That’s a wrap on the Virtual MarTech Summit: APAC! A huge thank you to all our great speakers, sponsors, audience members, partners, and hard-working staff. It wouldn’t be the same without you all and we can’t wait to deliver better experiences to you moving forward!

Over the 3 days at the Virtual MarTech Summit APAC on 24 – 26 February 2021, 12+ hours of LIVE, high quality content from the top solution providers and market leading industry companies have been generated and consumed by over 1800 attendees from 40+ countries across 6 continents!!! That’s right, the only continent that missed the Virtual MarTech Summit APAC was Antarctica. Please feel free to set your VPN location to Antarctica next time to be the first attendee tuning in from there and the team will give you a virtual high five!

At a glance, we’ve discussed:

• Content Marketing & Personalisation
• Best Use of Customer Data Platforms (CDP)
• Reimagining Customer Journey Funnel
• Digital Transformation
• End-To-End (E2E) Marketing Solutions
• Marketing & Sales Alignment
• Digital Consumers of Tomorrow
• Maximising Client Engagement in a Digital-First World
  And many more…

Let’s have a closer look at each day!

On 24th February, we kick started the summit with a particular focus on the B2C industry. We’ve built a community on Slack in which our attendees have enjoyed networking with each other. Our curious audience have blasted the Q&A inbox with over 70 questions directed to our thought-leader speakers. A wide range of trending topics in the field of marketing have been discussed in different formats as fireside chats, panel discussions, keynote presentations and an exclusive closed-door roundtable discussion!

Here are some of our team’s key takeaways from Day 1:

“The consumer is always the starting point for a marketing plan. Be consumer obsessed and create personas based on behavioural factors such as digital literacy.”

– Venaig Solinhac, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Purpose Brands, Olam

“Consumer habits and trends are always changing and how people buy online is different year over year. Stay agile, curious, and willing to experiment.”

– Ben Karpin, Director, Customer Data Strategy, NBA Asia

“Investment in data will be exponential in the coming years. We need to be looking at how to incorporate a culture of data centricity in our organizations for all stakeholders to break siloes for faster data access.”

– Soumita Roy Choudhury, VP & Head of APAC, Mobilewalla

“The best way for an organisation to approach data culture is that we need everyone adopts the culture and data mindset”

– Avantika Jain, Regional GM, Demand, Fave

We then moved on to BFSI track on 25th February, where we have featured elite speakers from the leaders of the industry such as Seismic, HCL Software, Standard Chartered Bank, Validus Capital, Srijan, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank and more! It’s been a busy day in our Q&A inbox again with over 30 questions!

Let’s quickly rewind some of the key takeaways from Day 2:

“End to end marketing solutions are only as good as the strategy, data, and operational excellence behind them”

– Tom Hannigan Jr., Unica Global Practice Leader, HCL Software

“There is a lot of common tech being used such as social media scheduling and analytics but the difference is how we use it and the level we use it at, the MarTech stack is likely to evolve differently for B2C and B2B brands”

– X.Y. Ng, Group Head, Digital & Branding, Validus

“My belief is that as Marketers, we are losing the human touch and focus on customers, in this MarTech race. Rationalisation and consolidation will take place and only those true marketing platforms that humanize digital experiences and blend different services will remain.”

– Mohit Gupta, Director, Head of Marketing, Asia Pacific & Global Social Media, Deutsche Bank

“Customer experience is more than selling, it’s about creating delightful experiences and adding intrinsic value.”

– Sharon Tan, Senior Vice President, Digital Consumer Finance & Card Payments, DBS Bank

Finally, on 26th February 2021, we had a fantastic day at our B2B track with great companies likes of Tata Projects, Seismic, ON24, Kerry Group, UPS, JLL, Harman International and many more! Although it’s hard to sum up all the insights our speakers have given us, here are a few top takeaways our team has noted down:

“Content is still king. If you want a successful content marketing campaign, remember to stick to the 4 Cs. Customer-centricity, Content, Creative visualisation & Channels. Content may be the king, but channel is the queen as choosing the right one is vital to drive traffic to your campaigns.”

– Parth Patel, Vice President Marketing, Asia Pacific & Middle East Africa, Kerry Group

“There are also a few exciting emerging content trends for 2021, these are IM channels, shorter videos, interactive content and employee advocacy via social media.”

– Iris Chan, Marketing Director, Asia Pacific & Japan, Seismic

“The customer journey is evolving continuously, the product itself is no longer the sole USP, the focus has now shifted on how the product manifest itself in the customer journey such as the user and product experiences.”

– Racheal Toh, Head of Marketing APAC, Barry Callebaut Chocolates Asia Pacific

“Audiences more than ever want to self-select, they want to be in the driving seat and choose their own way to self-educate, they want the right content at the right moment.” – Tim Johnston, Senior Marketing Director APJ, ON24

“Artificial intelligence and automation as voted by our audience is seen as a positive effect on the world. However, it’s important to remember to not follow the recommendations made by AI blindly particularly in regards to optimizing the customer experience as AI cannot do reasoning and can only interpret.”

– Gautam Balakrishnan, Chief Marketing Officer (Services) & Country Director (Singapore & Malaysia), Tata Projects

“Business resilience is like a muscle that develops with regular exercise. It is important to have structures and process in place to deal with challenging circumstances and to exercise them regularly. Be prepared and agile to respond to unprecedented events.”

– Vibhav Varshney, Head of Marketing, Malaysia & Singapore, UPS

Once again, thanks to all MarTech enthusiasts who have tuned in to The Virtual MarTech Summit APAC and shared a moment of learning and networking with us. For those who couldn’t make it to our live sessions and feel like missing out, don’t worry, you still have the opportunity to relive the summit on-demand here.

Last but not least, the registration for our Global Virtual MarTech Summit in April is now open. Simply register a pass for you and your team by visiting here – https://themartechsummit.com/global-virtual-summit

The MarTech Summit Team is pleased to have hosted an elite and engaging community. Stay tuned for more to come by following our social media accounts and joining The MarTech Community on Slack!

By: Rahmi Atalay.