Thirteen hours of presentations, 20 hours of interviews,

and 34 speakers share one common theme: The right marketing

technology can help marketers stimulate customer

engagement and drive ROI. Here, we distill the key issues for you

What Wins in Marketing Today Pg. 3

The 2016 Marketing & Tech Innovation Awards Case Study Category Winners Pg. 4

Stars of MarTech Pg. 10

Platform Winners Pg. 13

The Summit: Lessons Learned Pg. 16

T he 2016 Marketing & Tech Innova-tion Summit & Awards is all about how marketing teams are using

conventional and cutting-edge technolo-gies to innovate their marketing and im-prove business performance. In this com-pendium of coverage from the conference, we share the strategies that award-winning marketers are using to transform innova-tive marketing ideas into profitable reality.

In the run-up to announcing our 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation Awards, I spent a great deal of time reviewing nomination forms, examining judges’ scores and comments, and reading winners’ pro-files. Not surprisingly, a few commonalities emerged that shed light on what being successfully innovative in marketing requires today. Here are a few attributes that surfaced.

Balance: Today, even the most creative marketers need to embrace their more analytic side. Similarly, data-crunching marketers need to think creatively and use data to tell stories that will help their colleagues in marketing and on other customer-facing teams make strategic and tactical decisions.

Customer centricity: While some of the winners focus on person-alization in terms of messaging and content, others aim to connect with customers based on their behavior or where they are in their purchase or lifecycle. Indeed, one judge scored a winning entry high in part because it’s “a good example of [being] customer driven — aligning content and propositions based on where the customer is on [his] journey.” Another judge said about a winning entry, “Its personalized lifecycle marketing strategy is highly effective.”

Outcome driven: “Loved the in-depth measurements of suc-cess” was but one example of the comments judges made in citing metrics-related attributes that made award winners stand out. Hav-ing success metrics and expected outcomes associated with their initiatives are musts for all marketers today, as the pressure to prove the value and ROI of marketing increases. Consider: One winner was cited for an approach that “brought clear business benefits to the company,” as well as for finding “areas for business improvement/

transformation, and then literally helping to write the manual(s) for [the company] to drive/retain revenue.”

On trend: From omnichannel consistency to mobile engagement, sev-eral winners stood out for recognizing and acting on trends that have real impact. A judge remarked that one winning entry, for instance, “is revolutionizing consumer engagement and the links between our physical and digital selves.” Another pointed out that a winner “out-smarted” the competition through its highly successful use of the sec-ond screen to engage TV-watching consumers on social media.

Impactful: Sometimes great marketing is about more than just serving individual customers; it’s about addressing multiple audi-ences, or even the greater good. This was evident in several win-ning entries. For instance, one judge noted that a winner stood out because it’s “building components that matter to both retailers and customers.” Another was cited for “incredibly important work [that] sheds light on a significant, material problem for marketers world-wide and that will help save advertisers millions/billions and pro-tect consumers.” A third was praised for its broad appeal on social: “I love the promotion of goodwill,” one judge said.

Disciplined: Knowing what not to do is often just as, if not more, important than knowing what to do. One judge, for example, called out a winning entry for having “the discipline to actually turn off content that wasn’t working.”

Check out “The 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation Awards” to see the full profiles on this year’s winners — and to see why, as one judge so aptly said, “Forget the basics…That’s award-worthy.”

What Wins in Marketing TodayCommonalities among the winners of DMN's 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation Awards shed light on what it takes to be successfully innovative in marketing today. By Ginger Conlon

CASE STUDY CATEGORIESANALYTICS INNOVATION: GOLFSMITH

Digital marketing has been a game-changer that has caused many marketers to loosen their grip on more traditional channels, such as direct mail. Not Golf-smith. The specialty golf retailer used data and ana-lytics to better segment its customers and drive more targeted, cost-effective campaigns.

Golfsmith started as a catalog retailer, so its market-ers have always had an affinity for print. But, as the company became more digital, the marketing team started to send larger batch-and-blast campaigns. Although these campaigns were still effective, Golf-smith’s VP of omnichannel marketing Kim Lewis thought there was an opportunity to optimize its list targeting and content strategy.

That opportunity came in 2014 when marketing agency DMN3 proposed testing whether Golfsmith could generate the same lift in sales during the holi-day season with a less expensive medium — specifi-cally, a postcard versus a mini-catalog.

Golfsmith had never sent a postcard as part of its holiday mailings; however, it gave it a go and random-ly sent one of the two mailings to each of its customers.

After running the test, Golfsmith needed a way to analyze the holiday mailing piece’s performance. So, in August 2015, it started using two solutions within Experian Marketing Services’ suite to analyze the customer response rate to each mailing and, ultimately,use these insights to drive better targeting and ROI for the upcoming holiday season.

Instead of swinging into testing right away, Golf-smith decided to avoid any unnecessary bunkers and use the Experian Marketing Suite’s Identity Manager to clean and complete its customer data, as well as boost its in-house list by obtaining mailing addresses for top customers. This step was especially impor-tant, Lewis notes, because Golfsmith hadn’t consoli-dated its disparate data sources before.

“We never had a view into what happened online and what happened in-store combined,” she says. “They were always viewed separately and we had no idea how the customer purchase behavior overlapped.”

Results are a hole in oneOnce the data had been cleaned and organized, Golf-smith used Experian Marketing Suite’s Intelligence Man-ager tool to analyze the results of the 2014 direct mail holiday test.

According to Lewis, the analysis showed that the less expensive postcard outperformed the more expen-sive mini-catalog among moderate spenders; however, there was a higher response rate among high-spending customers who received the catalog.

“Interestingly, we found that this type of direct mail format targeting is actually pretty rare and sometimes lost in the digital-focused media strate-gies of today,” she notes. “So, while digital is also critically important to us, customers’ email inbox-es are overflowing and we found that getting the right direct mail piece in front of the right customer at the right time to be just the thing to cut through the clutter.”

Based on this insight, Golfsmith was able to further segment its customers and create a new strategy for

JUDGES FOR THE 2016 MARKETING&TECH

INNOVATION AWARDS

MICHAEL BECKERManaging partner, mCordis

ADAM BRAVOExecutive director of

loyalty marketing, MGM Resorts International

GEMMA CRAVENSVP, director of social and

mobile, McCann

MARTYN ETHERINGTONCMO and SVP business

operations, Jasper

NICHOLAS HENDERSON Publisher, programmatic-

advertising.org

ALIA KEMETU.S. media and digital

director, IKEA

RYUN LAMBSONDatabase marketing

manager, Best Western Hotels and Resorts

JAMIE LAROSEVP, digital marketing,

Wells Fargo

BRENT LEARYManaging partner,

CRM Essentials

DMP experts discuss the pros and cons of technology Attendees network during a break in the action

Erica Berger

The 2016 Marketing &Tech Innovation AwardsThis year's award winners show how marketing technology canhelp transform innovative marketing ideas into profitable reality

the 2015 holiday season. The company sent postcards to a greater percentage of customers and, therefore, cut back on total costs.

In fact, the company saved so much money it was able to use the existing campaign budget to create an incre-mental pre–Black Friday direct mail piece encouraging customers to opt in to the retailer’s email program to re-ceive offers during the holiday season and beyond. Early results show that the 2015 campaign generated a double-digit increase in response rate over 2014 — proving that analytics helped Golfsmith hit the green. — Elyse Dupré

CONTENT MARKETING INNOVATION: STEIN IASB2B marketing is evolving as rapidly as B2C mar-keting. But with so much focus on digital marketing among B2C companies, it can be difficult for B2B marketers to benchmark themselves against their peers. Global B2B marketing agency Stein IAS want-ed to find an easier way for marketers to compare their digital marketing aptitude to others and more thoroughly understand where they need to improve. So the company launched its Digital Marketing Maturity Index (DMMI) campaign in March 2015.

“Digital marketing maturity is a burning issue in our prospect community,” states Tom Stein, chair-man and chief client officer of Stein IAS. “It’s some-thing that people [are] seeking to understand and make the best progress they can, make the best bets they can, [and] organize themselves as best they can.”

The DMMI is an interactive tool that allows users to measure their performance against their peers and de-tect areas of improvement by answering a series of ques-tions. Stein IAS conducted a survey of B2B marketers to assemble the data needed to create the assess ment. The

agency worked with Oracle to email a survey to its own database as well as to the marketing technology provid-er’s. Stein IAS also fielded the survey on LinkedIn and at the World B2B Chief Marketing Congress in Shang-hai. It collected responses from 300 chief marketers.

Survey as lead-gen toolThe survey quizzed marketers about their profi-ciency in four key areas of digital marketing: reach and attract, engage and inspire, nurture and convert, and analyze and optimize. After the respondents answered the questions, they received personalized infographics showing how their digital marketing dexterity compares to other B2B marketers’.

But the content creation didn’t stop there. In exchange for participating in the survey, Stein IAS promised re-spondents early access to its DMMI report — a summa-ry of the study’s overall findings along with the agency’s commentary. Stein IAS also posted the report on its site so interested marketers could download it by filling out an online form and providing information such as their name, title, company, and contact details. Pairing the survey responses with the data gathered through gated content helped Stein IAS generate leads.

To prove that its DMMI approach worked, Stein IAS based its campaign strategy on the same four ar-eas featured in its report. For the reach and attract stage, the agency promoted its report through email, social, Web, display, and PR. It also used its inter-active tool to engage and inspire marketers and en-couraged users to try the tool through nurture emails.

The agency is still working on the nurture and con-vert and on the analyze and optimize stages, but so far the results are promising. In addition to receiving media coverage and social mentions, the campaign’s

Attendees shoot the breeze during a break Marketing professionals partake in Intelligent Connection roundtables

ALEX LIRTSMAN Founding partner and

chief strategist, Ready Set Rocket

STEPHANIE LOSEEExecutive director of

brand content, Politico

LIZ PEDROMarketing director, Mitel

DR. NATALIE PETOUHOFFVP and principal analyst,

Constellation Research

JEFFREY RAYPORTProfessor, Harvard

Business School

PEDRO L. RODRIGUEZ Director of integrated mar-

keting, People en Español

SIPING ROUSSINAnalytics and optimiza-

tion manager, Lenovo

GEOFFREY SANDERSVP, digital marketing, CRM and loyalty, Gilt

AMANDA TODOROVICH Director, content

marketing, Cleveland Clinic

CHARLOTTE TSOUSVP, head of analytics

and CRM, HSBC

emails have generated a 3.14% click-through rate — exceeding the B2B average of 2% — and a 65% conversion rate. Plus, people are spending an average of four minutes on its website, and the com-pany has generated numerous high-quality leads.

Stein says the campaign isn’t over. Inspired by its success, the agen-cy plans to make this content initiative an annual effort. — Elyse Dupré

EMAIL MARKETING INNOVATION: DELTA AIR LINESGetting a new email program off the ground isn’t easy, but Delta Air Lines took its SkyMiles frequent flier emails to new heights by using data to deliver relevant segmented messages.

Previously, Delta sent SkyMiles members about 11 to 16 emails per month, excluding transactional notifications. These messages often contained broad content and didn’t provide the first-class per-sonalized experience today’s customers expect. As a result, Delta’s engagement metrics started to descend.

Delta’s marketers know that every traveler experiences elements of travel (such as packing, checking in) differently. As Delta’s GM of digi-tal marketing Amy Harry puts it, there’s no one-size-fits-all method.

The airline’s marketers needed a way to send members critical travel information that was also contextually relevant and added value to each customer’s trip. Still, they didn’t want to resort to clog-ging up members’ inboxes. So, after hosting a series of brainstorm-ing and planning sessions with its agency DigitasLBi and marketing technology provider Experian Marketing Services, Delta launched the beta phase of its Flight Cycle email program in January 2015.

Route to successUnlike its original program, which consisted of sending members broad messages a dozen times a month, Delta’s Flight Cycle Pro-gram sends targeted triggered emails during the four key stages of their travel experience: plan, prep, fly, and home. For the beta launch, Delta focused solely on prep.

Using its airline, location, transactional, and loyalty data, Delta

created a matrix of elements that would dynamically populate an email with targeted content based on a traveler’s specific scenario. For example, one member may receive an upgrade message based on her itinerary and seat assignment, while another passenger might re-ceive location-based recommendations based on his final destination or layover. The airline uses Experian Marketing Suite’s Interactions Manager tool to incorporate these elements into each prep email, and it sends these trigger messages seven days before each person’s flight.

The company uses the Experian Marketing Suite’s Intelligence Manager solution to report program measurement. After the pro-gram ran for 60 days, Delta analyzed some of the initial results so it could adjust and optimize its messaging.

For example, the airline discovered that Comfort+ upgrade mes-sages performed far better than the First Class upgrade messages, so its marketers reprioritized the mailings. The analyses also revealed that response rates changed by loyalty tier. A member who has reached the highest Diamond Medallion tier, for instance, might not respond as well to packing tips as a less frequent flier might, Harry explains. In addition to analyzing response rates, Delta conducted qualitative research to collect customer feedback.

Constant optimization is part of Delta’s route to success. Harry says the company takes an “editorial” approach to its email content and updates it each month to keep members engaged.

After months of testing, Delta officially launched the program in May 2015 and customer engagement has soared. Along with cutting back on email clutter, the Flight Cycle emails produced open rates of 60% (doubling Delta’s 30% benchmark) and a 17.4% click-through rate — up from 4%. The airline also experienced a 5% incremental lift in Delta Comfort+ upgrade revenue, and Flight Cycle is the third- highest American Express acquisition trigger — an extra perk for its partners. — Elyse Dupré

MOBILE MARKETING INNOVATION: SAMSUNG When you’re a mobile provider that constantly touts its product innovations, your mobile marketing had better be innovative, as well.

L-R: Julie Smalstig, AccuWeather; Michelle Gudema, NY Times; Stephanie Miller, New Food Economy Matt Greitzer, Accordant Media, making his point

“We build ‘meaningful innovation’ into every product and the campaigns must demonstrate that,” states Yeji Kim, senior manager at Samsung.

In fact, looking for ways to innovate its marketing helped Sam-sung grab attention and build engagement when it launched its Gal-axy Note 4 in 2014. Working with marketing services firm Harte Hanks, the mobile provider put a unique spin on the idea of pro-ductivity — a key selling point of the mobile device — to reach the under-30 target audience Samsung was looking to engage.

Harte Hanks conducted research to help inform the campaign; it revealed an interesting, and useful, data point: Samsung’s under-30 audience is significantly more expressive emotionally in its social posts than are consumers over 30.

One way this was evident: Younger social media users are as open about discussing bad days as they are good days. Harte Hanks saw that as an emotional hook for Samsung’s campaign: using the Galaxy Note 4’s productivity capabilities to turn bad days into good ones.

“Millennials use social channels to share everything, every day,” says Alan Kittle, Harte Hanks’ global executive creative director. “But we’d never seen a brand take direct action and find ways to make the bad days better, even though turnaround stories are popular. Using smart-phone features to create happy endings felt so unusually emotional.”

Start tweetin’ the newsThe research also showed a notable shift to Vine and Snapchat among Samsung’s under-30 audience. So the campaign’s social focus would center on those touchpoints, as well as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

But Samsung Mobile’s low following on Vine and Snapchat would need a boost to ensure success. The mobile provider partnered with Vine star Rudy Mancuso (who has more than 6 million followers) and famed Snapchat artist Shaun “Shonduras” McBride. The two would use Note 4s to create social content focused on turning around bad days as part of what would be Samsung’s #NoteMyDay campaign.

“[With] the on-screen chemistry between two social stars, we had

the charm of a buddy movie blended with the unexpected plotlines of a docudrama — always placing product into the stories in a permis-sible way — we felt strongly we had a winning formula,” Kittle notes.

The campaign rolled out in three phases. During phase one, Mancu-so and McBride came to New York (which averages the greatest num-ber of tweets per square mile that are complaints), learned the Note 4’s new features, and shared their creative processes with each other. During this phase the duo created their usual Instagram, Snapchat, and Vine content using the Note 4; Samsung Mobile captured and shared behind-the-scenes videos of their content creation processes.

Phase two launched into the core of the #NoteMyDay campaign. Using Twitter’s API, Harte Hanks created a tool that searched Twit-ter for negative tweets within five miles of the campaign’s home base in New York. Mancuso and McBride then selected the tweets about bad days that they wanted to turn into good days.

The catch: They had to use the Note 4 to do so — that same day. In one case they selected a person who works underground and tweeted about the cold — chosen because he also posts lots of selfies — and had him join McBride in a cherry picker to go high above Central Park and shoot selfies with an amazing view of the park behind them.

During phase three the duo used a combination of Twitter and their own preferred social channels to create more content focused on resolving select tweeters’ bad days — within an hour of finding a tweet and drawing from a global audience of tweeters.

Each piece of content delivered a message meant to improve the per-son’s bad day and included a gift. One tweeter who posted about being stressed got a response tweet showing a photo of the duo wearing robes and with cucumber slices on their eyes, along with a message that the tweeter was going to receive a day at a spa to help relieve his stress.

Mancuso and McBride together turned around 18 bad days across 10 countries over the course of three days. Harte Hanks and Sam-sung filmed the entire process and uploaded videos to Samsung Mobile’s YouTube page each day. The videos capture how Mancuso and McBride collaborated to create their responses and posts and showed how they used the Note 4 to do so.

Direct Marketing News' Elyse Dupré conducting an interview Attendees discuss the many topics of the day during a break in the action

“The most outstanding success was the response to our final phase, our three Twitter Takeover days, when we took our idea global,” Harte Hanks’ Kittle notes. “Trending in country after country as we moved across time zones — creating content and giv-ing gifts to just one person, shared with millions simultaneously — was so affirming it kept us going even though the team was utterly exhausted by the time we were done. When people started using #NoteMyDay to share their stories it was electrifying.”

The campaign successfully dialed up engagement for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 4. Along with 1.3 million interactions (commenting, retweeting, revining) with the content from Mancuso and McBride, Samsung’s nine videos garnered 15.2 million views and 226,000 tweets included #NoteMyDay, which trended on Twitter in six key global markets. Best of all, the social engagement helped Samsung reach 13.5 million units sold in Q4 2014.

“We briefed the team at Harte Hanks to deliver an idea that was orig-inal, compelling, yet simple, and they managed to deliver on all three of these with #NoteMyDay,” Samsung’s Kim says. “It was our first signifi-cant attempt to integrate real-time marketing into a campaign, which delivered strong numbers to support our sales targets, product aware-ness, and satisfaction metrics. Internally, senior leadership labeled it one of the most innovative campaigns of the year.” — Ginger Conlon

OMNICHANNEL MARKETING INNOVATION: AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERSMarketers for retailer American Eagle Outfitters (AEO) recognize that shoppers today are multidimensional, transient, and always on.

“We know that customers are increasingly pre-shopping online prior to coming into our stores,” confirms Michael Rempell, EVP and COO at American Eagle Outfitters. “Over the past few years our teams have worked hard to build digital and mobile capabilities to meet our customers’ expectations.” He says the team at AEO understands that shopping experiences today start in consumers’ hands — through mobile, on the Web with their devices, in emails, and through SMS notifications. Marketers need technology to

make the ominichannel experience a reality for their customers.“Technology enables the entire process, from campaign promo-

tion to the dynamic transactional messages,” Rempell adds.AEO wanted to use consumers’ everyday digital experiences to

drive in-store traffic and purchases. That’s why last spring AEO developed a program called Reserve, Try & Buy. The idea behind the program is to give customers the flexibility to shop exactly how, when, and where they want.

AEO, however, needed technology to enable that ideal experience — one where the brand meets shoppers anyplace, not just in stores.

“American Eagle Outfitters has made tremendous strides to provide our customers with a brand experience that flows seamlessly between digital and in-store,” Rempell states. “Omnichannel represents the future of the brand, and future of the retail industry, for that matter.”

One example of AEO’s approach: Customers reserve merchandise through a mobile app or on AEO’s website. The store nearest each of those customers receives an alert of the shoppers’ requests, at which time store employees confirm that the items are in stock. If so, using tools from Experian Marketing Suite, the retailer sends the customers a series of real-time email and text messages to confirm their orders.

Those messages include the local store’s hours and location. Store employees set aside the items; shoppers can hold as many as five items in the store that will remain there until the customer comes to the store and buys them — up until the close of the next business day.

“Omnichannel customers are often a brand’s most valuable custom-ers because they engage more with the brand, and they purchase more frequently from that brand,” confirms Yara Lutz, VP of client services for Experian Marketing Services. “We found that mobile transaction rates were more than 10 times higher than those for email campaigns.”

Get with the programMarketers at AEO tested the program in 13 cities and launched the full program last July.

“Consumers expect cross channel — and cross channel is a seam-less experience,” Lutz divulges. “This is a difficult expectation for

Julie Smalstig, AccuWeather, discusses data as an asset Jay Wilson, Healthgrades (l), and Stephanie Miller, New Food Economy (r), with friends

brands to meet, but it becomes feasible if you can sift through the noise and link data across channels.”

AEO’s Rempell says that although technology was the cornerstone of the program, data was its backbone. Message preference data and in-ventory data dictated the contents and cadence of each triggered email.

AEO used tools in the Experian Marketing Suite to measure the success of the program.

“One of the exciting outcomes we’ve seen since launching the Re-serve, Try & Buy program is that customers are making additional purchases once they’re in our stores,” Rempell explains. Customers reserve an average of one to two items with the Reserve, Try & Buy program. But when they arrive in the store, they end up buying more than three items on average.

“We understand that our multichannel customers spend more than double the amount of single-channel shoppers,” Rempell re-calls. “This program promotes that multichannel behavior, which increasingly converts more customers into multichannel shoppers for the brand.” — Natasha D. Smith

SOCIAL MARKETING INNOVATION: VOLVOTraditionally, the 30-second ad spot during the Super Bowl has been the gilded standard for advertisers. But marketers at Volvo know that coveted spot is extending to the second screen — the mobile devices viewers are using to engage in the event and with friends.

“Volvo couldn’t afford to spend $4.5 million on a Super Bowl TV spot, but still wanted to be a part of the conversation,” says Amol Rana, account director of activation at agency Grey, which crafted a second-screen strategy for the car maker. “So we turned the atten-tion to Twitter, where the conversation was already happening on-line, which was proven by the fact that the previous year’s Super Bowl was the most tweeted live event in history.”

Marketers at Volvo decided to do two things for its 2015 social marketing campaign for the Super Bowl: The first was to focus on the people who matter most to consumers rather than run pricey car commercials that highlight what’s important to the company. The

second was to create conversation that tapped into — and was fueled by — the Super Bowl hype, but created a dialogue that infused talk of the brand and its next generation of cars.

The immaculate interceptionVolvo turned to Grey New York to implement a social contest en-titled “The Greatest Interception Ever.” The concept was simple: Volvo asked viewers of the Super Bowl to tweet using the hashtag #VolvoContest and say who they think should get a Volvo XC90 and why. Tweeters could win one of five new Volvo trucks. But there was a catch: Viewers had to tweet the hashtag and their pitch whenever a competitor’s car commercial aired during the Super Bowl, taking away attention from competitors’ messages, drawing attention to the Volvo brand, and sparking conversation around the next generation of vehicles at Volvo. The guerrilla marketing move stole some of the thunder from those $4.5 million Super Bowl TV ads and rode the excitement and attention centered on the big event.

Volvo sent auto-responses to respondent tweeters so they could finish their entries and accept the terms and conditions of the con-test. Rana says the results were astounding.

“We exceeded all of the sales targets and metrics for this cam-paign,” he points out. “The campaign resulted in accelerated growth during February with the highest sales lift of any vehicle in Volvo’s segment.”

Volvo saw a nearly 71% YoY increase in XC60 sales in February. About 20,000 users tweeted #VolvoContest more than 56,000 times during the game, causing Volvo to trend three times nationally and globally. More than 10,000 users completed contest entries, and 5,000 new consumers opted in to receive communications from Volvo.

“The idea itself was simple and effective but truly innovative,” Rana adds. “Volvo is a brand that places people first. This cam-paign leveraged that brand ethos by inviting consumers to behave in a way that brought the focus on people to life. Consumers weren’t entering to win a Volvo for themselves; rather they were nominat-ing a deserving person.” — Natasha D. Smith

Vivek Sharma, Movable Ink, talks about real-time marketing Yacov Wrocherinsky, Orion Global Solutions, on aligning customer-facing processes

STARS OF MARTECHCONTENT MARKETING SCRIBE: Steve Sachs, CEO, OneSpotWhat’s now called content has been part of Steve Sachs’ life since he delivered papers for The Baltimore Sun as a schoolboy. His print media journey eventually took him to one of the industry’s highest peaks. Two decades at

Time Inc. landed Sachs in the office of EVP of consumer marketing and sales at the venerable publisher.

He helped shepherd the company through a painful transition period to content creation and monetization on this new medium called the World Wide Web.

“And now, of course, it’s the leading channel, with new content created every day — by professionals, by non-professionals, by every body,” he explains.

It was because Sachs saw a better way for brands to act as bona fide content providers outside of standard paid advertising channels that he left Time for OneSpot three years ago.

“Brand marketers can absolutely deliver people content on the or-der of that delivered by major publishers. They just have to be able to determine what feels relevant and what does not,” says Sachs, whose key contribution to their cause is to direct them to the chan-nels where they’ll find optimum relevance.

It’s not advertisingNot surprisingly, he does this in part through OneSpot’s platform, which is a cross-channel content disseminator. It tracks visitor be-havior on a client’s website, recommends content for individuals, remarkets them across mobile and social, and drives look-alike con-sumers back to the site with relevant content.

“Look at Whole Foods. They’ve got something like 4,000 recipes, great recipes that have the same consumer mission of natural,

healthy, and delicious,” Sachs states of one of his clients. “What we do is get people to choose their recipes instead of going to Food Network.”

Sachs calls what OneSpot does “content sequencing” and likens it to the level of personalization Amazon has been able to achieve with its customer base. Just don’t call what Sachs does advertising.

“There are companies that see content as a form of advertising,” he says. “We don’t work with them.” — Al Urbanski

DATA SCIENTIST: Christopher Penn, VP of marketing technology, Shift CommunicationsIn the right brain–left brain miasma of digital marketing, employers lament the scarcity of marketing-tech amphibians. But lifelong techie Christopher Penn thinks non-techies can be

just as adaptable as he’s been. The secret, he says, is to forget about all the clouds and platforms.

“If you already know how to get a nice crust on a steak, do you need to understand the science behind your broiler?” Penn asks. “What we have going on in marketing is a lot of people who don’t know how to cook, but are buying all of these fancy appliances.”

Penn’s case in point for focusing on the steak rather than the broil-er: A U.K. client, Slimming World, asked Shift to find out if it would be worth its while to enter the U.S. market. Using data from the USDA, Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Penn cross-referenced obesity rates with de-mographic factors such as income and distance to stores and came up with an answer of “yes,” and then suggested branding strategies.

Of course, Penn does know how marketing tech works, and he’s made it easier for account people at Shift to get cooking with it through a marketing technology team that tests and perfects mar-tech initiatives.

“We got going on marketing automation in my first three months

Attendees enjoy the view and a cold drink during a celebratory cocktail party RAPP founder Stan Rapp addresses Entangled Marketing

and now we’re going into big data and machine learning,” he shares.His adaptability isn’t surprising considering that Penn is a black

belt in Togakure-ryu, an ancient Japanese martial art that uses tools such as sticks, swords, and spears.

“Or whatever’s handy,” Penn recalls. “You kind of have to win the battle or your opponent will shoot you with his bow and arrow. It’s like that with tech tools in business today.” — Al Urbanski

DIGITAL ACE: Tuomas Peltoniemi, president, Asia, Digital Arts NetworkEfforts by brands to become publishers in a content marketing world most often fall short of the mark, but Tuomas Peltoniemi wasn’t going to let that happen with MasterCard in

Asia. He brought to bear a huge cross-functional team, set up a vir-tual newsroom powered by state-of-the-art digital publishing tools, and rewrote the company’s marketing guidebook. The new system helped key MasterCard merchants lower their cost-per-click by 73% while lifting sales by more than 200%.

“We call the MasterCard [content] model a business model. For this, you need people from technology, content, data, strategy, cre-ative, media, and more,” Singapore-based Peltoniemi explains. “It’s unrealistic to think that an agency would have all these capabilities under the same roof.”

On the grindPeltoniemi’s background certainly influenced his penchant for cross-functional collaboration. He became a Web designer in the 1990s, when a person boasting that title did both design and cod-ing. Out of high school, he went to work as a technical designer at TBWA, but left after a few years to pursue a degree in business and marketing. That background and his work advising early stage tech

startups left him with a real-world perspective on technology, which he views as but one part of a multifaceted solution.

“Companies put a lot of money into technology licenses, where the tech tools they fund aren’t used to full capacity,” Peltoniemi notes. “It reminds me of the old condo analogy: It’s nice to have a tennis court and a pool, but they don’t get used much.” — Al Urbanski

MARKETING TECHNOLOGIST: Emad Georgy, CTO, Experian Marketing ServicesIs being tech savvy genetic or learned? Con-sider this anecdote from the Georgy house-hold: “My 8-year-old son, Nathan, told my

wife, Marian, recently that he wants to kill bugs when he grows up,” Emad Georgy quips. “Marian told him, ‘That’s called an exter-minator, honey,’ and he responded, ‘No, mom, software bugs!’ A boy after my own heart.”

Georgy, in his role as chief technology officer, is currently the architect of the Experian Marketing Suite, which endeavors to as-sist marketers in maximizing the value of every customer interac-tion by uniting consumer data, customer insights, analytics, data quality, and cross-channel marketing technology. Sales of the suite grew by more than 120% last year, drawing users such as Bass Pro Shops, DirecTV, Neiman Marcus, Sirius XM, and Publishers Clear-ing House.

Georgy’s advice to marketers aiming to be tech savvy is to start by being curious. Those who endeavor to learn to be techies need to embrace one key concept, Georgy says: Seek questions, not answers.

“Often, we try to seed answers and wrap the technology around them,” he shares. “What we do at Experian is outline the questions we wish we knew the answers to about customer behaviors and levels of engagement.”

But the one thing even technology can’t solve in the marketing

Sponsors hold court with attendees Jay Wilson, Healthgrades, advises attendees on selecting the right martech

suite, he notes, are data silos that deliver the goods to marketers too late or not at all.

“Technology can’t help here,” Georgy adds. “The organization needs to commit to a new way of working that drives real-time engagement, not limits it.” — Al Urbanski

PROGRAMMATIC PROGNOSTICATOR: Victor Wong, CEO, PaperGFew people today would use the words “cre-ative” and “programmatic” in the same sen-tence. Victor Wong did, and built a thriving business blending the two. Wong’s seven-year-

old PaperG platform allows brand managers and agency pros alike to create hundreds — or even thousands — of executions almost as fast as their display bids are accepted at RTB auctions. Little design or technical expertise is required.

“It’s so easy for machines to buy and sell inventory, and program-matic is heading into this world of new ad versions and ad sizes,” Wong explains. “Our platform is a cloud-based interface where adver tisers can store digital assets and easily build new ads that can be resized by an auto-adjust feature.”

Last year PaperG helped golf-simulator company Optishot to a 565% increase in direct sales. The company’s agency, Anagram, devel oped ad executions around four customer-related themes: time–convenience, weather–environment, quality–value, and acces-sibility to a golf course.

The buying efficiency and ad relevancy in the PaperG platform, Wong says, helped Optishot ace its goals with an 85% increase in conversion rate. Wong says he’s always been a believer in audience-based messaging.

“It’s more important to have the planning process and the meth-odology,” he confirms. “Then you can free anybody to think about designing campaigns.” — Al Urbanski

SOCIAL STRATEGIST: Michael Gabriel, marketing manager, Envision Creative GroupThree years can be an epoch in the fast- changing world of social media marketing.

Just ask Michael Gabriel, who joined Envision three years ago and opened its social practice, a business that now accounts for half of the package design and branding company’s revenues.

“Not too long ago a business could post something on its Facebook page and know that its entire audience was seeing it. Now you’re lucky if 5% to 10% see it,” Gabriel explains.

The 2012 University of Texas graduate says he’s fortunate to be a millennial who grew up with social media. But he pushes those social views percentages up for Envision’s clients the old-fashioned way: with a multifaceted, dedicated team and lots of research.

“Social media is no longer a one-person job,” Gabriel emphasizes. “It’s content marketing now, and a successful plan requires a talented designer and copywriter who understands targeting and budgeting.”

On the right trackGabriel begins each planning process with an intensive client meet-ing that probes perceived brand identity and target markets. Also crucial: what metrics to track. After that, it’s on to research mode.

“It’s our job to tell [clients] — in the social media sphere — whether they’re right or wrong,” he says.

And do they tell them. Envision’s action plan for Mix-o-logie, a marketer of blendable perfumes, is a more than 60-page docu-ment that lays out a five-phase strategy to be executed over a nine-month span. A “build” phase introduces the brand and divines the most relevant channels; this leads to the “amplify,” “analyze,” and “ expand” phases. The process included identifying geographic and demographic targets. Additionally, consumer research unearthed no fewer than 27 pieces of audience intelligence to guide content.

Audience members listen intently about the latest marketing test strategies An attendee poses a question

“Everything you do on social media has to be verified with actual statistics and feedback,” Gabriel states. “Engagement has become very difficult on social. You have to know what entertains which people.” — Al Urbanski

PLATFORM WINNERSMOST INNOVATIVE ANALYTICS PLATFORM: APPSFLYERAppsFlyer grabbed the judges’ attention with its vision for in-app advertising on mobile channels. Its mobile marketing attribution platform places real-time analytics and campaign ROI at the heart of the offering while also using deep-linking technology to guide users to app downloads or to specific landing pages within apps.

Ran Avrahamy, AppsFlyer’s head of marketing, says: “Our mo-bile marketing attribution analytics platform provides a single dash board [designed to] give marketers all of the tools they need to achieve the biggest return on their marketing dollars, including real-time analytics, campaign ROI, lifetime value, retention reports, attri-bution analytics, cohort analysis, retargeting attribution, and more.”

AppsFlyer’s vision, according to Avrahamy, is to “continue serving marketers and advertisers as the industry standard in mobile attribu-tion and marketing analytics.” AppsFlyer aims to enable marketers, brands, and agencies to optimize their marketing spend and help them measure their campaigns across more than 1,500 integrated mobile ad networks. A recent platform upgrade to include TV attribution monitoring is one that Avrahamy says is particularly innovative.

“The tool allows marketers to optimize the effectiveness of TV advertising campaigns for mobile apps,” he recalls. “The new solu-tion tracks installs from users in a designated market area immedi-ately after a TV ad has run in that region, then provides post-install analytics to allow app marketers to measure their return on invest-ment for TV ads.” — Kim Davis

MOST INNOVATIVE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT PLATFORM: INFLUITIVEInfluitive, an advocate marketing platform headquartered in To-ronto, impressed judges with its innovative approach to customer experience management. Providing more than just a tool designed to help brands identify, motivate, and incentivize influential online advocates, Influitive has developed into a VIP advocate community with about 1 million users (and 5,000 customers).

CEO Mark Organ views the launch of communities as a signifi-cant add-on to the Influitive platform. It aims to help B2B marketers create thriving customer communities, boost member engagement, surround buyers with social proof, and drive revenue. Organ an-ticipates the communities tool evolving into an on-demand focus group, allowing power users to have input into how brands build products and bring them to market.

Unlocking advocacy“People can use Influitive to demonstrate their love for a company or product,” Organ notes. “It’s not just work. We’ve made it fun, too. We make it rewarding for people to do what they want to do.”

Influitive’s mission is to unlock the full power of advocacy in an increasingly advocate-centric world. Built on a self-service model, it focuses on the advocate experience, allowing users to participate in campaigns according to their own schedule, not a marketer’s. Scal-ability is a key feature; the platform is capable of managing advo-cate bases of all sizes, from a few hundred to thousands.

“We realize the full potential of people who love you a lot,” Organ points out. — Kim Davis

MOST INNOVATIVE INTEGRATED MARKETING SUITE: SALESFORCE MARKETING CLOUDThe contest between major vendors to provide the most innovative and comprehensive integrated marketing suite solution has been fierce. This year Salesforce is recognized for its achievement — for

Michael Fenech, Western Union, on engaging customers Email and content marketing finalists share success strategies with DMN 's Natasha D. Smith (r)

the completeness of vision and technological excellence of its cloud-based digital marketing platform.

“Leveraging Salesforce Marketing Cloud, marketers can build a single view of the customer, plan and optimize the journey, deliver personalized content on every channel and device, and measure the impact on their businesses,” confirms Scott McCorkle, CEO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. “[It] can take all of the things that matter to marketers — a complete view of customer information, content, personalization, all digital marketing channels, and the power of the customer journey — and extend them across the Sales-force Customer Success Platform to sales, service, community, apps, analytics, and IoT.”

The stats are impressive. In 2015 Salesforce Marketing Cloud cus-tomers sent 2.3 billion emails using the platform on Cyber Monday alone, a 44% increase over 2014. On Black Friday, those customers sent 190 million emails in a single hour.

One major recent upgrade was the addition of the predictive jour-neys solution, which includes predictive scores and predictive au-diences. The tools are designed to allow marketers to fuse CRM and marketing data with relevant contextual data, such as Web-browsing activity and email engagement, and predict the next step in every customer journey. — Kim Davis

MOST INNOVATIVE MOBILEMARKETING PLATFORM: SWIRLSwirl topped the innovative mobile marketing platform category this year with its beacon-powered marketing solution. A network of secure beacons, powered by Bluetooth technology, allows retailers and brands to push relevant mobile messages to customers moving through brick-and-mortar environments.

“By connecting the physical and digital worlds through smart-phones and Bluetooth beacons, retailers are driving greater cus-tomer engagement and satisfaction, leading to increased loyalty and sales,” explains marketing spokesperson Mary Keroack. By deliv-ering relevant digital content direct to in-store shoppers, precisely

when and where it’s most useful, she adds, Swirl creates highly per-sonalized shopping experiences.

“The open and modular design of the platform,” Keroack notes, “allows retailers to seamlessly integrate existing systems and data-bases to deliver highly personalized experiences as part of a broader omnichannel strategy.”

Beacon of hopeSwirl aims to make deployment and management of beacons even easier with its recently released next-generation tools.

“With a six-year beacon battery life, and a simple-to-use mobile app that makes it easy for store employees to install and configure beacons at any time,” Keroack adds, “we have dramatically reduced the operating costs associated with maintaining even the largest in-store beacon network.”

Swirl is serving top retailers — including Lord & Taylor, Hudson’s Bay, Urban Outfitters, Alex and Ani, and Timberland — by helping them unlock real-world behavioral insights, engender customer loy-alty, and make relevant mobile experiences central to the shopping experience. — Kim Davis

MOST INNOVATIVE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM: SPROUT SOCIALOne reason for Sprout Social’s appeal is the relative simplicity of its user interface and the perception that even inexperienced users can learn to navigate it easily. The Chicago-based social media man-agement software vendor has raised its profile in an increasingly crowded space by combining powerful features with user-friendly design, to make it easy and efficient for businesses to discover, respond to, and interact with the social conversations that matter most to their brand.

Andrew Caravella, Sprout’s VP of marketing, describes the plat-form as “incredibly adaptable.” According to Caravella, “Whether they’re on our Web-based or mobile apps, more than 16,000 cus-tomers worldwide rely on Sprout’s engagement, publishing, and

The awards celebrate marketing innovation Attendees pause for a picture during the awards celebration

analytics capabilities to enhance their social programs and build stronger customer relationships.” Sprout’s mission is to power open communications between brand and people.

Sprout caught the judges’ attention not only for its adaptability, but also for its features.

“We focus on building integrations and features that help busi-nesses streamline, enhance, and measure their social engagement efforts,” Caravella shares. “Each feature has a purpose and is de-signed with the customer in mind, ensuring that the platform adds a layer of value — whether that’s the ease of our iOS and Android apps, access to comprehensive social data and analytics, the ability to run unlimited reports, or our Zendesk integration to make cus-tomer service a priority.”

A recent development was the platform’s partnership with Twitter, which added Twitter Profiles and Listening Reports to its tool kit, offering Sprout customers premium data that Caravella asserts is “on par with enterprise-level listening tools.” — Kim Davis

MOST INNOVATIVE MARKETINGTECH TO WATCH: FORENSIQMore and more is being powered by technology today — even fraud. That’s why Forensiq uses fire to fight fire — or, in this case, uses technology to fight tech-enabled fraud. Its main focus is identifying a specific type of ad fraud: mobile device hijacking, a tactic used by mobile applications to steal revenue by rapidly loading hidden ads and then emulating human behavior, much like bots on the Web.

“The device owner has no idea their device has been compro-mised,” says Paul Narvaez, director of marketing at Forensiq. Narvaez says the team at Forensiq uses its technology to discover irregular traffic patterns that don’t match up with real user behav-ior, such as continually loading invisible ads in the background.

Narvaez says that although most desktop malware is installed unintentionally through deceitful techniques, most mobile apps are installed intentionally. So consumers often trust what they’re down-loading, and mobile apps that exist in an official app store may receive

many positive reviews and provide entertainment or utility — but can also serve a dishonest purpose: harming advertisers and consumers.

“In addition to stealing their data plans and battery life, consum-ers are unknowingly accessories to a crime,” Narvaez notes. “Con-sumer devices are being hijacked by fraudsters and used to secure illegal profits. The ad industry is affected by ads not being seen by real humans and wasting billions in redirected funds with no way to recover the losses.”

Fighting fraudNarvaez says a huge part of the fight against ad fraud is awareness and education. Forensiq released a study that exposes the effects of ad fraud through mobile apps on users and advertisers.

“Other fraud vendors have begun to take part in the research we started,” Narvaez states. “And we’re seeing that information shared with the industry.”

The first step in Forensiq’s research was to identify the apps com-mitting mobile ad fraud. To do this, it tapped into its integrations with real-time bidding ad exchanges to analyze billions of impres-sions daily. The team at Forensiq analyzed more than 16 billion daily mobile in-app impressions and flagged more than 13% as high risk.

Forensiq estimates that mobile device hijacking cost advertisers more than $857 million in 2015.

“We recently observed an app that consistently interacted with an advertising exchange 15 separate times per second — something no human behavior could ever justify,” Narvaez confirms.

In fact, he says, Forensiq flagged apps serving invisible adver-tisements at a rate that’s far greater than the rate of ads shown on screen. The team captured hundreds of hours of data and video, mapping advertisements to corresponding frames. They found that malicious apps serve 700 ads per hour.

“We’ve been working with industry colleagues and partners to conduct new studies,” Narvaez points out. “This has expo - nentially increased our ability to share information with the indus-try.” — Natasha D. Smith

DMN's editor-in-chief, Ginger Conlon, shares a moment in the spotlight with 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation Award winners

The 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation SummitWhat were some of the lessons learned from this year’s event? Here, some of the key sessions

One Plus One ForeverOne to one is yesterday, according to direct marketing legend Stan Rapp, who holds that engagement is but the first step to the ultimate goal: entanglement. “What marketers can do with technology today is absolutely amazing, but it’s easy to get sidetracked. Everybody is focused on customer engagement, but we need to move beyond engagement and look at how much more is possible,” he counseled. Read why customer entanglement will be the dominant force in marketing: dmnews.com/summit/one-plus-one

Cultural Nuances Make Content PersonalWestern Union's head of global social strategy Michael Fenech explains how tapping into customers' distinct cultures and needs creates engaging, relatable stories that prompt action. Tapping into its customers’ individual stories allows the company to build trust, affinity, and loyalty with customers across the globe, in more than 120 currencies, via more than 500,000 agent locations, and with more than 100,000 ATMs across more than 200 countries. Read more: dmnews.com/summit/cultural-nuances

On Martech: Forget the Quest for the Best and Buy the Really GoodIt’s time that’s of the essence in the hunt for marketing tech solu-tions, not perfection, counsels Jay Wilson, a marketing technol-ogy veteran of several agencies and currently the VP of marketing technology and omnichannel platforms at Healthgrades, an online healthcare advisory. Here’s why: dmnews.com/summit/martech

Today, All Politics Is DigitalData is king among the nation’s kingmakers, says Rocket Fuel’s J.C. Medici, who sees TV finally ceding ground to digital in the 2016 presidential race. Find out more: dmnews.com/summit/politics-is-digital

KEEP SCROLLING

Hyperpersonalization: Creepy or Crucial?Keeping up with cutting-edge marketing trends such as “hyperper-sonalization” is an imperative for successful companies. The reasons why may be clear, but the path to implementation, not so much. These and other challenges were on the minds of participants at the Domo-sponsored Lunch and Learn session, “Hyperpersonalization: Creepy or Crucial?” at the 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation Summit. For the full report: dmnews.com/summit/hypersonalization

4 Recommendations for Upping Your Marketing GameMarketers from AccuWeather and The New York Times discuss how to rethink staffing and processes to get the most from marketing technology. Learn the four takeaways from the discussion, hosted by Stephanie Miller, VP of digital strategy for food business magazine New Food Economy: dmnews.com/summit/recommendations

5 Sports Marketer Success Secrets In baseball, it’s one, two, three strikes and you’re out. But when it comes to the customer experience, patrons don’t always give brands that many chances. A panel of sports marketers took the stage at DMN’s 2016 Marketing&Tech Innovation Summit and shared their best practices for driving engagement, loyalty, and sales. Learn how to hit a home run: dmnews.com/summit/sports-marketer-secrets

It’s All About the StrategyThe overarching theme of day one at our Marketing&Tech Innova-tion Summit? Strategy first. Here, some other attention-grabbing comments from the day: dmnews.com/summit/strategy

Never Stop LearningDay two of DMN's 2016 Marketing &Tech Innovation Summit brims over with captivating content — covering everything from how data is changing marketing, to selecting the “ideal” marketing technol-ogy, to moving beyond engagement to entangled marketing. Read the full story: dmnews.com/summit/learning