This morning’s article on eMarketer, “Marketers Moving to Digital Media” had some really encouraging and powerful data in it. For all of us in the interactive agency and email marketing industry, this is great news that validates our gut instinct that we’ve been seeing anecdotally. The article begins:
“Looking for an upside. In the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories. In most cases, that means online.
Although the name of the organization might imply a slight bias, in a survey by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), 81% of respondents said they plan to invest at least as much in digital marketing in 2009 as in the previous year.
More than 77% of traditional advertising agencies are increasing the amount of digital in their budgets by 1% to 29%. And over 10% are upping online budgets by 30% or more.
I love that YouTube videos are timeless and all of us can re-live ridiculous moments years later. At eROI, we have dozens and dozens of those moments captured over the past many years on the eROI YouTube channel here >>. So, why am I doing a Flashback blog post? Yesterday, I had a client meeting with my friend James Adair and the typical client meeting turned into something so much better after watching the below video on our big screen. The second video is of distinguished Portland PR specialist, JulieAnna Little Giannini. She was the winner at eROI Idol, so it was only appropriate to include her video as well.
I have been with eROI, in the interactive marketing industry, for over five years and seen the space evolve with email marketing, social networking/social media, blogging, and microblogging, i.e., Twitter. Running campaigns for clients online can be very exciting and stressful – as the Internet is always on. There is no other medium that moves as fast as the Internet and has as many ways that people can consume content. With the onslaught of social media sites and Twitter, information spreads faster than most people realize – people share feeds, sites have open APIs to pull information and post to other sites, Google constantly crawls and indexes these high traffic sites. One posting on Twitter or Facebook can result in hundreds or thousands of pages of syndication in minutes.
The real estate industry has always done a good job locally with information but it never spreads very fast (Sunday paper listings is the “information superhighway” of the real estate industry), which is one area the industry has seriously slacked. I am very lucky with my realtor as Jennifer King is a top realtor in the Portland area, with whom I have bought and sold a number of homes with. She has and is continuing to do an amazing job. Recently Jennifer switched to doing websites for properties and not leaving fliers. Jennifer is traditional in her methodology, so I knew she had all the bases covered. With the current state of the housing market, not many homes are moving very fast, so as traffic was slow for two weeks (during spring break) I reached out to a friend and colleague of mine, DJ Waldow from North Carolina. He was looking for a realtor online to help him sell his home and found his Realtor by asking some questions on Trulia Voices, a real estate Q&A social networking community. After some back and forth, it was a perfect match. He recently had a story published on him about using Twitter to promote the sale of his house. Anderson Cooper tweeted his story which promoted it only more. Soon thereafter, they had accepted an offer to purchase their home. DJ pointed me to Trulia and Rudy Bachraty, Trulia’s Social Media Guru, who helped him socialize his home on Trulia, Trulia’s corporate blog and on Twitter. So I was hoping to have a similar success by following suit.
I had a Twitter conversation with Rudy and he gave me a helping hand. Jennifer became a Trulia Pro to help promote my home up to 7x more on Trulia compared to that of a non Trulia Pro and I tweeted about my home for sale as well as posted a message on Facebook. Using URL tracking functionality by idek.net (written by Adam Covati). I was able to determine there was a major impact on the traffic and interest in my home.
Within two days of Jennifer posting my home on Trulia, my tweeting efforts and the Facebook posting the number of site visits to my property website more than tripled and we increased that again with a spike of page views on Trulia. In addition, due to the social effects of sites like Trulia and Twitter, there are nearly 250 listings on Google for my home. I have personally received a over 15 referrals from friends for people they know to look at the house.
The impacts of social media sites is wide reaching and exponentially effective. Coupled with traditional real estate marketing techniques we have increased not only site visits but also more than doubled the number of showing requests. Hopefully this dual marketing strategy will help us find a buyer for our home more effectively.
Some guys will just have more talent than I will ever have. This guy is absolutely amazing. It has nothing to do with online marketing but everything to do with inspiration. It keeps getting better throughout the video. Write your comment in haiku if you feel inspired.
The unsung hero behind an amazing integrated, grassroots campaign of traditional marketing, in-person events, and social media (well, she was mainly the social media part) gave a great keynote speech at the eMarketing Summit of Innotech today. Rahaf Harfoush was great. I show my twitter stream below of notes from the event, but also noticed she just launched a new site and blog – http://www.rahafharfoush.com/
Here is my twitter stream from Rahaf Harfoush’s awesome keynote speech at Innotech:
As I was biking in to work this morning along Waterfront Park (Willamette River and Mt. Hood views), I caught up with a colleague of mine who works at the PDC and we rode the rest of the way into work together. It was one of those “Portland moments” where it would be unexpected anywhere else for a couple business guys who haven’t seen each other in 3 months connect on a morning commute into work. Portland, like Amsterdam, has a biking culture, and with the right gear, it’s refreshing to bike rain or shine (although SUN is so so much better). Here is the NY Times article my Dad (who lives in Washington DC) sent me as I arrived at my desk this morning:
“A LOT of good cyclists come out of Portland just because you can ride year-round,” said Bruce Rogers, an athletic-shoe designer visiting from his home in Hailey, Idaho. “I love coming back because I love the biking, no matter what time of year it is. More than fitness, it’s a fun outlet. As long as you have decent rainwear you can ride in any weather.”
Careering through streets on a bicycle in Portland, Ore., this time of year can be an easy weekend adventure that mixes showers, sunbursts, cafes and a robust bicycle culture. And equipped with a sturdy rain jacket, booties, fenders and a bike map (a waterproof version that folds to the size of a credit card is handy), visitors can enjoy the city the way locals do.
Heritage Hunt is the third website eROI has launched for Buchanan Partners, an East Coast based real estate development firm. The site was created for their new commercial spaces along with plans for a residential counterpart, hence “The Place to Live and Work” tag line. Early on, eROI was faced with the opportunity to develop a logo for Heritage Hunt because it was a brand new endeavor for the firm. Elliot, the graphic designer, presented a few different treatments and with the suggestions from the client came up with a logo that presented Heritage Hunt’s professional and warm image effortlessly. In the interest of making the real estate development the star of the website the inspiration for the design came from the architecture itself. On the homepage the arch over the logo mimics the arch of the pictured building. Also the inlays around the top of the building were stylized on the site to become the top navigation. This approach created a cohesive design that transitioned flawlessly from one page to the next. All these design elements set in a manageable WordPress format created the ideal site for Buchanan Partners.
We, at eROI, have been working the last year on creating a new generation of Event Registration Software, eROI Event, with an enhanced user experience. We are currently in the Beta Launch Phase with a limited feature set, but we are excited to get this early-release version of the product out in front of our clients and the tech community in Portland. Our goal is to gather real user feedback as we continue to develop and enhance the product. We are offering a freemium version of the product for free events, but should a user prefer to hold paid events, we can enable the Payment Gateway feature for a minimal monthly fee of $50.00.
Novel concept, but I actually used our eROI Event tool to create an event for our Employee Disco Party on June 26th (if you are one of the 2 friends that employees can invite, then you too can join in the fun). I thought some screen shots of the back-end admin area would help you see why we are excited about this beta release (even though the feature set is slightly limited for the next 1-2 months until we get feedback from all of you that want to signup for a FREE account for free events (to use for RSVPs to dinner parties, seminars, BBQs, industry networking events, business meetings, etc.)
I love the comments from this video (and I need to give thanks to Alex Williams at eROI for sharing this enlightening piece of film below). Here is my favorite comment (by “iknklst” on YouTube):
“I make my business cards out of unrefined nuclear waste. They glow in the dark quite nicely, and give the receiver terminal cancer within ten minutes of touching it.
One person I know , a self-made man, very succesful in business, was aked for his card one day.
He looked at the person blankly, then said “Business cards are for used car salesman and hotel managers. If you don’t already know how to contact my office, there is nothing I need to talk to you about anyway.”
Portland, Oregon is a long way from Washington D.C. So, we should be psyched about playing host to the New Media Strategist, Rahaf Harfoush. She led arguably the social media strategy for the best online campaign implementation of any major politician in the history of politics (love the drama of that sentence even though politicians have really only used the web significantly in the past 4 years). Harfoush is the keynote speaker at InnoTech Portland:
Date: April 23, 2009
Time: InnoTech starts at 8am, Harfoush speaks at 11:30am
Place: Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon
How much: BIG DISCOUNT if you use these codes when you REGISTER HERE >>
(INN48 – gets you a $12 Discount so it’s only $48 for General Administration)
(EMS20AT – gets you a $20 Discount so it’s only $129 for the two day eMarketing summit)
In 2003, eROI designed and developed a website for Meritage Properties. Six years later, they were ready for a new overall strategy and design and again decided to turn to the eROI team to make it happen. The original design was simple and fit their needs at the time but with more focus on online marketing, Meritage Properties wanted to present themselves in a more mature fashion. The emphasis was on making the design clean and crisp. This was achieved by using neutral colors to make the property photos and logo pop off the page through greater contrast. Additionally, the site employs helpful yet understated navigation bars and a java script slideshow of properties rotating on the home page. Another success was integrating google maps into the site. This added functionality, built in wordpress, allows viewers to click a location and view the property that resides there. The overall effect is a stunning combination of photography, information and functionality. This site has been propelled back into the modern world of web design.
While I was at SXSW this year, I attended a session that focused on techniques to improve PowerPoint presentations called Presenting Straight to the Brain. I was immediately interested because presentations are a way of life in the agency world. Okay – I also might have been a little interested to see if the panel were giving any tips for mind control that I could use to help in that next big presentation. Though I may have been a little disappointed on the lack of ‘How to Be a Benevolent Svengali’ content, I did walk away with some interesting insight and reminders of how our noodles work.
If you only have time to read to this point- here’s your Twitter take-away. Great presentations add a dash of caveman thinking.
The point being is that we all still essentially think, react and remember more like Fred and Barney than the evolved post-millennial beings we all think we are. Our mind battles with our brain, constantly sending signals to process thoughts, remember information and control our reactions. In the end, our brain typically wins the fight. We are programmed to be at our peak level of awareness when we perceive a threat or when a situation evokes a strong emotion. It’s fight or flight. (more…)
I was fortunate enough to attend SXSWi in Austin for 5 inspiring days with a number of my colleagues. Out of the many engaging panels I attended I really enjoyed the core conversation session: How to Create a Great Company Culture. Sam Decker (BazaarVoice) and Jason Black (Boundless Network) were the presenters and shared their opinions and advice around their own company cultural experiences.
It is one thing to preach culture and another to resonate it. I believe that these two are the real deal and truly do take the time to understand and value the importance of their own company culture. One of the first things Black said that rang true is that investors look at spreadsheets, while he looks at the lines around the numbers. The lines are the culture and you need them in place to make the numbers work. I could not agree more with this analogy. Here are a few other key pieces to creating a great company culture that Decker and Black shared with us:
The End Of A Chapter – My Next Move - Just like a good book, there are never really any endings, only beginnings. I wanted to take a moment to let you know that I am leaving my position at eROI as of January 31st, 2011. I will be starting a new position at a company outside of the email marketing and interactive agency business [...]
Join eROI at DMA 2010 in San Francisco – October 11th-14th - Alex Williams, Strategy for eROI, will be presenting in San Francisco at DMA2010 on email, social, mobile and ecommerce. DMA2010 is the global event covering all marketing channels — from traditional...
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