Agenda Conference Day

The Internet continues to be an immense playground for those who are creative. Whole businesses have emerged out of what often looked like crazy ideas. As in any evolution process, most failed, but some survived and became immensely successful. What’s the role of creativity in today’s marketing and business strategies? Is creativity just play and business just about profits?

Stéphane Hamel is a leading voice for online analytics, helping businesses understand the value of performance measurement and business optimization. With over twenty years of experience, most spent developing web sites and online strategies, he is an independent consultant, a frequent conference speaker, is lecturing web analytics and business analysis classes at the University of British Columbia as well as teaching online analytics at Laval University.

Stéphane owns a Master in Business Administration specializing in eBusiness and received the « Web Analytics Association Leadership and Technical Excellence Recognition ». Involved in various educational, research & development activities, he is also a member of the « International Institute of Business Analysis » and director of the « Web Analytics Association ».

10:00 am

Noran El Shinnawy
Acquisio as Internet Marketing Specialist

Mark Goren
Transimission Content + Creative

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" -  Integration of Social Media with Web Analytics by Noran El Shinnawy, Acquisio as Internet Marketing Specialist and Mark Goren, Transimission Content + Creative

Your customer is talking about your products, your service, your brand. Some of that conversation happens on your properties, but with the explosion of social media, the majority of this conversation seems to be happening in places you can't control. When you post anything online – a blog post, comment, message board response, Tweet and countless other kinds of content – your thoughts can travel from one site to another to another to another.

In this session, we will explore the rammifications of the voice of the customer, how you can leverage it to enhance your brand and your customers' experience. You will walk away with a plan to monitor, measure, and improve your brand experience using social media and the "voice of customer".

Norans passion for understanding today’s customer is a key driver to her analysis of industry trends and keeping up with the latest in voice of customer and analytics. When Noran is not online, she is either travelling or diving with sharks in the red sea. You can follow Noran on twitter @noranshinnawy

After 10 years working in marketing as a copywriter at several traditional advertising agencies, Mark turned his attention and creative thinking to the field of social media marketing, all so he can help traditional agencies and direct clients understand the social media landscape and mindset. Since starting his business, Mark has worked with advertising and P.R. agencies in Canada and the U.S, helping them get up to speed on social media tools, technologies and tactics, while preparing them to add social media programs to their own service offering

Budweiser launched Bud.tv and fell on its face. Meanwhile, Home Depot has made a success with hdBusinessToolbox.com. Why did one score when the other couldn’t? No one has laid out a clear path to success for brands that want to create Internet Mini-Me’s, but the first step to intelligent experimentation is to take a hard look at what we do know. That’s the point of this talk, which is an examination of what we’ve learned from some instructive successes and failure.

After completing his Ph.D. course work in economics at U.C. Berkeley, Tajirian joined Bank of America as a visiting scholar responsible for providing quantitative support to the trading floor. During his seventeen years of academic and practical experience, he has also taught finance at U. C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Business (Haas School) and business policy and strategy as part of the university's Worldwide Programs. His nonacademic experience includes consulting experience with Morgan Stanley, Treynor-Arbit Associates, Financiometrics, and BARRA on financial-risk monitoring and valuation.

This session outlines and describes simple Internet marketing mistakes that have not only destroyed companies' costly online marketing campaigns, but also nearly destroyed many of the companies themselves. This session will examine some of the most memorable Internet screwups and distill the valuable lessons to be learned by both companies and individuals alike.

Dennton Fahl is President of BlackSun Inc. a web hosting, data storage, and co-location company headquartered in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Dennton has been advisor to companies such as Savanna Energy Services Corp., TrigPoint Solutions, Sabre Well Servicing Inc., Xtreme Drilling Corp., and Wrangler West Energy Corp. Dennton currently also serves as an advisor at National Bank Financial, a division of the National Bank of Canada.

SEO + PPC = A winning strategy by Deborah Kilpatrick, Owner,SourceKnowledge

Deborah is an expert in paid search advertising and search engine optimization.  With 10 years experience in the search engine industry, her passion lies in everything related to search. Deborah started her career as Product Marketing Manager at Mamma.com and managed both the brand strategy of the search engine as well as it's paid search service, Mamma Classifieds.  In 2006, she started dSideMarketing, a full service interactive Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing firm based in Montreal.

Deborah has been an advisor to companies such as LiquidNutrition, The John Molson School of Business, GEOS Language Academy and CloserLookSearch. In December 2009, Deborah became VP of Marketing at SourceKnowledge, of which dSideMarketing is an operating brand. SourceKnowledge is an online media agency that in addition to SEO and SEM, offers banner and website design, landing page optimization and serves ads on it's own banner and search network, reaching over 1.5 billion people a month. When Deborah is not online you will most likely find her hiking, running, reading or cooking.

Media saturation is rampant, so superior customer relationships require dynamic, tailored dialog with individuals on a near real-time basis. Yet marketing directly to an audience of one requires not only correctly understanding the prospect, but timing the communication to coincide with recent behaviors and preferences – whether on the Internet or in the “real world.” 

This sort of integrated, online/offline coordination means collecting, evaluating, and responding to customer data from a variety of touchpoints across a variety of channels, and sending the correct messages, in the correct form, at the correct time.  The end result is deeper customer relationships and increased cross-selling over the customer lifecycle. This presentation looks at how Aeroplan has established this kind of customer-specific marketing on a large scale, lessons they learned in the process, and how the strategy can be replicated by other companies.

Darin manages campaign analysts within the CRM group at Aeroplan and is responsible for leading the company’s marketing campaign management initiatives. His other responsibilities include leading the development of new targeting techniques and lead analysis of client specifications and development of business rules. Prior to Aeroplan, Darin was employed as a consultant for the Canadian National Railways, Bell Canada, and Bell Sygma.

Millions of smaller businesses are still not advertising online, yet consumers are search more than ever for local products and services. Why do so many businesses think that just because they created a website 4-5 years ago, that they have done all they can do. The Internet continues to change. As business owners we need to ensure that we don’t forget about the internet as we develop and change our marketing plans. Having worked with thousands of small business, both online and offline, I have seen every type of small business can see greater success, just by having a plan (and executing on it).
There are a few little things that every business owner can do to make their website more easily found when consumers are looking for their product or service. We will learn a few simple tips to help your company rank better in the Search Engines, and Directories.

You’re representing a brand on Twitter and know the basics, but don’t feel you’re getting the most out of its potential. Learn which 3rd party applications will enhance your experience to give you real value and market intelligence from Twitter. In this session we’ll look at the top Twitter Tools to help you manage corporate tweets, analyze sentiment, track opinions, conduct market research, find influencers, monitor brand mentions, track trends in real-time and more. Put more power behind your strategic marketing and increase your ROI with Twitter Tools.

In 2009, Profectio.com named Adele McAlear one of the Top 10 Most Influential Women in Social Media in Canada. Her expertise has been featured in The New York Times and The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business. An early adopter of social media and a technology enthusiast, Adele is a strategic marketing consultant with over 20 years marketing experience. In addition to consulting, she offers training and workshops in social media concepts, strategy and tools to help people build relationships online. Adele McAlear speaks at events regularly about marketing, social media and digital legacy. Her home online is adelemcalear.com.

Without a doubt, companies are diving more quickly into social media and social networking for the purposes of sales, marketing and customer service. But recruiting - as usual - is lagging. Companies that are looking to take advantage of social media to improve their business have ignored its power and effectiveness in hiring great people. But, most of these companies claim that their businesses succeed because of their people. Clearly, there's a disconnect.

The proper use of social media and social networking, along with off-line activities, can drastically improve how a company recruits, increasing the quality of applicants and hires, and decreasing costs. It takes commitment and a shift in thinking - but one that's already happening in other areas of the organization. If companies want to hire the best people, they need to connect and engage with their target market (of candidates) through new social media and social networking tools. Companies need to build and promote their employer brand, market more effectively and turn themselves into magnets.