We regularly give our small business customers a pat on the back for surviving and thriving in this economy, and recently President Obama mentioned that the small business sector has created 65 percent of all new jobs in America over the past 15 years. However, the VerticalResponse survey does show that smaller businesses may take longer to recover from the current economic downturn, as only 11% of businesses with 1-10 employees are planning on new hires in the next three months.

Read the rest of the story here, and stay tuned for some other findings in the State of Small Business Survey. Interested in surveying your own customers? Check out how we did it here.

So here is a list of ideas you can put to work now, and it doesn't have to be just for the holiday season.

1. Handwritten Thank You Notes - Gilt does a great job of this and even though it's not handwritten, it's a very nice gesture.

2. A Funky Hat - Wine.com included this very cool hat inside their shipping package along with nifty bottle neckers for you to take tasting notes on.

3. Candy - Who doesn't love a package of M&Ms or some Jelly Belly's? Just make sure it won't melt and ruin the product you're trying to ship! A great idea I heard from Andy Sernovitz, author of Word Of Mouth Marketing.

4. Samples - Do you sell products that you are able to give smaller samples of? Put samples of other products in the box when you ship. You're likely to see your customers come back and buy more from you the next time.

5. Get calendars for next year printed with your logo, url and contact information included. 

6. I got a book shipped from Andy Sernovitz, his new one coming out is really great, and in the packaging he included a bookmark with his info printed on it, a smiley face button and packages of yummy bacon salt! It had nothing to do with the book, but it got a group of us talking and tasting!

7. Logo'd Bag - Drawstring backpacks are great for the gym and who isn't using grocery bags these days? I saw both of them at Branders for about $2. You can't have enough of these!

8. Post-It Notes - Who doesn't love them? Have some printed with your information on them. I saw them at 4Imprint for 47¢ each.

9. Fun Games - I once got a package with a whoopie cushion in it! Ok, you don't have to go that crazy but what about a fun keychain puzzle, temporary tattoo, or a frisbee? It always gets people talking and puts a smile on their faces.

It doesn't have to cost much to go above and beyond, remember, it's the thought that counts. What are your ideas for this retail season?

What got me thinking about this was watching the television ads that Southwest Airlines has been running recently. In these tough economic times when many of the airlines are nickel and diming travelers for things like blankets and bags, Southwest is promoting "Bags Fly Free". They're not going for "most on-time arrivals" or "most legroom". They're hitting a pain point that's giving them some real differentiation.

I started to think of a few other big names that have done a great job at this. Enterprise Rent-a-Car picks you up if you can't get to the car rental location. Westin Hotels markets their Heavenly Bed to weary guests. Red Envelope sends everything they sell in beautiful red packaging. Heck, Playtex is even marketing their see through packaging so you can see what's inside before you buy it.

What do you think that you have in your arsenal that will make you rise above it all in a crowded messaging arena? Here are a few ideas I kicked around.

Wineries - Promote something off the wall like your wine is great with a burger.  Promote that your screw caps are better for the environment than corks or that you don't need a wine opener for your wines. OR vice versa, your wine will age better with a cork.

Jewelry Designers - Talk about how your jewelry clasps never break.

Nail Spas - Promote that your nail polish lasts 14 days or that you've got the most comfortable chairs and the best magazines.

Hair Salons - Talk about how you give the best 10 minute scalp massage with any haircut and promote a free "clean up" or bang trim two weeks after your cut.

Hotels - Is your property dog-friendly? Talk about it! Promote the steamer in the rooms so that your guests can steam their wrinkled clothes.

Auto Shops - Promote your kid-friendly shop and your free coffee, bagels and muffins in the morning.

Restaurants - Open for Thanksgiving? Promote a take-home baggie of a turkey sandwich for every patron.

Software - Talk about how you are saving the environment because your user guide is online or on a CD, or that your SaaS company loves the environment because there is no packaging.

Once you have your competitive advantage down, test it in your next email marketing campaign and in your messaging. You might be surprised what resonates with new prospects.

What great competitive advantages do you have to use? Share them please, we'd love to hear them.

The first subject line: Take Our Survey and Tell Us What You Think

We received 181 more opens and 35 more clicks than the following more specific subject line: Take 5 Minutes - See How Your Business Stacks Up

In this specific case it seemed to be that we had more opens and clicks from the generic subject line and more people taking our survey. This illustrates why it's important to be testing subject lines to get more opens or content inside your email to be getting more clicks.

First of all, I'm assuming at this point that your recipients will recognize you from your "From Label". I've written why your From Label is very important in your email marketing campaigns. If they are familiar with who the email is coming from, you'll have better luck getting your email opened with a catchy subject line.

As a retailer your email marketing campaigns are probably all about selling. If you sell your own products or products from other manufacturers, you'll be trying to announce new products, new seasons or discounts and sales. You'll want your recipients to act fast, so you may want to try expiration dates in your subject line. We even see businesses using hours in the day in their expiration time periods.

You'll see that some of these subject lines are a bit vague like "An Exclusive Offer for You", however sometimes that might get more opens than if you talk about a specific product. That's something that you need to test for yourself in your own campaigns.

Offer, Offer, Offer

Enjoy this Special Offer at Our New Location

25-40% off - Email-Only Offer – Today Only

Invitation-Only 2 Hour Event Starts 11:30 AM CT

Ends Today! 20% Off Friends & Family

Top 10 under $10

Free shipping - offer ends in 3 days

Free product with purchase of [product name]

[New Product] has arrived. Order now before we run out.

Earn double points for [insert product or action].

Last Chance: Get up to $25 now

Save 10% on your next order

Enjoy [season] with rates from $65

Service Notice: Exciting new changes at [your company]

An Exclusive Offer for You

[Your company] October Specials

Last minute deals, special offers, and new [product name]

Act Now to renew your [subscription name]

Online only: 25% off friends and family

Introducing our latest…[product/feature here]

[Product name] Promotion week. Save 25%

Extended for a day! Get Free shipping through Friday

Stock up and save 15%

Limited Supply: Limit 2 [product name] per customer

Ho-ho-ho: The [your company] holiday catalog is here!

Email subscriber exclusive: [Product name] sale is here

Ends Today: Take 20% off your entire order

Private Sale Ends Today

Your choice of amazing items $50 + under

Great gifts for [Dad, Mom, etc]

Best Sellers every [girl, boy, man, woman, dog, etc.]

Everything you need when the temperatures [rise, fall]

Free Shipping--Limited Time Offer

Catchy & Creative

Sometimes all you need is a little vase lift  (retailer selling vase's)

We've got you covered from head to toe (retailer selling hats, shirts, pants and boots)

How La Perla got its name (retailer selling lingerie, telling a story inside the email)

Temperatures Fall, Style Rises (retailer selling coats)

Celebrity Favorites (selling accessories that Hollywood is wearing)

Did you remember to get a gift? It's ok, we did. (retailer wanting to get people to register for gift reminders)

10 Gift Ideas for your little ones (retailer listing top 10 suggestions for kids)

Manhattan View for a Song in the Shower (retailer selling shower curtain with Manhattan skyline on it)

Take your pick: Our 9 Favorite Dresses (retailer suggesting by popularity)

Coolest modern desk on the job...for $149 (retailer including price in the subject line)

Score Great Savings on Game-Time Gear: HDTVs, Furniture & More (retailer selling TV's with a sports slant)

Party Like it's 1999 Aged Cabernet Special (wine retailer)

In our store: Last minute Mother's Day combo ready to go (retailer getting the last minute shoppers with a catch "combo to go".)

Adorn Your Home Now & Through the Holidays (Home decor retailer)

Mind-Blowing Grenache (wine retailer)

Bring this email to a Gap store and win! (retailer trying to get store traffic)

I hope this gets your creative juices flowing. You can also find some great holiday-specific subject lines here. If you've got some great subject lines that have worked for your business, comment and let us know.

I like the show because he gets down into the inner workings of a small business and peels away the onion to find any issues that might be hampering the business from growing.

So, I've outlined 6 things we can all learn from Gordon Ramsay, followed by a question you can ask yourself to see how you rate by his business strategy.

#1 - It all starts with the customer.

One of the first questions Chef asks the restaurant he is working with is how many people have reserved for the evening. More often than not, it's a pretty low number, so he observes for a night to find out why. In most cases (or there wouldn't be a TV show) there are serious issues with the way the entire restaurant is run.

He also takes to the streets; in many shows he walks the streets of the town to observe other restaurants and he'll stop people and ask what they think about the restaurant he's trying to help.

Question: When was the last time you surveyed your customers to find out what they think about your business, your product or your service?

#2 - Chef Ramsay gets at the foundation of the business.

He wants to get to know the owner of the place to find out how the business got into bad shape in the first place. He wants to see the owner's passion for what they do. He works with the staff to make sure they have a proper foundation and that the person leading the charge is truly leading the charge.

Then he gets into the real foundation of the business. According to Ramsay, success starts with a clean kitchen and in many cases that's the first thing that gets done.

Question: When was the last time you did a proper "cleaning" of your business to make sure it’s in order? It could be cleaning out old inventory lying around or it could be actually cleaning up your office environment. Spring cleaning is always a great idea for a fresh start!

#3 - The product needs to be good.

Chef wants to know who is making the food and what ingredients are being used. He wants to know if the staff is capable of doing what needs to be done. Then he works with them to make a great product (in this case, menu) and changes the way they think about what they're making and how they're presenting it.

Question: Is your product or service the best it can be? What would it take to get it to the next level? Do you need to change the way your staff thinks?

#4 - The experience needs to be good.

Ramsay will go to the extent of training the staff himself to make sure that reservations are being booked in a way that doesn’t overflow the kitchen. He'll make sure that the staff is offering entrées that the kitchen can make quickly and tries to get them thinking about the customer experience. Then he'll go to extremes and redesign the restaurant and give it a clean, friendly and updated look. Doing this has often given the staff a morale boost, which often leads to a great experience.

Question: When was the last time you looked at your location, or your website? Putting a fresh coat of paint on your walls, changing your front door entrance, or reducing the number of clicks your website visitors have to go through might be just the thing your business needs.

#5 - A business needs to market itself.

Obviously you can't get the word out without a great product and a great experience, but now there's something to talk about. My favorite thing about this show is that Chef knows how important it is to get the word out, from the signage out front to winning over customers on the street. For an Indian food restaurant, he had Indian dancers perform in the neighborhood and hand out food; for a Soul Food restaurant he set up an outdoor BBQ and gave food away. He's a true marketer at heart, which is what I love about him.

Question: What creative things are you doing to get the word out for your business?

#6 - Get back to the customer.

After it's all said and done, Chef Ramsay asks for feedback. After the dining experience, he wants to keep the business in check so getting comment cards back from the customers is critical.

Question: Are you asking your customers for feedback constantly, then acting on it?

There you have it, 6 reasons why I think there's a lot to learn from Gordon Ramsay. The meat of why he’s effective is laid out above; imagine what can happen when you interpret these tips with your own special sauce.

I've got a new article up on Inc.com for my column Girl Power: Female CEOs. It's entitled How Training Employees Can Boost Sales. Training can sound boring, however what happens when one of your employees ruins your reputation, check it out!

So I started thinking about how this is the antithesis of what we've been seeing in our own customers businesses, and I really wanted to write about it. However, ME writing about it seems somewhat self-serving, since well, I run an email marketing company. 

Then I got an EMAIL forwarded to me that Chris Crum over at WebProNews had come to the rescue and already wrote about all of the things I've been thinking about relating to how consumers are using email and social media.

So here is Chris's story "10 Reasons Social Media isn't Replacing Email."

I decided to add my own $.02 about how marketers feel about this article: 10 More Reasons Why Social Media Won't Replace Email.

11. Twitter and Facebook are fantastic products and companies; but that's what they are, companies. Even though email is host to 279 million users vs. 301 million users of social media according to Nielsen, email isn't going anywhere soon with many companies offering it as a service. Twitter and Facebook are just two companies that likely make up most of the social media users.

12. Your email recipients are still going to use business email for business purposes. They'll not likely let their boss know that they've finished the spreadsheet and are ready for the meeting now by posting to Twitter. If they don't use their business email address they probably also have a personal email account that they like to receive your email-only specials.

13. You can't easily segment your friends and followers to do targeted marketing in Twitter & Facebook for the optimal response.

14. You can't tell who clicked on a link with some social media outlets so that you can follow up with them again because they might be interested in your content.

15. That said, you can't tell who didn't click on the link so you can follow up with them with a different message trying to get them to take action.

16. You cannot personalize your Facebook updates. This has been proven to boost response in any marketing campaign you do.

17. You cannot size your graphics or use more than one in Facebook. You can't use them at all in Twitter. Graphics help tell a story.

18. You can't track how many clicks you got on your links in Facebook unless you use a third party URL shortener.

19. You are limited to 140 characters in Twitter leaving it impossible to put multiple messages in one Tweet.

20. You almost have to have separate social media accounts for your business and your personal life. Some customers might not care about that vacation you took where you...let's just say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

Am I against the use of social media as a marketing tool? Hell no! I love it. I've written about how Twitter & email marketing work together, and I've written how to use Facebook to grow your email lists. I've also written about how to post your email marketing campaign to your Twitter and Facebook pages to get more readers of your newsletters because I feel that these are two mediums that complement each other very nicely. Why? Because no one is going away from email anytime soon, and people are using social media as well. What are you seeing?

For instance a common misspell happens if you have double letters in your domain where the last letter of the first word and first letter of the next word are the same for example www.verticallearnings.com. People might only type in one "L" so you might want to register the domain with one "L" as well as two and redirect them to your site.

As an exercise to see how many people are doing this for my company VerticalResponse, I headed over to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and typed in "www.verticleresponse.com". To my surprise I saw there were over 700 visits to this page in a month, a clear opportunity for us to redirect these visitors to our home page. One note: If people type our misspelled domain into a Google search box they will ask people "Did you mean VerticalResponse?" with a link to our listing and list us in the top spot. But what about the people that hear about your business and type your misspelled URL directly into their browser? Those are the visitors you could potentially lose.

So try and think of the ways that people can misspell your domains and use the keyword tool to find out how much traffic in Google, at least, you could be missing out on. If it makes sense, register them and redirect those visitors to your website. It's a small cost ($10/month) and you could end up with new customers.