etailwest.wbresearch.com

I truly enjoyed this year's conference, and I saw it as significantly improved over 2018. First, I attended the email sessions on Monday, and I was very happy with most of the sessions. I appreciated that you included SMS and loyalty in the agenda, as my team and I are responsible for all CRM / owned media, so this was relevant for me. The one thing I didn't love was that both of those sessions felt much more like sales pitches than learning opportunities - there was no talk about best practices, examples of good/bad executions, discussion about how those areas link to email, etc. Second, many of the sessions Tue-Thu were very interesting and helpful. I liked the variety of formats, but the one format I did not love was when a panel "ended" with a question for the audience to discuss, and the moderator would then "call on" someone from the audience to talk. This was not effective - many attendees simply left the room - and it's not really the way to get attendees talking. Hard to do that in such a big group. Finally, the biggest annoyance I had the whole time was sessions that were led by a vendor and were basically a sales pitch - this was true with a couple of direct mail sessions on Mon and Tue, the loyalty session, the SMS session and some others. I understand that vendors want a platform to spread the word about their products / services, but they need to do that by speaking with a client OR having their presentation focus NOT on their product / service but on best practices, learnings from client work, etc. Those sessions really disappointed me.

eTail conferences are always highly worthwhile. Once again, I left (eTail East) feeling inspired and informed.

Very good discussions and content

Great variety of case studies and relevant topics. Focus on current and evolving markets. Honest discussion and facilitation empower the attendees and add to the opportunity to learn.

Well done but only went to one day of the conference.