About the Event

Welcome to the first full-day DigitalRVA conference. Here Richmond’s digital marketing community will come together to learn, share, and network.

 

Who Should Attend:

The DigitalRVA conference was designed for digital marketers, by digital marketers. No matter where you are in your career you’ll gain insights from industry leaders at organizations like CarMax, The Martin Agency and Meta.

 

What You’ll Learn:

Throughout the day speakers will share the latest in cutting-edge digital marketing tactics and strategies with an eye towards AI and automation, marketing technology, and analytics. You’ll leave with a better understanding of the tools and techniques you can apply to your daily work to move the needle.

Date + Time

September 7, 2023

9:00 – 9:30 AM – Doors open & light breakfast

9:30 AM – 5:00 PM – Conference

5:00 – 5:30 PM – Happy Hour

Venue

The Park RVA

2601 Durham St., Richmond, VA 23220

 

Registration

2023's Featured Keynote Speaker Jaclyn Ruelle

About Jaclyn
Work that transcends culture. That’s what you get with the lightening-in-a-bottle mind and personality of Jaclyn Ruelle, a 16+ year industry vet with an earned-first brand approach that’s catapulting brands into consumers’ hearts and minds. Still talked about, Jaclyn was the strategic storyteller behind one of the most famous viral campaigns: “World’s Toughest Job,” by American Greetings during her time at MullenLowe. She created the first-ever Cultural Impact Lab at the Martin Agency, deploying earned media to the forefront of innovative, cultural storytelling for brands like Buffalo Wild Wings, CarMax, DoorDash, Old Navy and GEICO— to name a few. The Cultural Impact Lab was a fusion of specialists, including comms strategy and paid media experts who create magnetic campaigns engineered for global impact. Now in her first brand-side role at Papa Johns, Ruelle is paving the way for a more humanity driven, pizza-eating occasion brand platform.

What's On Tap

9:30 – 9:45 a.m.

Intro + Welcome

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Kick off the conference with a welcome from Workshop Digital’s Andrew Miller.

9:45 – 10:15 a.m.

Embracing Change: An Optimistic Future for Digital Marketers in a Data-Driven World

Andrew Miller, Workshop Digital

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Andrew will explore how machine learning and analytics are not just shaping, but revolutionizing, the field of digital marketing and how marketers can adapt to stay relevant. Can our strategies evolve fast enough to stay ahead of the tide? Or will we be left behind? The future might be built on silicon chips and algorithms, but it’s also brimming with promise for humans that can embrace the change.

10:15 – 11:00 a.m.

The Tipping Point of Social: How the Landscape is Shifting for Brands and Creators

Meg Craig and Bradley Wells, The Martin Agency

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Unmasking the Challenges
In an era where digital transformation is the norm, we find ourselves at the tipping point of social media. As culture rapidly evolves, algorithms do too. We’re seeing content saturation and creator fatigue like never before. But in the midst of these challenges, how do brands and creators adapt and flourish?

The Martin Agency’s Edge
At CIL, we view these challenges not as obstacles, but as cues for innovation. We take on the battle against invisibility, injecting audience insights and cultural moments to bring brands to the top of the feed.

The Future of Social Media Engagement
The next evolution of social is an exciting realm of possibility, one that’s set to redefine brand and audience connection. We’re seeing audiences and influencers command a larger seat at the table, requiring in-depth audience segmentation, and continued integration of public relations and storytelling.

11:00 – 11:15 a.m.

Break

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Grab some coffee and catch up with friends, old and new.

11:15 – 12:00 p.m.

Auditorium Stage: Know When Strangers Need to Buy

Chris Gatewood, Name Warden

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Use public data to identify strangers’ specific moments of need. Specific events drive specific demand. Unsolicited marketing can be a nuisance, unless it is actually something you need, when you need it. Many of those events can be found in public records, once they are captured and organized.

Business events drive demand. Knowing about those events will drive revenue. Years ago, we started an automatic deadline-tracking service for lawyers. We don’t do that anymore. We now only sell event-driven demand. This is based on publicly reported events that we capture and organize so that a service provider only addresses a current and real need. This is our example. Across many industries, data from other licensing bodies and regulators show events that create demand. We will talk through a few examples such as professional service providers, auto dealers, equipment leasing companies, and high-growth startups.

11:15 – 12:00 p.m.

Beer Garden Stage: AI/Automation Panel

Chris Busse, Terazo, Subhash Jaini, Keiter, Ren Lacerda, CarMax, Patrick Cusumano, Workshop Digital

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Details coming soon!

12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Lunch

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Need we say more? Grab some lunch and enjoy the good food, great networking, and awesome venue.

1:00 – 1:45 p.m.

Auditorium Stage: Whole Human-Centered Marketing: Personalizing the Customer Journey Using Modern Data Platforms and Sales Tactics that Return a More Holistic Customer View

Amee Mungo, Terazo

Victoria Flood, Terazo

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The world is steadily continuing its shift from reliance on third- to first-party customer data, and new privacy legislation, including Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), have created unique and sometimes business-altering obstacles for marketers. With these challenges, however, come great new opportunities that, if leveraged correctly, can increase sales, trust, and customer loyalty.

In this session with Terazo’s Chief Strategy Officer Amee Mungo, you’ll gain insights on developing a whole human-centered marketing engagement strategy. Customize your modern data platform to gain a holistic view of your customers, track them across their sales journey, and personalize marketing touchpoints while meeting them where they are on their terms.

1:00 – 1:45 p.m.

Beer Garden Stage: The Future Of SEO Content: How To Rank & Stay On Top Of The SERPs

Bernard Huang, Clearscope

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Google wants to serve users helpful content. What are the characteristics that make content relevant to searchers? And what does this mean for your SEO content strategy moving forward? We’ll cover the evolution of Google’s stance on SEO content and where we’re heading. Come prepared to learn about topical authority, information gain, ranch-style SEO, and the implications of AI generated content.

1:45 – 2:30 p.m.

Auditorium Stage: Influencers 2.0

Rosalie Morton, Padilla

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Just a few years ago, trust in online influencers was at an all-time low, as many were exposed for boosting their follower counts with bots. Initially this led to backlash for the burgeoning industry, but eventually created an opportunity for micro-influencers to take centerstage. These authentic, often locally-focused influencers not only have highly engaged followers, they are usually more cost effective for brands. Their content easily can be repurposed as ads, sharing brand messages more meaningfully than typical advertising. Rosalie will show first-hand case studies of how Padilla has used influencers effectively to drive results, whether it’s for signatures on a petition, creating content that goes viral (yes, actually viral), or simply driving brand engagement.

1:45 – 2:30 p.m.

Beer Garden Stage: Go Beyond Reporting and Uncover the True Impact of Marketing

Brad Goldschmidt, KJ Travis, Zeke Brody, CarMax

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The customer journey is only getting more complicated. Media consumption as at an all-time high and Marketers are tasked with identifying the most optimal way to allocate their spend to drive a true impact to sales. Join Brad Goldschmidt, KJ Travis and Zeke Brody from CarMax, the largest used car retailer in the Nation and find out how their Marketing Analytics team leverages data and Advanced Analytics techniques to measure the effectiveness of Marketing and drive spend decisions.

2:30 – 2:45 p.m.

Break

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Stretch your legs and share your takeaways from the sessions during the afternoon break.

2:45 – 3:30 p.m.

Auditorium Stage: Herding Cats: Getting Organized for an Omnichannel MarComm Strategy

Casey Prentice, The Hodges Partnership

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Gone are the days where marketers could get away with focusing on just a channel or two to get their message across. Now, there are half a dozen social media networks, a website or two, maybe even a mobile app or brick-and-mortar to account for. Whether you’re in-house or agency, when it comes to managing an omnichannel MarComm strategy, you’re juggling about a 1,000 parts and pieces. This presentation will cover off on three steps to getting organized and building a foundation before you write your first line of copy or bid on your first digital ad.

2:45 – 3:30 p.m.

Beer Garden Stage: Engage Your Audience Creatively with Instagram

Gibran Jones, Meta

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Engage Your Audience with Meta

In Engage Your Audience with Meta, you’ll learn how to craft and optimize engaging content on Facebook and Instagram. You’ll discover best practices for communicating with your audience and creating content to maximize your business presence online.

 

In this session, participants will:

  • Identify what tools and creative formats to use to form a community on Facebook and Instagram.
  • Learn best practices for creating engaging content on Facebook and Instagram.
  • Learn best practices for communicating with your audience on Facebook and Instagram.

3:30 – 4:00 p.m.

The Bright Future of Black Boxes: Navigating Paid Media in the Age of AI and Invisible Attribution

Susan Wenograd

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This talk will cover:

  • The warning signs no one wanted to see, and how it’s culled the pack for successful brands.
  • How we know more than we think about doing more with media and less data.
  • The inflection points of where computers outperform us – and how it empowers media buying humans to do our jobs even better.
  • Why this is all actually good for the future of marketing as a whole.

4:00 – 4:45 p.m.

Keynote: Innovation in Pizza: Creating Brand Differentiation

Jaclyn Ruelle

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We’ll take a look at the innovative marketing efforts by Papa Johns, who is one of the brands leading the way in the mass pizza category.
How does product + consumer + marketing innovations create unique points of differentiation for the brand to stand out and breakthrough.

4:45 – 4:50 p.m.

Conclusion

Nick Serfass, CEO, rvatech/

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Let’s close out the conference together.

4:50 – 5:30 p.m.

Happy Hour

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Need we say more? Let’s end with a great happy hour and networking!

About DigitalRVA


DigitalRVA was founded in 2017 as a series of community meet-up events aimed at bringing together data-driven marketers of all levels of experience, from freelancers to Fortune 500, to create a welcoming, inclusive, diverse set of voices and perspectives to boost Richmond's growing digital marketing community.

Register for the Conference