2012 Personalization Summit Recap

Rapleaf and LiveRamp hosted the Personalization Summit last Thursday, which brought forth interesting discussion and some necessary debate on why personalization is happening today. The Summit aimed to explore the benefits and implications of personalization, privacy, customer segmentation and more with major thought leaders in the space.

The Summit kicked off with America’s favorite pastime cheering on the Giants at the Giants vs. Phillies game Wednesday night at AT&T ballpark. One hundred Summit participants, partners, clients and friends joined for a night of food and drinks in a private space to get the Summit started. A big highlight of the night, beside the Giants clinching a win in the top of the 11th, was seeing our raffle winner,

Christian Hamilton from x.commerce, stealing the Giant’s Second base and joining the grounds crew out on the field mid-game. Hamilton got to spend some time in the dugout and was featured on the jumbotron in front of 40,000+ people, sporting a Rapleaf sweatshirt of course!

On the day of the Summit, over 200 CEOs, Founders, and Execs came together at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco to discuss numerous topics on Personalization, it’s current state in marketing and technology, and what we think is yet to come. The day opened up with a heated discussion on Email Marketing, where leaders in the Email space including WhatCounts, SailThru, and Alchemy Worx battled over the current state of email marketing; we also we heard about what’s on the rise for email marketing from AdStack.

The day expanded into discussions over Big Data, where leaders from Acxiom, Inflection, and Deloitte discussed how data is changing marketer’s overall strategy in today’s world. Other topics throughout the day included: improving customer loyalty, building brand advocates, the importance of privacy in personalization for both brands and consumers, personalization in the display ecosystem, innovation & personalization, and more.

As we are moving from one to many towards one to one marketing and customer service, one issue kept surfacing: we as marketers need to do a better job of getting inside the consumer’s head. The companies that are better at putting themselves in the user’s shoes in the long run will win. Then, consumers will see the value of personalization first hand and start drinking the kool-aid.

Overall, the day was a tremendous opportunity for technology leaders and innovative companies to share in a dialog, where Founders and CEOs from salesforce.com, WordPress, comScore, Deloitte, Hootsuite, GiltGroupe, care.com, Retargeter, BrightRoll, and more, did a great job as panelists creating some brilliant questions and discussions for the group at large.

“It was great to see how the convergence of technology, data, and innovation can come together to create a better online experience across so many channels, “says Phil Davis, GM of Sales and Marketing at Rapleaf.

The day was captured by Graphic Recorder, Emily Shepard, who produced some incredible visuals from the discussions. A huge thanks to our sponsors for helping make the Summit a great success; both Rapleaf and LiveRamp were proud to host such a memorable conference, and were honored to have such monumental thought leaders partake in our event. If you are interested in learning more about the Summit or have ideas for 2013, please contact [email protected].

Live Recordings

Email Marketing: Gaining Attention in the User’s Inbox

Big Data: Tapping Into Data to Creat a Competitive Advantage (Scroll to 1:40)

Display Advertising: The Next Dimension of Personalization

Industry Outlook: Personalization

Privacy: Big Data in the Age of the Zetabyte

Audience Building Finding and Building Brand Advocates