What are the hot topics in marketing right now? After a whirlwind three days at DMA’s &THEN 2016 of standing-room-only sessions and one-on-one interviews, pre-show discussions, and post-show roundups, I can tell you this: If you don’t have a deep understanding of your customers yet, you’re not alone.

But marketers are feeling the pressure to amass the data they need for one-to-one marketing at scale, figure out mobile’s place in the mix, and prepare for the sweeping changes that the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence/machine learning will bring. And that’s not all. “One of the many things keeping marketers up at night is the speed of change—especially changes in customers’ behavior and expectations,” Dave Panek, SVP of marketing at Aprimo, told me during our interview at the conference. “At any given moment marketers think they’ve cracked the nut and then customers’ behaviors change.”

What else was the talk of the conference? Below is a roundup of several of the show highlights.

7 Decision Drivers Marketers Can Tap to Influence Customer Behavior
“People make split-second decisions,” Nancy Harhut reminded a standing-room-only crowd during her session, “7 Human Behavior Hacks That Increase Engagement and Response,” at DMA’s &THEN 2016 conference. Harhut, chief creative officer at Wilde Agency, noted that this reality is just one of many challenges marketers face in capturing prospective customers’ attention at a time when the average attention span has decreased to a mere eight seconds. MORE…

5 Marketing “Shoulds” in an Overwhelming List of “Coulds”
You’ve heard the adage, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” This is especially true in marketing, where the ever-so-tempting list of “coulds” is lengthy at best and overwhelming at worst. MORE…

Why CMOs Are, in Fact, Chief Mystery Officers
Data will tell fascinating stories, if you get out of its way and let it talk, says Josh Reynolds, head of marketing and client consulting at Quantifind. It’s up to marketers to use their curiosity and intuition, combined with those data-based stories, to make decisions that will positively impact marketing performance. Marketers also need to use curiosity and intuition to uncover the mysteries that data can reveal, such as what’s behind changes in sales or loyalty. MORE…

The Happy (Re)Marriage of First- and Third-Party Data
There’s a renaissance in marketing, Kevin Dean said during a panel discussion at DMA’s &THEN 2016 conference. That renaissance, says Dean, president and GM of targeting for Experian Marketing Services, is the resurgence in marketers’ interest in third-party data. MORE…

Data: The New Marketing Currency in a Time of Change
“What an amazing time to be a marketer,” GE Vice Chairman Beth Comstock said during the opening keynote at DMA’s &THEN 2016 conference. “Data is our currency. Grab it and use it.”
Marketers, she asserted, should observe consumers, customers, and the market; question everything; gain an understanding of what’s important, expected, and possible; and seek and get customer feedback. “Marketers at our core are behaviorists,” Comstock said. MORE…

POPSUGAR Uses Data to Sweeten Its Marketing Performance
There’s nothing sweeter than linking marketing to revenue. Just ask Geoff Schiller, chief revenue officer of POPSUGAR. The lifestyle media company uses data to provide content that tantalizes readers and advertisers alike. MORE…

Marketers Live in an “and” World
Today creative and data are two sides of a coin that double its value. One marketing leader who’s a proponent of the creative/data partnership is Jamie Gutfreund, global CMO of Wunderman. During her upcoming session at DMA’s &THEN 2016 conference in Los Angeles she’ll be pulling back the curtain on trends to watch in 2017 and beyond. I caught up with Gutfreund jetting between meetings and asked her for a preview. MORE…