Times are hard.

As a marketer, racking your brain for fresh ideas going into 2009 is probably on top of your to-do list in December. I know it is for me.

I received a CNN news alert yesterday, saying we’ve officially been declared in a recession as of November 2007. Immediately, a feeling of relief rushed over me. Kidding! With the market plummeting nearly 700 points yesterday, I felt no relief.

Today I searched for ways to make myself feel better. Quite successfully I might add, because of these two reasons:
1) This isn’t anything new. We’ve been in this “recession” for an entire year.
2) Email and SMS marketing are where it’s at. For marketers, that is.

You, too, can get some relief from the recession by implementing email and mobile efforts into your 2009 planning. There are two reasons to give this a try.

Activate your customers’ purchase interest: Personalized communication from brand favorites, or even brands that are new to me, makes me feel special as a consumer. In times of drudgery, an email message makes me feel like a company values my business; an SMS message puts a brand forefront in my mind. (Provided the message is relevant, of course.) Sadly enough, the presence of relevant email and SMS messages were lacking in my inboxes both on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Short ramp-up times: We all need some pick-me-ups, and having a little extra marketing firepower on short notice is invaluable. You hit the send button when you want. You can act on marketing gut intuition—and easily track your results. It’s also a great way to execute testing for messaging and segments.

Tell us how email and mobile is working for you! Leave a comment below.

Shaneli Ramratan, Director of Marketing, mobileStorm

The Monday after Thanksgiving has become known as Cyber Monday, officially starting the online shopping season. It’s almost as well-known as Black Friday, the day after T-day that kicks off the bricks-and-mortar shopping countdown.

No wonder that 80 percent of online retailers had Cyber Monday-specific campaigns ready, according to the National Retail Federation. The NFR cites research showing that email messaging is one of the most popular campaigns being deployed–32.7 percent of those surveyed said they’ll be using email to promote their websites and sales specials.

Something that can be adapted to message marketing is the fact that 24.5 percent of retailers said they would be promoting one-day sales. mobileStorm client Ashley Furniture HomeStore enjoyed great success with limited “secret” sales it announced only to SMS message subscribers. If you missed the boat this Cyber Monday, then consider having a one-day sale later this season–and use texts to promote it. SMS gives consumers the feeling of urgency (”I’d better hurry since it’s only one day!”) and personal relationship with the retailer (”wow, they sent me a text!”).

With message marketing (via email, SMS, RSS, or whatever platform you choose) you can immediately nab holiday-busy consumers’ interest, and offer them an incentive to buy from you–and not your competitor.

Grumpy British chef Gordon Ramsey is never kind to the restaurants he’s sent to save. One constant theme is his railing against complex food. Time and again, he shouts that simple is best. That adage could probably apply to messaging, marketing and otherwise. The downside to all the compelling technology coming out on mobile phones–from networking apps to sixth-sense chips– is that everyone assumes they’ll replace SMS. And while a social network is a great way to find old friends and stay up-to-date with current ones, it’s probably not where you’ll find folks being the most receptive to ads, behaviorally-targeted or otherwise–at least, not as receptive as they are with permission-based emails.

While I’ve always had great use for email and SMS, I’ve never cared for IM. To me, instant messaging is the red-headed step-sibling of texting and email: It forces message recipients to reply ASAP even if they don’t have the time or the inclination, by making the message-sender act on the feeling that every syllable he/she sent has the utmost urgency. Sure, SMS seems urgent, but if the recipient is slow in responding, the message-sender doesn’t usually send more texts haranguing the person. Imagine those horrible feelings exacerbated by a marketing message–especially if it interrupts a truly important chat (99 percent of the time I only use the darn platform with bosses and colleagues at work). In other words, IM makes casual written communications too complicated.

Luckily for me, says BusinessWeek, “the end of instant messaging as we know it” is nigh. Instead of being an awkward Nth Wheel on your desktop, the story points out,IM is now embedded in things like Facebook and Gmail (the latter being the only time I use IM for personal communications). The idea is that with instant messaging being a part of the greater experience, it can be more easily monetized. Someone might pay more attention to an ad that seems related to the site or conversation in which the user is engaged.

Sometimes when I’m using my Gmail IM, Google serves up paid ads that are related to our conversation’s content. It’s not terribly distracting because I’m used to that on the Gmail site. Marketers should be glad that I’m probably subliminally influenced by the adverts, even if I don’t stop what I’m doing to look at them.

After all, I don’t stop what I’m doing just to answer an IM that isn’t terribly important.

Eydie Cubarrubia, Marketing Communications Manager, mobileStorm

“I’d rather you text me”

Following one of the biggest days in democracy, it seems like a good day to talk about another manifestation of democracy, via the Internet: Blogs.

The ability to blog is arguably one of the coolest, most valuable features the Internet has brought. Blogging itself has completely changed the production of written texts, allowing virtually anyone to speak their mind, and share experiences good or bad, sans censorship.

A new study by Jupiter Research found that not only has blog readership gone up–by 300 percent!–but that blogs influence the purchase decisions of readers. And this influence is far more than that of social networks. None of us here would say it’s much of a surprise. Consider what blogs offer:

1. A real voice for the people. When I was a growing up I always imagined writing a letter to the editor, or if a business gave bad service, reporting them to the Better Business Bureau.  Now I don’t have to; even if I don’t have my own blog, there are countless out there ready and willing to accept comments.

2. Personal and original content. Who wants to read the same old dry perspectives, the corporate pitch, the product specifications, when you can check out blogs and learn about real experiences and opinions?

3. Word-of-mouth builds trust.  Who doesn’t believe what a friend or colleague says about a product or issue? Most of us at least give this more credit than a biased spiel from an organization, corporate or otherwise. Blogs mimic the power of word-of-mouth because they offer a platform to collectively share and exchange experiences and insights.

Do you use blogs in your life, professional or personal? How do you find them the most valuable?  Take a moment to share with us below!

Shaneli Ramratan, Director of Marketing, mobileStorm