eROI Days Email Agency

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.”

Decide if you’re ready to go mobile »

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.

Read the whole case study »

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

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As I was listening to a roundtable of 25 software sales and marketing execs talk about Mobile on our fourth floor yesterday morning, I was struck by how quickly mobile seems to be gaining steam in our collective mindshare.  It’s the hot topic in media, at conferences, and several of our clients – we have been part of some successful mobile website launches in recent weeks.  This blog post is more about highlighting 3 client mobile websites (hence the blog post title above) and I highly encourage you to pull these up on your mobile device which should automatically detect the mobile version of Banfield.net, touch.wacom.com, moonit.com.

For B2B companies like eROI, our mobile web analytics show that mobile web users on our site almost entirely use it for knowing how to get to our office – ContactUs page, however for the 3 mobile sites below, users are drawn into 3 or 4 distinct areas that are easy to find product information (Wacom), or quickly search a database of the closest pet hospital (Banfield), or interact with a web application through mobile version of Facebook Connect (Moonit).  Please check out these 3 creative examples below:

www.banfield.net/mobile

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I had a business mentor ask me yesterday several philosophical questions about the company (eROI) and I was going to use a little stream of consciousness to jot down some thoughts and ideas to start to answer one of his questions – Why.  Why does eROI exist? Why are we doing what we do at eROI?

So, here are some of my rough thoughts:

• Make marketers even better. Partnering with our clients, we come up with the creative idea, the strategy, the implementation, and the software tools to take a company’s digital marketing program to the next level.
• Obviously, the above could use better wording – remember these are rough thoughts. Make marketers better or Empower marketers or something else entirely? It should be something that clearly articulates who are client is and an aspirational goal that we can collectively reach with our client.
• Keywords: Make marketers better, creative, software, digital marketing
• When I founded the company in Nov’02, we started as a full-service email marketing company (software and services), then through online campaigns, added web design and development, and now there are so many marketing channels within digital marketing – it would take a paragraph to list them all out – email marketing, search engine marketing, web design and development, e-commerce, event registration, social media integration, mobile website, application development for web, mobile, building online communities, blog design and development, and then getting specific within each category with iPhone apps, Facebook apps, and the list continues.

Pyramid (in priority order below)

Our clients: marketers

Our employees: creative, innovative, awesome culture, makes life so much better when you have a team like we have that acts like a team and treats each other like family.

Our company: sustainable growth (revenue and profit) to keep doing what we love doing for the long-term.

So, why am I even jotting all these ideas down? A bunch of reasons: it re-affirms what I’m passionate about and helps me put a framework around where we are now.  Next step is to keep a completely open mind as I get input from the team.

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:

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.

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.

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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.

Check out the finished site »

“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

Download the Case Study

I am doing this blog post
so Hannah’s post below
doesn’t get as much attention.

Today is a good day
New client project kickoffs and
Online software innovation goodness

Better yet, a sun break appears
and Old Town Portland
is a beacon of light again.

Everyone should feel special on their birthday.  In my family that sense of happiness came with a slight sense of humiliation.  Whether it was a sombrero at Who Song and Larry’s or the story of your birth being recounted to your closest friends, birthdays were a roller coaster of emotions.

Being the giver that I am, I was sure to pass on my family traditions to my eROI family.  Thus began the institution of the birthday email.  Even though every employee is guaranteed to get a card late, I made sure that these mild affronts showed up right on time.

Below are a few of the highlights throughout the year.  I hope I don’t lose friends over this.

Our fearless leader in a stylish ’stache.  Click here for the real thing.

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