Recap of Omniture Summit in Copenhagen

More than 200 people (237, to be precise) gathered in Copenhagen to attend Omniture Summit on April 17. Nearly nine out of ten participants were practitioners (well, end customers anyhow).

It was nice to chat with all the Omniture folks (Josh, Gail, Stuart, Mike, Matt, John, Neil, Andrew, Jonas, Magnus, and everyone else) and hear what they’re up to.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: Omniture has a very talented marketing department. Their branding leaves competition far behind. There are good solutions from other vendors as well, but they aren’t as good at marketing them. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if recruiters “bug” Omniture’s marketing team every week.

Omniture Summit in Copenhagen was an extremely professional production, and it didn’t look like they hesitated to spend a lot of money on it. I understand it’s a great marketing vehicle and customer care event. It’s hard for non-vendor summits to compete since they need to make a profit from the event itself.

It’s also important to remember that vendor conferences like Omniture Summit, WebTrends Engage, and VisCon (defunct) only focus on best practices by one set of users (their own customers). There is a need for those events, but they will never replace vendor-neutral conferences such as Internet Marketing Conference (shameless plug).

Josh James opened the conference with his keynote. Incidentally, he announced that Lippupiste has “turned to Omniture to secure strategic partnerships and increase online revenue”.

Maybe that helped fill the room when Kimmo Vihanto, Marketing Manager, Lippu.fi, and Kalle Heinonen, Senior Consultant, Trainers’ House Satama, presented a success story later that day.

It was a very well-produced event. Two thumbs up!

I asked Matt Belkin, Vice President of Consulting for Omniture, a few questions about the summit.

What did you like best about Omniture Summit in Copenhagen and what would you have liked to change about it?

The Copenhagen Summit was great. I was personally amazed by all the big brands that attended in Telecom, Financial Services, Media, Automotive, Travel and Retail. Companies like Sonofon, TDC, Volvo, Nykredit, Handelsbanken, SaxoBank, Novo Nordisk, Icelandair – just to name a few. I was also impressed by the partner showing – we had certified Omniture Consultants from Satama Trainer’s House, Creuna, CountQuest, etc. But the Summit wasn’t just about the brand names – I really liked the overall level of interaction. I’ve done many conferences in my lifetime, and sometimes you get great conversations between people, and sometimes the energy just isn’t there. Well, in Copenhagen, the energy was definitely there. People were so eager to learn about best practices and push their own use of analytics to a higher level, no matter how new or experienced they were.

If I was to change the Summit, I would make it two days instead of one. We had so much great content from our Summit in Utah that we simply didn’t have time to share, and in the conversations I had with customers, they really wanted to hear it. Concepts like RSS tracking and multi-channel analytics got a lot of floor conversation, and we just didn’t have time to present them as formal tracks.

How do you think the Copenhagen summit compares to the other ones?

In Europe, we have only finished Paris and Copenhagen summits, with London and Munich still to go. So I don’t have a huge basis of comparison. But I can say that the Copenhagen Summit was just as well attended as Paris, with roughly 250 people.

Based on what you’ve seen and heard, how would you say that the adoption of web analytics in Europe (given each country is different) compares to the US?

Well, the adoption of analytics varies quite a bit by country in Europe. I have seen that in the several years I’ve met with European companies. In Denmark, there is no question that adoption is among the more sophisticated I’ve seen. The companies are looking to constantly push the envelope. What is of particular interest to me is the resource difference. In the Nordics, it seems companies have maybe one resource focused on analytics optimization, whereas in the US we often see much larger teams. Because of this, I think there is a challenging opportunity in the Nordics for those companies that can staff this function quicker, because I suspect this will allow them to execute more quickly on the optimization ideas they already have. Interestingly, the Nordics also showed a very strong interest in the Test and Target portion of our product suite – and given the inherent automation that brings, I’m not at all surprised they loved it!

Some odd folks at a booth.

Some photos by Petri Mertanen (Read his blog as well!)