March 2008 - Electronic Retailer Magazine

industryREPORTS
Electronic Retailer’s LiveEdit Lab
Debuts in Santa Monica
Jim Sterne, president of Target
Marketing, delivered the opening
keynote address.
SANTA MONICA, Calif.—Electronic
Retailer’s inaugural LiveEdit Lab took
place on Wednesday, January 30, at the
beautiful Hotel Casa Del Mar. The
LiveEdit Lab places readers in front of
the columnists and editors who provide
them with cutting-edge multichannel
marketing content each
month. Liquid Focus served as a presenting
sponsor at LiveEdit.
Supporting sponsors included Applied
Perceptions, dComm - Digital
Commerce Agency LLC and Cannella
Response Television.
The one-day conference started with
a bang during Target Marketing
President Jim Sterne’s morning
keynote. As the founding president of
the Web Analytics Association, Sterne
shared insight on the online marketing
landscape. “Your website is not a
brochure, it’s an activity,” he says.
Sterne went into a brief history of the
evolution of web analytics, touching on
everything from charting and reporting
to process optimization. “A website
is not paper on the Internet,” he says,
18 electronicRETAILER | March 2008
explaining that you need to
help people do rather than
help them read.
Sterne was quick to ask
the audience pointed questions,
at times incorporating
slides of actual attendees’
e-commerce sites into
the presentation. “Every
page should have specific
purposes for specific personas,”
he says. The keynote
was the perfect segue to the
day’s feature-packed lineup.
Next, Daniel Wright, CEO
of Seattle-based mPoria—a
leading provider of mobile
commerce solutions—spoke
about m-commerce: selling goods and
services over mobile devices. The audience
was surprised to learn just how
much commerce is currently conducted
via mobile devices, and impressed
at analysts’ projections for future
growth (m-commerce revenues are
expected to reach $480 million in the
next 12 to 18 months in the U.S.).
Wright outlined just how easy it is to
get a mobile commerce site up and
running (depending on the amount of
site sophistication, it can be accomplished
in less than an hour), and
audience members were surprised at
the low cost.
The topic then shifted to search
engine optimization and social
media. Aaron Kahlow, conference
chair of the Online Marketing
Summit and managing partner of
BusinessOnline, discussed how companies
often build their sites based on
their own business objectives, rather
than paying attention to the needs of
site visitors. Companies also need to
ask themselves: “How easy is it for
customers to find information that
they’re looking for when visiting your
site?” Kahlow offered valuable action
items for improving ROI. He then
transitioned to social media.
“Marketing always starts with human
behavior,” Kahlow notes. He adds that
social media can be an effective vehicle
for many. It can create word-ofmouth
buzz about a product or service,
and help marketers gain a better
understanding of their customers.
The first panel of the day was “Email
Marketing: Easy and Effective
Elements You Need to Know About.”
Moderator Jeanniey Mullen, founder
and executive chairwoman of the Email
Experience Council, engaged
attendees and welcomed questions and
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Magazine Magazine
Jeanniey Mullen (right), founder and executive chairwoman of the E-mail
Experience Council, moderated a panel discussion on e-mail marketing.
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