Internet Retailer – Internet Retailer currently hosts two key shows each year – the Web Design & Usability Conference which was just held last week in Orlando, and the larger Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in June.  This year’s main conference will be in Chicago from June 8-11.   If you are actively involved in web design, the February show would be valuable to attend.  For more general retail info, I am a big fan of the June show.  It draws a huge crowd (great for networking and exhibiting), and there is a ton of great content.  Our clients also rate this show highly for value and time well invested. 

Shop.org – Shop.org hosts several conferences throughout the year.  The best known and largest of all the online retail shows is the Shop.org Annual Summit in the fall.  This show has frequently been held in Las Vegas , but it’s moving to Dallas for 2010.  The change is unfortunate as I predict they are going to take a hit on attendance.  The Mandalay Bay venue in Las Vegas was much loved and Dallas pales by comparison.  The Shop.org shows have the reputation of being extremely retailer-focused, as opposed to eTail which is more vendor-focused.  Shop.org has retailer-only days and retailer-only events.  But despite their somewhat heavy-handed non-vendor stance, there are many sponsorships available to vendors, although some (like the vendor-hosted tables on retailer-only day) come with a pretty hefty price tag.

One of Shop.org’s other (smaller) events has just been retooled.  It is called the Retail & Innovation Marketing Conference and will be hosted in San Francisco from March 2-4.  This show focuses on next-generation media.  Social media had been a key topic at prior shows, and this year mobile will be a big area of focus.  I have really enjoyed this show in the past, but the reality is that there are so many shows crammed into a tight six-week period between February and March that marketers are challenged to squeeze them all in.  I personally could not make the Retail & Innovation show work with my schedule this year.

Retail Marketing Conference and DMA - These are two offline shows that attract many of the same retailers who also attend the online retail shows.  After years of declining attendance, the ACCM catalog conference has been renamed and presumably retooled.  It is now called the Retail Marketing Conference and will be held May 24-27 in Kissimmee, Florida.   The thrust of the agenda for this year’s show is “integrated marketing” with mostly online content spanning social media, SEM, mobile, e-commerce and catalog/print.   The new show doesn’t sound that much different than the Internet Retailer, E-Tail or Shop.org conferences.  I’m sure the Retail Marketing Conference will continue to draw a large offline audience made up of prior attendees of the ACCM, so the Direct Marketing Association (who runs this show) would be foolish to kill that offline content.  After all, there are still plenty of catalogs in my mailbox every day, so it’s not like this business is going away.   I remain on the fence about this event.  If the retooled content and rebranding works, it would be a great show.  If they aren’t able to get attendance back up, however, I imagine it may be the last year for this conference.

With regard to the DMA itself, I have attended the big annual conference for the past 10 years and have come to the conclusion that from an online perspective, I get very little out of this show.   One year the DMA filled up a pretty awesome online pavilion of exhibitors, but it wasn’t successful because they housed it across the street which drew very little foot traffic.  The next year, the online and offline exhibitors bordered each other in the main exhibit hall, and in subsequent years, many of the online exhibitors dropped out.  So thinking solely of online, I am ambivalent about the fate of this show. The DMA:2010 Conference & Exhibition is scheduled for October 9-14 in San Francisco.

ad:tech – This is such a fun, mobbed, upbeat show with great energy!  There are two large U.S. ad:tech conferences along with a variety of smaller events throughout the year.  The big U.S. shows are ad:tech San Francisco (April 19-21) and ad:tech New York (November 2-4).  Audiences for these events consist largely of agency and technology people, job hunters and employers.  There is very little content that is applicable to an actual marketer – it is largely technology-focused for agencies.  It will be interesting to see if this year’s NYC show can maintain the same high-energy atmosphere in its new digs at the Javits Center vs. the Hilton which had been its home for many years. 

Last year we saw attendance at all the shows plummet.  We are optimistic that this year they will go back up.  We have also noticed that marketers often attend the exact same conference year after year.  My recommendation would be to mix it up and do one of the eTail, Internet Retailer, or Shop.org shows and then perhaps add an SES or SMX show.  Next year you should consider switching it up.  Note that in my opinion there is really no reason to go to more than one or two of the retail shows and only one of the search shows in a given year.  You’ll quickly find that the content is not exclusive to each show.

Click here for Part 1 of our Online Marketing Conference Guide.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

I’ve just returned from two retail-focused conferences (the Shop.org Annual Summit and another NYC apparel-focused show).  The overriding theme at both was that value will be the predominant message of the holiday.  Those who promote value and whose message resonates with customers will win, and those who don’t will miss out.

Today we’re on the cusp of the holiday, but back in July, Kmart was already promoting their Christmas tree section.  At the time, I read a few articles criticizing the retailer for pushing the season, but I don’t think that was Kmart’s sole mission.  Rather, the offer in Kmart’s aisle was layaway, an old fashioned practice whose time is once again appropriate.

I don’t know how this campaign did for Kmart, but it would have been nice to see some other merchandisers testing it. I’ve debated the layaway issue with other retailers and have been told that Bill Me Later is already offered on many websites.  But the fact that one option enables you to take the merchandise now and pay later and the other requires you to make payments before you can take possession seems very different to me.  With tight credit and a prevailing climate of frugality, the latter is an offer that would appear to fit the moment more.

During Fashion Week there was lots of discussion that luxury will never again be what it was.  I don’t know if that’s true, but I do think it will take a long while to come back, and it’s no secret that current luxury brands are having difficulty.  Last week I heard Norma Kamali speak about her three fashion lines – her high-end Made in the USA fashion brand, her mid-range EBay line, and her low-end Walmart line in which her highest priced item is $35 with $25 being the average.

Norma Kamali at Walmart

Kamali was as excited about her Walmart brand as either of her other two lines, and I think she’s definitely nailed the value equation that’s prevalent today.  From a marketing perspective she is covering all ends, which is smart (and a little risky) but with the appeal of her low-priced clothing so huge, she is definitely strategically aligned.  High-end designers who are not considering lower-priced options are going to be far less relevant this coming holiday and possibly for years to come.

It’s easy to finger luxury as an obvious sector who’s going to take a big hit this year, but all the mid-tier brands that are more affordable for the masses (Gap, American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret) are also going to struggle unless they, too, can appeal to consumers with a strong value message.  People are hunkering down not necessarily because less-is-more is fashionable (although some would argue that it is) but because so much personal wealth was lost last year, and any retail purchases must wrestle wallet share away from utility bills, day care, etc.

Price will be extremely important this holiday and the competition for wooing consumers with limited resources will be fierce because people just don’t have the money to spend lavishly on a cardigan cashmere sweater that so perfectly matches an item in their wardrobe.  This may once have been thought of as a necessity but is now regarded as slightly frivolous, unnecessary, wasteful and expensive.  When competing with limited wallet share and faced with purchases that can no longer be put off, price will be a huge driver.  I predict another good year relative to their higher-end counterparts for Walmart, Target and Kohl’s.

While price is a big component and will be a consideration this year for consumers, it’s not the only component when consumers regard value.  Styles aren’t so radically different that items from last year can’t be worn, and good style is always in fashion.  An outdoor clothing company who sells quality down jackets may outsell retailers who sell similar-looking merchandise at a far discounted price but whose clothes lack the same level of quality.  Despite the higher price point, in this case the value is perceived to be so high that consumers will pay.

However it’s done, those retailers leading with the value message this holiday will fare the best.

Update:   Stuart Elliot’s article in the New York Times today, More Ads for Basic Brands as Shoppers Spend Less, discusses the impact of current economic times across all consumer brands, not just retail.  The article points out how “suddenly budget conscious consumers” are looking for value in the everyday purchases they make.  Marketers everywhere are adapting to this, shifting focus to a broader audience.

In addition, according to the National Retail Federation, holiday sales are expected to drop 1% on top of last year’s 3.4% decline. Yesterday’s New York Post article, Retail Group Sees Grim Holiday Season states that major retailers “have been slashing prices in a desperate effort to hold shoppers’ attention.”

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.

In the past year, PM Digital was fortunate to have Michelle Obama favor two of our clients’ clothes, and we leveraged linking those brands with Michelle Obama’s name and other relevant keywords within the content network, trying to make the most of the constant media mentions.

These campaigns yielded a significant amount of sales. Most advertisers, though, may not get the opportunity to link their brand to Michelle Obama, so can they still find success with content?

When content search first launched, we had to use the same bidding strategy as for regular search in the UI. As anyone who has advertised in the content network knows, the two perform differently so most of the content part of these campaigns didn’t work out. As a result, a lot of advertisers dropped out and were wary of going back in.

Since then, there have been radical improvements made in the content network itself and the methodology for launching these campaigns. Beyond the ability to have unique bidding strategies in content (which actually happened a while back), the ability to run display ads on some sites — and text ads on those that don’t run display — has made a nice impact in performance. The display ads have generated acceptable ROI, and a great byproduct is that it’s nice brand exposure, too, when you consider the volume of impressions displaying the ad.

Likewise, the ability to exclude underperforming sites has also helped lift performance of content campaigns. We have also changed our strategy in developing keywords which has significantly moved the needle: with content, less is definitely more. For ad groups, it’s the opposite. We expect even more improvements ahead. In fact, there is a Google beta in progress now in which view through conversions from content ads can be tracked provided Google’s conversion pixel is in place.

Here at the Shop.org conference in Las Vegas, retailers continue to look for ways to push scale going into the upcoming holiday. Continued advancements in search technology and methodologies such as those being made in the content network will help push those sales.

Suzy Sandberg is President of PM Digital.