Before you know it the holiday season will be upon us, and now is the perfect time to begin planning your holiday email marketing. Recently I read a great post by Chad White, the writer of the Retail Email Blog, about email marketing for this year’s holiday season.

Here are my takeaways:

1. Email marketing will be a more important aspect of a retailer's marketing plan than ever before. Seize the opportunity now to make sure you have a plan, make sure your database is in good shape and make sure your email can be read across numerous screens, such as tablets and smartphones.
2. This year the experts expect "Black Friday" to expand and become "Black November." Be prepared to launch holiday promotions and deals earlier in the month to grab those early season shoppers and avoid being out-marketed by your competitors.
3. “Cyber Monday” is expected to be the largest online shopping day of the year, so if you offer online shopping, make sure you have a Cyber Monday email campaign planned. 77 percent of online retailers are expected to use email marketing to promote their Cyber Monday deals.

Read Chad's post and download his “Retail Email Guide to the Holiday Season 2011” report for free.

QR Codes are those funky looking, square barcode images that you have likely seen popping up in more and more places, from store windows to business cards. As I’ve been visiting numerous trade shows lately, I see them everywhere. So what are they and how can they be of use to your business? A new study has just come out by comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, that in June 2011, 14 million mobile users in the U.S. scanned a QR code with their smartphones.

“Quick Response” (QR) codes, when scanned, can link the user to any kind of online content you wish. For example, you could have QR codes located near popular products that link shoppers to product reviews. The great thing about QR codes is that generating them and using them is free. Wondering how to get started? Here are three quick tips:

Generate QR codes In order to create your own QR codes, you need a QR Code Generator, which can be conveniently found online. You can do a Google search for “QR Code Generator” and find a myriad of free generators. One popular and very easy to use generator is Kaywa, which takes just moments to create and there’s no signing in or creating an account. (iPhone and Android phone users can download an app that allows them to scan and read QR codes. Find QR code readers by searching Google as well.)

Use QR codes Once you’ve got your QR code, start putting it to work and see what happens. Some ways other retailers are using QR codes include signage posted when the store is closed that says “Our store may be closed, but we are always open online. Visit our online store now!” with a QR tag that goes directly to your online store. Or include a QR tag on your sales receipt with a link to a page on your website asking for a customer review.

Use your imagination QR codes can be used to link to anything on the web — or they can display a special message — so let your imagination and creativity come up with uses that would benefit your customers and increase their loyalty. For example, you could link to product use instructions and videos, or ancillary content such as recipes, decorating ideas or related products. You could even create a QR code to populate an ecommerce customer’s shopping cart with a batch of items, making shopping easier.

Recently a retailer sent an email to me about wanting to initiate a "shop local" campaign. Even though I've blogged about this in the past, I thought I would bring it up again since it’s a fantastic tool. Launching a shop local campaign, whether on your own or by banding together with fellow retailers, is a great way to boost community awareness of your presence, increase community goodwill and boost your bottom line.

Here are the simple steps you can take to kick off your shop local campaign:

Decide who will participate
Ideally it would be great to have a large group of retailers getting together to launch a shop local campaign. You can go it alone, but the resources and time that others can pitch in will likely make your campaign more successful. Consider talking with the neighboring retailers and don’t forget to approach your local Chamber of Commerce or local business groups for help and support.

Create a theme
Shop local themes are as varied as the imaginations that create them. It’s most important to create a cohesive theme that all of your materials will revolve around. Some great ones I’ve seen are pointing out where local dollars ends up, such as three cents of every dollar goes to supporting the fire department. Another one profiles the people that own local businesses, highlighting that they are our neighbors.

Create promotional materials
If you have a budget to work with, consider creating your own promotional materials such as posters, window decals, bag stuffers and bumper stickers. There are also organizations that produce these types of materials like the American Independent Business Alliance.

Launch
Remember to promote your campaign with press releases, press alerts and invitations to the press for tours and launch receptions.

Measure success
The whole point here is to build your businesses, right? So, how will you know if it works? Create metrics that all participants will measure the success of the campaign by and be sure to have a post-mortem meeting to share with each other the success of the campaign, and how it could be improved in the future.

Here are a couple great resources for Shop Local ideas, inspiration, and materials: Amiba.net or The350Project.net

As managers we all know we’re supposed to conduct performance reviews, but often preparing for and conducting them seems no more desirable than filing our taxes. So why do performance reviews at all? Because it's an ideal time to speak to each staff member one-on-one, further your businesses goals and most importantly, motivate your employees to perform at to their full potential. Motivated, happy employees will translate directly to a bigger bottom line for your store.

With that being said, here are the top five reasons to stay on top of those performance reviews:

Motivates employees to keep growing. Taking time to sit down and speak with employees about their performance specifically not only helps them feel valued but if done properly can motivate them to work harder and build more loyalty. As the song says, “accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative” to create a constructive atmosphere where you and your employee work together to grow their career and thus your business.

Helps create a paper trail. It’s important and professional to keep documentation of employees’ performance, pay increases, promotions and also when employees do not get raises and promotions. Hopefully you never need to defend your actions in a legal dispute, but if you do you’ll be very happy you have everything documented.

Develops employees into ideal staff. By having regular performance reviews you have the chance to help employees stay on track with the goals you have created together and reiterate your expectations. By making your expectations explicit you can reduce misbehavior and develop employees into the ideal staff you’ve always dreamt of.

Great time to get feedback. A constructive performance review should be a two-way conversation — and an opportunity for you to hear how you and your business are doing from the perspective of the staff. Be prepared with questions and keep an open mind to the answers you receive. Avoid being defensive, just listen and take time to consider any criticisms your employees have.

Ideal way to further business goals. Getting as many as possible in your organization on board with your annual business goals will make those goals just that much easier to achieve. Take time during an evaluation to share your goals and how you plan to achieve them. Ask for ideas. You may be surprised at the brilliant ones people offer.

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but back-to-school season is happening and experts expect sales to be more robust this year. According to an online article at CNBC.com analysts are predicting back-to-school sales will grow 6.2 percent over last year making this the best year since 2006. This can be a perfect opportunity for you to jump-start your store sales and begin creating some positive momentum headed into the all-important holiday season.

Here are a few tips:

Make sure to have the right products
Take a fresh look at your product selection and make sure you are carrying the latest, most unique, most novel items for back-to-school. Make any inventory changes to better meet this year’s customer demands and desires. Make sure your inventory is adequate so you don’t run out of important items. Your unique, thoughtful product selection will bring customers in and the service you provide will keep them coming back.

Provide the value-add your customers want
Speaking of service, what are the value-added services you can provide for your back-to-school shoppers. Whether it’s having the school supply lists for your local schools or free delivery. Providing the service that your customers want will help create loyal customers who will hopefully spend their holiday shopping dollars in your store too.

Set the stage for sales
Create a welcoming, easy to navigate store layout that helps back-to-school shoppers find exactly what they are looking for. Spend some time out on the floor observing how your shoppers move through your store and taking a fresh look at your store layout. Create some in-store excitement by engaging as many of the five senses as you can.

Promote your efforts
Now that you have a stellar product selection, great value added services and a well-presented store, it’s time to promote it all. Launch a campaign that will bring shoppers in such as a free-gift with purchase. ITunes gift cards are popular with young people and parents alike! Try to avoid deep discounting until later on in the back-to-school season. Start promoting your products, services and special deals online through your website, social media, blog, and email newsletter. Also, contact your local papers offering yourself as a back-to-school expert. Write a press release about the top back-to-school items (that your store carries, of course). Hopefully they will feature you in a local back-to-school article.

Have you been searching for a unique mall promotion to increase traffic to your location? My husband ran across the picture below and we just had to share it with you. He read about it in a blog post about the Windsor Mall in Hong Kong — they hold regular baby races as a mall promotion. Apparently the races go on for hours and attract huge crowds. If you look closely, you can see the crowds gathered to watch.

Would this work in your mall?

Would you like to increase the effectiveness of your email marketing? Of course you would! We all would, and here are a few tips to make your email more personal, more effective and more likely to result in new sales.

Change up your language. Rather than being too newsy or formal, try changing up how you speak to your readers. Take a more informal, friendly tone – as if you’re writing an email to a friend you’d like to get together with soon. Use technology (included in most email services) to start the email with the reader’s first name.

Segmentation is key. In order to create effective, personalized emails you need to have a segmented database. For example, segment customers by the date of their last purchase and if it’s been awhile since they’ve been in the store, send them a friendly “we miss you” email. Think about your customer base and products to determine the most useful segmentation strategy for you. For example, you can segment by age, gender, geographic location, purchase history, etc.

Reach out to individuals. Once you have a well segmented list you can easily personalize key emails. For example, when you know you’re writing to just the women in your database, it’s much easier to write an email using fun, exciting, informal language when writing about a new shoe or accessory line. Let your personality shine through and give your readers the flavor of your brand and why customers love your store.

Having employee contests is a great way to motivate and invigorate your employees, especially during the slower summer months. Here a few ideas.

Use contests to recognize outside-of-work talents your staff may have. For example, Safelite AutoGlass hosts an employee photo contest each year and produces a calendar to be given out to customers from winning photos. You could host a similar contest and decorate your store with the winning photos.

Host a customer scavenger hunt. Create a game that benefits both customers and employees. For example, a customer service call center had a customer scavenger hunt where employees had to ask questions and collect customers’ information to win the game. Create a matrix with 10 items or pieces of information (“A customer born and raised here” or “A customer that graduated from Harvard”) employees have to collect from customers and the first employee to find all the right customers wins.

Use your creativity. Help make tough tasks more fun by creating games around them. Create games around your business’s least popular tasks (inventory day!). Employees love friendly competition, so find ways to throw a little competition into boring, less desirable store tasks.