Shoptalk 2018: 19 Key Retail & Ecommerce Takeaways

by Sean Ogino | Customer Loyalty, News & Events, Referral Marketing, User Generated Content, Visual Commerce

This week, thousands converged on Las Vegas to talk shop at Shoptalk, the world’s largest conference for retail and ecommerce innovation. Annex Cloud was in attendance, sharing our insights, meeting with customers, and learning from brilliant presentations and panels highlighting the future of retail and ecommerce. As told through attendees’ tweets, here are 19 of our favorite takeaways from Shoptalk 2018.

Holy crowds, Batman. There are a lot of people at this conference. C-suite speakers from Target/Macy’s/Shipt are to take the stage, followed by folks from Amazon. #shoptalk18 pic.twitter.com/UtnmCMg6Lp

— Elaine Low (@elainelow) March 18, 2018

110 women are speaking at this year's #shoptalk18 … about 1/3 of speakers. Making progress.

— Courtney Reagan (@CourtReagan) March 19, 2018

Blown away by #Shoptalk18 – sold out (for the 3rd year in a row!) with 8,500 attendees and the absolute biggest names in ecommerce today. Amazing production by the rockstar @shoptalk team @anildaggarwal @jonathanweiner @zdwigder pic.twitter.com/PF5LrWD9a2

— Primary (@PrimaryVC) March 20, 2018

Annex Cloud was a proud sponsor of both Shoptalk and Emarsys Revolution, where we kicked things off on Sunday with a bit of golfing and some words from our Chief Strategist, Al Lalani.

The US Emarsys crew is gearing up for #EmarsysRevolution In Las Vegas! Be sure to follow the hashtag to follow along with the event. pic.twitter.com/8xXffkarQX

— Emarsys (@Emarsys) March 18, 2018

Did you catch our Chief Strategist Al Lalani at @Emarsys Revolution's panel discussion yesterday? Let us know what you thought! pic.twitter.com/F7vqah8xnk

— Annex Cloud (@AnnexCloud) March 19, 2018

Who better to understand loyalty bark-eting and customer ruff-errals than man's best friend? Thanks for stopping by our booth, Jelly Bean! #Shoptalk2018 #Shopbark2018 #Shoptalk pic.twitter.com/lo89565zks

— Annex Cloud (@AnnexCloud) March 19, 2018

Customer loyalty and referral marketing were hot topics throughout the event, which we at Annex Cloud can definitely get on board with.

28M members in loyalty program represent 90% of @ultabeauty sales via CEO Mary Dillon at #shoptalk18

— Jason Goldberg (@retailgeek) March 19, 2018

#7-Eleven going to introduce voice-ordering at the pump and scan and go. Loyalty growing via app, how do you get them to download? ‘Hundred-year-old trick…give them something’ @tarangsethia #ShopTalk18

— Steve White (@steveewhite) March 20, 2018

"Customers are happy giving you their data if they get value back in return." Eric Messerschmidt, SVP Strategic Marketing, CRM, and Loyalty @ultabeauty #shoptalk18 @shoptalk

— ZAIUS (@getzaius) March 19, 2018

70%+ of sales are referrals @Allbirds #shoptalk18

— Jennifer Chiang (@cxgeek) March 19, 2018

Visual commerce continues to reign in retail and ecommerce.

People will want to discover things from pictures not words. Future of personalization is taste based not historic behaviors. Visual discovery will enable of this. #shoptalk18

— Michelle Grant (@EMI_MichelleG) March 19, 2018

Just now customer @Pinterest took the stage @shoptalk. Visual search is a THING. Visual discovery is still nascent and becoming very important for consumers and users. “People will want to discover things through pictures rather than words.” – CEO Ben Silbermann @8en #shoptalk18 pic.twitter.com/aTHbQJYfd3

— Juliana Pereira (@mjulianapereira) March 19, 2018

Jason Ackerman, @FreshDirect: Selling fresh food is about visual experience. Use this type of thing to guide the #digital experience in #grocery #retail #shoptalk18 #ecommerce pic.twitter.com/Ae2aCWzVaw

— Randy Hofbauer (@RandyHofbauer) March 19, 2018

And, of course, there was plenty of talk about the big things to come in the world of retail, including, personalization, AI, and beyond.

Consistent message of #shoptalk18 today. Future is #digital + physical store, not one or the other. The store is alive and well, just evolving to do and be more for shoppers!

— Diana Sheehan (@KR_DianaS) March 19, 2018

https://t.co/8nhBMqHpwv mastered personalization on & offline: new customer recognition, pet portraits, sent flowers when customers’ pets passed away, 4M hand-written holiday cards #Shoptalk18 #ecommerce2018

— Michael Gerard (@michaelgerard) March 20, 2018

#Personalization continues to be a driving force in retail @ultabeauty #shoptalk18 pic.twitter.com/cPwrYL4BQD

— Blueprint Retail (@BlueprintRetail) March 19, 2018

The biggest takeaway from @Nike– deep personalization is the driving force behind providing a positive, unique experience to consumers. #shoptalk18 pic.twitter.com/KfILvxdobU

— Abby Goodstein (@Agoodstein22) March 19, 2018

“At Criteo, we think the commerce world needs to come together & share data in a way that will benefit everybody. If we all collaborate & create an open ecosystem, it’s a better, more personalized experience for shoppers.” – Criteo’s @mspilman #TheGirlsLounge #Shoptalk18

— Criteo (@criteo) March 19, 2018

#shoptalk18 AI applications Sentient CEO @babakatwork using genetic algorithms to design web pages which can give a 12% improvement, use neural nets to personalize webpages by customer segments and use AI to design #AI pic.twitter.com/hz0lBCEKFD

— Percolata (@Percolata_com) March 21, 2018

Want to send better #email? @KickDynamic's @MatthewHayes says it comes down to #personalization and #AIMarketing. #EmarsysRevolution pic.twitter.com/YdYrxsqQHZ

— Emarsys (@Emarsys) March 18, 2018

#AI is changing the way consumers shop & sell in the global marketplace. Jan Pedersen, our Chief Scientist – Artificial Intelligence, shared his thoughts on the topic during his @Shoptalk keynote w/ @cutlerscott. #Shoptalk18 #eBayTech pic.twitter.com/BPhrjj6R7r

— eBay Newsroom (@eBayNewsroom) March 21, 2018

We hope you had as wonderful of a time at Shoptalk as we did! It was great to meet many of you there, and we’ll see you again next year!