Martech Conference Season – April 2018

While B2B marketers are already deep into events season, the two biggest martech events of Spring 2018 are back to back in the San Francisco Bay Area: Marketo Nation Summit 2018 and Martech West 2018 (SJC). I will be attending both this time and wanted to share the sessions I believe will be the most useful for marketing operations.

Martech West (San Jose)

Starting on April 23, the conference is three full days. I haven’t been to this one in two years and decided to go because the content was more relevant to the B2B world this time. Headed by Chiefmartec himself, Scott Brinker, Martech is always insightful. I’ve found that past sessions tended to be too futuristic and too B2C to be put to practical use. This year seems quite different.

Tuesday, April 24 Sessions:

• The Right Way to Buy Marketing Technology
• Converting How VMWare measures marketing’s B2B impact.
• Next Gen of Martech: Strategic Planning in Age of AI
• Visualizing Your Martech Stack
• Product Led vs. Sales Led Marketing
• Cracking the Code of Conversational Marketing
• Real World B2B Personalization Examples
• How RedHat Marketing Decides Next Best Action

Wednesday, April 25 Sessions:

• Navigating the CDP Landscape with David Raab.
• Organization-wide Attribution Model
• GTM Stack
• How to Rapidly Enable Marketers to Leverage Self Service Platform

And I’m sure we’re all waiting for Scott Brinker’s latest Martech Vendor chart!

Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit (SF)

This year will be the seventh time I have attended and the third year I am speaking. Based on the current session list, this looks like a reinvigorated event with exciting keynotes and a higher proportion of How To Sessions from Marketo Champions. If you are going to be there, I am looking forward to meeting you. My good friend Jeff Coveney of RevEngine Marketing has a tremendous post on parties and contests.

Sunday, April 29: University Day

This day is reserved for the opening, University Training, and the Marketo Certification Exam. You can take the Marketo Exam throughout the event as long as you’ve pre-scheduled it.

April 30 to May 2:

Marketo hasn’t posted the Sessions schedule yet, however, the main list of sessions and keynotes are live. Here’s what I’m curious about:

• Google Cloud and Diane Greene – will something new be unveiled?
• ABM Wins from Invoca’s Ari Echt.
• AWSome Sauce: 10 Marketo Lessons from Joe Reitz. Curious what he’s cooked up.
• The Real KPIs of B2B Marketing from Forrester.
• Data Brokerage Service with Custom Objects
• Uber’s CRM Global Org with Wyatt Bales
• Engagement Platform Roadmap – what’s new for Marketo?
• Transforming MOPS into CX Ops
• Microsoft Using AI for Marketing with Charles Eichenbaum
• How to Operationalize ABM – curious what Planview did.
• Inbox Providers Don’t Hate You
• Under the Hood II with Scott Nash – learn more secrets to optimize Marketo performance
• Want a Lasting Career in Marketing? with Joe Chernov.
• Building Multi Product Global Enterprise with Marketo.

And now the plug for my session!

Master Engagement Marketing with Marketo Engagement Programs

In 2016, I shared with attendees my approach to Nurturing effectively. After more than two years of heavy use of Engagement Programs and other unusual asks from marketers, I have a new set of tools to help you operationalize the Customer Journey within Marketo. Insights will include:

• How to Run a Journey Session and why you should always conduct one before touching Marketo.
• Using Engagements to scale up Prospecting Emails, ABM, and Nurturing.
• Reduce time involved in managing programs and focus on content creation.
• Learn how to use Engagements vs. Programs – AND combine them.
• Weird things I discovered.

My session is on April 30 at 2:30pm. Last time this session was SOLD OUT so be sure to line up early and register via the Marketo Summit App.

This session is targeted at more advanced Marketo users and you should be familiar with the basic Engagement program concepts.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

[Updated: April 14, 2018 with additional details.]