Just as we feel like we’ve got social media figured out, along comes a whole new trend for retailers to watch for. I’ve recently seen some great write ups on businesses that are now combining social media and gift giving. Sites like Giftiki.com and Shareagift.com harness social networking and online payments to make the gift giving chore something fun for the giver and receiver. These sites allow you and fellow gift givers to effortlessly pool your money toward something the recipient actually wants (like a new iPad) rather than receiving the assorted bad ties and scented candles. Giftki acts like an app on Facebook and will pull in the birthdays of your Facebook friends so users don’t even have to input data.

How can retailers get involved? Do some browsing and look into these companies, learn how their businesses work and how you may be able to collaborate with them. For example, with Giftki, they use American Express and Amex’s Serve online payment system. Do you accept Amex and are you able to accept Serve payments on your website? If not, you may want to consider getting signed up to accept online payments like PayPal and Serve.

Also, keep this trend on your radar and let’s come up with some new ideas on how specialty retailers can use collaborative gifting in our own businesses.

Recently I received this email blast from White House Black Market and loved it – it's a great example of a successful email marketing campaign.

Here are a few points that I loved most that may inspire your next email campaign:

Great subject line – “15% off for teachers. Tell every teacher you know!”
The subject line says it all, very succinctly. It gives you the purpose of the email, spells out how this offer is different (for teachers) and gives a call to action for all recipients, teachers and non-teachers.

Creative promotion
Even though this retailer may not be thought of as “Back to School Headquarters,” they came up with this creative promotion to boost sales during what may have otherwise been a slower time for sales.

Spurs action
Whether the recipient is a teacher or not, this email – like any successful advertisement – encourages action by asking the reader to forward to every teacher you know whether via email, social media or word of mouth. Brilliant!

Creates goodwill
Just about everyone likes to help out teachers and this piece inadvertently creates goodwill for the retailer, and it engages the reader to be a part of the good deed by “telling every teacher you know."

Lately it seems I’ve been seeing more and more businesses using cause marketing to widen their reach on Facebook. It’s a great way to not only give back to a cause close to your heart, but also raise awareness of your business in your community. One recent example is Snap Retail. They are offering to donate $1 to the Red Cross for everyone that “Likes” their Facebook page. To create greater urgency and put a cap on the total donation, SnapRetail included an expiration date.

I read about another example of cause marketing on Facebook done by a company called Clarisonic. They hosted a campaign to donate $1 to Look Good…Feel Better, an organization that works with people battling cancer. During the six week campaign, the company’s average daily Facebook “Likes” jumped over 1,414 percent! Clarisonic spread the word about its campaign using email blasts, Twitter, YouTube and its own blog. Word-of-mouth played an important role as well.

If you consider doing a cause marketing campaign with your Facebook page, keep these tips in mind: use an expiration date or dollar amount to create urgency; partner with your cause organization to market the campaign to their databasel; and when marketing your campaign, encourage your Fans to suggest that all of their Facebook friends “Like” your page.