eROI Days Email Agency

It’s that time of the quarter again for you to be involved in a really cool study to see how many of us in REALITY actually practice what we preach when it comes to testing our email campaigns. The “Email Testing Survey” should take 2-3 minutes and you’ll probably learn a bit in the process of answering some pretty insightful questions.  Also, you have a good shot at winning a Flip Ultra Video Camera - take the survey here >>

Fill out survey, and you could win this

The results should be fascinating as everyone in the email marketing world always talks about testing, testing, testing, but not everyone has time, patience, $, or know-how on how to do testing right.

Once again, take the survey and you might win a fun new toy.

Guy Kawasaki bootstrapping image

Yesterday, Chanin Ballance (founder/CEO of viaLanguage), Mitch Daugherty (founder of Morange Design), and I (the eROI guy) got together to plan what we’d talk about for a webinar about Bootstrapping and our personal experiences with self-induced starvation and endurance thru the early days.  It was like catching up with old friends after a couple years – the instant bond entrepreneurs share in dredging up old stories that weren’t fun at the time, but are great memories in retrospect.  The OEN Webinar is set for June 17 (registration isn’t live yet, but will be shortly) and we’re going to use a different format than the usual put-your-audience-to-sleep-with-powerpoint.  We are going to try to re-create the casual, round-table discussion among entrepreneurs sharing candid stories.  Some of the topics will include:

– Risk vs Reward – How do you know if it makes sense to bootstrap your idea?
– Keep your Day Job – The stress of self funding with no income can sometimes lead to failure
– Cash Flow – How to get a handle on your most important business aspect
– How to market your business on a shoestring budget
– Why most business models don’t need funding as it can be a big distraction

Guy Kawasaki, in his old-school days before Alltop, delivers some awesome advice on this on his 2006 blog post titled “The Art of Bootstrapping”

I’ve attended hundreds of marketing conferences over the years, and spoken at a few, but this one was pretty unique in that the speakers and content were the best of the best from all over the country on leading topics such as email marketing, search marketing, and social media. But more importantly, Online Marketing Summit delivered in making a lot of personal connections primarily through its founder, Aaron Kahlow, who ran an online marketing agency for years and understands the subject material inherently and the crazy breed of people known as online marketers.   Here are my tweets from Aaron’s opening session at the Washington DC OMS on May 14:

• Aaron doing a great job getting audience out of their shells at #oms

• Tip to event organizers – learn from aaron – institute the “boo” rule. It liberates the crowd.

• Aaron opening – marketing in a recession. Fear will cripple your decision-making

• management is all about cya, no future vision to give marketing any resources at all.

• Overall mktg budget wacked, but bigger piece of the pie going online #oms

• 100 percent of people prefer to communicate online

• Pillar 1 is search. Pillar 2 is email marketing. Pillar 3 is analytics. Across all pillars is social media

• @aaronkahlow – guessing on aaron’s handle – what % people here at #oms will tweet immediately vs email a couple days later from your biz card

• Email is like yesterday’s fax. Even facebook uses email to pull you back into the online community

• Need to customize web analytics reports to align with business goals #oms

I highly recommend you attend another OMS – there’s also a good chance you will see eROI folks like Dylan Boyd, Alex Williams, or me speak at some of the upcoming cities – Chicago, Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, San Fran, Portland, Seattle – there are others as well – check it out here >>.  I will try to dig up where my presentation from this event is posted – stay tuned.

At OMS Joel Book, Director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget, had some solid ideas about how to make sure the right message got to the right people.  He showed success stories of ET clients that used past consumer behavior to deliver extremely targeted marketing with positive results.  Here are my tweets from Joel’s presentation:

• @joelbook – speaking now at #oms. 33 years as direct marketing – called out @djwaldow in a friendly way

• Email has become the ultimate social medium

• 34 different marketing channels. We have created an ADD world, now we have to live with it

• The sales cycle has become 22% longer because resources tight

• Retention is the new acquisition #oms

• “The medium is the message” is like hearing at a wedding “love is patient, love is kind” – predictably used at every conf

• Newest dma study shows $45 roi for email marketing which is highest of all channels

• This aft, Need to make my pres interactive. Ask real questions and get user gen answers from audience

• Home depot is using dynamic couponing based on past buying behavior

• J+m uses brwsing history thru omniture to infer your preferences. Very cool #oms

• Question from #oms about where to put images for email campaigns, we have used amazon s3 or bitgravity in cloud.

• Question at #oms about affordable platforms – google analytics great first step before omniture

• Old-school phrase – OH: here’s a dandy way to do that

• @joelbook – nice pres. You know your stuff.

DJ Waldow, Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto, spoke at OMS about the perfect email in a recession.  Read my tweets from DJ’s presentation:

• @djwaldow starts his #oms presentation with his twitter police mug shot

• Recession proof email marketing – adage did article on same topic

• Relevancy is key. Batch and blast. Spray and pray.

• Forrester said in 2008 that email marketers – only 15% – concerned about recession

• Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who ask for them

• Perfect email is like the perfect meal. Timely. Relevant. Engaging.

• @djwaldow – good example of sierra trading post email – but do they consciously make their email design less polished compared to rei

• @djwaldow shares @returnpath email campaign example of doing all elements of email right – subject, call to action, reminders

KillROI, once again, has found a way to see the world and document his adventures.  This time he was off to watch the AMGEN Tour of California bike race.  His method of stowing away wasn’t glamorous but it got the job done.

Once discovered, KillROI showed his support for Lance Armstrong and, always the ham, posed for pictures.

When the race was coming to an end, KillROI, showed his appreciation for the intense athleticism of the bikers with a standing ovation and cheers.

Where will he go next?  We will just have to wait and see.

Many companies have treated email as the “red-headed stepchild” of the online world, but as money gets tight and targeting become more important, “rock star” becomes a more appropriate term for the direct marketing technique.  Natalie Zmuda’s article, How E-mail Became a Direct-Marketing Rock Star in Recession, shows that not only are businesses talking about beefing up their email, they’re actually allocating a budget for it.  Because of the relatively low cost of using this form of marketing during a recession, email has been looked upon with new eyes.  While other forms of marketing have flourished in the past, the interactive nature and sustainability of email has proven most effective.  One of the most important aspects of a strategic email campaign is that it is trackable.  In Zmuda’s article, Zappos.com mentions that segmentation will be a big part of their strategy moving forward.  By looking at the data from their previous “mass mailing” technique they can start to identify what to send and to whom to send it to.  A case study recently done by eROI lays out the importance of this and using the full potential of the data that is driven from email campaigns.  Below is an excerpt from the Advertising Age article.

E-mail has emerged as a recession darling, as retailers look to proven programs that are cost-effective and results-oriented. That’s led to increasing investment in technologies that better target customers and serve up more enticing messages.

“The economy has energized this channel,” said Ryan Deutsch, VP-strategic services and market development at StrongMail. “It’s become the rock star of direct marketing in a lot of these retail organizations because it’s the most cost-effective and most trackable.”

Read the entire article »

It’s first Thursday in the Rose City and that means shops opened late, free drinks, lots of hipsters and UNKL showing at Compound Gallery!  UNKL started right here in Portland with the creativity of Derek Welch and Jason Bacon.

The duo partnered with eROI to create our very own KillROI who has been everywhere from San Francisco to Chi Town!

Come to Compound Gallery tonight at 7pm and experience UNKL!

Alcoa presents (sorry, that’s the beginning of a TV commercial of “The Catch” in the 1982 NFL NFC Championship flashback when Dwight Clark levitated to grab a perfect pass from Joe Montana to lift the 49ers over the Cowboys). But, I digress. My mind faded to the dramatic music to Monday Night Football, but it’s now back on the prize – bragging rights to the Third Annual PAF Battle of the Bands at Someday Lounge in Old Town / Chinatown, Portland, Oregon where the creatives show their true colors after dark.  If you want to take a look at videos from prior year’s Battle of the Band, now is your time to really soak in some entertaining video for 2008.  It’s going to be almost impossible for eROI to win it for yet a third year in a row, but we’re going to bring our “A” Game.  Check it (this is PAF’s main event email and all the info is below):

BATTLE OF THE BANDS

DATE:
Wednesday June 17, 2009

TIME:
6:00 pm

PLACE:
Someday Lounge
224 NW 5th Avenue
Portland, OR

COST:
$300 per band

Register your Band!
Contact Mike Terry at mterry@magnetoworks.com

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I know, I’m a marketer, and I like visual things, which is why I always wondered why Twitter was so spartan with its notification emails.  Below are a couple screen-shots of the types of email I’ve been getting from Twitter since 10am this morning.  They used to be so transactional, bussiness-like, and dreadfully boring.  Now, Twitter has elevated its brand massively through a wildly effective push-medium like email.  The below emails really pop of the page instead of being completely forgettable.  This is all the more important considering folks like me almost never go to twitter.com – instead, I always use Tweetdeck or Twitterberry, therefore I almost never interact with the Twitter brand in an environment that Twitter controls.  So, long story short, I’m in love with their decision to go with HTML email notifications. Such a tiny little thing makes a HUGE difference to many of us.  Take a peek:

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Here is my twitter stream from this morning’s Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast event where Ziba Founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, inspired me from a creative and entrepreneurial standpoint.  Sorry for the upside down notes, but you’ve got to start at the bottom and read up:

1. Craft culture is mostly anti-Big which is why #portland has few fortune 500 companies here about 1 hour ago from TwitterBerry

2. Sohrab – branding portland – it has a craft culture. About the work, unpretentious, very real, natural about 1 hour ago from TwitterBerry

3. Tribal love – costco – amazing brand. costco members and employees love that brand. Costco does not care about wall st, but main st about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

4. Starbucks is trying to capture its dna that is there but they’ve lost their way. Now, more about efficiency and profit, not the experience about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

5. You need to create love with your consumers. All touchpoints need to fully connect with specific target market about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

6. Ziba has evolved from product design company to customer experience firm about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry

7. Sohrab – design thinking is all about making the complex clear about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry
   
   

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Kevin Tate, a buddy of mine, had an awesome analogy featured on the front page of the Oregonian today in the article “Tech entrepreneurs defy recession” by Mike Rogoway.  Here’s the excerpt from the article with Kevin’s quote that really got me thinking from a different mindset:

“Portland fosters the creation of small, furry mammals rather than dinosaurs — the really big things,” said Kevin Tate, 35, CEO of StepChange Group, a social media advertising and marketing specialist in the Pearl District. The “dinosaur” model of big corporate campuses and regimented software development (think Microsoft — or even Google) is going by the wayside, Tate said, in favor of more informal and collaborative arrangements. Portland’s current high-tech foment positions the state well to capitalize when the recession ends, provided its technology entrepreneurs have the appetite to take it on.  “What happens when things start coming back?” Tate asked. “Will the small, furry mammals evolve?”

Nearly 9 years ago, 7 mainly tech start-up entrepreneurs co-founded a group called Starve Ups.  We all survived the dot com implosion, but were influenced by really wanting to scale our companies for growth.  Some Starve Ups companies have grown a little faster than others, but many contain a desire to do something world-changing with our companies through software, social good, amazing company culture or all of the above.  I really like Kevin’s quote because it is accurate and represents a strong contingent in Portland’s software community, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that our dream is to do something bigger and be more like a lion than a forgettable Chihuahua.  So, how do we get there? Lack of capital is usually at the top of the list, but our biggest limitation is our mindset. Let’s grow game-changing, sustainable software businesses in Portland and tout Portland’s livability and balance as a BONUS, not a detriment to growth.

Comment below with your ideas of a more representative furry mammal for Portland.