On Thursday September 2, 2010 @waldeis sent a Tweet to @Avinash, completely capturing the spirit of what was going on in Frankfurt’s packed (and Über-cool) Union Halle: “If you are in Germany today you should rather be in Frankfurt on the first #ConversionCamp #cc10″

Ably organized by visionary Andre Morys, Web Arts‘s CEO, Conversion Camp, Europe’s first-ever Conversion Optimization Conference, started punctually at 9 am and what followed I believe will be considered a turning point for online marketing in Europe.

Sixteen speakers, over 20 to 30 minutes time blocks, presented on a variety of topics combining theory and case studies. Topics covered testing; usability; Landing Page Optimization; Neuromarketing; web writing; email marketing; and more. (You can read some great reviews here, here, here, and here.) Presentations were delivered in both English and German.

Representing WiderFunnel, I was doubly privileged: Andre invited me to deliver the keynote address (“Confessions of a CRO Strategist”). Plus, I also had the privilege of co-presenting a case study with our Intel client, Patricia Hader (“How Intel Up-sells and Measures Success on Its Partner Websites”).

Attendees, who came from far and wide and not only from German-speaking countries, had high expectations as Conference registration had reached capacity and sold-out well over a month in advance and the waiting list was not moving.

Conversion Camp certainly was one of the best organized conferences I have ever participated in and, being in Europe, even the food was excellent. The conference set up, with a bistro/lounge area overlooking the presentation hall, encouraged mingling and the free exchange of ideas. Pretty much everything worked well, plus the wireless LAN was fast.

Over 10 hours (I am not kidding: the conference ended after 7 pm), a captivated audience listened to speakers and vigorously Tweeted its feedback (I understand the conference’s hash tag, #cc10, was the number one trending topic on Twitter Germany that day).

I honestly could not believe that at 5 pm over 95% of the audience was still there and by 7 pm, when Andre wrapped up, my guess was that 75% of the people were still present. What an amazing statement of success!

When Andre asked for a show of hands to determine support for an expanded conference next year, pretty much everyone asked for a two-day conference.

(Which got me thinking: this year the conference had 16 speakers over 10 hours. By expanding to two days, will this engaged audience want 32 speakers over two days?? Probably.)

If you are a European online marketer, mark your calendars to go to Frankfurt now: The date for Conversion Camp 2011 is September 1-2

In the meantime, keep in touch on the Facebook fan page here.

ADDITIONS:

Andre’s blog post today summarizing the Conference mentions there were 19 presentations – not 16. Apologies for that! I cannot think of another conference with 19 separate consecutive presentations and where the vast majority of people stayed to the end — and then partied!

Also, apparently, the WiderFunnel tagline “You don’t need more web traffic. You need more conversions!” was the Conference’s most Tweeted comment (“Wir brauchen keinen Traffic, wir brauchen Conversions”). Nice to see it translates well!

Keynote address “Confessions of a CRO Strategist”

Confessions of a CRO Strategist