As promised, highlights of IRCE 2009 are below. The following topics/speakers are what I felt worth mentioning here either because they were offbeat or funny or insightful or interesting:

1. Patrick Byrne: Patrick, CEO of Overstock.com, was one of the keynote speakers on Tuesday. Patrick’ speech by any means was not earth shattering or insightful but for what he did during the last 10 minutes. He asked the audience whether to move to Q&A session or allow him to share his tribulations with Wall Street. Almost 75% chose the latter. Then, he went on to share his challenges with Wall Street’s short sellers, hedge funds, and some analysts on how Overstock’s stock was hammered based on false rumors and manipulation as well as his prescience calling of the 2008 financial meltdown back in 2006. I know what you are thinking – how is this related to Internet Retail? It is not but it seemed to be a crowd pleaser.
2. 

   Rue la la Invitation

   Rue La La: Cheryl Kaplan from Rue La La gave a talk on “Designing the unique experience.” Given that the projector malfunctioned for a while and Cheryl’s presentation was about visual experience, it was frustrating. However, she was a class act and continued without the slides for some time. It seems they thought of naming the business as “Pssst” but then decided against as it would be little embarrassing to introduce yourself to a stranger as, “I work at Pssst.” The interesting story is Rue La La’s customer acquisition model. They sell premier women’s brands in a private sale for just 2 days only. This keeps the potential buyers on their toes about when and what will be on sale. Added to this, there is no membership fee but to become a member, you must be sponsored by an existing member. The sponsors do get discounts on the next purchase. Do you see what’s going on here? This is very viral in nature. No wonder they always sell out the merchandise. Rue La La took an online retail concept and added exclusivity. Talk about how someone could become popular not only because she buys private brands but also because she holds the keys to the next person’s entry – all the while getting discounts on the side. Cheryl did not share the company’s revenues or profits but isn’t this an interesting concept? She was nice enough to dole out few welcome membership cards (the picture on the right) and I got one for my wife.

3. Alibris & Drugstore.com: Brian Elliott, CEO of Alibris.com, and Tracy Wright, CFO of Drugstore.com covered a session titled “Understanding web site financials.” Both Brian and Tracy are great speakers and knew the stuff cold. They deftly related how online metrics relate to Revenues and Margin. They went beyond traditional traffic, click-through, and conversion to frequency of purchase, customer churn, LTV (Lifetime value), and others. The presentation was chock full of dashboards depicting how they measure all these in their organizations.
4. Arthur Middleton Hughes: Arthur was one of the speakers who covered the session, “Why and how to segment your email marketing list.” Some of you may know that he is called the “father of database marketing.” I have met Arthur before but this was the first time I listened to his presentation. He was hilarious. His irreverence, mastery of the subject, and delivery made it so. I wish I could share an audio snippet of his talk here.
5. The Question Mark Guy: Have you seen “The Question Mark Guy” on TV. If you did, you know who I am referring to. If not, google (or shall I say, bing) and find out. I was riding the Silverline bus in Boston heading towards the convention center and lo and behold! “The Question Mark Guy” hops into the bus. Instantly I thought, hey! I have seen him before but I did not know his name. I caught up with him as we walked towards the convention center. He is Matthew Lesko. The reason I write about him is that he has a unique persona that he seems to have developed over the years. I asked him whether he wears this suit all the time and he said yes and that he has more than 20 of these. You can always find him in this attire – Talk about brand consistency. As we cross the pedestrian walkway, spectators and folks in the cars at the traffic light were pointing at him and smiling. That to me is Instant Brand Recognition. The question marks on his suit are like a RED color Coke can. He told me that Harvard Business School asked him to come and give a speech on Branding to its MBA students but he declined because he is not doing these as a branding exercise. Think about that for a second – HBS wants to know how he developed his brand. He is attending IRCE because he is trying to sell his products/services online. BTW, branding is not about a logo. It is more about what + how we influence customers & prospects to associate with that brand. To achieve that objective and be relevant, we have to address the target market needs, define the brand promise, stay true to that promise on a consistent basis through our products, services, communications, and measure constantly whether our beliefs are close to the perceptions out there. It’s hard, however, in this competitive world, it is extremely important to have this thought process in our DNA to help us stand out and be differentiated.
6. US Postal Service: USPS, in partnership with Pitney Bowes, offered a freebie – any attendee can mail anything that fits in one flat rate box to anywhere in the continental US. Pitney Bowes is actually picking up the cost. On day 2, when a gentleman waved the box at me “do you need one,” I declined. The next day, I saw more USPS members holding the mail boxes saying “Free Shipping,” I grabbed one. I did not do it the day before for 2 reasons – didn’t hear “FREE,” did not have the top 500 online retailers book (it’s around half the size of your typical yellow pages), and some other marketing material. Interestingly enough, neither PB nor USPS are capturing sender data. I thought the moment I fill in the shipping form online, right there, I am a lead and I have opted-in. Nope, said the manager. So, is it merely an awareness campaign on the part of PB and USPS? They are giving away almost $12 – 15 per individual (or prospect) for nothing? Well, some of us will remember the good gesture, but …
7. Who gets the credit?: This was actually a very interesting session that focused on the complexity of online marketing budget allocation. Simply put, if your prospect visits several channels (search, catalog, web site, coupon site, email mktg campaign, PPC,…) and finally makes a purchase, which channel should get the credit? If you offer incentives to several channels for the same purchase, then you are throwing money away and hurting your profit margins. The speaker from Rimm-Kaufman did a good job of walking through the complexity.
8. Website Feedback: One of the sessions had 3 panel members who offered on-the-spot critiques and advice to those brave online retailers who volunteered their sites to receive feedback. This was very lively session. There were more volunteers than time allowed. The three panelists were well versed in website design, search engines (SEO, PPC), placement of specific CTA (Call-to-Actions), site traffic, conversions, and many more. The smart thing here was that there wasn’t only one panel member doling out advice. The three were nice but very eager and competitive to voice their opinions – all in good fun. Given that not all online retailers have a million dollar budget, listening to these suggestions about their or other sites helped a number of attendees to take home some practical ideas that when implemented could give a lift to their conversions.
9. Getting your message to GenY: This session focused on how to market to Gen Y (Generation Y – those born between early 80′s and early 90′s). The speaker, Michael Penna, talked about participatory marketing and instead of jumping into a powerpoint presentation, he invited a panel of 3 students (all girls) from Pace University, New York to share their experiences about online shopping, channels that they use, and some general online behavior. Here are some thoughts that they shared:
   1. They sleep with their laptops, check their facebook a/c and email when they get up and throughout the day
   2. They do not twitter much
   3. Like messages that are interesting & relevant (like store location nearby offering discounts)
   4. Love deals and promotions (because students are poor and always like discounts)
   5. Prefer online retailers focus on making communications more memorable and engaging
   6. They wish online retailers spend time and effort to try to understand their needs
   7. Recommend merchants give the users the control to choose when and how to receive the communications
   8. Some of the promotions/advertisements that they liked in the recent past are: Virgin America’s Wi-Fi, ETrade’s talking baby, Microsoft’s “I am a PC campaign.” These ads broke thru the clutter and offered relevant, interesting, valuable messaging and offers. Virgin America offered free Wi-Fi for all their passengers and had a contest around this, ETrade’s talking baby was funny, and Microsoft’s “I am a PC use campaign” resonated with one of the girls who is a PC user.
   9. Like sites such as http://www.shopittome.com

Exhibit Hall - Left @ IRCE 2009

Last week, I was at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition (IRCE) in Boston from June 15 through 18. It was a well organized show but for the far flung conference rooms, which made those who wanted to cherry pick the general sessions run around a lot. The food was OK. The networking party sponsored by Alibaba.com was great especially the card tricks (poker) that a young local magician performed at our table. Look, I have seen my share of these before but I got to tell you that this one was mesmerizing.

The conference sessions covered a wide variety of topics and the speakers, for the most part, were good. The exhibitors, more than 300 of them, ranged from search engine companies to e-commerce solution providers to fulfillment houses. The attendees represented wide ranging geographies – from those local to Boston to California on the west coast, to Australia, New Zealand, and India. 

There were 4 full-day workshops on Monday and Thursday covering Email, Search, Mobile Marketing, and Small Retailers. The general sessions, with number of tracks, were on Tuesday, Wednesday and covered wide ranging topics.

Exhibit Hall - Middle @ IRCE 2009

I did observe few recurring themes during the conference and this is keeping in perspective of the needs of small and medium sized online retailers:

1. Everyone was well aware of Search Marketing – be it PPC (pay-per-click) or SEO (Search engine optimization) and most attendees have been using search in some way to attract traffic to their sites.
2. Most attendees were aware of Email marketing but a majority of the attendees did not know how to strategically use email marketing to their advantage.
3. I did not attend the mobile marketing workshop but did hear that some medium sized businesses were interested to understand the tactical component of using mobile marketing in addition to their other marketing channels.
4. There was a lot of interest to learn how to optimize an online retailer’s website to increase conversion.
5. There was also a lot of interest in analytics, performance metrics, and optimization in general.
6. Everyone across the board was impacted during the last 12+ months due to state of the US economy – as if this is new news, hello?
7. There was neither much focus nor serious interest in utilizing social networks as an additional marketing channel for the online retailers – yet!
8. The challenges catalog marketers are facing…
9. The innumerable number of moving parts associated with running an online retail business – everything from technology, operations, financial, logistics, marketing, traffic, conversions, partnerships, and more.     
   

   Exhibit Hall - Right @ IRCE 2009

There were also some highlights that I think deserve coverage. I will share these in the next post.