We showed up at an e-Commerce Meetup in Seattle last night and learned a lot. The group is called Seattle Profit Pirates Mastermind Group - Ecommerce & Amazon Entrepreneurs and was meeting at a coffee shop on Capitol Hill. We got a lot of tool and tech recommendations and met some thought leaders in the field. Here are some details for all you e-Commerce and digital marketing people out there.
Terapeak shows you what to sell online. MerchantWords helps you find more buyers. Google Adwords is a classic and key tool. Many people use Facebook to create ads and funnels. Text / SMS is another technique for capturing emails. Shopify was considered to be the best e-Commerce tool. James who runs Wooly Clothing and was telling us about Amazon's practice of Brand and Category Gating. Benjamin, who runs the group, was asking about Liquidation services. He said he's tried FoxBox. I mentioned Alternativeto.net as a method of finding technologies in a category to support a business process or function.
We didn't talk about but I was reminded of Mautic, HubSpot and my buddy with Conversion Wizards. Benjamin says it's important to consider Cost Per Email as a metric. He also mentioned that MailChimp has an advanced, for pay, feature that provides additional metadata for email addresses to extend marketing.
James was asking about managing multiple channels and Benjamin swore by Skubana, a multi-channel inventory management system, which is $1,000/mo. He says it's well worth it if you have the volume.
Flexport, a freight forwarding method, and Keepa, an Amazon price tracker, were also mentioned as useful tools.
Thanks to all attendees. Great event and lots to learn. A whole new domain and area to explore.
