The 8th October saw the return of Measurefest 2014; a fantastic free one-day digital marketing conference, which focuses exclusively on analytics, big data, business intelligence and conversion rate optimisation.
It was a cold and miserable day in Central London, everyone walking around wrapped up and wishing they were back in bed. That couldn’t have been more different inside of 20 Bedford Way, even though it was early (only 9am!) there was a buzz gathering. Measurefest is probably one of the few places you can find a group of digital analysts and strategists gather geeking out and NOT boring the person next to them!
There was just time for a quick chat and coffee before the real fun got underway. Most people reading this will have already been to Measurefest so don’t need a down of every speaker that was there. So I thought I would pick out my favourite from the day. Before we go offending anyone, everyone that spoke at the conference was fantastic however; I have picked my favourite 4 purely based on how their talk could help me in my day to day job.
If anyone was following my tweets on the day, I think it was fairly obvious who my favourites are. I ran a Tweet Blinder today and I even made it to the top 20 of tweeters on the day, check it out here, did you feature?
Andrew Hood
Last talk of the day, and I think by this time many people were fading. However, Andrew Hood, Managing Director of LynchPin managed to pull us all back in with his very interesting talk on “Creating Clever Clusters”. I was so interested in what he had to say, that I immediately signed up from his Webinar next Tuesday 14th.
I really enjoyed when he showed the definitions of marketing in the past and how it is defined in 2014, with my favourite line being “transacting their life in pixels”. Now, I don’t know about you, but who is doing this…really? I maybe old fashioned but I think a mixture of the old definitions is still much more relevant, even today.
Anna Lewis
Bringing a little bit of girl power to the mix – Anna Lewis analytics geek for Wiggle. Cool and sassy on stage she had some fantastic tools which everyone should be exploring and getting their teeth into. There were of course some of our old favourites – Google Analytics and Chromes extensions for event tracking, but she definitely opened my eyes up to some new and exciting tools.
David Taylor
David founder of Coffee Pot Digital gave a great talk on using IFTTT to track conversions. Now you might think it sounds much more complicated than it is, but the great thing is that he gives you the “recipe” and a guide. This is a great way of your clients tracking offline conversion using an Android phone and a SMS message.
This is defiantly something I will be looking at for our clients in the future as well as having a go at creating my own “recipes”.
Ela Osterberger
Ela was just as awesome as Anna, showing not just us girls out there, but everyone that if someone says you can’t do it, don’t listen to them. Through trial and error and as she said herself “breaking many things”, she has developed her knowledge and skills in APIs. Her talk was really engaging and very interesting, I found myself looking up R and Google Developer as she was talking. She defiantly inspired me to finally give APIs a try and to investigate R further! The girl built her own Esty recommendation engine with an API, which is really inspiring if you ask me!
Manuel da Costa
My final entry into my top 5 is Manuel da Costa, founder of Digital Tonic, who came on just before lunch. Now you can imagine how everyone was feeling at this point, with the promise of food and free beer. However, he reined us back into the room and engaged us all with some audience participation.
Manuel gave a really help talk on the A/B testing and why it might not be working for you. This is defiantly something I do in my day-to-day job, and hearing what he had to say on the subject giving me some new ideas, and remember – don’t stop you’re A/B testing too early.
That’s my quick run down of my favourite speakers from the day and a brief insight to what they had to say.
A big thank you to Kelvin Newman and his team at Rough Agenda for organising it, and lets not forget the headline sponsors and exhibitors; Call Track, Decibel Insights, Lynchpin, SiteVisibility and Clockwork Talent, who without them the day wouldn’t be the same.