'Tis the Season to Set Up Email.

The shops have been full of ornaments absolutely festooned in glitter that gets everywhere for weeks. 'The Late Late Toy Show' PJs have appeared in Penny's. Any day now the shopping centre parking lot will start to look like a miniature forest staffed exclusively by college students looking for pocket money.

It's the season to set up email marketing for your small business, but not for today -- for tomorrow. We're looking to the year ahead and we're going to get organized.

Consider this a pre-resolution already in the bag come January 31st! You're welcome, future you.

Now is the time to set up 'lead capture' (i.e. sign up forms) on your website to collect emails. I hear you when you tell me you don't have the time to be faffing around with all that. But -- and I say this with love -- you don't have time not to set them up.

If you're a product based business, you may be attending one to seventy 'Christmas' markets in the next 20+/- days. That's a gold mine of opportunities to not only make sales but to do some honest to goodness market research with your almost perfect target customers. We're looking at price point, we're looking at feedback, and we're filing all that information away for future reference.

But we're also encouraging people to scan the QR code displayed on our table, to take our business card (with QR code on the back) OR even leave their name and email on the clipboard by the cashbox.

Because we are growing our lists, ladies and gents.

The 'Black Friday' ship may have gone but email marketing as a channel for your business is not sunk.

If you're a service based business, now is the time to gather your notes from the year -- the good days, the great days and the 'stand in the kitchen and stare out the window' days -- and actually put a plan into place to do all the wonderful email marketing things you wanted to do when you were too busy.

If you want to chart a course for 2026 and need help getting started -- book your own 'Empowered Email Marketing Clinic' today.