June 18, 2014

Q&A: Jennifer Watkiss, Head of Marketing Communications at Adestra

Jennifer Watkiss, Head of Marketing Communications at Adestra, will be among the speakers at the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference in London on 17 July, where she’ll be taking the 21s challenge – 21 slides in seven-and-a-half minutes.

Hello Jen. Please give us a quick introduction to what you’ll be discussing at the Figaro Digital Marketing Conference.

I’ll be trying to cram ‘15 Easy Things to Test for Better Email Marketing Results’ into seven-and-a-half hot minutes.

Why does this matter to marketers right now?

Email is currently the number one digital channel for ROI (so says the latest Econsultancy Email Marketing Census). Marketers not leveraging that and trying to boost their results are losing out.

We’re impatient! Can we have one key take-away from your presentation?

The only method that matters is the scientific method. Test everything.

What’s the single biggest issue facing marketers in your sector at the moment?

The paradox of choice. We have too many channels to choose from. We have too many HiPPOs (that’s the ‘highest paid person’s opinion’ to you and me) telling us to throw all our effort (without slowing down on existing channels, natch) behind the latest trendy and totally unproven network. And too many of us don’t have the data to push back and back up our plans with proven results.

If we provided you with a magic wand that enabled you to make one change to the digital marketing landscape, what would it be?

Lab coats for everyone! We all need to get much more comfortable including the role of data scientist in our repertoire.

Anything else you’d like to tell us?

Have I mentioned testing? Seriously. Test everything. And then when you think you have an answer, test again.