The organization that I’ve selected for this month is Kids Flicks. After seeing Kids Flicks featured on TV it was a must have for My Monthly Charity. Founded by the Barta sisters they’ve been collecting DVDs to donate to hospitals.

We were doing some “Spring cleaning” and realized we had a number of DVDs we had either outgrown or no longer watched. Since a friend of ours had been treated for Leukemia and we knew that she watched movies to help her pass the time and distract her while she was in the hospital, we took our movies to the Pediatric Oncology Department of the Los Angeles hospital where she had been treated. When we dropped off our donations, the Child Life Specialist told us that “movies are the first things kids ask for when they are in the hospital.” That afternoon we decided to collect as many DVDs as possible to donate to as many hospitals as possible.

Since 2002 Kids Flicks has donated 55,300 movies to 553 hospitals. Focused on collecting kids movies they create a movie library of 100 different movies then donate it to a hospital. In the beginning they mostly donated locally within driving distances but as they’ve grown they’ve received awards and grants to cover shipping costs to donate to hospitals further away.

This was a must have charity for me to feature because I love the fact that it was a group of young individuals doing good and filling a need.

Find out more on how you can help at KidsFlicks.org.

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Holiday marketing already? Yeah I know right, we actually finalized our marketing plan for the rest of the year for Detailed Image at the end of August a few weeks ago.  Doesn’t everyone love talking about the holidays when it’s still summer? Not really but it’s worth it to prepare early for a busy holiday season as a retailer.

In the early years of Detailed Image we didn’t know how big selling detailing supplies would be during the holidays but it turns out that we are able capitalize off of it and it’s become one our busiest times of the year.

Things to think about this holiday season:

• Emergence of Cyber Sunday
• Change in the email landscape including Gmail’s Priority Inbox and Hotmail’s time traveling filters, sweep and preference auto-learning
• Slow growth economy, consumer confidence & unemployment rates
• When to start your holiday marketing push
• The thin line between too many emails and too little emails

There hasn’t been to many major trends comings from last year’s holiday season as far as marketing goes but the little things I mentioned above can come into play with your marketing. Key things still include many of the things I wrote about back in 2008.

August is about that time we start preparing for the holidays and it’s exciting for us to see what we can do to beat what we did last year. We want to do better and I think we have a great plan going forward.

An early, early, early happy holidays to everyone.

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On Friday night I watched the Stand Up 2 Cancer (SU2C) fund raising broadcast featuring a star studded cast helping raise money for cancer research. This was the biggest fund raising event I’ve ever seen. It was broadcasted across the 4 major networks, ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS, at the same time.

SU2C started in 2008 by the Entertainment Industry Foundation to raise significant money for cancer research and in their first telecast they raised over $100 million for cancer research.

The thing I love about SU2C is that they have brought scientific dream teams together in the search for a cure for cancer.  Not only have scientist come together, the patients, clinicians, children and parents, lawmakers, basically everyone that has been affected by cancer has come full circle to help find a cure. It’s really great to see everyone come together with a common goal of curing cancer.

This is a great cause and you can find out more about it at SU2C.org. You can also watch the entire main event below.

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The City of Albany has received the honors for having the best tasting drinking water in New York State for 2010. The recent contest for the State’s best tasting drinking water by the State Department of Health was held at the New York State Fair in Syracuse where Albany beat out likes of New York City and the Clifton Park Water Authority of Saratoga County.  For more information and the top 10 results of the see New York’s Department of Health press release.

This brings me back to December ’09 when I posted about ditching bottled water. This is a reminder that we have highly regulated quality drinking water that doesn’t come in fancy bottles. A simple BPA free reusable water bottle can save you lots of money and reduce your carbon footprint.

Also at the front lines of the battle against bottled water in Albany is a grassroots campaign named Tap that I want to briefly mention. This grassroots campaign educates and promotes local water supplies for a healthy green lifestyle. For more information about Tap and to find out how you can help please visit tapalbany.org.

In the US we have clean flowing water available and we should all take advantage of it to save money and the environment. A refillable water bottle is the way to go.

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Update: SNIAGRAB has been around for 56 years. Oh that makes me feel stupid but it’s new to me and definitely got my attention. Thank you to Joe who commented for letting me know that it certainly isn’t anything new. Please be aware my post below was off the basis that I thought that SNIAGRAB was something new.

Credit to the Gart Sports Company for starting SNIAGRAB which did a merger of equals with The Sports Authority in 2003. There is also a great story behind Gart Sports Company and the beginnings of SNIAGRAB that you can view in the video below.

What is SNIAGRAB? It’s Sports Authority’s new sale spelling “bargains” backwards. When I received the newsletter I got fixated on trying to figure out how to say that  wacky word and not looking right below the word to see that it’s bargains backwards. This email definitely got my attention the same way as naming my post that way has grabbed some people’s attention I assume.

I’ve been on Sports Authority’s newsletter list for a while now and they have certainly made a big change with the new newsletter template. You can see the differences in The Retail Email Blog’s recent post comparing the differences.

Checking the site it looks like they’ve also updated their site. I like the changes that they have made.  I’ve always thought their site was a little plain and outdated. The changes they’ve made have definitely caught my attention especially with the SNIAGRAB promo with popping graphics and creative sale name.

With the recent changes that SportsAuthority.com has made along with the new creative promos, it’s probably made a positive impact on their newsletter results. I thought their promotions were pretty predictable with $25 off $100 and the change of pace should grab the attention of subscribers that have become accustomed to their promos.

With our email marketing at Detailed Image we always try to keep it fresh and change it up so it doesn’t get mundane with unique promotions like our Easter egg promo. There are limits to what we can do but we work with what we got.  You got to keep your subscribers engaged and see value in staying subscribed to your newsletter.

Thumbs up to the creativity and new look at SportsAuthority.com.

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