Workshop A. Insiders Guide to Building Digital Marketing Technology Toolkit
Thursday, December, 4: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Marketing practitioners multitask just about every minute of every day. There are ongoing email, web, mobile, and marketing strategies to organize, plan and execute. Each of these areas used to include a range of technologies that was purchased and implemented separately such as web content management, campaign management, analytics, digital asset management, and others. Now, there are new suites of tools that can manage all of these processes. But how do you select the right one that will help you to accomplish your marketing objectives?
Specifically, the session will provide a methodology for mapping business needs to technology alternatives, as well as a road map for evaluating digital marketing technology vendors. We will provide critical and hard-hitting reviews of the available digital marketing technologies. Don't be surprised after-the-fact. Find out the real strengths and weaknesses of these tools before you purchase them.
Key Takeaways:
- Digital marketing trends and emerging architectures
- Hints and tips on selecting a digital marketing product for your organization
- Overcoming the daunting prospect of selection - how to narrow down your list of vendors to evaluate.
- A critical, high-level overview of digital marketing solution providers
Workshop B. Foundations for Best-Fit WCM Service Provider Selections
Thursday, December, 4: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Evaluating and selecting technology and service partners is intimidating. And without proper guidance, it's easy to take the wrong path. This workshop focuses on selection readiness. It is designed to point your organization in the right direction before you even start the journey to new solutions for web content and experience management. You will learn how to create a plan of action for getting your organization ready for a successful selection program - one that results in real business benefits as the direct result of implementing the right solutions with the right technology and service partners. We explore the fundamentals of selection preparation, covering four key areas of readiness:
- Articulating the business case,
- Identifying the stakeholder landscape,
- Managing requirements gatherings, and
- Developing realistic budgets.
We provide a step-by-step overview of an efficient, results-driven selection program, and we show you how to build a messaging and communications plan that will help you shape internal conversations about it. With this approach, you can set expectations, educate reluctant stakeholders, and get your company thinking about change management, which is often an afterthought but shouldn't be. The selection process is all about aligning business goals with the "best-fit" solution for your organization's needs. And finding that fit is about way more than just matching features to requirements. Armed with the outcomes of this workshop, you will be ready to move forward with confidence.
Speaker:Cathy McKnight, Vice President, Consulting, Digital Clarity Group
Workshop C. Successful Social Intranets
Thursday, December, 4: 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Modern intranets are steadily becoming more "social" and "collaborative", but this can mean many things. Some recent intranets put social at the heart of everything (including the homepage), while others supplement existing sites with simpler features, such as commenting. While this is still a rapidly evolving space, intranet teams in the real world need to make concrete decisions with confidence.
This interactive workshop will cover four key steps for social intranets:
- Explore the opportunities. Looking at social intranet examples around the globe, we will explore the reasons, benefits and business cases for social.
- Understand your organisational landscape. Every organisation is different, and this has a big impact on the what, where, when and how of social intranets.
- Choose what to launch. Where to start, what to launch and for who: there are multiple options to choose from, depending on your strategy and organisational context.
- Make social a success. There are a growing list of best practices to draw on, relating to design, launch, adoption and governance.
This inspirational and practical workshop will mix plenty of screenshots and examples with discussions and workshop activities. While not every question will be answered, participants will walk away with a greater sense of confidence and knowledge about social intranets.
Speaker:Rebecca Rodgers, Principal Consultant Digital Workplace & Community Manager, Step Two
Workshop D. Adaptive Content Modeling for Omnichannel UX
Thursday, December, 4: 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Your users need you to come to this session, even if they don't know it. Multi-channel, or "COPE (create once, publish everywhere)", content is a bit of a holy grail. Our trade is discussing content being freed from the browser, available for reuse, and accessible in apps, kiosks, responsive mobile deliverables, eBooks and syndication services to our partners - even in wearable technologies. All this should improve the experience of users, and benefit the organizations that serve them.
Adaptive content is content that is nimble enough to realize all these ambitions. But making our content adaptive means addressing a topic that sends many running for the fire exit or nearest window: semantic modeling of structured content.
This session will connect the dots between adaptive content, responsive design, multi-channel delivery and user experiences to show you why you want and even need to have semantic content structures. It will then go through a non-terrifying introduction to getting started with modeling your own content in a future-proof way. Learning objectives:
- The knowledge that their content is already more structured than they realize.
- A solid sense of what semantic, structured content actually is and its relationship to adaptive content, multichannel, and UX.
This workshop is designed for either intermediate or expert attendees. Bring your laptop and go home with samples and templates.
Speaker:Noz Urbina, Consultant and Founder, Urbina Consulting
Workshop E. CMS Implementations: The View from the Implementor's Side
Thursday, December, 4: 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Ever wanted to know how CMS integration shops approach projects, and how you can better work with them or use their techniques in your own organization? In this workshop, Deane Barker will explain the ins and outs of CMS project work from the perspective of a veteran integrator, with the goal of helping you understand how best to find an integrator, work with your chosen integrator, or manage your project and team.
Learn about how integrators:
- Evaluate RFPs
- Develop proposals
- Scope projects
- Schedule work
- Manage client expectations
- Plan implementations
- Select software
- Execute and manage development
- Support existing implementations
Workshop F. What's it Worth? Assessing the ROI of your Content
Thursday, December, 4: 1:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
No matter how well researched and deliberate your content strategy is, the proof lies in the pudding and the most successful content professionals continually evaluate the effectiveness of their content and adapt their strategies to improve the return.
Too often, content is evaluated or audited only when a major digital shift is in play (a move to a new CMS, a new marketing automation tool, a new campaign launch.) In order to be truly successful, that evaluation should be ongoing, providing the opportunity to learn from past content marketing successes and failures.
Lindy Roux will demonstrate an approach to content evaluation across multiple channels, based on qualitative and quantitative assessments, which has been used to help organizations understand the true ROI of a piece of content. The session will end with a practical exercise in content evaluation where participants will try their hand at developing assessment criteria and then applying these to real content. Participants in the session will learn:
- How to establish content goals that are measurable and realistic
- A way to evaluate content against these goals
- How to establish a regular review workflow and process
- An approach to optimization across all channels
- The appropriate team structure for ongoing content performance
Speaker:Lindy Roux, VP & Managing Director, Tendo Communications