simple as it sounds, it means sending an email to a prospective customer or an existing one, either to share some existing piece of information, or about informing or educating them on some new product or service that you can offer or may be just to say “Hi”.

Well Email marketing has been highly regarded for being able to get the highest returns on investments. It involves the least cost, requires the least set-up time, and you can see the responses very quickly. Though it might just sound like sending out an email, it’s not that simple!

In today’s time people can choose what they want to receive in their inbox. The good old ways of pushing the message in someone’s inbox is gone. Today’s it’s about the 4Rs of Email Marketing: - Relation, Request, Relevance and Returns/Revenue.

In simple words, today marketers need to strike up an engaging relation with prospects or customers during which the customers could request for some information and the content that you are offering should be relevant to the customers or prospects to get real returns on your investments (Revenue).

Components of Email Marketing

-Email Content
-Email Subject Lines
-Email Testing
-Email Design CTAs
-Email Opt-in Techniques
-Deliverability
-Key metrics – CTRs, Opens, Forwards

4 Rs in Action: - Relation building – Requesting Opt-in – providing Relevancy - ROI

Email Content – Keep the promise!

How do you build a relation with your friends? May be you get introduced by someone to a friend or may be you met someone somewhere (online in this case) or may be you just make a promise and live up to it and strengthen your relation with friends and over a period of time convert them to loyal friends.

It’s something similar in case of a customer relationship management through email marketing. Let’s say you were running an ad in a website or hired some space in a targeted newsletter and you were offering something useful for a prospective customer, you started generating traffic to your website through it and got people interested and started increasing your list size. Now, what is important is that you should remember to “keep the promise”, the promise that you made while gathering the information of the prospect. You made a promise to deliver a useful and relevant piece of information like a whitepaper, survey, research report etc. Obviously you should focus on your business, definitely, however, keep your promise by investing in the promise that you made continuously. Or else, you would be not more than anyone else in the same business. The only way you can differentiate is by keeping your promise to the customer during the time you acquired that customer’s relation.

As relevancy is taking the utmost importance in today’s time, it’s imperative to deliver highly relevant content. There are various ways to achieve this. You can manage your CRM system effectively and capture various details about your customers and prospects and leverage that date for delivering highly relevant content. This is no rocket science. It’s something which Google.com, Amazon.com, Yahoo.com and many other companies do, by learning about your preference and delivering what you need.

Additionally you can look at Omniture Segmentation Guide, Docmetrics - Document Optimization, Silverpops – Testing Methodology, Forrester’s Web Analytics report, Geographical optimization, Behavioral Triggering and Instance based triggering.

So let’s say while you are building your CRM database, keep a field open which says “Acquisition Source” which can be a pick list with values like: Banner Ads, Ad Words, Referral, Forward from a Friend etc. However, important thing to notice is to keep another field which says offer chosen like: Whitepaper, Survey, Research Report, Tech Paper, Event registration, Tips and tricks, Videos etc.

Just by doing this small activity you know later on what the interest type of the person was, so that the next time you wish to roll out some offer, you can just bundle it with another Whitepaper, Video, Survey etc and you were able to deliver on your promise while keeping your relation and relevancy.

Some important things to keep in mind are not to use potential SPAM words in the content or else your email deliverability will get hurt. Find the list of TOP 100 potential spam words here.

Email Design and Subject Lines
46% of Marketers take 15 secs to create email Subject Lines

One of the most important things in email marketing / website content development is the subject lines. Even though the above statistic is just an example to showcase that how a good subject line should be, simultaneously, it’s an indication that a lot of marketers do not spend enough time in creating subject lines.

I have created subject lines which have got me open rates as high as 40% and clickthru rates as high as 20% however, I have also created bad subject lines which yielded open rates as bad as 8% and clickthru rates of 0.7%.
It’s very evident from my experience that a good subject line can really decide the success and failure of a campaign. Just imagine you spent hours all together with teams in brainstorming and coming up with the right strategies and communication messages. But while executing you forgot to test the subject line and spent like 5 secs. in creating something that struck you at that moment and suddenly the entire campaign fell through as people didn’t open your emails at all.

Damn it’s annoying but true, that, something as simple as a subject line can kill the productivity of a brilliantly crafted message and designed campaign.

Some examples which work … mostly:
-Personalization
-Questions
-Emotive words
-Using statistics
-Using numbers
-Using company name
Put Whitepaper: , Survey: , Tech Report: , as the starting words.

Here are some examples:
-Hello {firstname}, are you among the TOP 100 {jobtitle}?
-Hi {firstname}, 5 mins Step-by-Step approach to plan your vacation.
-77% of the {jobtitle}s have registered with us, {firstname} have you?
-Are you weak like your colleagues?
-Whitepaper: Garbage the future of energy?
-Survey: 86% of HR heads are outsourcing recruitments.
-Majority Declared: 91% of mothers spread the word.
-{Companyname} Weekly Round-up: Customers want synergy at low cost.

Email Design – Is your CTA Actionable?

CTA or Call to action is like the button on your TV remote which when triggered makes your TV do the things which you want it to do. Similarly your CTAs should be punchy and actionable. Well crafted too, so that when you take an action by clicking some link on the email you should be able to drive the relevant action from the customer/prospect.

Your CTA should be placed well in the email which is easily located. Also, it should come at a point in time that there is some suspense element, some kind of need that is created and should create urgency.

Examples:
-Using quick links in the newsletter.
-Offers should be highly visible.
-Probably using colours, images, or simple text (but should be punchy and actionable)
-For European, Asia and American geos, preferably left aligned or centre aligned
-For Middle Eastern geos, preferably right align.
-CTAs like click here should be avoided as they trigger spam filters.
-Read more…, Learn more…, Get this whitepaper here, Get your own copy, Click to continue… and more…

Email Opt-in techniques and Deliverability.

Opt-in means that your prospects and customers have chosen to communicate with you. Opt-in status “yes” means that the user wants to communicate with you or your company so its fine your communication is not unsolicited. Also your email should comply with the CAN SPAM act.

There are a lot of ways that marketers leverage to create an opt-in status of a user.
Some of the questions that you should ask to see how you are building database.

· How do you collect consent from recipients to send commercial or promotional email: double opt-in, opt-in with verification; opt-in; preselected option with verification; or other?
· How do you collect consent to share email addresses with third parties or affiliates: double opt-in, opt-in with verification; opt-in; pre-selected option with verification; or other?
· How do you determine whether third parties who provide you email addresses have obtained their users’ consent: in writing; reviewed their consent method; reviewed the URL where the third party obtained consent; or other?
· Do you send commercial or promotional email based on prior business relationships but without prior consent?
· Do you require users to accept your commercial or promotional email as a condition of doing business with you?

You can run whitepaper, survey, e-book, research reports, webzines, webinar download campaigns, and generate opt-ins. You can look at even banner ads or you can hire in some space in newsletters or run a contest or even better may be a viral campaign etc depending on your business needs.

Here are two email opt-in and deliverability guides from Email Labs which are a must read.
-EmailLabs – Grow Email Opt-In List
-Email Deliverabilty Guide

Key Email Marketing Metrics – CTRs, Opens, Forwards, Leads, Quotes, Revenue, Market Share

While marketers do all this jazz of email marketing, tracking, optimizing, testing the core objective in my perspective should be sales revenue. Whether it is marketing leads to sales closure or its direct marketing online closure.

So certain key metrics to be looked at can be: Clickthru rates, Open rates, Forwards (if it’s a viral), Website visits, Leads generated, Leads getting converted to quotes, and finally how much revenue is generated.

Also some of the CMOs metrics should be the market share attained. How much share holder’s value enhanced?

Clickthru rates shows 2 things:
-Whether you communicated to the right audience or not?
-Also whether your CTAs were well planned and executed?

Leads generated on the microsites or websites show if you were really able to give the experience to the prospects or not. These leads truly showcase how marketing can add value to the organization’s business objectives as well as it adds to the brand awareness.

Leads getting converted into quotes and finally into revenue is the true marketing success. Though there is element of Sales skills involved in it, however, online closure of deals is a pure, honest marketing success!

An annual review of market share expansion should be conducted by the CMO to understand the impact of the marketing and ROI analysis through various media should determine the future expenditure planning and budgeting.

BIAL HAL Airport Issue - A request from RK Mishra - All bagaloreans unite!

I got the following email from a colleague and I strongly feel against BIAL to be the only airport in Bangalore. Till we have the infrastructure hiccups we should have HAL as well as BIAL airports open.

Please fill-in the survey and share your comments.

A Request from R K MISRA – SAHYOG – A Public Private Partnership Initiative

Dear Friends,

As we are getting closer to the opening date of New International Airport – BIAL
(Bangalore International Airport) , on 30th March, the realization of inadequate infrastructure and impending chaos is making all of us very nervous. I am also part of the High Powered Task force Set-up by the Governor to suggest and implement short and medium term measures.I have attended these meetings and I am extremely concerned with the preparedness of the bureaucracy in terms of adequate infrastructure and management of traffic. It is going to be a chaos and we will take anywhere from 2-3 hours to reach BIAL from South and South East of Bangalore. I plan to do this survey to get to know the public opinion and theirconcerns on this matter. Based on this survey, I plan to take necessary step to find viable solutions including keeping HAL airportfunction, till adequate and affordable infrastructure is provided forall to reach the airport in around one hour.

So please send the above REQUEST along with the LINK below to your employees, industry associations and friends' organizations, whowould be affected by this shift to the BIAL. They need to click onthe link below to complete the survey.http://www.surveymo nkey.com/ s.aspx?sm= NsxzXw_2bMMzQrqg GhYbf9LQ_ 3d_3d
Regards,
R K Misra
Founder Trustee
SAHYOGA Public Private Partnership Initiative

_____________________________________________________________

BTW: the prices for a Bangalore - Chennai flight vary between - INR 1000 - 3000. With this new BIAL airport, the prices will shoot up like anything as there is going to be a extra fee of Airport Development levied on each ticket fare. Also, anybody travelling from South of Bangalore would be paying INR 800-1000 only for the Taxi fares and would be spending 3 hours in reaching to the airport for a 45 min journey to chennai.

This is just an example to show how bad the situation will become. All low cost airlines are rallying against it. As well as a common man's dream to travel in an Airline would be shattered as the average cost of travel would include to-and-fro charges to airport + additional fee + cost of ticket+ govt taxes.

I strongly feel against it and there should be both the airports operational till the time government provides a good solution for the same. Please comment and please fill in the survey!

What’s in a name? Pretty much everything…

Topaz…what do you think of when you first hear topaz? The shaving blade your father used in the days before Sensor Excels and Mach – Mach3s??

How about a restaurant serving Indian food?? Naah- not really.

10 months ago, near where I live in 7th Block, Koramangla, Bangalore, a new restaurant serving Indian food opened. This (opening of restaurants) is a fairly common occurrence in Bangalore, especially Koramangla with a new place, serving a different cuisine, with a unique name opening almost every week. What is not a common occurrence is for the restaurant to be called “TOPAZ”, which is a name which almost never conjures up images of food and a new eating joint in the heart of Bangalore to not be choc-a-block with diners over the weekend, which sadly topaz never was.

I have walked past that restaurant almost everyday and always wondered what was it that made someone name their restaurant TOPAZ, and 10 months, and am yet to come up with an answer. Not able to just be content with simply wondering, I decided to walk in and sample the fare – something which no Indian restaurant should get wrong, Daal Makhani & butter Naan. Unfortunately, I had to come back disappointed with the just average food and above average prices.

Also, a firm believer of the wonders of marketing and branding, I decided to speak to the management about the possibility of a name change and even suggested a few Indian options, but the management present were clueless on why the owners named it Topaz in the first place!

Now 10 months later, Topaz has quietly shut shop and am sure not too many people notice the difference in Koramangla’s geography or miss it.

I am left wondering- could a mere name change, something as simple as “bawarchi khana”, “mirch masala” have saved the restaurant?

Personalized Search or Prima-facie Search?

On 4th March 2008, Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google blogged about the privacy and how search is being improved day-by-day at Google by "learning from crowds" by analysing billions of search logs and experimenting with people's data and delivering better results. I thought, as a marketer I should learn something from it, you never know I might need to profess something similar in my job, sometime in future!

When you read his blog entry, initially, the history of search is given, to divert attention from the topic and build a story around it and sweep away the readers mind with emotional touch by talking about “how two poor chaps doing research” started this company, as other search companies didn't buy their algorithm...Alas, they must be cursing themselves now...

Then the actual pitch comes, talking about how user information is “protected” and “leveraged” only for user experience improvement purposes!

Hal says: “We're constantly experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for our users.”
Very interesting unsolicited experiments which are not explicitly explained and subjected to you and only after some time when you realize the ads are getting more and more personalized is when you realize that you are part of the experiment!

After watching the cool Support Engineer chick presenting the videos on privacy at Google by explaining how Cookies work and how Web History works it’s really interesting to analyze how Google professes its neutrality and customer oriented approach. (I love you guys from a marketing perspective, everyday I learn new words and sentences in English language and how to use them in a politically correct manner whenever it’s needed, Thanks again!)

The website on which these videos are posted is owned by Google along with the ability to post comments (obviously it’s moderated). The web history is "definitely helpful" (pun intended) to give more relevant search results as well as more relevant ADS. How does Google earn revenue? Ads, I guess! (why can't you admit it?)

If you want to learn and better the user experience, ask the people to voluntarily participate in your search experiments instead of the way you do it by choosing on your own!

Maile Ohye, support engineer at google says an IP address doesn’t say who you are or exactly where you are…Are you sure? Did we hear Webtrends and Visual Sciences or even better Google Analytics along with email marketing solutions with web tracking saying we provide tracking of visitors on your website and did we hear Akamai saying we provide directory of companies hosted on each IP so that you can track who visited your website?

Though I like the innocent face of the support engineer and the simplicity with which she mops up things! Great job keep it up! BTW: stop giving Cars, Carss, Bass examples. What about examples like my buying behaviour or my healthcare searches?

Though the interesting thing to notice is that in coming 18 months, google is going to cut out the last 3 digits from the IP log display. As well as the preference ID from the cookie like below:

This would be an interesting move to watch, this hasn’t been attempted by any search engine till now. This step on one side might annoy Web tracking companies a bit, on the other side would be a consolation for common man.

Having said all this, my simple questions to Google are:

“Did the users ask you to provide more relevant search by picking their information?”

“Did users say that I am not getting relevant search results and now I am moving to a new search engine?”

Sachin Uppal's TOP 100 th Blog Post | Marketing & Technology

I am not sure what should I write in my 100th blog post, though I thought I can write a bit about myself and about my blogging habit. How I started blogging, why do I blog now, what I blog and for whom I blog for and what role does today's Blogging technology play in Marketing and personal Branding.

Well what I notice in Marketing over a period of time is that Technology has started playing a larger role, sometimes to the extent of driving the new strategies. Also, this has led to creation of a new breed of Human Capital with a completely new skill set which is needed. 10 years back to drive the marketing it required business objectives and goals, business mindset, creativity, new ideas and passion to do marketing. However, today it has got augmented and now it needs to be a good balance of Technical Know-how too. But one thing which has not changed is Passion to succeed in whatever you do. And passion is one thing which has driven me to achieve all the success which I have till now, though in words of Robert Frost :"I have miles to go before I sleep."

So what I noticed as a change in myself over a period of time is that, now I not just understand the technical part of technology, but also the Business and Human part of it and this I something which I leverage to my advantage. With social and professional networking adding advantage to the knowledge growth I just feel more privileged that I am born in this age. I sometimes now enjoy myself being called an Online Media Evangelist, as this is what I strongly believe in and stand for in today's Web 2.0 times. I can say I am passionate about it. When I started blogging way back in 2005, it was more like a juvenile amateur writing about college days or why he likes a Pizza or some philosophy and some inspired content etc. However, in mid 2007, I started focusing on Technology & Marketing.

In 2006 I didn't blog, as I was so occupied with my work. I was learning on how to implement marketing and branding strategies leveraging various media. I executed some 200 events in 05(sept) -07(june) varying from Seminars, Conferences, Workshops, Interaction and Brainstorm sessions, Expos, Tradeshows and did over 1000 different electronic mailers and some 50 direct mailers targeting 26 different industry segments varying from Automation, Automotive, Aerospace to Travel and Tourism, Healthcare, IT, Wireless, HR and more... Also I interacted with media for online and offline PR and even press conferences etc. I created whole lot of sales productivity enhancement tools, testimonials, demos, CDs etc etc and tried so many more things.

One thing which I remember while doing all this is my mentor in National Instruments telling me to focus on results and to see the broader picture than just on media execution. The importance of learning from past and each activity by analysing it on basis of what was the objective, strategy, tactics and what was finally achieved.

I was in a race to learn as much as I can and just because I was passionate about marketing and I wanted to be the best in what I am doing. I did my set of mistakes and learned every time and came off much stronger and better every time.

My professional journey of marketing officially started off at National Instruments though the seeds were born in my school and college life and small activities in Wipro Technologies. I let the plants grow and mushroom into strong banyan trees as I grew older. I read this book called "The End of Marketing as we know it" by Sergio Zyman the ex-CMO of Coca Cola, which shattered a lot of myths about marketing and the most abused term "Strategy" and I got introduced to real, fact based, measurable world of marketing, where it was all about sales and how new marketing strategies can drive sales for a small organization to the large giants.

Then one day while I was reading online I just felt that I should share my opinion on this topic and I started writing and revisited my blog. I saw many other blogs and started learning how to optimize blogs and on how to make it user friendly, add productivity features etc. Then I got introduced to something called Web Analytics and I installed the freely available (not so accurate) google analytics and started noticing that there are people who are reading my blog. So I thought why not start keeping in touch with my friends, known and unknown people who may get benefited from my writing. Soon I saw with increasing content on my blog I started getting more and more visitors on my blog and people started sharing their opinions.

Though I have a long way to go, I can surely see that I am able to keep myself focused on my thought process, my ideas and opinions and obviously keeps me aware that its a public place where people are seeing my thoughts naked as it is.

In today's time it's become a tool for personal branding for individuals as well as corporate branding for organizations. I don't know if it is an Exaggeration that I am making or not, but in some years from now, HR departments of companies, girl friends and boyfriends, dads and moms, CEOs and managers might just get judged in the world by there blogs. You might see a campaign like Titan Fast Track watches with tag line: "How many you have" for blogs saying "How many you write?" running on prime time TV. :)

Happy blogging and commenting!

-Sachin Uppal http://sachinuppal.blogspot.com

TOP Ways / Tips to manage Wives (Happiness)

TOP Ways / Tips to manage Wives (Happiness)

Male, 25, Indian, Married, all these four words generally do not appear in the same sequence in case of Indian Men or at least not in Bangalore. So if you are reading them together, you can definitely predict signs of an early marriage for that man. I am, definitely a young married man in India trying to manage the Happiness (acronym Wife) and relationship. Many people might envy me because of an early marriage, a good job and a cheerful and supportive wife. What they might not know are the clever subtleties of managing the happiness in relationships.

Here are TOP ways or TOP Tips to manage Wives (or happiness)

One: Do you remember, while testing your driving skill for a licence, you have to project yourself "as the slowest driver and let everyone pass you by. And once you get your licence, you know how to Drive the car anyways :D".
Marriage is the ultimate driving test. Always project that you are naive enough to believe that your wife is making you believe you are smarter than her, even though, you know what the truth is. The disadvantage - you will keep hearing, nice ego massaging statements. {Warning:- this behaviour leads to depletion of bank account "}, But do not worry, if you do not follow this behaviour the damage to your bank balance is anyway going to be higher. So this is a safe and conservative approach to manage happiness.

Two: As a cancerian, the route to my heart is through my stomach. So essentially, I boost my wife's morale, at her every culinary attempt. This keeps her happy and you get delicious home cooked food. There can be some aberrations though. However, in general interest and long term Happiness its highly recommended to appreciate the food. In certain cases, where your wife, might not be a good cook, you might want to take an alternate path. However, if your wife cooks well "which in my case, she does" you should blindly follow this approach.

Three: Remember Important Days. This is vital for any husband's existence. Use mobile calendars, sticky notes, friends, websites, PC calendars or whatever that can help you remember important occassions.And importantly, compliment these dates and occasions with GIFT'S'. The 's' is the 's' of happinesssss. More the 's', more the happiness! Look for subtle hints which your wife gives you while you are mall gazing or passing by a jewellery / shoe / bag store. But be warned, dont't show interest immediately or ur wallet will be damaged right then. Pretend to ignore, and you would anyway have to run on the last day, but you already have the right ideas on what to buy her.

Four: Respect her time with her female friends. Support her while ahe plans to catch up with her old friends. Probably cook your own food, drop her at the place, finish off some cleaning the house activities in her absence. Just these small things would help in the long term.BTW: Keep your plans ready during this time of "freedom" - call some of your friends over. But, donot project you had a better time than her ar you might not enjoy this freedom for a long time again.
Follow these and you'll be the perfect husband and did I say no-body is perfect?

Top Husband Management Tips from a Wife's Perspective

TOP husband management tips for that everlasting Happiness...*
*Courtsey, my wife, as a guest blogger.

Being a young wife, not too young by the traditional Indian Standards, but definitely young by the modern Indian standards has its own quirks. On one hand, the older relatives who were married much earlier than you were, can't quiet understand "what your problem is" - with cooking, running the house, work-life balance, husband and most importantly - not feeling the need to reproduce immediately.

The younger ones who are note yet married, can't understand "what your problem is" either - with an indulging husband, good job, and no children.But what is the problem indeed? How does one manage their husband and in the process their happiness in the marriage. From my brief experience into a marriage this is what I have figured (maybe subject to change on better experience):

TOP ways to manage Husbands and Happiness

One: Never for a moment let the husband know the eternal truth - that you are smarter than your husband. Constantly keeping him under the belief he is "Mr. know" all will do good things for his ego and even better for your wardrobe.

Two: Great cooking - cooking is no rocket science. What with all the numerous websites with recipes on everything from boiled rice to paneer makhni kurma masala. And thanks to Google, just key in the name with the all important word "EASY" and there you have it - A way to get dinner ready in 45 minutes and an enthralled husband.

Three: Subtly reminding him about forthcoming important occasions (birthday - yours and his, anniversary, Valentines Day & any other day you feel like recieving a gift) is vital to ensure you are not disappointed on those occasions. Begin well a month in advance. Every trip to the mall should include pointing to the things you adore and gushing over all the Jewellery / shoes / bags. Lapse of memory by the husband then cannot be given as an excuse when the occasion arises. But be subtle and do not nag

Four: Give him some time alone with the boys. Irrespective of how much men claim not to gossip, exchanging notes with his married pals will have him see how fortunate he is to have you - the ego boosting, great cooking, no nagging wife.

Hotmail goes Gmail ways…What about Yahoo Mail?

Free --> Paid --> (Free from competitor) --> Paid -->Unsuccessful Takeover --> Free

Hotmail has gone the “follow the google” way. With Hotmail giving POP access to all your mails into the LIVE Mail client. Years back Hotmail used to give POP access to Hotmail so that you can download your emails to a local machine. However, later they took away the POP access and made it a paid service. With Gmail taking over a large market share away from Yahoo and Microsoft, and a failed Microsoft’s bid of yahoo. It sounds like a desperate attempt or I should say back to senses approach of providing free POP access.

Now the question that remains: Will Yahoo give Free POP access?

The new LIVE Mail client helps you organize your feeds, emails, contacts and images. Does it sound like a parallel product line following the google product line of Google Picasa and Feed reader?

Healthcare - IT and Google

So now Mrs. Smith will see special suggestions on how to control her diabetes and how to keep her cholesterol and blood pressure under control as per google’s ads on her personal google online Health record.

Marissa Mayer, VP, Search and user products, Google, on 28th Feb blogged about the new google product “Google Health”.

No, No, Google is going to provide you with a very secure product, maintaining integrity and what not. It’s going to give you a perfect organizer to access your online medical records from various service providers in a common place, online, anywhere in the world.

Just imagine if I can read your email (gmail), I can read your online word docs and spread sheets (google docs), I can see what images you see (picasa), I can see what pages you browse on web (web history), I can see what you like on your front page everyday (iGoogle) and I know your health profile (google health), obviously I am not going to use that information.

Quoting Marissa Mayer: “We won't sell or share your data without your explicit permission.” Obviously you won’t, why do you need to sell it? You can very well use it for 3rd party ads yourself!

I think this is a much deeper connection (tracking in marketing terms) that google will be able to leverage. Must say this is true innovation as per google’s philosophy!

Bill Gates | Steve Jobs | Larry Ellison | Scott Ragsdale up for sale

With a new application on Facebook you can put your friends for sale. Knowing that a large number of CEOs of large companies are on facebook, I can just imagine the fun when Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison and Scott Ragsdale go on sale.

It would be interesting to see if the CEOs are in a common network and one CEO puts up another CEO for sale. So imagine Scott Ragsdale CEO of naseba, puts up Bill gates for sale and Steve Jobs buys bill gates for $574 (a figure which I noticed at which one of my friends bought a friend).

So does that mean Steve can make Bill work for Apple? May be this application was launched keeping in mind Bill’s retirement plans.

So next time keep an eye, you never know you be able to buy Geroge bush :)