eROI Days Email Agency

At pdx, waiting to catch plane to wash dc for #inc500 conf. This will my fourth straight year at this awesome conference. Great insights.
10:14 PM Sep 29th via TweetDeck

President Bill Clinton addresses @inc500 conf thru video
5:42 AM Oct 1st via TweetDeck

Gary Hirshberg CEO – Stonyfield Yogurt

Should be good! RT @inc5000: Today’s 1st session is starting! Gary Hirshberg, the CE-YO from Stoneyfield at #inc500conferenece!

Stonyfield Yogurt is up to $360 million in sales now. Gary going to go over his philosophy on triple bottom line.
5:47 AM Oct 1st

Churchill quote “success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm”
5:49 AM Oct 1st

If the rest of the world adopted USA energy and total consumption, we’d need 5 Earths to be able to handle it.
5:52 AM Oct 1st

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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.

When it comes to Twitter I read more than write.  I’m sad to say I have had to say goodbye to some celebs that I have followed (Demi and Ashton) but celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe hasn’t disappointed me yet with her twitpics of worship worthy rooms full of shoes, fashion advice and generally cheery tweets.  Rachel finds time between tweets to create her own branded empire.  In addition to her stylist gig she has a reality show, partnership with Piperlime, she’s introducing a new line of products for QVC and just launched her new website – RachelZoe.com.

I’m usually curious enough to click on the links she offers and yesterday I found myself at her new site.  What I was surprised and delighted by was the ease at which she engaged the user in a multitude of interactions.  As a first time visitor to the site you are invited to “Get The Zoe Report” by simply giving your email address and zip code.  The call to action is straight forward and simple.

Next you are taken to a thank you page where they segment your gender, age and preferences with an option to add a category they haven’t listed.  I think this page starts to build the relationship with the user.  You are asked about what is important to you and given the chance to elaborate, in a way it sets the tone for the pages that follow. (more…)

There is yet another incentive for people to join the wonderfully addictive world of Twitter, free stuff!  Once your following has been established, you never know who is going to read your tweets and grant your wishes!  On Tuesday May 26, Ryan tweeted: “RT @dhrube: Can’t wait- ZooBrew microfest at Oregon Zoo Friday 5/29 5-10 pm. Great scene 4 beer/food/tunes/friends http://tinyurl.com/6rsen2” and like the heavens had heard him he got a message to pick up two free tickets for Zoo Brew from Dan Rubin at Blackfish Creative.

Statue by the Penguins holding the event program and enjoying Cascade Brewing’s Razberry Wheat

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I know, I’m a marketer, and I like visual things, which is why I always wondered why Twitter was so spartan with its notification emails.  Below are a couple screen-shots of the types of email I’ve been getting from Twitter since 10am this morning.  They used to be so transactional, bussiness-like, and dreadfully boring.  Now, Twitter has elevated its brand massively through a wildly effective push-medium like email.  The below emails really pop of the page instead of being completely forgettable.  This is all the more important considering folks like me almost never go to twitter.com – instead, I always use Tweetdeck or Twitterberry, therefore I almost never interact with the Twitter brand in an environment that Twitter controls.  So, long story short, I’m in love with their decision to go with HTML email notifications. Such a tiny little thing makes a HUGE difference to many of us.  Take a peek:

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The power of Twitter has never been so apparent in the eROI office as when @The_Real_Shaq tweeted “Anybody in portland touches me rt now will get two tickets I’m at redstar cafe.”  As Megan put it “It was like a stampede upstairs!”

Leading the frenzied mob was Christine and Don who fought their way to the Red Star for a chance to grope the 7 foot 1 mammoth.  Christine, a dedicated Blazer fan, saw the tweet, took off her earrings and ran the seven blocks in moccasins with Don at her side.  Somehow, with the will of true Blazer fans and the hearts of eROI employees, Christine and Don the magnificent were able to reach O’Neal and claim their prize – two tickets each to a rocking basketball game.  A proud day for all.

Follow eROI on Twitter!

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Okay, I admit it – I am still more of a Twitter lurker than anything so far. I do occasionally throw a thought or 2 up but find it still a little difficult since I’m usually caught between 6 different things at any given time. One moment I could be grooving to some great new music while scanning the plethora of fantastic news and info beamed to me via Google Reader. Meanwhile, I’m likely having a conversation with one of my super hero Account Execs about a particular client/project situation and also thinking about the email I was in the middle of replying to before I began to think about how much I like this one song…

So then I turn to Twitter and gag. Gee, any of this is really worth a tweet, right?  Then I get distracted by someone or something else that needs immediate attention. By the time I get back to Twitter the moment has passed and I’m on to 6 other things and the cycle starts all over again. Yikes! Therein lies my dilemma. I want to share these things but I don’t want to be one of the those folks suffering from “Twitterhea” either –you know who you are. Your constant blathering has to be a sign of some sort of neurosis.

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I have an admission to make – last night, I had a shocking thing happen. I momentarily lapsed into non-optimistic thoughts. It had nothing to do with politics or business. It had to do entirely with an Act of God.

In Portland, we’ve had huge windstorms. During dinner at a friend’s house, a massive tree branch came crashing through my Prius back window. I love nature, but this time, my love affair was tainted for a night and the next morning.

So, after having seriously f@*#ked up dreams all night, I went for a long run in the morning and began processing my thoughts.  Before, my run I glanced at the NY Times front page article titled “Poll Finds Faith in Obama, Mixed with Patience.” In many of my blog posts, I’ve talked about 2009 being the year of optimism and it has been an optimistic year until the bloody tree limb incident last night. But, I knew I could mentally power thru these dreaded pessimistic thoughts.

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Just saw this article on Reuters.  If Facebook acquires Twitter, it could be a huge advantage for users of both like me.  There are already some great integration points between the two apps.  As business users, we just need to start separating out personal contacts from business contacts.  Crap – too late for that now.  Here’s the article:

“(Reuters) – Social networking company Facebook recently held acquisition talks with Twitter, the micro-blogging company, the Financial Times said.

The negotiations, put a valuation of as much as $500 million on Twitter, which has become one of Silicon Valley‘s most closely watched start-ups, the paper said.”

Read the rest of the article here >>

Last Thursday, I (@ryanbuch) attended an all-day, online marketing conference in Portland called Inverge (#inverge). I gained a ton of insights from conference speakers from Wieden + Kennedy (@rgleeson), Nokia (@karllong), TechWeb (@TonyUphoff), and Vidoop (@kveton) and from freelance social media freelancers, friends, and business associates alike. I even have 6 pages of handwritten notes (pen + paper, not digital) to prove it.  However, I managed to get in over 30 tweets (Twitter posts of 140 characters or less) that day which doubled my usage of Twitter for the past four months.  I’ve always been open to admitting that, in the past, I have only used Twitter at long conferences and airports when I tell myself that it’s okay to fuel my often-controlled Attention Deficit Disorder. 

I used to think Twitter was primarily a distraction with no practical business purpose, but now my latest Binge Tweeting session has provided some epiphanies from first-hand experience.  I tweeted about Zappos as a great case study in creating employee evangelists and within an hour, Tony Hsieh (@zappos), CEO of Zappos, began following me on Twitter (which is a good thing for all you non-tweeters).  We struck up a conversation on twitter and now I’m an even bigger fan of Zappos. I also realized that over 60% of our eROI employees use Twitter, which is awesome.  We can benefit from knowledge sharing, internal quick communication, and even help in some customer service scenarios.  The next step is to create a Group within TweetDeck, a sweet Twitter application, with the Twitter handles of as many of our customer contacts as possible to engage in those daily conversations as well and continue to be a resource to them.

To check out other CEOs who use Twitter, read the rest of the blog post. (more…)

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.”

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

One trend of online marketing and the tech world as a whole is that there is an acceleration of distraction and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). And, I’m sitting next to the King of ADD, Dylan Boyd. We are listening to the first keynote at MediaPost’s OMMA show in Hollywood, but Dylan has been showing me how Twitter works and it’s quite addictive. Yes, it’s unusual (from my Twitter Virgin perspective) that respected CEO of ReturnPath just Twittered details of the birth of his child and it’s also weird to learn when some of my business associates have a bowel movement.

But, there are some newsworthy uses of Twitter, as the ADD King showed me. The Oregonian is feeding its news into Twitter, Tri-Met has its traffic updates posted real-time to Twitter.

Lessons learned from a guy who started an email marketing company – many people WANT to communicate all the time – don’t fight this human need / addiction – fuel it. Why not?