Nora Snoddy is the Director of Marketing at Emma, an email marketing company based in Nashville, TN. She’s attending this year’s Digital Summit conference in Phoenix and leading a session about ways to improve your email marketing experience. She was kind enough to take some time out of her busy schedule to speak with Pennington Creative about the conference.
- Pennington Creative: Is this your first Digital Summit conference? If you’ve been in the past, what was your experience like?
- Nora Snoddy: I’m back again for another Digital Summit! I really enjoy this conference, as there’s a wonderful mix of attendees present. Here, you find everyone from executives who oversee strategy to those who are involved in the actual execution of marketing tactics. Plus, everything from advertising to branding to data analysis is accounted for at Digital Summit. It’s really a great venue for sharing ideas, collaborating, and learning industry best practices.
- PC: What sessions (or any other aspect of the conference) are you most looking forward to this year?
- NS: I’m especially excited for Laura Wilson’s session on micro-storytelling. This year, Emma’s own Marketing United conference is focused around the idea of storytelling in marketing and how we can incorporate stories into our strategies.
- PC: What are the greatest challenges you’ve faced as a marketing professional?
- NS: Marketing attribution is definitely still a challenge, as is proving marketing ROI, because so many aspects within the marketing funnel are important.
- PC: What do you see as the most important digital marketing trend of the moment?
- NS: Personalization is, and always will be, an important digital marketing trend. In 2018, it will continue to evolve. Consumers expect relevant marketing messages and marketers need to be able to get the balance right—they need to get better at segmentation and delivering a 1:1 experience. Especially with the rise of technology like voice search and even with the latest news of Google’s AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) capabilities for Gmail, email will continue to remain a powerful communication and engagement tool, with personalization at its core.
- PC: I’ve heard differing opinions on the importance that voice search is going to play in the future of SEO. What is your perspective?
- NS: Voice search is going to be a big deal, and marketers will need to be able to evolve their approach to it, because old-school SEO strategies won’t be as relevant anymore. It’s still a little early on, but now’s the time for marketers to hone in on developing a voice search strategy that takes into account natural language patterns, and most importantly, mobile optimization.
- PC: What role do podcasts play in your marketing strategy?
- NS: At Emma, we use podcasts as an engagement tool and as a way to generate brand awareness for our thought leadership content as well as events, like Marketing United. It’s a great way to provide invaluable content to marketers.
Will you be at this year’s Digital Summit Phoenix? Pennington Creative would love to connect with you there. If you’re going, drop us a line through our website!