Good luck to those that have been nominated! If anyone fancy’s a sneak peak before the nominations have been disclosed, apparently there’s leaks popping up already.

I also attended my first “Marketing Breakfast” organised by the Marketing Institute of Ireland yesterday morning, which took place in the Dome Restaurant at the top of St. Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre in Dublin. Yesterday’s breakfast focused on E-mail Marketing. “What Matters Most in Email” was presented by Denise Cox, Newsweaver’s Newsletter Specialist and one of Ireland’s leading authorities on best practice e-mail marketing. Denise presented an overview of email from both an acquisition and retention perspective and discussed the latest trends in email marketing and how this can affect a company’s marketing efforts. Denise also offered some tips on design, deliverability and how email fits into multi-channel marketing as well as how to write content that works and how to create email marketing that nurtures and builds customer relationships. For a short breakfast, the talk was very good. A lot of the points made would be familiar to people in the industry but it was great to be reminded of the fundamental best practice techniques in order to ensure success and to gain broader knowledge of the email marketing landscape in general. Last week Denise was awarded the “Best Blogger” at the IIA and Enterprise Ireland Net Visionary Awards. Interestingly, Anthony Quigley was a nominee in the “Internet Entrepreneur” category but just missed out to Lulu O’Sullivan at 4GiftsDirect.com. O’Sullivan started her business 20 years ago, delivering teddy bears on the back of a moped! The business was one of the first commercial internet shopping sites in Ireland when it went live 12 years ago. Since then hampers from 4Gifts have been opened on an episode of “The Osbournes” and Colin Farrell has also been a recipient of one.

Lorcan O’Sullivan from Enterprise Ireland, the awards sponsor, said:

“There is a new breed of Irish company that is harnessing the ongoing potential of the internet as a medium without boundaries. The nominees and winners of the IIA Net Visionary awards are testament to the creativity and calibre of those involved in the industry today. Lulu O’Sullivan is a great example of an entrepreneur who started from literally nothing and has harnessed technology to build a successful business.”

Hmmm, I wonder what I could start selling from the back of my own moped?!

Speaking of awards, the Golden Spiders Awards 2007 took place yesterday evening. I was interested to see that a few new categories have been added to the Awards this year; namely “Best Blog”, “Best use of Film/ Animation/ Motion Graphics”, “Best Social Networking Website”, “Best Entertainment & Games related website”, “Best FMCG website” and the “User Generated Content award”. Another one of the lecturers from my Diploma course, Rosey Broderick, was short-listed for “best website launched in 2006″ at the awards. Broderick is Managing Director of Homewise.ie, Ireland’s “Home and Garden search engine”.

On a separate note, yesterday was Thanksgiving Day in America (Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November in the United States and on the second Monday of October in Canada). I was asked to design my first Thanksgiving card for distribution to my company’s American & Canadian clients. It was a nice detour from usual tasks and got me thinking about the approaching holiday season. The Christmas lights that adorn Grafton Street, Georges street and the other main streets in Dublin city centre were turned on last weekend and I got to see them in the flesh last night. They really do put you in the Christmas spirit. I’m looking forward to Christmas this year and for once I might actually get my shopping fully done before Christmas eve! With a little help from the internet that is

The top sites that I predict that I’ll be visiting are:

www.amazon.com
www.apple.com
www.e-bay.ie

I must also check out 4GiftsDirect.com! And I also just came across ArmChair.ie, which also looks like it’s worth a browse. Interestingly, Deloitte in the UK are predicting a 100% increase in online shopping this year. In Ireland, E-bay, Apple and Amazon are the top three online shopping sites with Buy4now.ie, Argos, Littlewoods and even Tesco’s following behind them.

I must track what percentages of my own online shopping are divided among these!