At Innovation Visual, we are passionate about training and are always on the lookout for opportunities to develop our team’s knowledge further to ensure we stay ahead of the game and consistently deliver competitor-beating results for our clients.
On 13th June 2024, Digital Marketing Executive, Kate Staples, attended Mailchimp’s renowned conference, FROM: HERE, TO: THERE. In this blog, she highlights some key takeaways, including the acceleration of AI and the importance of taking risks in marketing.
About the From Here to There Conference
The From Here to There annual conference by Intuit Mailchimp was hosted at Magazine London. The exciting agenda encouraged networking opportunities with like-minded marketing professionals as well as talks from some of the biggest names in the industry, including Stephen Bartlett, Mo Gawdat and Rory Sutherland. Additionally, there was the opportunity for one-on-one sessions with Mailchimp experts and some of the brightest minds in the industry.
Top Takeaways from The Day
1. Revealing Mailchimp’s Newest Innovations to Level Up
After an introduction from award-winning presenter, Katherine Ryan, Mailchimp’s SVP, Rania Succar, took to the stage to dive into the platform’s latest tools and enhancements.
In the last year alone, there have been more than 100 new features, and it’s clear that this is just the beginning.
Succar proudly announced that of this week, SMS is now available in the UK. Consolidating channels in one platform allows you to seamlessly integrate SMS within your email, automations and social campaigns, helping you deliver hyper-personalised communication to your customers – something which consumers are demanding more and more.
Other new innovations include:
- 360 view of your customers – a comprehensive customer profile that consists of all available and meaningful data gathered through the customer’s journey,
- enterprise level predictive analytics – to analyse historical data, uncover pattern and predict future trends,
- marketing in sync with finance and operations (Revenue Intelligence).
I was particularly excited by the new Revenue Intelligence feature as it deploys cutting edge AI technology to proactively give marketers opportunities to gain more revenue. The system has incredible capabilities, analysing data in the background, providing insights into predicted customer spend and prospect opportunity size. The most impressive feature was that this tool can create content for you in line with your brand guidelines. Using advanced personalisation, Revenue Intelligence generates brand content that performs – using customer buying habits to make your content more personalised. Here are 5 more ideas to use personalisation in digital marketing.
We’re excited to see these features come to Mailchimp as we’ve already been using similar capabilities for our B2B and B2C clients within the HubSpot and Klaviyo platforms and have seen great results from personalisation.
2. The Importance of Risks & Experimentation
British entrepreneur and the host of Europe’s leading podcast ‘The Diary of a CEO’, Steven Bartlett, joined Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Oglivy UK, to discuss the future of marketing, and why experimentation is the key to success.
Bartlett opened the discussion by giving more insight into his success, explaining how taking risks in business is the key reason why he continues to thrive in an increasingly challenging space. He explained it in simple terms – “it doesn’t matter if you don’t brush your teeth today or tomorrow, or even this week. It will be in 5 years’ time that not brushing your teeth will really come to affect you.” By this he means, in business, you may choose not to bother doing something for it won’t have upsides or downsides in the short term. However, choosing to not take that risk could be what sets you back long term.
He further explained the impact of risk taking:
War in business is won by choosing to do the things that others choose not to do. Bottom level decisions, and the things that your competitors choose to ignore, are the things that will eventually stack up to deliver success.
If you don’t take everyday risks, it will be too late. Blackberry was thriving, but they didn’t take risks, meaning the rise of the smartphone – an experiment that paid off, is what caused an almost imminent demise for Blackberry.
Ultimately, 95% of decisions in business are what we refer to as ‘type 2’ decisions – ones you can go back on. Therefore, in the long run, it is more expensive holding off on a risk for months, than taking a risk and failing.
Bartlett gave an example from a recent podcast episode. They ran more than 120 tests on the title and the name of the podcast guest. Though it is such a small difference, doing so was well worthwhile for the best performing, most compelling title had a 25% click through rate, whereas the worst performing had an exceptionally low CTR of 0.5%. Taking the time to experiment resulted in significantly higher engagement and ultimately, financial gain.
Prioritise experimentation and run those tests today!
We always encourage our clients to experiment and test to gather their own data as something that works for one business might not work for another. Watch our Digital Marketing Answered podcast episode on marketing planning where we talk about putting aside some budget for experimentation.
3. Happiness in the Age of Technology
Mo Gawdat, former Chief Business Officer at X, took to the stage for a psychological discussion around happiness in a world reliant on technology. He begun the talk by explaining how we feel happiest when life meets our expectations.
As humans, we have a choice to proactively limit unnecessary stresses in our lives and technology is an excellent way to produce the reward hormone dopamine. One of the key ways of getting dopamine is by using your device – something you are likely to do because you are feeling bored. However, this eliminates true happiness – serotonin, which you receive by giving someone a hug or through human connection for example.
Gawdat’s key message is that we all have a choice. In a technological world, we should prioritise what truly makes us happy, and find a balance that works for us.
Why Should Businesses Consider This?
Balancing screen time and fostering authentic connections in business can lead to stronger, more fulfilling relationships with your team, customers and prospects. Whether it be in the form of in-person events, workshops or meetups, these offline experiences can strengthen relationships and improve individual wellbeing.
Offline events can be enhanced by technology through clever, personalised follow-ups or add-ons. Think about a well-built email workflow following an in-person event or Augmented Reality that will amplify your message. Our team regularly assist clients in promoting their in-person activities through digital channels as well as ensuring successful conversions post-event through sophisticated, personalised workflows and automation.
4. A Conversation with an Advanced AI Humanoid
Another standout talk for me was one around artificial intelligence. The panel was made up of three marketing professionals and a fourth, more unusual guest – Ameca, the world’s most advanced robot.
It was fascinating to witness such advanced technology. Ameca was designed at Engineered Arts headquarters and uses an array of sophisticated features including embedded microphones, cameras, facial recognition and articulated motorised components – meaning the robot can blink, move, talk and even dance!
Ameca was put to the test by the panel and we were all astounded by her intelligent responses. This sparked a further AI debate, where the panel explained that artificial intelligence is accelerating faster than any technology in history. The trajectory of travel in the next 5-10 years is nothing like we have seen before.
We can now benefit from intelligence on tap, which we can leverage in the most extraordinary ways – from medicine and agriculture to everyday tasks.
How to Engage Your Audience in the Face of AI Noise
In the face of generative AI noise, keeping up with rapid advancements and continuing to engage your audience can be a challenge. As marketeers, rather than adding to the noise by producing content en masse, the key is to prioritise the creation of unique content using your own data, expert opinions, thought leadership and things that can’t simply be replicated through artificial intelligence, whilst leveraging AI in clever ways to maximise efficiency. To grow, it’s important that businesses embrace AI, however we need to be strategic in the way in which we use it.
Should Humans Fear AI?
Intelligence is being turned into a utility – one which we can all capitalise on. Whilst we shouldn’t fear AI itself, we should continue to find a valuable balance of intelligence, without losing the ability to make human connections, which, as Gawdat explained in the previous talk, is vital for ongoing happiness.
Learn more about the future of AI in search.
Personal Highlights
My time at the Mailchimp conference was extremely valuable, and I thoroughly enjoyed having the opportunity to develop my knowledge on some of the most important topics in today’s marketing landscape. It’s difficult to choose a personal highlight out of such a great lineup, but for me, the discussion between Steven Bartlett and Rory Sutherland really stuck out. Hearing about Bartlett’s journey from a young boy growing up in a deprived area, to a hugely successful professional with a net worth of £70m+, has inspired me to get out of my comfort zone and take more risks in day-to-day life. After all, a few small experiments could add up to one huge success!
Start Your Digital Marketing Journey Today
FROM: HERE, TO: THERE Mailchimp was a hugely successful and valuable conference for our team and reinforced our knowledge of several key pillars within our digital marketing strategies, including the use of artificial intelligence, A/B testing and email marketing.
As a leading digital marketing performance agency, we are passionate about helping our clients achieve their goals and are excited to incorporate the latest insights from Mailchimp’s conference into our clients’ strategies.
If you’re looking for a trusted partner that can help your business grow and stay abreast of constant changes, Innovation Visual can provide just the expertise you need. Get in touch today to start the conversation.
