Marketo had an outstanding annual summit last week in always exciting Las Vegas. For those who attended, I know you will agree, that the opportunity to meet your fellow purple colleagues is amazing. I am always blown away by the enthusiasm and professional commitment of this industry. For those of you who couldn’t make it, I wanted to share with you take-aways, lessons and hopefully inspiration.

Theme: Managing The Customer Experience

I feel like Marketo has been listening in on my team meetings, because literally this has been taking over my brain for the last quarter! I am even considering changing my title from Chief Executive Officer to Chief Experience Officer (I get to keep the acronym!) … put your thoughts on this in the comments.

Numbers: Because they are important:

Attendees: 5200 – I heard a number that said while in SF 40% of attendees are local, the fact that Marketo hit 5200 in Las Vegas is #Impressive.

Employees: 1000 – For context I was employee about 50 in 2011.

Years in Business: 10 – Wow, milestone – For context, Marvel Marketers is coming up on 3. A really cool way this was presented was that Marketo started around the same time as Twitter and when the IPHONE was released. Talk about coming a long way! Happy 10 Years @Marketo!

# of breaths you have to take for every step on Everest: 5-10 (Details below on Amazing speaker)

% of CMO’s who believe they will own the customer experience by 202o: 86%

% of Gartner respondents expecting to compete on customer experience: 89%

# of customer events that Marketo’s Project Orion will support: 40,000,000 with 100 – 1000 X faster trigger performance … #Whoah.

The number of Years Will Smith has been entertaining us: 30

Phil’s presentation was different this year. He was really psyched about something. I can’t even pinpoint exactly what, he spoke about all the cool stuff coming out, the three coolest being:

1. Project Orion a new category of enterprise customer architecture
2. Marketo ABM functionality (Not Engagio … see below for Engagio stuff) – You couldn’t turn a corner without someone talking about ABM, Coming this Summer.
3. Audience Hub … @Apttus doing some great things there. Using Marketo to understand 40K of best leads. Pretty cool use of Data.

But in addition to that, he said a few very telling things, speaking almost to a critical mass in our industry where Marketers have finally caught up to the technology. He spoke about ideas around “Tomorrow’s Marketer never leaving the side of the customer.” That feels daunting and is a huge responsibility to us as Marketers who must manage that experience. We were also super proud of our own folks@MarvelMarketers, @StevenRodriguez and @AmandaThall whose client Portland Trailblazers and Davita were featured in the key note! #WOW.

Amazing Speakers and Take Aways

There were tons of great speakers. I want to speak about 2 of them. First, @Alison Levin, author of On the Edge. She spoke of her journey in climbing Mt. Everest. You would think it would have been another “I worked hard, failed, didn’t give up and finally made it” But frankly, I was so inspired by Alison’s honest, highlights of what success truly looks like.

As the CEO of a ridiculously fast growing company, there were many times when I just wanted to say .. Yes, exactly, that is exactly what success looks and feels like, sometimes you do want to throw up. And you do have to make sure your head doesn’t explode (LOL) She spoke of being content making the hard decision of climbing back down just hundreds of feet from the summit and having the wisdom to know that, that too was success. I relish the successes we have had over the last couple of years and in fact it has nothing to do with some prescribed idea of what the “TOP” of our journey looks like!

She spoke in terms of gratitude and acknowledgement of other’s successes in being just as accomplished as her whether they made it to the top or not. This is exactly how I feel about the industry, each of us are finding our success, and life is not a zero sum game where for you to be successful others have to fail. I loved meeting some of our competitors, and really appreciated their gracious greetings and in some cases good advice!

She spoke of her final motivating factor of returning to finish the climb, having nothing to do with the people who were always discounting her achievement by pointing out she hadn’t actually climbed to the top! She returned in honor of her friend who passed, a far superior motivation. #peoplefirst

She described how to climb Mount Everest, you literally climb up to base camp, then climb down, then climb up to the second marker then climb down, then the third, beautifully demonstrating that “Progress is not one direction” !! For anyone who has started a company, this is what it feels like. You wake up one day and go … wait a second, I thought we passed this point, only to find, you have to return to it to keep growing!

“Backing up is not the same as backing down” #Inspiration

She spoke of fear being a normal human emotion. “Complacency is what will kill you.” This might as well be @MarvelMarketers theme statement. The agility required to “Act and react quickly to changing conditions” has really been one of the biggest keys to our success. She mentioned how Mt. Everest is very, very , very bad for control freaks … I am here to say so is starting a successful company … as I have learned. The irony of it all is as she described how she had puked right before a picture she posted, but had carried on … a few of my employees messaged me at that moment on the #Awesome APP (Well done @doubledutch) because upon my arrival at Vegas, I got really sick!

I had a “house/hotel” call with Dr. Jordan who prescribed me medication for Bronchitis and Asthma, not to mention cough syrup. So I was pretty much a mess all week, but had to power through. I even almost threw up on @Glen Lipka … sorry 🙂 But you do what you got to do per our speaker.

“Be Relentless” #Inspiration

Now on to the timeless talented master of brand management Mr. Will Smith {insert applause and excitement here} Will (we are on a first name basis since I got a selfie) did a very good job relating his success to a few simple themes. First he said he considers himself much more a marketer than an entertainer. He said part of what he does is creating an emotion for people to be excited about a product (I assume he meant himself as the product). Frankly, I feel Will has mastered what our prior speakers discussed around customer experience. All we know is that after Will is around, people are happy. They are entertained, they are inspired, they are excited. And in some cases, they discover their stalking talent. i.e. my consultant @StevenRodriguez. I think part of this is very much him cultivating the reaction he wants his audience to have to him. I speak a lot about this very concept with my team. How do you make sure the client engages with you the way you want them to engage. If you do not manage that an organic and maybe not optimal engagement will surface.

Similarly in our day to day Marketing initiatives, and in Particular with ABM, or as @Engagio is brilliantly repurposing ABE (Account Based Everything) how do we orchestrate the experience we want our customers and prospects to have with our brand. I tell my folks that your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. (Best definition I picked up somewhere). What do you want people to know or experience with you? In fact, what do we all want people to know and experience with us? I think we should write it down and then measure ourselves against it … you know … like a benchmark #nerdalert.

The part of Will’s speech that really hit close to home is when he started talking about his kids … Millennials, and how for them the transparency that technology has brought into the world has forced complete authenticity. Music to my ears. While everyone knows I, like Will, really struggle to understand Millennials, what motivates them, why they do what they do, why they struggle with commitment, and decisions etc. That being said, they also bring some amazing things to our industry. For starters, I agree with Will about authenticity. they are very clear in mindset with what they believe to be what they want. I don’t always agree they are right, but at least they are clear. Also, as an economist (other career), to me, authenticity in industries, and people, and technology as a forcing agent means more complete information, which means better decisions, which means better equilibriums. I will stop here before I get tempted to graph something for you nice folks that made it this far in my post. He too spoke of being “Fearless and Relentless” All these smart people are really onto something!

Who won for Brand?

So, I always pay close attention to whose brand kicked butt at the summit. I do this for a couple of reasons. Brand is everything to me … personal and professional. As someone who is always trying to learn (Try it out it’s awesome), I want to follow the lead of who ever is being the best leader. I feel if I thought of the industry’s lifecycle, @Everstring won top of funnel on brand awareness. We have no idea if this awareness will push folks down the buying curve, but Everstring’s ability to throw the most awesome party that was fun, casual, entertaining because Will Smith joined, had everyone saying “Did you go, or are you going to, or are you at the Everstring party. I have been to a gazillion corporate events. Including the Bellagio 5 years in a row for my prior career, and no one threw a party like an Everystring party. I think it felt authentic … sounds weird but ask around, it was a hugely comfortable party for the industry.

If we look at product. I.e. which product did everyone leave thinking about hands down @Engagio won. Even though Marketo spoke about their ABM functionality, @JonMiller’s ability to be a thought leader in the space was pretty darn cool to see. Just like when I was at Salesforce they changed their ticker from SFDC to CRM (super smart), they really claimed CRM. I feel Engagio really claimed ABE (Account Based Everything) which de facto includes ABM. They had great presence in the Expo, their brand awareness had been obviously managed way before summit where folks showed up hungry for it. It was super awesome to see. Well Done!

I have so much more to say, as usual, but I will end with saying stay fearless and relentless my friends! 🙂 Until next year.

Maneeza

P.S. Did I mention I loved Students at Summit?

P.S.S. Marvel Marketer’s session at Summit re: Compliance went #Awesome. Here is a clever pic of our session consistent with compliance hehe

Originally Posted: LinkedIn – 5/16/2016