eROI Days Email Agency » online community

EnglishBaby! Proves Engaging Email Content is King

Ryan Buchanan — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:53:26 +0000

I got this email yesterday from a company called EnglishBaby! that ‘teaches’ conversational English (via the slang of professional atheletes and Hollywood stars) to an online community of nearly a million people all over the world. The email was perfect – it had one clear call to action, a great concept of a videographer following two EnglishBaby! members that met online on EnglishBaby! and got married. Better yet, it was ultra relevant as it was sent to me the day before Valentine’s Day. Crap – I almost forgot – I need to buy my wife roses and maybe a cool orchid before I get home from work today.

“To celebrate this day of love, we traveled to Istanbul for the wedding of two English, baby! members who met while learning English on the site. We hope you like the video!

Forward this message to your friends to wish them a happy Valentine’s Day!”

Check out the video – it’s awesome:
The trailer: http://www.englishbaby.com/lessons/istanbul
The main video: http://www.englishbaby.com/lessons/istanbul2

SXSW Monday – Panels

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:57:00 +0000

When people think of Texas, I don’t think rain is something that comes up in their minds, yet that’s what it did Sunday night, rain. It was unfortunate this happened our last night of the conference. We didn’t get to meet many new people and most of the night consisted of drying off between stints of running in the rain, a lot. It’s ok though, we still managed to catch a few shows and play some foosball on the way home from The Fray Cafe. Let me just say, Leslie couldn’t handle me on the table (-; After wringing our clothes out, we went to sleep. It was a nice memory that escaped me the night before.

We woke up to a sunny Austin morning and wished we had a few more days to stay, but work called, so we had to get all we could out of that day. It turns out chance favored us.

The Panels

Scaling Your Community
Jeff and I both arrived late into the first round of panels, this one was the second of the day. We are both very glad we made it as this was our favorite panel of the conference. It wasn’t so much of a panel as it was a speech. Matt Mullenweg, of the WordPress fame, talked about scaling a community. His talk covered four main points; starting simple, bootstrapping, letting go, and embracing it. No better person to give this discussion as his WordPress software is used by thousands of people around the world. Oh, and Matt is 23, which means he was developing WordPress while most of us were boozing in college. The good thing though is that Matt comes across as an old soul. He was the most comfortable speaker we saw and by the end of the presentation, the audience was eating out of his hand. I think I cried a little.

Dan Rather Keynote Interview
This panel consisted of Dan Rather being interviewed by Jane Hamsher. Essentially Dan Rather thinks the problem with journalism today is it’s lack of spine. I agree. It was really interesting to see such a prominent media figure in a room packed with geeks. Especially the fact that everyone walked out of there saying how good it was. Geeks are hard to please, and in doing that, Dan Rather proved his cross-generation appeal. Not a bad for a last panel.

We then headed back to our hotel picked up our stuff. A short cab ride away (with a very friendly cab driver) put us at the ticket counter of Northwest Airlines. It’s about six hours of travel to go from Portland to Austin, but well worth it. I have a love for Austin I never knew existed. I am definitely going to head back next year.

FontShop Article Features Web 2.0 Fonts

Ryan Buchanan — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:06:00 +0000

Isn’t it such a crazy coincedence that so many Web 2.0 companies look similar. Maybe not. The following FontShop article on Web 2.0 Fonts explains why:

“There is no official standard for what makes something “Web 2.0″, but there certainly are a few tell-tale signs. These new sites usually feature modern web technologies like Ajax and often have something to do with building online communities. But even more characteristic among these brands is their appearance. Web 2.0 sites nearly always feel open and friendly and often use small chunks of large type. The colors are bright and cheery — lots of blue, orange, and what we jokingly call the Official Color of Web 2.0: lime green.”

Read the full article here >>

We Can All Shoot Video

Ryan Buchanan — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:14:08 +0000

No I am not going to bang the idea that we can all shoot video. I am just going to share with you another brand that is getting into asking everyone to create an ad and upload it. With YouTube we are all now experts it seems. Or at least novices that can make some compelling stories that others will watch. Are we all voyeurs? Is it just human nature to want to watch others? Or are we creating a online community that owns the brand? Owns the content? And brands are just a way to express yourself around a feeling they emote?

I have lot of questions around what is happening with the social and video sites.

Not sure, but what I do know is the JACK in the BOX is hit a few times a week by the eROI team and I have a digitial video camera in my office. Maybe we might hit the Jackies.

http://jackinthebox.com/jackies/

Blogs are Growing Faster than We Thought

Ryan Buchanan — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 18:08:22 +0000

eMarketer published some exciting data on blog demographics and which group of people are blog power-users. Most blog neophytes assume that 12-24 year old MySpace users and “People” magazine readers are blogging about 50 Cent all day long, but the reality (from what this study shows) is that older, educated, affluent individuals are consuming and creating the bulk of the blog content. View the full article on “Blogs, Blogs, and More Blogs.”