Free Pay Per Click Advertising and Online Marketing Advice

Impressions of the Omniture Cafe - Toronto

December 6th, 2007 Posted in Omniture

Wednesday marked the first ever Omniture Cafe in Canada, and it couldn’t have been a better start to a fantastic networking opportunity. Save for the usual riff-raff of pessimists, the folks at Omniture did everything right last night. Surprisingly, the turn out was much better than I had anticipated, and big names in the industry as well.

The guest list was quite impressive, and the turnout was surprisingly better than anticipated. In fact, the rooms Omniture booked at the Four Seasons in Toronto were perhaps too small to contain all of those eager Omniture users at the pre-show cocktail hour. The attendees read like a who’s who of Canadian industry and included pretty much all sectors. Some of the organizations in attendance were:

  • Bell Canada
  • CTV
  • Sears Canada
  • Walmart Canada
  • BestBuy and/or Futureshop Canada
  • TheWeatherNetwork (Canadian version of TheWeatherChannel)
  • TD Bank
  • Canadian Tire Financial Services
  • Airmiles aka The Loyalty Group
  • Netfirms, Inc.
  • Arts & Entertainment
  • ThinData (Omniture vendor partner)

With all these big name companies in attendance, the next iteration of the Omniture Cafe is bound to draw a big crowd. However, these evenings are meant to be informal gatherings for networking and idea-sharing within the Omniture user community. Future gatherings will undoubtedly be hosted by individual organizations that use Omniture, rather than by Omniture itself.

If you’re like me, you’re probably asking yourself whether you should take the time to attend meetings like this. Was the Omniture Cafe valuable to those in attendance? I think so, for several reasons including the following:

  • With a complicated suite of tools offered by Omniture, it’s great to find out what other organizations consider their ‘best practices’.
  • Before attending the meeting, I had no idea Omniture had taken my own suggestions for development into advisement and actually intended to roll-out some of the changes in version 14. (Unfortunately, I cannot disclose what they have up their sleeves for Site Catalyst 14).
  • If you ever wondered whether your optimization efforts were working or not, all you need to do is discuss conversion with companies in similar verticals. To my surprise, my paid efforts were either on par or better than some significantly bigger brands in Canada.
  • Channel partners offer a different perspective. Some vendors are tightly integrated into Omniture, which makes media buying and business development much less painful.
  • It’s good for your own business/brand. All of the attendees at the Omniture Cafe are either decision-makers or key influencers of their respective companies.
  • The Cafe is a relaxed environment, meaning you don’t have to pull punches when discussing Omniture, and the Omniture representatives in attendance need input from stakeholders.

So Canada, if you’re wondering how you can make the most out of Omniture, make sure to come out to the next Omniture Cafe. It’s a good time, makes for great conversation, and may even improve your conversion!

Post a Comment