I gave this presentation at Innotech Oregon last Thursday and talked through some really useful tools that email marketers should consider using: Flowtown, Unbounce, Which Test Won, Email2Mobile, Email on Acid. Check out the presentation below to see some visual examples of what these tools can accomplish for you.
Fred Wilson, a NYC tech investor, delivered this analysis of successful web apps at the annual “Future of Web Apps” conference which was then published in this Carsonified blog post. This post really resonated with me as we are underway on a pretty ambitious web app here at eROI. Wilson’s top 10 golden rules of successful web apps were great reinforcement to make sure that nothing important is dropped off the list before launching your app. I thought I’d share my own thoughts on Wilson’s spot-on assessment.
The 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps from Carsonified on Vimeo.
To simplify the article into a straight list, here it is:
1. Speed
2. Instant Utility
3. Software is Media
4. Less is More
5. Make it Programmable
6. Make it Personal
7. RESTful
8. Discoverability
9. Clean
10. Playful
Here are the things I really like from what Fred Wilson had to say: Sometimes, words or expressions are so key to getting your point across. I’ve really been struggling with the over-use and broad nature of the term “intuitive” as in our interface is intuitive. Most companies tout this, but very few actually pull it off (Mint.com and iPhone interface are notable exceptions). Wilson’s expression “instant utility” means that you log in and you immediately get what to do end to end – the service is instantly useful to you. It’s critical to usability. His other 2 Golden Rules that fall in this category are “Less is More” and “Clean”. Our newest web app to launch in 6-8 weeks is following the design principles of progressive disclosure whereby the user is guided towards completing the ONE main action for that page or interface. By utilizing progressive disclosure, it reduces the confusion and clutter from a page or task – reducing the amount of time it takes for users to do their job while improving accuracy.
Additionally, I’m a big fan of Wilson’s Rule “Make it Programmable”. Web apps of old often kept silos of information in their app and the API was not really meant to push or pull a ton of info to other web apps. We are really putting a lot of energy into building web apps on an entire API platform so that the very premise of the web app is to have a community of other web apps built around it and for it.
Again, if you haven’t seen Fred Wilson’s full blog post, please check it out >>
eM+C teamed up with us to compile a new survey of 678 marketers. It revealed some compelling information on the kind of budget and time that went into online marketing in 2009 and what is budgeted for 2010.
The relatively low cost of internet marketing versus traditional avenues may have initially brought followers in a failing economy but the steady increase in budget was directly related to the ROI gained from these non-traditional channels.
Kudos to Chad White of Responsys for distilling a lot of really great concepts about “The Inbox of the Not-So-Distant Future” in his most recent article in MediaPost’s EmailInsider. As email marketers, we ultimately need to step into the shoes of our email recipients and understand all the ways in which they will interact with our email within their inbox. The quick synopsis of Chad’s article is:
1. Social media integration – share with your network becomes a key component in every email (and email marketers can segment lists to optimize for Gmail (Google Buzz) or Facebook’s Titan)
2. Mobile – SMS and Email converging has great benefits for things like mobile couponing for retailers
3. Video Lite – animated gifs to appear as a video – see eROI’s Dylan Boyd blog post on “VIV Blows it out with Animated GIFs”
4. Email Browsing – example of Sears using Gmail’s Enhanced Email: browsing module is decided and displayed at the time of open, not the time of send, which allows the information to be as current as possible. An email sent last month pulled today’s best-sellers from Sears.com.
5. Transactions -Email certification of a known trusted sender is especially important for e-commerce clients.
6. Email Management / Sentiment – ExactTarget’s Morgan Stewart wrote in a separate EmailInsider article about a “thumbs-up” button in the inbox to re-inforce positive sentiment in email instead of sledge-hammering the negative world of reporting spam as the only option.
If you dig a little deeper, there is a whole lot more innovation coming to the Future Inbox. Social tools are available to scrape profile info (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and dozens of other social media sites) and append that to your email lists to allow better personalization and segmenting. OpenID frameworks will allow information to be passed more freely between email and any online community through a single username/password that will inherently recognize you from your inbox. The future is near and email is innovating as fast or faster than most other industries. Get ready.
In our new study, Leveraging the Mobile Web, we discuss the relevance of the mobile web.
With a leap in American users of over 14% from 2008-2009 it is undeniable that mobile is the way of the future.
In the study we examined our process for creating and launching three completely different mobile sites with very different goals.
“With mobile gaining more and more attention, now is the time to develop your mobile strategy to stay ahead of the pack, and your competition.”
eROI’s newest case study, Wacom: Progression of an Online Community, has just been released.
This study takes you through the development of an online community of designers from testing to launch.
Below are the three main goals of an online community, we take you through how we met each of these goals with the Wacom Community.
1. Starting a relationship with your customers that can’t be duplicated by the competition, encouraging loyalty and providing value.
2. Maximizing customer interaction time with your brand, as well as building mindshare and influence.
3. Gathering an advanced level of CRM data informed by user interactions, preferences, interests, etc.
Here was my presentation from the Lake Oswego Chamber of Commerce FORGE Marketing Annual Summit – great event!
As usual, I learned a ton from the other speakers:
Kimberly Barta, VP of Marketing, Dr. Martens Shoes
Dayn Wilberding, Dir of Technology, Grady Britton
Kent Lewis, President, Anvil Media
Enjoy this eROI presentation!
I also included a few of my tweets below as well:
@kentjlewis nice. “remember your marketing budget is unlimited” 11:41 AM Jan 28th from Tweetie
Top paid placement is based on Quality Score, not just on highest price. 11:32 AM Jan 28th from Tweetie
eROI Case Study: Online Strategy for a Successful Product Launch
Get the full study
Sleek and chic – how can you not love the new Intuos4 tablet from Wacom. Very psyched how this integrated campaign turned out. For all the marketers reading this blog post, there are some really good insights to this case study.
Wacom Technology Corporation worked with eROI to launch their brand new product, the Intuos4. As you will find out, it is more than just a sleek site. This case study outlines the integrated online strategy used by Wacom, including results of the multi-pronged campaign; email, microsite, and offline channels working together to seamlessly promote the unique aspects of the new Intuos4 tablet.
“We’re absolutely happy with the number of visitors. We believe we’ve received a 70% awareness of our target audience. I mean, that’s really good. Not many companies are going to achieve that kind of awareness for a new product launch.”
~ Marketing Director, Wacom
I was forwarded a link to a site that engages the user through Facebook Connect. It had a total video game vibe and my curiosity got the best of me. There was a sense of doom from the beginning. A New York City cab flipped on it’s side, men with guns and – wait – my face? Flash forward to predictions of my kids deaths and pictures of them overtaken by worms, it was an experience that fascinated me and creeped me out at the same time.
The calm before the storm at #inc5000. Already connected with old friends and Inc magazine staff http://yfrog.com/0oqxmjj 5:56 PM Sep 23rd from Tweetie
One more photo from Gaylord resort in wash dc. Schwanky. http://yfrog.com/16vonyj 5:57 PM Sep 23rd from Tweetie
#inc5000 conf starting now. Largest attendance ever at 1,700 of us. Aggregate rev of $214 billion http://yfrog.com/0nxn1jj 6:14 AM Sep 24th from Tweetie
There is nothing like a little distance to make the heart grow fonder. The past 5 days, I’ve spent with my little family in a remote, rustic cabin in the forested Wallowa Mountains outside of Joseph, Oregon (6 hour drive from Portland). As with any vacation, it took a couple days to unwind, then it was pure bliss doing what I love doing – being outdoors nonstop, hiking, spending time with my family, and being undistracted by all the craziness in our technology-laden lives.
Upon my return to the grid (meaning my iPhone on the drive back), I realized that my longing for technology was really in communication of key information and emotional connection through my inbox (email is not, nor will it ever be dead in the foreseeable future), not through Tweetie, Tweetdeck when I returned to my laptop at home, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any website at all – it was spending 6 hours of catching up on all of the things that are hyper-relevant to me in my inbox. Interestingly enough, I could only really scan and internalize all the issues brought up through hundreds of emails on my iPhone for about an hour, and the other 5 hours of digging way deeper and responding happened through my Outlook inbox on my laptop. It’s a totally different mode of thinking on a 14″ screen than a 2″ screen.
There is a lot of chatter over the past several months among Email Marketing industry execs (over a hundred of us on a private email list) about whether or not Twitter is a complete waste of time or if it will kill Email, and it seems so obvious to me that Twitter is a useful conversation piece that has its place in the marketing mix, but is not yet the killer addictive app/platform/communication channel that email is. In each of our daily lives, the large majority of us prioritize our Inbox over everything else. It took almost a week in the woods to be able to articulate this simple gravitational pull towards email.
MediaPost’s Email Insider recently did an article on the importance of holiday emails. As email marketers, it is our duty to not only create quality emails but also give our clients consulting on what kind of email will help their businesses grow. Holiday email marketing goes beyond Cyber Monday campaigns or even general “Happy Holiday” emails, it is most effective when it starts slowly into an aggressive campaign. The article pointed out that there are even great opportunities to not only drive business to your e-com site but also to stores with offers like “ship to store” which make up-sells and complimentary sales easier. The main point is to plan. Don’t throw together a sloppy campaign a week before Christmas, take it seriously to get serious results.
Here are a few examples of holiday emails eROI has done in the past.
Are You Ready For The 18 Phases Of Christmas?
“If you haven’t begun planning your holiday campaigns, then you’re already behind. The first salvo of holiday email marketing has already been fired, with 8% of major online retailers having already mentioned the holidays in their email campaigns. While most of those were running “Christmas in July” campaigns, a few were just getting in early references to be top of mind later in the season. August is traditionally a non-event for holiday marketing, but September will mark the beginning of a continued effort to win holiday sales that will continue into January…”
I know I’m so so so late to this game – I have clung on to my Blackberry forever because I feared poor AT&T coverage. I feared that my fingers were too fat to successfully type on the touchscreen from trying it on my wife’s first generation iPhone. Not sure how many more fears I had, but I finally made the switch to the unbelievably intuitive and beautiful creation known as the iPhone. Other than the obvious advantages of an incredible mobile web experience, mature iPhone app ecosystem, more intuitive texting, more readable email, I wanted to focus on the mobile video feature that makes it so easy to shoot video and upload it to YouTube. So nice. Here is a video that I took on day 2 of owning my new iPhone:
If you have an iPhone, please share with us a haiku about why you like it so much. Here’s mine:
iPhone, radiating
beauty, video camera
in my pocket alas
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.
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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