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