It’s Valentine’s Day! Don’t leave your customers wondering how much you appreciate their business; show them with a Valentine’s promotion. Even if you’re not in the flower, card or candy business.

The cynics out there will say that Hallmark, advertisers and every profit-driven business in America have turned Valentine’s Day, and every other holiday, into a commercial monstrosity that’s all about money. While I don’t agree with this position, I can see where that idea comes from.

Holidays present the perfect opportunity (read: excuse) for a sale or giveaway. And that sale is justification of an advertising campaign. Not too many people really want to go to White Castle for Valentine’s Day, but the promotion gets people talking. Look, I even linked to it.

Saving customers money or not, sales and promotions are designed to make more money for the business. Get a customer in a store or on the site with the lure of a sale, and hope they shop around and buy more full-price items. Or buy enough stuff on sale to make up the difference. Either way, the sale is for the store’s benefit, not the customer.

But who wants to print a flyer or fire an email that says “Pretend to save some money but actually spend more because profits are down.” No one. A holiday gives people a reason to shop—for themselves, for holiday items or for gifts. It doesn’t matter what the holiday is, you’re bound to need something.

But if you’re not a Wal-Mart or department store offering something for every imaginable need, your products might not always mesh with the holiday being advertised. Then what? Get creative, that’s what.

It’s Valentine’s Day. You are not a florist, you’re an auto repair shop. Not romantic, but it is practical. Give the gift of safety. Or treat yourself. Or be daring and show your buddy how much you care—it’s a manly gift, so it balances out.

You get the idea. People love to shop. Give them a reason to and they will. Make them feel like it’s acceptable and expected, and you’ll get a customer for life.

It's a new year, and for many that means new budgets and new marketing campaigns. If you've never used email promotions, now is the time to start thinking about building an in-house email list and designing some cool postcards. Or, if your email marketing campaign seems a little stale, revamp it with a new look. Try a new format, or ditch your old marketing message and try an email newsletter.

VerticalResponse's marketing blog has a great marketing checklist full of ideas to start the (marketing) year off with a bang. Their ideas encompass every aspect of a truly comprehensive marketing plan, not just email, so you can use it to tie your whole campaign together, pull everything in a new direction or pick and choose what you'd like to try and make it work for you. A lot of the suggestions can be applied to email, even if it's not specifically mentioned.

Their best "marketing resolution" is to get people talking, because isn't that what any good marketing promotion is all about, email or otherwise? The "send to a friend" feature allows easy, one click email forwarding of anything people think is worth talking about, and sharing, with friends. So if you can get one person talking, they can help you get ten more friends talking.

Remember chain letters? How many jokes, cartoons and interesting articles do you get in your inbox a day? All these require you, or someone you know, to pass along an email to a friend or two. It's free for them, and they are only too happy to do it because they see something in the email adding value to their, and their friends', lives.

By creating a buzzworthy product or service and an email campaign to match, you could almost double your reach! If you sent 500 emails and every one of your recipients forwards your email to just one person, you get 500 free email promotions. And these promotions are almost more valuable, because they come from a trusted source-a friend or coworker, not an advertiser.

So resolve to take some time and come up with something worth sharing with friends. It could be a simple promotional code (everyone loves saving money) or a crazy contest. Just give them something to talk about.

Everywhere I look, people are dumping on email, and it’s really starting to get annoying. Maybe annoying isn’t the right word, but it’s definitely tiresome. Imagine always being one of the few kids to stand up for the poor little abused dork on the playground. Email is that dork, and I am its champion.

Twitter is the latest contender vying for the chance to shove email marketing out of favor and secure a coveted top spot as an advertising tool on the web. Laughable, really. Does anyone seriously anticipate Twitter replacing email enough to change email marketing significantly?

Twitter is to email what text messages are to phone calls. Twitter is fun and fast and great for quick little updates or random, off the cuff comments, but useless for serious discussion, conversation or messaging. Twittering is like texting; great for fluffy conversations with friends, but too frivolous and insincere for anything of great importance.

Real communication requires time, space and attention, none of which is afforded by Twitter. So there really is no hope of Tweets becoming the next generation of emails. Again, they are a different method of communication, with a different goal and end result than email. Twitter has strengths and weaknesses like any other channel of communication.

So does Twitter provide any value for marketing? Absolutely, but I don’t think people will be following brands and receiving mobile updates on promotions. Twitter has great potential for viral and word of mouth marketing, but its best hope for becoming part of the marketing mix is alongside email, not opposite it.