Just a few weeks ago the world’s number one email marketing and automation platform Intuit Mailchimp landed in sunny Sydney to premiere its world-class conference FROM: HERE, TO: THERE to Australian marketers. Marketing Mag attended, chatted, discussed and reviewed the latest products and innovations, and now we’re ready to take you behind the scenes of the sold-out inaugural event.

Arriving at the glistening doors of W Sydney, Marketing was met by Mailchimp’s winking mascot Freddie – perhaps a hint towards the exciting surprises and insights that would soon be unveiled in the hours to follow.

New product announcements

The agenda commenced with Intuit Mailchimp CEO Rania Succar delivering the details of the platform’s newest offerings. Meet Revenue Intelligence – an always-on system of predictive and generative artificial intelligence models designed to proactively give marketers opportunities to win more revenue. 

This feature, embedded into the Mailchimp product and backed by financial data from Intuit’s Quickbooks, promises to help marketers maximise their return on investment by predicting revenue based on AI segmentation, target repeat purchases by dynamically predicting the ideal time to remarket to customers based on the typical buying window for their industry, generate branded content that performs, and visualise revenue with the marketing funnel. 

Next, Succar announced an expanded partnership with Canva. This new integration functionality will soon enable users to automatically synchronise image folders and files directly within the marketing platform. It will eliminate the need for manual updates, promising to provide a more efficient workflow across all channels. 

Marketing exclusively spoke with Mailchimp global head of ecosystem Kenneth Chestnut on what this means for Aussie marketers.

“What we’ve heard from our partners is that customers want to have a consistent brand experience across all channels: their website, emails and SMS,” Chestnut said. “We’ve partnered very deeply with Canva to enable our customers to have that consistent brand experience across their entire internal and external properties.”

Chestnut emphasised how the brand is constantly and continually iterating and building on all integrations based on valued user feedback. 

“Mid-market companies tend to have on average about 14 different technologies in their martech stack – from tracking tools and CRM software to social media platforms. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for our customers to use Mailchimp with other popular technology platforms,” he said.

The last major product unveiling was the announcement of SMS for Australia. With international customers already seeing up to 16 times better conversion rates through SMS campaigns, Aussie marketers are now also able to unleash the power of the SMS channel within the already loved Mailchimp platform.

Just like its email marketing offerings, SMS also capitalises on the platform’s highly customisable automation workflows and personalisation capabilities to produce effective marketing strategies and drive results through a variety of channels.

Agenda and key speakers

Next, attendees heard from entrepreneur and best-selling author Seth Godin, who tuned in live from New York. In an interactive session, Godin provided valuable insights to help modern marketers navigate common challenges through a variety of in-depth case studies. Audience members were then free to ask the ‘inventor of email marketing’ questions and advice.

Leading behavioural expert Bri Williams was up next to assure marketers that while the industry was quickly evolving, the fundamental behavioural patterns of consumers remained unchanged. Williams posited that the key objective of marketers is to shift customers from Point A – current behaviour to Point B – desired behaviour, but this is, of course, much easier said than done. Williams left attendees with three key insights: consumers will tend to follow the ‘path of least resistance’, too many options can overwhelm customers and lead to inaction, and fear and hesitation can be reduced by fostering trust and mitigating perceived risks.

Just up before midday were the CMO ‘superheroes’ of the industry. The panel comprised Mailchimp CMO Michelle Taite, Telstra CMO Brent Smart and Kia Australia general manager of marketing Dean Norbiato, and was moderated by leadership expert Holly Ransom. The trio of industry titans shared a wealth of knowledge on embracing innovative tactics to achieve unconventional marketing success, adopting new technology – which Taite said “the value of AI in enhancing creativity and efficiency can not be understated”, and the importance of fostering a supportive and collaborative team culture, which can make-or-break the success of an organisation’s marketing output. 

The last big-ticket item of the day was a fireside chat with Boost Juice founder and CEO Janine Allis and ‘Australia’s funniest man’ Hamish Blake. In what was the perfect lighthearted end to a highly insightful day of marketing, Allis delved into all of the good and the bad spanning across her inspiring career, while Blake went into comic crisis questioning why he was the one chosen to sit across from one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs. When the conversation shifted to the importance of brand and personality, Allis expanded on the fun community-driven initiatives that she has delivered at Yochi, while Blake taught marketers the power of staying true to their values, which he credits for his long and successful career in the entertainment sector.

Mailchimp’s masterclass in strategic events

When it came to the event, Mailchimp was meticulous. Every detail was considered no matter how fine. From the highest quality motion graphics on the main stage screen to the ‘punny’ napkins at lunch, the quality of the event was unmatched.

In speaking with various members of the executive team including CMO Michelle Taite, chief sales officer Adam Anger, and newly appointed ANZ regional director Anthony Capano, one core message was echoed: challenge the conventional and have fun doing so. Be a cheeky monkey and learn from Freddie.

In what will surely be the first of many Australian events for the global marketing platform, Mailchimp’s FROM: HERE, TO: THERE underscored the brand’s commitment to the Aussie market.

At an event where Mailchimp’s signature yellow was everywhere you looked, it would’ve been easy to fall into the ‘sales pitch’ trap, making the day feel like one big advertisement – but they didn’t.

They proved their product is the industry leader with new features and the data to prove it. They connected with marketers which fostered new personal relationships with the brand. They invested in their audience – providing knowledge and value to all attendees and spared no expense to do so in any capacity (yes, there were exclusive gifts!). And lastly, while it may not have been their intention, they proved they could be a killer sole events company if they wanted to.

These are the takeaways that every brand would dream their event attendees would feel walking out after a long day of new insights and networking. So marketers, take a lesson from Mailchimp: understanding the power of knowing your audience, their interests, humour, wants and needs, is invaluable. Monkey see, monkey do – you see what I did there?

Also, read about Mailchimp’s inaugural OOH campaign launch in Australia back in April, or building customer loyalty with Mailchimp’s VP of brand experience.

Imagery attributed to Mailchimp.