Attention! The mCommerce Summit is Happening Now

Mobile Marketer is holding the mCommerce Summit: State of Mobile Commerce 2016 today in New York City. And you’ll get to find out what happens when I get back and write about it next week.

But today, I’m going to give you a sneak peak at what I’m seeing in New York at this moment. Before I do though, be sure to check our fastsms Twitter feed throughout the day. I’ll be sharing the best tidbits as they come up in each session as they happen.

Major retailers from across the world will be presenting their experiences and results of “mCommerce and mobile-influenced retail”. This means companies like IKEA, Walmart, Staples, Google and Sears among others.

The presentations promise to give some great insight into what these retailers are doing on mobile that makes them so successful. Here is a quick list of specific items the companies promise to share (from the mCommerce Summit agenda):

• Staples – “How mobile as a medium can provide a true value-add versus what is increasingly becoming business as usual”.
• Moburst – “A mobile campaign case study that delivered 15 times ROI”
• Google – “Best-practice tips from Google for mobile commerce”
• Nissan – “Nissan’s take on mobile and how the automaker uses the medium to connect to customers and prospects”
• Boston Retail Partners – “Identify how to meet customer and employee expectations and guide adoption of mobile capabilities”
• IKEA – “What is the future of retail in the digital universe?”
• Walgreens – “Mobile messaging services that let Walgreens’ mobile customers refill prescriptions by just texting with no need for an app”
• Sears – “How Sears leverages mobile technology to build a shopping community for millions of SYW rewards members”
• Walmart – “How mobile enhances the customer experience for store pickup, pharmacy, maps and ereceipts”

The retailer I’m most interested in seeing is Walmart. In March I wrote a blog about their efforts to improve shopping by offering an SMS based customer support system called Simple Text. At least that’s what it was originally, they may have changed it since it was first announced last year. When I was researching that blog, I couldn’t find any examples of the service being used, a list of stores where it was available, or any formal statement from the company about it at all – other than how it was created (you can read about it in this blog).

So I am hoping that in their presentation they’ll share what happened with the programme and whether or not they will launch it in their stores. I’m also curious to find out how well it actually works, and how people responded if they have tested it out.

Many of the companies will also talk about using mobile apps, websites, and social media. If you’ve been following the blogs lately, you may have noticed many of them have been about integrating SMS messaging with other mobile marketing efforts. I’m excited how it will all come together at the Summit with so many different perspectives and ideas being shared.

Check back next week to read a summary of what I learned. And in the weeks to come, you’ll probably see more detail and examples from the Summit here in the blog.