Recap from IRCE: Big Conference, Big Data

Last week, Rapleaf joined thousands of internet retailers and ecommerce partners at McCormick Place in Chicago for the 2013 International Retail Conference and Expo.

While some people’s highlights from the conference were probably Al Gore’s keynote speech or the great Chicago deep dish pizza or even those snazzy socks the bus booth was giving away, ours was seeing just how passionate marketers and internet companies are about data.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Data

Even when the open bar wasn’t in business across the aisle from us (awesome booth location if I do say so myself), the sheer number of attendees that saw our I <3 Data signs and shouted. “Hey, I love data too!” was great. We even had a few data-lovers take pictures of the Rapleaf Data Family just because they loved data so much.

Another interesting part of IRCE for Rapleaf was seeing how many different types of companies and businesses were looking to add data into their marketing mix…and with all kinds of companies comes all kinds of use cases.

Using data to make your email marketing message more relevant just makes sense. But there are so many more opportunities to enrich, segment, and personalize outside of the inbox. One company was looking for offline data to drive their Facebook advertising campaigns. Another looked into Rapleaf data to improve the personalization of their landing pages. One even hoped Rapleaf data could help them stop sending male enhancement pill offers to women.

Over all, it’s really cool to see that data is not only gaining traction as a mainstream marketing tool but also as a tool of marketing innovation.

After all, it’s not about the size of the data, it’s how you use it.