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2008 LENSER CLIENT SUMMIT
September 24-26, 2008
Embassy Suites
San Rafael, California
"These days my time is more valuable than money, and coming to the LENSER Client Summit was time well-spent."
Grady Hesters
President, Audio Editions
Convergent Channel Marketing: The perils and potential of convergent channel marketing are here. With the ever present need for paper, clicks and bricks to drive business, it is critical to understand and create a coherent customer experience across multiple channels. And that is what the LENSER 2008 Summit is about!
This year we’re bringing back the big hit from last year—our four 3-hour intensive tracks. These intensive courses will focus on Creative, Merchandising, Internet Marketing and Financial Planning.
In addition to the intensives, we’ll also feature inspiring and productive sessions on branding, website optimization, new email products, social and viral marketing programs, and integrating marketing plans, as well as Client Panels—with real-world tips—sure to appeal to small and large catalogers alike.
And this year, we’ve brought in key industry speakers—bestselling author and marketer Andy Cohen, respected marketing veteran Shelley Nandkeolyar and e-commerce wonder woman Amy Africa.
As one attendee said last year, “The LENSER Summit offers excellent content, topics on spot with
wonderful networking opportunities!”
We hope you’ll join us for another fantastic, educational and fun experience.
SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE
LENSER Intensive Sessions are designed as an intimate learning experience. Each track is planned for a learning group of up to 20 people. This will allow for an interactive and vibrant session.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
| Financial Planning – Track 1 Al Bessin LENSER Partner |
Creative – Track 2 Carol Worthington-Levy LENSER Partner |
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| 01:00PM | Why LTV Is Important (aka Find Your True Marginal Breakeven). We will explore various ways to measure the value of those newly acquired buyers. Combining that with acquisition cost, we will show you how to develop metrics that will help interpret the value of prospecting and assist in planning future acquisition campaigns. Attendees will leave with an understanding of how the value of acquired customers is measured, and how that information can be used to develop customer acquisition plans. | From Catalog to Web and Back Again. What successful e-commerce sites can learn from print marketers—and vice versa. This creative intensive will focus on best practices for communicating a strong brand image and selling individual products and how they differ from print to electronic media. Catalog marketers with e-commerce sites are encouraged to bring examples and share experiences during the interactive workshop segment. |
| 02:00PM | Building a Useful P&L. Most business P&Ls were developed to meet tax and financial reporting requirements. However, due to the structure of the statement and the way the chart of accounts is defined, valuable information remains obscured. This session will explore ways in which a business can structure the P&L to provide reporting that managers can use to monitor performance of the business. We’ll see how making a few changes to the chart of accounts increases the value of P&L reporting. Attendees will leave with practical tips for making their income statements much more useful. | Tapping into Your Customers’ Wallets with More Personal Email. Most email is done as a last-minute push, in-between projects, or by the junior members of your team. But the opportunities are substantial, especially considering that it’s going to existing customers. Don’t let another week go by without making your emails more personal and more powerful. This intensive will tell you how to tap into the tactics and technology to make it happen. Bring hard copies of a few of your emails—successful and not successful—so we can share and discuss alternatives during the interactive segment. |
| 03:00PM | Managing Your Most Important Asset: Your Customer File. The most important long-term asset that businesses have is their customer file. Properly maintained, this asset contains potential value that has been accumulated over years of brand building, marketing, and high quality customer service. Attendees will leave knowing the critical business and data management practices that should be used to maintain maximum value for their customer file, as well as insight into creative ways some businesses are using that information. | Creative Critiques. We’ll be doing creative critiques on a limited number of catalogs and emails in this session—and anyone interested can sit in and learn from the session. To “pre-register” (you’re more likely to have yours chosen if you do this) send us 3 copies of your catalog or 3 printouts of emails for one-on-one critiques. The extra catalogs are for others at the table to view as the critique is going on. |
| Merchandising – Track 3 Andrea Syverson IER PARTNERS, INC Geoff Wolf LENSER Partner |
Internet Marketing – Track 4 Bill Nicolai, Michelle Farabaugh LENSER Partners Austin Bliss Fresh Address |
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| 01:00PM | Beyond Trade Shows and SQUINCH. Recent changes in consumer behavior demand new merchandising practices. Join us to learn cutting-edge merchandising strategies to address today’s challenges, including the green movement, unpredictable political and economic times around the globe, the outrageous cost of fuel, and the demands of new e-commerce marketing practices. This session will provide the tools to address these current and extremely relevant issues. | Optimizing Your Paid Search Program. The internet, and specifically paid search or search engine marketing (SEM), are becoming a critical revenue driver. In addition, it can provide a strong return on investment. We will review SEM best practices and suggest some easy ways to start achieving better results, more efficiencies, and greater opportunity. We will also discuss the topic of running SEM in-house and when the time is right to start outsourcing this critical marketing function. |
| 02:00PM | Merchandising Moxie: 13 Ways to Get Your Product Verve Going! Tired of ho hum merchandising plans? In this fast-paced and stimulating session with ideas and examples from across many product categories and industries, you’ll learn ways to make your products stand out from the sea of sameness surrounding consumers today. Invigorate your next merchandising strategy with moxie and watch both your employees and customers respond enthusiastically! | Optimize Your Site to Increase Sales from Natural Search. We’ll cover industry standards and tricks of the trade for better index excellence, structure for spider readability, and how to utilize keywords in URLs for dramatically better rankings. Attendees will learn how seemingly innocent practices can undermine a search engine optimization program and how best practices in search marketing are likely to change in the near future. |
| 03:00PM | Bring your own pressing merchandise challenges or concerns for an open Q&A with the experts. | The Truth About Email Deliverability. These days, there’s a lot of talk about the importance of getting your email into your customer's inbox. But how can you avoid the spam filters? TMerchandising – Track 3 Andrea Syverson Geoff Wolf IER PARTNERS, INC LENSER Partnerhere are easy steps to can take to improve your success in this arena. Learn how list hygiene, the content of your emails, and the way you send your messages can all affect deliverability. |
| 04:00PM | Hors d'oeuvres reception immediately after Intensives at Embassy Suites | |
| 06:00PM- 10:00PM | Welcome Back Client Dinner at John and Marcia Lenser’s house. Join us for a casual dinner in John’s backyard, complete with great food & wonderful company! | |
Thursday, September 25, 2008
| TIME | SPEAKER | SESSION DESCRIPTION |
| 07:00AM- 08:00AM |
Solution Room | Breakfast. Join us and our valued vendors and partners in the Solution Room for breakfast and an opportunity to meet key service professionals whose products and services can strengthen your business strategies. |
| 08:00AM- 08:30AM |
John Lenser | Opening Remarks. |
| 08:30AM- 10:30AM |
 Andy Cohen |
Thinking Differently. Anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time, will be creating the same service or offering the same product that you are—only they will do it better, faster, or cheaper. The key factor in maintaining a competitive edge is thinking differently and generating innovative solutions. Andy Cohen, the opening keynote speaker, will use magic as metaphor to empower you to challenge industry assumptions about doing the impossible. Recognized as an idea & innovation marketing guru, Andy has been a driving force behind the success of some of the world's leading brands, providing strategic advice to senior executives & their teams. |
| 11:00AM- 12:00PM |
Carol Worthington-Levy, LENSER Partner |
Integrating Cross Channel Branding into Marketing Reality. How does your brand land? Do you assume that powerful branding is only for the big boys with multimillion dollar budgets? In this session you’ll see examples of branding brought to the working world, for both large and small businesses. We’ll also give you some ideas for the best way to communicate your brand to your prospects and customers. |
| 12:00PM- 01:15PM |
Lunch | Lunch and Networking in the Solution Room. Join us and our valued vendors and partners for an opportunity to meet key service professionals whose products and services can strengthen your business strategies. |
| 01:15PM- 02:00PM |
Hamilton Davison Executive Director, ACMA | Advocating for Our Common Interests. If we are to avoid disproportionate postal increases and "do not mail" legislation, it is critical that we have a voice in DC. The ACMA was created to exclusively represent those of us mailing catalogs. Hamilton will brief us on the status of future postal increases and other legislation impacting your business. He will help us understand what we individually and collectively can do to avoid draconian postal increases such as we experienced last year. |
| 02:00PM- 02:30PM |
Larry Marmon, LENSER Partner, and Jude Hoffner, LENSER Director of E-Commerce Services | Increase Web Sales with Personalized Recommendations. Online customers and prospects want to see more relevant choices with less clutter. If you can understand your site visitors’ behavior and instantly deliver what they need and what they like, you will realize the true power and benefit of real-time behavioral targeting, increasing web sales by 5-20%. We will review case studies to show how a powerful, easy-to-implement, hosted technology serves up individualized product recommendations to customers. |
| 02:30PM- 03:00PM |
Larry Kavanagh, President, DMinSite, and Jude Hoffner, LENSER Director of E-Commerce Services | How to Make Your Emails Relevant and Responsive. With print mailing costs continuing to rise, marketers are being forced to make digital media work harder. In this session, we will look at how the LENSER Email Program, powered by DM Mail, is turning email into a tool for effective and relevant marketing. We will review examples showing how emails driven by customer segmentation and behavior increase campaign performance, and how triggered emails driven by activity on your website can add significant incremental sales. |
| 03:30PM- 04:15PM |
Al Bessin, LENSER Partner | Guerrilla Marketing: Your Customer as the Salesperson. The adage is that there is no sale easier than selling to your own customer. One step better is having your customer sell for you. We will review different ways in which you can engage your customers in the selling process, with examples including customer reviews, blogs, and other programs. |
| 04:15PM- 05:00PM |
Michelle Farabaugh, LENSER Partner | Creating a Convergent Channel Marketing Plan. Bring together a holistic and integrated approach to the process of acquiring and contacting your customers that is fully aligned with your marketing strategy. We will summarize the day by reviewing a multichannel marketing planning approach that leverages the marketing programs of each channel while optimizing marketing mix across the internet, catalog, phone, and retail channels. |
| 06:00PM- 09:30PM |
Please join us for a spectacular dinner event, graciously sponsored by Abacus, I-Behavior and NextAction. |
Friday, September 26, 2008
| TIME | SPEAKER | SESSION DESCRIPTION |
| 07:00AM- 08:00AM |
Solution Room | Breakfast. Join us and our valued vendors and partners in the Solution Room for breakfast and an opportunity to meet key service professionals whose products and services can strengthen your business strategies. |
| 08:00AM- 08:15AM |
Bill Nicolai | Keynote Introduction. |
| 08:15AM- 09:00AM |
 Shelley Nandkeolyar CEO, Blair Corp. |
The Keys to Revitalizing Your Multichannel Business. A company may have all the elements in place for an optimal customer experience but still be unclear on how best to put those elements together and unlock the door to success. With 20+ years of executive experience with large multichannel companies, Shelley will bring insight into structuring an organization in the most efficient way possible. Attendees will come away with ideas on focusing on customer service in order to build positive perceptions and loyalty, engaging customers in the shopping experience by capturing feedback at every touch point, and re-energizing your marketing vision to focus on the customer experience across your brand. |
| 09:15AM- 10:30AM |
Panel: Amy Africa, Eight by Eight Chris Dice, I-Behavior Paul Imbierowicz, Abacus Larry Kavanagh, DMinSite Bill Nicolai, LENSER Lori Paikin, NextAction |
Where Will the Next Source of Customers Come From? There's no arguing with the fact that the convergent channels are making acquisition efforts challenging to understand. We agree that web-originating buyers are distinctly different from those acquired through more traditional sources. So how does that affect us? Will direct prospecting die because of it? How do the economics play into this equation? In this open Q&A session, we will hear from industry leaders about how they are planning for these new dynamics and what the future holds for our industry. |
| 10:45AM- 11:45AM |
 Amy Africa President, Eight by Eight |
Low Hanging Fruit: 38 Sure-Fire Ways to Increase Your Web Sales NOW. Twitter? Plurk? FriendFeed? MySpace? LinkedIn? These days, social networking is all anyone talks about. But are the newest bright, shiny objects what your business really needs? Chances are…no. While the puppies chase their tails, the old dogs of the internet space know that most of us already get more than enough traffic, we just need to better convert it. This jam-packed session gives you dozens of proven tips and techniques to improve your site and increase your conversion...without breaking the bank. You'll learn the secrets behind successful navigation, perfect shopping carts, solid entry pages, and more. |
| 11:45AM | John Lenser | Closing Comments |
Friday, September 26, 2008 - Optional Events
| TIME | SPEAKER | SESSION DESCRIPTION |
| 01:00PM- 06:30PM |
Optional Event - free | LENSER Golf Scramble. Come out and golf 18 holes at the beautiful Peacock Gap Golf Club. You don’t need to be a great golfer to participate! In a golf scramble, each team members hits each shot. The team then decides which the best shot is, and all team members hit the next shot from that spot. This continues until the ball is in the hole. This style of play lets each team member contribute where they can and have a great afternoon on the green with their colleagues. And everyone has a great time! Box lunches will be provided to all participants, as well as loaner clubs upon request. Contact Michelle Houston (michelle.houston@lenser.com) for more information and to participate. Please sign up by September 1. |
| 01:00PM- 06:00PM |
Optional Event - free | LENSER Bicycle Ride through West Marin County. Join John Lenser, Bill Nicolai, and other LENSER cyclists for a beautiful bicycle ride through Marin County’s hills and valleys. As bicycle enthusiasts know, West Marin County offers a myriad of scenic choices when it comes to riding its roads. One moment you're pedaling through redwood forested hills and the next you're admiring some of the country’s most fertile and picturesque farmland. If you’re lucky, you’ll get dramatic coastal views as well as sightings of native wildlife. Lunch will be provided. Bring your bicycle and gear. Rentals available with advance notice. Contact Tom Blake (tom.blake@lenser.com) for more information and to participate. Please sign up by September 1. |
SPEAKER BIOS
LENSER Intensive Sessions are designed as an intimate learning experience. Each track is planned for a learning group of up to 20 people. This will allow for an interactive and vibrant session.
| Andy Cohen is an idea & innovation marketing guru as well as a bestselling author. He has been a driving force behind the success of some of the world's leading brands, providing strategic advice and leadership motivation to senior executives & their teams. Through his talent as a motivational speaker, he has helped these corporate executives to craft innovative business solutions & generate a billion dollars in measurable sales. As a bestselling author & practitioner, Cohen has keen insights into what drives high-performing companies and what distinguishes their approaches to their customers and employees. |
 Larry Kavanagh, CEO and Founder of DMinSite, began his direct marketing career running the marketing department at cataloger Gardens Alive. From there, Larry moved on to operate a successful mail-order consulting firm with clients that ranged from traditional catalog and newsletter marketers to pure-play internet companies. Unlike other platform agencies, DMinSite does not simply develop a site and walk away. Instead, they continue to improve their clients’ web response by analyzing data and making changes based on when a potential customer visits a site and when they make a purchase. |
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Amy Africa has been in the forefront of web usability studies, web design improvement, and successful e-commerce for over 10 years. The author of What Makes People Click: How to Drive Your Website Traffic, Amy has also been widely published in industry magazines and e-zines. An engaging, entertaining speaker, she has been featured at web conferences around the globe. Her depth of knowledge, backed by intensive field testing and web user studies, has earned her the reputation of a voice to be heard on internet topics ranging from site improvement, traffic building, and SEO to analytics and email marketing. |
 Lori Paikin, Senior Vice President, Client Services at NextAction, leads NextAction’s new business and account teams, which are responsible for managing over 1,100 customer relationships. Prior to joining NextAction, Lori spent 12 years at Abacus, most recently as SVP, Sales. Before joining the co-op industry, Lori held positions at The Specialists where her main responsibility was list brokerage, and Mokrynski & Associates where she specialized in list management. |
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 Hamilton Davidson, Executive Director of American Catalog Mailers Assn (ACMA) is a trade association representing B2C and B2B direct marketers of all sizes who use catalogs as a primary vehicle to prospect or sell. Formed to advocate for the common commercial interests of its members where shared interests transcend individual company concerns, ACMA is active in postal policy, public relations and other areas that impact the external environment affecting catalog marketers who mail, sell online and distribute directly to end users. |
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 Paul Imbierowicz, Vice President of Strategy for Abacus, a division of Epsilon, is responsible for analyzing and developing service and product strategies to meet the needs of today’s multi-channel marketers. Since joining Abacus in 1997, Imbierowicz has served in several roles, including Vice President of Product Management where he was responsible for the development of various Abacus products. Before joining Abacus, Paul served in various marketing and circulation capacities at The Orvis Co., Inc., and Gardener's Supply Company. |
 Andrea Syverson is a customer-centric listener, connector and creator. By actively and intuitively listening to customers, she has created and developed bestselling products across a variety of categories. Her clients include many large and small giants; Hallmark, Ben & Jerry's, Wolferman's and Boston Proper, to name a few. While she holds an MBA, Andrea says her true expertise comes from continuous hands-on customer experiences. She is President of IER Partners, a consulting firm specializing in strategic planning, brand marketing, merchandising, new product development, and creative thinking. |
 Chris Dice, President and Chief Executive Officer of I-Behavior, brings over 30 years of experience managing the endeavors of technology-based companies and delivering high-value products and services to the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. Before joining I-Behavior, Chris was President and Chief Operating Officer of Abacus Direct Corporation, a leading supplier of services to the direct marketing industry. Prior to joining Abacus, Chris served as President of ImageSoft Technologies, the leading supplier of document imaging systems to the financial services industry. |
 Austin Bliss, President and co-founder of FreshAddress, is the driving force behind the original design and development of FreshAddress’s patented Email Change of Address (ECOA) technology. The Direct Marketing Educational Foundation recently named Austin a “Rising Star,” an award bestowed on four individuals under 40 across the country who have demonstrated strong leadership skills, a track record of outstanding results, and a solid reputation for "giving back" through direct marketing education. |
GENERAL INFORMATION
Registration, Fees, and Accommodations
Registration: Please fax the form below to Michele Salmon at 415.479.2280 or call her at 415.446.2511 for more information.
LENSER Conference Cost: Three complimentary passes are available for each company on an invitation only basis. Companies who elect to send more than three employees will be charged $495 per additional person (paid in advance).
Hotel Accommodations: A block of rooms has been reserved at the Embassy Suites, the location of the conference. When making reservations please be sure to reference the LENSER Client Summit. Discounted room rates are available at $159 for single/double and $169 for triple/quad per night.
101 McInnis Pkwy, San Rafael, CA 94903
(415) 499-9222
A limited number of rooms is available at this discounted rate, so please make your reservations by Friday, September 5.
Local Airports: We recommend flying into Oakland or San Francisco Int’l. Airport. Renting a car gives you the flexibility to explore the area, but transportation from SFO can also be arranged through Marin Door-to-Door (marindoortodoor.com, 415.457.2717) or Marin Airporter (marinairporter.com, 415.461.4222). For transportation from Oakland, contact Marin Door-to-Door or Sonoma Airport Express (airportexpressinc.com, 707.837.8700).
For more LENSER Client Summit information, please contact your LENSER partner or Michele Salmon at 415-446-2511 or michele.salmon@lenser.com.
