Internet World 2010 Digital Marketing Conference Round-up

Pure360 at Internet World 2010: The cream of UK digital marketing companies gather at Earls Court

Another year, another Internet World conference - and Pure360 were right there in the thick of it, taking our email marketing solutions to the attendees of Internet World 2010. This year saw higher temperatures, more expensive catering facilities and more scantily clad booth-girls than ever before.

That aside, Internet World 2010 was a great event packed with some of the hottest IT and digital marketing companies from across the globe. Earls Court was abuzz with big name keynote speakers from BBC Online, Google, Stella Artois, The Guardian, Tripadvisor and more. Queues for these speeches were lengthy, but if you had the stamina and enough water to wait it out, audiences were richly rewarded with some genuinely insightful and engaging talks on a variety of subjects, ranging from the psychology of online shopping to cross-platform syndication of television, and a whole lot more. Phew!

So, what was going on?

We had a quick chat early in the day with Steve Evans, reporter for CBR, who seemed suitably impressed: “The whole event is buzzing nicely, with the big exhibitors pushing out their respective boats. It’s always nice to see representatives from lots of different industries here, and I’ll definitely be trying to take in a few of the talks.”

Most of us were greeted outside the venue by our friends at Rackspace, who were doing some very entertaining and well-received ‘guerilla’ marketing; waving placards, and chanting slogans about web servers and hosting uptime, they did a good approximation of a political rally. Dominating the front of the cavernous interior of Earls Court 2 were Peer1 and the rest of the Rackspace contingent. Both had skyscraper-sized stands, lots of shiny plastic and all the bells and whistles usually associated with those in pole position at the front of the show.

Speaking of ‘pole position’, a short walk further into the arena revealed web hosting gurus UKFast. Their stand, featuring a full-size Formula 1 car driving simulator and affable staff, would surely win Best in Show if this were Crufts. We didn’t have an opportunity to go on the simulator, but watching others trying their hand at setting fast lap times was entertaining enough - partly because very few people managed to stay on the track for longer than 30 seconds.

Social media grabs the attention

Despite the prevalence of hardware/hosting providers, marketing, SEO, digital marketing companies and content management firms in attendance, the big buzz was around Social Media, especially in the keynote talks from speakers such as The Guardian’s Meg Pickard, who came out with one of the most frequently re-tweeted quotes of the event: “Media will evolve so we wont need to talk about Social Media, we will instead just talk about media”.

Over in our neck of the woods, Mike Weston from Lyris gave a talk in the ‘Email, Mobile & Analytics Theatre’ using fashion retailer Matches as an example of how email marketing and web analytics can work well together - something we’ve been advocating as part of our email marketing solutions for some time now. You can read more about this in our recent blog post on the subject.

The Pure360 stand

At the Pure360 stand we were busy for all three days, with the only real let-up occurring at the end of the third day. However, it was well worth it, as we met loads of interesting new people and prospects. These ranged from those new to the world of email marketing and people looking to get some advice on how to best use our email marketing solutions for their business, to some fascinating projects around triggered mailings, integration with analytics packages and how to enliven email marketing campaigns. Not mentioning any names, but we can’t wait to work with the people we spoke to on Wednesday afternoon...

We were very pleased with our new stand, which looked awesome. Thanks to everyone who complimented us on the design. Unfortunately, due to my being a bit stingy with the collateral budget, we ran out of feature guides at the end of the second day - sorry Sarah!

Hi Customers

It was also really nice to meet some of our existing customers at the event and put a face to the voice, with Experian, Arthritis Care and RBH all stopping by to say hello.

In conclusion, a fantastic three days. If everyone who attended had half as much fun and learned as much as we did, Internet World 2010 was a roaring success.

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