SAO Sponsor Spotlight: eROI

Start, Current and Future Outlook

eROI, Inc. was founded in December 2002 as a full service email marketing company. eROI’s founder, Ryan Buchanan, leveraged a close relationship with another entrepreneur to tie the two companies together -- email marketing software and web development -- to form the basis for eROI. As both companies progressed, it became clear that their services and solutions were natural complements. On January 1, 2004, the firms merged to form eROI, a full-service e-marketing agency. eROI’s services include email marketing, web development and database marketing. The company helps its clients generate and capture qualified leads online through email marketing, e-commerce, search engine marketing and web site development. eROI offers a suite of proprietary software to our clients to automate email marketing (emailROI), event registration (eventROI) and e-commerce transactions (ecomROI).

Since its inception, the company has grown from 2 to 23 current employees, with $1.7 million in email and web marketing revenue in 2005. eROI has developed over 65 strategic partnerships -- ranging from interactive agencies and advertising firms to software companies -- which accountied for approximately 20 percent of revenue. The biggest areas of growth occurred in email marketing software and services, online web campaigns and viral marketing. Furthermore, eROI saw increased demand for services within the technology, real estate, healthcare, gaming and consumer market segments. Some of the sales and marketing efforts that eROI used to spark this growth included non-profit sponsorships; networking organization sponsorships; web, email, and event sponsorships; and search engine marketing. Email marketing software and services leads our growth effort. Online web campaigns and viral marketing efforts were also a major growth area. Online event registration software implementation surged in the last half of 2005.

The demand for online marketing services continues to grow as marketers look for ways to connect with their customers and for more measurable forms of marketing. In fact, according to TNS Media Intelligence, nearly 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies plan to increase their online marketing budgets by 30 percent this year. “We are meeting this increased demand extremely well -- our success comes from thoroughly understanding the goals of our clients and providing them with the right services to meet those goals,” said Ryan Buchanan, eROI CEO. “Marketers are also being held more accountable for the success of their programs -- eROI gives clients the ability to measure results and track the success of their efforts, which is exactly what they need.”

The future looks bright for eROI. The company is targeting sales of $3.5 million in 2006 and adding another dozen employees to its Portland office. In fact, finding talented interactive account managers, software and service salespeople, and programmers will be eROI’s top priority this year. To accommodate its growing team, eROI is moving into new office space in March ’06 that is double its existing space (same building, Suite 180). eROI is up to the tricky task of nurturing aggressive growth AND maintaining a fun, young, creative culture.