2019 Agenda

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Tuesday, June 25

E-commerce Technology \| S100BC		Amazon and Me \| S100A		E-Commerce Boot Camp: Muscle Up to Grow \| S102A-D
9:00 AM - 9:15 AM	Dive In! Your Technology Game Plan Just Got Easier View Description Bernardine Wu, CEO, FitForCommerce In its 10th year, the Innovation in Technology Workshop will explore mission-critical technologies and leading-edge innovations to consider, plan and implement. We’ll start by examining emerging technology trends to keep in mind as you assess your technology and innovation stack, where to invest next and steps to take along the way to ensure success.	8:45 AM - 9:00 AM	Excelling on Amazon in 2019 and Beyond View Description Fahim Naim, Founder, eShopportunity When Amazon crossed the trillion-dollar threshold in 2018, it generated the usual headlines but little surprise, so astounding has been its growth since inception. In this opening session, our workshop chair will highlight the latest developments you may not have read about yet, trends taking shape that will influence how you manage and evolve your business in 2019 and beyond.	8:45 AM - 9:00 AM	Welcome & Introduction View Description Scott Kincaid, UX Research Principal , Salesforce Commerce Cloud Boot Camp Chair Scott Kincaid will give a rundown of what this workshop will cover and also discuss its format – a friendly, informal day of learning where attendees and presenters will gain most the most value through active participation.
9:15 AM - 10:00 AM	Aligning Technology to Today's Customer Journey: A Roadmap View Description Mark Friedman , CMO & CDO, Amerimark Holdings Let’s face it. Customers don’t care about "omnichannel" – they just want a seamless and unified experience that meets their needs. Learn how to use customer journey mapping to design differentiated experiences across all customer-facing channels. Attendees will learn what back-end technology and processes they need to create friction-free omnichannel engagement.	9:00 AM - 9:30 AM	Launching a New Product on Amazon View Description James Kelly, Founder, Jagerita Holdings Amazon.com has hundreds of millions of products on Amazon, so how is it possible to launch new products and get noticed? We will cover launch strategies and case studies from brands that have done this successfully time and time again. Learn how to get your new products not only discovered but also to the top of rankings.	9:00 AM - 9:45 AM	Site Design: Taking Your 101-Level Site to 201 and Beyond View Description Kevin Richards, Founder and CEO, Ventura Web Design & Marketing You have an e-commerce site, but you know that it could look better-- with photography that gets shoppers’ attention, product detail pages that pop, and other aspects of the online experience that draws shoppers in. With basics in place, what are the most important design elements to address when revamping your early e-commerce site into something more sophisticated? There isn’t only one path, and this session will help attendees assess their existing site design and their best options on where to start their next round of improvements.
10:00 AM - 10:30 AM	The Marketing Stack: Demystify the Array of Solutions to Build and Optimize View Description Marta Dalton, Global Director of Ecommerce, Unilever Think you've mastered and maximized your Marketing Stack? Think again! There are now more than 7,000 marketing solutions for your consideration, and a dozen added weekly. Our speaker will show how their team built and organized their Marketing Stack to optimize their investment and beat the competition. Attendees will come away with methods to thoroughly evaluate the vast array of new solutions, and how to organize the stack to squeeze out a return on investment.	9:30 AM - 10:00 AM	What to Do: Vendor (1P) vs. Seller (3P) vs. Hybrid View Description Fahim Naim, Founder, eShopportunity One of the most crucial decisions for brands or resellers is whether to be a Vendor or Seller. In this session, we will cover the pros and cons of selling wholesale to Amazon as a Vendor (1P) versus being a marketplace seller (3P). In addition, we’ll explore a hybrid strategy and show why you may be missing out on a significant opportunity if you do not consider a hybrid approach.	9:45 AM - 10:30 AM	Usability: Keeping Shoppers on the Road to Checkout, Step by Step View Description Jason McClintock, President/Principal , Desert Steel Scott Kincaid, UX Research Principal , Salesforce Commerce Cloud “Easy to use” is one big factor in helping site visitors’ progress toward checkout and “efficient” is another. Visuals and content created to appeal won’t matter if shoppers are confused by navigation or discouraged by the tasks needed to get to the Buy button. Don’t let what you’ve invested in making your site look great tank under hidden usability issues. Our speaker will discuss how to find and fix roadblocks impeding customers’ movement through your site to keep them on the path to purchase.
10:30 AM - 10:50 AM	Break View Description	10:00 AM - 10:15 AM	Break View Description	10:30 AM - 10:45 AM	Break View Description
10:50 AM - 11:50 AM	Save the Agony: How to Choose Best Fit Technologies – and Partners – and Not Go Mad View Description John Coniglio, Senior Consultant, FitForCommerce Mark Holmes, Ex-COO, Coldwater Creek Finding the perfect e-commerce platform or any key system—and the right vendor to provide it—is daunting. This session will examine the current landscape of solutions and providers. Attendees will walk away with a framework for rigorous requirements-gathering, a checklist of selection best practices and questions to ask potential technology partners to ensure a smooth implementation and long-term business results. We'll uncover hidden issues to watch for, roadblocks to avoid and tips for success.	10:15 AM - 11:00 AM	Reviews--Know the Rules, Avoid the Buried Mines View Description Jeff Cohen, VP of Marketing, Seller Labs Kelly Ennis, Director of Marketplace Strategy & Analytics, JAM Paper & Envelope The vital importance of reviews on Amazon is no secret. What is more of a mystery is how Amazon accounts for, handles and decides to delete reviews. With Amazon’s ever-changing policies on reviews, its mass sweeps that deleted all reviews on a product and general ambiguity about how to solicit reviews, understanding Amazon’s rules and philosophy on reviews can make or break your business. Join us for a deep dive on all things reviews-related to stay in good graces with Amazon, avoid account suspension and keep the glowing reviews coming.	10:45 AM - 11:15 AM	How You Can Ship Like Amazon View Description Casey Armstrong, Chief Marketing Officer, ShipBob, Inc. Steven Staffan, Founder & CMO, Brummell Meeting customer expectations with 2-day shipping in a cost-efficient manner is one key foundation of fast-growing ecommerce brands that keep their customers happy. In fact, this important function can be either a burden – or a competitive differentiator. But it’s a complicated aspect of your business and decisions can be tough to make. Join this session for an introduction - or a refresher – on what’s important to know about getting your products to the hands of your customers and how to form a revenue-driving shipping strategy that’s right for your business.
11:50 AM - 12:30 PM	Selling B2B or B2C: What B2B and Brands Must Get Right on Technology View Description Lucas Robinson, CEO, Weblife Stores Rich Siefert, ex-SVP/GMM, Direct-to-Consumer, Williams-Sonoma Increasingly, traditional B2B and brand manufacturers are stepping out of their comfort zones and leveraging digital for B2B or to go direct to consumer. In this session, we hear from two speakers with different approaches. We'll cover pros and cons, technology considerations and best practices for B2B and D2C commerce in today's connected world.	11:00 AM - 11:30 AM	Amazon Business-Why You Need to Be Selling There Now View Description Rob Green, Director, Amazon Business Jason Horst, Vice President & Commercial Director, Business Products , Central National-Gottesman Since its inception, Amazon Business has become a significant sales opportunity for brands, wholesalers and distributors. Now an available option for most categories and brands, Amazon’s B2B site has grown from $1 billion in revenue to $10 billion in just over two years, much faster than its consumer marketplace and Amazon Web Services. Learn more about how Amazon Business could provide an additional and profitable income stream to your business.	11:15 AM - 12:00 PM	Selling on Marketplaces: Why and How View Description Peter Marlenga, Director, Operations, Tech Armor Forrester Research estimates that half of all U.S. e-retailers already are selling on marketplaces, with that percentage continuing to rise. Amazon, eBay and a few other giants get the largest share of marketplace sales. A number of niche marketplaces target audiences such as seekers of handmade items or independent sellers. This session will address the value and the drawbacks in selling on marketplaces, including costs to retailers, how to track inventory, and how many and which marketplaces can make sense for your business.
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM	Lunch View Description	11:30 AM - 12:00 PM	Formulas for a Winning Product Detail Page View Description Shoaib Kabani, Co-Founder, Buffy Chris Rawlings, Co-Founder & CEO, Judolaunch Your Amazon product detail page is expensive real estate, but are you taking full advantage of it? Many brands and sellers don’t realize the impact that product description text and images have on the customer’s decision-making process. Join us to learn how to optimize your titles, bullets, product descriptions, images and SEO so that customers find and choose your products over your competitors.	12:00 PM - 1:00 PM	Lunch View Description
1:30 PM - 2:00 PM	Big Bets – What You Need to Know about Microservices View Description Brendan Gualdoni, VP of Enterprise Architecture, Commerce and Integration, Express There's a lot of buzz around microservices (“headless commerce”). Champions of headless commerce tout the flexibility and innovation afforded by a best-of-breed services architecture over a traditional e-commerce platform. But are these new technologies too big, too complex, too new for you to tackle? In this session, we'll dissect the buzz around headless commerce and see how retailers and brands can leverage it in a meaningful way. And when to know there isn’t a fit. We'll provide some examples of who's using these technologies and how, so attendees can evaluate if they are useful to their businesses.	12:00 PM - 1:00 PM	Lunch View Description	1:00 PM - 1:30 PM	Does Your Business Model Need a Reboot? View Description Karen Rzepecki, Founder, Mason Jars MakerPlace (MasonJars.com) One major advantage small retailers have over larger ones is agility. With fewer staff and less infrastructure, it’s easier to try new things or change course and less red tape, buy-in and fewer approvals are required. Many small retailers choose to launch fast and iterate as they grow and collect more customer feedback, sales data and other business signals. This session will feature a retailer that changed its business model for the better after listening to what shoppers wanted and moving toward what was best for its business. Our speaker will discuss how she came to the decision to change course, the process and the results.
2:00 PM - 2:40 PM	Lightning Round of Hot Digital Retail Innovations View Description Bernardine Wu, CEO, FitForCommerce Keith Neely, VP of eCommerce, Digital & IT, Case-Mate Staying on top of emerging trends and new innovations shaping our industry is essential to drive growth, achieve business goals and remain competitive. In one of our most popular sessions, we'll touch on 20 top retail innovations in play now and coming soon, so you don't have to do the digging. This session will arm attendees with new ideas and fresh perspectives to share with their teams plotting their next e-commerce moves.	1:00 PM - 1:30 PM	To acquire, or be acquired? Buying or Selling an Amazon Business View Description Jason Guerrettaz, CEO & President, Website Closers Matt Davis, Founder, Sheer Strength Labs M&As follow a defined path in the progress toward execution, but the ecommerce space can overlay additional considerations for businesses looking to grow by acquisition, as well as for companies looking to be acquired. How can ecommerce companies maximize their valuation for sale? What are the key metrics that acquiring companies need to understand about ecommerce as they assess prospects, and how much do they need to know about digital technology? This session will include insights for ecommerce companies on both sides of the M&A equation and the first-hand experience of an ecommerce business owner who sold his born-on-Amazon company for eight figures.	1:30 PM - 2:15 PM	25 Top Free & Low-Cost Marketing Tools & Services View Description Craig Smith, Founder & CEO, Trinity Insight Finite marketing budgets, new shopping tools and ROI mandates can give marketers a world of tough choices. Even small-scale testing of free technology carries cost—staff resources—and risk, too, if the initiative backfires. Our speaker has done the heavy lifting to serve up a roster of the best free and low-cost marketing tools and services to improve results, whether it’s internal project management or website optimization. Attendees will walk away with an insiders’ list of free or low-cost tools and tips on how to extract best results for minimal investment.
2:40 PM - 3:00 PM	Break View Description	1:30 PM - 2:15 PM	Amazon Advertising-The What, Why and How View Description Alasdair McLean-Foreman, CEO, Teikametrics Priya Rasetty, Digital Channel Marketing, Global Consumer Business Unit, Symantec Amazon Sponsored Product Ads – Amazon’s pay-per-click advertising program -- are no longer a “nice to have.” They are now a table stakes if you are selling on Amazon because if you aren’t running them, your competitors certainly are. Amazon suggests that you should be spending at least 10%-15% of your sales in Amazon ads. In this session, we will discuss how Amazon is continuing to stuff its search results with ads, what types of ads are available, strategies to get started and recommendations to optimize your current ads.	2:15 PM - 2:30 PM	Break View Description
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM	Delivery: From Pain Points to Sweet Spots View Description David Foote, Owner, Vesalius Health Delivery and fulfillment innovations, such as drone delivery, self-driving vehicles, and warehouse automation, are cutting delivery costs and improving efficiency. In this session, we'll discuss how retailers can leverage these innovations to address the pain-points of fulfilment and the last-mile.	2:15 PM - 2:30 PM	Break View Description	2:30 PM - 3:00 PM	Making Sense of Email Marketing Today View Description Cindy White, Senior E-Commerce Marketing Manager, Plow & Hearth Some e-retailers may bite at every new marketing approach rolled out by tech vendors, but the smartest also know that when something’s working well, there’s no reason to change it. Email marketing, done right, still is one of the most effective best, least expensive ways to keep in touch with customers, make targeted offers and drive sales. This session will cover how one retailer worked to close gaps between its program and industry standards and cut through the noise to find the right tools and strategies to improve its email marketing campaigns.
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM	Visual Search: From Pain Points to Sweet Spots View Description Amy Vener, Head of Retail Strategy, Pinterest Product discovery is no longer (such) a pain-point, thanks to new visual search technologies. Consumers are quickly leveraging visual search, which often removes roadblocks and decreases friction in the shopping experience, taking shoppers directly from inspiration to action. In this session, we look at the soon-to-be-standard visual search solutions and how these technologies are solving traditional pain-points in the customer journey.	2:30 PM - 3:15 PM	How to Balance Direct-to-Consumer and Amazon View Description Moiz Ali, CEO, NATIVE Eric Hutchinson, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Resident Why can't you have your cake and eat it too? With a careful strategy, you can build a strong direct-to-consumer business while also selling on Amazon. Come hear from the founder of Native, the fastest-growing CPG company in the country, and the founder of Nectar, the fastest-growing online brand in North America. Highlighting their experiences in building eight- and nine-figure brands, they will cover why a balanced strategy is needed, tips on how to measure and navigate both platforms and opportunities to utilize Amazon to accelerate your direct-to-consumer businesses.	3:00 PM - 3:30 PM	What You Need to Know About Behavioral Metrics View Description Ashlee Colliver, Senior eCommerce Strategist, Classy Llama Brittany Graham, Director, eCommerce, Tombow Behavioral metrics such as which pages visitors go to when they reach your site have been less of a priority to site operators than revenue or traffic. That’s changed with Google and Facebook algorithm shifts that value behavioral metrics indicating how good or bad the user experience is on a site; and how they relate to SEO rankings and quality scores for Google and Facebook ads. If your user experience is lacking, your site is more likely to lose organic traffic, and cost-per-click on your PPC ads will be higher. Join this session for a better understanding of behavioral metrics, and take away actionable items that will help move your site in the right direction to increase traffic, conversion rate and ROI.
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM	The Future of Retail in a Post-Digital World Doug Stephens, Founder and President, Retail Prophet View Description Join Author and internationally renowned consumer futurist Doug Stephens for an amazing tour of the future, where every aspect of the retail experience as we know it will be radically transformed. From online and virtual technology to 3D printing and the internet-of-things, shopping is being redefined.
		3:15 PM - 3:45 PM	How to Price Your Product on Amazon View Description Carly McGinnis, COO, Exploding Kittens Gil Mizrahi, VP, Product & Business Development, Feedvisor When it comes to pricing on Amazon, most conventional wisdom is thrown out the window. For 3P sellers (marketplace sellers), it’s key to know how to price and compete with other offers. For vendors (1P sellers), it’s essential to understand how Amazon decides how to price your products, and how price-matching works. Join us to learn about Amazon’s philosophy on pricing, as well as opportunities to maximize your profits	3:30 PM - 4:30 PM	My Site vs. Best Practices: Live Reviews View Description Kevin Richards, Founder and CEO, Ventura Web Design & Marketing Scott Kincaid, UX Research Principal , Salesforce Commerce Cloud Customers want a personalized experience when they shop online – and when it comes to constructive feedback on the design, construction and consumer appeal of their e-commerce site, so do Boot Camp attendees. Join this open session to volunteer your site for review by Boot Camp’s two design and usability experts. You’ll get some of the best and most individualized feedback you’ll receive all year on how consumers see and experience your site, including desktop and mobile, and how to turn that new knowledge into measurable improvement.
		3:45 PM - 4:45 PM	Town Hall: Ask Our Experts Anything Amazon View Description Fahim Naim, Founder, eShopportunity The 2019 Amazon and Me workshop wraps up with our own Town Hall where attendees take to the mic. Speakers who presented earlier in the day will return so attendees can pose new questions, either follow-ups to topics already covered or all-new topics not yet addressed. Once the conversation gets going, you can’t predict what provocative questions and illuminating answers will surface.
4:00 PM - 6:30 PM	Welcome Reception View Description

Wednesday, June 26

8:15 AM - 8:30 AM

Welcome

Doug Hope, Show Director, RetailX, Emerald Expositions
View Description

8:30 AM - 9:00 AM

Hitching a Rocket to an Engine, Bonobos and Walmart take off

Andy Dunn, Senior Vice President, Walmart
View Description

Direct-to-consumer brands, born online, are shaking up traditional retail – and forward-thinking traditional retailers are embracing the new model. RetailX 2019’s Keynote Speaker, Andy Dunn, formerly CEO of men’s apparel retailer Bonobos and now senior vice president of digital consumer brands at Walmart, will share how the key to unlocking the full potential of these digital brands may actually require physical stores. Bonobos, which Andy co-founded in 2007 right out of the Stanford graduate school of business and sold to Walmart a decade later, stars in a portfolio of brands acquired and incubated by Walmart as an investment in its digital future. Join this presentation to kick off RetailX 2019. You’ll learn why digital brands are growing at nearly triple the rate of e-commerce overall and why Andy believes the future of retail is beginning to resemble the history of video.

9:00 AM - 9:30 AM

Inter-Generational: Leveraging the Power of a New Workplace Diversity

Chip Conley, Strategic Advisor, Airbnb
View Description

In an age where workplaces may span up to five generations, and a broad set of skills, entrepreneur, bestselling author and hospitality industry giant Chip Conley has the unique experience of leadership positions across the continuum. Chip founded boutique hotel group Joie de Vivre Hotels at the age of 26 and was its CEO until selling the company in 2010. In 2013, at the age of 52, he joined Airbnb as head of global hospitality & strategy when he was sought out by the company’s Millennial CEO and co-founder for guidance in growing the fledgling enterprise.

Today, Chip serves as Airbnb’s strategic advisor for hospitality & leadership and is the founder of the world’s first midlife wisdom school, The Modern Elder Academy. Through his books, appearances and educational forums, his mission clarifies for business leaders of all ages why the intergenerational exchange of wisdom and skills is key to the success of the modern workplace and our society.

9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Break

Strategic Guidance for the Retail C-Suite | S105A-D

Omnichamps: Driving the Most from Every Channel | S102A-D

Marketing Vitals | S100BC

Attention-Getting Strategies to Build Brand Value | S100A

Place the Right Bets Now for the Digital Future | S103A-D

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM

The New Retail Imperative: Be A Leader in Ecommerce Technology

Brendan Witcher, Vice President, Forrester Research

The primary force driving today’s retail economy is ecommerce technology. Knowing that, tech companies are introducing advanced digital solutions at a mind-boggling pace that challenges top retail executives to make technology investments that are vital to growing sales and profits. In this session, a leading Forester Research analyst reviews the latest ecommerce technologies and identifies those achieving measurable improvements in retail competitiveness.

Building Cross-Functional Innovation Teams

Nathan Decker, Director of eCommerce, Evo

Executing on an omnichannel strategy demands performance from various teams that may have conflicting goals and objectives. In this session, our speaker will detail strategies to achieve buy-in from teams responsible for technology, operations, fulfillment, merchandising, inventory management and logistics. Effecting change can be challenging, but it’s essential the team be unified toward common, attainable objectives whether the goal is store/curbside pickup or home delivery; join our speaker to learn how.

Content Marketing to Capture New Customers and Keep the Hive Buzzing

Ronald Dod, CMO & Co-Founder, Visiture

Akin Tosyali, Director of Digital Marketing, Tiege Hanley

You need new customers. Well-crafted content marketing captures their attention via search engines and brings them to your site. Content marketing can be overwhelming, however, without a plan that ensures you engage consumers where they play via text, video, images and infographics across channels. Our speakers will show attendees how to use data to develop content for your target audience and how to attract high-quality backlinks from credible sources to drive traffic to your site, capture the sale and keep new customers.

How I went from an idea to $100 million

Moiz Ali, CEO, NATIVE

In two and half years, Moiz Ali built Native, a multimillion-dollar web-only deodorant brand that was on trend and turning a profit when he sold it to Procter & Gamble for a reported $100 million. In this session Ali shares how he spotted a market gap, developed Native from an idea to full-scale operations and gained a loyal following of consumers who spread the word and made the brand a best-seller. He will also share what’s next for Native now that it has the backing and reach of one of the largest CPG companies in the world.

The Future of Retail is More Than Retail

Erin Jordan, VP & Partner, Walker Sands Communications

Continued disruption of the commerce landscape is a given. One provocative development already is playing out with Amazon’s acquisition of PillPack, Kroger’s investment in driverless cars and Nordstrom’s merchandise-free stores. As retailers extend their brand, channel presence and technology into other lines of consumer-focused business, the future of retail will expand beyond retail as we know it now. Join this session for the release of Walker-Sands’ 2019 Future of Retail report and research-backed predictions plus strategic advice for the years ahead.

11:00 AM - 11:30 AM

What AI Can Do and How It Will Change Your Company

Sudarshan Sampath, GVP, eCommerce Technology, PVH

John Beechen, Commerce SME & Sales Leader, IBM

Not long ago, artificial intelligence was more theoretical than practical. Today it’s the most powerful state-of-the-art tool online retailers can employ to create a highly personalized online shopping experience and a faster and more efficient fulfillment and inventory management process. This session will examine one retailer’s successful experience with AI and as well as industry expert perspective on integrating AI into ecommerce operations.

Make a Popup Shop Pop -- Online and Off

Barry Goldware, Founder, Popup Shops

Laura McLaughlin, Director, Specialty Leasing, Brixmor

Shopper data collected online can inform the offline experience; likewise, information gathered in-store yields valuable data that can be fed into the website. At the intersection is the popup store. This session will dissect the critical pieces you must get right to ensure success for all selling channels. Our speakers, a retailer with popup experience and a company leasing spaces for popup stores, will provide the recipe and roadmap to dive in to popups with confidence and show ways to exploit valuable shopper data in all channels.

Increase Customer Loyalty and Conversions by Getting Customer Communication Right Across the Entire Shopping Journey

Sean Fisher, Senior Director Brand Experience, Signature Hardware

Andre Anderson, Director of Commercial Sales, Narvar

How, what and when retailers communicate to customers during their entire shopping experience can make a real business impact. In this session, intelligent customer experience platform Narvar and Signature Hardware will share key consumer research findings to help retailers understand how they should be communicating with shoppers and in what channels, and how they can leverage messaging about orders, returns, and estimated delivery dates to not only impact long-term metrics like lifetime value and brand loyalty, but also increase conversion in the short term.

Go Offline to Build Online: Plan and Track Brand Awareness

Chase Fisher, Founder, Blenders Eyewear

Luke Droulez, CMO, Parachute Home

The web is saturated with advertising, and a young e-retailer needs to be versatile in how it drives brand awareness and acquires new customers. In this session, two online retailers will share the offline marketing and advertising methods they incorporate into their marketing mix, how they measure the reach and effectiveness of these methods and their ultimate value to a growing brand. Methods covered include live event/sponsorship marketing, outdoor and broadcast mass advertising, and direct mail.

How Blockchain Technology Will Change Retail

Nikki Baird, Vice President of Retail Innovation, Aptos

Few retailers accept cryptocurrency as payment yet, but its supporting blockchain technology -- a centralized web-based record of transactions and a distributed system that verifies each one – will soon revolutionize -commerce payment. This session will cover how to prepare for cryptocurrencies that could one day reduce online payment fraud, guarantee the integrity of branded products sold online and more.

11:30 AM - 1:15 PM

Lunch

1:15 PM - 1:45 PM

How Retail's Leaders Are Tranforming the Industry

Mark Brohan, Director B2B E-Commerce Research, B2BecNews

Our speaker will share the success secrets that push the biggest and best players in ecommerce into the lead over competitors, including how these retailers are growing online with new omnichannel and marketing strategies. Join this session for an in-depth analysis of DigitalCommece360 data on the 500 largest online retailers in the U.S. and North America in 2018. The session will show growth by product category and preview how ecommerce will become an increasingly larger part of U.S. retail.

How to Improve Operational Efficiency

Rett Clevenger, Co-Founder & CEO, Steals.com

Jana Francis, President & Co-Founder, Steals.com

Compliance and logistics are labor intensive processes that impact all areas of your business. Whether you are operating a marketplace, a traditional ecommerce website, and especially if you have retail locations - streamlining repetitive processes are necessary for scale. In this session, Steals.com’s President and CEO will share how they have used creative techniques that any company can utilize for repetitive processes such as onboarding, compliance, vendor management and logistics to achieve greater operational efficiency. They will share how to use technology, relationships, documentation and support teams to create efficiency when building ecommerce companies.

Email Mastery -- New Tactics for a Reliable Workhorse

Judy Ransford, CMO, Hickory Farms

Jennifer Biefel, VP, Acquisition Marketing and Audience Management, Opry Entertainment Group

The best digital marketers in e-commerce generate more than 10% of their web traffic via email. Why such impressive results? Because they exploit new functionality by leveraging “send time” optimization, automation and dynamic and personalized content. Attendees will learn how to heighten email’s effectiveness by deploying the latest strategies and by weaning themselves off tactics that no longer work (or never worked) because shopper preferences and tolerances are always shifting. Yesterday’s approach doesn’t work today.

Rules of the Road for Working with Influencers

Joe Gagliese, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Viral Nation

Taylor Offer, CEO, Feat Socks

The Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on how influencers and brands convey their messaging and whether they are being transparent about what’s a paid endorsement. Alongside that scrutiny, social media platforms have made it easier to pay for placement of endorsed material (promoted posts, paid partnership posts, etc.). In this session, a social media marketing leader of a growing digitally native brand and an agency that aids retailers in social media marketing will share how to identify influencers aligned with the brand’s goals, the outreach and negotiation process, and how to manage and measure influencer posts.

More than Shopping, It's an Experience

Angela Gearhart, Vice President Brand Experience, Sleep Number

When consumers meet up to hang out, drink coffee, catch up with friends, take a cooking lesson, or hear a talk by an author, they’re gathering publicly. And where consumers gather, smart merchants go, the new thinking behind that idea is that stores can be the venue for all of those activities and more, rather than simply a place to buy products, with digital a key element that supports and enhances the real world activities. This session will cover examples of experiential retailing, ROI and whether today’s experiments will re-set shoppers’ expectations in the future.

1:45 PM - 2:15 PM

Blurring the Lines of Brick & Mortar

Harry Cunningham, Vice President, Retail Brand Experience, Vera Bradley

As online consumer shopping does nothing but grow, in-person consumer experiences are becoming more important touch points than ever before. But what does the future of brick-and-mortar look like? Is it even brick-and-mortar? Join Harry Cunningham, Vice President, Retail Brand Experience at Vera Bradley, as he asks, and answers, these important questions. Learn how Vera Bradley created immersive branded experiences in some of the most competitive retail spaces in the world, as well as how the brand has pioneered new technology like VR through a partnership with Google to expand brick-and-mortar retail beyond four walls.

Exceeding Shopper Expectations Now and in The Future

Lauren Freedman, Senior Consumer Insights Analyst, DigitalCommerce360/Internet Retailer

Tomorrow’s shopping experience will be vastly different than today's. In this session, our expert in mystery shopping and consumer insights will share what consumers – real shoppers – say matters to them most in terms of emerging website functionality, innovations in merchandising and fast, convenient delivery and personalization.

Grab Big Wins – and Dodge the Blunders – Advertising on Amazon

Jeff Cohen, VP of Marketing, Seller Labs

Peter Marlenga, Director, Operations, Tech Armor

Advertising on Amazon is critical to a brand’s success – and key to staying relevant in consumers’ eyes. Knowing what not to do is almost as important as knowing what to do. Our speakers will showcase smart advertising tactics to deploy immediately – whether you are a 1P (wholesale) seller to Amazon or a 3P seller on the Marketplace. The right advertising framework will get you noticed, drive traffic to your product detail page and increase sale velocity via Amazon. This session will walk attendees through Amazon’s ad formats, analytics and the other tools they can use to maximize their results on Amazon.

From Storytelling to Selling: Facebook Marketing for Growing Retail Brands

Mila Aldrin, Director of eCommerce, Moon Juice

Sarah Sanchez, Manager of Performance Social, Tinuiti

With rich demographic data and always-evolving, sophisticated advertising programs, Facebook has become a highly investable advertising channel for retailers because of its ability to address all parts of the e-commerce conversion funnel. This session will take attendees through the development of a paid Facebook brand strategy to acquire and retain high-value customers using the advanced targeting and advertising methods Facebook offers and the tools necessary to manage increasingly complicated campaigns. It will also cover the latest Facebook advertising advancements, such as augmented reality ads, Facebook Stories and more.

Emerging Retail Technologies—Around the World

Daniel Lucht, Research Director, ResearchFarm

It’s not only in the US that New technologies are moving out of the development phase and toward eventual widespread use in retail. Changing consumer expectations in the EU, Asia and elsewhere also are sparking the creation of robots, facial recognition, and other retail applications that are largely experimental today. Trials and testing will shake out the real drivers of engagement, sales and profits from the gimmicks, but which are likely to demonstrate real value? Join this session for a look at some of the latest projects from established tech giants such as Amazon and other powerhouse retailers, as well as the disruptive technologies developed by startups. From the informed perspective of a top UK technology research firm, you’ll gain an understanding of emerging technologies and applications here and abroad poised to displace retail’s status quo online and off, to guide your own planning for retail’s future.

2:15 PM - 3:15 PM

Break

3:15 PM - 3:45 PM

Great Expectations: A Preview of the 2019 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper Report™

Sean Flaherty, Vice President, Global Retail Strategy, UPS

It’s more important than ever to leverage critical data to capitalize on current retail disruption. The 2019 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper™ study reveals how e-commerce customers expect more from your business—more service, more information, and more control. Learn how to turn these heightened expectations into a winning strategy for your business.

The Intersection of DTC & Brick and Mortar

Craig Schmeizer, Co-Founder, Resident

The rapid rise of digitally native brands such as Warby Parker, Allbirds, Untuck-it, Glossier, Hones, and Nectar has shifted the consumer brand genesis story, demonstrating internet retail pure plays as entirely capable of self-standing, with profound consequences to brick and mortar retailers. Ecommerce is now evolving beyond pure-play online selling, turning into multichannel, online and offline brands and merging the best attributes of online convenience with offline experience. Together, the mash-up of channels comprising DTC and offline are producing shared leverage and substantial performance gains for brands investing in understanding the intersection of media and customer journeys from both venues. In this session, learn why DTC and brick and mortar convergence is unstoppable, and the way to grow market-leading presence. Our speaker will highlight strategies from Nectar’s playbook that are delivering significant and rapid growth, and talk about how to set up to win the long game by coordinating a multichannel approach blurring the lines between online and offline.

Avoid Jaw-Droppingly Bad Adjacencies to Protect the Brand

Gary Burtka, VP, Operations U.S., RTB House

Leanne Skipper, Senior Marketing Manager, GiftsForYouNow

Your digital ad appearing near objectional content hurts. Sometimes the resulting impression is unintended humor but too often it’s damaging to the brand. There are measures to protect against unfortunate pairings with offensive content – and ad placement on undesirable websites such as those with extremist views. Our speakers will review some notorious bad advertising/content adjacencies, the outcry provoked and what savvy brands do to rebound and restore brand integrity. This session will also cover technologies, such as artificial intelligence, deep learning and computer vision, to keep your digital ads away from inappropriate or disturbing content and video.

How to Spend Marketing Dollars Wisely

Stephen Kuhl, Co-Founder & CEO, Burrow

Growing marketing channels efficiently is crucial for any company, whether a traditional retailer or up-and-coming challenger company. Join us to discuss how to spend marketing dollars wisely in order to build a brand name while driving performance. We will cover finding the right spend ratio to acquire and convert customers, at both the top and bottom of the funnel. Find out how to strike the right marketing mix between introducing new marketing channels, and scaling existing ones to reach different audiences. These are all scenarios you need to understand in order to scale efficiently and sustainably and keep your customer acquisition cost down.

Tapping Into the Shopper Mind Using Neuroscience

Michelle Adams, Founder and President, Marketing Brainology

In a retail landscape dominated by constantly-evolving technology, focus groups and surveys remain a go-to source for insights into consumer thoughts and behaviors. Neuroscience offers a better solution, by tapping into a shopper’s subconscious. Join this session to learn more about the cutting-edge technology that delivers unbiased, second-by-second measures of emotion and attention as consumers “tune in” and consider a purchase, or “tune out” and keep looking.

3:45 PM - 4:15 PM

Getting Ready for What's Next In Retail: The View From the C-Suite

Diana Ganz, Co-Founder, The Groomsman Suit

Don Davis, Editor at Large, Internet Retailer

Reid Greenberg, President, Vermont's Original Bag Balm

Brad Wolansky, CEO, Dover Saddlery

Ecommerce continues growing 15% annually, ever more marginal retailers are closing their doors, and Amazon’s amazing market share growth in the last decade is reminiscent of Walmart’s performance in the 1980’s, when thousands of main street merchants closed shop. Where will these trends lead in the next five years and beyond? This panel discussion will feature the perspectives of senior retail executives with diverse experience in navigating cycles of change and as well as newer top executives that bring a next-generation perspective to this core question.

New Ways With Try-Before-You-Buy

John Kennelly, Head of Partnerships, b8ta

The ability to see, touch and try out merchandise before they buy it has always been a preference of consumers – one that many online merchants have sought to satisfy by implementing systems for quick and easy returns. But a liberal returns policy isn't the only way to fulfill shoppers’ wishes to experience first-hand what they see online. Join this session to see how a retailer of the latest electronic gadgets is using its physical stores– in partnership with other retailers who sell online – and an innovative retail-as-service business model that blends channels to support online sales.

A curly journey - How DevaCurl marries its brand values with marketing best practices

Melissa Feemster, Co-Founder, Team Bespoke

Rachel Sacks-Hoppenfeld, Senior Director of Digital, DevaCurl

Most retailers know they need to be using some form of personalization on their websites. But they should also be using these best practices to personalize their marketing mix. In this session, DevaCurl, which sells products for women with curly hair, and Team Bespoke will discuss how brands can prioritize marketing channel spend based on their unique audience, how to personalize tactics such as social, email and affiliate to a company’s brand values and personality, and how merchants can make sure their direct marketing tactics remain "on brand". For 25 years, DevaCurl has been dedicated to and driven by one obsession: all things curly. Celebrating the curl community is at the heart of everything we do which means our approach to marketing must be as unique and personalized as the audience we serve. In this presentation, we will share how we evaluate our priorities and choices and balance them with our brand’s core mission—and how other retailers can do the same.

Get Seen: Have a Brand Identity on Online Marketplaces

Brian Riley, CEO, Guardian Bike Co

Andrew Jacobs, CEO, JAM Paper

Half of online sales today happen on online marketplaces, but young brands with little recognition find it hard to stand out in these search-intensive platforms. Established brands can be assured marketplace shoppers will be looking for their products, but younger brands can’t count on such attention. In this session, digitally native brand marketers will share the methods they use to get seen on marketplaces and how they communicate their brand story to convince shoppers their products and services are different from other sellers’ goods. They will also share what they do to drive the most brand building ROI, a significant challenge as most marketplaces deny sellers access to information on their own customers.

The Future of Fashion: Online Retail + Indie, Pop-ups & Drops

Renee Paradise, Senior Director of Fashion, eBay

eCommerce has made it easy for the staple-seeker to shop—but for every best-black-leggings sale, there are millions of shoppers seeking well-curated stashes of boutique brands, avant-garde accessories and indie ‘investment’ pieces. So, where do shoppers turn for the online equivalent of Soho, Rue du Commerce, Oxford Street (or for vintage nerds: Camden Passage)? What tools and technologies can retailers adopt to better provide this segment of fashion-forward clientele the personalized online shopping experience they crave?

In this talk, eBay’s Senior Director of Fashion, Renee Paradise, will share why eCommerce will evolve away from being a ‘sea of sameness’ to instead become a more diverse, individuality-embracing marketplace of both essentials and emerging designers—and how retailers can plan, compete and thrive without giving up their unique style.

4:15 PM - 4:45 PM

Meet a Next-Gen Disruptor: How New Brands Shake Up Incumbents

Zak Normandin, Founder & CEO, Iris Nova (DIRTY LEMON, The Drug Store)

Wellness beverage company Dirty Lemon is challenging the established consumer beverage industry with a new product category–soft drinks formulated to deliver health benefits such as better sleep--and a novel sales and distribution strategy that bonds customers directly to the product. Bypassing store shelves and even ecommerce sites, the company sells exclusively by SMS, processing 50,000 text messages per month to deliver cases of six-packs directly to customers. Join the session to learn why this brand envisions a digital future where shoppers don’t download an app or visit a website to buy.

The Supply Chain Tactics That Push Retailers to the Top

George Lawrie, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

This session will profile exceptional retailers who are getting omnichannel right because supply chain and delivery are central to their strategies. E-retailers in all categories will come away with enlightening new approaches to deploy whether they operate in commodity CPG, fashion, B2B or brands selling direct.

10 Things to Do Now to Get Ready for the Holidays

Nathan Gordon, Vice President, Christmascentral.com

Erik Fialho, COO, LeftLane Sports

The winter holiday season starts online earlier every year, and now is the time to finalize a marketing plan that will take you through Christmas and beyond. This session will cover the fundamental components of holiday marketing, including email, search, social media and website design. The expert speakers will discuss what happened during last year's holiday season, what's likely to be different this year and what you should do about it. Attendees will walk away with a checklist of steps to take now to get ready for the holidays and insights on strategies that will help you adapt to what's new in online shopping in 2019.

Can Digitally Native Brands Make it on Their Own

Zak Stambor, Editor, Internet Retailer

Eric Roth, Managing Director, MidOcean Partners

John Kim, Managing Director, HIG

Gabby Slome, Co-Founder, Ollie

Many digitally native brands shoot for the stars with a high-growth, high-spending plan from day one. They gain attention, scale up and scoop up customers, often at a cost that exceeds the customer’s lifetime value. Some of these trendy digital brands exit by acquisition: they are snapped up for big money by more established companies seeking the invigoration and cache a startup brings. Others have gone different routes, staying independent or going public to varying degrees of success, or falling flat. As the frenzy of digitally native brand launches continue, this session will examine the business strategies of such companies, their long-term viability as independent brands and the current and future state of investment funding flowing to digital brands.

Don’t be Blockbuster in a Netflix World: Why Shifting Your Focus to Mobile is Inescapable

Casey Gannon, VP of Marketing, Shopgate

Amarena Diaz, Director of Digital and Ecommerce, Mizuno

4:30 PM - 6:30 PM

Exhibit Hall Networking Reception

Thursday, June 27

8:15 AM - 8:45 AM

Five years in: What I've learned about building a 21st century retailer

Susan Tynan, CEO & Founder, Framebridge
View Description

Leading custom framing e-retailer Framebridge.com through its first five years presented a lot of challenges for founder and CEO Susan Tynan, but her north star has been her relentless focus on the customer. In her Keynote Address to the RetailX audience, Tynan will share how putting the customer first allowed her to successfully lead Framebridge through intense sales growth, refine her pitches to investors and single-handedly expand the market for custom framing in the U.S. Customer-centricity, Tynan says, will also help her lead Framebridge through its next growth stages, which include an entrance into bricks-and-mortar retail and more. Both a look back and a look ahead, Susan will share the lessons she’s learned as a leader of a high-growth startup and what’s ahead for her company.

8:45 AM - 9:15 AM

True Grit: A Warriors’ Mettle Builds an E-commerce Brand

Dan Alarik, CEO, Grunt Style
View Description

Unstoppable, hardy and hyper-focused on the mission: the words that could describe a top-grade U.S. soldier also could describe a successful e-commerce entrepreneur. Dan applied his personal experience and the values of his military career to launching his e-commerce company in 2009 -- a classic startup story of selling patriotic t-shirts out of his car. Powering through setbacks that can befall any new business, Dan’s determination and ability to learn fast and correct course were rewarded with increasing success.

Today, GruntStyle has a loyal customer base and some 2 million followers on social media, bringing in sales of $100 million over the past three years. Our speaker will share inspiring proof of how grit, determination and the willingness to take risks is the starting point for success in today’s very challenging yet opportunity-filled online retail environment.

9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

Break

Thriving in the Amazon Age | S102A-D

The Power of Marketplaces | S100A

Marketing 2.0: Strategies for Advanced Marketers | S100BC

Optimized Operations | S105A-D

Online Merchandising That Makes Them Buy | S103A-D

10:30 AM - 11:00 AM

How a Differentiated Business Strategy Drives Success

Jeremy Miller, CEO, founder, FSAStore.com

Eight-year-old e-retailer FSAstore.com only sells products consumers can pay for using pretax money they’ve set aside through Flexible Spending or Health Savings Accounts—money that’s otherwise forfeited at the end of the year if unspent. In doing so, FSAstore.com has a target market primed to spend and takes the question of “is this product eligible” out the process. The e-retailer also has marketing agreements with flexible spending account managers at hundreds of major employers to promote FSAstore.com to employees. In this session, founder and CEO Jeremy Miller will share FSAstore.com’s unique market positioning, how he developed it and the mix of services designed to make shopping with FSAstore.com easier than shopping anywhere else.

Only at IRCE: Exclusive Internet Retailer Research on Marketplace Leaders, Laggards and High-Growth Startups

Fareeha Ali, Director, Research Strategy, Internet Retailer

With half of online sales made globally now transacting on online marketplaces, marketplaces have changed how consumers shop the web, and changed how online retailers approach selling online. Internet Retailer will debut its latest original research on this high-growth sales channel. The research will identify the market leaders and the growth strategies of smaller online marketplaces that are creating sales opportunities for niche sellers. Armed with this knowledge, online retailers will be able to better understand online opportunities ahead of the general market.

Personalize Online Interactions to Drive Better Results

Bridget Fahrland, Head of Digital Strategy, Astound Commerce

Megan Whitman, Chief Digital Officer, Kopari Beauty

Personalization technologies have become sophisticated selling tools, allowing e-retailers to apply what they know about consumers to sell to them more effectively. This session will review advanced applications of personalization technology and its results, keying in on the more advanced applications of personalization technology most consumers won’t immediately recognize as “personalized,” but that drive positive outcomes, such as landing pages that render with content dynamically created in real time attuned to the customer and where she is on the purchase path.

How to Negotiate the Best Shipping Rate

Kenneth Moyer, VP of Supply Chain Strategies, LJM Group

Eric Wagner, Merchandising Analyst, Best Cigar Prices

Pennies matter. This session will provide practical instruction on how to slash costs and create the optimal shipping carrier and service mix for your e-retail business and your customers. In this session you will learn how to effectively negotiate with UPS, FedEx, USPS, as well as regional carriers and 3PLs; learn what carriers’ true costs are and what is flexible and what is not to help determine your best options. Our speaker will help you to learn to think like a carrier when it comes to the cost of serving your business.

Selling a Lifestyle: How Storytelling Motivates Different Customer Types to Buy

Eric Dean, CEO, founder, Whereoware

Andrew Cullen, Digital Marketing and Communications Director, WaterCraft Group, Yamaha Motor Corp. USA

Retailers know shoppers arrive at their website with different mindsets and goals. The most successful retailers segment audiences accordingly, and build personalized brand stories to help potential customers visualize themselves enjoying products. This session will look at proven techniques for segmenting different customer types and discuss merchandising approaches to drive sales with each type, from first-time visitors to your highest-value clientele. Don’t just sell a product, sell a lifestyle and gain a lifetime customer.

11:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Scarcity and the Secondary Market: A Profitable Mix

Hamilton Powell, Founder & CEO, Crown & Caliber

Amazon may have won the market for the $50 customer, but what about the customer ready to spend thousands? Focusing on luxury products and the resale market is proving to be a formidable strategy for a growing cadre of specialized retailers. Crown & Caliber operates a marketplace for out-of-production Rolexes and other luxury timepieces. It has found that having products not easily found elsewhere online is a key competitive strategy in online retailing today because that attribute makes it insensitive to price competition. Our speaker will share how he spotted a market niche and how his business model give him some security from bigger market players. Attendees will take away lessons on how e-commerce in the secondary market works and how they might apply it to their own sales mix.

First-Year Basics for New Marketplace Sellers

Cynthia Stine, President, eGrowth Partners

Mike Zhang, Founder & CEO, Fenrici Brands

In this jam-packed 101-level session, speakers will lay out what first-time sellers need to know about working successfully in the marketplace environment. It will address how to manage listings and orders, the tools and reports new sellers should set up to track their progress, where to look for benchmarks to assist with goal-setting, and how to test the waters with marketplace promotions and advertising. Speakers will also address how to navigate communications with the largest marketplace operators to get help on their accounts.

E-retail Across Cultures: Connecting with America’s High-Growth Segments

Amy Gomez, Managing Director, Cross-Cultural Marketing, WPP - The Neighborhood

Kirsten Mitchell, Senior Program Manager, Inclusion & Diversity, Amazon

More than 90% of U.S. population growth comes from multicultural consumers. To be effective today, cross-cultural savvy is an essential element of the marketer’s toolkit. This session will explore key U.S. demographic trends, the marketing dynamics of multicultural shoppers, and what an e-retailer should know about servicing them online. Take-aways: understanding cross-cultural considerations for an e-retailer’s messaging, digital marketing mix, and customer service, as well as the important link between corporate diversity & inclusion programs and cross-cultural marketing initiatives.

Using the Power of AI to Build Better Customer Experiences

Colin Crowley, VP, Customer Experience, Freshly

Teresa Haun, Principal Product Marketing Manager, Zendesk

Retailers are increasingly turning to intelligent AI-powered software to interact with customers and answer questions in real time. Some research shows about 25% of customer service and support operations will use AI to engage with customers by 2020. In this session, Zendesk and meal delivery service Freshly will share the pros and cons of using bots, how customers have responded to them and how they’ve added business value and empowered agents using AI. Attendees will gain an understanding of different applications of AI, associated costs and the short term support operations impact and the long-term value of AI-assisted bot technology.

Boost Margin on More with Dynamic Pricing

Matt Bertulli, CEO, Pela

Chris Westall, Chief Strategy Officer, Bounteous

Dynamic pricing uses price as a way to appeal in different ways to targeted online customers. Get it right and it lets retailers drive higher margins on more products with more site visitors. Join this session to learn how and when different strategies for dynamic pricing – such as peak demand pricing – are most successful. Our speakers will also cover how to handle cross-channel price-matching and other issues that keep more retailers from experimenting with this powerful yet underused strategy.

11:30 AM - 1:15 PM

Lunch

1:15 PM - 1:45 PM

How Silver Jeans Propels Online Sales on Amazon and Beyond

Timothy Seward, Author, Ultimate Guide to Amazon Advertising for Brands

Faheem Dayala, Director of Digital Marketing, Silver Jeans Co

In order to grow its brand profitably, fashion retailer Silver Jeans Co. has branched out into multiple marketing channels, including a foray into selling on Amazon. With Amazon’s improved marketing and brand protection services, Silver Jeans has developed an effective marketing program that gets them attention on Amazon and in broader searches, leading to an increase in sales and profitable revenue. Attendees of this session will learn Silver Jeans’ approach to working with Amazon and how it built an agile marketing strategy that positions it to maximize profits and minimize wasted advertising spend. This session will cover the latest digital marketing features available to brands looking to capitalize on Amazon’s growing advertising share as well as how brands can safeguard themselves against counterfeiters, grey market sellers and aggressive competition on and off Amazon.

Mastering Margins on Marketplaces

Alison Held, Product Manager, ChannelAdvisor

Joe Caldwell, eCommerce Manager, SIM Supply

Online marketplaces account for more than half the goods sold online today, and they make money by taking a cut of each sale and by providing other services—fulfillment, advertising, etc.—each with their own added fees and each taking a bite out of the margin a merchant will make on the sale. How can a seller balance the need to sell on marketplaces versus the shrinking return on profit? This session will examine how sellers manage their margins on marketplaces, keep track of what’s profitable to sell on marketplaces and how they make adjustments on what they sell where to main profitability.

Mastering Rank and Conversions to Land “Page 1” on Amazon

Chad Rubin, CEO, Think Crucial

70% of Amazon shoppers only look at the products on the first page of their Amazon search. That means appearing high in Amazon search results is crucial to success on Amazon. But how do brands and retailers rank high on the most competitive online marketplace? Join Chad Rubin, CEO of replacement parts retailer Think Crucial, as he shares his tips for leveraging Amazon’s search algorithm to rank on Page 1. In this session, attendees will learn about the four must-use Amazon traffic tools, how to make URLs work better for them and the rules for compelling content that drives conversions.

Global Access: How Niche Online Retailers Can Reach the World’s Consumers

Mike Cregan, CEO, Butler Luxury

Philip Rooke, CEO, Managing Director , Spreadshirt

The globalization of online shopping has spawned a coterie of service providers who can not only deliver orders worldwide, but in many cases handle such tasks as language translation, customer service, taxes/duties and returns processing. No matter where in the world customers are, there’s a way to reach them. In this session, two specialized U.S. online retailers share how they are growing sales to consumers all over the world, providing takeaways applicable to attendees on how they may try to expand their reach.

Make Shopping Fun Again: Winning With Deal-Focused Mobile Shoppers

Ashish Sharma, Senior Director, Corporate Strategy, Rakuten

Andrew Blachman, COO, Tophatter

The internet has made buying more efficient, but it’s sucked some of the joy out of shopping. Brands and retailers learned that personalization was an early key to success on mobile, but there is more to the shopping experience. Join this session to learn discuss how to develop a "thrill of the deal" shopping experience that drives conversion and discovery, and keeps customers coming back. Our speakers will dive into mastering the art of mobile user acquisition and developing long-term customer lifetime value through rewards.

1:45 PM - 2:15 PM

Balancing Act: How Tuft & Needle Incorporated Amazon as it Built a Profitable Mattress Brand

JT Marino, Co-Founder, Tuft & Needle

Tuft & Needle has wanted to amass significant market share in the mattress category since its 2012 launch, and one way to get exposure in the hot and crowded mattress category online was to find a way to work strategically with Amazon.com. In this session, Tuft & Needle cofounder JT Marino will share the company’s reasoning behind aligning itself with Amazon early on and how, due to Amazon’s reach, Tuft & Needle was able to identify market opportunities that drove profitable sales and increased brand recognition for the growing brand. This strategy-focused session will dig deeply into how a brand can use Amazon to its advantage.

The Biggest Niche of all: Apparel Marketplaces Burst Forth

Josh Luber, Co-Founder & CEO, StockX

Shreena Amin, Director of Product, ShopRunner

The largest category for sales online is apparel—27% of apparel sold in the U.S. is sold online—and dozens of specialized apparel marketplaces have come online in recent years, such as Tradesy and Jane. As Amazon and other mass marketplaces increase their apparel SKUs, these marketplaces offer an antidote of style-informed selections, often personalized for repeat visitors. In this session, find out how sellers, often newer brands or Main Street boutiques looking to extend online, are leveraging these marketplaces and creating a profitable revenue stream. Even if you do not sell apparel, the lessons and insights from this session will carry over, as niche marketplaces are emerging for many categories.

What you Need to Know to Drive Results From Podcasts

Ryan Lane, Co-Founder, Dream Beard

Look around—chances are many people nearby are wearing earbuds and listening to podcasts. There are more than half a million active podcasts on iTunes, with more launching every day. The audience is there, and attentive. So, as marketers you have a choice. You can start your own podcast and add a voice to your business or brand, or you can advertise on existing programs. This session will explore the pros and cons of both choices and dig into the marketing ROI of podcasts.

The Landmark Tax Decision: What You Need to Know Now

Scott Peterson, VP, Tax Policy, Avalara

Clayton Cullimore, Director, Global Indirect Tax, Groupon

The Wayfair decision by the Supreme Court in June 2018 changed the tax rules online retailers have operated under for decades. Since then, there’s been more confusion than clarity on what sales taxes online retailers have to collect where, and how to even approach doing so. This panel discussion will bring together online sales tax experts and e-retail executives to address the current state of online sales tax collection, the strategies online retailers are currently deploying to comply and the way forward.

Leveraging UGC to Accelerate Growth

Jeff Hamm, Vice President, Digital Experience & Operations, Ulta Beauty

Matt Moog, CEO, PowerReviews

Sasha Smith, User Experience Designer, Ulta Beauty

Transparency, authenticity and addressing customer questions throughout the shopping journey are critical to product sales. That's why smart merchants are making increasing use of user-generated content on their own sites and in store. Seeing customers and others like them extol their love of a product or brand in their own words adds personalized credibility beyond the reach of merchant-generated content, however skillfully executed. In this session, learn how online retailers are connecting established and new forms of user-generated content today to build trust, improve the customer experience and drive sales.

2:15 PM - 3:15 PM

Break

3:15 PM - 3:45 PM

Subscription E-Retailing: Yea or Nay?

Paul Jarrett, CEO, Bulu

Jake Bronstein, Head of Partner Innovation, BuzzFeed

Subscription e-retailing isn’t for everyone, but that hasn’t stopped just about everyone from trying to apply the sales model in some way. This session will take apart the subscription e-retail model, examining the pros and cons, profit potential, and the categories where it has a greater likelihood of success or failure. It will highlight subscription e-retailing’s success stories and flops, and how a subscription model may be incorporated into a broader e-retail sales strategy.

Understanding Your Online Tax Obligations in Marketplace Sales

Jason Boyce, Co-Founder & CEO, Dazadi

Michael Fleming, CEO, Sales Tax and More

A lot remains unclear in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to permit states to demand online retailers without a local presence to remit sales tax on purchases made by residents. Another wrinkle is added when factoring in sales made at arm’s length on marketplaces. This session will look at how the changing state-by-state laws affect marketplace sellers, what sellers ought to do to be in compliance and the role marketplace operators have in the equation. It will also look at what marketplaces are doing to level the playing field with foreign sellers that typically don’t collect tax.

How to Turn Customers into Brand Advocates for Life

Jana Francis, President & Co-Founder, Steals.com

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How AI Can Improve Operational Efficiency

John Bancroft, Senior Consultant, FitForCommerce

Klaus Werner, Former CDO, HD SUPPLY

AI in retail today is most frequently associated with improving marketing ROI, however AI has the potential to impact all areas of retail operations. When AI is applied across the supply chain (merchandising, warehousing, fulfillment, customer service and more), it results in more intelligent and efficient retail organizations. This session will share the results of FitForCommerce’s study on how retailers can leverage AI and the biggest near-term opportunities for AI in improving retailers’ supply chain operations. An online retailer already incorporating AI technology will share their experience so far and their long-term expectations for how AI will help them achieve greater operational efficiency.

How 360-Degree Imagery Boosts Online and Offline Merchandise Sales and Customer Engagement

Dave Elliott, Senior Vice President, Marketing, True Value Company

Jeff Hunt, CEO and Co-Founder, Snap36

In order to create an exceptional omnichannel customer experience, the nation's leading hardlines wholesaler True Value embarked on a comprehensive new product content program, including the addition of 360 spin photography. Challenged with unreliable and inconsistent vendor supplied imagery, True Value decided to partner with Snap36 to create a robust product image library that could be used to support all of its marketing and sales channels, including digital and social media. Snap36, the world's leading 360 product photography provider, works with True Value to facilitate product availability, content creation, and website updates. True Value now offers its shoppers more consistent, high-quality product experiences that are driving higher conversion rates, AOV, and revenue.

3:45 PM - 4:15 PM

Omnichannel Pursuits: Leveraging Stores to Satisfy Online Shoppers and Increase Profit

Bill Quinn, Vice President of Digital Commerce, Hibbett Sports

Hibbett Sports, which operates more than 1,000 stores in smaller U.S. cities, came late to e-commerce, launching online sales in fall 2017. But coming late meant it was able to more smoothly implement an omnichannel sales strategy other retailers learned only by experience. Effectively omnichannel from its digital start, the retailer will share key performance metrics and its ROI goals for omnichannel selling, assess its profitability on omnichannel sales through the lens of its operational savings, such as on shipping fees, for orders shipped short distances or where customers make the journey to the store.

Online Marketplaces Marketing: Amazon and Beyond

Matt Grimm, Director of eCommerce, RST Brands

Karen Kang, CEO, Clear Influential Marketing

Grace Small, Online Marketplaces Product Manager, New Pig Corporation

James Thomson, Former Amazon Insider; Partner,, Buy Box Experts

In this session, marketplace experts will share their marketplace advertising strategies, including choosing which products to promote and where, their strategies for bidding or buying the different types of advertising, and how they track ROI.

How Artificial Intelligence is Automating Marketing

Ken Natori, President, Natori

John Wood, CEO & Founder, US Wellness Meats

From ad creation to placement to getting the solid ROI every marketer needs, artificial intelligence—and its sister deep learning—is driving positive changes in digital marketing. This session will examine how AI-powered marketing technology tools and platforms can help create and automate effective, nearly hands-off digital marketing programs for e-retailers. Online retailers will share their experiences in putting these programs to work and fine-tuning them to work toward business objectives.

The Return Burden: Spinning Returns into a Positive Experience

Helen Nightingale, Director of eCommerce, Draper James

David Sobie, Co-Founder & CEO, Happy Returns

Online shoppers return billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise each year because products didn’t match their expectations, or they just changed their mind. How an e-retailer services returns can be the deciding factor whether a customer buys again or goes elsewhere. This session will reveal the latest industry data on the growing prevalence of offering “free returns” and the upfront cost of doing so, juxtaposed against the long-term value of a retained customer.

Putting One-to-One Personalization to Work

Anna Cole, Director of Global D2C Digital Platforms, Carhartt

TJ Prebil, Director of Product Marketing, Evergage

By the end of the year, companies that have fully invested in online personalization will outsell those that haven’t by 30%. Responding to each shopper’s unique preferences and intent across channels is key to building customer loyalty and driving sales. This session will cover how Carhartt built a real time, right-now “omni-personal” system and supporting technology that delivered results including a 23.5% campaign lift. Our speakers will address using data to create customer-specific, on-the-spot personalization and using AI to keep optimizing.

4:15 PM - 4:45 PM

Why are Big, Profitable Retailers Working with Amazon?

Fahim Naim, Founder, eShopportunity

Nike, Carter’s, Best Buy, Chico’s, Estee Lauder, Kohl’s, Fruit of the Loom, and others—including some that only a few years ago wouldn’t consider selling to or through e-retailing’s leader—are finding a way to make working with Amazon work for them. Whether marketing Amazon’s products in their stores or selling goods through Amazon (including Amazon-exclusive product), many established retailers are developing cautious relationships with Amazon. This session will discuss major brands’ and retailers’ strategies for working with Amazon and the long-term potential and effect of doing so.

From Online Retailer to Online Marketplace: Launching a Marketplace

Adrien Nussenbaum, CEO, Mirakl Inc.

Sophia Tsao, Chief Marketplace Officer, Newegg

Selling on marketplaces is one strategy. But large online retailers are employing another strategy to create a new revenue stream: launching their own marketplace and collecting a commission when they facilitate a sale. Albertsons, Overstock.com, Newegg, Asos, Groupon, Crate & Barrel and Urban Outfitters are just some of the Top 500 retailers that operate their own marketplaces to capitalize on traffic and fortify revenue streams. In this session, expert speakers will share what it takes to turn a site into a marketplace, the risks and rewards of inviting others into your sales platform and the long-term implications of operating as a marketplace.

The Right Message in the Right Place at the Right Time

Jerry Jao, CEO & Founder, ReSci

Adriana Kwicinski, Digital Marketing Manager, Birdies

Retailers want to catch consumers when the timing is right—when the consumer is looking and a message won’t be intruding or distracting. This session will look at the new technologies available to pinpoint when to send an email, push notification or other alert, and at the results retailers are seeing by optimizing their timing.

On Time and on Budget: Yes It’s Possible

Marta Dalton, Global Director of Ecommerce, Unilever

Alicia Phillips, Ecommerce Business Manager, Ghirardelli

It’s a common tale in the e-commerce world: projects going over budget and over time. Here retailers will walk attendees through what they learned over the years about how to approach e-commerce technology project in a realistic way, questions to ask their operational teams and vendors and offer lessons learned from mistakes they have made. Attendees will get tips for staying on budget and on time with e-commerce technology projects and receive advice on vetting vendors.

Merchandising Around Out of Stock to Save the Sale

Ujjwal Dhoot, CMO & CPO, FSAStore.com

Mohit Maheshwari, Partner, NMG Technologies

An online shopper’s discovery that a searched-for product is out of stock is a lost opportunity for the merchant. Frustration can drive shoppers to another site, leaving a trail of disappointment with the brand in their wake – but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s all about narrowing the gap between the expectations your site sets up for shoppers around current inventory status and what your site is able to deliver. This session will highlight how merchants can handle out-of-stocks online to retain shoppers’ future business, and even direct them to other in-stock products in a way they’ll be receptive to.

Friday, June 28

Get Found Fast: Search Tactics That Get Results \| S105A-D		Breakout Tactics for B2B Selling \| S102A-D		Website Design to Power Profits \| S103A-D
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM	A Proven SEO Formula to 10X Your Traffic and Conversions View Description Chad Rubin, CEO, Think Crucial Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can make or break a brand’s visibility. Showing up on page one can seem like an impossible task without search ads - but is it really? Join this session where out expert speaker reveals several key ranking strategies that will make you re-think everything you know about SEO and ecommerce. You’ll learn the role speed, backlinks and content play in your strategy, while coming away with clear, actionable steps to multiply your site traffic without spending ad budget. Discover the content principles to make sure Google always ranks you #1, effective link-building tactics to increase your Google Authority, how to hijack your competitor’s link strategies and do it better, and methods to track your ecommerce platform metrics and outperform Google's algorithm.	Welcome & Intro View Description Paul Demery, Editor, B2BecNews B2B E-Commerce News editor and workshop chair Paul Demery will pinpoint some of the biggest shifts to emerge in Vertical Web Media’s proprietary data on B2B E-commerce since its research start three years ago. The contrast between then and now, and seeing how B2B e-commerce has evolved already sets the stage for this workshop’s practical advice and future forecasting.		Analysis of Exclusive Market Research from Internet Retailer View Description Don Davis, Editor at Large, Internet Retailer To kick off the day, our workshop chair will share exclusive research findings from Internet Retailer’s design report. We’ll explore website design trends taking shape, solutions to persistent challenges and a few missteps that will be instructional for all. Attendees will learn how to prioritize new initiatives to ensure website design turns browsers to buyers.
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM	Optimizing for Voice Search View Description Eric Enge, General Manager, Perficent Digital Jordan Silton, Director, SEO Marketing, Apartments.com Half of all searches will be voice-based come 2020, according to industry predictions. Because digital assistants serve up one answer to a voice query – rather than a list of results as is done for text-based search – your site ranks first or you lose. This session will reveal the top factors in optimizing voice search rankings, such as page load time, secure HTTP and simple, succinct language. Attendees will learn tactics to improve chances of their voice search result being chosen, whether by Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Microsoft’s Cortana or the next arrival in this fast-moving space.	8:15 AM - 8:45 AM	B2B E-Commerce: What's Cutting-Edge Now View Description Penny Gillespie, Research Vice President, Gartner A top industry analyst will sort out which new digital trends and technologies deliver the most value to B2B online sellers. Manufacturers, distributors and wholesalers charged with succeeding in e-commerce must choose well from an ever-growing universe of technologies and systems. Our speaker will cover what online sellers should have in place right now to stay on top and what’s on the horizon, assessing personalization driven by artificial intelligence, internet of things systems to streamline inventory management and more.	8:15 AM - 8:45 AM	PWA or Native App? The Great Debate View Description Wilson Kerr, VP Business Development and Sales, Unbound Commerce Frank Fornaris, General Manager, ProStockHockey Higher conversion rates are a shared goal of most retailers and slow pageload times play a big role in suppressing this important metric for mobile commerce success. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) seem to offer a new way to turbocharge your mobile web offering (with some of the best aspects of native apps), but many retailers are not clear on the differences between these two options. Does having a PWA negates the need for an app? Our speakers will give a crash course on the differences and pros/cons of PWAs vs apps and how to take maximum advantage of these new conversion-lifting options.
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM	Who’s Up Next? Your Site’s SEO Analyzed Right Now View Description Stephan Spencer, Co-Author, The Art of SEO Attendees queue up at the mic for this one to volunteer their website URLs for an on-the-fly assessment of SEO proficiency. Our search expert analyzes strengths and weaknesses in professional and respectful fashion to call out excellence to emulate and common mistakes to avoid. The powerful takeaways are specific recommendations to improve your SEO – refinements every website can deploy for better results.	8:45 AM - 9:15 AM	Mythbusting: Transitioning from B2C to B2B View Description Jerry Bernhart, Principal, Bernhart Associates Meeta Kratz, Vice President, Brady Corporation With unemployment rates at the lowest levels in a generation, employers in many markets are struggling to find workers with B2B ecommerce experience for their mission-critical positions. Faced with candidates who have B2C experience, they worry that knowledge won’t apply to the B2B environment. And those with B2C ecommerce experience may avoid B2B opportunities because they believe it’s not “sexy” enough, or that B2B marketing requires an entirely different skill set. This session challenges myths that exist about making that transition. We’ll answer questions such as what are the significant differences between the B2C and B2B markets ( such as scale, a more complex purchasing process, firewalls, customer-specific pricing etc.)? As a hiring manager, what are the key questions you need to be asking to effectively evaluate candidates with B2C backgrounds who are applying for your B2B jobs? As a job-seeker, what are the specific skills and attributes required to successfully transition from B2C to B2B? And is it a boost to your marketing career to have both?	8:45 AM - 9:15 AM	Virtual Try-on Design: Retailers Win When Shoppers Know Exactly What They're Buying View Description Carson Finkle, CEO, Tenth Street Hats Vince Cacace, CEO, Vertebrae Online shoppers return billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise each year because products didn’t match their expectations, or they never buy at all because the merchant’s site images or descriptions didn’t give them the information they need to make a confident purchase. In this session, we’ll look at how augmented reality-based site technology can assist in changing these dynamics. It will examine how merchants can get started creating AR assets and at how and where to display them on the site where they will have the most impact driving conversions. A merchant experienced with AR will share a case study on how adding AR affected sales and customer engagement, and contributed to lowering returns.
10:00 AM - 10:15 AM	Break View Description	9:15 AM - 9:45 AM	Marketplaces: Amazon Business, or Amazon.com - Or Other? View Description Jeff McRitchie, VP, eCommerce & Marketing, Mybinding.com Joe Caldwell, eCommerce Manager, SIM Supply Veterans of selling through Amazon and other marketplaces will share their strategies for deciding what to sell through which marketplaces—including the differences between selling through Amazon Business and the Business-Industrial-Scientific section of Amazon.com. Our speakers will cover how to decide which marketplace opportunities are best for your business and how to get the most out of the ones you choose.	9:15 AM - 10:15 AM	Broken and Asymmetrical, Yes, These are Good Things View Description Kellar Williams, Creative Director, Fluid Matt Corey, Chief Marketing Officer, PGA Superstore Sometimes called “broken grid” or “broken layout,” this approach to website structural design is not a problem to fix but rather an alternate path to consider. Innovative designers are experimenting with an approach that effectively breaks the traditional grid system that governs website function while still preserving a hierarchy with planned asymmetry. It’s a form of controlled chaos that delivers unique and unforgettable visual effects. This session will start with a self-assessment to determine if this approach can work for your brand, how to transition from your established grid foundation while maintaining order to achieve new, exciting effects such as animation, a parallax scrolling (a layering technique) and inventive new ways to play with white space and vibrant color.
10:15 AM - 10:30 AM	Aligning Your Strategy with New Search Trends View Description Zak Stambor, Editor, Internet Retailer More than half of all online product searches were done on Amazon – not Google – in 2018 while at the same time, “near me” mobile searches have exploded on Google – rising 200%. The eye-popping new metrics keep coming and reveal new opportunities to refine your search strategy. In this session, Internet Retailer editor Zak Stambor will disclose proprietary new findings on search.	9:45 AM - 10:15 AM	Merge CRM and Personalization to Boost B2B Sales Online View Description Steve Martinez, Senior Director, Digital Commerce, Univar Conversion rates are up at our speaker’s distribution company since it moved to a new e-commerce platform designed with a personalized portal for integration with its CRM software. Join this session to hear how customers are interacting with personalized content and service, how the integration with CRM helps it to better understand customer needs and how giving B2B buyers an online experience geared to their unique requirements increases sales.	10:15 AM - 10:30 AM	Break View Description
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM	Search Term Isolation: An Advanced Ad Strategy on Amazon View Description Daniel Tejada, Amazon Sales Manager, Blue Wheel Media Tom Sesti, Amazon Marketplace Director, HoMedics Recent industry reports show Amazon tops Google in product search, with more U.S. product searches starting on Amazon than on Google. But many retailers with deep experience in SEM on Google have yet to fully understand that sponsored search – advertising-- on Amazon works very differently. Join this session to learn about the key differences between Amazon and Google and about utilizing search term isolation, a strategy designed specifically to increase exposure and sales on Amazon.	10:15 AM - 10:30 AM	Break View Description	10:30 AM - 11:15 AM	Mics Are On! Attendees Step Up for Live Site Reviews View Description Scott Emalfarb, Owner, Fresh Content Society Jon MacDonald, President & Founder, The Good IRCE attendees have the opportunity to get personally involved in the workshop. In this session, members of the audience are invited to step up to the floor mic, offer their website URL and we are off to the races with spontaneous critiques! An attendee’s website is displayed on the big screen and our astute, fast-on-their-feet design experts dissect each site’s strengths and weaknesses from a design and usability perspective. This session is fast-paced so we can accommodate as many website reviews as possible. Critiques are professional, instructive and include smart fixes and recommendations to improve aesthetics, navigation and overall effectiveness so design can do its part to captivate and convert shoppers.
11:00 AM - 11:45 AM	The Data Science of Google Shopping Biases View Description Nik Rajpal, VP of Marketing Sciences, Exclusive Concepts Brian Huck, President & COO, The Eastwood Company Your Google Shopping account is begging you to learn some new tricks. Simply adjusting bids at the product level and tweaking a negatives list is becoming really stale. And sticking to the mundane, classic data that is produced within Google Ads is archaic in today’s data-driven world. It’s time to infuse some serious data science back into your Google Ads management approach. This presentation will address the “whys,” “hows” and “what to dos” regarding the many biases that impact your product performance, such as device, user type, audience influence, seasonality and price advantage.	10:30 AM - 11:15 AM	A Legacy Distributor Shifts to Ecommerce View Description Gene Carbonara, VP of Ecommerce & digital, US Foods In this session, the head of ecommerce and digital at US Foods, the second largest foodservice distributor in the U.S., will discuss how US Foods transformed its go-to-market strategy with technology to engage customers, improve seller productivity, and grow the business. Our speaker will discuss the company’s ecommerce journey, addressing the B2B challenges of seller/customer adoption as well as more recent trends such as personalization and expectations online buyers base on their B2C experience online.	11:15 AM - 12:00 PM	Unlocking Mobile Performance with AMP and PWA View Description Robert Gara, Co-Founder & VP Business Development , WompMobile Shane Halstead, VP of Marketing, GiftTree Al Lee, Director, Web Technologies, JM Bullion, Inc Mobile is the new battleground in retail, as consumers increasingly turn to their mobile devices to search, price compare and buy products. However, an unreliable and slow mobile web has long been a barrier to strong mobile revenue growth. Two new technologies—Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA)—are changing this, breaking barriers and unlocking new possibilities by delivering a fast and rich mobile user experience. This session will provide an overview of what’s possible with AMP and PWA, as well as share real-world examples of how retailers are using and benefiting from these mobile-first technologies.
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM	Picture This: Integrating Visual Search View Description Ted Mann, CEO, Slyce The younger your customers, the more likely they expect visual search to help find the items they want. In this session, attendees will learn how to use visual search to make product recommendations, cross-sell and optimize to give shoppers access to their total inventory – not just the most-searched, most-popular items. Compare the benefits of enabling shoppers to upload their own images – to find lookalike styles such as “A-line” dress – with the benefits of graphic icons shoppers use to specify product features like “armrest” in the furniture category. Hear how one retailer piloted visual search and the results achieved.	11:15 AM - 12:00 PM	Power up Your Sales Reps with Digital Tools View Description Justin Racine, Director of Marketing & eCommerce, Geriatric Medical Karie Daudt, Senior Commece Consultant, Perficient Digital Today’s best B2B sales reps are consultants, not order-takers. As more customers place their own orders directly online, B2B companies must drive more value out of sales calls by putting digital tools such as instant custom quotes in reps’ hands before, during and afterwards. This session also will cover how companies can use online dashboards to measure sales performance per SKU online to validate sales forecasts, inventory planning and more.	12:00 PM - 12:30 PM	Stop Stopping Shoppers with Friction — Fix That Checkout View Description Amitai Sasson, Vice President, Marketing and Development, OverstockArt.com E-retailers are so familiar with their own websites—logic, taxonomy and quirks—that they are often blind to obstacles hindering sales, namely shoppers’ ability to submit a product order easily and with confidence. In this session, art retailer overstockArt.com will show some of the roadblocks merchants can remove to reduce friction and capture the sale. Attendees will learn about the benefits of offering innovative payment methods, eliminating steps in checkout, how to go about revamping your checkout process and more.
12:15 PM - 1:00 PM	Three New Google Ad Tactics that Give You a Competitive Edge View Description Brett Curry, CEO, OMGCommerce Jared Mitchell, Co-Founder, Skincare by Alana New ad formats, targeting options, and smart campaigns continue to evolve and make life interesting for paid search advertisers. In this talk we’ll explore three paid traffic super powers that give you a leg up on the competition. We’ll look at how the proper use of YouTube ads can help boost search and shopping ad performance and we’ll also lay out new Google Shopping formats, discussing which to use in different situations. We'll look at the latest new ways to leverage smart bidding options and smart campaigns while still maintaining control.	12:00 PM - 1:15 PM	Live Critiques for B2B Ecommerce Sites View Description Lori McDonald, President & CEO, Brilliance Business Solutions Matt Glaze, Director, UX, Capgemini To gain and keep customers, your B2B e-commerce site needs to find solutions to customers’ business problems and not simply sell products. Is that what your site provides? This session features live site critiques by two top B2B e-commerce web designers and strategists on B2B sites volunteered from the audience. Find out if your site (or those of your competitors) is all it needs to be, and capture missed opportunities with a more effective design.
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM	Boxed Lunch View Description

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