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.
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?
I recently got an invitation from Techspace, the office building that houses our New York City office, for a holiday party filled with networking, food, music and drinks. To my delight, when I clicked on the RSVP link I was taken to their eROI Event page. We did some custom themeing on their event site to match their website. What I love about this event is that they took the bones of our design and customized it for their purpose. The addition of the holiday image and red button give it a little more holiday cheer than their normal event site would have.
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
My two fellow eROI NYC folks, Chris Masagatani and Kavita Makadia, joined me in attending the June 1 Ignite NYC event just a block from Chris’s apartment in Midtown. I had been to an Ignite event in Washington DC which was pretty good, but a little stiff and serious, so my expectations were moderate before going to the event. At this NYC event, I was blown away by how creative, funny, and polished each of the 5-minute presentations were. I highly highly recommend you watch the video below of the brilliantly funny Baratunde Shares of The Onion.
As I was biking in to work this morning along Waterfront Park (Willamette River and Mt. Hood views), I caught up with a colleague of mine who works at the PDC and we rode the rest of the way into work together. It was one of those “Portland moments” where it would be unexpected anywhere else for a couple business guys who haven’t seen each other in 3 months connect on a morning commute into work. Portland, like Amsterdam, has a biking culture, and with the right gear, it’s refreshing to bike rain or shine (although SUN is so so much better). Here is the NY Times article my Dad (who lives in Washington DC) sent me as I arrived at my desk this morning:
“A LOT of good cyclists come out of Portland just because you can ride year-round,” said Bruce Rogers, an athletic-shoe designer visiting from his home in Hailey, Idaho. “I love coming back because I love the biking, no matter what time of year it is. More than fitness, it’s a fun outlet. As long as you have decent rainwear you can ride in any weather.”
Careering through streets on a bicycle in Portland, Ore., this time of year can be an easy weekend adventure that mixes showers, sunbursts, cafes and a robust bicycle culture. And equipped with a sturdy rain jacket, booties, fenders and a bike map (a waterproof version that folds to the size of a credit card is handy), visitors can enjoy the city the way locals do.
In 2003, eROI designed and developed a website for Meritage Properties. Six years later, they were ready for a new overall strategy and design and again decided to turn to the eROI team to make it happen. The original design was simple and fit their needs at the time but with more focus on online marketing, Meritage Properties wanted to present themselves in a more mature fashion. The emphasis was on making the design clean and crisp. This was achieved by using neutral colors to make the property photos and logo pop off the page through greater contrast. Additionally, the site employs helpful yet understated navigation bars and a java script slideshow of properties rotating on the home page. Another success was integrating google maps into the site. This added functionality, built in wordpress, allows viewers to click a location and view the property that resides there. The overall effect is a stunning combination of photography, information and functionality. This site has been propelled back into the modern world of web design.
At eROI, we’ve launched some exciting new blogs in the past couple months, and the content is unbelievably good. It’s so good, it may even rival the eROI Days blog. If you haven’t had a chance to check them out, now is your chance. Fresh is a blog from our creatives that is both design-oriented as well as great insights into web technologies. eROI NYC has an urban, high-energy feel to it with loads of unique video straight from the New York underground. Then, there are the tried and true old-timer blogs with eROI Days, The Email Wars, and Return on Subscriber.
Our fearless NYC Director, Chris Masagatani, has been scouring the streets of NYC for 374 days. He and his fiance (now wife) moved there Dec 2, 2007. They moved straight into Hell’s Kitchen and Chris commuted all of 25 blocks to the eROI NYC office in the Flat Iron District of Manhattan where we still operate. So much change in a year – his wife is one of the top designers at nationally-acclaimed design school Parsons, and Chris is truly coming into his own as an expert online marketer, leading email design and web projects for CBS Sports, CBS Watch magazine, CBS Star Trek store among other key eROI clients like digital publisher Zinio, real estate companies like Shares of New York, The Marketing Directors and dozens more unique and amazing NYC-based clients.
What makes our year anniversary in NYC even better is that Chris has found his voice blogging on our new blog in the eROI blog family. Check out the phenomenal, unique video mashups, and photos of NYC life on THE REBIRTH OF SLICK >>
You will feel like you are in New York City when you read the blog posts and watch the videos at www.eroinyc.com
Email Design Drives Results for CBSSports.com Fantasy Sports
Does email design really matter? Is it just “fluff,” or does it truly drive results?
At eROI, we just let our Resource Center subscribers know about this exclusive email marketing case study. See how a fresh, targeted, and on-brand email design by eROI’s award-winning creative team took the CBSSports.com Fantasy Sports emails to the next level.
Please comment below to let us know your thoughts on Email Design. Give us your take Before & After you read the case study. Thx.
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!
Chris – you have insane skills video editing. I had to share this video you did on CrossPixelNYC blog on to eROIdays (in the spirit of re-tweeting). Again – great stuff!
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.
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.
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!
Chris – love your use of original video on your blog – www.crosspixelnyc.com – content in this rocks. It was so good – I had to re-post on this blog so people can see how we roll in NYC. Great job!
13 Brands Examined: New rules for sexy subject lines - If you do not read iMedia Connection then I wanted to share with you an article I wrote last week for them where I looked at 13 email marketing programs for the good and the bad. We can learn from...
