eROI Days Email Agency

Come to the Portland Art Museum at 7pm tonight, March 7 to check out 8 Cut&Paste contestants do some insane speed designing using Photoshop and Wacom digital pens and tablets. My wife and I are joining another dozen eROI peops to cheer voiceferously our own Tom O’Toole – the talented eROI designer – who is predicted with 3 to 1 odds to win this thing. No matter what, it will be a good time.

Cut&Paste Digital Design Tournament 2007 from Cut&Paste on Vimeo.

Geoff Ramsey, co-founder of eMarketer, wrote an awesome tactical article on “How Staying Positive is Good for Business.”  As you know, I’ve been writing blog posts for the past 3 months about how fear is so 2008 and that this year, 2009, is the Year of Optimism.  Well, it keeps getting harder and harder to truly believe that 2009 will be optimistic as the news media keeps reinforcing doomsday news constantly.  So, take a minute to Geoff’s 5 guiding principles of positivity:

1. Understand Your Locus of Control

2. Tighten the Spigot

3. Focus on the Opportunities

4. Leverage Data to Construct Opportunistic Experiments

5. Invest in the Future

I especially like this quote from the article: “I don’t care how hard this period is. You have to have the combination of believing that you will prevail, that you will get out of this, but also not be the Pollyanna who ignores the brutal facts. You have to say that we will be in this for a long time and we will turn it into a defining event, a big catalyst to make ourselves a much stronger enterprise.”
—Jim Collins, management guru, as quoted in Fortune, February 2, 2009

I’d also like to hear from all of you about a specific positive personal or business experience or news that you’ve read that stood out above the rest – please comment below (in haiku format, of course).

Holy crap – I was exhausted last night – crashed at 8pm. I think it had something to do with the Portland Advertising Federation (PAF) Rosey Awards on Thurs night at the Performing Arts Center. Aside from hearing from other agency owners in town how brutal the economy is, it was clear that everyone has been working way harder than normal and was looking to blow off a lot of steam (translation: a perfect excuse for a night of heavy drinking, loud music, and overly-honest conversations). One of the highlights of the Roseys was the hosts – 3 guys who pushed the envelope in a big way – nicely done! If you watch the second video, you might agree with me.

Rosey Awards 2008 Part Five from Dylan Boyd on Vimeo.

Rosey Awards Part Nine from Dylan Boyd on Vimeo.

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

 Renny Gleeson, global digital evangelist for Wieden + Kennedy, led off the Inverge Conference, with a personal, philosophical discussion on how fast and far our lives have changed due to digital devices, mobile, and online social media.  It was an epiphany for Renny at 4am in a London hotel to realize he’d been screwing around on different social sites for over 12 straight hours. Talk about some high engagement metrics for those sites.  This speech was a month ago, but I feel it was still uber-relevant to get perspective on what has led up to this precipitous change.  Here are my notes from his speech:

With each tech advance, it takes a little while to connect emotionally with it and through it.
• 1876 – Telephone (killed body language), but made it easier to meet up
• 1844 – Telegraph – Morse tapped “What Hath God Wrought” “Crap, what have we done?”
• 1906 – Radio – > Broadcast

Use Technology to meet up, see one another

1971 @ Email (Ray Tomlinson: @ indicated a user was at some other host) -> Email medium can be the most misinterpreted (lose body language, voice inflection, most range to explain enough to get misinterpreted)

Email vs. Social Media
• Email – Very focused (1 to 1)
• Social Media – Distracted by so many other toys involved in it

– Crib Sheet – Visual cues for displaying emotion
– Dinosaurs in inappropriate places – Flickr Group
– Blip.fm: jam or music
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Alex Bogusky was on the cover of Inc. magazine a few months ago with the headline something like “Can this Hot Guy Make Microsoft Cool?” Well, Crispin Porter + Bogusky are off to a good start w/ the Jerry Seinfeld / Bill Gates commercials, and even better, the PC commercials. So, I pose the question – did Bogusky make the Inc. 5000 Conference cool? Having been to 2 consecutive years of conferences, I can clearly say that it was already very cool before he came along, but Bogusky did a really good job of speaking to more than just creativity but accomplishing business objectives in a creative way. Here are my notes:

CP & B: 900 employees, 900 freaks, early on, worked with a ton of underdogs. Very Scrappy.

The Truth Campaign- Anti-Smoking
Change the cultural perceptions around a product Brand around youth rebellion. Rebellion is great. This choice is not rebellion, it’s about being manipulated by a huge machine (tobacco campaigns).

Advertising must play into PR and web, social “Playing with your consumer”

Molson Beer- 200 different labels “I’m not wearing any underwear”

Creativity is just a way to leverage business goals

Burger King Whopper Freak out- people got really pissed off with no Whopper. Super funny.
• embrace the creative process – makes it fun
• “you know what you ought to do,” have someone fill in the answer

CP+B 1 Rule: NEVER LIE. NO FIBS. NO BS. (more…)

Because this is such a SEXY presentation, I had to do it on Keynote on a sexy Mac that I have limited access to, therefore, the “Bringing Sexy Back to Email Marketing” presentation is available via a PDF on our site, but not on the extra sexy technology that my associate Dylan Boyd pointed out on the Email Wars blog, called SlideShare. Look for this blog post to be updated with that soon.

Until then, Download the Full PDF presentation of “Bringing Sexy Back to Email” here>>

It’s the second downloadable document on that page. Tell me what you think.

I spent the last week preparing for a speech (to 100 marketers) at Innotech on “Bringing Sexy Back to Email Marketing“, and I must admit that I got pretty philosophical about the email marketing industry and the real definition of what sexy means to me and to marketers.

Download the Full PDF presentation of “Bringing Sexy Back to Email” here>>. It’s the second downloadable document on that page. Tell me what you think.

The genesis of the idea for this speech came from attending a panel on email marketing at MediaPost’s OMMA Hollywood show last month. At that panel, the nation’s top email experts, who I have a ton of respect for, all had a similar response to the question, “what’s exciting coming up in the near future for email marketing?” After a few chuckles and shrugs that it’s the same old same old in the email world, these top email software and agency experts’ answers included “email is a workhorse” and it “is the plumbing of the internet.” To paraphrase the response, email has the highest ROI of any online marketing medium, but it’s ultimately boring in its implementation.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Where is the passion? Where is the sex appeal? Email has been around for a long time, but don’t tell me it’s boring. Email is dead sexy, but first let’s explore who is sexy to you? Before you look at the images below, think about who you find sexy and why are they sexy? Great looking. Hot body. Amazing voice. Atheletic. Bad girl or Bad boy personality. Something luring you in?

Ignore these pics below, and tell me WHO IS SEXY to you?

What does this have to do with Email?

Email is Dead Sexy and here’s why:
–Email is the Killer App – only true push medium
–More brand touchpoints than any other medium
–Highest ROI – Email Works
–Core of Building Online Community
–Successful Email Trigger Campaign – Fosters 2-way dialogue

Don’t forget to download the Full PDF presentation of “Bringing Sexy Back to Email” here>>.

eMarketing Summit @ InnoTech
April 16-17, Oregon Convention Center

www.emarketingsummit.com for information and registration
Use Discount Code EROI8EMS for the $129 price. Prices includes two day summit, both luncheons topics and Don Tapscott Featured Speaker breakfast on April 17.

The 4th annual eMarketing Summit meets in Portland, Oregon this year, and brings together marketers, business owners and internet professionals.
This two day Summit focuses on social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing and web 2.0 tools, including widgets and more. Guest speakers include Don Tapscott, Author of Wikinomics; Rohit Bhargava, Sr. VP, Digital Strategy, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Kent Lewis, Anvil Media; with additional speakers from Northwest Airlines, Razorfish/Avenue A, Hill & Knowlton Digital, Jive Software, Kick Apps and many others.

4/16: 10:30am – 11:30am
What the Heck is a Widget?
Dylan Boyd, Vice President of Sales and Strategy, eROI, Inc.
Matt Bijur, Vice President, Business Development, KickApps
David White, VP of Business Development, FlightStats
Mike Berkley, CEO, SplashCast Media
Widgets are building blocks for social aggregators. Widgets can also quickly help your web site reach new audiences in web 2.0 including social media, blog, web site and more. This expert panel will discuss the roadmap to planning, designing, creating and distributing this innovative gadget.

4/17: 10:30am – 11:30pm
Bringing Sexy Back into Email Marketing
Ryan Buchanan, President, eROI, Inc.
Has your email marketing program gotten tired, neglected, and stuck in a rut? eROI CEO, Ryan Buchanan, will use several case studies from some sexy and unsexy businesses to show how marketers can breath life back into their email marketing program. More…

Our very own Dylan Boyd with eROI spoke on this panel where the goal was to engage audience participation and guess who the Liar was among the 5 panelists.

First potential liar: Al Gadbut, CEO, Acquire Web
Acquisition Email – is your response true? Al showed examples of acquisition email for an auto-insurance client, non-profit event, financial services client, and telecom client. Was he lying that email recipients actually sent long, valuable responses to acquisition email that so many people perceive as spam? (Not a liar)

Second potential liar: Scott Mencken, Director, Relationship Marketing, eBay
With hundreds of different lists and email creatives for transactional and marketing emails, Personalization is Key! Lots of ways to personalize email:
1) Audience composition
2) Degree/Mix of personalization
3) Email design + production
4) Frequency of delivery

Results: 113% lift in open rates; 285% lift in response rates, and 160% increase in sales.
(Not a liar)

Third potential liar: Dylan Boyd, Vice President, Sales and Strategy, eROI
Offline to Online Lead Capture Case Study for Jewelry company:
PIN-coded direct mail postcards sent to 100k customers/prospects (their in-house list). That postcard sent people to a website where they were asked to do only 1 thing – enter a unique PIN code and click “submit”. The following page pre-populated all of their info and asked a few other questions like email address and 2 lead qualification questions, then gave the customer a coupon for limited sale in their physical stores.

Results: 1920 coupons redeemed ($312.50/sale) = $600k in sales
Learnings in this case: use branded URL to instill trust: rogersandhollands.com/vip
Next phase: convert to more email as postal rates are set to increase 7% or more.
(Not a liar)

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Along with 650 other email marketers in a giant room in Miami, Florida, I’m now listening to Anne Holland and Stefan Tornquist with MarketingSherpa.

• 2007 MarketingSherpa showed that email is “extremely significant” to company’s marketing programs.
• 25% of marketers surveyed have no mention of newsletter or email signup on their homepages.
• 55% of companies send a Welcome email message within 72 hours. Of those, roughly 1/3 send content beyond welcome – these automated email triggers offer a great opportunity to show examples of previous newsletters or cross-sell or up-sell offers. Strike while the iron is hot and reach out to subscribers right when they are most excited about hearing from you.
• Transactional email has become more accepted over the past 3 years. Fewer people are hugely negative or positive towards transactional email as long as there isn’t a lot of heavy, “hard sell” marketing speak in them.
• Email Deliverability: many ISPs like AOL, Earthlink, Gmail, and Yahoo are primarily Reputation-based which has become much more systematic and mathematic in all that Reputation encompasses. Reputation-based programs promote good marketing.
• Reputation Fixes:
  1) Slash your list
  2) Third Parties & CAN-SPAM (do it right)
  3) Rendering 
• MSherpa recommends that you re-engage with an unsubscriber at the point of unsubscribing. Add 2-3 quick survey questions asking why they are leaving.
• Eyetracking: need to teach new designers a data-centric way of where email recipients eyes are drawn to on the email creative. Showed a case study of a more print-driven design that performed horribly on Eye Tools heat map. The other case study showing tightened up copy and strong visual offers performed amazingly where the hottest area of the heat map was actually below the fold. Impressive.
• Viewing and Rendering: blocked images are important to take into account. Make sure that your email creative has a mix of images and copy where some copy is above the fold.

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