eROI Days Email Agency

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.

I finally got the professional photo today. Here it is:

Here are some more casual pics from the evening:

Businesses Must Support Their Local Community or they will suffer (PR backlash, customer and vendor pressure). Local is the new Organic, but for businesses, not just consumers. There is such truth to the expression – the more you give, the more you get. It applies to giving of your time and money to charity causes and even non-profit professional associations. On the surface, it appears to be a major expense and unproductive distraction to give a significant amount of executive time, employee resources, and company money to local charities like Friends of the Children, Start Making a Reader Today, Zenger Farm, or the Boys and Girls Club. The same logic applies to professional organizations like Oregon Entrepreneurs Network, Starve Ups, Portland Advertising Federation, Software Association of Oregon, American Marketing Association, and a handful of others. Examples of companies who focus on giving back to their communities (click on each company name to go directly to their community involvement webpage) include Kettle Foods, Jive Software, and eROI.

However, it is flawed logic to look at giving back to the community as an expense. Here’s why:

• Gain awareness to large groups of prospective clients. Customer acquisition costs are much lower when a business and its customer have a shared connection and shared values.
• Community involvement creates a halo effect of positive association to an altruistic organization with shared values.
• Employee involvement in non-profit organizations deepens the emotional connection and loyalty between the employee and the company.
• Employee recruiting is a whole lot easier with greater local awareness and the positive association with your business doing the right thing (especially in the younger generation of recent college grads).
• Serving on non-profit committees and Board of Directors gives you access to some of the smartest local business execs that can give valuable entrepreneurial business advice you can’t get anywhere else.
• Public relations and marketing is a lot easier locally when people are genuinely routing for you.
• Finally, doing the right thing for your community is the whole point of being in business in the first place.

If you don’t run a company built on a socially-conscious business model, the least you can do is get involved in your community and I guarantee you will have a huge return on investment for that effort.

Cool pictures from our move below:

More pictures to follow. Please come visit us!

It’s Sunday in November and it’s predictably rainy in Portland – beautifully, dreadfully rainy. My 5-year old daughter was bouncing off the walls in our house and we needed a change of scenery. So, I bribed her with extra-special ice cream at Mia Gelato’s in the Pearl District. We then went to the largest bookstore in the world – Powell’s Bookstore on NW 10th and Couch.

The cool part of the day’s activities were yet another bribe to play arcade games at Ground Kontrol, which happens to be in eROI’s new office building and it was the perfect excuse to check out the progress of the new space that we are moving into in 12 days. Our new office space looks amazing, but I have no idea how it will be ready for our move-in date of Nov 30. I’m praying our contractor has a little magic up sleeve.

Back to telling you about Ground Kontrol. Back in time. Retro. Imagine all of your favorite games from 1982 and put them all in one large 2-floored room – Ms. Pacman, Centipede, Galaga, Street Fighter, and the list goes on. I have a vision of my daughters spending far too many quarters in that place, waiting for their Dad to take them home after work. For all its retro geekiness, that’s not such a bad vision.

My hat goes off to a Portland entrepreneurial group called Starve Ups that I have been involved with for the past 7 years. John Friess, our leader with unbelievable entrepreneurial passion, wrote a really meaningful email to the group just now and I copied my response below his email.

—————————————————————–
From: John Friess
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 10:35 PM
To: List
Subject: Starve Ups 7 Years Later

Everyone,

Seven years ago this evening 7 companies met at the offices of Rumblefish in downtown Portland and founded Starve Ups. The founders of these companies (AssetExchange, Versation, eROI, viaLanguage, CoolerEmail, Rumblefish and wired.MD) met for about four hours that day as we discussed exactly what Starve Ups should be, what it should accomplish and where it should go.

That evening we decided that the group should be about providing one another feedback, resources and networks to propel our businesses forward. We decided that what it should do is make success the only business model worth pursuing and that eventually we should all get to our exit or existence strategy as defined by our teams.

Well since that time all 7 founding companies, though some have had name changes or have undergone corporate restructuring, have survived and have made it to profitability. One has been acquired and more are sure to be acquired within the next two years. We have collectively employed hundreds, we have sold product to tens of thousands and we have earned tens of millions. We have built two Inc. 500 companies and have provided viable business solutions in 6 of the 7 continents.

To date we have had a total of 32 membership companies, 27 of which are still in business and building or selling products and solutions. This is an 84% success ratio amongst our membership companies, where the national average after 7 years is approximately a 16-18% success ratio. We have built a brand with a single purpose and that is to ensure that we all succeed in our businesses through paying it forward. We have done exactly that as a group, as a team as Starve Ups.

Thank you all for a great 7 years.

John

————————————————————
My response:

This is awesome! And the cold, hard truth of it all is that Starve Ups would not exist if John Friess wasn’t driving it forward each and every day – you’ve done far more than you give yourself credit for.

With that said, congrats collectively to everyone on this list – we need to appreciate and celebrate our accomplishments – John’s email above shows all of us that we have legitimate things to be proud of with our companies.

Cheers,
Ryan

This blog post isn’t an effort to toot our own horn, although I’m definitely proud of my team for this accomplishment. This entry is about sharing the feedback from the evening and showing my appreciation for organizations like OEN (Oregon Entrepreneurs Network) who provide the foundation for entrepreneurial learning, networking, and mentoring in this great, underappreciated (from a business standpoint) state.

eROI was chosen as 1 of 3 finalists for the OEN Company of the Year Award in the Working Capital category. This event celebrates Oregon entrepreneurs and businesses as if we were in Hollywood (which is a welcome change from the other 364 days of the year when we are in the trenches with very little recognition or pause for celebration). I was getting a little bit nervous as the time approached to lead up to the 3 finalists (eROI, AuctionPay, and Cayuse). On 3 huge video screens, videos of each of the 3 finalist CEOs played. The videos were shot 2 months prior and I was self-conscious watching the video from the audience (of 900 people), but fortunately the video editor chose the best of my rambling answers and focused on my primary point of truly listening one-on-one to my employees and transforming the process and the culture based on their input.

Many of the eROI employees at the table appreciated that I didn’t focus on sales or marketing success, but very candidly exposed a problem that became a strength. Here’s what a fellow business owner emailed me the following day:
“Hi Ryan,
Just a note to congratulate eROI on making the finalists for the OEN Awards! I enjoyed watching your interview video for the OEN Awards last week at the awards dinner… especially the part about asking each and every employee for direct feedback on how they were feeling. Very brave ;-)”

We didn’t win (AuctionPay was the deserving winner as they’ve built an amazingly scalable company), but eROI is doing a few things right to even be in the running.

I fly over 2,000 miles to Chicago for the Inc. 500 Conference, and I run into two guys from my town, Portland Oregon, who I knew all about for the past 5 years, but never met. Eric and Jack (pictured with me above) originally started a company called Handyman Online in ‘97 which grew quickly, but got derailed from a $24 million VC investment that ballooned its headcount and expenses before flaming out. Eric and Jack pulled that business model (of selling valuable leads to contractors) out of the ashes, and have built an incredibly successful, high-growth, non-funded company called ReliableRemodeler.com. Looking forward to continuing the relationship in Portland, now that finally met each other in Chicago.

Every Portland-metro Company Offered One Pass
to New Multi-Disciplinary Interactive Convergence Conference

As a way to launch its first year, inVerge 2007: the interactive convergence conference is offering one complimentary pass (a $495 value) to each company in the Portland area who wants to send someone to this unique multi-disciplinary event (subsequent attendees from each company receive $100 off with Discount Code “IPF”).

inVerge 2007: the interactive convergence conference focuses on the invergence of media platforms, of online + offline, content + advertising, and of corporate content + consumer-generated content.

inVerge 2007 speakers include*:

NEW: Catherine Ogilvie, EVP & GM, S.F. office, Edelman Public Relations
Jeff Yapp, Executive Vice President, MTV Networks
Joshua Green, Research Mgr, Convergence Culture Consortium, MIT
Renny Gleeson, Director of Digital Strategies, Wieden + Kennedy
Dalen Harrison, CEO, Ensequence (interactive TV platform)
Adam Richardson, Director of Product Strategy, frog design
Chris Van Dyke, CEO, Nau (see recent Fast Company feature)
Jason Stoddard (Partner) & Ken Brady (VP, Asia), Centric, Agency of Change (virtual worlds)
Ken Papagan, President & Chief Strategy Officer, Rentrak
Mark Deuze, Prof. of Journalism & New Media, Leiden University (The Netherlands)
Bill Barnett, General Manager, Entertainment Media Works

As an integrated part of the event, a paid pass to inVerge 2007 includes full access to MusicFestNW and vouchers to 3 Time-Based Art Festival events (optional for a fee on the complimentary pass).

To register for the complimentary pass (one per company please), go to:
http://register.inverge.com/roi/727/inVerge-2007-Complimentary-Pass.htm

For additional paid passes:
Use Discount Code “IPF” to save $100.

For more information, visit the invergence blog and the interim inverge.com site.

The Best Time for Out-of-Town Colleagues to Visit Portland?

This is a great time of year for your out-of-town colleagues to visit Portland. Consider that ALL of the following events start on September 6th and that the inVerge pass includes access to all or part of them:
the inVerge 2007: the interactive convergence conference
MusicFestNW (over 125 indie bands)
The Time-Based Art Festival (international performance art)
First Thursday Gallery Walk (an evening of art, wine and music)

If you pass this message along to a colleague and they decide to join us, they too can use the same IPF discount code.

I admit it. I’m guilty of NOT blogging in over two weeks. I was on vacation for 8 days and loved every minute of it. I went white water rafting, climbed a couple mountains in Central Oregon, made a fort in our vacation house backyard with my daughters, nephews, and neices. The crazy thing is that I was relaxed, checked in on my email, but somehow blogging was not a priority while on vacation.

Just writing this blog post is making me feel a whole lot better about my BLOG GUILT. Cathartic, indeed! A bunch of relevant online marketing stuff has happened while on vacation – I am now a part-owner in a new building in Old Town, Portland and eROI will move to 505 NW Couch Street on December 1 of this year. In the past couple weeks, we’ve launched some high profile websites that I will blog about once we get clearance from our clients (I try to learn from past mistakes where we mention a client that doesn’t want certain press).

So, my blog guilt is absolved. Now, I’m off to write a dozen blog posts with video and pics from our party. Lots of entertainment there. Cheers!

If you haven’t read any of Seth Godin’s books or his blog, you probably aren’t in the eMarketing, online marketing, interactive marketing, viral marketing or just plain old marketing world. He’s phenomenal, he’s candid, and the insight you learn from each of his books and blog posts is power-packed with solid, proven ways to improve your marketing and steadily grow your company by doing lots of little things remarkably well.

I just finished his book “Small is the New Big” which is a compilation of hundreds of his blog posts over the past 4 years. On a local level, I find that I learn from some small, entrepreneurial companies that specialize in a certain niche and share their learning with the world through their blog and with me at lunch or happy hour. Stephen Landau with Substance is one of those people. He and his business partner David have one of the best blogs I’ve seen on Flash and user experiences. Their idealism in truly changing the world is infectious and they are already making a difference. Check out their blog >>

Another blog that provides some creative inspiration as one of the smallest of the “big guys” (although they are the largest independent advertising agency in the country) is Wieden + Kennedy’s Portland blog and their London blog. Both of these blogs are either inspiring or so insanely obscure that it’s pretty funny.

Well we are very excited to end up 15th in the top 100 companies in the State of Oregon for Fastest Growing. I can only say thank you to all of the companies and people that have believed in us and honored us by allowing us to be their emarketing partners.

And of course a big hats off to the whole eROI team for the amount of work, drive and love they bring to the table each and every day (and many late nights).

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Ending the week on a high note and excited to crack the Top 10 next year for this award category. Who know what else might be on the horizon for us and our clients.

Thanks to everyone and come to the party July 20th at the eROI offices if you are in Portland, Oregon. We can celebrate together then. Until then… back to great ideas, great work, great partners/clients and the best team.

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The theme of this year’s Innotech eMarketing Summit really hammered on Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites. While this seems to be over-played in the media, the content and speakers in this 2-day event of back-to-back seminars was truly AWESOME.

From brand new upstart Citizen Agency, I learned a dozen new social networking sites that I’d never heard of before that were incredibly niche, but fascinating. They drove home key points about building community online throughout their presentation such as: “these are my peops,” “they talk my language,” “they get me,” and build off of one another’s conversations. Sites I hadn’t heard about:
Dogster.com
Catster.com
Intuit JackRabbit community site
VIRB.com
Last.fm
BarCamp.org
Ma.gnolia
BareNakedApp

Also, you should know about some amazing Web 2.0 companies in our backyard in Portland:
Jive Software
Platial
Values of N
JanRain
MatchPoint

Lastly, for any of those who wanted to download my presentation on Building Community Online and Matchpoint Case Study, please download it here >>

Cheers.

Web 2.0 companies are springing up all over the place. I know most of you are thinking that this is just like the Dot Com rush of 1999, but it’s different because many of these business models are sound and social networking / user-generated content works (given the right implementation of it).

One company (Matchpoint) in our backyard came to us 6 months ago with an amazing concept – connect professional parents, highly-skilled and intelligent parents who are getting back into the workforce, with each other and ultimately to flexible, contract jobs. It has some elements to LinkedIn, but it is far more visually appealing, niche, and a hybrid full-service revenue model of having real regional managers place professionals in these jobs. Create your own profile on Matchpointcorp.com!

In Seattle, venture capital reporter John Cook, documents the top 100 Web 2.0 companies in the city alone. Here are the top 5:

Atomic Moguls: Next generation fantasy games. (New entry)

Avvo: Consumer-oriented online legal service. (Stealth)

Bag Borrow or Steal: Luxury goods borrowing service.

Beet Inc.: Online music. (New entry)

BeRecruited: Online sports recruiting site. (New entry)

Read his full blog posting with all 100 Web 2.0 listings >>

OMMA West ‘07 – Day 1 Re-cap

Overall theme of the event: “High Anxiety”

Topics covered were:
1) Top 10 Online Marketing Buzzwords you need to eliminate
2) Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, talks about the power of the Blogosphere as well as consumers need + longing for authenticity, transparency, and like-minded values to the media and brands they consume.
3) Shelly Palmer, Media 3.0 host, coins the next big realization – Context (not Content) is King
4) The new new thing in Social Networks
5) Case studies of HOT trend: User-Generated Video integration into websites – for Media, Big Consumer Brands, and smaller brands
6) Email Liars Club – featuring AcquireWeb, Ogilvy, AvenueA / Razorfish, and eROI

Details to follow in upcoming blog posts…