AMA Experience Design Virtual Conference

Opening Keynote: Brand = Experience^STORY

Marketing has operated on a simple construct for branding for almost 75 years.: Brand = Promise + Experience. That construct is now obsolete. The advent of social media has shattered one-way interruptions of promise making in favor of co-created storytelling. But now marketers are addicted to storytelling; and they are at risk of losing yet more of their portfolio as they have with pricing, business analytics, supply chain, and distribution.

Russ Klein’s new and patented construct, Brand = Experience STORY makes the case that the most durable brand-building is through experience design, and re-frames the role of authentic storytelling.

Klein’s presentation will address how intentional experience design can be a brand’s strongest tool for engaging the Post-COVID consumer. You’ll be able to return to your brand the same day and see your challenges through the new lens of experience design.

Russ Klein

CEO, American Marketing Association

Now or Never: Why AI-Enabled Collaborative Work Management is the Future

As marketers, our digital IQ is years ahead of what anyone thought it would be. We’re more prepared than ever to be agile and pivot to meet the needs of our audience — and with more of our lives spent online, that audience is more available to us than ever. But with the increase in online content, how can we break through the noise and stand out from other brands? Automation and real-time insights will be the engine that enables brands to differentiate themselves. At Wrike, we’re finding that by using artificial intelligence capabilities, we’re able to get more insights with data than ever before with up to 99% accuracy. See how AI plus a collaborative work management solution allows marketing teams to work together in one platform to manage those insights and create impactful campaigns.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Automate repetitive tasks so you can focus efforts on connecting with your audience
• Unify your marketing processes, streamline communication, and turbocharge your results
• Gain instant access to campaign performance across various channels so you can easily optimize results

Saranya Babu

SVP of Marketing, Wrike

The DNA of Customer Experience in 2030

Primed by evolving digital technologies that are smart, immersive and mobile, customers are expecting “relevance as a service” in ways that are more personalized, immediate and participatory. According to the Experience 2030 Pulse survey, 73% of brands agree that the future of customer experience (CX) is tied to real-time data collection and analysis. Analytics is the DNA of modern marketing in a tech-infused world. The new CX or “relevance-as-a-service” will be fueled by decision-driven analytics that is both tech-focused and human-driven.

Join this session to learn how to:

• Bridge gaps in customer experience design with AI and immersive technologies.
• Design customer journeys that mirror the needs, expectations and hopes of digital-first consumers.
• Evolve customer strategies from engagement to participation.

Wilson Raj

Global Director of Customer Intelligence, SAS

Agile For Content Creators

The imperative to be adaptive couldn’t be made stronger than it was last year, yet most content creation is still caught up in rigid and outdated workflows. Common creative processes are slowing content creators down, resulting in irrelevant material that is obsolete by the time it reaches its audience.

The Agile movement—borne from the world of software development—offers values and principles that can transform how we create. Whether you’re building training courses, internal communications, or something else altogether; your content development can be better and faster by adopting an agile mindset. Join Kevin Doherty, marketer and agilist, for this introductory crash course on creating content in an agile way.

You’ll learn:

• What “waterfall” is, and why it’s killing your content.

• The history, values, and principles of agile software development.

• Small mindset and process shifts that will take your content to the next level.

Kevin Doherty

Marketing Communications Manager, Vyond

Opening Keynote: Delta CX: Transforming Businesses By Focusing on Customer Value

Debbie Levitt

CXO, Delta CX

The Secret to Herding Cats — Internal Marketing for Brand Templates 101

Things certainly feel hair-on-fire-fraught right now, don’t they? “There are bigger fish to fry, beautiful designs to be made and dreams to be had!” you think.

But uh, speaking of those beautiful design dreams. Those can be tough to attain when you’re spending all your time herding cats, trying to get your team members to use brand templates you’ve made for them.

Here’s the thing — it doesn’t have to. Join Tyson Mickelsen, Senior Graphic Designer at Lucidpress, as he discusses tips and tricks to help you get folks to actually use the brand templates you’ve made.

In this little fireside chat, we’ll discuss how to:

• Strike a balance between hand-holding and an empowered template user through education
• Conserve your time, energy and design capabilities while giving the people what they want
• Delight and inspire your template users

You deserve to spend more time scheming and dreaming up grandiose design projects — and your design requesters deserve to get the content they need to do their job well! So, what are you waiting for?

Tyson Mickelsen

Sr. Graphic Designer, Lucidpress

How to Get Customers to Do Your Journey Maps for You

There are many roadblocks on the path to purchase, and it’s your job to remove them for your customers. The best way to make the journey easier for your customers? Have them design it. During this session, Nick Sargent, journey mapping expert for Standing Partnership, will show you how to lead your customers through experience design exercises that not only identify and prioritize the pain points of their journey but empower them to build the solutions.

During this session, you’ll learn:

1. Why customer-lead journey maps help you grow faster

2. How to find the right customers for the job

3. Exercises that get you those insights

Nick Sargent

Vice President, Standing Partnership

Customer-First: Embedding Experience Design in Your GTM Strategy

Customers are the lifeblood of every business, but how many companies can say that they truly have a customer-centric go-to-market strategy? With so many touchpoints in a customer’s lifecycle, there are innumerable ways to misstep and think about what makes sense for your company instead of who your company serves. Are you segmenting in ways that make sense for your audience? Are you creating marketing events and programs that bring the right types of customers together? When you speak to your audience, are you speaking in their language?

Join Marissa Lyman, Director of Americas Growth Marketing for her webinar, Customer-First: Embedding Experience Design in Your GTM Strategy.

You’ll learn:

•  Dos and Don’ts of account segmentation
•  Creative ways to think through programs and activities
•  How to connect with your customers in meaningful ways

Marissa Lyman

Director of Americas Growth Marketing, Adobe

Driving Quality Growth at Scale - How To Develop Robust Customer Programs for Upsell and Cross-Sell Initiatives 

Brands are capturing more data than ever before yet are challenged with how to fuel that to not only create better experiences, but how to create loyal fans for life. Join this lively session to see the exact steps for creating world-class customer growth programs and learn how to:

• Understand your customers through their data
• Create customer-centric campaigns that delight your audience at every stage of their journey
• Develop a powerhouse team that puts the customer first
• Implement a solid strategy that becomes a blueprint to ensure future growth

Heidi Bullock

CMO, Tealium

Future-Proofing Your Company: Integrating Brand, CX and EX

A new era of business is emerging. The future of work is changing, the complexity of challenges is growing, and the identity of companies is shifting. Increasingly, customers and employees want *humanized* businesses. And marketing has a more important role to play than ever before in this new era.

This session will discuss how stand-out companies will increasingly design the WHOLE brand experience, from new hire to new customer — integrating brand, customer experience, and employee experience. Join our discussion to think about your role and experience design strategy so that you can stand out and attract the best customers and best talent in the new era.

Charissa Shelton

Experience Strategy Consultant

The Digital Revolution: Static Webinars Reimagined for Maximum Engagement

Up until recently, webinar programs have remained relatively stagnant in terms of technology capabilities and audience expectations. But, with heightened focus on virtual events, and audience expectations demanding even more engaging content and interactivity, organizations must rethink how they remain relevant and keep audiences tuned in from start to finish.

In this session, we’ll discuss the new emerging ways to garner audience attention through enhanced production, content delivery, and captivating new strategies for packaging your entire webinar program.

Alyssa Peltier

Senior Manager, Industry Solutions, Event Marketing, Cvent

Myllisa Patterson

Senior Director, Demand Generation, Cvent

Lunchtime Keynote: The Golden Road Of Opportunity: Website Accessibility and Human Experience Design

This lunchtime keynote session explores real life examples of how and why companies overlook missed business growth opportunities in a digital world. What barriers are your customers experiencing?  How are employees, students, and consumers using assistive technology and what steps can you take to embrace them? Through the art of storytelling and real life examples, we wrap up with a tour of possibilities that includes learning what experience as the new design methodology is, how to prepare for new global  web accessibility laws, guidelines and best practices and why inclusive design supports and powers up digital marketing strategies.

Kim Krause Berg

CPACC Accessibility and Usability Specialist, Creative Vision Web Consulting, LLC

Rethink Retention and Growth with AI and Analytics

At a time when customer engagement and needs are rapidly changing, more than half of chief marketing officers (CMOs) plan to rely on existing customers to fuel growth in 2021. Knowing who your customers are, what they care about, and how they feel at different stages of their customer journey are key success factors for retention. In this session, you will learn about current marketing trends and how the combination of different AI and Analytics technologies provides key customer insights and enables marketing optimization. Sense customers’ sentiment and know who they are to build stronger relationships.

Andrea Yanez

Senior Product Marketing Manager, OpenText AI and Analytics

Virgil Dodson

Director of Developer Community and Product Marketing, OpenText AI and Analytics

The New Rules for Email Marketing: Combining Privacy & Personalization

With customers’ heightened focus on privacy and an increasing demand for personalization, marketers need a new approach to email marketing. Focusing on the customer experience and building trust is key to balancing privacy and personalization. In this session, we’ll discuss the emerging strategies to add transparency to email marketing in order to drive opt-ins, reduce opt-outs and unsubscribes, and retain your subscriber list.

Claire Feeney

Product Marketing Manager, OneTrust PreferenceChoice