DMNews on Multichannel marketing inching ahead at eTail

DMNews checked in from Etail West in Palm Desert, CA with an article titled, “Multichannel marketing inches ahead at eTail,” posted by Chantal Todé & Dianna Dilworth February 22nd, 2007.

They review some of the big, multi-channel vendors in attendance and discuss what they seek at the show and hint that the technologies are in transition and some major players are re-thinking strategy before diving in. In other words, raising conversion rates by tweaking channels is the name of the game rather than “build a whole new thing tomorrow.”

EP’s Jason checks in saying …

Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing at Elastic Path, Vancouver, B.C., said he didn’t hear much talk about innovation at eTail. “Large retailers are not going out on a limb and trying new stuff,” Mr. Billingsley said.

Instead, retailers were more concerned with how they are going to fund the next big multichannel initiative.

The article discusses a few examples of retailers using social media and colloborative technologies to attract customers and enhance loyalty with examples from Home Depot and Shutterfly CEO Jeff Housenbold who says, “Having customers become evangelical for your brand is the best way to acquire new customers and retain loyalty.”

So nice, I’ll type it twice!

“Having customers become evangelical for your brand is the best way to acquire new customers and retain loyalty.”
Jason mentions the new EP One Page checkout (which rocks) and EP’s new formalized friendship with BEA.

Web 2.0 functionality was also the focus of news from Elastic Path, which gave a preview of an announcement for Feb. 20, that it has teamed up with BEA Systems Inc., a formerly large player in e-commerce technology which is re-surfacing after a few years.

The new offering from BEA and Elastic Path will include extensive use of Web 2.0 technologies, including an AJAX-based one-page checkout. BEA, which has a large presence in the telecommunications industry, will enable the communication between e-commerce and other customer data systems.