If you’ve been keeping an eye on our Twitter feed of late, you’ll have seen that this week we held our #DigiTransMA event. For those who came (and there were a lot of you) it was a wonderful morning to talk marketing; for those that didn’t here’s what went on behind the hashtag.
On a bright and beautiful Wednesday morning, 76 delegates descended upon one of the capital’s best known landmarks – the London Stock Exchange – to hear about Digital Transformation through Marketing Automation.
Right on the doorstep of historical St Paul’s Cathedral, the light and modern venue provided the perfect setting for nibbles and networking as our excellent guest speakers kicked off the event.
Guy Brindle, Group Marketing Director at the London Stock Exchange, was first up, speaking on the LSE Group’s Marketing Automation journey. Central to any implementation experience, he said, was to remember that every business has different wants and needs from their MA platform – and that when starting out, marketers should focus on what they hope to achieve for their specific brand. Guy’s personal tips were to set priorities and focus on core objectives, and he suggested that in so doing, his own team had been able to deliver better business insight through their implementation of MA. Although an ongoing process that marketers need to draw out themselves, by building confidence, understanding MA better and utilising its increasing functionalities, the improvements to his marketing processes has already been significant. In particular, the introduction of a Marketing Automation platform had allowed Guy’s team of marketers to show ROI by identifying how revenue had been brought into the business, and connecting the previously disparate entities of revenue and marketing.
Next to speak were our own top consultants, Jane Allan and Caroline Hodson. Speaking from the other side of the implementation process, they offered invaluable insight to customers just embarking on their MA journey and, echoing Guy’s sentiments, advised that though all businesses start at stage one, each is at a different state of readiness. As they put it, the process is about the art of “building the road while driving the car” – and finding out what works for you as you go along. Crucial to building that road is testing, especially in the early stages, as there’s no better way to work out what works best, and help guide future planning. But as Caroline (with a little help from Winston Churchill) pointed out: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
After a short break for second rounds of bacon sandwiches, Stewart Conway, Head of Digital Marketing and Jupiter Asset Management, took the floor. His topic was ‘Digital Disruptive Thinking’, and he made the pertinent point that marketers need to stop, look and listen to see what is really going on in their business function – only then is diagnosis and rectification of issues possible, and only then can an effective plan be put in place to elevate them to the next level.
As Stewart said in his talk, and perhaps the most important lesson we learned at our #DigiTransMA morning, MA is much more than just a tool. Marketing Automation is a vision of where marketing should be, and it tells you a story that you need to pay attention to.
Here at CleverTouch, we’re all ears – and we can’t wait to hear more stories of transformation as our friends and customers move forward in the journeys.
If you'd like to attend a future event, please email holly@clever-touch.com.
