Welcome to SIGNALS22: A Kickoff with our Executive Leaders

Tim Glomb: Welcome everyone, and welcome to the kickoff for'22 Signals. It's going to be awesome. This is a great day. It's Monday. We have so many sessions, like almost 15 hours and 30 sessions, but in the kickoff here, I want to bring the man to life, our leader, our guy with a vision. Wellford, thanks for joining us. I know we're on an offsite right now, but thanks for taking the time to do this kickoff session.

Wellford Dillard: No, thanks so much for having me, Tim. I'm super excited to be here. Really excited about Signals. Finally, all of our products together. Customers from SMB up to enterprise, that's like the corner coffee shops, all the way to Starbucks. It's a ton of content. Like you said, I couldn't be more excited. This has been the vision for a long time, and we're finally here. It's finally happening.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, it totally is. It's kickoff, and look, Wendy's going to sit down, our CMO is going to sit down with me. We're going to go over the top 10 sessions you absolutely cannot miss on this. But first, Wellford, why are we doing this? Right? What's going on in the landscape? Why are we producing an event like Signals and bringing this great content to all of our clients, and frankly our prospects?

Wellford Dillard: That's a great question, Tim. I think, unquestionably, what we all know is that B2C marketing has changed. Right? It's no longer just undifferentiated sort of batch and blast content, load and send, where we actually talked about the people who purchase from us, who read our content that we produce, where we talk about them as customers or readers. These are people. Now, these are personal interactions. This is about true customer engagement, true relationship marketing. That's what this event is about. This is about how we all, regardless of our size, how we all have to think about the people who actually buy from us, who consume our content, whatever the interactions are that we have about that relationship that we're building with them.

Tim Glomb: I'm glad you brought up some keywords that are truly important to the entire thread of Signals, personalization and treating people like individuals. That is the name of the game. I mean, Forrester has stats that tells you you have to be customer obsessed, right? I mean, there's all kinds of things that you have to be thinking about as a marketer. And there's great content coming. So after the session, go fill out some of those sessions, hit your save a seat button. But what is the business we're in now? CM Group stands for something. We're building products and solutions. What are we in the business of?

Wellford Dillard: We're really in the business of relationship marketing. That's what we do, full stop.

Tim Glomb: Great. Now, it's a new term. You may have seen some things in Ad Age recently. Relationship marketing is out there. There's a survey that we sponsored with Ad Age, again, customer obsession. But let's go through very quickly the high level, the solutions and the stages of relationship marketing, which people need to get familiar with as marketers.

Wellford Dillard: Look, I think there's sort of four key areas when we talk about relationship marketing. One is create a value exchange. Really, this is the idea of you got to acquire customers always, and how do you do that? That's you have to provide them with an immersive, interactive experience to get them to share with you zero first party data around their hopes, their interests, their desires. That's where you have to start, full stop. And then from there, once you know, you begin to build that relationship and people are sharing with you. You have to engage with them, right? And you have to engage with them in a way that feels relevant. It feels personal. It has to feel truly seamless to them. You have to meet them where they are at that exact point.

Tim Glomb: There's no more linear journey. You have to pivot with your customer.

Wellford Dillard: Absolutely. In fact, I'm so glad you said that, Tim, because meeting people where they are was the whole thesis originally. The idea of bringing all of these products together. We want to be a home for markers of all sizes. The idea that you can come to CM Group and we'll meet you where you are in your journey, and we'll provide you with the right product and the right partnership and the right tools at that moment in time. And we'll grow with you as you grow.

Tim Glomb: We have tons of content on those first two stages, right? You're going to see some great stuff here, but stage three is all about personalization, which is the holy grail. I don't care the size of your company, I don't care your industry, your region. It's all about personalization, right?

Wellford Dillard: Absolutely. It 100% is all about personalization, but really what does that mean? It's a word that we throw around all the time. I think first and foremost, honestly, it's like stop calling people customers. That one thing in and of itself shifts the whole way that you see people. These are your friends. This is you on the other side of this. Hopefully, you're a consumer of your own brand. How do you want to be interacted with this? Every relationship feel like you actually know me, which means that you're not sending me stuff just at random moments in time. Somehow magically, you just seem to feel me. You know where I am at a moment in time and you're there for me when I need you to be there for me.

Tim Glomb: We have some great sessions specifically on that and some great brands that are doing it well, right? Like you said, it's that human connection. If we met each other on the street and didn't know each other, we'd ask some questions. " Hey, do you have kids?" " Cool. Where do they go to school?" " Hey, what do you do after work?" That's what brands need to be doing. And there's some awesome sessions you need to look at. Wendy and I are going to talk about a few. But stage four, let's round this out. Stage four of relationship marketing is really about retention and loyalty. What's your take on that and how are we trying to solve that problem for marketers?

Wellford Dillard: Oh, that's a great question. And honestly, it really is just, it's constant learning. It's constantly, how do I get more insights? How do I deepen that relationship? How do I deepen my understanding of you? It really is it's about data, but think of it again at a personal level. If the only conversation I ever had with you was from the first time they ever met you, and all I ever talked to you about is your kids' names, and I don't remember the next five times that we talk and I'm like, oh, your daughter was sick, your son was feeling X. This happened in your own personal life, and I don't grow with you and evolve. Our relationship stays just a surface level, " Hey Tim, how you doing?"

Tim Glomb: It's transactional. It's like two ships passing in the night you wave, but you don't really interact.

Wellford Dillard: Yeah. And that's the difference between the people that you care about in your own personal life versus the people that you're like, " I'm happy to see ya."

Tim Glomb: Yeah, Yeah. Fair. All right. Well, there's some great sessions there. In fact, Loyalty360, the largest loyalty association on planet has a great session and they're going to talk about metrics you need to think about if you're starting to build a loyalty program. All right, awesome. Thanks for helping me explain the four stages of relationship marketing. We'll go much deeper in the content over this week. How about let's recognize the people that are here? We have a lot of products, Campaign Monitor, Emma, Liveclicker, Future, Selligent, Sailthru, Cheetah. Give me a little bit of what is the idea between behind the CM Group and this ladder of companies and products.

Wellford Dillard: Of course. I love that question because this has been a vision that we had years ago when we first started in this journey with Campaign Monitor and we brought them together with Emma, and it was the idea of can we, can we really create a home for everyone? And this was the idea of like, we would constantly see... You'd see customers as they came to you, they left someone else and why did they leave? And you have customers that leave us and they move on and they evolved to somewhere else. And the idea of actually, can we just build a home for everybody? And let's go all the way from SMB and let's go all the way up to enterprise. But the idea that you could have a consistent interaction with us. You can come here and we know you, and we will stay with you and we know your business and we know your data, and we understand your goals in the same way that you want to understand your own customer's goals. And that's really what we're trying to build here is that, is that same type of personal relationship with you, what we're here to grow with you and not just sell you the product that we have at this moment in time.

Tim Glomb: No, that's great. And the beauty of being a client at the CM group, and I found it because I was a client before I joined here years ago. Emma was a client. But now to know that the features and the technology that are being built for one product can kind of scale across and start to fall and cascade into the other product. So SMS just launched on a few. Experiences, amazing first- party data acquisition tool was attached to Sailthru recently. So is there a thought? I know you don't want to let a lot of cats out of the bag on this one, but what are your thoughts on the future of CM?

Wellford Dillard: You hit on it perfectly. The idea was like we can go out and acquire or build new technologies and bring them across all of our product suites, but bring them to bear in a way that's most appropriate and most relevant for those customers on that product. So certain things that we have, they need to be complex, they need to be highly malleable, like to be able to dream your dream and do anything that you want. But for a small business, sometimes that's like, I don't have time for all of that. I don't have the resources for all of that. But I care a lot about a loyalty program. I care a lot about zero and first- party data acquisition, but I need that to exist in a very different form and I need to engage with that very, very differently. That's what we're here to do, to take innovative technologies, to bring them to bear, but in a way that's appropriate to you and then to set you up so that you can grow on that journey. And when you're ready for that next step, we're here for that next step.

Tim Glomb: Well, that's awesome. And I happen to know some of the brands in some of the sessions this week have actually laddered up across products. So it's coming true. Listen, I got to get Wendy in here. I want to talk about the top 10 sessions I think are can't miss. They're all can't miss, but we're going to get to that. Wellford, what's your closing thoughts here on our kickoff?

Wellford Dillard: Look, I think everybody's probably tired of hearing from me at this point, Tim. It's not about me, it's about everybody that's here that's taking the time. And like you said, we've got 15 hours, we got 30 sessions of fantastic content. I'm super excited to hear about the 10 can't miss sessions, so I'm going to get out of the way.

Tim Glomb: Wellford, I need you gone because right now I'm going to bring in Wendy Werve, our CMO here at the CM Group. Wendy, thanks for standing in. What kind of sessions do you want to talk about today?

Wendy Werve: Tim, thanks for having me here. I'm super excited. This is my first Signals event. I joined CM Group back in February, right when we were combining with Cheetah. I know Signals is an awesome event that we do every year, so can't wait to get started. I've seen some of the sessions and I'm excited about a couple of them.

Tim Glomb: Well, I'm going to pin you down to the four days. We have four days. Each one is covering a stage of relationship marketing that Wellford and I just talked about. So let's start with today, the acquisition stage. What are your favorites in that stage?

Wendy Werve: I'm so happy you asked because zero- party data, it's all about zero- party data. We've got CPRA coming down the pike in January, privacy, we've got so much goodness in these sessions. And I want you to tell me. You filmed all of these. I want you to tell me what we're going to learn about zero- party data that everybody needs to know.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, this is great. I don't care how large, how small your company is. I don't care what industry you're in. Zero- party day is really important. For me, Stephanie Liu, she is immediately following this session. She is a Forrester analyst. She's been covering zero- party data for years. Gives you great examples of, as you mentioned, CCPRA, GDPR, all the reasons you need your zero- party data. So stick around and do that one after this. How about you?

Wendy Werve: I'm excited about Nick Watson, head of Experiences for Cheetah. He's got some great examples beginning to end, SMB all the way up through enterprise. Can't wait to hear what he has to say. I think zero- party data is something every single marketer needs to be aware of and needs to be actively researching right now. So I know that you know Nick really well.

Tim Glomb: Yeah. Look, you nailed it. A head of Experiences, he's been doing zero- party data for years. We talk about a lot of awesome things. So that is another one. So zero- party data is a big one today.

Wendy Werve: Zero- party data.

Tim Glomb: So what do you like tomorrow in engagement?

Wendy Werve: So I love SMS and I love Andy Gladwin and I love all of the stages that he's going to walk through, all of the different types of organizations and how they can leverage SMS. Plus, he's got a British accent. So I love that. It's going to be an awesome session.

Tim Glomb: He's one of the nicest guys here at the CM Group, and he's great. He's awesome. How about, we have some client ones though in tomorrow in engagement? Who's your favorite out of those?

Wendy Werve: The GIST part, of course, Women in Sports, great story, Campaign Monitor customer, scaled their database by 400,000 in a year, became a revenue generating engine. And I mean, who doesn't love this story about three college friends who got together, started this great business that found its niche and just has taken off like a juggernaut? Bet you got to spend time with these folks.

Tim Glomb: I did. And there's some awesome B- roll content that we're going to be producing after Signals, where they really dig in deep. I do love it. 400,000 growth and explosive revenue opportunities there. So I like that one. Well, Wendy, one of my favorites today is also Smartbox. It's the last one today. Awesome company. Gayle Gunning is really, really cool. It's a great story of Experiences. They took our Experiences platform. They've been a long time messaging customer, and they basically grew revenue. Do you know how much they grew revenue?

Wendy Werve: No. I know this story, but-

Tim Glomb: 60%. Once they attach Experiences, their engagement in email-

Wendy Werve: Wow.

Tim Glomb: ...spiked 60%. Revenue spikes 60%.

Wendy Werve: All right. What's the lesson there?

Tim Glomb: The lesson there?

Wendy Werve: You want to grow your revenue?

Tim Glomb: Yeah. You want to grow revenue? You got to watch that session. It's all about zero- party data and Experiences. What else do you like on day two in the engagement category?

Wendy Werve: I love Brilliant Earth.

Tim Glomb: Why? Because it's jewelry?

Wendy Werve: That's one reason. One pretty big reason. But another reason is how they have leveraged personalization, specifically segmentation and the journeys that they've built in email. It's pretty amazing. And they're a company that has continued to perform even as their competitors have sort of really struggle.

Tim Glomb: Hit some rocky road. Yeah.

Wendy Werve: Yeah. I mean, it's pretty amazing. They're showing what they've done and they're really creative in how they're doing it. So I know you got to spend time with them as well. Have you got some jewelry?

Tim Glomb: I did not get any jewelry, but we did learn about that. And you're right. I believe it was their second quarter earnings call. The CEO said it's all about their email, that's what's driving revenue. So it is a good one. You need to check out that one. What are your takes for personalization?

Wendy Werve: So I love Kamera Express out of the Netherlands. Global organization, they've really cracked the nut on personalization. They're using Selligent's recommendation engine to drive a ton of engagement and it's really made a difference in their business. So they're 19 countries, seven languages. I mean, this isn't easy stuff that they're doing, but they're seeing some real results with it. So that's a really fun one.

Tim Glomb: Yeah, and what I think is cool about that is you might say, " Hey, I want those results too. But I don't have a huge marketing team." I believe they only have four people on their marketing team in revenue.

Wendy Werve: That's incredible.

Tim Glomb: Yep, it is. I am going to nominate Conditional Love, a great session with Brendan Witcher, another analyst that we have who's really melding how personalization and retail go together. He's been doing this a long time. As a global analyst, he has access to some of the biggest brands, biggest budgets as well as small. So he really understands what's going on in the landscape, what are the problems. If you're in retail or even not in retail, you should be listening to how personalization is actually going to drive your business forward.

Wendy Werve: You know what I love about that? This is a great reminder about how many thought leadership sessions... We've got great customer sessions, but there are a ton of thought leadership sessions that are delivered by experts in the field, and they span just about everything you would ever want to know certainly across relationship marketing, but Chris Marriott, Chris Muscat, Stephanie Liu, Brendan Witcher.

Tim Glomb: You're totally right. We've got everything covered, all industries, we're global, et cetera. But let's round it out. The last day is about retention and loyalty. What are your favorites there?

Wendy Werve: So these are some of my favorite sessions. We've got Magnolia Bakery, which is an amazing story. We also have TGI Friday's. And what I really love about TGI Friday's is not only does it highlight the importance of the technology, it really highlights the importance of having the right people to implement that technology and stand up those programs. Loyalty programs are huge. They're really impactful for organizations. And when you have the right technology, you need the right people behind the scenes making sure that it is all being leveraged and utilized properly.

Tim Glomb: You're absolutely right. In fact, Barbara Spearing at Starbucks, we talked about that earlier this year, but Katie Knight has been around the block in the restaurant industry and she does like to talk about people. I personally, I've done a lot of these sessions over the last few years. Mark Johnson, the CEO of Loyalty 360, the largest loyalty association on the planet. He has the benefit of talking to brands globally about what metrics should you be putting in place if you're standing up a loyalty session. So that one was a fun one for me. We always have a lot of fun. He's a really, really knowledgeable guy. I think that's one you got to hit.

Wendy Werve: I see here Mark Johnson and Loyalty360 and I will raise you and Oprah with Paula Thomas.

Tim Glomb: She is the Oprah of loyalty. She's been doing it a long time. She's from an Australian loyalty associate down there. She has an amazing podcast.

Wendy Werve: She's fantastic. I'm super excited about both of those thought leaders. So this is going to be a great way to round out the whole event.

Tim Glomb: Yeah. Totally.

Wendy Werve: So I'm really excited.

Tim Glomb: And look, we just went over 10 suggestions. Look, you really should be watching all of them for some reason. We've got some great diversity speakers that we have at the tail end. There's just a ton. But let's end this. Let's get into those sessions, right?

Wendy Werve: This is going to be great. And there's no other event like this where you get to go and see all of these individuals. You get to hear from all these folks across the full relationship marketing life cycle. I mean, this is fantastic. And you get to do it over four days.

Tim Glomb: And look, if you can't make all the sessions, you got a job, you got to go work. We get that. They're all going to be completely available video on demand. They'll be on our website. So you're registered, which means you're going to have access. Just look out for our emails. We're going to keep reminding you all these great sessions that you didn't hit. So should we start it? Should we kick it off?

Wendy Werve: Let's kick it off, but before we do, I want to thank you and your team. You have been spending the past several months flying all over the place interviewing folks. You guys did an amazing job. Bravo.

Tim Glomb: Great team.

Wendy Werve: Thank you.

Tim Glomb: It's all about the team. There's amazing people here. We've been doing this. It's our third year virtual. We appreciate you coming. Look, a lot of hard work. So let's kick it off. We're going to give you a minute or two to look at the agenda, to look at all the sessions while you're here on the website watching. Go save your seat for those other ones that haven't gotten yet and meet us in a couple of minutes when we kick off with Stephanie Liu from Forrester, talking all about zero- party data. Let's do it.

Wendy Werve: Awesome. Let's do it.