​By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

Halloween has always been great for small business and larger retailers and this year is will be scarily similar. Americans plan to spend $87 on average per person on the holiday according to the National Retail Federation.  The organization also claims that Americans are expected to spend $9.0 billion in total, slightly down on last year's $9.1 billion. And according to Statista, "45 percent of Americans will shop at a discount store this year while just under a quarter will make their Halloween purchases online. When it comes to how people will celebrate, 70 percent will hand out candy, 50 percent will decorate and 48 percent will dress in costume." 

Take a look at Halloween shopping stats presented as fun-sized eye-candy by Statista: 

​By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

We're finding that a lot of small business owners are inclined to wait until after Thanksgiving to really promote their holiday activities and events. But did you know that each year about 40 percent of consumers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween.? Yes! And according to the National Retail Federation, this number is growing each year. And likewise, this same retail organization reports that "20 to 40 percent of all sales for small and mid-sized retailers take place within the last two months of the year."

​By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

We know it may sound a little crazy, but it's time to start thinking about the holidays and your holiday-related events and promotions. No really. According to the National Retail Federation, "each year about 40 percent of consumers begin their holiday shopping before Halloween." Now that's scary. 

But while it's time to start planning your Holiday promotions, it's also time to continue executing on your email campaigns. And to that end Constant Contact has come out with a short list of themes and ideas to keep you engaged with your customers throughout the month of September. We also offer some additional tips and ideas about each theme below the infographic.

It's no secret that different types of marketing collateral serve very different purposes, particularly when it comes to informing and educating your audience.

​Sometimes people don't want to read a long piece of content. They'd like to see the same information expressed visually in the form of an infographic, presentation, or even a video. Let's face it, recent studies show that these types of visual content typically outperform more traditional forms of marketing communications.

​By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

Last week we attended the Digital Transformation Day Online Conference. Important key takeaways were that millennials will make up 50% of the workforce by 2020 (That's less than two years away!) and serving up engaging content to this key group of 18- to 35-year-old consumers is very different than traditional content marketing methods. 

Critical to creating engaging content is promoting it on social with compelling social cards. For example, a study by Facebook reported that users increased traffic from the platform by 250%, simply by using clickable social cards.

​By Julee Klein, Marketing Consultant & President​

​Holy cow, it's already February! It's not too late to capitalize on February holidays and themes to better engage with your online communities and via email marketing. 

Of course there's the obvious theme of Valentine's Day. But Constant Contact has some other really great ideas about what you can be reaching out to your customers about this month. They've also included some insightful, compelling reasons to use email marketing to nurture your biggest fans in your contact lists. Check out the infographic: