MetLife and Babson College Host 2nd Annual E-Commerce Conference; At Issue: Understanding the Multi-Channel Marketing Mindset

"MetLife was pleased to partner with Babson College to hostleaders from a range of industries as they discussed the commonmulti-channel marketing issues that many companies face. This type ofintellectual summit reinforces the importance of ongoing dialogue tohelp understand the impact that new marketing channels can have on anorganization," said Sachin Shah, vice president, InstitutionalBusiness at MetLife.

The conference centered on two main themes: multi-channelmarketing innovative practices and measurement techniques. Among theissues discussed were:

Innovative Practices

-- Paul Horstmeier, director of Internet and Marketing Services at HP Americas, provided real-world examples of ways to increase the relevance of online consumer engagements through B2B personalization.

-- Arun Bordoloi, vice president of Foote Cone & Belding interactive, discussed the vision and importance of multi-channel marketing, focusing on consistent user experience across touch points and the critical enablers for success.

-- Tom Angsten, president and chief executive officer of the Netkitchen and Edward Carden, chief creative officer of The Netkitchen shared methodologies for Application Development to enable the production of multiple commerce driven sites with consistent brand and user experience.

-- Angus Davis, co-founder of Tellme addressed the significance of the telephone network to multi-channel marketing efforts, as well as unique ways to integrate the telephone with more traditional marketing efforts.

Measurement Techniques

-- Jason Shulman, executive vice president and lead strategist for Carat Interactive, led a discussion on digital trends and how they are affecting marketers today, including the emergence of analytics and ROI measurement of marketing expenditures.

-- Andreas Weigend, independent consultant and former chief scientist at Amazon, offered insight into marketing channel technologies with "long tails" - such as books, movies, web pages and user-generated content - and highlighted how this data can be mined to generate customer recommendations and new leads.

-- John Torre, director of sales at Dynamic Logic, discussed real-life examples of various approaches and methodologies for using the Internet to measure Cross Media Campaigns.

MetLife and Babson College also hosted an open forum to addressthe opportunities and barriers for multi-channel marketing thatsurfaced at the conference, as well as proposed research topics.

"Babson is creating a number of thought leadership forums fororganizations to share innovative practices," said Patricia J. Guinan,Associate Professor, technology operations and information management,Babson College. "The faculty will then pursue action research, workingin partnership with these organizations to solve real-time businessissues in the multi-channel space."

About MetLife

MetLife, a subsidiary of MetLife, Inc. (NYSE: MET) is a leadingprovider of insurance and other financial services to millions ofindividual and institutional customers throughout the United States.Through its subsidiaries and affiliates, MetLife, Inc. offers lifeinsurance, annuities, automobile and homeowner's insurance and retailbanking services to individuals, as well as group insurance,reinsurance and retirement and savings products and services tocorporations and other institutions. Outside the U.S., the MetLifecompanies have direct insurance operations in Asia Pacific, LatinAmerica and Europe. For more information, please visitwww.metlife.com.

About Babson Executive Education

Babson Executive Education is ranked among the Top 10 providersworldwide of custom executive programs for companies by bothBusinessWeek and The Financial Times. Babson Executive Educationfosters the spirit of innovation: the drive to identify newopportunities and bring them to commercial realization. It shows largecorporations how to be agile, efficient, and effective under adverseconditions and during periods of growth. For more information onBabson Executive Education and custom solutions, open programs, andresearch centers, visit the website: www.babson.edu/bee.