There is no denying that e-mail is a powerful tool for marketing your business. Best estimates show that e-mail marketing will garner $1.5 billion in sales by the end of 2011. But as a small business, how do you reach out to other, sometimes bigger, business enterprises to your advantage? With a new survey from BtoB Magazine, “B-to-B State of E-mail Marketing: Best Practices,” b2b marketers can access information they need to keep their efforts from going straight into junk mail.

The research was gathered from 414 interviews with b2b marketers and includes 35 charts and graphs along with six in-depth conversations that represent the plans of marketers for 2011. Readers will learn how to budget for e-mail marketing, what e-mail strategies marketers find the most effective, how metrics are used to judge success and how marketers are integrating e-mail with social media.

By staying relevant and examining key performance metrics, budgets and industry trends in “B-to-B State of E-mail Marketing: Best Practices,” b2b marketers will be able to improve upon the tools they use on a daily basis.

Interested in reading more on “B-to-B State of E-mail Marketing: Best Practices”? Visit http://www.btobonline.com/section/researchreports4.

Owning a gallery is a powerful fantasy. Newly minted art school graduates and young entrepreneurs daydream about expansive, carefully lit retail spaces filled with handcrafted objects that eager customers will immediately whip out their credit cards to buy.

The realities of operating a craft gallery, of course, are quite different. Negotiating leases, hiring employees, ordering products, cultivating both artists and repeat customers, marketing, advertising, and now a host of untested social media platforms to explore can make—or break—the most willing entrepreneurial spirits.
It’s a wonder how anyone stays in business over the long haul. How do long-time gallery owners do it? That’s the question NICHE asked of four gallery owners around the country who together have a combined 100 years of retail experience under their belts.

Mary Bonney, owner of the William & Joseph Gallery in Santa Fe, has just cut the cake in celebration of her gallery’s 10th anniversary. Sandra Randolph, of Good Goods in Saugatuck, Mich., has just passed the 20-year mark. Don and Cynthia Hoskins opened the first Earthenworks Gallery in a tiny space in Oak Harbor, Wash., in 1978, making them 30-plus-year veterans. And Audrey Parent, who runs Left Bank Gallery’s three locations in Wellfleet and Orleans, Mass., has been going strong for 40 years.

All four have had retail ups and downs, experienced at least one or more economic recessions, and dealt with natural disasters and personal crises, yet they have managed to create and continue successful businesses that have withstood the test of time.

For more of “Going the Distance” pick up a copy of the Summer 2011 issue of NICHE magazine.

More than 50 organizations have banded together to get Americans to think small during the biggest shopping weekend of the year. The second annual Small Business Saturday, sandwiched between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, will take place this year on Nov. 26.

Among those leading the charge to mobilize the buying public to shop small is Women Impacting Public Policy, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for issues affecting the health of small businesses. To expand the impact of Small Business Saturday, WIPP has created the “Small Business Saturday Coalition.” The group’s mission is to inspire business owners and communities to embrace shopping at local, independent businesses and to participate in Small Business Saturday.

Originally developed in 2010 by American Express in response to small business owners’ need for more demand for their goods and services, the inaugural Small Business Saturday was a huge success. As a result of the push to shop small, independent retailers who accepted American Express saw a 27 percent increase in sales compared to the same time in the previous year.

For more information, go to www.smallbusinesssaturday.com

How do you boost sales and benefit your local community? Partner with local nonprofits, of course.

Diane Christian Budd, owner of Indigenous, a craft gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the vice president of the O’Bryonville Business Association, and has long supported local nonprofits that are closely related to the gallery’s mission. This year, she made local nonprofits the focus of O’Bryonville’s monthly benefits. “Our wine walk benefits run April through December, so nine organizations were chosen,” Budd explains, “each for a different cause, each significant to the unique mix of businesses in our neighborhood.”

October’s “Mystic Moon Wine Walk & Benefit” supported Cincinnati ArtWorks. For its part, Indigenous featured the work of two artists, along with live owls and free tarot card readings. “Our benefits typically draw fifty to two hundred people in three hours,” Budd says. “We donate ten percent of our sales made during the event and typically triple or quadruple our sales within that time frame.”

For Carolyn Kelsey, owner of With These Hands Gallery in Edisto Beach, S.C., it was an easy decision to organize an event for the local nonprofit Edisto Belles, a support group for women diagnosed with breast cancer. “It is important to me to partner with the Edisto Belles, not only because of my friendship with founder Mott Parker, but because my grandmother is also a breast cancer survivor,” Kelsey explains.

The gallery’s Oct. 23 event drew 150 people and featured work by three artists who created special “Think Pink” lines for the gallery. Events like these are about more than just donating a percentage of sales, Kelsey explains. “Do it to support local nonprofits,” she says. “It’s just like buying American and it makes a difference.”