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Recap: eDataSource Client Conference

Article by John Landsman CATEGORIES: News & Updates TAGS:

Last week eDataSource held its third annual client summit at Studio Arte in the Garment District of NYC. It focused on sharing how brands, email service providers (ESPs) and market research firms use our solutions. There were more than 80 people in attendance, including representatives from Oracle Marketing Cloud, SiriusXM and Digitas. Speakers included Staples, Zeta Interactive and 1-800-Flowers. The atmosphere was alive and the air was thick with interest.

Our CEO G.B. Heidarsson kicked off the event with an update on “What’s new at eDataSource?” (A lot, that’s what!) Forty-five new clients in the past year, pioneering new features and user-friendly capabilities of our platform, an ever-growing panel of inboxes, brands and ISPs tracked, and much more. But now, onto the stars of our show…

The Value of Competitive Intelligence

Our keynote speaker, David Daniels from The Relevancy Group, shared results from a recent study of almost 500 marketers about their use (or not!) of competitive intelligence to improve email revenues. Without spoiling the results that will soon be publicly unveiled, David declared: “Competitive Intelligence Applications (CIA) is A Thing, a Category.’” Watch this space for more on how ‘spies like us’ can use this research to prove CIA is a wise investment for our organizations and what the rules of engagement are.

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What do GAP, Brexit and Wells Fargo have in common?

Our friends from market research firm Mintel, Shafiq Rajani and Andrew Davidson, then reviewed why our two companies are such a good fit for one another. We’re both focused on real time, accurate intelligence, customer obsession and helping companies grow. The presenters took us through three case examples of eDataSource in action for GAP, Wells Fargo and for financial services companies immediately following Brexit. They also shared what they’ve learned that works and doesn’t work in email from analyzing some 500 billion messages.

The Proof is in the Pudding                                           

Next up was Pradeep Mangalapalli, director of deliverability operations at Oracle, who discussed how the ESP leverages eDataSource for proactive deliverability monitoring, prospect research, tracking industry-wide trends, and enabling their clients to monitor campaign performance and competitive intelligence. He reviewed an example of how they use eDataSource to answer questions that were previously much more difficult to answer. In this case, they identified – with ample evidence – best practice around opt-in confirmations for their clients.

Personalization: Getting Beyond the Buzzword

Rob Brosnan from Movable Ink (and former Forrester analyst) talked about using context and content to personalize email marketing. Since a recipient’s context is constantly changing, relevance requires a broader data model. Context is the intersection of relationship, behavior and interaction environment. And content should be viewed as a recipe; not as dead bits in a database.

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‘That Was Easy’

Staples’ email marketing expert Jared Chase highlighted how eDataSource insights helps his efforts internally as well as externally. With intelligence around how Staples’ programs are doing versus the competition, including their audience overlaps, the company is able to bring regular business reviews to a new level. He also appreciates being proactively notified of challenges and successes, seeing creative comparisons, and is currently using intelligence from last year’s holiday season to guide the company’s efforts in this year’s critical selling season.

Targeting Analytics Works

John Landsman, eDataSource director of strategy and analytics, followed with a discussion of using targeting analytics to understand a brand’s average depth of file, a.k.a., the degree to which it segments and targets its mailings. While senders don’t always don’t take the time to target, the highest read rates are associated with the most targeted emails.

Thrive in the Competitive Inbox

Andrea Orvis from Zeta CRM spoke about leveraging eDataSource to pinpoint customer experiences in the inbox. Using Brand Compare, the ESP is able to provide deep competitive evaluation and benchmarking as part of every client engagement. Overlap analyses help them understand the competition and channel experience from the subscribers’ point of view, as well as deepen their customer profiles. Understanding the tactical approaches of other brands helps lead to the next big idea.

Everything Coming up Roses

When Matt Nedbalsky from 1-800-Flowers talked about using eDataSource to understand a deliverability issue earlier this year, a lot of heads nodded in agreement. The florist discovered that a Gmail filter change was not only affecting them, but their competitors as well. Armed with this knowledge they were able to fix the issue before the important Mother’s Day holiday and make sales they would have otherwise lost.

Taking Action on the Data

Last, but certainly not least, was Chris Adams, eDataSource CTO, who presented our product roadmap and how we’ve been executing against it. “We are taking our product from data to action. Not just what does it mean, but what should I do about it?” With enhancements across the board – from growing a rich panel of consumer inboxes, to new ways of helping our clients access the data, to innovations in deliverability and reputation monitoring, improvements to our user interface, eCommerce trend data, ESP integration and more – we are working very hard to create actionable intelligence that enables our clients to boost their email ROI.

The day ended with a casual, delicious dinner of Chinese food at Chef Yu, complete with caricature artist!  We’re glad we could share a meal with our clients and partners and provide a small bit of thanks for all of their contributions.

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