As many readers of this blog are aware, eBay Live 2007 in Boston is less than 60 days away. Each year, the buySAFE team looks forward to this event with great anticipation, as it gives us a chance to spend time with our many merchant customers, as well as the eBay community at large. It also gives us a great opportunity to see some of the interesting things that other eBay certified solutions providers in the space are doing.
In years past, we’ve invested heavily in this show, sending
a large buySAFE contingent and maintaining a big booth on the floor of the
convention. Although this approach has been very effective for raising the overall
awareness of buySAFE among the eBay community, we found that it has not always provided
enough opportunities for one-on-one interactions with our current customers and
most other service providers would attest, it doesn’t provide a good return on
the high investment required to have a booth. Likewise, the format is not as
effective as it could be in providing opportunities for us to meet with the prospective
customers who can most benefit from our service.
So, this year we’re taking a slightly different approach to eBay
Live. While we’ll still be sending a large group of buySAFE employees to eBay Live,
we’ve decided not to display on the exhibit floor. Instead, we will be doing
several things to ensure that we have the opportunity to meet with those
sellers interested in buySAFE either for their eBay sales or for their website:
1) Scheduled
On-Site Business Impact Meetings – For current and prospective customers,
buySAFE will be scheduling one-on-one meetings to discuss conversion impact
results (actual and forecasted) for individual businesses. We will be proactively
reaching out to specific businesses, but please contact us at customersupport@buysafe.com if
you’d like to schedule a time to meet with a buySAFE representative at the
show.
2) buySAFE
Lunch Seminar – “eBay and Beyond – A Primer for Multi-Channel Merchants” –
During eBay Live, buySAFE will hold a lunch seminar for current and prospective
customers that focuses on issues faced by merchants looking to utilize eBay as
part of a multi-channel e-commerce strategy. This seminar will feature speakers
from top companies in the industry, and will include a free lunch at a
premier waterfront restaurant in Boston
3) Participation
in eBay Developers Conference – Representatives from buySAFE’s product
management team will be participating in the eBay Developers Conference, and
will also be available to answer any technical or development questions you
might have.
4) Seller Meet
& Greet. Over the past few
years the Seller Meet & Greet event, for which buySAFE has been the primary
sponsor, has been a huge success. Last
year, there were an estimated 700-800 attendees at the event which takes place
the evening before the 1st day of eBay Live. The Seller Meet & Greet is a community
driven event and one that we are big fans of. This year, its still a little uncertain as to whether the community will
be having it again, but if so, you can expect us to be there again as a
supporter. We hope you’ll also attend.
In taking this approach, we believe that we’ll be better
able to spend quality time with merchants without the hustle and bustle that
often accompanies trying to hold a meaningful conversation on a tradeshow
floor. Likewise, by alleviating the logistical burden of preparing for the
event (i.e. booth shipment, signage, tchotchkes, etc.), we can devote more time
to focusing on providing merchants like you the information you really want to
know – what impact buySAFE is having or
will have on your business. We’ve
built some very robust analytic tools to specifically measure how much buySAFE
increases your website’s conversion rate, average transaction sizes and repeat
buyer rates, so we want to make sure you use them to understand how buySAFE
helps your business.
An ancillary benefit of not having a booth at eBay Live is
that it will allow us to spread our tradeshow budget across several new events.
As those who read this blog know, buySAFE has been very busy since the last
eBay Live. Perhaps our biggest accomplishment since that time was making
buySAFE available for merchant websites, as opposed to just eBay, Overstock.com
Auctions and TIAS. In so doing, we’ve also opened up buySAFE to an entirely new
group of customers, who attend not only eBay Live, but also events like
Internet Retailer, Shop.org and eTail. By investing more appropriately in our
eBay presence, we are able to ensure a significant presence at these and other
events where we can introduce buySAFE to others who can benefit from our
service.
We’re anxious to put this new approach into action, and I
look forward to seeing all of you at eBay Live. Since space is so limited, if you’d like to be considered
for a slot in either the business impact meetings or the lunch seminar, drop us
a line today at customersupport@buysafe.com.
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