Lift Summit Announces Success of Social Commerce Event

Event attendance increased to 159 percent of last years attendees, with more than 95 percent positive feedback.

Atlanta, GA – October 7, 2010 – Lift Summit announces the success of its second annual social commerce conference on Thursday, September 23rd at Loews Midtown Hotel, held in collaboration with host sponsors - the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI), Social Strategy1, OfficeArrow.com. This year’s attendance increased by 59 percent, with positive feedback from over 95 percent of attendees surveyed.

The theme of the Lift Summit was, “Practical and Applicable Ways that Social Media Drives Sales” with the goal to generate awareness on building sales and calculating Return on Investment (ROI) in social media channels. The conference brought together an exceptional line up of business owners, C-levels, social influencers, and professors, as well as internationally acclaimed social media experts to discuss how to make money using social media.

“We are very pleased with the caliber of experts and discussions that took place at our second annual social commerce conference. Despite economic forces, options for reaching targeted buyers are more numerous than any time before in history,” said Mike Lewis, Chairman of ILD Corp. “Lift Summit’s sessions featured an impressive lineup of eCommerce experts and social media marketing executives sharing their views and experiences on how to establish successful and measurable strategies that monetize social media efforts.”

Distinguished scholar and keynote speaker, Dr. Eric Bradlow of WIMI shared his interactive marketing research and stressed the importance of predicting and monetizing active and inactive customers, planning capacity adjustments, forecasting future sales and understanding multi-channel behavior. In addition, attendees collaborated and gained real-world insights from social newsmakers, respected authorities and marketing leaders, such as bestselling author of Socialnomics Erik Qualman, Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer of BazaarVoice, Steve Ennen Co-founder of the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative, Dave Williams CEO and Co-founder of Atlanta-based Blinq Media and Boland Jones CEO and Chairman of Atlanta-based Pgi. Additional speakers included: Jeffrey Cohen of Howard, Merrell and Partners, Leslie Darling of comScore, Donna Bedford of Lenovo, Dennis Stoutenburgh of Social Strategy1, Mike Gelfond MasterMind Marketing, Social CRM Consultant Michael Thomas, Jennie Ecclestone of General Motors, Kristine Dobson of EmailDirect, Lisa Calhoun of Write2Market, and Dave Bulger of Eric Mower and Associates.

PGi CEO, Boland Jones concluded the event with a sneak peak at PGi’s new application built to revolutionize remote meetings – iMeet, which later sponsored the conference’s closing reception.

“Effective social strategies are transforming the way people interact. PGi’s newest social connector is designed to ‘lift’ businesses by improving the way they collaborate,” said PGi Founder, Chairman and CEO Boland Jones. “We’ve combined the best of audio, video and web conferencing, along with social networking, in a simple and elegant new application that puts people, not technology, front and center – giving them a more natural and intuitive way to connect.”
Lift Summit is geared towards equipping professionals already engaged in social media with tangible ways to monetize their social media efforts. Post conference feedback from attendees showed that more than 95 percent would recommend the conference to others, and the same percentage were satisfied with the speakers and the content and felt the format was effective.

“This was our second year holding the Lift Summit in Atlanta, and based on its success, we look forward to an even better Lift Summit next year,” said Lewis.

About LIFT
LIFT: the B2B eCommerce Summit is a one-day conference focused on best practices in B2B social media marketing, measurement and eCommerce. Attendees are provided real-world examples of how to execute social strategies to ‘lift’ business, and make new connections with prominent experts and leading marketers. The first Lift Summit in 2009 set the standard. Lift Summit 2010 raises the bar. Held in Atlanta, Georgia for its second year, new sponsor Social Strategy1 joins hosting sponsors OfficeArrow and Wharton for this premier event. For more information, visit www.liftsummit.com.

About PGi
The world collaborates with PGi. Our advanced meeting, conferencing and collaboration solutions energize people and organizations to connect more meaningfully and work together more productively. Our customers include more than 50,000 companies and nearly 90% of the Fortune 500. Every month, 12 million people around the world use PGi’s advanced solutions and next-generation platform to meet, work and collaborate. PGi is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with operations in 24 countries worldwide. You can learn more at www.pgi.com.

About OfficeArrow
OfficeArrow® is an online community of over 250,000 small business owners and office professionals, created to help them manage their businesses more effectively. OfficeArrow’s social commerce platform connects members of the community with industry experts, leading vendors and each other. Tips, advice, articles and discussions combine with community purchasing power to make OfficeArrow a unique and preferred destination. For more information, visit www.OfficeArrow.com.

About the Wharton Interactive Media Initiative
The Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (WIMI) is the world’s first and foremost data-driven research center focused on interactive media, its effects on global businesses, and implications for traditional business models. Capitalizing on the Wharton School’s longstanding leadership in data-driven research, WIMI seeks to foster collaboration between world-class researchers and leading-edge businesses to understand how to monetize interactive data that they and others collect. For more information, visit www.whartoninteractive.com.

About Social Strategy1
Social Strategy1, a new venture from ILD Corp., leverages the most powerful social media monitoring technologies to help companies capitalize on the opportunities that are available on the increasingly open and social web. Social Strategy1’s proven approach uses the expertise of social media listening analysts (SMLA) to interact with influencers on behalf of its clients with pre-set messages and context, using search engine marketing methods, social media monitoring tools and professional and savvy listeners to deliver game-changing online results for its clients’ brands. For more information, contact Social Strategy1 - www.socialstrategy1.com.

Download this press release as a PDF