eROI Days Email Agency

Here is my Twitter binge from the Friedman talk at Portland State University just minutes ago.  I hope you enjoy.  Please follow me on twitter @ryanbuch aka www.twitter.com/ryanbuch!  Thank you.

ryanbuch: 2008 was the year the economy and the environment hit the wall.
Monday, March 09, 2009 1:25 PM
ryanbuch: 2008 was the year the economy and the environment hit the wall.
ryanbuch: When you put people together you put the earth together.
Monday, March 09, 2009 1:24 PM
ryanbuch: When you put people together you put the earth together.
ryanbuch: Optimists are usually wrong, but they are the ones who change the world.
Monday, March 09, 2009 1:21 PM
ryanbuch: Optimists are usually wrong, but they are the ones who change the world.

(more…)

I just stumbled upon a great post from Ian Sohn about his interview w/ Alex Bogusky about why he only used Twitter for a few months and then quit it like a bad flavor of ice cream. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Why would he walk away from Twitter? Was he just being provocative?

Rather than speculate I asked Bogusky [we've never met, but did exchange a few tweets] if he would answer five email questions about his Twitter experience. He graciously obliged.

In the true spirit of online community, I quasi-crowdsourced two of the five questions [as noted below] from folks I respect in the social media space. Here we go …

Question 1: When you first joined Twitter there was an amusing amount of chatter questioning the identity of @Bogusky. In fact, there is a @BogusBogusky. Why would someone want to pretend to be you, and more importantly what does the community’s initial suspicion about your identity say about the state of things in social media?

Alex Bogusky: Yeah, I’m pretty sure @BogusBogusky works here too. I don’t know who it is but you can tell they’re on the inside. The suspicion comes from the fact that there is no requirement to be who you are online. I think this is something that might change going forward. There will be communities that are more diligent about ID and it will be a good thing. People are much more positive and responsible when they have to represent themselves and are unable to hide behind anonymity.

There’s a place for both kinds of community but I look forward to people representing themselves. Twitter actually has more of this than many communities. And I liked that. I had decided I would only follow people who had posted a picture or even an illustration of themselves. You don’t really know if it’s them I guess but it seemed a good indicator of sincerity.

Question 2: What’s the significance, if any, that you are doing this interview with me – rather than say, AdWeek? Does it say anything about the future of journalism and the role of “traditional” media? If so, what?

Check out the full interview + article about Bogusky quitting Twitter >>

I’m publishing my schedule for SXSW – it’s kind of ridiculous how much stuff there is to see and learn.  This is my first time to the amazing, well-known event and we are showing up in full force – 1/3 of eROI staffers will be there, but clients, don’t fret, we will be on email and working during most of it.  Cheers!

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Let’s review my online predictions for 2009.  OK, I admit it – the easy ones are not happening nearly as fast as I thought they would.  Let’s just look at the first 3 of 10:

10. My Dad will use Twitter for first time and get hooked What’s up Dad? You are addicted to your Crackberry just like President Obama, all you need to do is download a great app called Twitterberry and you’ll be using Twitter in no time. 10 weeks into the year and still hasn’t come true. Side note: my older sister is using twitter (@3greenmoms) in the past few days to talk about her new company, 3greenmoms.

9. My Mom will get on Facebook and get addicted to chatting non-stop with family and friends Mom, C’mon – you are a chatterbox – the most social woman I know. Facebook is perfect for you. I thought you and my wife would be sharing all of your secrets about how I have food on my face half the time and wear really bad clothes on the weekends. I guess you’re not there yet. When we see you and Dad in a month, we’ll need to do something about this – Facebook is so mainstream now because it’s painfully addictive.

8. Skype and other easy video-creation apps will take off in ‘09 Done. My entire family on my side and my wife’s family all got video cameras / microphones to totally Skype-enable their laptops. It makes for super fun Sat or Sun mornings to check out missing teeth on the kids and other fun things to visualize. Nicely done.

Come to the Portland Art Museum at 7pm tonight, March 7 to check out 8 Cut&Paste contestants do some insane speed designing using Photoshop and Wacom digital pens and tablets. My wife and I are joining another dozen eROI peops to cheer voiceferously our own Tom O’Toole – the talented eROI designer – who is predicted with 3 to 1 odds to win this thing. No matter what, it will be a good time.

Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament 2007 from Cut&Paste on Vimeo.

Remember just 5 years ago when the big debate was whether or not HTML email was more effective than text. Now, it’s a given that for most audiences, HTML performs better even for internal reminder emails.  Even if it’s just one image, it makes a difference.  Make sure to take a few extra minutes to pick the right images for your email – they matter in conveying the appropriate message for your email.  Happy Friday!

Marketers: know this – doing things the same old traditional way that you’ve always done it is not going to work anymore.

We, as marketers, need to innovate. We need to take a risk with our methods, our message, our mediums, our transparency, and our openness to listen to customers.  We need to take a risk with new products, software development, feature roll-outs, user-interface design, cutting edge design, and pushing our brand to mean something in today’s world.

We meet with clients regularly who have almost waited until its too late to dramatically improve their results on increasing the number and quality of leads captured, nurture campaigns, resource centers, the works.

Start small – celebrate your wins even if it is something less than a website launch.  At eROI, I am really psyched about a landing page we rolled out that is compelling and has a much higher conversion rate than we’ve ever had for our own marketing purposes – tell me what you think.

http://www.eroi.com/eroi-email-marketing-study-7-elements-of-email-survey-results-report/