If there's ever been a time to beef up your marketing campaign, it's now. In a session I did last week at the Boston Gift Show, I suggested that this is the year retailers need to spend more money on marketing, not less. I know it's tough if your sales are down and cash flow is tight, so here are a few very inexpensive ideas to get your marketing message out there.

Email marketing
Emails are a very low-cost way to reach out to your active customers. If you're not already collecting email addresses, you should start right away. I encourage you to use an incentive when asking for the address, but rather than saying, "Can I get your email address to notify you of special sales," I suggest you also offer a special gift.

I love the story of Bath & Body Works, who collected approximately 10 million email addresses in three months. The sales people all participated and asked each customer if they would share their email address to get a free gift. A coupon was then emailed to the customer which they could bring back to the store to redeem for a free lip gloss. This worked great because it achieved two objectives: the customer had to give a valid email address if they wanted the free gift, and when the customers came back to redeem their gift, they spent an average of $25 on their return visit. And be sure to email regularly—once every two-three weeks is great.

Host more store events
This isn't a new concept, but it isn't used as often as it could be to drive more traffic to your store. Get creative and try some new events. As customers cut back on spending, they are looking for fun ways to have some inexpensive entertainment.

Work with another store to cross-promote one another
Identify a store in your community that isn't a direct competitor (such as a local florist, photographer or bookstore) and you could each offer to put out a flyer or postcard for the other in your store. Or even go one step further and drop the postcard in each customers' shopping bag.

If you're interested in discussing additional low-cost or no-cost marketing ideas, I encourage you to join me and fellow retailers for a TweetChat tomorrow on TweetChat.com, April 10th at 1PM EST. Use the hashtag #giftshopsuccess to participate in the conversation. I hope to see you there!