The Whitelist

breakfast of champions - SP Agency Partners

All good things must end.  Today was the end of the whirlwind (literally, a tornado rolled in today) tour of the SP Client Summit.  Started the day getting to meet some of the SP Agency Partners.  Some collaborating and strategizing got the day off to a good beginning.

Dave Daniels’ keynote on the New Rules of Relevancy got the day ‘officially’ started – he never fails to deliver and it was a good shot in the arm to get energized for the rest of the day.

Right on the heels of Dave’s keynote was yours truly – presenting on ‘Proving Your Worth with Metrics’.  The pressure was on, following Bill Nussey then Dave Daniels on the stage was a tall order – my 9th grade teacher had predicted my future would involve parole hearings and probations officer(s) – she would have been surprised to see me there on the same stage as those guys.

I felt like I was ready, but with some of the best/brightest marketers on the planet in the room – I knew I had to bring a good game.  The applause at the end was not deafening, but I didn’t see anyone leave during the entire hour.  Providing great relief was that I had posted our SMS short code of how people could download the presentation if they were interested – and within a few minutes my gig wrapping up, there was enough traffic/download requests coming in that I was able to stop worrying right away.

88769 is the short code to use, send the message – cmmnews youremail (that is cmmnews, space, your email address) and you’ll get signed up for the ClickMail Marketer and we’ll make sure you get sent links to presentation.

Brandi Heinz and Kristen Hagen - representing divisions of Follett

Kim Peters of Axentis - here for her 2nd summit...

Amanda Horvath of iStockPhoto - all the way down from the GreatWhiteNorth for her 2nd summit

Step right up, all the leading-edge content you can consume…  Howdy y’all (loving Atlanta).  Wow, been drinking from the firehose today, what an amazing calibre and quantity of information to digest.  Fortunately (thankfully), I’ve had help from my bloggingpartner-in-crime Chrissy in getting double the coverage of sessions than I could have done on my own.  She was in John Coe’s session early this afternoon on Data-Driven Creative (B2B) and did a great job picking up what he was laying down.  Here’s the rub: data and creative are not connected (by the vast majority of marketers – even the good ones), even though we KNOW that ‘the higher the relevancy of the offer and the message, the higher the engagement will be of the recipient’.  To get thru the clutter (and noise in the inbox), data and creative HAVE to be connected.

Okay John.  How?  Campaign plan comes first (driven by database), creative comes second.  The campaign plan needs to have 3 levels – 1st being based on demographic data, and the creative should be ’soft and relevant’ to a specific demographic.  2nd level is set around behavioral data (search inquiries, whitepaper downloads etc) and the creative needs to reference the behavior that triggered the message being sent – with a goal of getting recipient’s commitment to next buying step.  3rd level is then driven by relationship data (lead scoring, sales/site visits, high value customer…) and now the creative is functional, direct and a hard sell “we know you’re about ready” with a message goal of commitment to final steps in buying process.  Key point – the creative must involve 3 critical things – messaging, offer, and media (email vs postal).

Big-game marketing tools

You buying?  I’m selling.  Love this stuff, high calibre ammo to go big-game hunting.  Yeah baby yeah.

Gotta go get my Easy-on.  The 20’s themed SpeakEasy party started half an hour ago, I’m late.  More (much more) later.

yeah - it's on!

So what’s there to smile about at Silverpop’s Client Summit?  When you’re Mitch Diamond – plenty!  This is Mitch’s show.  His baby.  His 5th year of making it happen.  This year’s numbers?  Better than last year’s! (hmmm, economic rebound already?)  Or is it the drink in his hand?  Or the buzz in the room about what’s in store over the next couple of days?  This blogger has not heard of ANY email event so far in 2009 that has outperformed the prior year’s version.  Way to go MD… 

Saw a couple of icons tonight.  John Coe of The Sales & Marketing Institute (and past board director of the DMA).  John ran the EngageB2B ‘boot camp’ today, high energy strategy for B2B marketers – got great reviews!  He also has a much anticipated webinar coming up later this month (May 14th) in association with MarketingProfs.  “7 fast-acting methods to drive B2B revenue NOW“.  If you’re selling/marketing into the B2B realm, don’t miss this one! The other icon – none other than the author of The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing, CEO and President of Silverpop — Bill Nussey.  Really looking forward to his opening remarks on ‘the future of email’, on deck for first thing tomorrow.

lot's to smile about

This is my first time to a Silverpop client summit, and my first trip to Atlanta – I guarantee you it won’t be my last (for either)!

smiles all 'round

She also offered up her assessment of what the “big release“ being announced tomorrow might be…  In her ’perfect world’, it would be a marketing platform that was even more intuitive and easier to use than Silverpop is now.  She went to describe other elements of her perfect world vision that supported ‘drag-and-drop’ across the entire ‘net for ALL APPS.  Cool.  I am having a good time getting to know the marketers here, there is some serious brainpower in this place.  One more reason to be smiling…