Overall, the Bronto Summit 2016 was a great event for merchants beyond general email issues. Bronto, if you don’t know, is an email marketing service provider (ESP) that focuses on ecommerce which makes them unique in their space and makes their tools both familiar and powerful for online merchants. Razoyo is a Bronto service reseller and we use Bronto as our email engine for our in house accounts.

As a merchant, I was thrilled with the 2016 content. The Bronto team really nailed it as far as I’m concerned, hitting the topics that will influence ecommerce for the small and medium-sized merchant.

10. Benchmarks for email marketing

Bronto’s survey will be published soon, but, I found the fact that open rates are between 14 and 19% and click-throughs on opens are between 12 and 14% to be great solid benchmarks. B2B click throughs were closer to 21%. I’m looking forward to the full report in a few weeks.

9. Most Effective Email Marketing Programs

If you aren’t sure where to focus your email marketing efforts, start with the ones Bronto users indicated were the most effective: exclusive email-only offers, cart abandonment and campaigns to collect registration info (preferences, ownership, etc.).

8. Billy Bean is an enthralling speaker

One of my personal heros, I found his remarks both instructive (i.e., focus on finding un-attributed value) and inspirational. From a guy who had limited budget but still had to build a winning team (and succeeded - still succeeds - at it), there were a lot of great corollaries for SMB online merchants. Use your stats, focus on real value, don’t make emotional decisions.

7. Never be afraid to pull out your dinosaur

Bronto Summit 2016 Golden Bronto from Paul Byrne on Vimeo.

‘nuff said

6. The Shopping Cart is Dead

This warning came from the good folks at Something Digital. What is taking it’s place?

• Passive Commerce - shows up organically in everything we access. Think Pinterest Buy Button
• Ambient Commerce - we’re surrounded by it. Kind of like The Force in Star Wars. Digital pop up stores.
• Conversational Commerce - be careful what you chat… it might be delivered. Drink Easy. Actually, don’t drink. It’s bad for you.
• On Demand Commerce - delivered before you even know you want it. Amazon Echo, Google On Hub, Siri Commerce.

5. The Bronto Magento 2 connector is going to be awesome!

Seriously, by moving the configuration to the cloud, reliability and flexibility are going to go through the roof.

4. I really need to get my clients to use product data in their Magento emails

We have several clients using Bronto which now allows you to upload product data to help speed up the process of creating emails and campaigns. Many of the new features, including Browse (recovering non-cart-add sessions) are dependent on it.

3. You might want to consider requiring an account to shop on your site

According to the presenter, Add Shoppers,

2. Salsa Dancing can solve most of your problems

SalsaProblem from Paul Byrne on Vimeo.

1. The On Demand Economy is changing everything

Scot Wingo did a deep dive that was fantastic on the subject. Scot, an acquaintance of mine and renowned technologist in the ecommerce space, has really thought this through from the perspective of an innovator (and geek) in this space. I highly recommend you take a look at his blog post on the subject.