eROI Days Email Agency

Our NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, has creating, editing, mixing, and mashing video with a very urban, creative flair. He posted his video to the blog he contributes most to - CrossPixelNYC, however, I couldn’t resist embedding the video in this blog post here. Enjoy!

Obamaween from Christopher Masagatani on Vimeo.

I regularly give speeches on the importance of blogging.  It is one of the core pieces of our grassroots marketing effort, personalizes our brand, engages a 2-way dialogue, helps search engine optimization of all eROI sites and blogs, seeds some press that we get, and indirectly generates some leads through all of this.

That being said, there are weeks like the past one where it is really challenging to make blogging a priority as a CEO. Over the past 2 months, I’ve gotten a lot more engaged in the company and am actually working a bit harder (60 hour weeks vs. 50 hours before).  My focus has shifted more towards Sales, Speaking Engagements, and Product Development (and I’ve kept the same high level of commitment towards interacting w/ employees).

I am not making excuses (actually, that’s exactly what I’m doing), but that’s why I haven’t blogged in 8 days. My biggest reflection of this poor blogging discipline is that I missed Haiku Monday (by 5 hours at is now 5am on Tuesday). After a brief, private flogging, I now forgive myself for this major faux-pas.  Let the haikus roll like water in a rocky stream:

I had my daughters
To myself this weekend and
We laughed and danced.

Tom Szaky lit
Up the stage at eROI - telling
Huge successes of Worm Poop

What a difference a good email makes to motivate, inspire, and deliver a strong message.  Christine Baker (Twitter handle: @cbakes) creates a different yoga email for reminding all of us at eROI that we have yoga practice the following morning.

I’d like to talk about all the things she does right in the email above:

• The preheader “Yoga Friday at 7:45am” reminds me of when it is when I read this email on my Blackberry or in the top area of the preview pane of my email client (even when images are turned off).
• Also in the preheader is “View as webpage >>” which allows me to see the full extent of this graphic-rich email if I’m getting a text view of it on my Blackberry or Gmail or Outlook.
• Solid, consistent branding
• Relevant messaging and imagery (Obama had just won days before and Christine knows her audience well enough to know most of us in the company are big fans)
• Clean email design template
• Tight, functional footer using a lot of email best practices and compliance: Unsubscribe, Update Profile, Send to Friend, and mailing address.

I’m an entrepreneur and I’ve failed in the past. I left Intel and started my first company on March 21, 2000 (the week that the dot com bubble showed its first major signs of bursting). Unfortunately, we had a product that was before its time and the generally techno-phobic, construction industry undervalued our ultra-niche software, so the company failed. Our failure was due to our inability to adapt our business model. It was our fault, not the economy.

As an entrepreneur, I think one of my strengths is that I’m naïve. By definition, no entrepreneur in his right mind would start his first business if he truly knew how brutally challenging it would be to build something out of nothing (knowing that anything that can go wrong will go wrong). Six years ago, I founded eROI, an email and web marketing company. We’ve been fortunate to grow from an idea in late 2002 to where we are today, a multi-million dollar company with 47 employees. I know I’m supposed to be writing about how the economy is going to continue to tank and that you should buy a year’s worth of rations to store in your basement, but instead, I’m going to tell you about the audacity of growth in uncertain times ahead.

A couple of weeks ago, I led an all-company meeting on our fourth floor. The message was clear: be aware of the global economic situation, but it is imperative for all of us to focus on what we can control – to truly go above and beyond in our own jobs. We should collaborate productively with our fellow employees, delight our customers on a personal level, practice frugality, and exude positivity and optimism.

Believe in the Future
When eROI began, we leveraged a good product and built a great service company around it. Now, we are investing in research and development to build powerful software on top of an already strong framework. Many would argue that we made a bad decision to invest precious cash into software that will not generate revenue (and profit) for at least 9 months. However, we strongly believe in growth opportunities in the near future, and there is no better time than now to inspire your team to create a product or service that will have a hugely positive impact on the world. (more…)

Fortunately, in Oregon, we all mail in our votes, and I did so the first day I got the ballot, so I’m off the hook. For those who haven’t voted or don’t intend to vote, you are missing your opportunity to have a very real impact in a critical time in our nation’s history.

Last week, eMarketer published a telling article about online e-commerce sales this year.  They are still growing from previous years, up to $32 billion this year.  Not bad.  Maybe, the sky is only falling halfway and will dangle in suspended animation while the rest of us live our lives normally, but with a bit more caution.

Check out the chart below - intriguing.

We want to know - how does your little brother, sister, nephew, or neice Use Email? We don’t know the answer yet, and need your help to discover how high school kids, college students, and recent college grads actually use email. That’s why we’re conducting this survey >>

All the articles we’ve read pretty much tell us that email marketing will be dead in a matter of years (because kids are only into texting and social networking communities), but we’re a little skeptical of that assessment that email is not or will not be a big part of their lives. So, we are conducting our own survey and we’re primarily using blogs, MySpace, Facebook, and a little bit of email to reach out to our .edu friends. Please help us  to fill out this awesome survey, and you might win your very own, limited-edition KillROI in the process.

We need to know what our kids (or nephews, neices, cousins, brothers, or sisters) futures will look like, so please spread the word to fill out this survey; http://eroi.onlinestudentcommunication.sgizmo.com.

Additionally, I’d love to read your thoughts on the survey in the comments below.  Thank you thank you!

Yesterday, many of you did not submit your haiku on this blog.  While, I am deeply upset about this, I realized that I didn’t give you a lot of outside inspiration.  I think the Internet was built for the sole purpose of searching for, reading, and submitting a haiku for the greater good of all of us to enjoy them.

Here are a few sites to check out:
http://www.haiku.com/
http://www.ahapoetry.com/haiku.htm
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q4/elechaiku.html
http://www.yuckles.com/bellyup.htm

Here are some haikus from David Joslin on U.S. politics:

What sound do I hear,
From the nation’s capitol?
Oh! Paper shredders!

Deer in the headlights
With a grin from ear to ear –
Have they told him yet?

Draft dodger, pot head,
Womanizer and waffler.
Still better than Bush.

Here is my presentation to NACHA - National Automated Clearing House Association on “How Financial Institutions Can Use Social Media to their Advantage”

I’m a huge fan of a quintessential Oregon entity called Live Wire! Radio - a mix of edgy humor, music, and Garrison Keillor-style story-telling and political humor. My wife and I went to the show w/ other folks from eROI and one distinct thing that they do at every show is the Audience Haiku.  Let me preface this blog post by saying that I am clearly no poet, haiku expert.  In fact, they may be so bad, that they are laughable.  But, it’s Monday morning and I want to have you, my loyal blog readers, participate a little more and inspire me with some of your haikus.  Here are only two ground rules - 1. it’s got to be as close as possible to 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables; 2. theme can be edgy, vulgar, random, whatever, but NO excessive swearing please.  Let the absurd poetry of haiku begin.

dark in the morning
cold as hell on my red bike
I am refreshed

Anticipation
of Halloween begins and
finance market scares

Yellow leaves cascade
slick as banana peels squish
under Nike Air

Now, it’s your turn.  Comment with your haiku - you could win a free eROI collectible gift of a robot named KillROI - the famous hero in www.KillSpammer.com!

I’m making the switch from Backcountry Snowboard to Backcountry Alpine Touring Skis - want to try something new.  Get fired up for a huge powder year.  Here’s my Craigslist ad (not sure what I’d do without Craigslist):

Voile Split Snowboard - Backcountry - Excellent Condition - $550 (SE Portland)

I bought this amazing snowboard in 2006. It comes with Skins.

It is 164cm. It’s only been used on 3 backcountry trips.

Feel free to email me first, or call me at 503-701-1956. Thx so much!

I never thought I’d have ‘thank you Palin’ in the title of anything I’d ever write, but I’ve done it. She and Tina Fey have made Saturday Night Live so unbelievably relevant and funny again. SNL absolutely nailed this skit last night - Baldwin said exactly what most guys (at least my guy friends) are thinking and to make this blog post relevant to online marketing, I must tell you that I don’t watch any of this stuff on TV anymore - I race to my computer on a Sunday morning and laugh my head off watching it on Saturday Night Live’s website.

Chris Masagatani, you were on the SNL set last week, what’s your take on all the new buzz around Saturday Night Live. Please comment below.

Everyone else - tell me - are you watching SNL skits on their site or YouTube on Sunday or during the workweek, or is this blog post the first time you’ve seen its online video? Comment.

My business associate and friend Jerry Ketel, partner at Leopold & Ketel Partners, sent this email to several Portland agency owners to help prove to clients that marketing has been proven to grow a brand and its sales, profit, and market share during a recession (notice how I didn’t use this “r” word in the blog title - I’m not comfortable using it yet).  Here was Jerry’s email to me (I added the image after searching on Google “marketing in recession” - it’s actually quite informative):

“There have been a number of studies over the years proving that marketing during a recession is a good investment in the long run. ‘In a recession, dare to invest aggressively in marketing, innovation and customer quality’, is the clear message to be drawn from PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) research into which business strategies aid success during and after a market downturn lasting several years. Author: Keith Roberts, Journal: Strategy & Leadership, 2003. 
http://tinyurl.com/4sqx8j
(more…)

Ok - so the Break Media study spins it another way, but c’mon guys, who are the 26% of you how would rather interact with a computer than your partner?  Here’s the study published by MarketingVox:

Men Prefer ‘Net to TV, but Sex Trumps Both

Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson. More than two-thirds of men age 18-34 say they cannot live without the internet vs. television, but 74% would rather have sex than surf the web, according to (pdf) a study from Break Media, conducted by Hall and Partners, MarketingCharts reports.

The study, which was designed to determine what men (age 18-34) are doing online and how they respond to internet advertising, found that this demographic - which views itself as responsible and conformist overall - spends close to 22 hours on the internet per week, goes online for entertainment, and prefers to spend time on the internet rather than TV.

To read the full MarketingVox article, click here >>

The smiley face image to the left makes this blog post all the more enjoyable to write.  So, as an entrepreneur, let’s talk about which strategies worked and which failed last week amidst the absolute chaos in the financial markets and subsequently the economy. I was visiting clients and prospects from our NYC office on Mon-Wed last week and media is EVERYWHERE in Manhattan - you cannot escape it. 

However, I was with our NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, who is super talented and hilarious to hang out with while dashing to meetings all over town.  So, my NYC strategy was “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” in relation to all the news surrounding the markets crashing continuously.

Then, on the plane flight home to Portland on Wed night, I watched a little of Anderson Cooper and Suze Orman on the Jet Blue flight and Suze said the Dow could easily drop another 1000 points to 8,200 (little did I know that this would actually happen during the day 36 hours later).  This was on top of all the other stuff I had been trying to ignore - and the honest truth is that a lot of anxiety and a little panic set in.  It didn’t last long, but it was there for a brief moment that night.  Failed strategy #2.

I had the most relaxing, peaceful weekend with close friends and all of our families at Black Butte Ranch in Central Oregon (where I still managed to get a ton of work done) and I realized that the successful strategy #3 is to be aware of what is going on globally, but focus all of your energy on your own little world - your team, delighting customers, being frugal in how your company operates, stay calm, and exude positivity and optimism.  So, if an anxiety attack hits, remember to be happy dammit!