"This call may be monitored for training purposes." We've all heard that message, or something similar, when calling for tech support or customer service. Generally, we accept it. But what if your company prefaced its outbound B2B sales calls with that kind of disclaimer? "This call may be recorded for ... more

"Before the current recession," writes Mark Dolliver in an article at Adweek, "popular wisdom said wealthy people tended to be relatively untouched by the ups and downs of the economy and would keep buying high-end products and services no matter what." Well, times have changed. If your business serves the luxury ... more

US consumers spent $595 million shopping online on Black Friday 2009, an increase of 11% compared with Black Friday 2008—and the second heaviest online spending day to date in 2009—according to comScore. more

Business owner Fran Murdy presented all the symptoms of full-blown Search Overload Syndrome (SOS), Microsoft's term coined in its recent commercials for Bing, when he fessed up in a forum discussion not too long ago at InboundMarketing.com: "I'm in desperate need of help to find keywords for my business." Soon afterward, fellow ... more

On both Black Friday and Thanksgiving this year, the top 500 retail websites recorded decreases in their share of US visits year over year, according to Experian Hitwise. more

Few things are as irresistible as a mobile game that lets players rack points up during waiting-room or bus-ride lulls. But if you're a brick-and-mortar shop, or a restaurant, there isn't much incentive for throwing another branded version of Tetris out into the ether. What to do, what to do? Solution: Hook up ... more

This holiday season, almost half of holiday shoppers (46%) plan to spend less on holiday gifts compared with last year, according to a recent Harris poll. Young consumers are an exception: Just 37% of Echo Boomers (age 18-32) plan to spend less. more

Those of us who check multiple email accounts throughout the day can hardly imagine a world in which people don't read messages as soon as they receive them. But in a post at the Retail Email blog, Chad White reports on a Pivotal Veracity study that found email recipients in August ... more

In a recent post at the Online Marketing Blog, Adam Singer summarizes Charlene Li's keynote at Search Engine Strategies San Jose last summer. Co-author of the business bestseller Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, and a MarketingProfs presenter, Li examines the intersection of search and social media. According ... more

You're in the business of communicating, and in the age of Internet-and-mobile, your platforms for doing so have expanded almost exponentially. But here's a down side: From fielding phone calls to checking email to ensuring your personal/company blog and Twitter accounts are well-populated, how do you manage it all? Lucky for you, slews of ... more

"Having an offer for your products or services that is truly risk-free might be just the ticket you need to really make a difference in your email marketing campaigns," says Janine Popick in a post at her Vertical Response blog. She points to retailers like these that generate customer loyalty and ... more

In March 2008, Amber Duick began receiving email messages from a criminal fugitive who identified himself as Sebastian Fowler. "Amber, mate!" read one missive. "Coming 2 Los Angeles. Gonna lay low at your place for a bit till it all blows over." Over the course of five days, he advised ... more

Hard, cold fact: Few B2B sales reps relish having to make cold calls. And Laura Ramos could not agree more. "I believe marketing should strive to put sales out of the business of cold calling," she states at the B2B Marketing POSTs blog. Since that's a tall order, she offers a ... more

"A hot brand ends up in one of two different ways," writes Laura Ries at the Ries' Pieces blog. "It burns bright too fast and fizzles. Brands like this are known as fads. Or a brand burns hot then continues at a steady simmer. Brands like this are known as ... more

"Give a man a hammer," says Lori Feldman at The Database Diva blog, "and everything looks like a nail. Email marketing campaign software often has the same effect on novice email marketers. They forget how much they hate advertising mail when they start sending it out themselves." It's a hazardous mindset—and ... more

Last month, we offered a bunch of options for optimizing your local search advertising. Well, here's a way to extend your local search marketing options even further: through your good-old local news guys. In a recent article at Search Engine Land, KeyRelevance's Chris Silver Smith suggests three ways to optimize ... more

Inactive subscribers are a conundrum for email marketers. Although they treat your messages with apparent indifference, they never opt out; as a result, you continue to send messages that they continue to ignore. You naturally want to reactivate these recipients so you can revive relationships and make future sales.  Now here's ... more

Hoping to position Lufthansa as bigger than just a German airline, digital agency Profero has helped it create MySkyStatus—a tool that has brought Lufthansa's branding catch-phrase, "passion for precision," to life in a hands-on way. "Communications needs to have a use," explains Profero's Wayne Arnold in a recent article at Adweek. "Saying ... more

"Too often, we are looking for silver-bullet systems or recipes for success, while ignoring the basics," says Bill Rice in a post at the Better Closer blog. "In my experience, 90 percent of big sales improvement comes from getting back to the basics." What are the tried-and-true basics of B2B marketing—those ... more

Last summer, Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget quizzed 2,400 people on their attitudes toward marketing and made an interesting discovery. "70% of consumers who visit Facebook at least once a month and are a 'fan' of at least one company or brand, don't believe they have given those companies permission to ... more

As a result of the financial crisis, Americans have permanently changed their attitudes toward saving money and are more focused on paying down debt and controlling finances, according to a recent study by Synovate. more

There are three elements to selling: access, influence and delivery. Whether you work in sales or marketing, whatever you do must impact one of those elements—that is, give you access to your customers, help you influence those customers and help you deliver on what you promise. So advises sales expert Jim ... more

As the goblins and ghouls out there munch away on their Halloween bounty, fond memories arise of one apparition we saw a lot of this season—the Monster Mash JibJab "sendable." The e-card uses facial-recognition technology to seamlessly attach the faces of your friends or family to the body of a monster. ... more

It's the bane of every retailer with an online store—somewhere between adding products to shopping carts and finalizing their purchases, some customers vanish into thin air. According to Brendan Regan at the FutureNow blog, they abandon their carts for various reasons. Here are a few: They thought ... more

To be free or not to be free? That is the question many content providers are asking these days. Says SEO Book author Aaron Wall in a Search Engine Land article: "Free content can spread far and get many links, but it won't produce any revenue directly. If it is paid, ... more