Looking back at NRF 2020

Marketing in the here and now with Resulticks.

Admittedly, 2020 was my first experience at the NRF Retail conference and expo in NYC. Over the course of my previous work experiences, I never once had the opportunity to learn and explore at this massive venue. This year, the Resulticks team and I attended NRF as exhibitors ourselves. Given our list of global retail customers, we wanted to showcase our brand and our solution to the international audience attending NRF.

 Our booth drew a considerable number of visitors and generated a lot of traction, but I was able to sneak away occasionally (sorry colleagues) to look around and experience the oasis of visionary companies that had gathered at the Jacob K. Javits Centre. I was intrigued by the many innovative solutions exhibited and envisioned; addressing topics and products such as in-store optimization, price optimization, channel optimization, digital scanners, digital labels, RFID, tap-and-go, delivery services,  facial recognition systems to prevent theft, AI enablers, enterprise search applications, e-Commerce vendors and so on. With around 40K visitors, you can only imagine how many exhibitors were present.

 I’ve always been fascinated by how companies convey their message to potential buyers and customers. Some start-ups have amazing innovative ideas, but no effective way to pitch them to their audience. Certain products fail to add value for the end consumer, even though the product itself is an awesome innovation. And sometimes the audience isn't ready yet. Among other key goals, the focus of exhibitors at NRF should be value-driven messaging and positioning of their brand, focusing specifically on what’s in it for potential customers. I noticed this crucial distinction among the more successful vendors - they kept their story-line simple yet compelling, and their value proposition was innovative enough to solve problems customers didn’t even know they had.

 In this day and age where technology operates at the cross section of everyday life, I use Instagram to do my research on the possibilities of a Tiny House (yes, I love the Tiny House movement and would love to be more off the grid once I retire). While visiting a bookstore in ‘the Village’ in mid-town Toronto the other day, I discovered a beautiful little book with tons of amazing photos and stories of Tiny House owners. The author of the book, Brent Heavener, runs the Instagram account @tinyhouse with close to 745K followers.

This cross-platform approach of digital and traditional / analogue has grown increasingly prominent (and engaging) with the modern consumer. Through an NRF brief, I read an article on what author and Professor Ryan L. Raffaelli (Harvard Business School) labels “Technology Re-emergence”. The article is all about the rise of the indie bookstore. Who could foresee this rise in the Amazon-era? It’s a beautifully written article based on Professor Raffaelli’s multi-year research and hundreds of interviews leading to fascinating insights. I urge you to read it if you’re interested in concepts and ideas on how to appeal to audiences in mixing and matching multiple techniques to reach and captivate your audience.

So back to my own business – Resulticks. What do we do differently in an overcrowded marketplace - the Marketing Automation business? And how are we resonating with our customers? 

Well, let me keep it simple - “We keep it simple”. I’ve been in the Marketing Software and CRM space for more than 20 years. Since joining Resulticks I’ve never seen a more powerful Marketing Engagement platform than the Resulticks mCloud. So why is it so simple? A few examples:

• Even though we offer an incredibly powerful and robust architecture that performs like no other, an end user of the platform doesn’t have to have a PhD in order to work with the solution. The User Experience is seamless and self-explanatory.
• We integrate with every single digital channel; paid, owned and earned media. We do so out of the box with over 75+ ready to use API’s.
• We have an underlying CDP platform which offers our users a 360-degree view of their customers, which is constantly enriched through insights on marketing engagement with end consumers.
• Our platform was built based on the concept of ‘outcome-based marketing’. We provide all the necessary insights to maximize reach, engagement, conversion and ROI.
• We leverage AI and Machine Learning throughout the solution – bringing the full potential of AI and ML from hype to reality. All based on proven customer use cases.
• We ensure the highest levels of security by hashing and encrypting data – totally dependent on the customer’s individual needs. Looking to keep your customer data on premises and unable to leverage our full SaaS mCloud? Our hybrid solution has you covered! We’re also GDPR, HIPAA and CCPA compliant, in addition to being an ISO certified solution.
• We operate on one unified, holistic solution - no more data silos, no more spaghetti.

Our customers love the simplicity and the power of the Resulticks mCloud because it allows them to prioritize their customers’ experience with the products or services they want to sell.  If you want to hear what some of our customers have said about our solution and company, check this link:

As always, feel free to reach out to me – whether to talk about Tiny Houses, vinyl, bookstores and coffee, or the Resulticks mCloud - just DM me. I promise I will keep it simple!

Arjen van der Broek