I had a great two days at Marketo Summit 2015 in San Francisco. So many booths to visit, colleagues to learn from and sessions to attend! The keynote sessions were fantastic as well. When Arriana Huftington, John Legend and Salman Khan took the stage, Marketo fulfilled their promise of delivering “Inspiration in the Nation.”

Marketo Summit in 140 Characters or Less

It's like drinking from a firehose sprouting vitamin water (tweet this).

My Biggest Takeaway from Summit

IT’S NOT (about) ME, IT’S (about) YOU.

Marketers need to adopt this reversed break-up line in order to succeed in the era of engagement marketing.According to Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez, mass advertising and planned campaign marketing are dead. The future? It’s all about engagement marketing.

As “first-world” marketers, we need to listen to what our prospects and customers are telling us with their digital footprint and respond to them with personalized messages in different platforms and different devices at the right time.

The Marketing Nation seems to be embracing this strategy with open arms, but is the nation ready and equipped to take on this pivotal approach?

It almost feels like when “big data” emerged. Everybody was talking about it, everybody said they were doing it, but no one was really doing it right.

Let’s check back at Marketo Summit 2016 and compare notes.

Exhibitors I Found Most Interesting

You’ve increased your MQLs 3x? Pipeline has doubled? Revenue grew 30%? And you know which channels and campaigns drove those numbers? Fantastic! But you’re still missing something.

What is predictive analytics? According to Infer, a Palo Alto-based Marketo partner, it’s a solution that “leverages proven data science to rapidly model the untapped data sitting in enterprises, along with hundreds of external signals from the web. Inspired by the simplicity of the consumer web, Infer manifests advanced statistics across huge data sets in applications that anyone can get up and running in just days.”

Musings on Marketo Summit from DNN Marketers

By Linda Cleary

Lattice, a San Mateo-based Marketo partner, goes on to add that, “as a result, marketing and sales can stop guessing and start relying on data science that anyone can use to predict and close their next customer.”

Sounds amazing, right? What’s truly amazing is that they have the data to support their ROI claims. Now back to the real world - you would still have to determine if the solution is right for your business and get the budget for the project. Good luck!

A Conference Learning I Plan to Implement

Tokens. I learned a lot in a session titled “Marketo Pro Tips Episode II: The Token Strikes Back,” presented by Adam New-Waterson and Jeff Shearer. The duo’s presentation, peppered with Star Wars references, provided a jam-packed auditorium with tips and tricks on how to creatively utilize Marketo tokens. I’m planning to implement a couple of them in our Marketo instance. For more information, check out this useful resources page provided by Bloomreach.

Why Am I Here?

There are not many conferences that trigger existential questions, but one of the keynote sessions did just that. It was truly inspiring to hear about the journey of Salman Khan, Founder of Khan Academy, from creating tutorial math videos in his walk-in closet to changing how we view education.

Khan Academy’s mission to provide "a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere," is not only leveling the playing field, but could also change the trajectory of human advancement. It’s time for me to read Salman’s favorite book, “ The Foundation Series” by Isaac Asimov. Maybe it will also help us find our own mission in this world.

Celebrating with Marketing Nation

Pictured: The crowds at Marketo Summit get larger year after year. 

It was great to reconnect with colleagues and friends. Aside from finding out who’s having a baby or who just switched jobs, it was interesting to confirm that we have the same challenges in our work: how to improve on low-performing channels (ahem, PPC), fine-tuning our forecasting, and what to spend on increased budget.

Being at Moscone Center with top marketers, who can relate to your pain and give you advice, was pretty cool! I’m looking forward to the next summit. Onwards!

FYI: Our Marketo Integration

Did you know? Evoq provides integration with Marketo. You can add the Marketo Munchkin code and deploy Marketo Forms 2.0 to your website in just a few keystrokes. You can find further details on our Integrations page.