This experience is a good reminder for everyone as you begin 2008 - how can you easily provide greater value to your customers? My brain is slowly de-fogging from my trip to Costa Rica. My wife and I had a wonderful jammed pack week full of tours, hikes and R&R at the beach. Beyond the beauty of this country and the relaxing siestas in the sun, I was reminded of a valuable lesson - go above and beyond for your customers. We thought that we were going to be traveling with a bunch of other tourists but we ended up on an empty bus with just a driver and a tour guide. Chad H. MORE >>

Various E-mail Tips from MarketingSherpa' Marketing Wisdom Report I've read through MarketingSherpa's " Marketing Wisdom for 2008 " which includes 101 real life marketing stories and lessons learned. Greetings! I've finally had the chance to go through a number of email newsletters and reports and I wanted to highlight some interesting email tips. The average open and click-through rates for non personalized emails were 15.86% and 2.09% respectively while the averages for personalized emails were 18% and 5.02%. This does a few things. then the cost to re-build your database. Chad H. MORE >>

Raise your hand if you answer yes to all of the following questions: My company has a website We have great resources on our website Some of these resources help our customers and prospects learn more about what we do and affect the buying process It's difficult to find these resources on our site Your hand raised? I've got a fairly simple solution. If you're on my blog (that's directed to my RSS reader friends), you'll notice a shiny new Google search box at the top of the site. This is an example of AJAX (new technology that doesn't require the browser to reload). Try it out! MORE >>

Although I`ve slowed down my blogging (too many things going on and I have a new project brewing - more details soon) I`m getting some attention from around the marketing universe. Bulldog Solutions has quoted me recently on their BullBlog from my post on using video with email : ``Anticipating concerns about the complexity of video, blogger Chad Horenfeldt of Eloqua notes, "If a three-year-oldcan play Guitar Hero and have it posted to YouTube, your marketing team can handle this." Thanks Bulldog! You even spelled my last name right (it doesn`t happen very often). Thanks BtoB Magazine! Chad H. MORE >>

Kraft has an interesting new microsite that follows the life of Bob at his workplace and his quest to replace the existing coffee machine with a Kraft Tassimo. Bob is one of those crazy co-workers that has a few screws loose. In fact, you could probably open a Home Depot with the trail of hardware he leaves. Probably something that Nasa found on mars), I can sympathize with Bob. You can check it out at www.whohiredbob.com. Here is a clip I found on Youtube. Possibly. watched the first video and I got bored fairly quickly. You can thank me later Kraft). it rocks!). This is a good laugh. Chad H. MORE >>