• by Ali Swerdlow , December 7, 2006

After spending an amazing three days at the MediaPost Email Insider Summit, we are back to reality. The hectic and busy pre-holiday wrap-ups quickly begin to eat away the excitement and passion instilled by the speakers and conversations from the event.

In the last session, the Advisory Board from the Email Summit asked for attendee feedback on how we could improve the agenda for the next show. There were a number of great insights and ideas that arose from that exchange. But only one person asked how we would keep up the momentum as we all returned to our jobs.

Where do we go from here?

Wow--great question! An industry like email is very complex. It's not like producing a product where you go through the same five steps and it's done. When there are six different types of email communications and eight different aspects of an email campaign, it quickly gets to be a very complex and messy process. So, when asked how you extend what you learned at the conference and maintain that high level of enthusiasm to apply to your efforts "back at the office," we are not so sure there is one easy answer. However, a few good next steps did come about. They included:

The establishment of a MediaPost Email Insiders Summit list serv, one great channel to keep people connected.

The Email Experience Council created a white paper room that holds over 50 white papers and case studies that speak to the all of the topics covered at the Summit, and will continue to be updated weekly with more data.

One of the highlights of the conference was the keynote by Brian Ellefritz from Cisco Systems. Brian also heads the "C-suite" roundtable, whose main purpose is to unite those who work on similar projects or in similar verticals in very open conversation, leveraging each others' successes and failures to help build programs. A large number of conference attendees have joined this group.

Mini-conferences. There was some talk about participants heading back to their respective jobs and putting on 1-hour summaries and wrap-ups to help educate the people they work with.

Whatever route the Summit members choose to take, we hope that their enthusiasm, excitement and commitment to elevating email hold strong. We made huge strides at the conference--and look forward to proving our successes in the upcoming year.