One challenge facing online retailers is analyzing the mass of avail­able consumer data, to better market their product offerings. Now, research being done by the Georgia Institute of Technology, with a $3 million joint grant from the National Science Foundation and Department of Homeland Security, aims to make the science of analytics and mining large data­bases more effective for marketers.

Direct and interactive tactics are helping videos become viral sensations.

Lizan Brand, owner of Greenfield Liquors inGreenfield, IN, explains how her small business has grown as a result of blogging.

Less than a year old, Facebook's Pages application allows brands to join the social networking masses - but can it be used as a DM tactic?

Kim Gnatt, VP of Internet at Footsmart.com, discusses how the foot- and lower body-care retailer automated its Web site's cross-sell recommendations and increased revenue.

To help add more prospects and customers to its database, Kevin DeMeritt, president of Los Angeles-based Lear Capital, a precious metals company, worked on a refer-a-friend sweepstakes with ReferNow.

Widgets — small, downloadable applications that can interact with the Web to be updated dynamically, for sports scores, weather reports or news — have been around for over three years now. As this timeline illustrates, they surfaced when Apple released its "Tiger" edition of OS X, the Macintosh operating system, which included a suite of widgets called Dashboard.

Web-based efforts have taken the power of promotions to the next level, Pamela Oldham reports.

It seems like widgets are everywhere — on Web sites, on blogs, on Facebook — but how can you turn these portable applications into powerful marketing tools? Four experts weigh in.

Age restrictions and crowded categories make marketing wine and spirits a tough task. Alyson Grala explores how marketers can handle these challenges.