eROI Days Email Agency

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 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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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.

“Woman Sues Toyota Over ‘Terrifying’ Prank” was the ABC News headline that caught the eye of one of eROI’s developers and the article quickly circulated around the office.  The article stated that Amber Duick was suing Toyota for $10 million over emails that supposedly made her believe that she was being stalked.  The campaign in question was for Toyota’s Matrix car.  The emails, intended for “men under 35 who hate advertising,” was a series of emails “from” a fictitious English man on the run from cops claiming to need to stay at the recipients house.  Saatchi & Saatchi, the agency responsible for the ads, even created a fake MySpace page for the fugitive.  The campaign was well executed, funny, creative and buzz worthy and the lawsuit only adds to the hype around the emails.

It seems there are a couple things that don’t line up with the lawsuit.  First of all, the lawyers who represent Toyota asserted that there was a confirmed opt-in process that Duick admitted that she committed to at the initial outset of the series of Toyota campaign emails that she received.   The article didn’t mention whether or not there was an unsubscribe link and physical address in each email (CAN-Spam compliance), as Toyota  and Saatchi & Saatchi may have taken the position that those elements in the email would have detracted from the authenticity of this fake campaign (not sure I’ve ever written “authenticity and fake” in the same sentence where it actually kind of made sense).

If there was an easy opt-out on each and every email, which would make you think either this is the most privacy concerned criminal ever encountered, then there isn’t even a glimmer of hope that Duick could win her case.  As is, Toyota has an overwhelmingly solid legal argument based on her written consent in opt-in.

What could have been done differently?

Obviously a neurotic Los Angeles woman wasn’t their target audience, so how could she have been engaged while not being “terrified?”  List segmentation could have been used to “check in” on consumers not fitting the targeted demographic.  Toyota could have even segmented women from men and had an extra question or check in to make sure their campaign would be received with the appropriate response.  Another idea would be to just make the product a little more blatantly obvious so you know you are interacting with a brand but you are still having fun.  Finding a balance between really creative and fun with responsible marketing is key.

I was forwarded a link to a site that engages the user through Facebook Connect.  It had a total video game vibe and my curiosity got the best of me. There was a sense of doom from the beginning.  A New York City cab flipped on it’s side, men with guns and – wait – my face?  Flash forward to predictions of my kids deaths and pictures of them overtaken by worms, it was an experience that fascinated me and creeped me out at the same time.

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To the blog that brought you the Crispin video on interns (probably after you had seen it a couple times – sorry I was a little late to the game on that one), NOW I show you a local agency – little shop called Wieden+Kennedy and a different kind of culture / humor w/ their 12 program of interns.

If you have little kids around your computer, like I do right now, you might want to watch the frequent, casual F bombs used in the video, albeit educational.

When I first started writing for this blog, it was called “Email Days” and featured lots of examples of everyday emails, highlighting the importance of email in our every day lives, not just touting email marketing only.  So, I thought I’d go back to my roots a little bit and tell you about an email a friend sent me last night.  He is an avid cyclist and knows I like cycling as well, despite the fact that we both mainly commute to work by bike and don’t get to do long rides very often as our weekends are consumed with raising young kids and different kinds of activities then biking.  He sent a link to the video below, which is filmed in Portland, Oregon, and really captures the humor of two different types of cyclists – hipsters vs performance.  This is one of the funnier videos I’ve seen in a while and is very close to home, literally and figuratively.  Enjoy.

The YouTube video from Crispin interns has been circulating through agency e-zines and word-of-mouth email for the past week or more.

It made me think about the wacky stuff that free labor at other large agencies come up with and here’s what I found off of a Google Search:

Crap – I searched and looked at dozens of intern videos with no sound or no humor. Maybe Crispin nailed this better than I thought. There is opportunity for other interns to take their spin on it. This also proves that online video still needs a lot of content – there is very little out there and much much smaller amount of quality.

As for interns at eROI, we love ‘em.  Not sure I want to task any of them with spending 100’s of hours putting together a rap video.  Your thoughts?

Next post…wrapping paper gone wild experiment in the office (video and pics to follow)…

Dawn Foster just sent out an awesome Flickr slideshow done by Aaron Hockley. I’ll figure out the iframe work-around to get the embedded slideshow working correctly when I get into the office tomorrow. As I was sitting next to fellow current, current, and former eROI teammates Dylan, Summer, and Garrett, I couldn’t help but commenting on all of the things that Portland creativity, informality, and general vibe offer that you simply can’t find anywhere else. For example: I would never see a toddler or infant at a late-night business event on the East Coast where “ear muffs” are needed in many of the presentations. I doubt other cities have women crescendo into near-real orgasms over vegetables during a presentation. So, to start off my twitter stream from the big Ignite6 night, I’ll pick the one that sums it all up – “What’s great about portland? So communal – techies bring kids to the event, casual, real, accepting, creative, inspiring.” Here’s the rest of my tweets:

# James keller on being a hooker in rugby. Great lessons, entertaining #ignite6

Eva – brilliant thinking

Authority – like librarians – its about what’s real

Anything happens at #ignite6 – veggies an aphrodisiac

Ice cold swim after sauna – shrinkage can be an issue #ignite6

Sauna cleanses you inside and out #ignite6

After intermission – sauna etiquette pres, #ignite6

# Kgw – lesson 1 – be careful who you call a hipster. Epic fail. At #ignite4
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I came across a New York Times article the other day that told the story of Howcast.com.  The site features how-to videos done by the  Howcast team, aspiring film makers and average YouTube video users.  Video isn’t exactly new to the internet but their unique brand of specific short how-to’s on topics such as “How to Survive a Bear Attack”, “How to Look Great in Photographs” and, yes, “How to use Twitter” create a new niche in the video market.

Howcast has had solid success with clients who are primarily in the Business to Consumer market.  They know it takes more than their own site to create an internet destination and have been smart enough to quickly sign “deals with the likes of Google, Facebook and Hulu to spread their videos across the Internet.”  They have integrated sharing through Facebook and you have the options to copy and customize embedded code similar to YouTube.  Ads have also been added to some videos and there is talk of making products pertaining to certain videos available for sale.

At this point Howcast.com is a fun and informative resource and could potentially have B to B clout.  For the tech and software world, it’d be cool to experiment with emerging products in this forum but expecting big results at this point is a little premature.

Read the rest of the NY Times article »

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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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.

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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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.

Some guys will just have more talent than I will ever have.  This guy is absolutely amazing.  It has nothing to do with online marketing but everything to do with inspiration.  It keeps getting better throughout the video.  Write your comment in haiku if you feel inspired.