On Sunday, May 1st, I made my departure from Sacramento, CA, to attend Unica, an IBM Company’s Marketing Innovation Summit (MIS 2011). My first conference as an official IBM employee. Pretty cool!
Here are some takeaways that I gathered (and tweeted):
- Yuchun Lee made an excellent mathematical observation that showed that you really can’t spend enough money to overtake what he referred to as “earned media”. I don’t remember the numbers off-hand. Earned media is loosely defined as what people are saying on social networks. It’s not something you pay for, but rather freely provided by loyal or unhappy customers.
- Yuchun Lee provided a very good reason for the competition to look out. He said he’s not about winning the money, but rather, winning the market. I think he’s got the right prize in mind!
- We were almost overtaken by Craig Hayman’s response as to the importance of Unica’s innovation. He started by saying that IBM didn’t support it…instead, IBM is reliant upon it!
- Elana Anderson was the first I’ve heard to make the comparison of IBM’s fusion of Coremetrics and NetInsight as IBM’s arranged marriage. I found this to be an amusing comparison. So does that make me a groomsman, a ringbearer, or an usher perhaps?
- The most innovative conference swag award from me goes to Covalent Marketing – a stain remover pen.
- One presentation showed that companies are quite out of touch with the intended use of social channels. Customers are really checking out social channels for discounts and to make purchases. One airline has even made it possible to book a flight right on their Facebook page.
- The most amusing story I heard was about the CMO of Air France who had boarded his flight and then received a text message from Air France that his flight had been canceled. He bewilderingly approached the pilot about this who confirmed that the flight was still scheduled to depart. Moments later, the pilot came back to the CMO and relayed the news that he had just received – the flight was canceled! They were both surprised how quickly the company was able to provide up to the minute flight information.
- ING was able to use Unica’s tools to drastically improve one conversion. It required visitors to print, sign and mail a form to complete their process. They discovered that visitors were dropping at the print step. So they setup a campaign that automatically provided the visitor’s phone number to the call center who then called and offered to mail the form. 50% improvement! Amazingly, customers saw this as a service, not marketing! This is a concept that got a lot of attention. If you do your marketing right, the end result is that it is perceived as a service and not marketing.
- Another point that I think is vital to a social marketer’s success – participate! If you don’t have a facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. account, then how can you really understand how to leverage those channels?
- Rockwell introduced a new term to me – web anthropology. Pretty cool! I like being a web anthropologist!
- Another great point is that we’re ALL in sales. If you don’t like it, nobody cares. You are in the business of selling.
I thoroughly enjoyed my week at the Unica, an IBM Company Marketing Innovation Summit (MIS2011). I highly recommend it. Mark Jeffries was an incredible host. He had so many great ideas to take in. I’m already looking forward to MIS2012! You can take a look at all the #MIS2011 tweets on Twitter search.
