Archive for the ‘Online Marketing Events’ Category

Building Your Brand By Building Community

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

The eROI presenters, Dylan Boyd, Alex Williams, and I, have traveled all over the country to give presentations on various topics from Building Community Online to The Value of a Welcome Email Program to New Trends in Measuring the Success of your Online Marketing & Social Media Efforts. This blog post is an overload of resource material for 3 great presentations - enjoy!

Online Event Registration Just Got Sexier

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

This year’s theme for our company appreciation party was put to a vote.  After the votes were tallied the theme was shrouded in mystery until a team email was sent with the reveal in true eROI Rock star fashion.  This year it was fated to be… Summer White Party!  Using our new eROI Event system we created a totally themed event that the email linked to.  Check out the process for creating The eROI Summer White Party.

front-sideThe finished product, see how it was done below.

dashboard

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No Guts, No Glory

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

The Portland Creative Community took some bold steps with its launch of the Portland Ad Federation Rosey Awards website themed “Nothing Says I’m Better than you Like a Rosey.”  The messaging has an East Coast directness to it that takes many Portlanders by surprise in a city that fosters friendliness to strangers, foes, and friends.  However, I think it’s the perfect time for Portland to step up and talk with confidence about its creative talent here.  Yes, we’ve recently been discovered by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications as the destination for hipsters (employed and unemployed) to hang out.  But, we aren’t getting much positive press for having the second highest unemployment in the country.  Now is the right time to shout from the roof-tops that Portland creative agencies do kick-ass work! Kudos to Anthill Marketing for the concept, design, and messaging in the site and entire Roseys this year!

2009 PAF Rosey Awards site

2009 PAF Rosey Awards site

I’m not so sure this site would work in most other industries as it is definitely edgy, controversial, and provocative, but I think it’s a shot in the arm that Portland needs.  The true test is to see if agencies from other cities take notice.  Then, an interesting dialog will begin.

You’ll start to see this campaign promoted more on Twitter (I love the “Rosey Smack Feed” section of the ‘Win Tix’ part of the site), Facebook, and other blogs in the upcoming months.  I’ve got to sign off from this blog post to think of some good Smack Talk myself - submit your own here >>

Ignite NYC - creative vibe to NYC tech scene

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

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.

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Online Marketing Summit - Coming to a City Near You

Monday, May 18th, 2009

I’ve attended hundreds of marketing conferences over the years, and spoken at a few, but this one was pretty unique in that the speakers and content were the best of the best from all over the country on leading topics such as email marketing, search marketing, and social media. But more importantly, Online Marketing Summit delivered in making a lot of personal connections primarily through its founder, Aaron Kahlow, who ran an online marketing agency for years and understands the subject material inherently and the crazy breed of people known as online marketers.   Here are my tweets from Aaron’s opening session at the Washington DC OMS on May 14:

  • Aaron doing a great job getting audience out of their shells at #oms
  • Tip to event organizers - learn from aaron - institute the “boo” rule. It liberates the crowd.
  • Aaron opening - marketing in a recession. Fear will cripple your decision-making
  • management is all about cya, no future vision to give marketing any resources at all.
  • Overall mktg budget wacked, but bigger piece of the pie going online #oms
  • 100 percent of people prefer to communicate online
  • Pillar 1 is search. Pillar 2 is email marketing. Pillar 3 is analytics. Across all pillars is social media
  • @aaronkahlow - guessing on aaron’s handle - what % people here at #oms will tweet immediately vs email a couple days later from your biz card
  • Email is like yesterday’s fax. Even facebook uses email to pull you back into the online community
  • Need to customize web analytics reports to align with business goals #oms

I highly recommend you attend another OMS - there’s also a good chance you will see eROI folks like Dylan Boyd, Alex Williams, or me speak at some of the upcoming cities - Chicago, Austin, Denver, Minneapolis, San Fran, Portland, Seattle - there are others as well - check it out here >>.  I will try to dig up where my presentation from this event is posted - stay tuned.

School is in Session with Joel Book

Friday, May 15th, 2009

At OMS Joel Book, Director of eMarketing Education at ExactTarget, had some solid ideas about how to make sure the right message got to the right people.  He showed success stories of ET clients that used past consumer behavior to deliver extremely targeted marketing with positive results.  Here are my tweets from Joel’s presentation:

  • @joelbook - speaking now at #oms. 33 years as direct marketing - called out @djwaldow in a friendly way
  • Email has become the ultimate social medium
  • 34 different marketing channels. We have created an ADD world, now we have to live with it
  • The sales cycle has become 22% longer because resources tight
  • Retention is the new acquisition #oms
  • “The medium is the message” is like hearing at a wedding “love is patient, love is kind” - predictably used at every conf
  • Newest dma study shows $45 roi for email marketing which is highest of all channels
  • This aft, Need to make my pres interactive. Ask real questions and get user gen answers from audience
  • Home depot is using dynamic couponing based on past buying behavior
  • J+m uses brwsing history thru omniture to infer your preferences. Very cool #oms
  • Question from #oms about where to put images for email campaigns, we have used amazon s3 or bitgravity in cloud.
  • Question at #oms about affordable platforms - google analytics great first step before omniture
  • Old-school phrase - OH: here’s a dandy way to do that
  • @joelbook - nice pres. You know your stuff.

DJ Waldow Talks about the Perfect Email

Friday, May 15th, 2009

DJ Waldow, Director of Best Practices and Deliverability at Bronto, spoke at OMS about the perfect email in a recession.  Read my tweets from DJ’s presentation:

  • @djwaldow starts his #oms presentation with his twitter police mug shot
  • Recession proof email marketing - adage did article on same topic
  • Relevancy is key. Batch and blast. Spray and pray.
  • Forrester said in 2008 that email marketers - only 15% - concerned about recession
  • Send timely, targeted, relevant emails to subscribers who ask for them
  • Perfect email is like the perfect meal. Timely. Relevant. Engaging.
  • @djwaldow - good example of sierra trading post email - but do they consciously make their email design less polished compared to rei
  • @djwaldow shares @returnpath email campaign example of doing all elements of email right - subject, call to action, reminders

Will eROI take PAF Battle of the Bands for 3rd Straight Year?

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Alcoa presents (sorry, that’s the beginning of a TV commercial of “The Catch” in the 1982 NFL NFC Championship flashback when Dwight Clark levitated to grab a perfect pass from Joe Montana to lift the 49ers over the Cowboys). But, I digress. My mind faded to the dramatic music to Monday Night Football, but it’s now back on the prize - bragging rights to the Third Annual PAF Battle of the Bands at Someday Lounge in Old Town / Chinatown, Portland, Oregon where the creatives show their true colors after dark.  If you want to take a look at videos from prior year’s Battle of the Band, now is your time to really soak in some entertaining video for 2008.  It’s going to be almost impossible for eROI to win it for yet a third year in a row, but we’re going to bring our “A” Game.  Check it (this is PAF’s main event email and all the info is below):

BATTLE OF THE BANDS

DATE:
Wednesday June 17, 2009

TIME:
6:00 pm

PLACE:
Someday Lounge
224 NW 5th Avenue
Portland, OR

COST:
$300 per band

Register your Band!
Contact Mike Terry at mterry@magnetoworks.com

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Ziba Founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, Inspires in Portland

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Here is my twitter stream from this morning’s Portland Business Journal Power Breakfast event where Ziba Founder, Sohrab Vossoughi, inspired me from a creative and entrepreneurial standpoint.  Sorry for the upside down notes, but you’ve got to start at the bottom and read up:

  1. Craft culture is mostly anti-Big which is why #portland has few fortune 500 companies here

  2. Sohrab - branding portland - it has a craft culture. About the work, unpretentious, very real, natural

  3. Tribal love - costco - amazing brand. costco members and employees love that brand. Costco does not care about wall st, but main st

  4. Starbucks is trying to capture its dna that is there but they’ve lost their way. Now, more about efficiency and profit, not the experience

  5. You need to create love with your consumers. All touchpoints need to fully connect with specific target market

  6. Ziba has evolved from product design company to customer experience firm

  7. Sohrab - design thinking is all about making the complex clear

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Portland Software Businesses: Small, Furry Mammals?

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Kevin Tate, a buddy of mine, had an awesome analogy featured on the front page of the Oregonian today in the article “Tech entrepreneurs defy recession” by Mike Rogoway.  Here’s the excerpt from the article with Kevin’s quote that really got me thinking from a different mindset:

“Portland fosters the creation of small, furry mammals rather than dinosaurs — the really big things,” said Kevin Tate, 35, CEO of StepChange Group, a social media advertising and marketing specialist in the Pearl District. The “dinosaur” model of big corporate campuses and regimented software development (think Microsoft — or even Google) is going by the wayside, Tate said, in favor of more informal and collaborative arrangements. Portland’s current high-tech foment positions the state well to capitalize when the recession ends, provided its technology entrepreneurs have the appetite to take it on.  “What happens when things start coming back?” Tate asked. “Will the small, furry mammals evolve?”

Nearly 9 years ago, 7 mainly tech start-up entrepreneurs co-founded a group called Starve Ups.  We all survived the dot com implosion, but were influenced by really wanting to scale our companies for growth.  Some Starve Ups companies have grown a little faster than others, but many contain a desire to do something world-changing with our companies through software, social good, amazing company culture or all of the above.  I really like Kevin’s quote because it is accurate and represents a strong contingent in Portland’s software community, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that our dream is to do something bigger and be more like a lion than a forgettable Chihuahua.  So, how do we get there? Lack of capital is usually at the top of the list, but our biggest limitation is our mindset. Let’s grow game-changing, sustainable software businesses in Portland and tout Portland’s livability and balance as a BONUS, not a detriment to growth.

Comment below with your ideas of a more representative furry mammal for Portland.

Flashback 2 years ago: eROI Idol

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

I love that YouTube videos are timeless and all of us can re-live ridiculous moments years later. At eROI, we have dozens and dozens of those moments captured over the past many years on the eROI YouTube channel here >>. So, why am I doing a Flashback blog post? Yesterday, I had a client meeting with my friend James Adair and the typical client meeting turned into something so much better after watching the below video on our big screen. The second video is of distinguished Portland PR specialist, JulieAnna Little Giannini. She was the winner at eROI Idol, so it was only appropriate to include her video as well.

Obama’s Rahaf Harfoush Rocks Keynote Speech at Innotech

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

The unsung hero behind an amazing integrated, grassroots campaign of traditional marketing, in-person events, and social media (well, she was mainly the social media part) gave a great keynote speech at the eMarketing Summit of Innotech today.  Rahaf Harfoush was great.  I show my twitter stream below of notes from the event, but also noticed she just launched a new site and blog - http://www.rahafharfoush.com/

Here is my twitter stream from Rahaf Harfoush’s awesome keynote speech at Innotech:

Very progressive. We can’t go backwards now to restrict all info to public.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Impossible to replicate. It was the perfect storm.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Grant park had 1 million deliriously happy people. Thx for great presentation @rahafharfoushabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

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Portland’s own Renny Gleeson speaks at TED

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

“Let’s make technology that makes us more human, not less human.”

SXSW: Your Eyes are Getting Very Heavy….

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

While I was at SXSW this year, I attended a session that focused on techniques to improve PowerPoint presentations called Presenting Straight to the Brain. I was immediately interested because presentations are a way of life in the agency world. Okay – I also might have been a little interested to see if the panel were giving any tips for mind control that I could use to help in that next big presentation. Though I may have been a little disappointed on the lack of ‘How to Be a Benevolent Svengali’ content, I did walk away with some interesting insight and reminders of how our noodles work.

If you only have time to read to this point- here’s your Twitter take-away. Great presentations add a dash of caveman thinking.

The point being is that we all still essentially think, react and remember more like Fred and Barney than the evolved post-millennial beings we all think we are. Our mind battles with our brain, constantly sending signals to process thoughts, remember information and control our reactions. In the end, our brain typically wins the fight. We are programmed to be at our peak level of awareness when we perceive a threat or when a situation evokes a strong emotion. It’s fight or flight.
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SXSW: How to Create a Great Company Culture

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

I was fortunate enough to attend SXSWi in Austin for 5 inspiring days with a number of my colleagues. Out of the many engaging panels I attended I really enjoyed the core conversation session: How to Create a Great Company Culture. Sam Decker (BazaarVoice) and Jason Black (Boundless Network) were the presenters and shared their opinions and advice around their own company cultural experiences.

Jason Black at SXSW from Diverge Communications on Vimeo.

It is one thing to preach culture and another to resonate it. I believe that these two are the real deal and truly do take the time to understand and value the importance of their own company culture. One of the first things Black said that rang true is that investors look at spreadsheets, while he looks at the lines around the numbers. The lines are the culture and you need them in place to make the numbers work. I could not agree more with this analogy. Here are a few other key pieces to creating a great company culture that Decker and Black shared with us:

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