etailwest.wbresearch.com

Everything was great...but there were way too many sweets. Try providing more healthy snacks next time.

The most productive moments at the show were when everyone was allowed to network and mingle, rather than being sectioned off. I think having some retailer-only events is okay, but segregating for the entire show was a bit much. Show floor was set up well for foot traffic. Speaking schedule was great.

Food was amazing. Staff was very helpful and polite. Only feedback would be to request vendor and attendee have identifiable color on badge. We were only able to identify 'speakers' by badge color.

As a brand, the most value I got from eTail is hearing from other brands and how they're using particular partners and tools to achieve their goals. The partner can go more in detail about their services and tools at that point and with that context, but I don't get value from sessions hosted by specific partners where they spend the entire time plugging their product. In particular, the Certona session and Snapchat session were positioned in the titles to be broader and applicable to my business, but ended up being nothing more than a sales pitch. Conferences like these are about sharing knowledge, ideas, stories of success and failure - sessions that are all about one particular vendor feel very self-centered and do not bring value.

1. There were too many “fireside chats” / “panels”. Some of the fireside chats (two speakers where one acted as more of a moderator, but it was really just a joint case study) were good. The majority of panels were poorly moderated and not focused enough. 2. It would be better if some sessions were longer than 20 minutes so speakers could move past the high-level takeaways and really dive into examples, findings, successes, failures, trends,...etc. I want less of the WHAT to do (say, personalization) and more of the HOW to execute effectively. 3. The day 2 (Thursday) morning moderator, Ed Kennedy, was MUCH better than Day 1 (Wednesday). 4. It would be nice to have 5 minute breaks between sessions for those switching tracks and heading to different rooms. 5. Hotel was great. Food was decent.