Your weekly dose of recommended reading from the Accolade team. This week -

Dan Zarella – Need to Justify Social Media? Use Real Numbers About Real Money
Zarella tackles justifying the ROI of social media and his thoughts on the subject are spot on. If the field’s practitioners can’t substantiate their claims with hard data, then it’s completely reasonable for organizations to avoid further investment. In light of the fact that calculating ROI is a matter of simple mathematics, the time has come for more accountability.

Clickz – SEO + QR Codes
Interested in effectively bridging the gap between online and offline marketing? Then QR codes may be for you. Crispin Sheridan’s article detailing creative use cases of the technology as well as the United States Postal Service’s new promotion to encourage the use of direct mail featuring QR codes is a must read for those interested in taking the plunge.

Find Email Design Inspiration with Emailium
If you need design inspiration or just want to keep tabs on design and trends of a particular industry, check out Emailium. The free search engine features email campaigns across a spectrum of industries and is searchable by a wide variety of criteria including:

• Company
• Subject
• Body Text
• Color
• Industry
• Date

The data returned for each query includes deployment time, email service provider as well as lists of related emails. Additionally, individual emails can be shared via Facebook or Twitter or saved and tagged for future reference to build a personal clip file.

One caveat worth mentioning is that Emailium is certainly not comprehensive and is no replacement for pre-existing resources like The Retail Email Blog or in-house clip files. That said, it’s a great addition to any email marketer’s toolkit.

To register for a free beta account, see http://www.emailium.com.