2009 Singapore Public Holidays, Festivals and School Holidays
Here’s a list of Public Holidays in Singapore for 2009.
New Year’s Day
1 January 2009 (Thursday)
Chinese New Year
26 January 2009 (Monday)
27 January 2009 (Tuesday)
Good Friday
10 April 2009 (Friday)
Labour Day
1 May 2009 (Friday)
Vesak Day
9 May 2009 (Saturday)
National Day
9 August 2009 (Sunday)*
Hari Raya Puasa
20 September 2009 (Sunday)*
Deepavali
15 November 2009 (Sunday)*
Hari Raya Haji
27 November 2009 (Friday)
Christmas Day
25 December 2009 (Friday)
Plus an additional list of other festivals and occasions to remember:
Valentine’s Day
14 February 2009 (Saturday)
Easter Sunday
12 April 2009 (Sunday)
Earth Day
22 April 2009 (Tuesday)
Secretary’s Day
23 April 2009 (Thursday)
Mother’s Day
10 May 2009 (Sunday)
World Environment Day
5 June 2009 (Friday)
Father’s Day
21 June 2009 (Sunday)
Youth Day
5 July 2009 (Sunday)
Racial Harmony Day
21 July 2009 (Tuesday)
Teacher’s Day
1 September 2009 (Tuesday)
Grandparent’s Day
14 September 2009 (Monday)
Children’s Day
1 October 2009 (Thursday)
Boss’s Day
14 October 2009 (Wednesday)
Thanksgiving Day
22 November 2009 (Sunday)
Boxing Day
26 December 2009 (Saturday)
Singapore School Vacations
14 March 2009 (Saturday) to 22 March 2009 (Sunday)
30 May 2009 (Saturday) to 28 May 2009 (Sunday)
5 September 2009 (Saturday) to 13 September 2009 (Sunday)
21 November 2009 (Saturday) to 3 January 2010 (Sunday)
To ADV or not to ADV, That IS The Question!
We get this question quite a bit. It’s about the <ADV> Tag that marketers are required by law to add to their marketing emails.
Here’s the short version:
Subject: <ADV> Then comes your subject line
You must use this tag when you are sending unsolicited commercial email to businesses and individuals in Singapore. Unsolicited may mean the recipient may know of you, have given you their business card or email contact before, but did not specifically ask to be on your mailing list.
Now the longer version
The main confusion comes in the way we define unsolicited commercial email and how marketers should deal with the grey areas of whether to <ADV> or not to <ADV>. Read more
Getting Started with Email Marketing
There is really no trick to getting started quickly with Email Marketing.
You need to have a database of prospects and clients you want to contact. Make sure you have all the relevant information from them, such as their First Name, Last Name, Email Address and maybe a Mobile Contact Number.
Next, you need to decide how you want to present your communication to them. Of course, we believe that email is the most cost effective, easy to integrate and most flexible platform for any small business or non profit organisation.
Email Marketing for Every Small Business in Singapore?
We’re really excited about reaching far more small businesses in Singapore and start the conversation with, “Why exactly do you need email marketing?”
The answer should be obvious, or is it?
Read more
Email Marketing Best Practices: Getting Permission to Email
Here’s a quick expansion on Point 1 of our Email Marketing Best Practices.
1) Always get permission to email (either before or after)
There are a few scenarios. This seems to make the most sense.
- If you have a prior business relationship with the email recipient (already your customer)
- If they have asked to be contacted or to be included in your list (brandy bowl for namecards in store)
- If they belong to a special group that must use your services (eg cleanroom engineers need specialised goggles and prescription lenses)
- They belong to the same association as you (once again, you must ask their permission.)
- If you met them in person before and have their contact or business card
- If you are a customer of theirs (they could become a customer of yours)
It’s okay to email in the above circumstances, but what if you have an old list of customers or someone with whom you have not already asked his or her permission to contact? Then do this.
Top 10 Email Marketing Best Practices
It’s time to let you in on a few email marketing best practices in case you are already managing your own email marketing campaigns. If you need some assistance to implement the suggestions below, you can get in touch with us to learn more.
1) Always Get Permission to Email
If someone subscribes to your email list voluntarily, it does mean he or she has given you permission to email.
If it’s someone you’ve manually added to your database (for a variety of reasons), it’s only polite to ask.
If you ask and someone says no, that’s better than not asking and getting black listed as a spammer with your ISP.
2) Send Multi-Part (MIME) Emails with TEXT and HTML versions
In our technologically advanced world with high speed broadband, amazing mixed multimedia and super duper web technologies, we often forget that not everyone is as technologically enabled as we are. The advent of mobile internet and broadband on mobile phones also see people receiving email at low speeds of 128kbps and reading email with text only email browsers.
Email Marketing: Integrating Offline, Online and Web Marketing Activities
This is perhaps a most interesting topic for traditional business owners. I see this as web technology meets small business and how we can use Email Marketing as the integrating platform and technology to bring all your marketing efforts into one single channel.
When we meet small business owners, we often ask them what marketing activities they already have committed their budgets to.
Many of them cite the following activities as part of their marketing mix.
- Hire sales people
- Send a flyer
- Share a corporate brochure
- Create a product catalog or a product newsletter
- Printed newsletter (most of the time in black & white photocopy)
- Send a greeting card or email at major festive holidays
- SMS marketing - costs a lot, got some responses, but limited texting capability
- Advertising in monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly magazine (in related industry)
- Advertising in other printed magazines, commemoratives, trade journals.
- Maintaining a database on Excel spreadsheet or within Outlook address book
Here’s how to get all your marketing activities in order:
Be fully compliant with local spam control and international anti-spam laws
Are your business-to-business or business-to-consumer marketing emails being marked by your recipients as SPAM or Junk Mail?
We have looked at the legal implications of sending email that people don’t want to receive any (even if they did want to receive those emails initially) and have distilled it down to a few rules that every email sender should adhere to.
Last week, we attended an industry meeting discussing the grey areas of the spam control and anti-spam legislation in Asia and around the world. While it is clear that we were already on track, we were very doubtful that email receivers clearly know what was to be classified as spam and what was not spam.
Here’s the guidelines that we can recommend you follow when sending your own email campaigns.
Top 10 Singapore Small Business Marketing Strategies
We work with small businesses most often. The question we get most often is how to effectively promote a small business without blowing a budget.
Our first tongue in cheek response: “Start with Email Marketing!”
It’s true. Many of our clients basically learn as they work with us the things they need to do to market themselves more effectively as a Singapore small business.
Email marketing as a small business marketing solution is not for everyone, do not be mistaken. But for most of the small businesses that already use email as a means of communication with their clients and customers, it is a viable solution.
Here’s a quick list of things to consider when marketing your small business in Singapore:
Take the Email Marketing Readiness Test today!
Is your business or organisation ready to make the most out of email marketing?
Very often we speak to business owners and managers who can’t seem to put their finger on this question. They know a bit about email marketing, generally agree on the fact the more frequent (but reasonable) contact with their prospects and customers will boost sales, and think that having an email newsletter is a great idea.
But why did they think email marketing would not work for them? We couldn’t figure it out at first.
We decided to get more information from our future clients with this email marketing readiness test.
Let’s go back to the three pillars of email marketing that we described earlier:
1) Customers
2) Content
3) Conversion