No question, everyone seems to be climbing on the “green” bandwagon …and mostly for the very best of altruistic reasons:  to leave the planet a bit better – or at least no worse – than they found it.  In fact, we blogged about this awhile back.

At least in marketing, though, there’s another great reason for greenness:  it’s actually cheaper! …and who’s opposed to saving money in the current economy?  The offline-to-online shift is underway already (and well documented), but the twin reasons of green power and bang for the buck are only going to add fuel to the fire.

Consider… you can replace:

• Direct mail with email – which is vastly cheaper, since email’s cost is barely greater than zero
• Tradeshows with webinars and video demos  [Read more...]

We were pleased – OK, actually thrilled – to come across a couple of recent data points indicating real strength in online marketing, despite all the economic dark clouds…

Item 1:  From a quick poll of over 1,200 advertisers and agency execs (B2B and B2C) at the Association of National Advertisers annual conference in October…

• 34% said they were increasing their current marketing budgets or making no changes in response to the downturn, while a third said they’d be doing some reallocation;  only a third were planning actual cuts.
• Nearly 40% plan to increase marketing budgets in 2009, with 26% planning increases greater than 10% and 13% planning increases between 1% and 10%.  Again, only a third plan to cut, with the rest remaining flat. [Read more...]