“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift… that’s why they call it present.” – Master Oogway

Human beings have always been fascinated by Tomorrow. We have astrologers, psychics and palm readers trying to predict what will happen tomorrow using “super-natural” powers.

Until recently, most of such prediction efforts have not been positive or consistent, and if someone had predicted something accurate, it has always been more of luck than science. If prediction using super-natural powers were true, most of the millionaires in our world would be the astrologers.

However, as technology impacts every aspect of our lives, it is also creating an impact in predicting the future, with reasonable accuracy. With mathematics, big data and predictive analytics, predictions can be made on the foundation of science. No one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, but a hazy view of what’s going to come is better than blindness any day.

In this article, let us look at how much predictive analytics has evolved and if it has a role to play in the field of digital marketing. Before we dive into predictive analytics for digital marketing, we need to understand how prediction works in the first place, the tools and data we need, and most importantly, its limitations.

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Ads are an integral part of marketing. Ads are the first touch point between a business and a potential customer. Writing an effective ad is an art and a science. A good ad is a result of understanding of the target customers, creativity from the ad copywriter and most importantly, the ad man needs to understand the fundamentals of advertising.

Having a strong foundation in advertising is an asset for any marketer or businessman. To build a strong foundation in the fundamentals of advertising we need to look at history.

Advertising came into existence when there was a possibility of sending the same message to multiple people at once – using technology. The first form of this technology was printing press. Then came the radio, then the TV and then the internet.

The mass media revolution is what has given birth to the concept of advertising. Before that, the only way was to sell at a market place or sell door to door.

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Digital marketing has a lot of components. One of the most important and critical components of digital marketing is email marketing. Especially in the age of volatile social media, where you cannot trust any platform to reach your followers, email marketing is uber important.

I have been focusing most of my learning and execution on email marketing and marketing automation in the past few years. And I have developed quite an experience in making sure my email campaigns work.

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One fine day as I was going through my emails, I saw an invitation to speak. I get a lot of invitations from time to time, and I decline a lot of invitations. But this was an invitation to speak at a TEDx event! I have seen a lot of TED and TEDx talks on YouTube and I was really excited.

I had tried to become a TEDx speaker a while back and later I learned that you cannot buy your way into such an event. You need to get an invitation it cannot happen by design. There is a bit of chance and luck involved in getting such an invitation.

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I have always loved going through financial reports of other businesses and entrepreneurs. And I have a huge respect for people who are transparent. Sometimes, it is better to be transparent, especially when you have critics. Being transparent builds a strong brand. In fact, public companies cannot operate without transparency in accounting – so let’s say I am building that habit from now!

So as a first time exercise, I decided to release a financial report for my HighTraffic Summit™ powered by ResellerClub which was conducted in Bangalore on February 24th.

I was motivated to do this report because I got a lot of replies saying that the ticket price is too high and I should be charging less and I should do the event at a cheaper venue.

It is a mammoth task to do an event successfully because there are so many moving parts. There are so many things that have a potential to go wrong. The mic could stop working, the lights could go off, the food won’t be prepared on time and there are 100 such things. All that headache is removed when you do it at a good venue and get a reliable event management company.

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