Marketo had an amazing annual summit last week. I hope all of you who attended took the time to really take away actionable learnings. For those of you who couldn’t make it, or couldn’t make all of it I wanted to share a few highlights and insights I took away. (My key learnings at the end).

The Industry/ Marketo – Theme: “Inspiration”

• 90% increase in Summit registrations → Validation of our Industry
• 1000 people at Marketo → For context I was employee ~70/80 in 2010
• 56% year over year growth … fasting growing company in this space
• Marketo Japan – Launched
• 43 Countries
• 4000 Clients
• 75% of CMO’s will be the owner and manager of the customer relationship with their company
• Phil discussed data overload and how our challenge is to navigate through it as Marketers that is why we all have to focus on → Engagement Marketing
  • Getting Louder and More emotional is not working (We have all seen this in social media)
  • Marketo weaves customer interactions across all devices now with Marketo Mobile Engagement. Move naturally across channels and create push notifications. Mobile messages in your engagement streams that are location aware. Engagement at the moment that matters.

New Products/ Features

• Theme: Engagement, Personalized Scalable Engagement
• SEO/ Calendar Product
• Marketo Moments → Real time feedback and notifications on the KPI’s of your business, I got a secret beta demo by the PM (thanks AJ!) … pretty cool.
• Marketo Mobile Engagement → Seamless move through devices and delight your customer experience.
• Marketo Linkedin Partnership

Case Studies

• Marketing influenced deals twice as big. – Kaspersky Labs (My former Client woohoo!)
• Heartwarming Hero K12 Case Study … Hero SAAS software sold to k-12 schools, they do the most with the least when 90% of students qualify for financial assistance. → This case study reminded all of us that Marketing isn’t just about software and emails. It reminded us why we do what we do. Overheard:
• “Believe in a child when they don’t believe in themselves.” – Real outcomes, not just business outcomes
• “It’s an honor to be a Marketer.”

Arianna Huffington – Keynote Speaker

Forbes – One of the most powerful women in the world, and quite funny I might add

• Arianna discussed how they moved the industry by creating a site that worked from engaged participation and top down presentation. She said that we need both, we need the engagement with the consumers. This is directly aligned with what we do every day.
• She discussed how HP is not a site, but an equalizing platform where royalty can blog next to a homeless teenage. She said “This for me is the magic of an open platform”

• Bestest Quotes Ever:
  • “Ubiquity is new Exclusivity”
  • “Poke the Pope” – We have fun.
  • “OMG IMF”
  • “Trust is the New Black” In discussing the importance of earning your readers confidence.

John Legend – Keynote Speaker

Another amazing speaker, 9 time grammy and 2015 academy award winner. Aside from being incredibly talented and singing some of our collective favorite songs live, he shared a few very important take aways:

• “Sometimes your dreams take a detour”
• John worked at the Boston Consulting Group (My sister works there and says it’s an amazing place) He talked about lots of spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations (BCG should really Go Google (Shout out to my client hehe :))
• He pursued and was unsuccessful in getting signed in 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. He said he was “Turned down by every major label including the one he is signed with now”
• He described, beautifully that the key to his success was not just collaboration, but … “Approaching Collaboration with HUMILITY” #Awesome. This is by far something I wish they would start teaching in school. Seriously the Ego and lack of humility is by far a growing problem in our space (in my opinion)
• He also shared the amazing work he does with Free America to address our over incarcerated Nation. He spoke of how sometimes there exists school to prison pipelines and how with the work they have been doing have freed 10’s of thousands of people.

That is living beautifully.

Maneeza’s most important Take away:

“Is this what success looks like?” Arianna described how she asked herself this question when out of pure exhaustion she passed out, hit her head and woke up in a pool of her own blood. Diagnosis: Burnout. By all explicit measures, she was a success … but what should success really be like?

This resonated very personally with me. Building a company growing as fast as we are often times has this moment of pure exhaustion. And to hear the same experience captured and communicated from such an important woman in our industry was an amazing reminder.

Moral/ Solution: Renewal, sleep, exercise and meditation is not counterproductive. She said there is a “Collective dilution that burnout is the only way to succeed.” “Is this what a good life is. Indeed, what is a good life? We need third metric … ”

From my (Maneeza’s) point of view, this is the question I want to tackle. “Indeed, what is a good life.” I would add, how do we make sure that whatever our answer is, is woven into every part of our life, including our work … that is the challenge I am signing up for. I hope you do too.

The beauty of this speaker was that she was also incredibly entertaining She said: “We are taking better care of our smartphones than ourselves

i.e. we know how much battery is left in our smart phone then look for charging shrine” (lol @ Charging Shrine)

More amazing quotes from Arianna:

• “The more connected we are to our inner wisdom the better decisions we make.”
• “Hiring mistakes when you are tired and want to just check off the list.” (Guilty!)
• “Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” – Rumi (Arianna carries this quote around with her. I have it in my Notebook of inspiring thoughts at home.)

Explicit actions she has taken:

• Ended bringing devices into meetings → @ HP
• Nap Room 🙂
• After work they are not expected to be on email. If it is urgent, we will call or text you.

I left the conference truly inspired. Very well done Marketo. It is an honor to be part of such an amazing group of professionals who are passionate about what they do, but more importantly, it gave me a minute to see all the beautiful people behind the emails, voicemails and conference calls. #Win.

I really really wanted to see the Khan Academy presentation. But I needed some sleep. 🙂 (Thanks for the great advice Arianna.)

Originally Posted: LinkedIn – 4/22/2015