TL;DR

 Trade shows and conferences can feel like a waste of time. The cons column is long:

Quick Sales PSA...

"Everybody is selling something."

It's the truth. I can't stand when people get annoyed at being sold to, like they're time is just that much more valuable.

If you have something worth selling, then sell it! To do it well, you need to know your ICP, or you will end up looking like an idiot.

So get over yourself. Be kinder to people, even those selling something. You have something to sell. And maybe have a little fun with someone selling you something.

PSA Over

The pros, if you're lucky, are that you learn something, make a new connection or make a sale, for your product or service.

Amazon Accelerate is different for several reasons.

You're tickets under $600. That's a big win.

It's in Seattle and with the water, restaurants, bars, and huge landmarks, like the space needle, it can be a beautiful city. I have a lot of family in Seattle so I love getting a chance to see them while being at a work thing.

The food is also, pretty good. That doesn't always happen. Yes, there are decent drinks for happy hours, but not quite to the standard I'd like. There is an amazing little spot right by Amazon HQ you'd never know was there that has amazing cocktails. Reply to this for the details.

Content is wide at this show and goes from beginner to advanced, legitimately, as well as repeated sessions just in case you missed something.

At this year's event, there will also be a really cool meetup with cool people that will cover GenAI, agentic commerce, using LLMs to build tools, and all that cool jazz. Follow my great friend Brett Bohannon on LinkedIn to hear more about this forthcoming announcement.

Last but not least is Seller Cafe. It's a place to get real answers from real people at Amazon. For anyone whose been dealing with ongoing compliance issues, has been in an a Seller Support case loop for the last 3 months, or just needs to talk to a human, this is a great opportunity for you to do that. Is it worth $600? Depends upon the size of your business but I'd say more than likely, yes. Yes it is.

I think that covers my TL;DR.

My vote is go. Early bird pricing still in effect through August 29th, even if you aren't really an early bird.

Amazon’s business operations falls into three distinct categories: Catalog, Creative, & Advertising. Each newsletter I create a content tasting flight of smaller yet no less delicious samplings of that Amazon ecosystem. Today’s Flight focuses on insert subject matter here.

Amazon has updated their logistics branding to ASCS (Amazon Supply Chain Services). They’re really good with brand. As they continue to move their FCs away from being warehouses and true fulfillment centers, their range of options are impressive. You may no longer need a 3PL, if Amazon’s pricing works for you.

Consider adding Buy With Prime to your site, leveraging MCF (multi-channel fulfillment) and see if the pricing makes sense. It’s one less step and complication for you in your journey of becoming a strong omni-channel presence.

We’ve read that 70% of people, on average, shop Amazon on mobile phones vs. their desktop computers. While the layers of that are more nuanced, at Cartology our current 30 day rolling average is 73.65% and that’s up 1.7% from the prior 30 days. Amazon allows you to optimize your A+ Content and Store Pages for both Mobile & Desktop.

Make sure you’re creating unique designs for both. Don’t shortchange the design on either but use imagery that works well on the device, i.e. less small text on mobile vs. desktop. Small text kind of sucks anyway so just don’t use it.

AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud) continues to amaze me in a really consistent way. I’ve never seen reports that show in an exposure group that less ad types, or singular ad types, perform better than more ad types combined. Amazon is last touch attribution so you never get the full picture when looking at RoAS. Your needed viewing frequency isn’t daily or even weekly but it’s helpful for planning and implementation across a month or quarter’s timing.

Stop looking at RoAS as the end-all be-all. Work with a tech provider like Intentwise to set up your AMC Instance and leverage their built-in reports. They’ve even got some cool LTV reports they just released.

Alright, so I didn’t create this drink. Chip Tyndale gets the credit and the original recipe is here. It’s not my actual favorite right now and I didn’t even get a good shot before I started drinking. I’m including because it uses Sherry, which is all the rage in cocktails now, and it’s a great Low ABV Martini substitute. I like high octane but when you want to have multiple drinks and not get trashed, this is how you do it. It was very smooth, with full mouthful, and plenty of flavor but not heavy on the booze: a great Sunday afternoon drink. I actually had all the preferred ingredients, except the Orange Bitters were my own Maher Bar recipe.

Every two weeks I release a new podcast episode that talks all about the future of retail. This is the most recent one.

Capital expenditure is a necessity… What if you could be more intentional about your growth, build a strong footing in your community, and develop deep relationships that gave you leverage?