The Message is the Money

Ask any successful business owner – little strategies make a big difference in tough times. One way to balance the need to keep and attract new clients without depleting your marketing budget is to fine-tune your approach to one important but very low-cost strategy: an e-mail marketing campaign.

The following three e-mail tips are fundamental tools in a long-term marketing budget strategy that will help save on other marketing expenses. Here’s how to get a bang out of those e-mail campaigns:

1. Choose a solid subject line. In my experience critiquing marketing pieces and campaigns for small business owners, I’ve seen those who get it right … and I’ve seen those who get it very, very wrong. What I’ve learned is that in order to get the best response rates, it’s important to treat the subject line of any e-mail intended for clients or potential clients like the headline of a major marketing campaign. To create a subject line that really resonates with clients and potential clients, it’s necessary to understand which problems plague them and how your services or products will address or even completely eliminate these problems. If you work with clients that are within a specific industry, you should also target this industry to give your subject line more weight; for example, if you are selling management consulting services to burgeoning musicians, you can write, “See What Our Management Services Do for Musicians Just Like You.” You don’t have to be a marketing guru (or even hire one!) to write effective e-mails. You just need to focus on the benefits you provide and not just talk about yourself or the features of your company or any products you sell…

Dowturnaround Deals: Saks, Diamonds, Perricone, Lord & Taylor, Ann Talor Loft, Restaurants.com

Every week, we post a handful of online deals hand-picked for Recessionwire readers by the nice people over at Savings.com. Feel free to pass them along to your friends. And if there’s something you’d like to see, let us know!

Free shipping on all orders at Saks Fifth Avenue
Expires: 9.20.09
Deal: http://www.savings.com/detail/289302-coupon.html
Merchant: http://www.savings.com/m-Saks-Fifth-Avenue-coupons.html

Exclusive 15 percent off orders of $100+ at Diamonds International…

Recession Briefing 9.10: Income Gap Shrinking

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

The downturn may finally shrink the gap between the very best-off Americans and everyone else. But if so, it won’t be by lifting up the bottom. It will be by pulling down the top. (Wall Street Journal)

Can cheap really be sexy? Laura Miller makes the case that it can. (Salon)

The recession is pushing more despondent people to call suicide hotlines. (Canadian Press)…

Screwed: 120 at the MetroSouth Medical Center

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.

Today’s Total: 239

Blue Island’s MetroSouth Medical Center has laid off 120 employees… The Heinz plant in Pocatello has laid off 65 workers… Southern Connecticut Gas Co. plans to lay off 54 employees by the end of the year… Sheriff Rutherford is being forced to layoff an unknown number of officers in Jacksonville, Fla…

Television Takes on the Recession (Video)

It was just a matter of time before the recession and its effects made their way beyond the late-night talk shows. HuffPo has a slide show of how popular programs like the Simpsons and Desperate Housewives are incorporating the downturn into plot lines. Plus, there videos of new shows — like this truly terrible-looking one starring Kelsey Grammar as an ousted CEO who has move back to Virginia with his bratty family. Then there’s AMC’s Breaking Bad — practically a self parody — in which a high school teacher starts a meth lab to make money for his family.

For once, we can’t think of an upside. Check them out after the jump…

Screwed: 3,000 City of Philadelphia Workers

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.

Today’s Total: 4,706

Philadelphia’s mayor announced that 3,000 city workers will receive layoff notices next week… 645 Harley-Davidson workers will lose their jobs when the company shuts down a plant and distribution center in Wisconsin… Virginia is slated to cut its workforce by 593 employees… Valero will close its Delaware City refinery, laying off 150 full-time employees and 100 contract workers… HSBC laid off 90 employees in the United Arab Emirates… Capgemini Energy will cut its Dallas office staff by 85… Jobs and Family Services of Clark County, Ohio, has announced its intent to lay off 33 employees after budget cuts by the state… Provident Financial Inc. will liquidate assets and lay off its 10 employees…

Recession Briefing 9.9: Downturn Unleashes Strays

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

The number of stray and abandoned dogs in the U.K. jumped 11 percent in the past year — the biggest surge in a decade — possibly because of the financial crisis. (CNN)

Haunted by fewer job offers this season, recent graduates with jobs took a hit to their salaries. Those who graduated with bachelor’s degrees in 2009 received a $48,633 average starting salary offer, down 1.2% from last year. (Wall Street Journal)

Unless real reform happens soon, we face the prospect of another bubble-bust-bailout cycle that will be even more dangerous than the one we’ve just been through. (The New Republic)…

Why Pink Slips are Good for Pets (and What to Do When You Get a Job)

Sure, losing your job was stressful. For you. But for your pet, the longer you sit on the couch in a savings-sucking stupor the better.

Laura Goldstein left her post at This Old House magazine in March 2008 to become editor-in-chief of the start-up magazine Jewish Living. When Jewish Living folded six months later, Goldstein began working from home, cobbling together editorial projects while sending out resumes.

Unemployment was a shock and disappointment to her. Not so for her white-capped pionus parrot, Peewee…

Christmas Starts in September

It’s just one day after Labor Day, but retailers already have their sights set on the Christmas holiday shopping season. Royal Caribbean, for one, is running a television campaign featuring a familiar holiday jingle. Coming off a summer of slumping sales, retailers are looking to hedge their bets against another depressing holiday season by starting early.

Some retailers have been at it for months; stores like Toys R Us have been luring customers with the promise of discounts on toys and retailers like Kmart and Sears have promoted a Christmas Club card program that rewards customers for shopping early—and often—for their holiday supplies.

So what’s in store for customers shopping early this holiday season? We took a closer look at a few of the biggest sales programs going on right now.

Kmart and Sears

The Deal: Kmart and Sears are giving customers who put money onto a Christmas Club Card—basically a gift card that can be used at either of the stores—3 percent back on all money loaded onto the card as a way of helping customers “save now” and plan ahead for the Christmas shopping season…

Screwed: 6,000 at Fin Air

A daily review of the employment fallout around the country and the world.

Today’s total: 8,850

Fin Air plans to layoff 6,000 workers for a few weeks at a time for periods of about two weeks to aid in savings of euro100 million… State of Illinois union officials will lay off at least 1,000 state workers during negotiations with AFSCME… Vodafone Ghana announces plans to layoff 950 workers in accordance with negotiations between Ghana Telecommunications (GT) Company Limited and the Communications Workers Union of GTUC in a Collective Bargaining Agreement… Four Mepz have laid off 700 workers by four garment factories in the Mactan Export Processing Zone… Iberia plans to lay off more than 100 directors for the company’s new managerial structure… Century Link will close its Embarq Corp. inbound call center in New Bern, North Carolina and lay off 100 employees…