eROI Days Email Agency

As I looked over my online marketing predictions from last year, what struck me was my tone of optimism in the face of doomsday articles swirling about for 2009.  To some degree, 2009 has much to be optimistic about for online marketers. Finally, there is a broad agreement in organizations that the web is an important business and marketing medium, and a greater percentage of marketing dollars are going online (even though overall marketing budgets are flat or slightly down compared to 2008).  On the flipside, online marketers are expected to do more with less resources than ever before.

While you may still have the title as Email Marketing Manager, you are likely expected to have some expertise and drive inbound marketing, marketing automation programs, coordinate integration with social media and potentially be the online community manager for your company, closely tie into your search engine marketing program, and all of this is on top of the strategy and implementation of your marketing plan for the year.  It’s exhausting and the pressure is on – 2010 is about action and results – and the tension between marketing and sales is going to increase with the demand for quality leads that convert into real sales.

So, let’s cut to the chase and dig into what will happen in 2010.  Here are my 11 Web + Email Marketing Predictions:

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Things I like: cheesing for the camera, beer, the holidays, websites that include all of these things.

Lucky for me, and you, eROI shares in my adoration for the aforementioned things.

To commemorate the holiday season we wanted to say “Cheers in the Name of Frugality” to all of our clients, supporters and friends.  Joyfully, the entire company is as narcissistic as I am and thought the perfect gift to you was pictures of us (my go-to gift outside my professional life).

Highlights included: beer showers in the kiddy-pool, “organized falling”, clothing removal and, of course, pet cameos.  It was loads of fun and brought all of us together even more.  This one will be hard to top.

See the email we sent out »

See the Holiday Cheer landing page »

Major props to the very talented Chris Masagatani who is our NYC Director and also an amazing video creator and producer. The video says it all, but I just want to reinforce how proud I am of Chris and Kavita for being one of our true bright spots this past year. eROI New York City has also done an awesome job staying connected to HQ in P’town. Check it out – the video makes you feel like you are in NYC – raw yet refined – is that possible?

eROI New York – 2009 Review from Christopher Masagatani on Vimeo.

Yesterday evening symbolized eROI family for me – it was a great day. It started with the eROI NYC video to the whole company. Then, a few eROI event organizers put together a great event where 8 teams of 6 employees competed in a scavenger hunt / bar crawl which involved freestyle-rapping (Kelsey was good, but couldn’t hang w/ Maureen’s Philly-style talent), getting dollar bills to stick on the ceiling at Kell’s, and the last and most important show-down was a limbo contest at Someday Lounge. At this last gig, Mai Nakamura, who is part yoga-master and secretly tours with Cirque de Soleil for being able to contort her body to fit in small boxes, backpacks, whatever. She hardly even tried and she effortlessly destroyed the competition in the limbo contest.

And today, as I was doing some Christmas shopping at the Seven Planet store in Old Town, I saw 500 Santas descend on the corner of NW 4th and Davis like a swarm of red and white locusts.  My 7 year-old daughter was with me and we had to capture this unique bar crawl on video:

Something that we recommend for our clients is the integration of Social Media into their marketing campaigns.  Social media monitoring goes hand in hand with creating a strong social media presence.  I came across an article that breaks social media monitoring down into 4 manageable parts.

“The four cornerstones of social media monitoring are (1) Competitive Analysis, (2) Product Development, (3) Reputation Management and (4) Outreach.”

To paraphrase the article:

Competitive Analysis – If your competition is engaged in social media, pay attention to what they are doing and the responses they are receiving and learn from them.

Product Development – Use social media as a way to find out what your consumers want.

Reputation Management –  Make sure the people responsible for  and reacting to posts on various sites are educated in the importance of their responses and in the brand they are trying to portray.

Outreach – Identify who the influencers are outside of your company and create relationships with them.

Read the whole article here »

It’s that time where it’s great to look back on the past year and forward on what’s in store for next year. It’s a time to reflect on the new things you’ve learned, the opportunities you’ve had, the people you’ve meet and over all the things that you are thankful for.

In the spirit, I thought it would be fun to ask the entire eROI team what they were thankful for- specifically what they were thankful for in terms of the tools and resources that have become part of their day-to-day over the past year. I received responses from members of each department and thought I would share that collaborative list with you in hopes that you may find a new tool and/or resource that will become part of your day-to-day in the year to come…

Not surprisingly, there were some common answers:

I am thankful for Google….

…for pushing open standards and making the web kick ass

… so I no longer have to know everything; I now just have to know how to find it.  Much easier!

…because it answers all the questions I’m too embarrassed to ask.

I am thankful for Twitter….

… and am really blessed at how it has opened some new communications and friendships.

… and Tweetie so I can share my life with a world that barely cares.

… it’s a strange little world of mind sharing and I love it!

… and the people that use it for contests, because through those contest, I got to meet Shaq, won an iPod Touch, gift cards to Powell’s and Vault, and free tickets to Regina Spektor!

There were some “interesting” answers:

I am thankful for Maker’s Mark.

I am thankful for Blackberry flavored Izze

I’m thankful for #c7d3dd. It’s a color and it happens to be a very pretty light blue.

And overall just some really fantastic ones…

I am thankful for Google Reader for being my digital mind meld of all things new, interesting and relevant.

I am thankful It’s Nice That – inspiration from many corners.

I am thankful  Boing Boing –so much fun on any and every topic you know and never heard of in the history of the world.

I am thankful Mashable – everyday, multiple times a day.

I am thankful for mobile sites.  They are super fun to design!

I am thankful  Fluid.app + Helvetireader

I am thankful Ubuntu for making a kick-ass operating system that I can develop in and Zend for making a sweet modular development framework #zf

I am thankful for www.booooooom.com!

I am thankful for people who put their info in their email signatures

I’m thankful for the Behance Action Method system, as well as the new 99 Percent site.  Both awesome resources for making ideas happen.

I am thankful for the screen shot button.

I am thankful for ALL of my iPhone apps and how much easier they have made my life.

I am thankful for for Skitch, Evernote, Tweetdeck, and Google Analytics – could not do my job without you.

I’m thankful for Seth Godin’s blog.  Always good insight.

I am thankful for 3 tools – Evernote, Gist, & Xobni – that have made me a much more productive person in 2009.

Thank goodness for excel.  I love excel.

I am thank full for eMUSIC. Great pay music site – 10 bucks a month I get 30 songs. Allows me to hit up new things I hear..

I am thankful for Firebug, jQuery, JavaScript, Red Bull, Foosball, Ninja Plate Lunch, and Ubuntu.

I’m thankful that the percentage of IE6 users has reached 10%, down from 20% this time last year!  Score one for web standards!

I am thankful for last.fm for keeping my ears happy, reminding me of old bands I used to love and constantly introducing me to new and awesome music.  And by new I mean new to me, not generally new to the world.

I am thankful for Portland. To many of you that do not live here it is just one of those magically wonderful places filled with passionate, caring, creative, community driven people. It is a place I am always happy to fly home to.

I am thankful for the Web Designer Wall Blog. They are on top of all the new techniques and a really great resource!

I am thankful for the tech updates on www.current.tv and love how most of the content on this site is UG and video-based.

I am thankful for Firebug’s “Inspect Element” feature.

I am thankful for the “I Am T-Pain” iPhone app, and I don’t even own an iPhone.

I’m thankful for eROI’s  QA team

“I am thankful for the Urbanspoon iPhone app. Did you know there are 15 buffet restaurants in the Portland area?”

I am thankful for Instant Messenger – I can have phone conversations, answer emails, and talk to 5 people all at once thanks to IM!

And a few final ones that I saw over and over, and couldn’t agree more with…

For companies realizing how when you work with your partners you get 200% better work out of them.

For clients that continue to trust the eROI team with strategy and execution to continues to knock it out of the park.

And

For a team that continues to amaze and inspire with creative, ideas and collaboration each and every day.