When I first started writing for this blog, it was called "Email Days" and featured lots of examples of everyday emails, highlighting the importance of email in our every day lives, not just touting email marketing only.  So, I thought I'd go back to my roots a little bit and tell you about an email a friend sent me last night.  He is an avid cyclist and knows I like cycling as well, despite the fact that we both mainly commute to work by bike and don't get to do long rides very often as our weekends are consumed with raising young kids and different kinds of activities then biking.  He sent a link to the video below, which is filmed in Portland, Oregon, and really captures the humor of two different types of cyclists - hipsters vs performance.  This is one of the funnier videos I've seen in a while and is very close to home, literally and figuratively.  Enjoy.

The YouTube video from Crispin interns has been circulating through agency e-zines and word-of-mouth email for the past week or more.

It made me think about the wacky stuff that free labor at other large agencies come up with and here's what I found off of a Google Search:  Crap - I searched and looked at dozens of intern videos with no sound or no humor.  Maybe Crispin nailed this better than I thought. There is opportunity for other interns to take their spin on it.  This also proves that online video still needs a lot of content - there is very little out there and much much smaller amount of quality.  As for interns at eROI, we love 'em.  Not sure I want to task any of them with spending 100's of hours putting together a rap video.  Your thoughts?  Next post...wrapping paper gone wild experiment in the office (video and pics to follow)...

Over the past few months, a lot of what our team has been speaking, writing, and studying about relates to the philosophy that it's okay to fail, as long as you are able to learn from it and, in the end, come out achieving success.  After reading our latest study "Use of Testing in Email Marketing" - which concludes by saying "if you're not failing, you're not learning" - I began thinking about how, as an entrepreneur and  business owner, it was extremely important for me to embrace this philosophy early on and realize that it expands to every aspect of business.  I'll be the first to say it, failing isn't fun! Doing so however, can be enlightening and isn't something you should fear. If you fear failure, you will likely refrain from taking risks and experimenting with new ideas that can ultimately move you ahead.  I have gone through the "fail, learn and improve" process numerous times and each time I've learned more about it. One such lesson is that sometimes "the fail" isn't always obvious. The below video is comedy and not relevant to my particular FAIL, but it's a Fail Video worth watching.

There are times when the big FAIL sign isn't held up to alert you, "the fail" is often something you have to keep an eye out for. This eye-opening lesson came upon me in early 2007 when eROI was going through a big transition period accompanied by lot of growing pains. Going though this period certainly made me stronger as a leader, us stronger as a company and created a culture where my employees have a stronger voice and a bigger influence in the ongoing success of eROI -it however was an emotional and professional journey to get to this point and one that I actually documented in a 5 part blog post back in the summer of 2007. If you are so inclined, the entire series can be found in the eROI Days archive for you reading pleasure but to sum it up:  

The Fail

I had assumed that I was connected to the thoughts of each employee and each department because I had a hands-on management approach and frequently interacted socially with my employees.  I assumed that the agency was well aligned internally and that that everyone was happy, felt valued and felt they had a voice, both on a project level and within the agency as a whole.

As I began preparing material for a company retreat, I scheduled short one-on-one meetings with all of my employees where I encouraged them to be candid with me. Through 34 one-on-one meetings over 3 non-stop, emotionally draining days, I learned how wrong many of my assumptions were. Here are a few specific learnings.

The Learnings

As a business owner this particular "fail" taught me...

1.    
2. Keep your eyes (and ears) open for "failures" and when you find them... admit them, learn from them and quickly take action to implement change.
3.   
4. Never assume that informal socializing with employees is good enough. You must regularly meet one-on-one with your employees in a professional, confidential environment where true sharing is encouraged and rewarded.
5.   
6. If given the opportunity, your employees will let you know when the company has fallen out of alignment. If this happens, get their opinions on how improve and let them know you are listening by sharing their suggestions with the whole company.
7.   
8. Take a hard look at what and how much you delegate - you may feel like you've handed over a substantial amount and given up a lot of control over your company - but often you actually haven't. If you want your company to soar, embrace delegation on every level and truly give key pieces of control to your employees.
9.   
10. Get advice from other entrepreneurs. I was fortunate to have co-founded a group, called Starve Ups, of 18 founders of high-growth startups and I received a lot of trusted advice from the trenches. Additionally, I am part of another group of advertising agency owners called Agency Owner Roundtable which is run through the Portland Advertising Federation. Both of these groups gave me pointers of real-world experiences on employee advice, branding advice, and strategic direction that I couldn't get anywhere else.

The Results

Here we are 2 years later and as an agency we've come a long way from the above "fail". We have seen some awesome changes, implemented great processes and overall, better aligned ourselves internally to cultivate better communication, collaboration and creativity.

The "Process Team" we created in the summer of '07, with a representative from each department, continues to be an integral part of implementing ongoing improvements to our process - both between and within departments as well as between us and our clients.

My employees have a voice - and they use it! Although many are comfortable speaking up when they feel there is reason to, we've made it a semi- annual practice to schedule a day of one-on-one meetings where employees are encouraged to meet with not just me, but anyone on the management team, and candidly talk about what they're loving, hating, or frustrated with (i.e. processes, projects, or communication breakdowns). Following these meetings, the management team meets to review and discuss new strategic and performance related goals, as well as create an action plan for any needed change.

On a daily basis I am impressed and inspired by the level of work our team continuously produces as result of the open, collaborative environment we've created.  Of everything that resulted  from this particular "fail" my favorite remains this personal one - As a business owner,  I get an enormous amount of pride and satisfaction seeing my employees being truly passionate about eROI and seeing their continuous ability to reach new levels of synergy as a team, resulting in the accomplishment of work I never thought possible.

There's nothing like a few, good quality testimonials to re-charge your optimism and give the extra motivation to kick it into high gear for the day.  Here are a few that have me psyched about a full-throttle week coming up:

“I have worked at three agencies that have completed successful interactive engagements with eROI: McMillan, Copeland Communications and iSoftStone. In all three instances, eROI provided great ideas, good counsel, and most importantly a solid understanding of the agency’s very unique needs, based on the marketing campaigns being created for our clients. They were able to help strategically and tactically (implementation) and were proactive in thinking ahead to possible road-blocks for ideas that we wanted to bring to life, and more importantly looking at solutions to problems before we knew they existed. They cleared understand the unique needs of agencies and that will continue to serve them today and in the future.  If you have any specific questions in regard to the engagements and why eROI are able to provide strong value in agency/client engagements, please feel free to contact me."

- David Sly, iSoftStone

“eROI’s work on Arboria.com has been integral in turning our brand into a crowd pleaser. We have transformed from a primarily dealer-centric existence, to a touchy-feely existence that consumers want to buy direct."

- Mario Alfonse, Arboria.com

“eROI is a company that gets it. They get customer service, so they hire outstanding account teams. They get that not everyone speaks tech-ese, so they know how to articulate web functionality to a “normal” person. They get that customers don’t want to be told “you need to…”, so they listen to what you want and work hard to deliver it. I have been very impressed with eROI’s ability to translate my sometimes vague “I wants” into a great campaign website and SEO strategy that upped our web presence by several degrees."

- Laura Wieking, Credit Union Association of Oregon

“Email plays a key role in our integrated marketing programs and EROI has been our email software provider for over six years. eROI offers us two critically important services: 1) an email system that is easy to use for program deployment and campaign tracking, and 2) email marketing insights and guidance that has helped us to create highly successful client and agency programs."

- Peter Levitan, Citrus

I came across a New York Times article the other day that told the story of Howcast.com.  The site features how-to videos done by the  Howcast team, aspiring film makers and average YouTube video users.  Video isn't exactly new to the internet but their unique brand of specific short how-to's on topics such as "How to Survive a Bear Attack", "How to Look Great in Photographs" and, yes, "How to use Twitter" create a new niche in the video market.  Howcast has had solid success with clients who are primarily in the Business to Consumer market.  They know it takes more than their own site to create an internet destination and have been smart enough to quickly sign "deals with the likes of Google, Facebook and Hulu to spread their videos across the Internet."  They have integrated sharing through Facebook and you have the options to copy and customize embedded code similar to YouTube.  Ads have also been added to some videos and there is talk of making products pertaining to certain videos available for sale.  At this point Howcast.com is a fun and informative resource and could potentially have B to B clout.  For the tech and software world, it'd be cool to experiment with emerging products in this forum but expecting big results at this point is a little premature.

Read the rest of the NY Times article »

OMS has been touring the country to spread the word on online marketing the right way.  On June 29th, OMS set up in Portland for a day full of expertise.  I brought something back from every speaker and got to watch. eROI's own Alex Williams did a great job of breaking down the value of a good welcome email for the crowd. Here are some of my other notes from the event:  Aaron Khalow started the event off with key points like 63% of website visitors who don't find what they are looking for will never come back.  It makes a strong case for optimizing your site.   He stressed that your website is your foundation but it won't matter unless you have the tools to encourage people to find it.  The three pillars were search - with SEO having the largest impact, email - the fabric that holds it all together, and analytics - customization is key.

Ray "Catfish" Comstock, from Business Online, went deeper into some of these subjects. He illustrated a search cycle that went from ranking to repeat customer.  Ranking - [SEO] → Traffic - [Landing Page Optimization] → Conversions - [Marketing and Sales ]→ Sale - [Customer Service] → Repeat Customer  Why is ranking so important?  90% of traffic happens on the first page of search engines which means you have to be in the top 10 results to have a chance.  Like Khalow pointed out, analytics play a huge factor in how you get to the repeat customer.  Finding out what keywords are relevant is extremely valuable, personalization and location are both key components.  Other strategies Catfish brought up were optimizing video, news and the use of internal linking.  These techniques are effective because there is a lot less competition than with traditional searches.

The Portland Creative Community took some bold steps with its launch of the Portland Ad Federation Rosey Awards website themed "Nothing Says I'm Better than you Like a Rosey."  The messaging has an East Coast directness to it that takes many Portlanders by surprise in a city that fosters friendliness to strangers, foes, and friends.  However, I think it's the perfect time for Portland to step up and talk with confidence about its creative talent here.  Yes, we've recently been discovered by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications as the destination for hipsters (employed and unemployed) to hang out.  But, we aren't getting much positive press for having the second highest unemployment in the country.  Now is the right time to shout from the roof-tops that Portland creative agencies do kick-ass work! Kudos to Anthill Marketing for the concept, design, and messaging in the site and entire Roseys this year!

I'm not so sure this site would work in most other industries as it is definitely edgy, controversial, and provocative, but I think it's a shot in the arm that Portland needs.  The true test is to see if agencies from other cities take notice.  Then, an interesting dialog will begin.  You'll start to see this campaign promoted more on Twitter (I love the "Rosey Smack Feed" section of the 'Win Tix' part of the site), Facebook, and other blogs in the upcoming months.  I've got to sign off from this blog post to think of some good Smack Talk myself -

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