eROI decided to find out by conducting a study of over 500 marketers to see what their current attitudes were towards mobile marketing and social media trends.

Get a brief on our study from ClickZ

Our study was geared towards learning:

• The interest in mobile marketing to marketers, if any.
• The importance of mobile marketing and social media to the marketer.
• How the marketer is integrating the media and how much research is being done to optimize it.

The study was successful and informative if not a bit surprising. If 91% of the US population uses a mobile device, what are the marketers really doing to access those consumers? Get the full study here…

Our task was to put that brand creativity to work and drive up holiday sales.

Our challenge was to make the Icebreaker brand stand out against the barrage of holiday emails coming from every other retailer.

While the creative grabbed the attention of the viewer, the content kept people clicking and purchasing.

Using a total of 11 emails, the campaign helped to substantially increase the holiday sales of 2009 from the previous year.

Strategies we used in the 2009 Icebreaker holiday campaign included:

• Increased frequency of sends (2-3 per week)
• A/B Testing – offers and copy
• Free shipping offers
• Product bundles
• and more…

See the emails and stats from the campaign»

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.

Here are a few examples of holiday emails eROI has done in the past.

Are You Ready For The 18 Phases Of Christmas?

“If you haven’t begun planning your holiday campaigns, then you’re already behind. The first salvo of holiday email marketing has already been fired, with 8% of major online retailers having already mentioned the holidays in their email campaigns. While most of those were running “Christmas in July” campaigns, a few were just getting in early references to be top of mind later in the season. August is traditionally a non-event for holiday marketing, but September will mark the beginning of a continued effort to win holiday sales that will continue into January…”

Read the rest of the MediaPost article here »

In our last study, Use of Analytics in Email Marketing Campaigns, we showed email marketers how important metrics are in making decisions and proving campaign ROI. One major opportunity to improve metrics and strengthen brand positioning with potential customers is to optimize email campaigns through consistent, careful testing. So, in our newest study, we show how 623 email marketers are currently using, or not using, testing to improve their email marketing efforts. One of the key takeaways of this study is that 4 out of 10 marketers are not testing campaigns – but why aren’t they? And for those that are testing, what elements are being tested and what can we learn from them?

Some stats from this study at a glance:
• 37% aren’t testing
• Of marketers that don’t test their email campaigns, 33% say it’s because they do not know how
• 27% say they don’t have time
• 13% say their platform doesn’t have testing capabilities
• For those that are testing, they are testing a wide variety of elements including design, frequency, calls to action and day/time sent. Our survey shows this breakdown for email content testing: 85.2% test subject lines, 54.8% test calls to action, 50.9% test designs, 49.1% test copy, 41.7% test offers, 36% test timing of campaigns.
• The survey showed that 36% of marketers are testing timing, which includes day of week, time of day, and frequency. Although history shows that results on the most successful time and day are constantly changing, here’s the latest trends:
• Time of Day – 37.86% of marketers testing timing are testing time of day. Of those, 49.4% currently find sending mid-day (10am-2pm) to be best, while start of the business day (6AM – 10AM) showed to be second best at 31.5%
• Tuesday ranks as the most successful day, followed closely by Wednesday.

Let us know what kind of insights you get from the new eROI Study Report -

Use of Testing in Email Marketing!

Even online, where it’s easiest for email marketers to track the path of subscribers, we’re not getting credit for much of the action that our messages drive. That’s because 33% of permission-based email recipients say they usually visit sites directly, instead of clicking on an email link, according to Epsilon. This means conversions may be undercounted by 50%.

Taking into consideration the action that email drives offline and directly to Web sites, email marketing’s ROI is probably closer to $130 — about three times the DMA’s estimate. And that’s clearly ignoring email’s ability to drive interest and actions in other channels like catalogs and social networks.

Email Marketing’s ROI Probably Closer To $130 Than $43.52
By Chad White

Read the rest of the MediaPost article »

“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

• 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.

• @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.

• @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