Robust Conference Bucks Downward Trend

With a reported 5,000 people in attendance, representing only a modest decline from 2008, last week’s Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Boston certainly brought many online marketers, retailers and catalogers out of the woodwork, bucking a troubling downward trend of the year’s catalog, direct marketing and retail conferences.

As I combed the event, spreading the word of our metamorphosis to All About ROI from Catalog Success, I naturally was gratified at the welcoming reception I received from nearly everyone I met — online retailers, catalogers, store retailers, brand merchants, vendors, etc. What I found even more gratifying was how our adjustment — from being a catalog/multichannel-specific information provider to one that intensely focuses on the integration of all marketing channels — mirrors what so many of the marketers I met are doing.

It’s obviously been a long time since merchandise sellers stopped relying on single channels, namely catalogs or stores. But if there’s a true, so-called “traditional” multichannel marketer — one that focuses on a single classic channel, then blends in a Web store, e-mail marketing and search — I came away from this event with the realization that that particular business model is actually becoming outdated, too.

The marketers I met or whose stories I heard about are more focused than ever on communicating with their customers in newer ways. For starters, the explosion in social media and SMS (i.e., texting) has dramatically changed how many consumers, most notably younger adults, interact. Then consider the simple fact that they can scoot through the commercials on TV with their DVR remotes. Add it all up and you have a growing portion of consumers who simply don’t want mass advertising anymore. They want to access brands in their own time, at their own paces and in their own ways. They don’t want to conform to communicating with you on your time.

This conference brought to light the fact that retailers of all kinds need to invest more in unique marketing channels, ones their forefathers didn’t build their companies on. Catalogers who are investing in improving their Web sites are doing fine, but if they’re not also investing in — or at the very least, looking seriously at — mobile marketing, social networking and even affiliate marketing, they’re missing the boat.

Retailers focused too heavily on store expansion and real estate deals, and not enough on emerging Web 3.0 advancements, also are going to come up short. In one session, the sports apparel marketer and manufacturer Under Armour described how it keeps up with its primary audience of teenage athletes on many levels, both online and off, always keeping the ball in consumers’ courts rather than flooding them with advertising.

In another session, a representative from Green Mountain Coffee went into great detail (see related story) on how it's become an environmental stalwart while making sure its customers know how environmentally friendly it is.

On the exhibit floor, the widening array of vendors — most notably a good number of e-commerce software solutions providers and e-fulfillment providers — illustrated how much further marketers can take their e-commerce-related efforts. The broad array of general e-commerce solutions providers and Web hosting platforms has been succeeded by assorted subcategories, offering not only e-commerce software, but also saved customer data solutions, product reviews processing, e-mail creation and transmission services, among others.

Takeaway Tip of the Event … Maybe of the Year
As I headed out of the convention center for the final time, a multichannel retailer flagged me down to tell me something. She'd heard me ask a question during one of the final sessions about how marketers who are active with social networks can effectively keep up with all those tweets on Twitter and communications on their Facebook fan pages.

Her company hires eager-beaver college interns and pays them next to nothing. Who better than college kids, who seemingly spend a quarter of their lives on these sites? The kids are perfectly happy with this because they can add the experience to their resumes. After a little training on how to put on the best face for the company, she lets them do their thing all day long on these networks. Again, I ask you: Who better? And at such a low cost. A win-win for sure.