eROI Days Email Agency

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.

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, 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

Many companies have treated email as the “red-headed stepchild” of the online world, but as money gets tight and targeting become more important, “rock star” becomes a more appropriate term for the direct marketing technique.  Natalie Zmuda’s article, How E-mail Became a Direct-Marketing Rock Star in Recession, shows that not only are businesses talking about beefing up their email, they’re actually allocating a budget for it.  Because of the relatively low cost of using this form of marketing during a recession, email has been looked upon with new eyes.  While other forms of marketing have flourished in the past, the interactive nature and sustainability of email has proven most effective.  One of the most important aspects of a strategic email campaign is that it is trackable.  In Zmuda’s article, Zappos.com mentions that segmentation will be a big part of their strategy moving forward.  By looking at the data from their previous “mass mailing” technique they can start to identify what to send and to whom to send it to.  A case study recently done by eROI lays out the importance of this and using the full potential of the data that is driven from email campaigns.  Below is an excerpt from the Advertising Age article.

E-mail has emerged as a recession darling, as retailers look to proven programs that are cost-effective and results-oriented. That’s led to increasing investment in technologies that better target customers and serve up more enticing messages.

“The economy has energized this channel,” said Ryan Deutsch, VP-strategic services and market development at StrongMail. “It’s become the rock star of direct marketing in a lot of these retail organizations because it’s the most cost-effective and most trackable.”

Read the entire article »

I know, I’m a marketer, and I like visual things, which is why I always wondered why Twitter was so spartan with its notification emails.  Below are a couple screen-shots of the types of email I’ve been getting from Twitter since 10am this morning.  They used to be so transactional, bussiness-like, and dreadfully boring.  Now, Twitter has elevated its brand massively through a wildly effective push-medium like email.  The below emails really pop of the page instead of being completely forgettable.  This is all the more important considering folks like me almost never go to twitter.com - instead, I always use Tweetdeck or Twitterberry, therefore I almost never interact with the Twitter brand in an environment that Twitter controls.  So, long story short, I’m in love with their decision to go with HTML email notifications. Such a tiny little thing makes a HUGE difference to many of us.  Take a peek:

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This morning’s article on eMarketer, “Marketers Moving to Digital Media” had some really encouraging and powerful data in it. For all of us in the interactive agency and email marketing industry, this is great news that validates our gut instinct that we’ve been seeing anecdotally. The article begins:

“Looking for an upside. In the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories. In most cases, that means online.

Although the name of the organization might imply a slight bias, in a survey by the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), 81% of respondents said they plan to invest at least as much in digital marketing in 2009 as in the previous year.

More than 77% of traditional advertising agencies are increasing the amount of digital in their budgets by 1% to 29%. And over 10% are upping online budgets by 30% or more.

I recently wrote an article for iMedia Connection titled “11 Email Design Best Practices” and thought I’d share it with you if you hadn’t already checked it out.  It starts like this:

Remember the last great offer you didn’t see? The savvy email marketer knows that you catch more conversions with honey than you do with vinegar, so make sure your email design is sweet!

If you’re starting a new email marketing program, or looking for an edge to take your email campaigns to the next level, consider these ideas for designing emails that get your compelling offer noticed. These tips and tricks will start you off right, and even help experienced email marketers amp-up existing campaigns, turning precise communication into profits and visibility.

1. Before you start
Prior to constructing your email, make sure that your message is clear and concise. Develop and refine what you want to say so that readers don’t lose interest or get confused about what your call-to-action is. What is your offer? How will reading and clicking through this email help the reader? Make sure they know what’s in it for them. Before and during the building process, continually ask yourself, “What would I think if I got this in my inbox? Would I immediately delete it? Or worse, report it as spam?” Rule No. 1 — don’t be spam.

Even the most compelling message can be rendered ineffective if it’s presented in an undesirable way to your readers. During this process you may encounter many challenges and obstacles. Your design team may want to create something striking and beautiful, but your audience may not want it. At the same time, don’t throw readers for a loop with a design that is off-brand. Your email design should be able to flow well with the look of your website as well as any pieces collateral offered. Consistency is good. Also, design the email around your readers by responding to their personality. Are they tech savvy? Parents? Students?

Check out the rest of the iMedia Connection article here >>

Marketers: know this - doing things the same old traditional way that you’ve always done it is not going to work anymore.

We, as marketers, need to innovate. We need to take a risk with our methods, our message, our mediums, our transparency, and our openness to listen to customers.  We need to take a risk with new products, software development, feature roll-outs, user-interface design, cutting edge design, and pushing our brand to mean something in today’s world.

We meet with clients regularly who have almost waited until its too late to dramatically improve their results on increasing the number and quality of leads captured, nurture campaigns, resource centers, the works.

Start small - celebrate your wins even if it is something less than a website launch.  At eROI, I am really psyched about a landing page we rolled out that is compelling and has a much higher conversion rate than we’ve ever had for our own marketing purposes - tell me what you think.

http://www.eroi.com/eroi-email-marketing-study-7-elements-of-email-survey-results-report/

According to a new study published today by eMarketer, “57% of consumers had a more positive impression of companies they had purchased from when they received e-mail from them—and 40% said such e-mail made a future purchase from the company more likely.”

Read the full eMarketer article here on some surprising take-aways on the effectiveness of email marketing >>

My respected co-worker, email expert, and The Email Wars star blogger, Dylan Boyd, has made some excellent points about the Obama camp’s blown opportunity in VP Candidate Joe Biden’s email outreach with the subject line “Hello” in today’s blog post: http://theemailwars.com/2008/08/25/errr-hello-top-subject-line-ever/.  However, I challenge Dylan to tell me that he is truly “jaded” by the pure effectiveness of the Obama email program. 

I’d love to get Dylan’s response to Michele Obama’s email this evening with the subject line “Behind the scenes in Denver”.  The content of the email hit the mark - it was real, genuine, her voice, intelligent.  The timing perfect: she delivered a kick ass speech at the Democratic National Convention just 3 hours after her email hit my inbox.  The call to action was compelling, obvious, focused, and had intrigue and mystery built into it.  I want to see what’s going on behind the scenes in this historic presidential race.  Don’t you?

So, before you all get jaded from one mis-step out of 207 emails, get inspired by the good stuff.  To me, the Obama campaign displays Email Intelligence.  And, unlike his opponent, he can actually use the medium. Tell me what you think in your comments on this post.  Subscribe to this Blog in the upper right.

If you want to check out the content of Michelle’s email, read more here >> (more…)

You will be inspired. The new look to this fascinatingly fascinating blog will be far far better than the little screenshot below. Prepare to be utterly floored by this weekend. No pressure to the awesome developer (rockstar Mrs. Gunter) and designer (nicely done Mr. Calvert).

I almost forgot — this blog will transition over the next month or so to having everyone subscribe to eroidays.com, no longer emaildays.com (same content, just a more accurate name):

The company eROI didn’t get married, but two amazing people (Chris and Tatom Masagatani) tied the knot on a Ranch outside of a tiny town called Dayton in Central Washington. Half the company was present and had a blast. Truly, the pictures and videos in the slideshow below say it all. Both families are super genuine and made the event an unbelievably special occasion:

Ever since we moved into the Technology & Arts Building on 505 NW Couch Street, we’ve loved it - it’s in the heart of Oldtown / Chinatown and 1 block from downtown. It has the coolest, hipest retail (Compound), favorite indie coffee place in town (Backspace), best Steak & Cheese sandwiches (Ford’s Cafe), killer drinks and ambience (Someday Lounge), and coming soon - the first and only upscale business lunch spot in the entire neighborhood (Davis Street Tavern).

However, this blog post isn’t about all the killer stuff currently in our building. It’s about the development happening across the street in the full city block parking lot that’s about to become the hotspot in town for upscale grocery shopping (Japanese + Chinese), retail, farmer’s market, and all kinds of other goodness. Check out this recent Portland Tribune article talking all about it!

It’s not totally a done deal, but it’s looking good. Ain’t life grand.

If you didn’t catch our email yesterday and you attended or participated in the big eROI fashion party called FIVE a couple weeks ago, here it is below. Also, we have new video to show you.

The new eROI party video - check it out to see if you are in the video:

Full disclosure, eROI did the design for this CBSSports.com Fantasy Football and Fantasy Baseball newsletter signup email. One pleasant surprise is how well this email performed both before its launch in eye-tracking testing and in the number of newsletter signups it drove in the actual campaign.

What are your thougths on the above email design? Please comment.