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OroCRM + dotmailer event, London – October 20, 2016
Firstly, it was really good to be back in my home town and also a pleasure to be invited to speak here. I enjoyed catching up with the dotmailer Product Team and they were super-excited to hear how well the platform is being received globally. It’s really promising when you realise that the piece of technology you’ve created is loved by businesses of all shapes and sizes around the world, and it’s awesome to come home and share that feedback.
Anyway, the OroCRM event was hosted at dotmailer’s HQ; we have a great relationship with Oro and have worked on a few joint projects together over in the US. The founding team at Oro, including Jary Carter, were also the co-founders of Magento. On stage along with myself and Jary were Chris Raven from Allies and Certainly Wood’s Natalie Sadler.
This event was designed to help one of our key partners go international and get some exposure in the UK. We’ve worked with our partners to do this previously, including Redbox Digital who were based in the UK and who we’ve exhibited with in Dubai to help expand each other’s presence in the Middle East. It’s great that we’re able to help out our partners using our global grounding.
I was also honoured to be invited to an evening with the St. George’s Society to meet the Duke of Gloucester during my visit. The St. George’s Society is an organization which looks after expats and celebrates UK companies that have been successful outside their country of origin. However, this wasn’t the first time I’ve rubbed shoulders with the elite. I was once fortunate enough to meet some of the Royal Family, including The Queen and both Prince William & Prince Harry! In fact, I have an anecdote to share…
When I met Prince William, he asked what I did for a living and I told him that I was once of the founders of dotmailer. When I asked him if he knew what dotmailer did, he responded with ‘Is that an email marketing automation platform that enables you to send the right message, to the right people at the right time?’ I responded with surprise and asked how he knew; it turned out that his mother-in-law uses dotmailer and he said he’d be in trouble if he didn’t know what she did!
My visit to London was rounded off by speaking at dotmailer’s company-wide All Hands meeting, where I shared updates and news with the entire team.
Meet Magento, Vietnam – October 15, 2016
1,200 people attended Meet Magento in Ho Chi Minh City. This is the second-largest Magento gathering outside Magento Imagine in the US.
It was a very well organized conference and I was delighted to be invited to speak alongside some big names, including Jerry Smith, the President & CEO of OgilvyOne APAC, the founder of Mercurial, Matias Orlando, and the Founder & CTO of QuarticON, Pawel Wyborski.
I was delighted to be part of the panel discussion around launching an ecommerce website. My presentation on the top 10 email programs for retailers went down a storm, because it really resonated with partners and merchants in this space. I felt like a bit of a celebrity afterwards – I had people coming up and asking to take selfies with me! The attention didn’t stop there, as I was also interviewed by Vietnamese television broadcasters such as VTV News.
The size of the opportunity for technology companies like us – and online retailers – is that the maturity of ecommerce in this region is nothing like that of the western world. Retailers are bypassing the high street and are leaping straight online; as such, they’re looking for the best-of-breed tools that’ll enable them to act fast and scale quickly. That being said, some of the challenges facing the Asian market appeared to be streamlining and smoothing out issues with things such as the logistics around payment on delivery.
Meet Magento was also a great social and networking opportunity, and it was particularly nice to bump into some of our Vietnamese customers on the booth.
All in all, dotmailer enjoyed some great exposure at a well-attended event.
Dreamforce, San Francisco – October 4-7, 2016
Dreamforce is a beast – there’s nothing else quite like it and it really does take over San Francisco! This year there were 170,000 attendees, and more than 5 million people tuned in online.
The big piece of news at this year’s conference was the launch of Salesforce’s Einstein product, so there were some really nice Artificial Intelligence stories being told. It was also great to see that the ecosystem is alive and well, with the exhibitor hall as busy as ever.
It was clear to me that there were three kinds of customer attending the event, and it’s promising that we’re able to help and add value to two of those distinct groups. dotmailer is well-suited to both larger SMEs and mid-market customers who want their marketing to be more sophisticated and deeply integrated with Salesforce, but without the big price ticket for the software and service.
In fact, let’s use an analogy to try and describe where I believe dotmailer fits into the marketplace. If we were to look at boxers Tyson Fury and Floyd Mayweather, we might compare dotmailer to Floyd Mayweather, because he’s the best pound-for-pound fighter; he represents performance and value for money. Whereas a heavyweight fighter like Tyson Fury can provide the biggest knockout blow, he represents a big and expensive stack like Salesforce. Large-scale companies with huge volumes of data are well-suited to that all-in-one kind of solution. And it’s those smaller businesses, who feel as though buying a tech stack would be like purchasing an expensive hammer to crack a nut, that really see the value in our offering. I found that there were companies using weird and basic email systems I’d never even heard of, because they didn’t think there were alternatives like dotmailer.
Of course, I can’t sign off without talking about the social aspect of Dreamforce, because it’s also well-known for its nightlife. And with so many events going on it even has a dedicated app called Partyforce, just so you can keep track of all the events being run across the city every night. But no party were bigger than the main event: U2! They played before 170,000 people in a giant open-air stadium.
Bono and the Dreamforce team were there representing the ‘Red’ foundation, an AIDs-related charity (founded by Bono). $1 million was raised during the event; Mark Benioff pledged to double that with his own money and Melinda Gates also said she would do the same. So not only are masters of Silicon Valley making money, they were also busy giving it away.
Shop.org Retail’s Digital Summit, Dallas – September 26-28, 2016
More than 5,000 attendees and 200 exhibitors gathered at this year’s Shop.org summit. We didn’t exhibit, but this gave us an excellent opportunity to take along our Channel Team and spend time with our partners.
We also held a partner event that was attended by around 40 people from 15 partner companies across the US. In fact, it took place on the night of the first US presidential election debate! The guys reported that there had been a slight pause in the development of Magento sites while M2 was bedded in, however they now have a continual number of projects rolling in especially as Magento 2.1 has now been released.
It was great to hear how happy people are to be working with dotmailer and the Magento integration, and promising to realise that we’re becoming much more well known in the US market. That’s all thanks to the hard work of the team and their achievements in growing our presence over the last three years.
Online Retailer Conference & Expo and Balance Internet, Australia – July 20-23, 2016
The Online Retailer Conference & Expo is Australia’s largest and most trusted technology-driven retail event, and attracts buyers and decision-makers from online and omnichannel retailers.
It was great to speak and be a part of the panel at the event, which took place in Sydney. I was also on stage with NORA, who is the industry body representing direct-selling companies in Australia. In fact, it was during this event that we announced dotmailer would now also be selling direct to customers, as well as through our network of local partners.
Our agency partners in Australia are extremely important to us and have been instrumental in helping us to grow our presence in the APAC region. So much so, that my speech to Australian retailers was themed around our agency partners, such as Salmat.
While I was at the event I also linked up with Cart Hartmann, the Co-founder and CEO of Temando. Temando is a piece of shipping and fulfilment software, and, like dotmailer, is one of Magento’s Premier Technology Partners. You can watch our conversation here:
I had a busy time while down under, as I also flew up to a private event with Balance Internet, which was in conjunction with Braintree Payments.
I think one thing that was really apparent at the end of my trip is that the Australian market isn’t as behind in terms of ecommerce as they think they are. And when I say behind, I mean in comparison to the UK and the US. In fact, I think they’re at an advantage, because they have the hindsight of the UK and the US’ mistakes and aren’t burdened with legacy systems.