The Email Wars

In London? Want to meet up with some email marketing leaders? DMA UK Nov 4th.

I have the pleasure of being a speaker this event I am am very excited to be speaking with such a great caliber of email marketers. I hope that if you are in London you find time to join us at the event. I am only there for 3 days total but would love to meet anyone that has time for a beer.

What I am really excited about is I will get to hear many of these great speakers from Europe that I hope to learn a lot from. There are some differences in strategies that might give me some new ideas for email marketing campaign execution.

(more…)

The ever loving eROI Crew are having their way with me again. I know I deserve it as I am a little non stop with my pranks and efforts. Glad I have brought them into my web. I received the new today via an email that I am the first in a series of eROI “action figures”. Sure this is a prank, and fun, but they forgot my iPhone, my email marketing belt, my pixel measuring glasses, and my Analytics staff. Must be the series 2 release. Slackers. Attention to details is a must, and excpet for those things… they nailed me. 

Funny to think about, but in another company if you were to do this to your bosses I don’t think that they would take it as lightly and laugh. Me I love it. The creativity here is infectious. Guys, can you just find out where to make me one of these for my wall please. It can join the gimp, De La Soul, DDay, Clint, Che and the 100s of others. 

Oh life at an interactive marketing agency. Love it.

But, this starts the war. HEADS Up Team.

If today was any more of a crazy day with new campaigns, internal meetings, external client reviews, site launches, email launches etc I might have had more time to write some good posts. But alas will start up Tuesday this week. So for some other news:

Our designers are hard at work on a new blog that will join the eROI blog family publicly in October. This new blog will focus on the agency side of our business, things that inspire, work we do, work others do and tips and tricks for doing what you do better. Yes once again we are giving you more and more of what races through out hearts, minds and souls each and every day.

It is going to be FRESH and I think it will help you look at not only the email side of life but all sides. This is how we at eROI approach the interNETZ and all campaigns, sites, and interactive strategy and planning we do. 

But until then enjoy these 3 new wallpapers. And look for new ones being released on the new blog each month.

The Big Pink - named after the tower that sits next to our office. - Get It

FRESH - Part of the new design blog to remind you it is coming. - Get It

And some eROI Love - Get IT

On the approach to another trip to the eROI NYC office to work with Chris Masagatani (MD at the office) on some new client work and meetings, I was inspired with his PITCH video on his new blog CrossPixelNation. He makes it look easy getting ready and going to a pitch. We all know that there are hours of calls, strategy, design, decks made, handouts, and all the other assest that go into a well executed pitch. Or maybe the eROI Crew takes a different approach in the email and interactive agency world. We do not go after the business of everyone, but the best ones.

We want to people that:

1. We like

2. Will drink or have drank the kool aid of best practices

3. Get It

4. Are open to trying to new things

5. Will not limit thought to just email

There is another rule that until now has been unwritten. It is at the end of a long day our clients are  ones you would want to hang out with, share a drink and have a conversation off the topic of work. They are not clients in the end, but partners.

Relationship, trust, friendship, and great work… they all start with the pitch or first date. So NYC we are not just bringing Maverick but we have a crew of wingmen for our first date. When are you free to go out NYC?

Anyone going to be in NYC next week for OMMA East? I know a few of you either live there OR plan on hitting the show. If you are going to be there we would love to meet you. Alex Williams from the eROI team and blogger of ReturnOnSubscriber will be there Tuesday to Friday for client meetings, work at the eROI East Office, and hitting OMMA. 

If you have not been to OMMA it is not JUST about email. WHEW. I know how much email can you consume each and every day. But the line up is great again this year and I think you will gain some great knowledge out of it. We do twice a year and look forward to it. BONUS that it is in NYC and we would spend all week every week there if we could. 

On that note, the eROI office there is booming and we are so happy to find such great clients in the software, social media, publishing and entertainment industries that are excited to work with our team. If you ever want to get together in NYC, let us know and we will be happy to come over and share with you some of our knowledge in person and show you some of the amazing campaigns we keep launching each and every week. 

OK, self promo over. Hope to see you there.

I am sharing this campaign with you a little prematurely. Now I am not saying that this campaign has not gone out and did blow away the long running subscription control by a double digit factor, but it is getting a full campaign case study written up now. It will be out soon with all the details, but want I wanted to focus on was the slight factor that changed the response rate. 

When this creative was first passed by my desk I had to stop and think about it a little bit. How was it different from what was sent out prior? What would tell people what to do and would that effort beat that of ones prior? The whole idea of this campaign was to drive subscriptions and we did not want it to make people think of anything else besides the images and the value of having a print subscription. We loaded it up into an inbox to see how it displayed. Did it drive the eyes to the action. Did it convey value and on top of that did it make me want to get a subscription. Well it was close.

(more…)

Here it is… another great survey on email marketing and email marketer from eROI. Now this one is juicy as well as good looking. I know I am a little biased, but I love the design work our team is doing. Also be on the look for new case studies coming out on Email Design, Campaign Sites, Publishing Client Campaigns, and new methods of email marketing that are delivering ROI in social media.

Here is what you will get in the new study:

We examine all the elements of a great email, and show where email marketers are hitting (and missing) opportunities to increase deliverability, opens, clicks and conversions. We uncover rising trends and current opportunities. How do your email marketing campaigns need to evolve to take advantage?

Download our presentation of the full results!

Why the head of Vladimir? Well why not. He was a great revolutionary that would love the Wars we are fighting for the best email campaigns out there. So that being stated, I don’t want his head. I have 24 of them. Yes I buy random things that bring me some sort of joy or inspiration (stop by my office sometime). I have 24 of these Heads of Vladimir Lenin that are Cola Flavored Pops… and one of them can be yours?

Really you can have one? Yes and here is the deal that will get me to drop one in a special cola flavor sealing envelope and ship it right to you. 

1. You need to find an email campaign

2. It can FAIL or it can Exceed Expectations

3. It can be your own or one of someone else

4. You need to write up 150 words of why it was a success or failure and send it to me via email. Those that want to submit should COMMENT (I know soooo scary, but it is ok as I will not publish them all if they don’t need to be published to communicate with me) and I will email you my info if you do not have it already. 

Contest ends when I run out of pops.

After I get them all, I will read through them, share them with some of the eROI team and then select and present the winners. Note employees of eROI you are open to enter this contest as well and will be judged the same as anyone else. BUT I will not ship you a lolly. I will bring it to your desk.

That is all for now Comrades.

If you have not noticed the new header on this blog (look at the top) you will now notice that we have added the updated blogs to the masthead. We have redesigned ReturnOnSubscriber and moved EmailDays to eROIDays.com as it makes more sense. 

Look for the launch of an East Coast (NYC Office) and West Coast (PDX Office) blog soon with the daily rantings, finds, and culture of eROI from the whole team. It is a cool new blog that changes coasts based on the last post. Makes it more competitive. 

Ryan Buchanan, our CEO, is working on sharing more about the Company eROI, his thoughts on things that reach his inbox and the industry as whole. 

(more…)

That’s right boys and girls… a new Email Marketing Guide in the Resources center @eROI. And not just one… but 3 new guides. And hold tight… wait for it… wait for it… wait for it… now - Look next week for the RESULTS of our latest email study there as well. 

I know you say this is TOO good to be true, like the Flowbee or the GoateeSaver, but it is not it is 4 for the price of 1 visit. I know these guys at eROI really go above and beyond to think about what is working in email marketing and how to share this knowledge with the world. One would think that they are a 3000 strong global force of Ninjas and Revolutionaries (we are but less that 60 with 2 offices) but alas we just like to make you smarter to do your job better. 

Now if we share like this with everyone can you JUST imagine what we share with our clients and customers? I would wager that some AWESOME ideas come out of here and some campaigns that rock. 

(more…)

So today I will be wrapping up my vacation in Southern California. And you did not even know I was gone. Amazing how that works with a blog? I told you I would make sure to keep the posts active and the news flowing as it was my vacation and not yours. How could I let you starve for 7 days? I care too much I guess. 

But the real reason for my return is the news that eROI was infiltrated by a spy. Yes that is right. I was sitting here checking my email the other day only to have this float into my Twitter stream of a crazy Bronto employee heading all the way across the USA to make it all the way to my office. HE had made his way through 3 floors, our security guard Sharky and into my office. Only to sneak up behind one of my team with my AMA Award baseball bat to strike a blow for the Carolinas. 

Looks like his use of the eROI Bloggers Unite t-shirt might have bought him some time and got him past the crew. I am going to need to sweep my office (shown in this photo) for bugs, mics, camera, and bronto poop. (Speaking of did you see the front page of the USA today Tues the 5th? They state that plastic Bronto’s are harmful to the environment and maybe poisonous? A must read.)

So on a flight tonight back to Stumptown (aka Portland) to survey the damage and make sure we arrange a surprise attack back to the (L)east Coast. 

After a few years of writing this blog I was wondering what percentage of the readership is subscribing to our weekly email updates? From what I can see a large percentage of the visitors are subscribed. BUT what percentage of the readers are just using RSS or have this blog bookmarked in their tool bar. Hundreds of daily readers make up this amount as well. 

So today is the day that you sign up for our weekly (once a week) email fed by RSS goodness blog recap newsletter. Now you not only get the rich nuggety goodness that comes with The Email Wars, but you also get a taste of our newly designed blog eROI Days (was Email Days for years) from our CEO, and the soon to relaunch blog Return on Subscriber penned by Alex Williams and Jeff Mills from our Sales and Strategy team. That is a 3 for 1 ROI for you on just one email subscription. What a shockingly good deal for you.

Now you can be kept in the loop mid week about all the exciting articles we write, learn about new white papers, studies, surveys, awards, parties, and our critiques of campaigns we see each and every day. So your next step is to look to the right hand side of our blog and sign up. Easy? Yes. Feel good? Of Course. You also have the option of signing up for the eROI Monthly newsletter at the same time. WOW too good to be true is seems? I know the hits keep on coming. If you want to review the past eROI Newsletters from 2003 to present, we also have them all stashed right over here. 

We will also be sharing with our blog readers a new eROI Internal Culture blog shaping up as an East Coast VS West Coast office battle. 

Looking forward to seeing you subscribe in the old fashion Web 1.0 type of way… 

If you had had the pleasure in the past to peruse our portfolio of FRICKING AWESOME work, yes this is a shameless plug, our team last week made some changes. We are not showing work that is just FRICKING AWESOME, we are showing and sharing with you work that the inspiring and awesome… all at the same time. 

Hats off to the eROI creative team for continuing to rock, roll, play hard and turn out some of the best email, web and campaign work out there. 

I know I might be a little biased here, but when I see the stuff we are doing now as compared to this old stuff in the portfolio my heart skips a beat and my eyes tear up. Are you ready to come over to our side and start doing some great work, take some risks and go in a new direction? I know you are and we are here for you. 

For those of you that know me, you know that I have a hard time with vacations. I really like the whole concept of leaving work for a few days or a week, but I have a hard time not being connected. It is a wild thing in this day and age that we are always connected and always reading email to stay in the loop. Some are better at unplugging than others. Not me. 

But I have actually not really “worked” as work is something you do when you don’t like what you do. I happen to be one of those sick individuals that loves to take some time off, relax, hang with friends and family in a warm locale, but I also love the industry and the agency/esp we have created at eROI. It is one of those places where I am excited each day to wake up and go to work. Crazy huh? But not so crazy that I need to be locked up in a white coat. Well some might tell you that at times. But I thrive on the innovation, creativity and family that eROI brings to the table. If you have not worked with us you should, but only if you like to do great work and have a blast while doing it. 

(more…)

Well we want you to tell (Us, aka Me) what you think about each post. Now we are not going to ask you to comment, as well that could be a SCARY thing to do on the interWeb. I hear sharing your opinion and social media are just a fad anyway, so why waste your time commenting on a post right? Right. (more…)