Digithoughts

Interactive Day featured first-rate speakers from all corners of the Digital Marketing industry including Facebook, Google Analytics, Exact Target, Yahoo and LinkedIn.

Of particular note, Digitaria's Warren Raisch delivered one of the day's most heavily attended sessions on Marketing Convergence, and how we can synchronize our marketing efforts as unprecedented innovation changes our industry.

Other highlights from the day included the various topics:

Innovation

Jack Myers opened the day covering innovation and stated that organizations must innovate in order to stay relevant. He first wrote these words in his 1993 book, and they are and forever will be true, but what struck me is how this is too often only applied to new things. For instance, the advancement of mobile and geo-fencing were popular topics at Interactive Day. But we as marketers must also find ways to innovate with the traditional tenants of our digital space. Search, Display and Email aren't going anywhere and are going to command the greatest market share for the foreseeable future. We need to innovate within these tactics, not simply focusing on creation of new tactics or we risk undermining our marketing efforts.

Mobile

Right now, mobile has captured the majority of the buzz in our industry and to an extent, rightfully so. Our mobile devices are an intricate part of our lives, and represent a new and still untapped potential for marketers. But what needs to be kept in perspective (as Warren points out in the interview below) is that mobile needs to be treated as the marketing tactic that it is. It is a line item within greater marketing budgets, but all tactics should be appropriately represented to truly maximize the success of our programs and campaigns.

Analysis

The overall focus for marketers will and should always remain on ROI. It was especially encouraging to see the Google Analytics session so heavily attended. Marketers should crave this data, and want to build their entire marketing programs around it. Obviously this industry has seen tremendous change over the past year, but what was missing from this conference, was the showcasing of someone with the ability to take ROI intelligence a step further. One area of predicted growth in 2010 is with ROI modeling, as companies look to gather intelligence on how all spending in their organization drives revenue, not simply marketing campaign spending. This is an area where Digitaria has set the bar, working with some of the country's largest corporations to provide a deep level of understanding for how every penny spent in the organization contributes to the bottom line.

Overall

The day truly presented invaluable information and the San Diego Ad Club should be commended for a fantastic event on all fronts. From venue, to sessions, to the speaker lineup, the Ad Club represented San Diego's digital community extremely well, one that Digitaria is proud to be a part of.

Following the event, I was able to sit down with Warren to ask some follow-up questions. This interview can be seen below:

Chris Book Director of Marketing

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