eROI Days Email Agency

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 »

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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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 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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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»

Publicis just got a little bigger as it outbid the other agency conglomerates to take Razorfish off Microsoft’s hands for a mere $530 million.  I haven’t had a chance to ask any longtime Razorfish employees how they feel about being traded as frequently as a baseball card, but I can’t imagine that it fosters a lot of loyalty to the company. Microsoft bought Razorfish’s parent company, aQuantive, for $6 billion or 10x revenue just 2 years ago, and is now shedding the business units it doesn’t want (Razorfish) for 1.4x revenue, which says a lot about software company valuations vs. agency valuations.

On reflection, I couldn’t be happier with the type of independent culture Portland agencies have.  Portland’s largest agency, Wieden + Kennedy, is the world’s largest completely independent agency and was named Global Agency of the Year last year – any coincidence that they best creative work comes from an independent agency?

Check out the full article here >>

A couple of days ago, we launched our brand new homepage and we are all psyched with the way it turned out.  As usual for creative agencies, we are our own toughest client, trying to please lots of detail-oriented, savvy decision-makers from every department and aspect of the company. However, we truly followed our own highly-collaborative process, and while it may have taken longer than we wanted to fit this project into all of our client work as well, we were extremely happy with the end result. The user-centered design includes an element of flash which was integrated seamlessly and our production team made everything work like a charm. 

One of the most noticeable new features was the integration of tabs on the page.  There are 10 tabs in all that help the user easily navigate what we offer along with content from each of our five blogs.  At eROI, we drink our own Koolaid when it comes to online marketing.  We have a clear call-out to sign up for our newsletter in the bottom section of our page, we invite people to become a fan of eROI on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or see our profile on Linkedin and even our most recent tweets are displayed to the right of the page.

Please give us feedback in the form of a haiku – tell us if you love our new homepage or you hate it or something in between, but please please do NOT be boring. thx.

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

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!

Heritage Hunt is the third website eROI has launched for Buchanan Partners, an East Coast based real estate development firm.  The site was created for their new commercial spaces along with plans for a residential counterpart, hence “The Place to Live and Work” tag line.  Early on, eROI was faced with the opportunity to develop a logo for Heritage Hunt because it was a brand new endeavor for the firm.  Elliot, the graphic designer, presented a few different treatments and with the suggestions from the client came up with a logo that presented Heritage Hunt’s professional and warm image effortlessly.  In the interest of making the real estate development the star of the website the inspiration for the design came from the architecture itself.  On the homepage the arch over the logo mimics the arch of the pictured building.  Also the inlays around the top of the building were stylized on the site to become the top navigation.  This approach created a cohesive design that transitioned flawlessly from one page to the next.  All these design elements set in a manageable WordPress format created the ideal site for Buchanan Partners.

Home Page

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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.

Visit the site at: http://www.meritageprop.com/

Home Page Before:

Home After:

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