eROI Days Email Agency

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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eROI employees live by the work hard – play hard motto and Halloween always presents a great opportunity to balance out the work.  This year one of our employees took it upon herself to throw a bash and invite the gang.  With Halloween a week away the invitations have been sent out and the tone has been set for this once a year event.  Kelsey and her team came up with an amazing email that translated into a one of a kind event using eROI Event’s custom-theme capabilities.  One of our designers, Stephen, created a zombie cool invite complete with his signature hash-tags (you would know why I say signature if you follow him on Twitter).

One of our Web Developers, Christine, busted out the production on both the email and the event.  The result is a Halloween art piece brought to life.

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

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I don’t know about you, but I love to moon the people in my life.  No, I’m not talking 8 year old boy humor here I’m talking the new site we launched, Moonit.

It’s a place where you can evaluate and track your relationships, get advice on things happening in your life and catch up on celebrity gossip, all while Mooning your friends.  Really “Mooning” is checking your compatibility but that doesn’t sound nearly as fun.  We are so excited to see this dream become a reality.  For me, an internal brainstorming session for Moonit was the very first meeting at eROI I ever attended.  I feel an attachment to Moonit, I wonder if I put in the site’s launch date and my birth date if we would be compatible…

Beyond my fondness for the site, Moonit has been getting really positive reviews.  They had the honor of being a part of the TechCrunch50, in what felt like minutes after the launch, allowing them to showcase the site and even bribe a security guard to allow them access to a special room in exchange for figuring out his “crazy love life.”

The site is fun, easy to use and is a perfect compliment to your social media life (you can even use facebook connect.)  If nothing else, at least you can moon your boss.

Moonit Press:

The Moonit Blog»

Read the blogher Article»

Moonit on Forbes.com»

“Friend or boyfriend” in the examiner.com»

Something that we preach at eROI is to TEST TEST TEST.  We believe that testing should be an integral part of every email marketing campaign.  Our latest free guide gives you instructions on how to test, what to test and how to measure success.  We have given advice on what metrics you should be wary of and which ones are more solid, for example, your read rate may be leading you on.  Basically, what we are trying to get across is that testing helps to take out the guess work.  This is a great resource for anyone getting ready for, or in the process of, an email marketing campaign.

“Even with all the numbers and ideas that fly around during the process, testing can be fun! Not just because it eliminates guesswork and settles arguments, but because of the surprises waiting around every corner. This bevy of information and direction is what proves the value of testing again and again.”

DOWNLOAD THE FREE GUIDE »

We are only two days away from the Old Town Block Party and the entire neighborhood is buzzing with anticipation.  As I mentioned in my last Block Party post, this was born out of a brainstorming session at eROI and now has grown into an event with over 20 booths, a record release party, Seven Planet store opening and a rummage sale just to name a few happenings.  The eROI lounge will be by the exit on 5th, between Couch and Davis.  Come down and say hi to us and all the other Old Town businesses.  I can’t think of a better way to spend a Portland Saturday then with food, drinks, shopping and a lot of music.  Let’s celebrate our community and help re-erect the Hung Far Low Sign!

Check out the Old Town Block Party»

Donate to help re-erect Hung Far Low»

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.