Sitecore Symposium 2018: Opening Keynote

The opening keynote was delivered by Mark Frost and Paige O’Neil from Sitecore to an audience of 3,000 attendees!  The theme of this year’s symposium was “Elevate the Experience”.

My Takeaways

Here are my notes from the session:

• People are not buying products, they are buying an experience
  • The experience is the product
  • 88% of people will pay more for a good experience
  • Only 1% of people feel like they get good experiences
  • How can we enable our customers to deliver good digital experiences?

Exciting Announcements

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Several announcements were made during this session:

• The general availability of JavaScript Services for Sitecore
  • Enables faster time to market
  • Devs do not need to know much about Sitecore
  • Full access to personalization
• The general availability of Cortex
  • AI based personalization
• Tighter integration of Sitecore with Salesforce
• The acquisition of Stylelabs
  • Digital asset management
  • Sitecore will be able to provide full end to end view of content for marketers

Highlighted Brands

Three brands were highlighted that are elevating the experience:

• Volvo Cars
  • Changing from a marketing company that passes customers to a local dealer to have direct relationships with customers
  • Starting the “car as a service” model
    • Not a lease, but a subscription service
    • Flat fee (includes all maintenance and insurance)
    • Change cars whenever you need
      • Trade to a bigger car for a weekend trip
  • Subscription can be managed through an app
  • Lessons learned
    • Understand your customer
    • Always improve
    • Think fast, act fast
• Cannondale Bikes
  • Very traditional marketing methods
    • Photo shoots of people riding their bikes
    • Offline purchasing through independent dealers
  • Leverage data from ride tracking devices
    • Use the data to help customers find the right bike for them
    • Find a location that has the bike in stock
    • Give the customer a QR code they can take to a store to ensure they get the correct bike they have chosen
  • After the sale, the app has augmented reality features showing how to repair your bike
• Sick Kids Foundation Hospital
  • Traditional “please help me charity”
  • True mobile first designed site
    • They did not see desktop design comps until the mobile experience was right
  • Spent a year rebranding then launched the biggest fundraising campaign in Canadian healthcare history
  • Full omnichannel marketing with personalized content
    • Airport
    • Malls
    • Doctor to Doctor
    • Social media
    • Radio
    • Email
  • Lessons learned
    • There is power in consistent messaging
    • Keep the message simple and understandable
    • Ensure business strategy and information technology are tightly integrated
    • Keep the proven, test the unknown
      • Have to be able to fail and learn from your mistakes

Sitecore Symposium’s First Charity

This was the first year that Sitecore has partnered with a charity.  This year’s charity was SickKids.

• Sitecore offered to double any donations received during symposium
• Sitecore partnered with Arke and Cannondale to help raise money during symposium.
  • Attendees could ride a Cannondale bike for three minutes for a $25 donation.
  • Participants also received an oversized building block.
  • The blocks were stacked to make a building as we symbolically built a hospital over the course of symposium.

Check out the rest of my notes from Sitecore Symposium 2018!