Marketers from across the whole country gathered on Thursday 18 May at the Emirates Stadium for the latest Figaro Digital Marketing Summit. Staying true to its promise, the event was a one-stop-shop for insight and inspiration, as knowledgeable individuals from the marketing industry shared their invaluable experience on a broad range of topics, from CRM, UX, and video, to search, social media, and multichannel marketing. After absorbing a whole day of presentations, interesting questions and practical pieces of advice, we take a look at some of the event’s key takeaways.

Parry Malm: What Makes A Subject Line Good Or Bad?

Brands should focus on the so-called ‘longitudinal modelling’, the understanding in the long run of the language that creates durable relationships with their customers through emails, explained Parry Malm. The CEO of Phrasee argued that companies need to use the length of their email subject lines intelligently in order to draw attention and create urgency, looking at the big picture instead of fiddling with details such as single words or emojis. “What matters is the entire syntactic construct of the different linguistic elements that go in to form the whole piece of text” he stated, as humans tend to first read a sentence and then assess its meaning as a whole – and therefore small changes only slightly affect the overall concept. According to Malm, businesses need to ensure that the language used in their email campaigns is compliant to their brand voice, although at the end of the day, the success of a campaign is determined by the message itself.

Damien Bennett: The Four ‘Buzzwords’ Of Digital Marketing

NMPi’s Director of Business Strategy delved into some of the buzzwords of digital marketing: engagement, ROI, big data, and transparency, in an attempt to shed some light on their mysteries. He stated that although engagement can be measured through brand uplift, such as searching for a term/brand after having seen an ad, marketers can’t assess understanding. “ROI, when misused, is the biggest barrier that advertisers face when implementing a great marketing strategy” argued Bennett. Approximately 70 per cent of companies still rely on basic attribution models, having therefore, at best, a distorted image of their campaigns’ effectiveness. In terms of big data, Bennett explained that companies need to be extra careful when collecting their data, as they have to make sure that it’s accurate, obtained legally, and is stored in a safe but accessible way. Brands must train their teams in big data best practice, in order to keep the whole team on the same page throughout the newly changing legislation. Bennett encouraged companies to ask their agencies for details about their campaigns’ audience profile, ‘viewability’, and placement, as well as their budget breakdown, because after all, “nowadays transparency is everywhere”.

Raj Balasundaram: Using A.I. To Compose Truly Personalised Messages

Raj Balasundaram, Global Head of Solution Consultants at Emarsys began by highlighting the differences among three popular digital marketing terms which often seem to be used interchangeably. Machine learning is the understanding of patterns within data ranges, data science is the analysis of information, and A.I. embodies the combination of these two that leads to problem solving. Balasundaram explained that marketers need to take advantage of advanced A.I. in order to address three key marketing pillars: data, content, and engagement. It is important for the companies to have a unified customer profile that will allow them to segment their audience more efficiently; this way, they will be able to benefit from automated, personalised content and to understand how buying and interaction patterns work. By applying machine learning techniques to their campaigns, brands can use A.I. to determine the most efficient segmentation, the best timing for sending out their emails, and the customers they need to re-approach in the near future. Finally, Balasundaram advised companies “to start small” by allowing A.I. in the beginning to manage a portion of their database, before experimenting with the various opportunities it has to offer.

Peter Mason: The ‘Content Shock’ Forces Brands To Distribute Content In A Smarter Way

Today, the content that’s produced is more than can be consumed, leading to what experts are calling ‘content shock’. By 2020 overall content creation is expected to increase 2.5 times, while consumption will remain roughly the same. In this saturated space, contextualising your content offering is key. CTO of Addition+, Peter Mason, took the time to describe the new, contextual content being used by client Ricoh. A company that produces its own qualitative content in a multitude of forms (videos, copies, white papers, etc), Ricoh was aiming towards a niche B2B audience, and although it was active on every major social media platform, its reach was limited. Mason explained how Addition+ uses A.I. in order to efficiently invest in paid channels, target the most appropriate audience, lead them to the proper sections of its website and track them through remarketing. The technique in question allowed Ricoh to create potential customer profiles and by identifying user journeys, to determine what sort of content each one was consuming and which type of advert convinced them to click on it. This way, Addition+ was able to serve more engaging content, creating a unique and personalised experience.

James Erskine: Investing On Influencer Marketing

The Big Shot’s Managing Director, James Erskine, presented on the power of influencers in digital marketing. Influencer marketing has a higher reach as it overcomes popup and ad blockers, ‘speaking’ directly to the consumer. The Big Shot’s data suggests that YouTubers’ campaigns have an impressive click-through rate of 10-40 per cent, when the average value in a digital campaign is around 0.05-0.2 per cent. “Ninety-two per cent of the consumers trust recommendations by individuals, even if they’re unrelated to them”, argued Erskine. In terms of measuring the effectiveness of influencer marketing, Erskine mentioned ‘cost per engagement’, which should be clear for each influencer, and gave delegates a glimpse of The Big Shot’s latest platform.

Read the second part of our Figaro Digital Marketing Summit Roundup with the rest of the presentation summaries and videos here, and continue the conversation on Twitter at @Figaro_Digital.