Happy Cyber Monday! Today is the unofficial start of the online holiday shopping season. A few days ago, we celebrated Black Friday, which signifies the busiest shopping day of the year, as consumers headed to traditional, brick-and-mortar storefronts to take advantage of amazing doorbuster deals. Online marketers use Cyber Monday discounts to entice shoppers who were unable (for whatever reasons) to get the deals they had hoped for on Black Friday.

Pundits at Forrester are predicting an eight-percent increase ($44.7 billion), year over year, in online sales this holiday season, despite the struggling economy. If this number isn’t enough to convince you to amp up your online, holiday marketing strategy, these same analysts attribute this year-over-year growth to more consumers searching online. As a result, more online marketers and retailers are contributing significant portions of their budgets to their Internet search presence, creating better website usability and further developing their social media tools. Consider this finding from Google Retail Advertising Blog about consumer search behaviors this holiday season:

• Searches for online coupons and promo codes are up, compared to 2008. This suggests that consumers are still purchasing and interested in purchasing, but they’re more conscious of how they are spending.

To foster online coupon searches, many websites exist as clearing houses for promo codes. But some websites such as DealTaker.com are improving their social media presence by using Twitter to provide consumers a more-convenient method of locating coupons for the stores they want to buy from. DealTaker followers just have to tweet “@couponbot [store name]” to receive real-time coupons and/or promo codes for the respective stores.

Forrester’s research again complemented Google’s analysis by saying that 39 percent of consumers expect to delay their purchases until items go on sale, prompting an increase in searches for online coupons or promotions. And consumers will wait, according to a second Google blog post — 46 percent of consumers intend to conduct a majority of their holiday purchases in the early or even later parts of December, which is why nearly 260 retailers are engaging in National Free Shipping Day on Thursday, December 17 (a date that falls just one week before Christmas Day). This discount campaign is an effort to help businesses capitalize on Google’s estimation that approximately 73 percent of shoppers intend to use free shipping this holiday season, while another 87 percent will utilize discount pricing or holiday deals.

But retailer Toys “R” Us and e-commerce site Amazon are streamlining the holiday shopping experience by highlighting comprehensive toy lists as well as shopping specials. Furthermore, a partnership between social media giant YouTube and retailer Target is providing consumers with Holiday Solutions for a variety of timely situations such as holiday cooking, gift wrapping and more. This free resource features holiday-related videos on the Target YouTube channel, cross promoting products related to the videos being viewed. Sears is using its website to promote Black Friday Now! Doorbusters, a campaign that extends deals from the busiest shopping day to every Saturday from now until Christmas Day (shoppers simply visit the Sears website to view doorbuster dates, view TV spots and get sneak previews of upcoming holiday specials updated each Wednesday).

In addition to warming up their home page designs with seasonal themes, other companies are revising their PPC campaigns to include holiday-related keywords and phrases such as “holiday gifts for him,” “holiday coupons” or even geo-designated keywords such as “holiday toys Chicago.” And use the holidays to really maximize the potential of your email marketing by advertising promotions and shipping discounts. In fact, Experian reported that Cyber Monday email marketing volume from 2007 to 2008 increased by nearly 31 million. Expect this number to grow again this year. Based on the aforementioned research that consumers want coupons and discount promotions this season, email marketing focused on shipping or holiday discounts seems a sure-fire way to entice readers to open your messages.