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
Over the past couple years, I’ve gotten more and more involved in the Software Association of Oregon (SAO), but never have I had as much fun on the golf course with my foursome sponsored and led by the local accounting powerhouse firm, Perkins & Company. With over 100 software professionals and 30+ SAO volunteers at The Reserve golf course on the outskirts of Aloha, Oregon.
The Tourney was a scramble and I had to contend with incessant smack-talking from the uber-outgoing, affable Dave Sullivan in my foursome. Somehow, thru all that smack-talking, I raised my game (not hard to do when one is as bad of a golfer as I am). Four holes into the match, Sullivan drilled a 75 yarder into the cup for an eagle. The foursome of Sullivan, David Uslan, John Hayden, and I celebrated on the green with a few chest bumps (yes, old men try to act younger with a few beers in them).
A few holes before the end of our play, the golf gods were kind to me. A perennial wicked slicer, I actually hit my drive 270 yards straight down the fairway to about 15 feet on the fringe of the green. As luck would have it, I chose my putter instead of the predictable Pitching Wedge and nailed a 45 foot putt for eagle (first in my life). Ridiculous.
What does this blog post have to do with anything relevant to eROI or the interactive communty? Nothing, other than to say that the Portland software community and SAO in particular is not only alive but thriving. SAO President Matt Nees starts in his role this Monday and we’re back in the saddle again.
OMS has been touring the country to spread the word on online marketing the right way. On June 29th, OMS set up in Portland for a day full of expertise. I brought something back from every speaker and got to watch. eROI’s own Alex Williams did a great job of breaking down the value of a good welcome email for the crowd. Here are some of my other notes from the event:
Aaron Khalow started the event off with key points like 63% of website visitors who don’t find what they are looking for will never come back. It makes a strong case for optimizing your site. He stressed that your website is your foundation but it won’t matter unless you have the tools to encourage people to find it. The three pillars were search – with SEO having the largest impact, email – the fabric that holds it all together, and analytics – customization is key.
Ray “Catfish” Comstock, from Business Online, went deeper into some of these subjects. He illustrated a search cycle that went from ranking to repeat customer.
Why is ranking so important? 90% of traffic happens on the first page of search engines which means you have to be in the top 10 results to have a chance. Like Khalow pointed out, analytics play a huge factor in how you get to the repeat customer. Finding out what keywords are relevant is extremely valuable, personalization and location are both key components.
Other strategies Catfish brought up were optimizing video, news and the use of internal linking. These techniques are effective because there is a lot less competition than with traditional searches.
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!
This year’s theme for our company appreciation party was put to a vote. After the votes were tallied the theme was shrouded in mystery until a team email was sent with the reveal in true eROI Rock star fashion. This year it was fated to be… Summer White Party! Using our new eROI Event system we created a totally themed event that the email linked to. Check out the process for creating The eROI Summer White Party.
It’s that time of the quarter again for you to be involved in a really cool study to see how many of us in REALITY actually practice what we preach when it comes to testing our email campaigns. The “Email Testing Survey” should take 2-3 minutes and you’ll probably learn a bit in the process of answering some pretty insightful questions. Also, you have a good shot at winning a Flip Ultra Video Camera -take the survey here >>
Fill out survey, and you could win this
The results should be fascinating as everyone in the email marketing world always talks about testing, testing, testing, but not everyone has time, patience, $, or know-how on how to do testing right.
Yesterday, Chanin Ballance (founder/CEO of viaLanguage), Mitch Daugherty (founder of Morange Design), and I (the eROI guy) got together to plan what we’d talk about for a webinar about Bootstrapping and our personal experiences with self-induced starvation and endurance thru the early days. It was like catching up with old friends after a couple years – the instant bond entrepreneurs share in dredging up old stories that weren’t fun at the time, but are great memories in retrospect. The OEN Webinar is set for June 17 (registration isn’t live yet, but will be shortly) and we’re going to use a different format than the usual put-your-audience-to-sleep-with-powerpoint. We are going to try to re-create the casual, round-table discussion among entrepreneurs sharing candid stories. Some of the topics will include:
– Risk vs Reward – How do you know if it makes sense to bootstrap your idea?
– Keep your Day Job – The stress of self funding with no income can sometimes lead to failure
– Cash Flow – How to get a handle on your most important business aspect
– How to market your business on a shoestring budget
– Why most business models don’t need funding as it can be a big distraction
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.
It’s first Thursday in the Rose City and that means shops opened late, free drinks, lots of hipsters and UNKL showing at Compound Gallery! UNKL started right here in Portland with the creativity of Derek Welch and Jason Bacon.
The duo partnered with eROI to create our very own KillROI who has been everywhere from San Francisco to Chi Town!
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
Kevin Tate, a buddy of mine, had an awesome analogy featured on the front page of the Oregonian today in the article “Tech entrepreneurs defy recession” by Mike Rogoway. Here’s the excerpt from the article with Kevin’s quote that really got me thinking from a different mindset:
“Portland fosters the creation of small, furry mammals rather than dinosaurs — the really big things,” said Kevin Tate, 35, CEO of StepChange Group, a social media advertising and marketing specialist in the Pearl District. The “dinosaur” model of big corporate campuses and regimented software development (think Microsoft — or even Google) is going by the wayside, Tate said, in favor of more informal and collaborative arrangements. Portland’s current high-tech foment positions the state well to capitalize when the recession ends, provided its technology entrepreneurs have the appetite to take it on. “What happens when things start coming back?” Tate asked. “Will the small, furry mammals evolve?”
Nearly 9 years ago, 7 mainly tech start-up entrepreneurs co-founded a group called Starve Ups. We all survived the dot com implosion, but were influenced by really wanting to scale our companies for growth. Some Starve Ups companies have grown a little faster than others, but many contain a desire to do something world-changing with our companies through software, social good, amazing company culture or all of the above. I really like Kevin’s quote because it is accurate and represents a strong contingent in Portland’s software community, but I think we need to be honest with ourselves that our dream is to do something bigger and be more like a lion than a forgettable Chihuahua. So, how do we get there? Lack of capital is usually at the top of the list, but our biggest limitation is our mindset. Let’s grow game-changing, sustainable software businesses in Portland and tout Portland’s livability and balance as a BONUS, not a detriment to growth.
Comment below with your ideas of a more representative furry mammal for Portland.
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.
We, at eROI, have been working the last year on creating a new generation of Event Registration Software, eROI Event, with an enhanced user experience. We are currently in the Beta Launch Phase with a limited feature set, but we are excited to get this early-release version of the product out in front of our clients and the tech community in Portland. Our goal is to gather real user feedback as we continue to develop and enhance the product. We are offering a freemium version of the product for free events, but should a user prefer to hold paid events, we can enable the Payment Gateway feature for a minimal monthly fee of $50.00.
Novel concept, but I actually used our eROI Event tool to create an event for our Employee Disco Party on June 26th (if you are one of the 2 friends that employees can invite, then you too can join in the fun). I thought some screen shots of the back-end admin area would help you see why we are excited about this beta release (even though the feature set is slightly limited for the next 1-2 months until we get feedback from all of you that want to signup for a FREE account for free events (to use for RSVPs to dinner parties, seminars, BBQs, industry networking events, business meetings, etc.)
Portland, Oregon is a long way from Washington D.C. So, we should be psyched about playing host to the New Media Strategist, Rahaf Harfoush. She led arguably the social media strategy for the best online campaign implementation of any major politician in the history of politics (love the drama of that sentence even though politicians have really only used the web significantly in the past 4 years). Harfoush is the keynote speaker at InnoTech Portland:
Date: April 23, 2009
Time: InnoTech starts at 8am, Harfoush speaks at 11:30am
Place: Oregon Convention Center, Portland, Oregon
How much: BIG DISCOUNT if you use these codes when you REGISTER HERE >>
(INN48 – gets you a $12 Discount so it’s only $48 for General Administration)
(EMS20AT – gets you a $20 Discount so it’s only $129 for the two day eMarketing summit)
VIV Blows It Out With Animated Gifs - We have all been jawing about the use of animated gifs in emails over the past 8 months and I love that we are starting to see them being used more and more when they make sense. Now not only to they really make an email work well, drive deeper engagement, and even make us [...]
The finished product, see how it was done below.
I am excited to join a great panel for an upcoming Software Association of Oregon event called 
