This was a solid panel and deserved more than my feeble attempts at live blogging.

Moderator: Bill Tancer (Hitwise)
Panelists: Natalie Long (REI), Peter Brumme (Intuit), Monty Hudson (Revenue Science), Joey Wilson (Sapient).

Here were the big bullet points from the panelists:
-Don’t confuse the new tools (social networking, for example) with new laws. [Monty]
-Don’t assume what worked yesterday will work tomorrow. Continue to test what you already know. [Peter]
-Allocate appropriate resources to maximize current relationships before trying to pursuade someone new. [Peter]
-The conversation with the customer doesn’t end when they click submit. [Joey]
-It’s almost universal that there’s more to be done. [Companies] are leaving things out there when the relationship has already been made. [Joey]
-Each step of the conversation can be optimized. [Joey]
-Give your customers the tools they need to connect with each other. [Natalie]
-Customers want more out of their brands. [Natalie]

I love hearing marketers talk like this. While I see the potential in companies twittering and setting up Facebook profiles, these new activities shouldn’t replace continued testing and optimization of high ROI marketing campaigns. If we’re still saying that 1-3% conversion rates are good, then there’s a lot more to be done to optimize the checkout process. If merchants are still not effectively building a relationship with their current customers, they shouldn’t be aggressively courting new customers through an exciting new blogging strategy…although it might make sense to have an exciting new blogging strategy or social networking strategy to strengthen current relationships.