At the end of May, congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act. The act bans specific practices of the credit card industry and requires more disclosure and transparency. For example, a credit card bill must now display, alongside your minimum payment amount, how long it will take to pay off your current debt if you only make the minimum monthly payment.

When it comes to this recession, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says it best: "Maybe we should think of today as normal … as opposed [to] today as the tough times, and yesterday as normal." The pre-2007 economy is gone for years, and some elements might be gone for good.

Despite the trendiness of social-media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, a whopping question lingers: Does marketing on these sites drive revenue or other measurable results? Learn how to treat your social-media forays as more traditional marketing campaigns, so you can begin to muscle through the hype and establish a baseline of actual concrete results.

This is an exciting time for email marketers. Email marketing is more popular than ever in this down economy for its cost-efficiency, immediate results, and high ROI. At the same time, we're also seeing the rise of social media marketing as a powerful tool. On its own, it can be used to communicate with your target audience much like email marketing. In fact, some even wonder whether social media marketing will make email marketing obsolete.