We’re back today for Day Two of Digital Summit Los Angeles!

Yesterday was an awesome day full of helpful workshops and presentations. If you missed it, here’s the Day One Digital Summit Los Angeles Live Blog.

It’s always fun to be surrounded by so many people that do what I do and have a passion for it. It’s energizing!

Today, we’ve got a full day of 30-minute presentations, with a couple of keynotes mixed in.

Stay tuned, because there’s a ton of fun stuff in store for today (if you’re a marketing nerd like me).

Digital Content Lessons from a Fyre Festival Attendee – Seth Crossno, Dumpster Fyre Podcast

• 8:48 AM: We’re 15+ minutes in and the only lesson I’ve learned so far from this Fyre Festival Attendee is to get to the meat of your content quicker, because as of now he’s only managed to make telling the story of Fyre Fest incredibly tiresome.
• 8:51 AM: We’re now getting into learning what content works best on what platforms. Images and video are always most popular, but even the social channel it’s shared on matters. Know who your audience is on each of them and what they want to see. A video that doesn’t perform on Twitter might be much more successful on Facebook.
• 8:53 AM: You don’t have to spend $250K on Kendall Jenner. Find the fans of what you already do and make them your brand evangelists. Invite them in and make them a part of your community.
• 8:55 AM: Reach your audience where they are and provide the kind of content they want to consume.
• 8:58 AM: Seth trails off… “so I think that’s… (turns and looks at final slide) yeah.” That’s literally how it ended. I don’t know much more about creating “fyre” content, but I’m pretty sure that wet blanket could put out an actual fire.

Four Automated Email Series That Get Serious Results – Akerho Oghoghomeh, CM Group

• 9:18 AM: Automation is an opportunity to inject ourselves into the customer journey. They’re relevant and timely and should be used by more marketers. Only about HALF of marketers are using automation. Additionally, that half is mostly Welcome Emails only.
• 9:19 AM: According to eMarketer, B2C marketers leveraging automation have conversion rates as high as 50%.
• 9:20 AM: About half of the subscribers you engage aren’t ready to buy. That’s why automation can be a helpful tool to engage them and stay top-of-mind.
• 9:21 AM: Welcome Emails are the basic version of automation.
  • Triggered when someone subscribes, by a download (with an opt-in) or a purchase (with an opt-in).
  • Average 8x higher revenue per email
  • Make the most of a Welcome Email by making it a series
  • See where your signups are coming from, determine the next steps, consider the customer journey and create the template and start automating.
• 9:24 AM: Date-based emails
  • Triggered when a date is approaching or a date has passed
  • Birthday emails genrage342% higher revenue per email
  • Make the most of it by offering a unique promo or follow-up after a purchase
  • Coordinate the dates with what fits your offer, gather the right data and then create and automate!
• 9:27 AM: Level 2 Automation – Content nurturing
  • Usually centered on educational content
  • What you need: educational content, email, map the outcomes
  • How they’re triggered: Downloaded content, attended an event, purchased a product, used a service and many more
  • Relevant content-driven emails can product 18x more revenue – Jupiter Research
  • Make the most of it: relevant and based on the specific action they took
  • Where to start: Map the starting points, outline the journey, create and automate
  • Key Takeaways:
    • Content nurturing should be very targeted, based on specific goals
    • Consider what you want them to do next
• 9:32 AM: Level 2 Automation – Story nurturing
  • Creative use of storytelling to inspire more experiences with your brand
  • What you need: experiences, reviews or case studies, storytelling basics, map the outcomes
  • How it’s triggered: Purchased or donated, downloaded content
  • Why you should do it: story nurturing picks up where content leaves off
  • Where to start: identify pain points, find stories that fit, create and automate
  • Takeaways:
    • Stimulate the heart
    • The story should relate to your unique value proposition
• 9:36 AM: Advanced Automation – Behavior in an email
  • What you need: ESP with email click tracking, creativity
  • How it’s triggered: clicks in your email
  • Why you should do it: Emails triggered by behavior can contribute 30% of your revenue, according to the DMA
  • Where to start:
    • 1. Examine your basic and level two automation sequences
    • 2. See where new tracks can be explored
    • 3. Create and automate
  • Key takeaways
    • You need an ESP that can support this activity (Benchmark does this!)
    • Combine this automation series with your existing automation sequences
• 9:40 AM: Advanced Automation – Behavior on your website
  • What you need: integrations, webhooks, API, Creativity (or use Automation Pro)
  • Triggered by activity on your website or in-app
  • Why you should do it: Abandoned cart emails may recover 63% of lost revenue, according to Business Insider
  • Where to start:
    • 1. Draw up your customer journey
    • 2. Identify key points where emails can reinforce the experience
    • 3. Create and automate

Why Your Brand Works in the “Real World” But Fails When Online – Juntae DeLane, Digital Delane, Digital Branding Institute

• 10:06 AM: Only 48% of US respondents trust businesses
• 10:09 AM: Consumer distrust impacts their path-to-purchase
• 10:10 AM: People are going outside your path-to-purchase because of their distrust. They look to review sites, online communities, etc. That means what we’re sending to them becomes less effective.
• 10:11 AM: What can you do about this?
  • Focus on building a digital brand. Digital branding is the whole puzzle: social, content and SEO are the pieces.
    • Delane believes social media is starting to plateau. Audiences know it’s become less organic, that brands have to pay to play.
    • Savvier marketers are starting to understand what we’re doing as marketers, making content marketing more difficult.
    • SEO isn’t just about linkbacks, but engagement with your pages.
• 10:15 AM: How can you enhance your digital brand?
  • It starts with your brand voice:
    • Character: human characteristics
    • Purpose: your point of view
    • Language: the words you use to describe your offering
    • Tone: it’s not what you say, but how you say it
    • 70% of those polled by Survata said they were irritated by the use of inappropriate jargon from a brand
    • OPP: Objective, Promise, Personality
  • Be Memorable
    • Use reality shows as market research. See what’s memorable about the characters.
    • Wendy’s social media as an example. They’re adopting a consumer voice.
• 10:23 AM: On social media platforms, consumers don’t want to be helped. They want to be engaged.
• 10:24 AM: Use micro trends to help you capture your own brand voice and align it with your consumers
  • Quickly capitalize on a cultural moment and leverage a micro-trend
  • Assess your organization’s agility: can you act quickly to do this?
  • Develop a protocol for leveraging micro-trends: Super Bowl, Grammy’s, Final Four, etc. Is your team equipped to handle social trends as they come?
  • Micro-moments: Be there, Be useful, Be quick
    • Be there: where is your target audience searching for your offering?
    • Be useful: are you creating content with value for your audience? 73% of consumers say that regularly receiving useful info is the deciding factor when choosing a brand
    • Be quick: what is getting in the way of having your target audience taking you up on your offering and what can be done to fix it.
• 10:31 AM: Prioritize the customer experience
  • Just because you can’t measure it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist
  • 65% of buyers consider a positive experience to be more influential than advertising
  • Go from transactional to experiential
• 10:34 AM: Reaching people isn’t the challenge-it’s connecting with people

Growth by Content: Driving Massive Traffic Without a Big Budget – Nadya Khoja, Venngage Infographics

• 11:08 AM: 4-Step Framework for Massive Organic Growth: Goals, Research, Authority, Promotion
• 11:10 AM: Goals: how to establish specific goals for various types of content
  • Higher domain authority (DA), higher conversions, increased traffic
  • Different content can help you achieve different goals
  • Viral/editorial: higher DA, Actionable/how-to: conversions, inspirational: more traffic
• 11:14 AM: Research: how to strategically research which keywords to rank for
  • 2-types of pages: boring (high-converting LPs) and not boring (blog posts, etc.)
  • Brainstorm keywords and categories/topics, then keep breaking down “category” topics into more long-tail search queries
  • Understand the theme and depth of topics you write about
• 11:17 AM: Authority: How to structure your content to establish authority on Google
• 11:19 AM: Promotion: How to effectively promote various types of content for growth
  • Too many marketers spent 80% of their time creating the content and only 20% promoting it
  • Promotion should take up more time than the creation of your content
  • Cold-outreach best practices for link building
    • Don’t sound like a robot
    • Cull your lists and make sure the content is relevant
    • Don’t be afraid to inject your personality in your outreach (Be yourself … unless “yourself” sucks … then be someone better.)
    • Give people a reason to care about what you’re doing (and don’t always rely on short emails working)
    • Build a relationship: link building is a long-term strategy

Reinventing Content Marketing Into a Measurable Business Strategy – Robert Rose, Content Marketing Institute

• 11:51 AM: Trust is the one thing that we must deliver. Trust is at its lowest point ever today.
• 11:54 AM: Content marketing is building a corporate branding asset
• 11:57 AM: Strategic content is stuck in average
  • 51% “small group” servicing entire company
  • 35% have a formal strategy
  • 24% committed to content marketing
  • 20% very proficient at ROI
  • 90% successful content marketers put audience information needs above all else
• 11:59 AM: The Four Business Models of Content Marketing
  • Player: content as a contributor marketing tactic
  • Performer: content as a department marketing strategy
  • Processor: content as a service
  • Platform: content as a business model
• 12:06 PM: Content is a product not a project, it’s not more efficient, it’s a business model. It’s harder. It’s more expensive. But it’s your opportunity to build trust.
• 12:08 PM: Two important questions: Can I have your attention? Can I have your trust?
  • Zero moment of trust: I trust this message/brand
  • First moment of trust: I trust this product
  • Second moment of trust: I trust this experience

The Four Horsemen of the Web Marketing Apocalypse – Rand Fishkin, SparkToro

• 12:46 PM: In 2016, this happened: keywords sending less traffic, “good” content was not enough, links in social get little traction, fewer followers see your posts, influencers failed to influence and ads got expensive
• 12:48 PM: Social Platforms Massively Diminished Outlinking Traffic
  • Facebook killed organic reach. Outbound, referral traffic went to almost zero.
  • Twitter and LinkedIn also suppress content that has URLs/links
  • YouTube cuts off descriptions to avoid making links visible in default view. They cut it off wherever you put the link.
• 12:53 PM: Who still does send web traffic?
  • Google has always been the one … right?!
• 12:55 PM: Google (for the first time) Sends Less Organic Traffic
  • Google solves more and more queries WITHOUT clicks. The answers for searches are directly in the SERPs.
  • 30% growth in no click mobile searches over the past two years
  • Once Google owns all the traffic, there’s no more incentive for publishers to create content
• 1:02 PM: “Influencers” failing to influence
  • Very little metrics accountability from brands on influencers. Less than 50% ask what happened with a campaign. That’s the fault of the marketers.
  • There is a growing backlash on influencer marketing
• 1:08 PM: Web Advertising ROI (in many fields) is trending to zero
  • Ad bids in many sectors are going beyond what is profitable for businesses
  • Many marketers aren’t on top of their metrics
• 1:10 PM: So … what do we do?! The Smart Marketer’s Battle Plan
  • Center All Marketing on your website and email lists
    • 10 email addresses > 10,000 New Followers
    • 100 website visitors > 10,000 new followers
    • 100 true fans beats 100,000 visitors
    • Change your approach to SEO
      • Click volume > search volume
  • Build flywheels: a great marketing flywheel scales with decreasing friction
    • Flywheels are hard at first, but get easier and more profitable with scale
    • You want a flywheel that sparks demand
    • Growing branded searches > ranking #1 for generic searches
  • We need to market where our audiences are actually paying attention
    • Discover your audience’s true sources of influence – market there
    • It’s hard to get this data, but surveys and interviews are a good start
    • If your competitor ignore a channel, you can get higher content/ad engagement for less money
  • Balance social engagement vs. drawing clicks
    • When content does poorly, Facebook will reduce your next posts reach. Same is true for the opposite. Good post? More reach for next post, unless it starts to show low engagement. True on all platforms.
    • They’re designed to engage, addict and train us.
    • Use this formula:
      • High-engagement, non-promotional post
      • Repeat step above
      • Promo w/link
      • Back to step 1
      • Repeat step 1 yet again
  • Broaden Content & Outreach Campaigns
    • Successful content targets topics that resonate with amplifiers, not just customers
    • What your customers care about (only a piece of the puzzle). Doesn’t help get visibility/engagement
    • Play to what influential publications and people your customers listen to and care about
    • The harder content is to create, the more likely it will be to do well
    • Spray and pray outreach leads to reputational damage for your brand, social, email and search
  • Use Ads to Reach Already Primed Audiences
    • First: Organic and Brand, Then: Ads and CRO
    • How to win at digital advertising
      • Earn brand exposure w/your target audience
      • Get organic visits and social engagement
      • Advertise to those you already know like you

Get More out of Every Email You Send – Brett Merle

• 1:57 PM: 1st big lesson: walk before you run. Start simple. You don’t have to do everyting at once.
• 1:58 PM: We have to cut through the noise and inspire action.
• 2:00 PM: Strategic Thinking
  • Journeys exist within journeys and are incrementally important
  • To control the experience, control the journey and the purchase will come
• 2:02 PM: Keys for Success
  • Don’t blast and broadcast
  • Email is a channel for action. It’s NOT a place to consume content. Leave content to landing pages.
  • It’s all about the Call To Action (CTA). Every email goes like this:
    • Step 1: Here’s some ? you want to do.”
    • Step 2: [Do the ?] (CTA button)
  • Mind your real estate. Compelling CONTENT and CTA must always be above the fold. Keep your messages succinct.
  • Learn to VENT
    • Valuable (targeted)
    • Engaging (personalized)
    • Necessary (goal based)
    • True (validating)
• 2:09 PM: How do you do it?
  • Know your audience statically. Signup forms are the doorway to your contacts, first opportunity to understand who they are.
  • Know your audience dynamically. People are behaviors.
  • Dynamic content. Right offers to the right people, different CTAs.
  • Segment and personalize. Don’t broadcast, personalize. Meaning makes action. Timeliness is critical.
  • Put time back into content. Automate what you can, so you can focus on what you cannot automate.
• 2:15 PM: Results: More targeted, actionable emails that you can actually measure, learn from and repeat.

The Most Powerful Email Data Lessons All Found in the Movie Groundhog Day – Sam Douglass III, 250ok

• 2:31 PM: Groundhog Day is actually a data story.
  • Email isn’t sexy. It’s the “Puxatawny job.” But that’s just a matter of perspective. The numbers show emails impact.
  • Email can feel like the same every day, week, month, season.
  • Use data to take advantage.
  • People get wise, then get angry.
    • Regulations result when this happens. Example: GDPR, CCPA
    • Cobra effect. The law of unintended consequences. Increasing a promo thinking it’ll help, but it hurts the value of your brand.
  • Disillusionment. “You’ll never love anyone but yourself.”
  • Now what?
  • Enlightenment: Missing Something
    • Small, but meaningful ways everyday
  • Use data for good
• 2:42 PM: Engagement Data
  • Data you see (last seen, clicks, opens)
  • Data you can’t see. Survivorship bias can show you what to do, but how do you get that data?
    • Spamtraps, other reputation-harming actions, be mindful of the emails that don’t make it to the inbox.
    • List validation services help you ensure recipients are actual, real people and avoid unseen pitfalls.
    • DMARC Policy, SPF/DKIM
    • Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI)
• 2:50 PM: Email Design
  • Use your data to design to your audience. Ex: Older audience, use a bigger font.
  • Use email previews and test to see how they’ll look and the devices your reports show your audience is using.
• 2:52 PM: Google Email Annotations
  • Make the most out of being in the Promotions Tab. Shows more info about your email in the tab.
• 2:54 PM: Smart Speakers
  • Have to write more like you speak, not use emojis, etc. It’s burgeoning, so might not need to start tomorrow, but be aware of it. Design emails with the user in mind (more accessible for some audiences). Use the preheader text to optimize for speech.

Make Your Buyer Your Content Hero – MaryAnn Holder-Browne, One Network Enterprises

• 3:19 PM: How do we connect with our buyers?
  • Do we lead with head marketing? Appealing to intellect.
  • Do we lead with heart marketing? Appealing to emotional.
• 3:21 PM: The Approach
  • If you want customers to buy, you must tell a story where the customer is the hero – not you
  • “Be the wizard who gives the hero the sword.”
  • How We Win Internally
    • Credible, Useful, Create the Sensation of Winning
• 3:22 PM: The Making of a Hero
  • Just Do It campaign: Not trying to get you to buy the shoe. Getting you to believe you’re the hero
• 3:24 PM: The Journey
  • 1. Call To Action: A normal person is faced with evil or adversity.
  • 2. Supernatural Aid: A mentor, sometimes in the form of a supernatural entity, arrives to show the person what they are capable of and gives them the confidence or skills to battle the evil forces
  • 3. The Master of Two Worlds: The hero battles and defeats evil and brings peace.
• 3:26 PM: Types of Learners
  • Visual
  • Auditory
  • Reading/Writing
  • Kinesthetic
• 3:34 PM: People trust a sales rep at 3%. Only profession that’s worse is a politician.

How to Talk to Your Customers in a Voice First World – Dave Isbitski, Chief Evangelist, Amazon

• 4:05 PM: Alexa gives accessibility to people who can’t read or write.
• 4:07 PM: Speech understanding advancements have skyrocketed in recent years. There’s been a big rise in Natural Language Understanding. It’s looking at our intention, regardless of who you are, how old you are, etc.
• 4:10 PM: Amazon believes voice is the next major advancement in computers.
• 4:12 PM: Alexa gives humans the ability to naturally comunicate with the technology in their lives.
  • Conversation is complex
  • Utterances and Intents: Wake Word, Launch, Utterance, Invocation Name
• 4:18 PM: What conversations can you have with your audience?
  • Anything that will be a time saver
  • Telling convos: what’s the weather like outwise?
  • Searching: identifies specific info
  • Doing: performing a task
• 4:24 PM: Devices like Alexa are also training our search habits. Tailor your content to it. People will ask things like: Alexa, how do I remove a grass stain?