MessageGears was proud to sponsor the inaugural OMMA Marketing Tech at Internet Week New York on May 18, 2016. The event focused on how marketers can aim technology at their main business objectives without being distracted by the newest, shiniest object on the market. Here are some highlights:
Keynote: Marketing With A Retail Mindset
Katie Bisbee, Chief Marketing Officer, DonorsChoose.org
In what ended up being the opening keynote (issues with the morning commute plagued some other panelists and presenters), Katie Bisbee shared how DonorsChoose.org uses tech to market more like an online retailer than a traditional non-profit. She shared some of her best acquisition and retention programs and talked about how personalization yields big returns. The more specific they’re able to get, the better the results.
No surprise: @katiebisbee says people expect personalized recommendations now and even get upset if they don’t get it right. #MPOMMA #IWNY
— MessageGears (@MessageGears) May 18, 2016
Panel: It’s The Strategy, Not The Stack: Aligning Tech With Goals
Joe Mandese, Editor-in-Chief, MediaPost; Chris Bero, VP, Global Marketing, FlexJet; Josh Campo, Director, Technology, SapientNitro; Brent Shedd, Executive Director and General Manager, J. Walter Thompson, San Francisco; Baylen Springer, VP, Marketing Analytics, R2C Group
How can marketers embrace genuinely helpful, promising technologies while keeping their eye on their business goals? This panel explored what a marketing technology strategy looks like and how marketers can focus on people and outcomes vs. “the stack”. The point was made that technology can’t override the emotional aspect of marketing, but data and technology can help us create better emotional experiences by making things more relevant. Brent Shedd said that the difference between information and advertising is relevance: if you’re in the market for a car and you see an ad for a car, you treat that as something that’s informing your purchasing decision. When you’re not in the market for a car and you see that ad, it’s just an annoying, irrelevant ad.
#Data analysis is useless if you don’t know what you’re looking for and don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve. #MPOMMA
— Will Devlin (@wdevlin) May 18, 2016
You need to educate yourself on your existing tools before chasing the latest #marketingtech, says Josh Campo of SapientNitro #MPOMMA #IWNY
— Ready State (@readystatements) May 18, 2016
Interview: The Rise Of The New Machine
Joe Mandese, Editor-in-Chief, MediaPost; Jonny Silberman, Digital Brand Manager, Anheuser-Busch InBev
Is marketing technology replacing ad tech? Joe Mandese from MediaPost asked Anheuser-Busch Inbev’s Jonny Silberman about how he is utilizing martech and what he expects from it. A great point from this: technology allows marketers to measure short-term or immediate effects (clicks, conversions, views, etc.), but that can’t overshadow decades of brand equity build-up. A value exchange must always be present when you connect with the audience. Think about those “click-bait” articles on Facebook: they got a lot of clicks at first but over time people learned that there wasn’t value there and stopped clicking. Don’t let your brand fall into that trap!
Enjoying #MPOMMA Martech day, where the focus is staying on strategy and achieving goals amid shiny tech objects. #IWNY
— Katherine Ogburn (@K_Ogburn) May 18, 2016
Panel: Building The Better, Smarter DMP
Dan Hodges, CEO & Founder, Consumers in Motion; Brian Shedd, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, OpenKey; Michael Turcotte, Marketing Director, Addressable Media, JP Morgan Chase
Data is at the center of marketing technology, but as marketers look at data management platforms (DMPs), questions can emerge about who owns the data, where it resides, and how it’s shared. One of the big points from this panel was that marketing technology is only as good as the data being put into it. This echoes a point made by Experian Marketing Services’ Spencer Kollas at last week’s The State of Email Marketing event in Atlanta. Businesses also need to get buy-in on martech decisions from departments across the organization, not just one (I recently blogged about marketers needing to involve I.T.). Take the time to learn the ins and outs of the technology you’ve purchased to allow it to work properly.