Another successful Magento Imagine is officially in the books and the Sprinbot team, once again, had a great time during the three-day show. This year, Magento Imagine was jam-packed with industry leaders speaking on innovative technology and strategies, specifically for eCommerce retailers. Springbot was awarded a speaking opportunity during one of the breakout sessions, where our VP of Sales, Austin DeAngelis, presented our Four-Stages of Marketing Maturity for SMB retailers and conducted a live Q&A session with one of our customers, George Vlagos of Oak Street Bootmakers. When our time at Imagine came to a close, the Springbot team headed home with new information and ideas we couldn’t wait to share. Here are our top six takeaways from Magento Imagine 2018:
1. Jamie Foxx – What we Learned About Leadership
Image via https://imagine.magento.com/
This year, the Marquee Keynote Speaker was Jamie Foxx – an Academy Award winner, Grammy-winning artist and an eCommerce trailblazer. Foxx joined Magento CEO Mark Lavelle on stage for a candid discussion, sharing highlights from his journey and revealing how he manages the many different aspects of his career. His top three pieces of advice for everyone? Push through fear, be a global connector and test your product. After his incredible keynote speech, Foxx blew all of us away with a mixture of stand-up comedy, song and dance and posing with Mark Lavelle wearing his Privé Revaux sunglasses, to which he proudly announced, “We run it on Magento!” Read more about Jamie Foxx and his appearance at Magento Imagine 2018 here.
2. Continue to Embrace Omnichannel Marketing
We kicked off the week attending one of the Magento Imagine Growth Strategy Sessions: eCommerce Saves the Millenium: Why Omnichannel is Retail’s Only Hope, presented by Rebecca Brocton from JH. During this session, we learned from Brocton that Omnichannel shoppers have a 30 percent higher lifetime value than those who shop using only one channel and 82 percent of shoppers use their smartphones as shopping assistants in stores. Additionally, 90 percent of customers expect consistent interactions across channels, while only 14 percent of organizations are running coordinated campaigns across all channels. What is the takeaway here? If you aren’t embracing omnichannel marketing already, you need to add it into your strategy, because your customers expect it and your competition is already doing it. Brocton dove deeper with tips on being omnipresent and where to start. Learn more from her presentation here.
3. Springbot’s Four-Stages of Marketing Maturity: How Does Your Marketing Measure Up?
Day two of Magento Imagine was especially exciting for us because our very-own Austin DeAngelis presented our Four-Stage Marketing Maturity Model for SMB retailers on stage with our customer, George Vlagos of Oak Street Bootmakers. During this breakout session, Austin went through each of the four stages, describing the key characteristics and common pain points at each stage. Each stage is listed below:
We invited George Vlagos, whose store is currently a Stage Three: Full-Fledged Marketer, to speak about his own journey through each stage of the Marketing Maturity Model and to discuss how Springbot has helped him as a marketer know his next marketing move. Want to know how your marketing measures up? Take our Marketing Maturity Model Quiz for a free marketing health check. Click here to see Austin’s full presentation at Magento Imagine and stay tuned for the video of the breakout session coming soon!
4. Driving More Revenue Through Content Marketing and SEO
Ronald Dodd, CMO and co-founder at Visiture, gave a presentation during one of the breakout sessions on driving revenue through content marketing and SEO. Dodd first touched on content marketing: what is content marketing and why is it important for your eCommerce storefront? Here, he explained that content marketing builds a connection between your brand and your consumers, which in turn drives repeat purchases. He then discussed the many different types of content marketing, including video, blogs, infographics and more. The two key categories of content marketing are on-site and off-site content. On-site content lives on your website, giving you as a marketer the control and helps rank for keyword phrases. Off-site content is out of your control. It does, however, provide external SEO (e.g., backlinks, usability, etc.) The backlinks provide referral traffic and helps the consumer perceive less bias with your content. After giving the background information on SEO and content marketing, he explained how this will drive revenue for your store. Here are the five ways SEO and content marketing drive traffic from content to purchases:
- Discount codes
- Offers
- Product mentions
- Affiliates
- Remarketing
Another key reason to stay on top of your SEO and content marketing strategies is that 81 percent of consumers research online before they buy according to a Retail Today Study. If your content has a high keyword ranking, your store is likely to show up when a potential customer is doing research. Learn more about content marketing and SEO here, by reading the full presentation from Ronald Dodd and Visiture.
5. Five Essential Marketing Tools to Accelerate Your Business
David Christy, Managing Director, Commerce at Weidenhammer presented the five essential marketing tools to accelerate your business. Check them out below:
- Magento SEO Best Practices
- Use an Integrated Digital Marketing Tool (Like Springbot!)
- Visual Merchandiser and Related Product Rules
- Social Integrations
- Channel Integrations
All great tools to scale your marketing efforts and grow your business in 2018.
6. The Magento Roadmap
Our final takeaway of Magento Imagine 2018 are the updates to the Magento roadmap. On the final day of the event, Jason Woosley, SVP of Product and Technology at Magento, shared the latest updates to the Magento roadmap and discussed how Magento is expanding its solution set in terms of what they will offer for B2B, B2C and omnichannel and how they offer it. The biggest announcements during this session were:
- DHL announced as a new Premier Partner and will be integrated with Magento Shipping for more shipping options. Read more here.
- Newest version of Magento Commerce, which features integrations with Amazon Pay, Klarna and Vertex. Read more about this announcement here.
- Magento is leading the way to empowered PWA experience with significant advancements in the way Magento will deliver mobile capabilities. Learn more here.
That’s a wrap on Magento Imagine 2018 and our top six takeaways! We are already looking forward to next year’s event.
