Smart phones, groceries, copper and postage— just a short list of some items expected to be more expensive in 2013.
Among these, maybe the least surprising is a postage hike. According to Pitney Bowes Small Business, a price increase on postal rates of 2.75 percent went into effect on Jan. 27. If you rely on postage as an integral part of your business or use postage for marketing purposes, you will see price increases.
Small business owners can be more creative in their use of postal services to help offset the increase. Others may finally switch their print-mailed campaigns efforts to email marketing campaigns. In any case, these new increases can run into thousands of dollars for high-volume shippers.
There are three important things small business owners need to know about the 2013 postage increase:
* Low-cost shipping solutions are being eliminated.
* Retail shipping rates are rising an average of 5-10 percent.
* The Intelligent Mail barcode will give business owners and customers more power when it comes to tracking their items.
Here are details of the 2013 USPS postage increase:
New single-piece First-Class Mail pricing includes:
Postcards: 1-cent increase to 33 cents.
Letters (1 ounce or less): 1-cent increase to 46 cents.
Letters over 1 ounce: unchanged at 20... Read more
Tagged 'consumer engagement' 
2013 Postage Increase: How will it Affect Your Small Business?
Credit Bureaus Could Score with Mobile
The financial services industry has found great success with mobile as a channel for extending products and services to on-the-go customers. A next logical and related segment where we have not seen much activity is the credit reporting agencies.
Engagement – Why don't brands create their own virtual worlds or MMOs?
Listening to the latest words of wisdom from top marketing pundits, it seems that consumer engagement – with online advertising, with a brand, with just about every aspect of a product's marketing – is all the rage. Yet it has surprised me that, at least from recent articles I’ve read and conferences I’ve attended, not a single person is mentioning at length branded virtual worlds or MMOs as an advertising medium. What could be more engaging and immersive than creating an entire world that, at least online, the customer actually lives within?
At Upper Deck I work with games every day, and we're hyper aware of the online gaming space, in part because two of our products – the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game and the soon-to-launch World of Warcraft Collectible Miniatures Game – exist solely because of the popularity of the World of Warcraft MMO. Still, between World of Warcraft, which has nearly 11 million subscribers worldwide, Lineage, Habbo, Gaia Online, EverQuest, Eve Online, There.com and the hundreds of other virtual worlds and MMOs either already running or currently on the drawing boards, there is clearly interest and demand for such immersive realms. In fact, a study released... Read more
