7:45a - 8:45a

Keynote: Jeanne Bliss
Author, Chief Customer Officer
"Delivering on the Promise"
Arizona Ballroom G
Online shopping gives your company a 24 x 7 opportunity to deliver on your brand promise through the experience of your site, through how you respond and surprise customers and through how you deliver your products and services.  Jeanne Bliss, past Chief Customer Officer for Lands' End, Allstate, Coldwell Banker, Mazda and Microsoft takes us on a journey to how companies connect their efforts across channels to deliver to customers; discussing the expanding role that marketing and ecommerce play in customers' overall experience with the brand.

Carrie Johnson
VP and Research Director, Forrester
"The State of Retailing Online"
Arizona Ballroom G
Carrie will present just-released findings from the 2008 State of Retailing Online Marketing research.  She will focus on how retailers are allocating and evaluating their online marketing spend, as well as how merchants are using and measuring email marketing and management, paid and natural search, promotions and emerging marketing vehicles.

Optimizing Customer Experience Through Paid and Organic Search
Arizona Ballroom G
Our panel of search experts will provide you with specific steps to analyze your data to create a customer-centric experience through paid and organic search.  Using a case-study of a specific product, you will leave this session with immediately actionable tips that cover such topics as search analytics, optimizing landing pages, keyword research, focused ad text, and geo-targeting. 

Speakers:
Allan Dick, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Plumbing Evangelist, Vintage Tub and Bath
Rebecca Kelley, Search Marketing Consultant, SEOmoz
Christopher Knoch, Principle Consultant, Omniture Consulting Group
Ken Jurina, President and Founder, Epiar
Todd Friesen, VP, Search Strategies, Visible Technologies

Targeting the Inner Circle with your Customer-Centric Strategies
Arizona Ballroom A
This session will focus on how to identify best customer segments, how to recognize and reward their contributions, how to learn from the information that best customers provide both explicitly through their transactions and implicitly through their overall interactions, and most importantly how to use that information to deepen the retailer-to-consumer relationship in a way that is sincere, relevant and most of all leads to higher customer value.

Speakers:
David Rosen, SVP, Loyalty Lab
Edward P. Foy, Jr., CEO, eFashionSolutions
Noah Maffitt, Director E-Commerce, Office Depot, Inc.

Keynote: Patrick Byrne
Chairman & CEO, Overstock.com
"Creating Customer-Centric Marketing"
Arizona Ballroom G
In 2005, a NRF Foundation/AMEX survey asked American consumers, which organizations provided extraordinary customer service? Overstock did not appear in the top 150 American retailers. In January, 2006 Overstock.com decided to focus on being customer-centric by making Customer Care the senior department to the entire company, and putting their most hard-headed executive in charge of the department.  Customer Care knew where all the bones were buried, and we let their knowledge drive the programs to fix various processes in the company. Since then, Overstock has moved from not scoring in the top 150 to scoring #4 two years in a row, and #1 in Customer Respect. As Overstock moves into 2008 the customer is taking an even more important role within the company, driving the experience on the website and the products Overstock sources and sells.

Keeping it Together When Losing Control:
How to Create a Customer-Centric Environment in a Web 2.0 World where Customers are in Charge
Arizona Ballroom G
Empowering your customers is a key element of success in the 21st century online marketplace.  In this brand new Web 2.0 world, many retailers are faced with the paradox of allowing customers unprecedented access while still needing to lead marketing initiatives and control their brand.  Our panel will discuss what retailers need to do to find the perfect balance between opening up and remaining in control. We will examine in detail the prizes and pitfalls of empowering the customer, provide rules for engaging the customer and keeping control, and tips for finding and nurturing the customer evangelist.

Speakers: 
Gary Briggs, SVP and Former CMO, eBay
Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image
Laura Evans, Executive Director, Retail, Resource Interactive

Web 2.0 University
Arizona Ballroom G
Mitch Joel, dubbed as the "Rock Star of Digital Marketing" by Marketing Magazine will lead retailers through his “tools of the trade.”   Mitch will demonstrate how to better monitor your customers through the Web 2.0 landscape, add your brand to other communities, and how to publish your own Blog/Podcast using only free tools. By the end of this session you will learn to use the most current Social Media tools to improve your business, track what customers are saying about you across all channels, how to share this wealth of knowledge with your colleagues, and, ultimately, be a better Marketer. Bring your own laptop for this dynamic and interactive workshop session.

Mitch Joel is President of Twist Image – an award-winning Digital Marketing agency. His Marketing Blog and Podcast, Six Pixels of Separation, is widely regarded as one of the best, and in 2006 Mitch was named one of the most influential authorities on Blog Marketing in the world.

Speaker: 
Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image