Email, Social Media Level Playing Field For SMBs

If social media is online marketing's present marquee star, email is its veteran performer: It may not generate the headlines, but it dutifully shows up for work every day. The tactic has often appealed to small and midsize businesses (SMBs) because of its relatively low expenses (compared with, say, print or TV) and scalability.

Email can be an valuable, cost-efficient way to reach an audience of 5,000 or 5 million, depending on the budget and the business, while a full-page ad in USA Today is, well, a complete page ad in USA Today -- a very visible pulpit, if you can afford it, but one less likely to suit resource-constrained SMBs or their particular markets.

Online Spending Up on Turkey Day and Black Friday

It appears as if turkey isn’t the only thing consumed on Thanksgiving Day as the online purchase number reported by comScore shows a 28% raise in online commerce for the holiday.

That raise was also reported for the Black Friday online event. We await, of course, data from CyberMonday but until it actually happens we’ll refrain from giving numbers

As has been the case for the past few years, year over year numbers need to be considered in the context of what the before year has been like. We are still slogging through the worst recession in a long time (oh wait that’s right, the recession is over according to Washington’s latest Fantasy Economist League report). As a result, when you see big increases year over year it’s not always a sign of huge growth. It’s more like a sign of the hope of recovery.

So however you look at it, it is improvement. Also an improvement is the apparent shift from concentrating so much on one day (Black Friday) and seeing how offline sales for the holiday weekend were up. Whenever we get too myopic and concentrate on one thing too much we tend to create bad assumptions which will be followed by bad decisions. That’s bad policy.

Retail Holiday Online Marketing: Has Black Friday and Cyber Monday Come Early This Year?

While it's not surprising that online holiday deals are being publicized prior to Cyber Monday, I was surprised to see advertising no longer promoting "pre-Thanksgiving sales" but instead Black Friday before Black Friday sales (giving the impression that the prices are slashed almost as much.) This year shops are opening even earlier and many are posting their Black Friday sales online Thanksgiving Eve. Will this take away from relaxing into a tryptophan induced coma on turkey day to opt for the insanity of holiday shopping online earlier than what we've seen in years past ? And how does that affect Cyber Monday?

When some may enjoy the physical exhaustion and adrenaline rush of shopping the brick and mortar stores on Black Friday, the internet has provided a portal to the similar level of price reduction minus the insanity of camping outside a store and dealing with the crowds. Cyber Monday has been designated when we will see the biggest rate cuts...but has the current serge of pre-holiday sales make Cyber Monday seem almost like any other day of discounts in the holiday shopping season? To be honest, it seems like it is beginning to blur a bit.