It seems all that I’ve been posting lately have been about conferences, well, here’s another 🙂  I wrote about other sponsored roadshows like this one which provide you the opportunity to receive strong thought leaders to you as well as offer an opportunity to network. KUDOS to 1) event planners for making this happen and 2) those on the road at each conference.
Silverpop, my former alma mater, hosted an informative event here in their hometown of Atlanta as the next to the last stop of the tour. Hosted at the Intercontinental Hotel, the meeting rooms where in close proximity to each other.  It was nice to catchup with former colleagues who are new friends as well as new faces at Silverpop and Atlanta marketers.
I arrived a bit early and had the opportunity to reintroduce myself  with Adam Stienberg (@adams472) co-founder of PlacePunch, Silverpop’s newest acquisition.  The company offers a location-based loyalty program platform via the common social networks.  This is a differentiating new social offering on top of social sign-in (via janrain) and the Share-to-Social feature introduced by the company in October 2008.  Great offering for their B2C base.  I was told that Adam’s preso on the usage of location-based marketing was one of the B2C crowd’s favorite. Congratulations Adam and Chris.
The session began with Silverpop’s power players Bryan Brown (@getvision) and Loren McDonald (@LorenMcDonald) on “mocial” and tips to engage with this audience. Â The term ‘mocial’ Â began with Mobile and Social, but has since been augmented to include email and location-based technologies. Â The presentation was long, but with lots of great content on justifying the additional cost to introduce mobile & social strategy into your marketing. Â If you can get your hands on the presentation, do so. Â One stunning stat showed that Smartphones began outselling personal computers in late 2010. Â Â Building relationships with great content… works in any medium.
The next session for all was Jay Jhun (@emailrocks) from Engague a digital marketing agency of 300 strong.  As email remains to be a material channel for marketers, Jay’s presentation offered many great tips and examples maximize email in the new mobile world.  One of the comments on a slide was that “Great email creative is not a solution to declining engagement”.  Its a good message for brand marketers who feel that a only differing look to the same content will somehow make buyers engage again.
The final session that I had attended was the lead management and marketing automation presentation by Jay Hidalgo (@jayhidalgo) president of “The Annuitas Group”.  If you aren’t following this group, then you’re missing out.  To do so, check out their newly formed “Marketing Automation Institute” community.  The resources on the site are good especaily if the research by SiriusDecisions is a bit out of your budget.
Speaking of SiriusDecisions, I did have a chance to connect with their Marketing Ops rockstar Megan Heuer (@megheuer). Â A must follow for those looking for answers.
At this point, I had to rush to a client meeting, but did have a chance to connect with fellow marketers after the event. Â Their sentiment as is mine was that the ROI tour had a good mix of presenters and appreciated the split B2C and B2B tracks. Â Its worth stating again, these types of events, while sponsored by vendors, are great time investments to connect with birds of a feather and learn a few more tricks in marketing technology.
What was missing was more examples social “ROI” B2B side of the house…  As I’m writing this post, I receive a tweet that Eric Holmen (@eholmen) SVP of Marketing, in his first Silverpop blog post writes about measuring social media in B2B.
To those that attended: Â I was bummed that I wasn’t able to attend the other sessions, what was your best take-away? Â What new questions do you have to ponder?