eROI Days Email Agency

Mahalo is on a role. First, the controversial TechCrunch review of Mahalo’s founder blog entry on expecting employees to work 16 hours a day every day because he does (which I wholeheartedly disagree with). Now, their YouTube retro video is truly good stuff and relevant to the email marketing world. Mahalo, the human search company, is trying to show how pull technology like search doesn’t have the flaw of spam, but the creative is strong enough to get a chuckle out of it.

An employee sent me an email with this link – fascinating!

Freedom, A Twitter Away For UC Berkeley Student Arrested In Egypt

“As surreal as it may sound, Twitter can get you out of jail! The catch…send the right message to as many people as possible as fast as you can and voila!

UC Berkeley journalism graduate student James Karl Buck (29), former Oakland Tribune multimedia intern, was arrested during a demonstration in Mahalla El-Kobra, an industrial city in the Nile Delta.

What the Egyptian authorities didn’t probably expect was the prompt reaction of a large circle of friends in the United States and the anti-government bloggers in Egypt, who were sent an instant text message from his cellular phone: “ARRESTED,” the San Jose Mercury News reports.

The micro-blogging service allows users to send text messages up to 140 characters long, and the message Buck sent had the desired outcome: his friends called the University, the American Embassy, as well as the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune and other media.

The result: he was released the next day, although according to his affirmations, the Egyptian authorities told him just hours after his arrest, in the middle of the night, that he was a free man.”

Not sure there is much biz there, but that’s really the point. My wife and I are going to a pretty remote area of the country and we’re looking forward to some good outdoor adventure there.

I’ll share some appropriate pics and video upon my return and try to make it somewhat relevant to the online marketing world, but for now, I’m going to enjoy a well-deserved week off blog posts, among others. Did a little research on YouTube, and thought I’d share this one:

The PDC (Portland Development Commission) worked with the Portland Classical Chinese Garden to create this video to show in several cities throughout China with the intent of recruiting more Chinese businesses to move into Old Town/Chinatown.

eROI has been in Old Town / Chinatown for the past 6 months and we’ve seen a dozen other software companies and creative agencies move into the neighborhood. We’re big fans.

ENGLISH VERSION

MANDARIN VERSION

If you are wanting email marketing or interactive agency best practices, you’re not going to get it in this blog post. As a former prankster in high school and father of two daughters who will be in high school in a decade, I love coming across articles like this school just a couple miles from my house:

KATU.com: Lincoln H.S. parents receive hoax ‘prom night’ letter

“PORTLAND, Ore. – Administrators at Lincoln High School are trying to find out who sent a hoax letter to parents about this Saturday’s senior prom.

The letter is printed on what appears to be Portland Public Schools letterhead and it says students will likely be drinking, doing drugs, and having sex on prom night.

The letter goes on to encourage parents to open their homes for parties so kids don’t drink and drive and even provides instructions on how much alcohol to provide.

District officials say they did not send the letter and that it is an elaborate hoax.

In addition to finding out who wrote and sent the letters, the district wants to know how the pranksters gained access to addresses of parents and guardians of Lincoln students.”

We have finally published the Q2 2008 The Cradle & The Grave email survey results

The full report is at this link:
http://eroi.com/online-marketing-resource-center/resource-center/?sec=3

Respondents:
· Over 500 marketers were surveyed about the subscribe/unsubscribe process. While these processes are improving, they have yet to reach what we would call exceptional.

Key observations:
· People are not matching up other marketing efforts like they should
· People are not monitoring feedback loops and complaint rates
· The thank you page, prime visitor real estate is being wasted
· Not surveying subscribers at opt out
· Not allowing frequency changes

Some Results:

I. Opt – in:
–Only 30% of the respondents say they use opt-in; still below where the industry should be

–Of those that use opt-in; only a 4% provide more than 10 ways for someone to opt-in and the majority, three-quarters, have only 1-3 ways.

–Incentives/Content for opting:
§ 88% offering newsletter subscription
§ 29% offering access to preferred content
§ 24% offering discounts/coupons
§ 22% offering some kind of contest

–One-third of marketers don’t do any segmenting at opt-in

–Landing page improvements needed

II. Opt-Out
–30% of marketers don’t pass opt-in names onto other systems

–65% won’t pass on when subscribers opt-out

–CRM Systems – lead way in third-party applications for opt-in/out

–90% of marketers don’t follow up with opt-outs – potential for reaching through other channels

–One-third of marketers don’t send a confirmation email after opt-out – which can offer the chance for the subscriber to change mind.

III. Feedback Loop:
–Nearly one-quarter of email marketers don’t know what they currently do with abuse complaints, or how they are handled. Is this lack of education by the ESP or is it lack of understanding the value of feedback loops and the purpose of them?

–Only about one-half of email marketers currently monitor feedback loops.

Because this is such a SEXY presentation, I had to do it on Keynote on a sexy Mac that I have limited access to, therefore, the “Bringing Sexy Back to Email Marketing” presentation is available via a PDF on our site, but not on the extra sexy technology that my associate Dylan Boyd pointed out on the Email Wars blog, called SlideShare. Look for this blog post to be updated with that soon.

Until then, Download the Full PDF presentation of “Bringing Sexy Back to Email” here>>

It’s the second downloadable document on that page. Tell me what you think.

In today’s New York Times Business section, there was an astute article on “The Daily Struggle to Avoid Burial by E-Mail” by Randall Stross. At eROI, we have been covered in the press on multiple occasions for Email Addiction or Email Overload, but it was the combination of today’s “burial by email” article AND a recent eMarketing speech where a friend of mine talked of maintaining 40 social media site profiles, where I felt compelled to write this blog post (slightly ironic given that a blog is a basic form of social media).

Stross mentioned in the NY Times article that both Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Mark Cuban of Mark Cuban get upwards of 2,000 emails every day and 700 messages daily in Facebook, and both of these executive process all of these emails themselves. I get about 400 emails per day and usually reply to and send 60 emails/day if I’m not booked in meetings all day.

While email is the killer app and where I spend most of my time “online,” I also occasionally blog, use LinkedIn sporadically, barely use Facebook, and Twitter when I’m distracted at a conference. Basically, this blog post is my first online admission of becoming an old man – with so many distractions, I wonder if technology company entrepreneurs and executives will evolve into communicating in truncated sentence grunts with very little deep strategic thinking, planning and writing.

I have clients asking frequently, “how will I have time to do everything I do now, AND blog AND engage in all of these conversations about my brand in every single online community?” I’ve adapted my answer to a more definitive “You can’t do it all single-handedly.” Let me get back to my 35-year old friend who has 40 profiles – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Answers, Lockergnome, digg, del.icio.us, and on and on and on. The new generation and grandpa-old 35 year olds playing the new generation’s world, attention deficit disorder is a requirement, not a condition.

So, what’s my advice in this cultural change in expectations of keeping up in the online marketing world? Experiment with all of the social networking sites and tools, and find 3 sites/tools that generate the most value to you individually and/or your company (as an entrepreneur, individual benefit/company benefit is often the same). Thankfully, there is a new protocal, OpenID, where one username/password will carry all your info with you for every online community you join, because in the future, we will all be participants in hundreds of these broad social communities or niche branded communities.

With the acceleration of online communication, it relieves anxiety just to admit that “yes, I too, feel completely overwhelmed and overloaded by using every social site and tool that comes along.” I’ve said it and those words shall set me free. Now, if I could just leave my Blackberry locked in my office desk on a weekend. Fat chance.

Creative companies like eROI have musicians like Chris who is jamming with my two girls. Enjoy!

Thank you thank you, Jonathan Brinckman. You did a great job talking about how “something very different is going on in Portland, where a cluster of software firms have set up shop in and around Old Town:

Two crucial factors are driving the trend: Software companies — particularly those focusing on social networking, online advertising and finance — are thriving. And a hip office in a central location can be a competitive edge in attracting top-notch staff.”

To check out the OregonLive blog entry, go here to see the full monty >>

The Oregonian article really needs the images to accompany it, so see those below.

eMarketing Summit @ InnoTech
April 16-17, Oregon Convention Center

www.emarketingsummit.com for information and registration
Use Discount Code EROI8EMS for the $129 price. Prices includes two day summit, both luncheons topics and Don Tapscott Featured Speaker breakfast on April 17.

The 4th annual eMarketing Summit meets in Portland, Oregon this year, and brings together marketers, business owners and internet professionals.
This two day Summit focuses on social media marketing, search engine optimization, email marketing and web 2.0 tools, including widgets and more. Guest speakers include Don Tapscott, Author of Wikinomics; Rohit Bhargava, Sr. VP, Digital Strategy, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, Kent Lewis, Anvil Media; with additional speakers from Northwest Airlines, Razorfish/Avenue A, Hill & Knowlton Digital, Jive Software, Kick Apps and many others.

4/16: 10:30am – 11:30am
What the Heck is a Widget?
Dylan Boyd, Vice President of Sales and Strategy, eROI, Inc.
Matt Bijur, Vice President, Business Development, KickApps
David White, VP of Business Development, FlightStats
Mike Berkley, CEO, SplashCast Media
Widgets are building blocks for social aggregators. Widgets can also quickly help your web site reach new audiences in web 2.0 including social media, blog, web site and more. This expert panel will discuss the roadmap to planning, designing, creating and distributing this innovative gadget.

4/17: 10:30am – 11:30pm
Bringing Sexy Back into Email Marketing
Ryan Buchanan, President, eROI, Inc.
Has your email marketing program gotten tired, neglected, and stuck in a rut? eROI CEO, Ryan Buchanan, will use several case studies from some sexy and unsexy businesses to show how marketers can breath life back into their email marketing program. More…

I’m going to try to do 4 blog entries in almost as little time as I’d Tweet 4 times. Let’s see how it goes. Alright, beginning now – here goes.

My twitter profile is www.twitter.com/ryanbuch!

Cheers,
Ryan

As our fellow blogger Dylan Boyd broke the news just minutes ago:

“eROI Abandons New Offices, Goes Green
Portland Interactive Agency Takes ‘Natural Approach’ to Marketing

Portland, OR – In a move that both shocked and surprised the city of Portland, eROI left the urban grid. After 12 months of negotiations, remodeling and settling into their new building in Old Town Portland, they just picked up and moved to a field of solar powered yurts just east of their world HDQs along the Willamette River.”

Read the full story on eROI’s other blog: The Email Wars

www.LogoBama.com:

My friends over at a relatively new Portland, interactive agency, Substance, launched this site a few weeks ago. I asked founder Stephen Landau about his inspiration to do the site. He responded, “We figured if we’ve been talking about beliefs and change for the last 15 months, we should support the candidate who says the same stuff. Plus, it was a fun little project to work on. Not sure why we set the donation goal so high ($5,000) but then again, what’s the point in shooting for a small, attainable goal when you can aim for a bigger, more audacious goal.”

I especially like the way the logo you create can map into Flickr automatically and can be ported at any size into Flickr and a dozen other social networking sites. Nice work.

Here’s my quick, uncreative creation using the site:

I know my employees aren’t going to like this level of transparency, but I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with myself for NOT heavily promoting this non-profit workshop that we created from scratch for the benefit of The Boys and Girls Club of Portland. We had a lower than expected turnout at both workshops the past 2 weeks, but on the bright side, we learned some critical take-aways that could make this program a big success this summer or fall when we try it one more time.

Here’s the concept behind the Communication Breakdown Workshop:
The acceleration of technology innovation like Web 2.0 and other online tools is having an adverse effect on family dynamics. Kids and their parents have always struggled to communicate, but these days, they don’t even speak the same language – (IM’ing, hanging out on social networking sites for kids 8-13 years old like Microsoft LiveSpaces, Yahoo! Kids, Disney, and Millsberry). Parents want a way to communicate, connect, and bond with their kids, but still protect them from the predators that they fear in “online communities.” The workshop is a lot like an online scavenger hunt with cool discoveries of safe music-making sites and blog posts on LiveSpaces.

What we learned:
1. Promote it heavily in email, web, search, in-kind media partners, and on-site at The Boys and Girls Club.
2. Don’t schedule the workshop during Spring Break – bad idea.
3. Instead of having a wide age range like 8-13 years old, keep it to 11-13 year olds and their parents or 14-16 year olds. A four year age difference is like light years for kids at that age.
4. FREE pizza will always be the best on-site marketing ever.
5. Try a test run for this workshop at an organization like Friends of the Children where mentors are a huge part of the equation.