Stephanie Donelson

I love, love, love continued education opportunities and attending conferences, especially ones geared toward marketing.

Over the last two days, I got the chance to attend the 2019 Digital Summit Denver and it was well worth it. I had attended about five years ago and actually wasn’t that impressed with some of the speakers they had lined up, but they’ve grown over that time and have invested in attracting quality presenters and marketing celebrities to the stage. 

This year’s event was spread out over two days (three if you went to the master classes) and I got some incredible ideas and best practices I can apply in my career.

I focused my time at the conference on email marketing, content marketing, Account-Based Marketing, and chatbot optimization. 

Here are some of the major takeaways, speaker notes, stats, and quotes from Digital Summit Denver that I found extremely interesting and informative. 

Session: Forget everything you know about email marketing, Jen Capstraw

At Jen Capstraw’s email marketing workshop she brought up the idea of being critical of best practices and asking:

• How did it become a best practice?
• Do the conditions that created it still exist?
• Will implementing this best practice help or hinder my marketing efforts?
• Is this best practice missing any context to make it true?

She also called attention to the idea of ignoring best practices and just using your data to determine what works best for your email marketing campaigns. For example, her team got rid of a “view in browser” link as no one was clicking it and it took up valuable above the fold real estate.

Jen talked at length about not deleting disengaged subscribers as we have to have a 360-degree view of the whole customer journey and identify what other channels they may be interacting with or where they’re at in their buyer’s cycle. They may not be ready to purchase yet, but they could be next month after you’ve taken them off your list. Be smart about how you deal with disengaged subscribers and look at the bigger picture. 

When trying to re-engage users, you have three options:

1. Ask them again
2. Ask them if they still want to take action
3. Ask them why they’re not taking action

Another good takeaway was the use of manipulinks (coined by Justine Jordan) in subscribe pop-ups. For some brands they work, for some they don’t and can actually turn customers off from your brand. These are the pop-up forms that use manipulative language to get you to take an action. 

An example she had from a website was to sign up for emails and get a free weight loss guide, and to say no you had to say “I don’t want to lose weight.” You’re basically negging the reader and making them feel guilty for not doing what you want them to do. 

Finally, she covered A/B testing and told everyone, “Absolutely do not test everything!” Stop testing for the sake of testing, but test when you know how to do it right and can get statistically significant findings. 

Keynote: The scientific secrets of perfect timing, Daniel Pink

Dan Pink’s keynote was a hit as he talked about how timing is a science, not an art, and shared a popular graph that showed how we all tend to follow a specific pattern of the day with highs and lows and how that affects our mood and performance (meaning no 4 p.m. meetings!). 

Studies on mood have shown that our mood rises in the morning, drops in the afternoon, and rises again in the afternoon. Within these peaks and valleys, we have to get the most out of that time and our mood by doing the right tasks. 

When we’re at our peak, it’s time for work that requires heads-down focus, when we’re in the valley it’s time for administrative work. 

We have to become disciplined to the do the right work at the right time and be deliberate and intentional in scheduling individual and team work. We also need to take more breaks, especially breaks that are social, moving, outside, and fully detached. 

Finally, he talked about how endings help us energize and elevate, when we know something is coming to an end, we’re more excited and willing to work harder to get there. 

Session: Generating brand momentum by turning content into commerce, James Royer

At this session, James covered how we have to combine organic and paid media to turn content into commerce. This entails leveraging organic interest, giving it a boost with paid, and then putting the sell in front of them.

It was interesting as that’s how I run social media for ecommerce sites. Build up reach and engagement with fun, educational content and then put a promotional post in the mix to capitalize on that organic reach. 

He also talked about his content mix, where 60% is high-performing content that’s tried and true, 20% is an iteration of that and optimized, and the last 20% are experiments or tests of content and content formats. 

He cautioned about being platform-specific as not everything works as well across different channels. Make sure you’re meeting the needs of each social audience, and then adapt high performers to other channels. 

Session: Putting experiences, people, and accounts at the center of your B2B marketing strategy, Bob Conklin

This session was interesting as Bob talked about the adoption of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and how it will live alongside our more traditional demand gen. ABM has shown to have a higher ROI, but is difficult as sales and marketing have to be fully aligned, your company has to have the right technology, you have to know how to route and process the data you collect, and have an appropriate budget. 

I liked how Bob talked about the fact that B2B and B2C are converging as that B2B buyers are using their B2C buying experiences to shape what they expect when buying products or services in their professional lives. I agree that these two methods are converging and soon we won’t really split B2B and B2C, it’ll all just be marketing. 

The biggest part of ABM is creating unique paths for unique shoppers, and personalizing the buying experience. You have to bridge the gap between sales and marketing to enable cohesive engagement and a seamless experience, no matter who the prospect is getting info from. 

Session: How to run a content practice (without inciting mass panic), Matt Ingwalson

This session was great when Matt shared the three main types of content we should be creating: Hero, Hub, and Help.

• Hero content: Maximize a moment in time (product launch, special event, etc.)
• Hub content: Episodic, repeatable, and predictable content (blog series, podcasts, etc.)
• Help content: Community management pieces and trustworthy content

Matt referenced Attention, Interest, Decision, and Action (AIDA), and how that still applies to content marketing today, but we have to not only get their attention and interest but invite them into our ecosystem. 

I also liked his idea of the content waterfall – getting smaller pieces of content out of a bigger campaign or content piece, like sharing behind-the-scenes clips or photos. He also made a point of reminding us to think about the zero second (to set expectations) and to promise an end. 

Session: Four automated email series that get serious results, Leah Miranda

Leah’s presentation was great for getting ideas of how to improve automated campaigns and different ways of sharing your brand’s story. She broke it down into four different campaigns:

• Date-based (birthdays, anniversaries, events, etc.)
• Content nurturing (educational content)
• Story nurturing (motivational content)
• Behavior-based (clicks in emails or actions on website, abandoned cart, etc.)

I liked her point that we need to go deeper than just driving sales as an outcome of our automated email campaigns as 50% of leads aren’t ready to buy. Focus on the journey, building the relationship, and providing value. Cadence and timing are key, so know your sales cycle and know what content to send during that cycle.

Her reminders that we don’t have to automate on every single behavior our users can take and that we need to evaluate our campaigns every three to six months were great takeaways at the end of the session.

Session: Six data-validated tactics to increase marketers qualified lead volume, Garrett Mehgruth

Garrett’s presentation actually had seven tactics and shared two that just do not work (scholarship link building and blindly trusting Google’s smart bidding). 

My big takeaway from his presentation was focusing on good keyword research and strategically using them within content, especially in how-to content or why-based content (why you need [keyword term] at your company). Another easy win is auditing your website and adding internal links in keyword-driven anchor text to signal the importance of the content you want to rank.

I appreciated his talk on decreasing psychological friction: Are you giving your audience something more valuable than they’re giving you? 

An action item I took away was looking at review sites and making sure we have built out profiles, links back to our website, and reviews as Google favors review sites more than individual sites when people are looking for terms like “the best computer software.”

Finally, he talked about allocating advertising spend to non-branded campaigns as why are we paying for clicks from customers who already know us? Put your spend where it’ll pay off – attracting new users or people who don’t know about your brand. 

Session: Get new and repeat business on autopilot with email marketing, Dave Charest

Dave discussed the idea that we have to think of email as one-to-one messages, as in a person should feel like you’re talking directly to them and not a group of people. 

He also highlighted the idea that if you’re going to interrupt their experience on the site with a pop-up subscribe form, you better be providing value and focus on the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me), like:

• Sign up to receive promotions or discounts
• Receive exclusive content
• Continue support for an organization
• Receive a free consultation

Welcome email campaigns should have three emails in the series:

• Email 1: Welcome
  • Send immediately
  • Deliver asset/promise
  • Welcome them and set expectations
• Email 2: Invitation to connect
  • Send a few days later
  • Invite to connect on social or how else they can reach you
• Email 3: Invoke FOMO
  • Remind them why they signed up or need your service/product

Keynote: Brave, not perfect: A conversation with Reshma Saujani

The lunch keynote with Reshma was quite inspiring as she shared her personal journey at failing and becoming brave so she could try again. Her focus was how we teach our boys to be brave and take risks but we teach our girls to be perfect and humble. 

An eye-opening statistic was that women won’t apply for jobs unless she meets 100% of the qualifications whereas men will apply when they meet 60%. 

As women, we need to stop waiting for perfection and trust ourselves to become brave and take the same risks and go after the same opportunities that men do. We need to learn to celebrate our successes and stand up for ourselves and not get left behind in the workforce. 

Not going to lie, I’m adding her book to my Amazon cart tonight!

Session: Ignore at your peril: 9 trends that will reshape your marketing organization and career, Loren McDonald

At this session, Loren talked about how “in the emotion economy, purpose creates loyalty.” People feel strongly about issues and will either align themselves with brands who feel the same way or will distance themselves from company’s who stand contrary to what we believe. Brands can win loyal customers by taking a stance. 

There was an interesting point where he talked about how customers don’t want to give away their information to brands but still expect brands to know about us and meet our needs. 

He talked about how agile marketing is taking over and that we, as marketers, have to respond to change, iterate rapidly, test and measure our data, run small experiments, and collaborate. 

Session: Three keys to mastering B2B email like a jazz musician, Cliff Seal

Cliff’s presentation was unique in how he applied a musical approach to marketing efforts, but to succeed we have to master the instrument, master comping and improvising, and master the mantra. It’s our job to create unique moments and understand our customer’s day-to-day. 

I liked his point that we have to learn to support our marketing and sales team before we can lead it  and we have to give our all to our craft if we want to succeed. 

Session: Your network is your net-worth: how to grow your social capital like a super-connector, Anne Gherini

Sorry, Anne, but I’m going to be honest and say this session was not what I thought it was going to be. She had good tips on how to grow your network and know how to leverage it, but I thought it was going to be more marketing-focused on how to grow social media networks.

Some cool ideas she did share included the idea that we have to invest in our EQ or emotional intelligence and remember that others are busy and we are not their first priority. We also have to break free of our addiction to affirmation and validation on social media. 

Session: The optimized chatbot conversation, Arvell Craig

Arvell’s session was the last one I attended on day two, and he provided some good insight into how  to set up chatbots for success. He talked about how chatbots deliver what social media promised as it’s real-time, engaging, and empathetic. Chatbots acknowledge and engage with customers where they are, where social media gets a user’s attention and then drives them to the website.

An important takeaway was the idea that we have to customize chatbot conversations for the page or intent, like pricing page chatbot has to be focused on pricing, a resources page chatbot has to be focused on what information they still need, etc.

He mentioned that we have to change landing page CTAs to conversations. Don’t take an action, have a conversation about your needs. 

His best practice of reducing chatbots to three steps was helpful as he says chatbots need to engage, understand, and recommend. Acknowledge the user’s intent, understand who they are and qualify them, and based on what you know then serve recommendations like sending them to a different page, getting a live person on the chat, or book a meeting. 

Overall, it was a great digital marketing conference this year and I’m excited to see who they bring in next year and the content they’ll be presenting on. I really appreciated the mix of tracks and topics as I know friends who have gone to other Digital Summits where every session was on pretty much the same thing. What digital marketing conference do you make sure to attend when you can? Tell me in the comments below!