Some Light Summertime Reading

Admit it, you're looking out the window of your office. You observe light breezes. The sky has a bit of haze to it. These are the dog days of summer! You'd rather be outside, sitting on a blanket laying on a manicured lawn, opening a picnic basket filled with sandwiches and chips and cold drinks.

But you aren't outside. You're earning a wage, sitting in a artificially lit and air-conditioned building, getting ready for a department-wide meeting where you'll learn for the 280th consecutive day that sales missed expectations by six percent. You'll be told that your career development objective to attend the Shop.org conference is being scrapped in an effort to save a thousand bucks, a move guaranteed to increase shareholder value.

Instead of considering such sobering facts, why not take a few moments and read some of the fine articles written by authors all across the blogosphere.


The more the world changes, the more the world stays the same. Give this essay from Don Libey, written in the fall of 2002, a try. You can replace very few words, and end up with an essay that describes 2008.

Catalog Success wrote about the State of the Co-Ops in 2008 a month ago. You folks seem to like clicking through my site to get to this article.

Are you an online or catalog marketer looking to try a new strategy? Take a look at what Mr. Godin is trying to accomplish.

The good folks at the Rimm-Kaufman group talk about using the word "voucher" vs. using the word "coupon".

Jim Novo asks for your thoughts on the topic of Social Media.

David Raab discusses the value of a blog. I talked about this topic at the MeritDirect Co-Op --- for me, the value is about $100 per subscriber per year.

Akin Arikan was recently intereviewed in eM+C Magazine.

Polly discusses the future of Catalog Customer Acquisition.

Sally McKenzie writes an essay about "The Long Tail" from the perspective of a merchant.

A bit about J. Peterman on The Catalog Chronicles Blog.

Tamara features daily links to relevant e-mail marketing articles.

Chad White talks about e-mail marketers using longer preheader messages.

Mark Brownlow is up to part eleven of a series of essays about modern e-mail marketing.

Justin Premick disses renting e-mail lists.

Zach Gemignani shares 5 Options For Embedding Charts In A Web Page.

Robbin asks "Can You Start Small On Conversion And PPC?".

Jeff asks why folks aren't flocking to e-books?

RRW Consulting offers a case study on e-mail marketing and segmentation.

Alison Bolen shares resources for finding Business Intelligence blogs.

UK readers, have you visited The Snow Patrol recently?

Curt Barry asks if happiness can improve your bottom line?

Bob Bly stirs the pot by comparing old school and modern marketing practices.

Ted Grigg talks about clients turning around invoices in a slow manner. Uh huh!

Some in the blogosphere might be flummoxed to learn that simply having great merchandise doesn't guarantee success.

Matthew Hurts, the NY Times, and a map on Foreclosures.