My Customer Identity Management Blog

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Single Sign-On For Secure Web Authentication

Password is the weapon by which businesses are protecting themselves from cyber criminals and ensure that only authenticated users are accessing their services and resources.

But in today’s digital world, users have many accounts and each account needs a password. That means users have a bunch of passwords to create and remember. Almost all of their accounts are linked with their email ID. And more interestingly, for most of the accounts, users use the same set of credentials- an unhealthy process from the security point. Because if hackers get credentials for any of the service they can get the right to access all the other services.

And hacking a password is no more a tough job for hackers. There are numbers of software and applications available on the internet. Just type “software for cracking passwords” and will you get a long list of free and easily downloadable tools. By using such tools, hackers can attack any private account which he wants to hack.

The Web single sign-on solution or WSSO is a solution here that solves the mentioned issue.  Read the interesting article to know more about WSSO tool.

WSSO is a method of web authentication where users only need a single password to access multiple websites and applications that belong to the same domain. Once you entered your credentials for any of the application, you will be logged in automatically on other related apps.

The solution is based on SAML that is security assertion markup language. SAML protocol is considered as one of the most secured protocol. It is based on XML (Extensible markup language) standard that permits users to login once for affiliated but different applications.  SAML protocol is designed for both B2B and B2C type of businesses.

One of the most important features of SSO is that it can manage both “access to” and “denial of” for SaaS solutions. Managing identity and credentials is a tough job and businesses are spending lots of money in this. SSO is an important way to avoid the situation. The solution not only manages users account but also help businesses in providing a unified view of customers.

The single sign-on solution is a way of providing both easy and secure websites authentication and most importantly it removes the need to creating dozens of passwords.

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Professional email signature - The modern business cards!

Today your digitized email signatures are just another form of your printed business cards. Just like your business card, these professional email signatures are essential to your brand and to your individual professional persona.

Imagine writing your name on a scrap of paper and handing over to your delegates. Well this will surely serve your purpose but at what cost of professionalism? Using a poorly structured email signature is equivalent to not using any.

It is not what you say, it is how you say it that matters. When you communicate with people via email, your recipient not only get the words you wrote but they also get to see more information related to you and your organization you belong to. So just find out how an email signature can help or hurt your marketing efforts.

Perfect ingredients for a professional Email signature!

A fully- featured email signature must meet these following requirements!

Adds your brand identity(logo) upfront.

Mention what role you play in your company.

It should contain active links to your website and social media accounts.

Mention your at least one contact number and skype Id(if available).

Don’t stretch your signature more than six lines but it is good to include some marketing message time to time depending upon your brand.

How to create a professional email signature?

There are number of ways available in the market including some online tools to make amazing email signatures. Well creating a standardized email signature may include:

Creation of an HTML template which can be edited afterwards and can be installed for each user in the firm. This can be done by an IT pro who knows HTML for reliable results.

Use of a software that automatically fetches user data from the active directory of user and merges it into a signature template and then it becomes the default signature for each employee.

Use of some online email generation tools that asks for some information and gives you an amazing signature to you for use.

So don’t loose on an excellent opportunity to brand yourself and start attaching a professional email signatures at the end of every email you exchange.

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Magento SEO guide: common mistakes to avoid!

Do you own an online e-store and struggling for more traffic, higher ranks, and more conversions? Seo experts all around the world have mentioned a variety of methods to get you what you desire. Different CMS platforms have their SEO strategies to win the trust of search engines. WordPress has its set of plugins to skyrocket a website’s performance, Drupal has its rules for search engine optimization, and Magento also own some by default options with several other external Magento SEO extensions for you to optimize an e-store.

While performing one or all SEO optimization task on any web property, One might encounter some mistakes, and this article is to outline some of them. Here our focus will be on Magento SEO and what mistakes one possibly could make while doing this.

Magento SEO checklist- covering some very common mistakes!

Not Optimizing Title tags correctly!

Not optimizing the title tags can be your biggest mistake leading you to not showing up in the search engine result pages. It’s the by default setting of almost every CMS that they keep the title for the homepage of your website as “Home” and we often forget to change that. We should retain the title of your home page as the name of your store.

Not optimizing default keywords!

Although Google is not considering these hidden keyword metatags any more because of their spanning usage. But leaving them untouched is not a good approach even. After optimizing your title tags, your prime focus should be on adding relevant keywords(or adding long phrases that best describe your products) to its default meta keywords section.

Not optimizing URL rewrites!

Your URLs play a significant role in your search engine rankings. Hence it is needed to add SEO friendly URLs to your website as they make it easy for search engines to read them and crawl them.

Wait there are more such points that you need to optimize once you are on the track of optimizing a Magento store.

Not adding Alt text to your images.

Having similar title tags to your multiple pages gives Title redundancy.

Creating long titles having no keywords.

Not handling Canonicalization issues.

Well, these are some mistakes that people often make while doing Magento SEO optimization. Be alert and Don’t repeat these silly mistakes.

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Tools to write professional email signatures!

Email signatures at the end of your mails have become a solid CTA source these days. These email signatures are mostly overlooked. Companies or even individuals often ignore their existence in emails and what? They just give up on an opportunity to market themselves and not able to initiate an easy communication.

So fellas do you want to set up your own professional email signature? And do want an automated tool to do that task for you? Yeah, you get it right! There are many such tools available in the market that set an email signature for you and the system will attach it with the every email you send. So just have a look at some best professional email generating tools from here:

Wisestamp:

Give your email signatures a customized touch with this free email signature creator. It easily integrates with your email client and gives you the benefits of some beautiful templates for email signatures. With this easy to install tool, you can add an image or even your RSS feed’s link in your email signature.

htmlSig:

htmlSig is an online place to create a neat email signature without much decoration. This is a free and simple way to generate your personalized email signatures. With its paid version, you can get the access to some advanced creative features.

ZippySig email generator tool:

Quickly create email signature for your entire team with ZippySig email signature generator tool. It has some advanced customization options, a fully-featured dashboard and and an amazing technical support. So hurry up and download this outstanding tool.

Newoldstamp:

Newoldstamp helps you to create creative and unique email signatures. It has 11 professional email signature template from where you can choose your preferred one and can create your professional email signature.

Companysig, EmailSignatureRescure, BlackPearlmail and Sigwich are some of the other tools that creates amazing email signature for the corporate. Take advantage of these softwares and leave a good impression on your clients.

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Progressive Profiling is here to help for low customer turnout on your website.

Today in era of internet, a website is a primary requirement for every business. Not only business, person can be benefited too.

For a website, traffic is important, that too a quality one. Business with any strength of customers has a common concern, problem of low turnout on their website.

If you have a website with lots of registered users, or a website with decent traffic and less users, this problem is common for both.

One of the many reason of low turnout can be wrong channels, which are being used to drive traffic to site or wrong customers which are being targeted.

It is very essential to know about customers with which a business deal with. Customers are dynamic, with time they also tend to change. Like for a business which is successfully running for many years, their customers in their journey won't be same as their present ones.

There are many ways to help determine customers type. And one of those ways is progressive profiling.

Progressive profiling is implemented during customer registration and can be implemented for active users also.

In progressive profiling, users information is collected using dynamic fields. Small set of fields with some questionnaires is asked to customers, when they log in to their accounts. Upon logging on next time another set of questions is asked.

This way gradually lots of information about a customer is collected and saved.

With this information, businesses can analyze their customers and find out trends which business can follow and implement in their strategies.

This also helps in improving product, service or website itself.

After knowing about the customers, businesses can change their strategies, frontface and product so as to stay in sync with changing trends.

When business and customers are in sync, there will  be no factor left for customers which can disappoint them and will increase customer turnout on your website.

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Social share icons: To use or to Not to use

Social media is a gold mine for everyone. Whether it is a marketer, business or a person, social media has something for everyone. For a webmaster, social media is one of the best source for traffic and increasing reach.

Social share icons are widely being used on websites and blogs. The main purpose of social share icons is to give user convenience to share content on their social media profile.  With icons in front of them, they can easily click and share content, which is very convenient than copying and pasting content manually to their social media profile.

To use or to not to use them is a personal choice but if you have a blog then definitely they are important.

For a blog, it is very important because for a blog, its content is the only thing which can attract traffic to website. Social media is one of the platforms which is known as largest web traffic source.  It has lot of people who share same ethics and interests and can get attracted to relevant blog posts, if posted on social media

Almost every blog has an social media page where they share their blog posts. On website If a non-follower comes to the site, they can share content via share icons, and followers too.  No one will make effort to go on social page and search for post to share.

For non-blogging websites, it is not mandatory to include social share icons, but if the website is a portfolio website or ecommerce then it is recommended to use social share icons on images or on product page so that visitors can share them, if they wish to.

It isn't strange of someone sharing a product on their social media profile. People likes to share a product in order to flaunt their purchase or save it as a bookmark or get suggestions from fellow friends.

Hence it is not compulsory to use social share icons but if you are one of the case which were explained above, then you can use social share icons.

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Increase Traffic, Reduce Bounce Rate

Driving traffic to a website is not an easy job. There are number of factors that attract visitors. Many websites get successful in driving traffic but soon after users land on the first page, they go back resulting in high bounce rate. This is because of the missing factors. So, how can you improve website traffic without increasing bounce rate? The article will explain some tips that will definitely work for you.

Start with great content:

Everybody knows ”content is king”. So, it is must for you to provide good content on your website. The content should be unique, it must not be copied from anywhere. Search engines also like unique content and promote websites that have unique and worthy content. Don’t forget to add images and videos for more exposure.

Go with social media:

You have written a great content but that alone is not going to work for you. Make it viral. Post your content on different types of social media platforms. Social media is one of the best tools to drive enormous traffic. You can also add social sharing buttons for better results. These buttons help users to share your content with their network in just a single click. Social sharing buttons are very effective in driving traffic.

Start guest blogging:

Search high-quality websites that are relevant to your niche and where you can submit your blog. Make a list and start guest blogging there. This will help to capture high traffic to your website and you will see high conversions instantly.

Email marketing:

Email marketing is one of the most effective methods for reach out. This method also helps you drive traffic.

Make your website responsive:

Today most of the traffic on website is from mobile. So, it is must for you to have a responsive website. Also improve website speed, if you want to reduce bounce rate.

Driving traffic by reducing bounce rate is very important. I am sure these tips will definitely help you.

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Social share plugin can do wonders for a wordpress site !!

WordPress is one of the popular cms’s today, widely adopted and loved. Most of the bloggers have a WordPress running, easing their blogging experience. Other than blogging, other types of websites are being powered by WordPress too.

What makes WordPress so efficient and easy are the plugins and themes which are easy to install and configure. To install a plugin, admin has two options, either by searching it via dashboard or by manually downloading from any trusted source and the uploading via dashboard.

Social share plugins can do wonders in terms of increasing traffic and reach. Traffic and reach are two flavours for a website so as to survive, just like food.

Social sharing plugins help visitors in sharing content over their social profiles. This seems like an easy task for a person at once, doing it manually. For regular readers it is a tiresome job. They have to download content, copy and paste links every time they look something shareable and wants to share it with others.

Sharing plugins enables social sharing buttons on every post and page(if configured for.) So whenever someone feels like sharing a content, they can select a social platform and click share.

Once the content is shared on a social profile, it will reach to its timeline exposing to its followers, hence a new reach of audience. If someone from its followers reshare it, the new audience rule gets along with it too.

For getting more traffic, just installing share plugins is not enough. The audience must be relevant too. Shared by an irrelevant profile is useless as it won’t lead to clicks or shares. So make sure from starting about your strategies that they are returning quality results, not quantity.

For WordPress installation of social share plugin is very easy, just like every other plugin in plugin directory. Search, click and activate.

Who can use social share plugins?

Any niche who has shareable content on its site can use social share plugin. Even businesses are using share plugins for their blogs because they know the importance of social traffic.

If you have not installed social share plugins, then opt for them immediately for increasing traffic and reach of website and content..

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What is Two-Factor and Multi-Factor Web-Authentication:

Passwords are everywhere. To access our PC, while transferring online payment, debiting cash from atm’s, or much more, passwords are must. They keep our resources safe from hackers. But the problem with them is they can be easily guessed, stolen or bypassed. But don’t worry, there are many other reliable solutions that keep your resources secure. Let’s throw some spotlight on them.

You might have heard terms like, “two-factor” or “multifactor” authentication. They are some methods that make the authentication process highly secure and safe. In such methods, users need to verify themselves even after entering their credentials to get the complete access. In this article, I am going to explain both the factors of authentication in detail.

Let’s start with two-factor authentication:

There are lots of web services where you only need to enter username and password to verify yourself. It is the simplest way of authentication. But once your credentials get hacked you will be in trouble. To save users from this situation, two-factor authentication came into the role. In this method of authentication, along with username and password users are asked to verify themselves with something that only they own- like a mobile phone. When user enters his credentials to access a service, a unique code will be sent to his mobile phone that he will need to enter for further process. Hackers may have your credentials but is very hard for them to have your mobile access. Thus, it is a two-step verification process that adds an extra layer of security to your resources.

Now, what is multifactor authentication or MFA?

It is a method of authentication where users need to provide something to identify themselves as the account owner. In addition to username and password, users need multiple things to confirm their identities. Things like, they have to answer some personalized security questions, scan their fingerprints or retina etc.

Whenever I think about the multi factor authentication, I remember a scene from the movie “Mission Impossible” where a guy needs to scan his iris to get through one door and then voice match for the next one, and then a passcode and so on. So, simply MFA is a high security process of log on to any digital platform.

So friends, this is all about the two methods of authentication. No matter, which one is you are going to chose, both are reliable, safe and highly-secured. The selection between two totally depends on the type of business you have.

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How Many Users are There in Linked ?

LinkeIn is one of the most famous social media platforms for professionals. It has more than 150 million users worldwide. 

The infographics will explain more:

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Web Authentication: Past, Present, and Future!

Authentication to a website is always a headache for web users. Users are facing many difficulties while authenticating themselves to a website. Every website has a different way of authentication. Some offer traditional registration forms, some offers social login and lots of other methods. From time to time IT researchers have come up with new and unique ideas of web-authentication. In this article, I am going to explain what are the changes that occurred in the field of web-authentication and what are the changes that are going to take place in future.

Once upon a time there was a long and boring registration form:

Do you remember the form above? Yes, if we go few years back, if we wanted to access any website then we had to encounter long and boring registration form. We had no option but to fill the form. This cost us our time. Apart from time, the form frustrated and degraded our efficiency. But in present time, there are many methods that have replaced old traditional method. But still, there are lots of websites that offer an option of web authentication via new methods or traditional form. It totally depends on a user which one to choose.

What do we have?

Thanks to IT researchers for saving us from a long form. It was really a headache. Now, we have lots of option to authenticate ourselves to a website. Will discuss some of them one by one:

Social login:

How many social media accounts do you have? One, two or more? I know we all have accounts on many social media networks. Social login is a method that makes us login to a website using one of our social media accounts.

The above form indicates that we can login to a website using Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Unlike traditional forms, now we don’t need to fill forms and waste our time. Just with one click of the mouse, we can login to a website.

Single Sign-On:

Today, businesses normally have more than one website. No matter how easy the social login method is but authentication to multiple websites is not easy. Here single sign-on or SSO solution helps us to authenticate websites of the same business by authenticating only to any of the websites. I am not saying that SSO is an alternative of social login. Both are different methods. Social login is best for a single resource but for multiple resources businesses single sign-on is a better option.

What is the future?

Well, the approaches mentioned above are quite easy and quick but still researchers are always trying to find something new and great. They are looking for passwordless login where a user can login to resources without a need of passwords. Biometric login is one such approach. The concept is already exists but researchers want to take it to new heights.

Biometric authentication:

It is a password less authentication. User can authenticate to a website using his thumb impression or retinal scan. Like in my office to get enter, I have to provide my thumb impression against a biometric system then the system recognizes me and permits to let in. The method is on high demand nowadays and always will be in future.

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Social Media Sites in 2016

Social media is an important platform to boost sales. There are many social media platforms, not all are good for your business. You need to know which are the best one and on which platforms most of your users are engaged with. The infographics will explain some of the social media trends in 2016.

Reference: http://visual.ly/social-media-usage-stats-2016

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Single Sign-On and Its Benefits:

Today, we have numbers of resources and websites to access that are protected with a layer of security called passwords. So, creating and remembering credentials is a modern day concern. This concern gives birth to some of the techniques that allow users to access resources using their social media accounts. The techniques skip the annoying signup process. One such technique is single sign-on method. The method helps users to get rid of usernames and passwords.

Single sign-on solution(SSO) makes the web-authentication process simple and quick by allowing end users to authenticate multiple resources of the same organization by using single set of passwords. Users do not need to login all resources, once they are logged in to any of the resources they automatically get logged in to others. Like once you log in to Gmail you don’t need to authenticate again to access any of the Google products that includes YouTube, Google maps, Analytics etc.

Organizations with numbers of websites are widely implementing the solution to provide easy authentication to their users. Some of the other benefits of SSO are:

It saves time:

By allowing users to access multiple websites without login to each independently, the solution saves users time.

Free users from passwords:

One password and that is enough to access multiple websites and web applications. Thus, the solution removes the fear of remembering passwords and makes users password free.

Improves users experience:

By reducing number of passwords to remember and by simplifying the web authentication process, no doubt, the solution improves user experience. This also gives an opportunity for users to explore more on websites.

Reduces IT support help desk cost:

Less passwords to remember means low chances of forgetting passwords. That means less chances of calls regarding to password loss. This ultimately means businesses have to invest less on IT support help desk team.

So, friends, these are some of the benefits of single sign-on. If you have any point mention it in the comment box.

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Major Tech challenges faced by Startups !

Start Up trend is on boom right now as funding is abundant. Everyday there is a new Startup story making headline. Technological innovations and free availability of resources have opened up multiple doors for startups to groom but in spite of all these there are also some business ideas who get their shop shut even before they declare themselves open to the market. Some struggles very hard against the market challenges and float for a while but eventually drown deep. So what are these market challenges that cause a definite failure for Startup businesses?

The product itself:

Inspecting the water before taking a dip is for sure the most important lesson for every entrepreneur. Launching a product that is already a well established brand is foolish. You must be thinking that you are plugging a huge gap for customers but what if the market doesn’t feel so. So do proper market research and know what your customers think by testing it with a small group  only.

The constant change in technology:

Rapid change in technology can really throw a startup off the kilter. To become the fastest growing  company in its niche one needs to face a lot of technical pressure. If your technical force is not nimble enough and cannot execute fast enough on an idea, the opportunity for your product or service may close before it is ready for the market.

Lack of solid awareness about the product you launched:

You had an idea, you worked upon it and you have launched it. That’s it- End of the story!!

You really are misleading yourself if you think so. Without proper awareness among the people about the service or the product, there is no way you can sell it. So prepare a strong SEO strategy that will highlight your presence at least in the local market of Vancouver if you own an IT company in Vancouver.

Getting the right team:

The initial team for any StartUp is very crucial for a long-term success. And hiring can be proved as the most daunting task for Startup owners because of the lack of funding. To set up a burning trend, Startups requires highly skilled professionals and most of these people already have well paying jobs that a startup obviously can not match.

Fighting the mindset:

Every entrepreneur sooner or lates faces the fear of failure and support issues for choosing an unconventional career option. This implies that having astute financial planning and operational strategy is not enough only but it also requires a good training of mind to deal positively with de-motivation, failures and other hurdles which are by default mandatory for any business plan.

Well, these are only a few challenges that a startup company faces no matter wherever it is situated. Drop me your opinions in the comment box below.

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The new face of identity and access management!

Well, there is much discussion available on the internet focusing on this topic but here I’ll be combining all the general queries that comes whenever the term identity strikes in one’s mind. So let’s ride on this quick Q&A journey.

Query #1: What’s the difference between employee identity management system and customer identity management system?

Workforce identity management systems is employee identity management systems are dedicated towards reducing risks by controlling the access to different application softwares and also reduces cost by automating the user provisioning and entitlement processes whereas the new customer identity and access management systems are meant for improving revenues by improving end to end customer experience via making the best use of customer data. These customer based systems are architecture to take care of millions or even hundreds of millions of identities where the workforce dedicated systems are not capable of scaling to this huge number.

Another major difference between the both is that customer identity management platforms are not expected to face downtime that directly impacts the top line revenues and on the other hand if employee identity management systems goes down, it affects productivity or may appear annoying to your employees but it has no adverse affect on your business revenue.

Query #2: How these systems are different from technology point of view?

Since customer identity management platforms are tend to use customer identities to deliver superior customer experience that’s why it needs several technical capabilities that don’t exist in workforce systems. Among these technical capabilities we can include technology for easy registration, a common user profile, data access governance and preference management. To enable a friction-less registration process, Social Login is the technique which i don’t think a part of employee identity management systems.

Query #3: Is preference management a new capability in identity management systems and how does it work?

Preference management means the capability that allows a customer of website to directly specify their preferences and how they want to interact with a vendor. These preferences can be anything such as preference for communication mediums, product interests, personal device settings and many more. Preference management leverage you with the capability of capturing, enforcement and updation of customer preferences. This can give you a superior customer experience since here users are directly submitting their preferred choices to interact with your business.

Query #4: Does a company require both the systems?

Customer identity and access management systems are necessary for those businesses who directly interact with end users. Major Industry verticals like financial,healthcare, telecom, retail, and technology almost every niche require a reliable customer identity management platform. And at the same time all companies need to manage their employee identities simultaneously so yes both the systems are essential to be care free at the point of identity management.

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Crucial steps to Omni channel marketing for mobile marketing!

Today the world is connected more than ever before- from our TVs to expensive wearables to our smartphones to the latest Internet of things. The good news is: customers have many more touch points to make a purchase than it did in the past. Even studies say that a customer interacts with your business 10 times on an average before committing every purchasing decision. And it is totally up to them how they interact with your brand. They may connect in person, on website, on phone or via the means of social media platforms. As a response businesses are adopting methods like multi channel or omni channel marketing.

Our brick and mortar stores have fixed regular hours but our websites and mobile stores are always open. Customers can connect with brands around the clock and in return they want irresistible responsiveness around the clock. And to achieve this goal, brands need to build a synchronized, consistent and a complementary approach which is feasible across all devices and channels. And that’s what is known as Omni-channel marketing.

Omni channel marketing is a highly coordinated form of marketing that ensures the presence of a rigid solution where their customers are, when they want and how they want. In this businesses seek for the methods to reach their customers with the appropriate message via whatever channel they are using and all in real time.

To build up this kind of strategy you need to keep some points in mind and here they are:

Know your customers with customer profiles:

The bottom line of any omni channel marketing strategy is the customer profile. There may be variety of channels but the customer who is going to interact will remain the same across all the channels. And that’s where you can take advantage of. You can collect information about the customer each time he interacts with your brand in any way and then you will be able to craft a complete picture of a customer. With this complete picture of an user, companies can target specific customers according to their preferences and behaviors.

User segmentation based on data:

Not every user on the same track in their business journeys that’s why you can’t treat them alike. For example you can’t send the same message to a newly arrived customers that you send to your already existing customers. Here your customer profiles can help you to sort out your marketing efforts to get the right message to the right people. Apart from this you can also segment your visitors based on the way they interact with your brand. For example there are users who spend lots of time in surfing your products via a mobile app. You could prompt them with a special offer or can suggest to try a different channel. Similarly there will be some users who most frequently add items to their cart but don’t make a purchase. You can send them a personalized email reminding them not to miss out on that product.

Follow your customers:

You can’t expect a customer to be on the same channel all the time. Trust me this customer path is rarely linear and that’s totally okay! They often start with one channel and eventually convert it to another. There might be several channel jumps before a final conversion. As a marketer your responsibility here is to offer an experience which is consistent across all channel jumps. Here again the customer profile data helps. For example if a user adds some item in his cart via a mobile app and then opens your website in their browser than the added product should be there.

What’s the bottom line??

The wide availability of channels for engaging with your customers opens up the doors to curate a successful marketing strategy that is based on the collected user profiles and you can build a better brand experience for every customer.

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Happy Children's Day Wallpapers To Download Free

Children’s day is around the corner. No matter how old I am, children’s day always reminds me of my school days, where we were asked to come in the uniform of teachers and teach our juniors. The memories of childhood days stay with you forever and that’s why, whether you are a parent or a teacher or just an adult wants to make the kids around you happy, you must celebrate children’s day with the little bundle of joy around you.

We have brought for you here some beautiful Happy Children’s Day Wallpapers and Images to download free.