Q&As

Kikkoman loves barbeques, Super Bowl tailgate parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other special occasions. These key food occasions provide timeframes for the brand to push out recipe ideas for new ways to use its products along with incentives to purchase.

After all, if your marketing and sales materials are managed and distributed via a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution on the Internet, rather than housed on your company’s own servers, aren’t they more prone to being viewed by unauthorized users? The answer may actually be no, according to some industry analysts.

For the fifth year in a row, gift cards top Christmas wish lists.

It's probably engaging enough that Midwest retailer Meijer is running an online holiday contest offering website visitors a chance to win $10,000 in gift cards, as well as a $10,000 to their local food pantry.

Both Zynga, the online games company whose offerings include Farmville, Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker, and Groupon, the daily deal site, are dot-coms which deal primarily in virtual goods. They hold no physical inventory and rarely generate transactions …

The Top 10 holiday specials shoppers are taking advantage of.

In a first-time deal with the HSN network, the brand is selling the “Make it Delicious Recipe & Coupon Booklet,” that includes 20 top recipes and $30 worth of coupons.

Welcome to Broker Roundtable, where each week we ask list brokers to give their opinions on issues that matter to the marketing community. This week’s question: What effect is the overabundance of email lists having on the market?

Cooperative databases account for at least 80% of all consumer prospecting. Names selected from a co-op are super multiple buyers who respond well to any number of different offers. These buyers have been modeled from actual buyer files and are therefore they are highly qualified names. What’s more, they represent a good value for the money renting for $70 per thousand or less.

Midnight store openings may get the most press, but direct marketers claimed their share of Black Friday dollars, thanks in large part to mobile and social initiatives.