Most people have a favorite time of the year – for some, it’s the first few crisp days of fall. After ExactTarget’s annual user conference (held here in Indianapolis Oct. 1-3), I am tempted to say my favorite time of the year might be Connections ‘07! Over 500 clients flocking to Indianapolis for three action-packed days of expert panels, client success stories, hands-on product training, and keynote speakers including Martha Rogers, Chip Heath, Shar VanBoskirk, Craig Spiezle, Jeanniey Mullen, and David Daniels – to name just a few.
I went into Connections ’07 with three major goals:
Thank:
With over 6,000 organizations who use our product, Connections ’07 was largely a display of our gratitude for our clients’ business, innovation, and willingness to challenge us every day. (We only wish we could thank everyone “Hershey Style!”)
Inform:
Connections ’07 featured over twenty break-out sessions on hot topics from list growth and email design to testing and international sending. Most importantly, each session emphasized the need to deliver Results and Relationships.
Inspire:
One-to-one marketing is expanding into exciting new mediums like SMS and Voice. Through our new Integrated One-to-One Platform (available with our Fall 2007 Release), clients will be able to manage their digital communication channels from a single platform.
Be on the lookout for exciting updates about our Fall 2007 Release – with relational data, SMS, and Voice, and a ton of UI enhancements on the horizon, these are exciting times at ExactTarget.
For our clients and partners who attended Connections ’07, it was great to see you. For those of you that missed the conference this year, I hope to see you at Connections ’08!
(And don’t forget to check out Judson Laipply’s Awards Dinner performance of The Evolution of Dance!)
