Should a customer loyalty program come with fine print and what basically amounts to “black out dates”? You know, the program that offers you points or discounts by coming back, but you can only get those rewards on certain days. Or sometimes the rewards aren’t eligible during other promotions. Is this fair to your loyal customers? Here’s a better question - is it smart? Fe...

Here’s a good story about an entrepreneur using small business online marketing ideas who found a great niche and is now utilizing the Internet to “grow her footprint” in business. Diana Vanover is a woman with big feet. She always found frustration when trying to locate comfortable and stylish shoes in her size because few retail stores actually carry them. So she set out to cre...

World-renown coffee chain, Starbucks, is launching a new loyalty program for 2010. Starbucks has struggled to maintain loyalty programs in the recent past, due to customer groups and their continued efforts to try and bend the rules to their favor. Under the new loyalty program plan it appears that many Starbucks customers will be losing a 10 percent discount but will be gaining a variety of benef...

Many startups realize the significance good customer service can mean for the success of a small business - or even a large operation. When done right, customer service can grease the wheels of any marketing and loyalty program. That’s exactly what Joan Lamonica did when she opened up a retail store recently. She’s the fashion designer and owner of Sara Mique and she quickly realized h...

Does your small business have a loyalty program or a rewards program? In short, these types of programs “reward” customers for being “loyal” to you by coming back and shopping repeatedly. As a company, you’re committed to keeping them happy and providing an incentive for them to come back and shop again and again. In it’s simplest form, an example of a loyalty p...

Virtually every single small business or entrepreneur carries his or her entire life on some computer or laptop. Whether or not this is a smart idea, it’s a fact and one that can’t be denied. But like everything else in life, stuff happens. Computers are prone to crashing. Everything from virus attacks and theft, to natural disasters and hard drive crashes, your entire computer’s...