Summer is gone, and we are a month away from Halloween and gaining an hour of sleep. As marketers, publishers or service providers, this is the time of year when everyone is distracted, overstimulated and likely grasping for straws for how to do things better or differently from last year. It's the perfect time to get the crystal ball out and make a few predictions for this holiday retail season. If you're not a retailer, don't stop reading - there's a few nuggets for you too.

It's no secret that Q4 is the time for many retailers to move from the red to black. Email has a big hand in that, as our beloved channel drives a considerable amount of online revenue. While we're still weeks away from holiday-specific campaigns, retailers can begin laying a foundation for a lucrative holiday season now. Here are some tactics to focus on in late September through early October to make your holiday campaigns more successful than last year:

As I look back upon my 16+-year career -- largely focused on this great channel that is email - I thought I would share 16 key things I have learned along the way. Some may be more obvious than others, but the hope is that you find a great nugget in here!

The email channel is unique in many ways, but the data it captures on consumer preferences, behaviors, and purchase trends can and should be applied across the marketing department. Today the most common use of this sort of data is gathering competitive intelligence -- checking out how the campaigns from other brands perform, and which messages and offers engage subscribers. Let me suggest a few alternative uses of this "email panel" data:

It's not too late to inject a little innovation into your holiday email-marketing planning, even if you feel as if Cranberry Red Thursday (Thanksgiving in the U.S.) is hovering over your shoulder already. Here are six holiday revenue or engagement strategies that you can either launch or update in the weeks that remain before the blitz begins.

The term "minimizing regret" in scientific circles can be defined as using experiments to minimize patient loss. A scary proposition to bring up in a marketing-related blog, but a reality of scientific experimentation.

Email marketers, especially those in the hospitality, travel, and entertainment industries, can revel in Gmail's latest product enhancement, Gmail Events. This new feature allows event details like a flight, concert, hotel reservation or restaurant reservation to display automatically on the calendar of any device synced with Gmail and Google Calendar. The arduous task of Gmail users having to copy event details to a calendar has largely been solved through this new feature.

Emails with "video" in the subject line have a 65% higher click-through rate on average, according to Vidcaster. When video is a central part of your email campaign, the CTR can be 200% higher than a similar campaign without video. Video can help you cut costs and increase customer satisfaction as well as identify prospects and move them closer to a purchase decision when you integrate your email video strategy with your marketing automation and ecommerce platforms.