eROI Days Email Agency

Over the past few months, a lot of what our team has been speaking, writing, and studying about relates to the philosophy that it’s okay to fail, as long as you are able to learn from it and, in the end, come out achieving success.

After reading our latest study “Use of Testing in Email Marketing” – which concludes by saying “if you’re not failing, you’re not learning” – I began thinking about how, as an entrepreneur and  business owner, it was extremely important for me to embrace this philosophy early on and realize that it expands to every aspect of business.  I’ll be the first to say it, failing isn’t fun! Doing so however, can be enlightening and isn’t something you should fear. If you fear failure, you will likely refrain from taking risks and experimenting with new ideas that can ultimately move you ahead.  I have gone through the “fail, learn and improve” process numerous times and each time I’ve learned more about it. One such lesson is that sometimes “the fail” isn’t always obvious. The below video is comedy and not relevant to my particular FAIL, but it’s a Fail Video worth watching.

There are times when the big FAIL sign isn’t held up to alert you, “the fail” is often something you have to keep an eye out for. This eye-opening lesson came upon me in early 2007 when eROI was going through a big transition period accompanied by lot of growing pains. Going though this period certainly made me stronger as a leader, us stronger as a company and created a culture where my employees have a stronger voice and a bigger influence in the ongoing success of eROI -it however was an emotional and professional journey to get to this point and one that I actually documented in a 5 part blog post back in the summer of 2007. If you are so inclined, the entire series can be found in the eROI Days archive for you reading pleasure but to sum it up:

The Fail

I had assumed that I was connected to the thoughts of each employee and each department because I had a hands-on management approach and frequently interacted socially with my employees.  I assumed that the agency was well aligned internally and that that everyone was happy, felt valued and felt they had a voice, both on a project level and within the agency as a whole.

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A couple of days ago, we launched our brand new homepage and we are all psyched with the way it turned out.  As usual for creative agencies, we are our own toughest client, trying to please lots of detail-oriented, savvy decision-makers from every department and aspect of the company. However, we truly followed our own highly-collaborative process, and while it may have taken longer than we wanted to fit this project into all of our client work as well, we were extremely happy with the end result. The user-centered design includes an element of flash which was integrated seamlessly and our production team made everything work like a charm. 

One of the most noticeable new features was the integration of tabs on the page.  There are 10 tabs in all that help the user easily navigate what we offer along with content from each of our five blogs.  At eROI, we drink our own Koolaid when it comes to online marketing.  We have a clear call-out to sign up for our newsletter in the bottom section of our page, we invite people to become a fan of eROI on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or see our profile on Linkedin and even our most recent tweets are displayed to the right of the page.

Please give us feedback in the form of a haiku – tell us if you love our new homepage or you hate it or something in between, but please please do NOT be boring. thx.

We, at eROI, just released a survey study called “Use of Testing in Email Marketing.” You can download the full study here – http://idek.net/Kxk.

In our last study, Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns, we showed email marketers how important metrics are in making decisions and proving campaign ROI. One major opportunity to improve metrics and strengthen brand positioning with potential customers is to optimize email campaigns through consistent, careful testing. So, in our newest study, we show how 623 email marketers are currently using, or not using, testing to improve their email marketing efforts. One of the key takeaways of this study is that 4 out of 10 marketers are not testing campaigns – but why aren’t they? And for those that are testing, what elements are being tested and what can we learn from them?

Some stats from this study at a glance:
• 37% aren’t testing
• Of marketers that don’t test their email campaigns, 33% say it’s because they do not know how
• 27% say they don’t have time
• 13% say their platform doesn’t have testing capabilities
• For those that are testing, they are testing a wide variety of elements including design, frequency, calls to action and day/time sent. Our survey shows this breakdown for email content testing: 85.2% test subject lines, 54.8% test calls to action, 50.9% test designs, 49.1% test copy, 41.7% test offers, 36% test timing of campaigns.
• The survey showed that 36% of marketers are testing timing, which includes day of week, time of day, and frequency. Although history shows that results on the most successful time and day are constantly changing, here’s the latest trends:
• Time of Day – 37.86% of marketers testing timing are testing time of day. Of those, 49.4% currently find sending mid-day (10am-2pm) to be best, while start of the business day (6AM – 10AM) showed to be second best at 31.5%
• Tuesday ranks as the most successful day, followed closely by Wednesday.

Let us know what kind of insights you get from the new eROI Study Report -

Use of Testing in Email Marketing!

There’s nothing like a few, good quality testimonials to re-charge your optimism and give the extra motivation to kick it into high gear for the day.  Here are a few that have me psyched about a full-throttle week coming up:

“I have worked at three agencies that have completed successful interactive engagements with eROI: McMillan, Copeland Communications and iSoftStone. In all three instances, eROI provided great ideas, good counsel, and most importantly a solid understanding of the agency’s very unique needs, based on the marketing campaigns being created for our clients. They were able to help strategically and tactically (implementation) and were proactive in thinking ahead to possible road-blocks for ideas that we wanted to bring to life, and more importantly looking at solutions to problems before we knew they existed. They cleared understand the unique needs of agencies and that will continue to serve them today and in the future.  If you have any specific questions in regard to the engagements and why eROI are able to provide strong value in agency/client engagements, please feel free to contact me.“

- David Sly, iSoftStone

“eROI’s work on Arboria.com has been integral in turning our brand into a crowd pleaser. We have transformed from a primarily dealer-centric existence, to a touchy-feely existence that consumers want to buy direct.”

- Mario Alfonse, Arboria.com

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Dawn Foster just sent out an awesome Flickr slideshow done by Aaron Hockley. I’ll figure out the iframe work-around to get the embedded slideshow working correctly when I get into the office tomorrow. As I was sitting next to fellow current, current, and former eROI teammates Dylan, Summer, and Garrett, I couldn’t help but commenting on all of the things that Portland creativity, informality, and general vibe offer that you simply can’t find anywhere else. For example: I would never see a toddler or infant at a late-night business event on the East Coast where “ear muffs” are needed in many of the presentations. I doubt other cities have women crescendo into near-real orgasms over vegetables during a presentation. So, to start off my twitter stream from the big Ignite6 night, I’ll pick the one that sums it all up – “What’s great about portland? So communal – techies bring kids to the event, casual, real, accepting, creative, inspiring.” Here’s the rest of my tweets:

# James keller on being a hooker in rugby. Great lessons, entertaining #ignite6

Eva – brilliant thinking

Authority – like librarians – its about what’s real

Anything happens at #ignite6 – veggies an aphrodisiac

Ice cold swim after sauna – shrinkage can be an issue #ignite6

Sauna cleanses you inside and out #ignite6

After intermission – sauna etiquette pres, #ignite6

# Kgw – lesson 1 – be careful who you call a hipster. Epic fail. At #ignite4
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This past Monday the entire Account Department attended Portland Advertising Federation’s AE Bootcamp. Some of the best of the best of Portland’s advertising executive world (Peter Levitan, Phil Reilly, Jerry Ketel, Rebecca Armstrong, and Paige McCarthy) were brought together to share their wisdom, experience, and expectations on what is required to reach “Total AEness.”  I thoroughly enjoyed each presentation and it was refreshing to have a PAF event topic that spoke directly to the accounts side of the agency.

In particular, I found Phil Reilly’s talk to be very interesting. He started off by posing the question, “how many of you have a difficult time dealing with your creatives?” There were many hands raised throughout the room but I was not surprised to see a that none of the ten eROI account executives had a hand in the air. I am proud to say this is something that we do not struggle with as an agency. This led me to ask the question “why?” (more…)

Dylan may participate in the Email Wars but I have been on the front line of the Dishes Wars for quite some time now.  There was a heavy blow to my defense recently.  The dishwasher, along with some of my resolve, broke last week.  For a little while my post-it stating, “If you leave dishes in the sink a monster will eat you!” kept the kitchen clear but in time everyone realized I was, in fact, bluffing and no monster would prey on them.  As a final desperate plea, while I waited for the repair man, I sent out an email to the team begging for mercy from the suds.

I hope some of you can understand my pain.

I came across a New York Times article the other day that told the story of Howcast.com.  The site features how-to videos done by the  Howcast team, aspiring film makers and average YouTube video users.  Video isn’t exactly new to the internet but their unique brand of specific short how-to’s on topics such as “How to Survive a Bear Attack”, “How to Look Great in Photographs” and, yes, “How to use Twitter” create a new niche in the video market.

Howcast has had solid success with clients who are primarily in the Business to Consumer market.  They know it takes more than their own site to create an internet destination and have been smart enough to quickly sign “deals with the likes of Google, Facebook and Hulu to spread their videos across the Internet.”  They have integrated sharing through Facebook and you have the options to copy and customize embedded code similar to YouTube.  Ads have also been added to some videos and there is talk of making products pertaining to certain videos available for sale.

At this point Howcast.com is a fun and informative resource and could potentially have B to B clout.  For the tech and software world, it’d be cool to experiment with emerging products in this forum but expecting big results at this point is a little premature.

Read the rest of the NY Times article »

Chad White wrote an eye-opening story about the real ROI in email.  The raw return is not being measured in the traditional sense.  Having a ROI of $43.52 is killer, but the fact that the real number may be closer to $103 is astounding.  Devoting more budget towards email is the smart thing to do.  It should put a smile on your face to know that when you are tracking your data the numbers are higher than they first appear.

Even online, where it’s easiest for email marketers to track the path of subscribers, we’re not getting credit for much of the action that our messages drive. That’s because 33% of permission-based email recipients say they usually visit sites directly, instead of clicking on an email link, according to Epsilon. This means conversions may be undercounted by 50%.

Taking into consideration the action that email drives offline and directly to Web sites, email marketing’s ROI is probably closer to $130 — about three times the DMA’s estimate. And that’s clearly ignoring email’s ability to drive interest and actions in other channels like catalogs and social networks.

Email Marketing’s ROI Probably Closer To $130 Than $43.52
By Chad White

Read the rest of the MediaPost article »

At eROI, we’re not always as disciplined as we should be about asking our customers what they think of us personally and the kind of work we do here. So, last week, we decided to ask a few customers (thru 1-to-1 email outreach) and here’s what we heard:

“eROI is what you look for in any business relationship: an expert partner who helps you realize your vision. The eROI team listened carefully to our needs, asked probing questions that helped us better understand the capabilities that would enable us to reach our goals, and communicated closely with us all the way to achieve success. The final product went above and beyond what we thought was possible. It was mindblowing.”
–Noah Glass, CEO, GoMobo

“Choosing eROI to help launch our magazine into the digital realm has been a great decision. The support from their web team has been incredible, making the scary transition from print to online- stress free. They provided structure, guidance and solutions to any minor hang up we experienced along the way.”
–Kaitlyn, CBS Watch Magazine (new site hasn’t been launched yet)

“Working with eROI to help with the development and launch of seven planet was key to company on many levels and will prove to be a critical positive impact on the brand. We began speaking with their team about 7 months prior to launching our virtual trading post (our ecommerce store/company site) with the intent to launch a site that was easy to navigate, that visually differentiated our brand and that helped our patrons effectively find out how the “mindful commerce” could work in their lives. In the end, they met all three of those criteria without question and in turn also were very patience with us in the process as we had scope revisions, content delays, support needs, etc. Finally, they proactively approached us after our launch with product review site upgrades, that would help improve the trading post and usability, without being asked to do so. Those upgrades are now implemented and we look forward to working with them consistently on making the seven planet site and our company newsletters as key to the brand and the vision of mindful commerce as our traditional green general stores.”
–John Friess, CEO, Seven Planet

Over the past couple years, I’ve gotten more and more involved in the Software Association of Oregon (SAO), but never have I had as much fun on the golf course with my foursome sponsored and led by the local accounting powerhouse firm, Perkins & Company.  With over 100 software professionals and 30+ SAO volunteers at The Reserve golf course on the outskirts of Aloha, Oregon.

The Tourney was a scramble and I had to contend with incessant smack-talking from the uber-outgoing, affable Dave Sullivan in my foursome.  Somehow, thru all that smack-talking, I raised my game (not hard to do when one is as bad of a golfer as I am).  Four holes into the match, Sullivan drilled a 75 yarder into the cup for an eagle.  The foursome of Sullivan, David Uslan, John Hayden, and I celebrated on the green with a few chest bumps (yes, old men try to act younger with a few beers in them).

A few holes before the end of our play, the golf gods were kind to me.  A perennial wicked slicer, I actually hit my drive 270 yards straight down the fairway to about 15 feet on the fringe of the green.  As luck would have it, I chose my putter instead of the predictable Pitching Wedge and nailed a 45 foot putt for eagle (first in my life). Ridiculous.

What does this blog post have to do with anything relevant to eROI or the interactive communty? Nothing, other than to say that the Portland software community and SAO in particular is not only alive but thriving.  SAO President Matt Nees starts in his role this Monday and we’re back in the saddle again.

Our New York City Director, Chris Masagatani, did this killer video “Bust a Move” where you can get a sense of the vibe of the new space that has a window to the outside world, enough room to fit 4 people in the future (it’s a 2-person office w/ Kavita) and overall a big boost to morale and more conducive to client meetings. Check it:

Bust a Move from Christopher Masagatani on Vimeo.

OMS has been touring the country to spread the word on online marketing the right way.  On June 29th, OMS set up in Portland for a day full of expertise.  I brought something back from every speaker and got to watch. eROI’s own Alex Williams did a great job of breaking down the value of a good welcome email for the crowd. Here are some of my other notes from the event:

Aaron Khalow started the event off with key points like 63% of website visitors who don’t find what they are looking for will never come back.  It makes a strong case for optimizing your site.   He stressed that your website is your foundation but it won’t matter unless you have the tools to encourage people to find it.  The three pillars were search – with SEO having the largest impact, email – the fabric that holds it all together, and analytics – customization is key. 

Ray “Catfish” Comstock, from Business Online, went deeper into some of these subjects. He illustrated a search cycle that went from ranking to repeat customer.

Ranking – [SEO] → Traffic – [Landing Page Optimization] → Conversions – [Marketing and Sales ]→ Sale – [Customer Service] → Repeat Customer

Why is ranking so important?  90% of traffic happens on the first page of search engines which means you have to be in the top 10 results to have a chance.  Like Khalow pointed out, analytics play a huge factor in how you get to the repeat customer.  Finding out what keywords are relevant is extremely valuable, personalization and location are both key components.

Other strategies Catfish brought up were optimizing video, news and the use of internal linking.  These techniques are effective because there is a lot less competition than with traditional searches.