Held last week at The Old Truman Brewery, the two-day conference featured over 200 speakers along with exhibitors, alternative content streams, creative masterclasses, chill out zones and much more.
Social Media Manager Camille Ainsworth from Ticketmaster UK Marketing attended YMS and appeared on a panel about social media and retail. Below are some things of interest she took away from the event.
Chatbots for marketing
The most interesting thing I saw was about the future of chatbots. We tend to think of chatbots as a customer service thing, but we could use these to promote our guides – such as when people are looking for inspiration for gift ideas or asking about what’s good and going on in a region. Interestingly, those working in this space reported that people are much more honest with bots than with actual sales assistants. This is because people don’t have any fear of being judged by a robot, and as a result ROI has been seen to be higher than expected.
Digital marketing thinking in offline experience
There are some really interesting ways shops are thinking about using socials and mobile to help with the in-store experience. One of the best I saw was a sort of physical retargeting. For example, if someone had been on a site and looked at a pair of shoes, a smart wall of draws would offer interest – lighting up and opening towards the shopper as they moved past. Digital marketing thinking, when applied offline, is pretty interesting. It could be particularly interesting for venues – such as for gigs they know the user in their venue has looked at.
Brands offering utility
One of the key things the conference talked about was the future of adverts. There are a lot of people who think ads will disappear and that the key to future marketing is “utility”. This is something we show through socials and the blog a lot – being a kind of resource for customers.
Future marketing
Finally there was an interesting talk from the Stylist agency who consult on future marketing. They break down their thinking into five key points:
1. Create intimacy with your customer and bring them closer to how your business operates.
2. Embrace unfinished beta business (we do this with socials and digital marketing).
3. Feed the ego as digital natives tend to be more self involved. But this doesn’t need to be something done to inflate the ego – it can be done by expressing fandom and creating a space for them to show off.
4. Adopt grades to lock in loyalty – perhaps through reward schemes.
5. Contextualise with or without tech.
For any other information about this event, or others that we attend, please contact your account manager or [email protected].
