Top 10 moments from the dotmailer Summit 2018

On a gorgeous April day, over 1,000 international marketers gathered at the Park Plaza in the heart of London to discover even greater digital potential. This year’s event was jam-packed with inspiring talks, breakout sessions and technical workshops designed to help our delegates advance their day-to-day marketing. There was so much going on during the day that you had to be super switched on to catch it all. In case you missed any of the highlights, here are our top 10 moments from the dotmailer Summit 2018:

1. Powerful and empowering women in business

It’s safe to say that the 2018 Summit played host to some serious industry titans and we were thrilled to see the agenda opened and closed by two powerful and empowering women. Natalie Nahai, author and web psychologist, showed us how she advises Fortune 500 companies like Google, eBay and Unilever how to use online persuasion to win over and retain business. We learned about homophily, cognitive load and how to engage with customers in a more meaningful way.

Your keynote speaker this year was Baroness Karren Brady, one of the most influential, high-profile and respected female business leaders in the UK and rated among the 50 most inspirational people in the world. Karren gifted us her own top 10 ingredients for success along with a witty, provocative and inspiring insight into her career journey.

2. GDPR reassurance

It was easy to predict that GDPR would feature heavily on the agenda this year, but the key takeaways were far from dry, doomy and gloomy. In his primary session, Dotdigital’s Strategy & Insight Director, Skip Fidura, showed us to treat GDPR as an opportunity to strengthen our data and build more compelling, trusted relationships with customers through automation. And Rachel Aldighieri, Managing Director at the DMA, got us thinking about how marketers can work effectively and creatively within these new parameters.

3. 1,142 delegates

After welcoming over 600 marketers last year at Dotdigital’s inaugural Summit, we set out to make 2018 a year of international empowerment. Watching over 1,000 digital marketers discover, grow and network throughout the day was one of our personalhighlights. In fact, Dotdigital’s CMO, Phil Draper, let it get to his head a little. Here he is pretending to be his favorite artist, Ed Sheeran:

4. Twitter trending

While the hottest news on 19^th April was undoubtedly the 26° sunshine (welcome to the UK!), it was awesome to see #dotmailersummit take the no.2 spot on Twitter as an equally hot topic. We loved checking in throughout the day to see so many empowered marketers tweet their key learnings from our speakers. Plus, it’s always good to know when the lunch goes down a treat.

5. 849 app downloads

The dotmailer Summit 2018 welcomed 30 international speakers to deliver on 27 session topics across three speaking tracks – so we wanted to make sure delegates could get organized. Marketers were able to follow, schedule and query every session using our free dotmailer Summit app. With ¾ of attendees making use of the app on the day, you can bet it’ll be back for 2019.

6. Launching an evolved Dotdigital

2018 Summit delegates were able to get a first look at the brand-new innovations happening within the Dotdigital platform.

With 27% of revenue generated by automation over batch-and-blast campaigns, marketers need to be able to flex their mailing muscles. Dotdigital users now have access to 30 new free automation programs to help them deliver on rising customer expectations. In order to help our customers hit every contact on the right channel, we’ve incorporated Facebook Messenger into the platform, and our new COMAPI acquisition brings sophisticated SMS capabilities on-board. Add free Facebook Audience and Google Adword Re-targeting, chuck BigQuery into the mix and you’ve got a souped-up omnichannel automation platform with all the components in the box. Oh, and we’ve added a native product recommendations tool. Innovating Dotdigita, empowering you!

7. Hitting the Mark 2018

Summit attendees were the first to gain access to insight from Dotdigital’s biggest and beefiest benchmarking report, Hitting the Mark. Attendees were able to snap up the latest statistics on segmentation, as well as learn how many brands are still leaving money on the table by failing to send an abandoned cart email. Plus, we revealed this year’s number one marketer. Want to find out for yourself? Download the full report.

8. Wayne Hemmingway

One of the most inspirational talks from the day came from Red or Dead and Hemingway Designs co-founder, Wayne Hemingway, who showed the audience that “Design is about improving the things that matter in life.” The compelling businessman – who’s provided sustainable designs for tube uniforms, student accommodation and entire housing estates – entertained and inspired with his personal storytelling. To achieve perfection in design, Hemmingway urged marketers: “Spot something that’s wrong and make it right.”

9. Customer insight

At Dotdigital, we know our customers are true superstars, so it was awesome to see Charlotte Hilton from Sika take the stage to show audiences how they’ve harness automation to build trust in B2B marketing. Alongside Charlotte, attendees were able to hear success stories from Tom Wheatley of Shortlist Media and Sarah Elphick of Forest Holidays – to name but a few! See the agenda for a full list of Dotdigital superstars who lent their expertise on the day.

10. Our partners in tech

From our superb Gold partners, Magento and Shopify Plus, who helped realize the Summit 2018, to the inspiring session on trust and social proof from Neil Bayton at Trustpilot, attendees were able to access expertise from a seriously eclectic mix of tech experts. See the full list of partners for 2018.

Don’t believe the hype? Check out some videos from the day.

See you next year!