INBOUND 2020: Our favorite sessions from day 2

Day two of INBOUND was an incredible experience. We’ve learned a lot about the importance of content marketing and its effectiveness in relationships with customers. There were way too many sessions to cover in a single blog post, but here are a few of our favorite of the day.

Matt’s favorite sessions

A session that I enjoyed was Critical Email Marketing Techniques to Crush the Competition by Jay Schwedelson. The session taught me many things about email marketing and how certain email techniques can boost mindshare and convert leads into sales. In particular, I learned that since January 2020, Mondays and Wednesdays have experienced the highest open rate average. Jay also emphasized the importance of subject line distinction. An email with a unique subject line is more likely to be opened as it provides the viewer with content that they have yet to engage with. I can apply this knowledge to my role at Imarc by ensuring that each email I send includes a unique subject line and presents content that will educate the prospect. Each sent email presents the receiver with the chance to learn something new or discover an opportunity to grow their business.

Another session that I enjoyed was How to Use Conversational Marketing to Create Personal Relationships at Scale by Diana Zalaquett. During the session, Diana discussed that customers are seeking convenience and expertise when engaging with conversational platforms. Many times, customers want to be educated on particular products or services, and conversations can be used by companies to collect valuable information about their customers. I learned that 42% of customers indicated that live chat is their preferred communication method. Also, 79% of businesses with chatbots saw an increase in sales during 2019. Imarc can use conversational platforms to build relationships with customers and gather additional information in order to develop customized solutions. Each interaction is an opportunity to make an impact and can be a convenient way for customers to get answers. 57% of customers abandon their purchase if they are unable to get their questions answered quickly enough.

Kari’s favorite sessions

For years, SEO managers have operated in a world where three types of SEO – on page, off page, and technical – had the power to influence our rankings on Google. Follow best practices in these three key pillars of SEO and the organic reach will come! Well, According to Fire & Spark President, Dale Bertrand in his session The End of Technical SEO; How Google's AI Forces SEO Strategies to Be More Human, technical SEO should no longer be a major focus for SEO managers. Over-optimization on technical SEO is now a waste of time because, individually, they don’t do enough to move the needle. According to Dale, we need to leave technical SEO in the past and focus on developing a mission for our content. How does our product connect with users on a personal level? How do we make their lives easier and allow them to work more efficiently? When we lead with mission-driven content that speaks to humans… as humans... we see better results and increased ROI. How can we begin to learn enough about what our audience cares about and needs so we can write mission-centered content? Well, my next session answered just that.

In Maximizing Google Analytics Segments for Audience Insights with Senior Data Strategist, Karen Hooper we learned about Google’s best-kept secret – audience segments. Audience segments provided by Google Analytics are a subset of your overall data. Segments are not personas, but they can be a valuable tool to help you build personas or understand user behaviors better. The possibilities are almost overwhelmingly endless. I’ll be writing a blog post soon that walks through the four major steps to follow. However, Karen’s most important takeaway is that a well-crafted hypothesis will always yield learnings even if the test fails.

In my final session, HubSpot Case Study: Prove that Marketing is Making Your Company Money with HubSpot Revenue Attribution, Guido Bartolacci of New Breed walked us through Hubspot’s Attribution tool. Attribution models are a set of rules that allow you to assign credit to different touchpoints along your buyer’s journey. Sure, we understand the BIG stops in the marketing funnel. First touch, lead generation, final sale, but what about all of the “little moments” that help propel the user to that final sale? Attribution modeling can help give you insight into exactly how important campaign X, or ebook Y was to your bottom line.

Our final takeaways of the day

It’s a great feeling walking away from a conference feeling full of ideas with the potential to transform our agency. Here are questions we’ll be bringing back to the team for greater discussion:

1. How can we write content that is human-focused and takes into greater consideration the needs and wants of our customers?
2. How can we continue to learn more about our customers? Can we make informed hypotheses about how they will act and test those hypotheses?
3. What does attribution tell us about how users are moving through our sales funnel? Are there areas where we need to invest more or less of our time and marketing dollars?

With so many Imarcians attending INBOUND this year, keep an eye out for all the blog posts we’ll be publishing soon sharing all our learnings! Also, be sure to check out our Instagram Highlights from INBOUND for more insights from the conference.

Did you miss yesterday's recap for day 1? Check it out!