The Email Wars

just pulled in to Deer Valley, Utah for 72 hours of the brightest email minds, 18 degree weather and some great conversations. I will be attempting to blog the events during the day so keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully we gleam some new ideas these next few days.

Cheers

We are all riding a high this week because of our move into creative new space and now this huge honor that was rather unsuspecting and humbling. It was a room of pin striped suits and red power ties, with luminaries like Gert Boyle of Columbia Sportswear and other larger than life local business leaders and captains of industry sprinkled around the room. And then us. Eight eROI’ers from our team in t-shirts, jeans, and even some leather bracelets from the creative team. We truly were the elephant in the room, and it was cool.

At the Portland Business Journal award ceremony luncheon for the Oregon’s Most Admired Companies (voted by 2,000 CEOs from around the state), eROI was honored today in a pretty big way. There were 8 industry categories (Financial, Real Estate, Professional Services, Non-Profit, etc), and the 9th one was the “Across All Industries” category which is like the ‘Championship Series.’ Many of the other honorees were clients of ours, which made the award and recognition even more amazing.

We are all still pinching ourselves to see if it was real, but Ryan, our CEO was on stage with the CEOs and a few company representatives of all 1,000-employee companies or bigger as the top 10 most admired companies in Oregon. Heck some of them are multinational companies like Intel and Nike. We are just this little “new-fangled” (as the editor of the Portland Business Journal referred to us as) marketing company, but we’re getting recognized on a grand scale by CEOs/companies around the state.

Here is the list:
1. Nike
2. Columbia Sportswear
3. Intel
4. Leatherman Tool Group
5. Precision Castparts
6. Umpqua Bank
7. OHSU
8. eROI, Inc.
Tied: NW Natural Gas
10. A-dec, Inc.

We are all incredibly proud as this is a MAJOR pat on the back for all of the hard work our team puts in to deliver great email marketing tools and interactive web campaigns. Thanks to our team for all the hard work they have put in this year and the past 5 at eROI. And also thank you to all the partners and companies that have allowed us to do GREAT work in the state of Oregon and around the world.

So many times we see emails that look like everyone else’s emails. They follow the same design, images, link colors, and boxy style. So when I get one from a brand that looks like it took some time to design it, I think higher of it. Now this being said it might have some rendering issues in some email clients and even have some of it not load right, but I guess that is the risk you take when you want to design to make an impact. Fortunately my email clients does not have this issue (another reason for the Email Standards Site to form) so it came in just right.

I love the layering and complexity of the design and that it is spot on with the brand. It might be a little long winded, but the look had me at hello.

What are your thoughts?

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I can tell you that with all the respect I have for the candidates this year, this email made me gag. Sure there is an opportunity to sell gear, but as holiday presents? Dad… here is a great Obama t-shirt for you. I hope you love it when you are running in DC this spring.

I know that the primaries have put a lot of pressure on the fund raising efforts, but this felt so forced and so Cafe Press, that I honestly lost some respect. Should I still have it? Should I have more as his campaign is pulling out all the stops and embracing the internet? I don’t know.

Would you buy one for a Christmas gift? So many jokes I could write about this, but they would all be cheap shots. And you know me, I don’t do that….

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So here I am loading up my cart with my wife’s holiday wishes that she so carefully rips from magazines and leaves around the house, and I am caught by someone in big box retail doing it right. I don’t shop too much online in some of the big retail stores, I know I hate to say it but I go to the mall instead, but when I did today I was happier about the check out process than I was about online shopping. Good work Nordstrom’s.

I was “asked” if I wanted to opt in after the transactional info, and before I placed my order. Spot on. And not only that but they asked WHAT I wanted to get information about. I shop at JCrew alot, but had to leave the email program after 2 years of not getting emails about men’s clothes. Heck I even called them, replied to emails and asked at the stores how I could get emails that were relevant. (A seed account I have still gets irrelevant ones). Back to Nordy’s… they asked what I wanted to hear about. Now I might be a little premature with this post, as I have not got an email yet, but if they deliver with relevant men’s information, I might shop more online from them.

I had to show you below as I was so proud of them.

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HELLO Clear copy, simple call to action, easy to read and reference coupon code. Nice work Bath and Body. This time of year, and actually all the time, show me what you want me to do, tell me what is in it for me, and give me a simple button to press.

Home Run in my book for an ecom or event driven email campaign. Looking forward to seeing more.

Something that I liked as well, but sounded odd, was in the footer of “3 Very Natural Ways to Shop”. So what it this “Party at Home”? I assume it is organizing your own shopping party, but seems odd to call that Natural, or as a culture has shopping crossed the threshold?

I would have liked to see some web font in the creative instead of all image, but then who cares about image blocking?

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I wrote this post a few weeks ago, so as not to forget this day. Thanks to you Jeanniey for helping to pull us all together in the EEC and as a community.

I know it is not your 21st (29th right) but in a few days at the Email Insiders Summit in Park City Utah, we will throw our party there. Hopefully like last year in 11 degree weather at the foot of the mountain around a fire pit. This time maybe being prepared so we don’t have to swill bottles of wine.

Cheers and thank you.