Every December, your supporters’ mailboxes start to look a lot like yours. Holiday cards, catalogs, credit card offers, and a stack of year-end appeals from every organization they’ve ever handed five dollars to. Too many of those appeals look about the same, say about the same thing, and end up in the same place, which is the recycling bin.

That’s not because people stopped caring. It’s usually because the appeal was written for a mailing list instead of a person. The good news is that the fixes aren’t complicated, and most of them cost nothing more than some extra thought before the design and printing ever start.

Read more: https://burlingtonpress.com/2026/10/05/year-end-giving-mailers-that-dont-get-tossed/

If you’ve ever downloaded a marketing calendar template, filled in the first two months with good intentions, and then never opened it again, you’re in good company. Most small business owners aren’t marketers. You’re running the shop, managing the staff, answering the phone, and doing the books on Sunday night. A spreadsheet full of color-coded campaigns isn’t going to survive that schedule.

The problem is that most marketing calendars weren’t built for the person who’s also running the business. Most of them are built for companies with a marketing department. A useful small business marketing calendar doesn’t need fifty-two campaigns on it. What a small business actually needs is something much simpler. That means a handful of dates that matter, a few pieces that go out on time, and a plan that’s easy enough to keep even during your busiest month.

Read more: https://burlingtonpress.com/2026/10/06/the-marketing-calendar-for-small-businesses-who-hate-marketing-calendars/

Every election cycle, someone tells a candidate that yard signs are a waste of money. The argument usually sounds something like this: nobody decides who to vote for because they saw a sign on someone’s lawn, so the budget is better spent on digital ads, targeted mail, or social media.

Here’s the problem. That argument misunderstands what a yard sign is actually for.

Read more: https://burlingtonpress.com/2026/09/17/yard-signs-still-work-why-traditional-political-campaign-tactics-havent-gone-away/