I went to the Austin Modern Marketing Tour on April 24.  In a nutshell, it was very good and I’d recommend it to any Texans (and surrounding state Modern Marketers).  I left it excited to implement new ideas here at DR and we have!  You’ll see a shift in our marketing to focus more on our customers’ pains and less on “why us?”  After all, it’s all about the customer.

On Tuesday, May 6, I attended the Modern Marketing Tour Boston, hosted by Oracle.  It was bigger in attendance size and venue size.  It felt more like Eloqua Experience from 5 years ago.  But I heard that’s part of the plan given that Eloqua Experience won’t be taking place this year in North America…fear not!  It will run in North America in March 2015, and in London in October this year.  And it’s now called, “Modern Marketing Experience.”

What you gather by attending the MMT in different cities is actually quite similar – lots of focus being “Customer Obsessed” and on the Oracle Marketing Cloud, not Eloqua even though the vast majority of attendees are Eloqua users.  But some use the other tools in the Oracle Marketing Cloud.  What is the Oracle Marketing Cloud or “OMC” as my Oracle friends call it?  As of now, it consists of these 4 parts:

• Cross Channel Marketing: products are Eloqua and Responsys
• Content Marketing: product is Compendium
• Social Marketing: product is Oracle’s SRM (Social Relationship Management)
• Data Management: product is BlueKai

You’ll likely hear less of some of the acquired company names, although I did hear that Eloqua will stay.  But things are changing rapidly, so we shall see.

Boston had some great presentations, just like Austin did.  Oracle’s own John Stetic, Group VP, Products-Oracle Marketing Cloud, did an engaging morning keynote presentation after the witty Jocelyn Brown cleverly introduced him (she’s the hostess with the mostess and Director of Global Services Enablement as her day job).  @jstetic, great job yet again with an engaging presentation with some product roadmap details thrown in.  We LOVE hearing about the product roadmap!

Other great presentations I was able to attend were those by Brian Kardon of Lattice Engines, Laura Ramos of Forrester Research, David Kruh of Analog Devices, Chris Moody of Oracle Marketing Cloud, Erika Brookes or Oracle Social.  Really great presentation styles with each person bringing some humor to the table…something I wish all presenters did in our world.  And the content was very relevant and helpful.  If you didn’t walk away excited or learning something new, you probably were not paying attention…maybe the amazing cookies distracted you.  It happens.

Upcoming MMTs are Chicago in September and DC in November.  We’ll be at both and hope to see you there if we haven’t already at a past MMT! Even if you have to travel, it’s worth it.