On 8 June 2023, more than 70 attendees from various industries, gathered at etc.venues St Paul’s for the inaugural MarTech Summit Roundtable London, an immersive format that allows attendees to engage with fellow participants through roundtable discussions actively. Topics covered included Customer Data, Metaverse, Value Exchange Economy, MarTech Workforce Engagement, and others, led by six brilliant speakers.
Attendees included representatives from companies such as Colliers, Farfetch, Dyson, Sainsbury’s, JLL, British American Tobacco, UBS, Eataly, and Marriott, among others. In terms of industry, most attendees came from Banking & Financial Services, followed by Retail & eCommerce, and IT & Telco.
- Banking & Financial Services – 24%
- Retail & eCommerce – 20%
- IT & Telco – 17%
- Manufacturing – 14%
- Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare – 7%
- Hotel & Hospitality – 5%
- Energy & Utilities – 4%
- Logistics & Transportation – 3%
- Automotive – 3%
- Others – 3%
In terms of seniority, 13% of our attendees were Chief-level attendees, 12% were in VP positions, with 27% were Directors level, 24% were Heads of their departments, and 20% are Senior Managers & Managers.
Summit Highlights
The summit kicked off with a quick introduction to the summit by Lin Duan, Head of Events at BEETc. The attendees answered a poll on whether they are from B2B or B2C, or both. 46% of attendees said that they are from B2B, 43% said they are from both B2B and B2C, while 11% of attendees noted that they are from B2C. The mix of representatives from both B2B and B2C backgrounds allowed for more extensive discussions, given the diverse backgrounds of attendees.
First to the stage was Tim Bond, Associate Director, Media Development at Ipsos, who gave a lightning talk on the Metaverse, where he mentioned that one in three believe the Metaverse will be fully with us within the next 5 years.
Tim: “Is the Metaverse ‘The Next Internet’? Yes, like I said at the beginning. But at the same time, no, because it is not here yet and immersive experiences still have challenges to overcome.”
Tim also emphasised that marketers should be mindful of their demographics – and who might need help and support into these environments.
The lightning talk was followed by the first roundtable discussion of the day, which was started with a short talk by Nick Watson, VP, Client Success EMEA, Marigold, on The Ideal Customer Journey: Turning an Unknown Individual into a Loyal Brand Advocate. Nick noted that the Ideal Customer Journey needs:
- Acquisition & Enrichment of Actionable Consumer Data
- A Personalisation Strategy that delivers value to consumers as well as brand
- A Loyalty and Retention Strategy founded on brand values and emotion
On a poll shared with attendees on how available and actionable their customer data is to fuel their marketing, most attendees (57%) rated it a 5-7 on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 10 (very much), a testament that more can be done to bridge the gap between data and marketing.
Roundtable Discussions
Each table shared its key takeaways after the 40-minute roundtable discussion, touching on:
- Challenges with using data, such as technical hurdles in organising data across different apps and systems, utilising data in real-time, privacy and regulations with sharing data across different channels, using data in a highly regulated industry and unclear opt-in policy to get access to the data
- Identifying levels of loyalty – for example, limiting levels of personalisation to new customers who are not as loyal to the brand
- Improving within the business – Many companies end up with a massive MarTech stack, which does not solve the issue. Some attendees agreed that Customer Data Platform is the way forward, and it can solve tech stack issues
Chris Cutino, Chief Revenue Officer, Celtra, and Oleg Kravets, Global Head of Data & Analytics, The Travel Corporation, set the scene ahead of the roundtable discussion and co-presented on Engaging Your Workforce to Ensure the Maximisation of Output.
Key takeaways from the discussion include:
- The most important departmental relationships for marketing teams – a table of attendees mentioned the importance of the IT team, for them to deliver what is really needed for marketing.
- And another table stated that many interdependencies are important – giving examples of the commercial team, where there are overlapping KPIs, but ultimately they fall under the same corporate strategy. Another team mentioned it was with the legal team, especially with emerging technology firms.
- It is important to think about how people can learn and collaborate with each other, and ensure that any decisions are people-led rather than tool-led, such as using a hackathon-style rollout for new strategies, which will help to test new AI tools at a company-wide level.
It is also crucial to find a balance between departments, and decision-makers who are introducing technology should understand what is good for the whole business and its objectives.
Leila Seith Hassan, Deputy Chair, Value of Data Committee, Data & Marketing Association, who is also the Head of Data Science & Analytics, Digitas, then shared in a Lightning Talk on Building Customer Trust for the Future Through Data Ethics. Leila shared statistics that should be cared about, for example: 85% of UK consumers do not trust businesses with the privacy and security of their online data, but 50% are prepared to overlook these concerns in favour of a better user experience. Leila emphasised that future-ready organisations have to actively stop doing things that could be discriminatory or cause harm.
In the last roundtable discussion, Leila, joined with Jonathan Pieterse, Director of Global Demand & Analytics, Rockwell Automation, focused on the topic of Validating Customer Data to Align with Your Brand Strategy. During the session, a question posed to attendees was: Going into your next planning cycle, what is your biggest customer data challenge?
For many attendees, they are concerned about consent, personalisation and data quality.
The roundtable discussion also brought about discussions, with key takeaways on:
- Creating a single customer view – such as using email as a fingerprint, whitelisting through unique customer IDs and Customer Data Platform, bringing together the different sources and running automation through the data. It is also fundamental to understand what data is truly valuable to the organisation, given the amount of data involved.
- To build organisational alignment, important points discussed include maintenance of data, and ensuring that data strategy is the start of all processes rather than an output at the end.
- In terms of rigorous persona research and ultimate personalisation of content, attendees mentioned allowing the consumer to select from general content put out and using drip campaigns to allow consumers to move through the journey how they want to, and ensure accurate timing of engagement. However, it is important to note the multiple personas an individual might have.
At the end of The MarTech Summit Roundtable London, a charity luncheon was held, where attendees discussed partnerships between brands and non-profit organisations, over a delicious meal. Some attendees noted that there are a lot of partnerships between their companies and non-profit organisations, while others noted that their companies do not have a unified way of working with charities, by only engaging in fund matching with their employees’ initiatives. Attendees also noted on other effects of working with charities that are not limited to enhancing their company’s reputation, such as low turnover rates. The charity luncheon allowed attendees to leave the summit with a reminder of the fundamentals of the industry, which will hopefully lead to more initiatives between companies and non-profit organisations in the long run.
Future Engagement
The MarTech Summit Team is glad to have hosted this new format of The MarTech Summit, and hopes that many fruitful discussions and networks were formed during the roundtable. The next in-person MarTech Summit happening in London will be on 16 & 17 November 2023, check it out and register here.
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By: Vanessa Goh, June 2023
