Everyone should feel special on their birthday. In my family that sense of happiness came with a slight sense of humiliation. Whether it was a sombrero at Who Song and Larry’s or the story of your birth being recounted to your closest friends, birthdays were a roller coaster of emotions.
Being the giver that I am, I was sure to pass on my family traditions to my eROI family. Thus began the institution of the birthday email. Even though every employee is guaranteed to get a card late, I made sure that these mild affronts showed up right on time.
Below are a few of the highlights throughout the year. I hope I don’t lose friends over this.
The calm before the storm at #inc5000. Already connected with old friends and Inc magazine staff http://yfrog.com/0oqxmjj 5:56 PM Sep 23rd from Tweetie
One more photo from Gaylord resort in wash dc. Schwanky. http://yfrog.com/16vonyj 5:57 PM Sep 23rd from Tweetie
#inc5000 conf starting now. Largest attendance ever at 1,700 of us. Aggregate rev of $214 billion http://yfrog.com/0nxn1jj 6:14 AM Sep 24th from Tweetie
Something that we preach at eROI is to TEST TEST TEST. We believe that testing should be an integral part of every email marketing campaign. Our latest free guide gives you instructions on how to test, what to test and how to measure success. We have given advice on what metrics you should be wary of and which ones are more solid, for example, your read rate may be leading you on. Basically, what we are trying to get across is that testing helps to take out the guess work. This is a great resource for anyone getting ready for, or in the process of, an email marketing campaign.
“Even with all the numbers and ideas that fly around during the process, testing can be fun! Not just because it eliminates guesswork and settles arguments, but because of the surprises waiting around every corner. This bevy of information and direction is what proves the value of testing again and again.”
We are only two days away from the Old Town Block Party and the entire neighborhood is buzzing with anticipation. As I mentioned in my last Block Party post, this was born out of a brainstorming session at eROI and now has grown into an event with over 20 booths, a record release party, Seven Planet store opening and a rummage sale just to name a few happenings. The eROI lounge will be by the exit on 5th, between Couch and Davis. Come down and say hi to us and all the other Old Town businesses. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Portland Saturday then with food, drinks, shopping and a lot of music. Let’s celebrate our community and help re-erect the Hung Far Low Sign!
There is nothing like a little distance to make the heart grow fonder. The past 5 days, I’ve spent with my little family in a remote, rustic cabin in the forested Wallowa Mountains outside of Joseph, Oregon (6 hour drive from Portland). As with any vacation, it took a couple days to unwind, then it was pure bliss doing what I love doing – being outdoors nonstop, hiking, spending time with my family, and being undistracted by all the craziness in our technology-laden lives.
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.
The Software Association of Oregon (SAO) is launching a platform for peer discussion groups called the Leadership Exchange. Through an extensive survey of 300 tech professionals in the community, we heard loud and clear that people were looking for ways to grow professionally in their roles by connecting with peers.
With this in mind, I’m leading the Steering Committee for the CEO Leadership Exchange so if you are interested in joining the group which will meet once a month at different software/tech CEOs / GMs company conference rooms (or hopefully more creative places at some point) from around the Portland Metro area, please sign up online on SAO’s site or email me or DM me on Twitter (@ryanbuch). The point of these peer discussion groups is to gather in a relaxed atmosphere and share tough issues / challenges / burning questions with your peers knowing that it is fully confidential and info stays in the room only.
This model has been unbelievably successful for groups like Starve Ups (co-founded 9 years ago), EO, and SAO’s Startup Exchange has gained a lot of traction over the past year. Many of my peers through Starve Ups have become very close personal friends as well as business partners in other ventures. It took months and years to develop these close ties, but I’m optimistic that the CEO Leadership Exchange (for CEOs/GMs of Portland companies that have or expect to have $5m in annual revenue) will have that kind of valuable connecting power and peer learning over the upcoming months and years.
Read more below to find out about the other Leadership Exchange Groups that are all launching the week of Labor Day in less than 2 weeks!
On April 8th, we got the news that the legendary Hung Far Low Sign had been cleared to be brought back to its home in Chinatown. The challenge was to find the funds to do it. What ensued was an epic email strand of brainstorming throughout our team. The top of all of our lists (well, besides the “Naked Limbo Contest”) was our Marketing Coordinator’s idea to have a huge block party. I think he put it best with “yes, the answer to everything is a dance party.”
Here we are four months later in the final stages of a huge collaboration to introduce the first Old Town China Town Block Party. I’m so psyched that all the creative, delicious and just cool business in this area have all banned together to have fun for a great cause.
It’s that time of year again when Inc Magazine comes out with its list of the fastest growing, privately-held companies in the country. We are stoked to make the INC 500|5000 list for a third consecutive year – I get really reflective and nostalgic of how far we’ve come as a company – very proud of our team.
This year, we achieved #1,876. It’s hard to believe that we have grown 169.7% over the past 3 years. Actually, it’s not that much of a stretch – we’ve worked our asses off to do great work and push the ball forward. We were also awarded #30 in the Portland Metro Area, we share the list with others like EthicsPoint, R2C Group and even Papa Murphy’s International.
The top 10 ranged from advertising & marketing to logistics & transportation but the business who earned the crown was insurance. Miami’s Northern Capitol Insurance topped the list with 19,812.2% growth and $95 million in revenue. Their business model changed from one of accommodating a more narrow margin of well-off home buyers to one that was focused on managing risk for large groups of re-insurers. The foresight to change their path greatly helped them achieve the #1 company status. Another great example of working to the market was #3 Harley Stanfield. They used a model of sustainable housing and flexible ownership for the unstable housing market.
This September 24-25, I’ll be in Washington D.C. at the Inc. 5000 Conference – I know some friends of mine from Brass Media and Ethics Point will be there. How about you? Let me know if I’ll see you there. It’s my 3rd time going to this conference and get a ton of value from it every year. I highly recommend it.
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.
Now we may not be as blessed in the rap department as Crispin but that doesn’t mean we can’t wrap with the best of them. Andy, one of our designers, decided to go away to get married over the first weekend in August. Poor guy had no idea that with separation anxiety in full effect the eROI team banned together to give him his biggest wedding present yet, his own desk. The team wrapped everything – his functioning phone, his fancy tea maker, random cords on his desk and even the papers on his magnet board.
Andy’s reaction to his newly redesigned space was pretty priceless. Click through the slide show and watch the video below keeping in mind that in the beginning he is standing right in front of his desk and somehow fails to look at it while the rest of the design team is gawking at him in disbelief and anticipation.
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)…
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.
This past Monday the entire Account Department attended Portland Advertising Federation’s AE Bootcamp. Some of the best of the best of Portland’s advertising executive world (Peter Levitan, Phil Reilly, Jerry Ketel, Rebecca Armstrong, and Paige McCarthy) were brought together to share their wisdom, experience, and expectations on what is required to reach “Total AEness.” I thoroughly enjoyed each presentation and it was refreshing to have a PAF event topic that spoke directly to the accounts side of the agency.
In particular, I found Phil Reilly’s talk to be very interesting. He started off by posing the question, “how many of you have a difficult time dealing with your creatives?” There were many hands raised throughout the room but I was not surprised to see a that none of the ten eROI account executives had a hand in the air. I am proud to say this is something that we do not struggle with as an agency. This led me to ask the question “why?” (more…)
Dylan may participate in the Email Wars but I have been on the front line of the Dishes Wars for quite some time now. There was a heavy blow to my defense recently. The dishwasher, along with some of my resolve, broke last week. For a little while my post-it stating, “If you leave dishes in the sink a monster will eat you!” kept the kitchen clear but in time everyone realized I was, in fact, bluffing and no monster would prey on them. As a final desperate plea, while I waited for the repair man, I sent out an email to the team begging for mercy from the suds.
Black and White OR White and Black - The other week Anna Yeaman at StyleCampaign put forth an idea and backed it up with a test on the concept of the uses of black and white as a background in an email and how it performs. Her test has been on my mind making me take a closer look at not only our [...]
Below is a list of real holidays, wacky holidays, and pop culture events in March and ideas you can utilize to develop timely and relevant email marketing campaigns.
Here it is, your March Email Marketing Calendar.
