Digital Summit is a U.S. based digital marketing community and conference company tailored to providing practical solutions designed to “supercharge customer strategies.” My first exposure to the brand started last year upon my agency investing in tickets to Digital Summit Chicago 2019. Stand-out topics featured at the conference included: Content, Email, Influencer Marketing, UX & Design, Social, and Strategy. There were so many sessions applicable to digital agency dynamics that I embraced the challenge of contributing to a collaboration deck to internally present highlights during a Lunch & Learn (L&L).

I was doing my daily scroll through my “Promotions” tab in my agency related Gmail account, when I came across the invitation to register for Digital Summit, at home edition! In tried and true Millenial fashion, I hit the star button to revisit it at a later time and never did🤣. Therefore, the combined powers of a remailer email campaign and a former colleague registering encouraged me to forward the information to my agency’s Executive Team. Without hesitation, they immediately confirmed that they would secure Digital Summit passes for this year’s #DSatHome event.

Fast forward to today, I am 1.5 days into multitasking my way through this two-day conference, and ready to share highlights from #DSatHome.

Kickoff and Opening Keynote: This is Marketing: A Live Q&A with Seth Godin on How We Move Forward

Seth Godin, Best Selling Author

Seth Godin kicked off his session by simply saying, “How do I find my passion in this world?” This opening cleared the way for him to explore the various ways we as marketers have leveraged ourselves into a corner and how we can use this time of crisis to connect back to caring.

We find and solve problems. We have an opportunity as marketers to make things better.

Make things better by earning permission and not stealing attention.

Change by leading, showing up, making things better, and taking control over the things you can do.

Each thoughtfully delivered statement served as a reminder that we can bring love to the table when we connect with our audiences.

In response to being asked if he was ready to start the Q&A session, Seth responded, “I was born naked and unable to speak, but now I am ready!” Please pardon me as I proceed to use this as my go-to response for anytime anyone asks me if I am ready for ANYTHING‼️🤣

My personal favorite responses he provided during the Q&A are as follows:

Nothing ever goes back to normal. Everything that changes the world, changes the world forever. The opportunity is not to create more fluff. People are going to realize they have enough stuff and are going to want to connect with what matters.

The essence of what you have to do as a digital marketing leader in this time is to create an environment where it is better than it would have been in person.

Your customers don’t want you to be authentic. They don’t want your problems… They want you to be consistent. They want you to make a promise and keep it.

I often regard Seth Godin as an influencer whose brand I recognize; however I did not know what to expect from his keynote. It was not filled to the brim with practical takeaways for digital marketing optimization. It was filled with gems of inspiration for how we can move forward as marketers so well done.

Feel free to visit https://www.sethgodin.com/ to learn more about Seth Godin.

Establishing a Data-Driven and Brand-Sage Social Content Strategy

Ericka Kurtz, MGM Resorts International

What happens in Vegas stays in Stage 2 🌃. Erica Kurtz tailored her #DSatHome session around best practices established by MGM from fostering a culture around data-driven content. In order to scale content, Ericka makes sure she has a true differentiator for each product of the product categories.

One of MGM’s missions is to “be a consumer touchpoint from beginning to end.” To help achieve this, the brand takes performance KPIs and turns them into insight. Fun fact: fear of missing out (FOMO) is a KPI for the brand.

The most practical takeaways from Ericka Kurtz session for fellow digital marketers are as follows:

Foster a culture of data-driven content.

Contrast engagement data by media type of content vertical to find insights.

Social listening is as important as post engagement. Brand perception is owned by the customer, but can be measured through listening.

Mitigate risk and maximize opportunities with insights.

A sample of MGM listening insights are: Total Brand Mentions, Topics Mentioned, Word Cloud, and Emoji Cloud.

It was refreshing to see an emoji cloud as a listening insight during this session. I hadn’t thought about using it, yet seeing the WilderFury2 fight in the word cloud followed by the 🥊 emoji in the emoji cloud made sense.

Ericka shared a content relevancy model that can be leveraged as a checklist to determine if something should be posted or created at all.

Establishing a data-driven and brand-safe social content strategy is applicable to each of my clients and my personal brand so I am thankful for presentations like this.

Feel free to visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericka-kurtz-03876437 to learn more about Erica Kurtz of MGM Resorts International.

Marketing Analytics: How to Find the Answers You Need Now

Matt Hertig, Alight Analytics

Matt Hertig of Alight Analytics did an early afternoon session at Stage 1 with concise prompts centered around how we can demonstrate value and drive growth through advanced marketing analytics.

Feel free to visit https://alightanalytics.com/about/leadership/ to learn more about Matt Hertig of Alight Analytics.

#DSatHome Organizer Outreach Break

Similar to when maneuvering in person conferences, you can manage to get caught up “talking in the hallway like you have all the time in the world” while casually strolling to your next session🤣

I was making lunch and catching up with my social when I realized it was well into the 1:00pm CST session.

This is where I must use the opportunity to insert a gentle recommendation to the organizers to please build in a break to your full-day digital conference models going forward. We completely understand that hosting the conference during this crisis doesn’t allow us to go to a common area for an assortment of sandwiches and coffee; yet that lunch time should still be factored despite the 65,000 of us being in the comfort of our homes.

I managed to hop back online just in time to catch the first half of Ty Heath’s session and the second half of Nate Wright’s session.

Winning Hearts and Minds: Using Customer Feedback to Create Marketing that Customers Love

Nate Wright, UserTesting

I thankfully hopped over to Stage 2 in enough time to catch the majority of Nate Wright’s session on Haines customer feedback to create marketing that customers love.

The variety of audio examples Nate incorporated throughout his session reinforced many of the benefits of user testing that I haven’t used lately.

The most practical takeaways from Nate Wright’s session for established digital marketers are as follows:

Deeply understand and empathize with your customers. The best way to understand your customer is to talk to them, especially since marketing is all about communicating your value.

It’s different hearing direct feedback from your customers than seeing it in a report.

Find and connect to the emotional motivations of your customers. i.e. Budweiser’s “One Team” campaign

Tapping into emotions motivates people to act.

Here are two featured slides from Nate’s presentation to help “understand the why behind the what.”

Feel free to visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/natewright to learn more about Nate Wright of UserTesting.com.

How Marketers Can Harness Voice in Our New Media World

Gabe Tartaglia, Pandora

Pandora gained a customer back today just from the content of Gabe Tartaglia’s presentation! His session on how marketers can harness voice in our new media world directly spoke to the heart of me as a Millenial and Digital Marketer.

The most practical takeaways from Gabe Tartaglia’s session regarding truths around voice driven IOTs are as follows:

1. Voice-based engagement: 1 in 4 Americans own smart speakers and the majority of people have 2 speakers.

2. Screening: Attention fragmentation in media is giving rise to 2nd and 3rd screening. 70% of adults use 2nd screen devices while watching TV.

3. Audio-First Content: There are over 30,000 active podcasts.

Therefore, marketers need to use the power of audio. Music & sound effects have the power to change perception of content.

Feel free to visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabe-tartaglia-39053a22 to learn more about Gabe Tartaglia of Pandora.

The New Customer Journey: The Data Insight & Direction You Need to Adapt

Samantha Kermode, Investis Digital

Samantha Kermode of Investis Digital did an engaging session (with just the right hint of humor) on the emotional journey of digital marketing.

She kicked off her presentation with the recommendation to set up a strategy and share it along with a hilarious meme featuring the Mike Tyson quote:

When I say my fight 🥊 loving heart cackled at her use of this quote. We were off to a good start and this marked the beginning of our digital friendship in my head.

Samantha provided 10 tips on the direction needed to adapt to the customer journey. The most practical takeaways from her session for established digital marketers are as follows:

Set up a strategy and share it.

Optimize

Prioritize audience over brand.

Promote. If intent is present, you still need to promote. In this climate, there are searches happening at a lower cost per click. This is an opportunity. This is not the case for every industry; yet the research is worth it.

Activate your audience and segment workflows based on interests.

Decipher your own trends.

Measure by monitoring weekly, if not daily.

Executive Team must lead the way.

I agree with her approach and look forward to replaying this session.

Feel free to visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/skermode to learn more about Samantha Kermode of Investis Digital.

4 Ways to Get Better Metrics for Your Evolving Social Content (with Tool Recommendations!)

Carmen Collins, Cisco

The closing (and strongest) presentation of #DSatHome Day 1 was administered by Carmen Collins of Cisco! She leveraged a clever combination of facts, her bitmoji, bold personality, and sense of humor to share tips on getting better social media metrics.

Carmen kicked off her session by saying “use the force… sorry, funnel to capture your audience’s attention and foster a real connection.” Can we please talk about how much I love that she made this reference the day after May 4th!?!

She provided the timely reminder that our metrics should tell a story. “Keep in mind that they don’t know what they don’t know.”

A visualization of the most practical takeaways from Carmen Collin’s session to achieve a path to better social media metrics as follows:

Feel free to visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/carmenshirkeycollins to learn more about Carmen Collins of Cisco.

Light,

Lisa Marie ‘Phoenix’