On the road at the Nuremberg Digital Festival #nuedigital 2021

Apart from a few technical difficulties - wrong Zoom passwords and, well, it took us a while to find our way around the pixel world - it was once again a great experience and showed us that such a series of events also works wonderfully virtually.

Internet of Things and B2B campaigns

We started on 14.7. with the presentation "Internet of Things - what opportunities does this technology offer us?". Lisa Knab from Nürnberger Versicherung gave a vivid account of the potential offered by the Internet of Things in relation to Industry 4.0, mobility, health management and SmartHome. The latter in particular was explained in detail, also in relation to the insurance industry. After all, if I receive door, window and water sensors when I take out home contents insurance and can thus reduce or at best even avoid damage, both the policyholder and the insurance company will benefit in the end. We are excited to see what else will happen in the coming years.

Nuremberg insurance

In the afternoon, Theresa Steinbauer and Hanna Rose Matheis from UCS took us step by step into B2B campaign hell in their ironic and sarcastic presentation "Don't burn your customer's customers - A B2B Use Case" full of memes (we love memes!). Fortunately, not only was it explained how not to do it, but there were some good tips and we were able to take a few things away with us for our work.

UCS

The eCommerce Day

On Thursday, 15.7. was then called: eCommerce Day! A whole day dedicated to one of our favorite topics, which has now become a permanent fixture at the Digital Festival. In his keynote speech at the beginning, Stefan Peter Roos drew attention to the current difficulties: "Whoever has the goods has won", because almost the entire industry is affected by delivery difficulties, delays and increased logistics costs. He recommended that the audience take the opportunity now to put everything to the test. Does the range still fit? Is the supply chain running? What about pricing and competition? This also includes increasing the IT expertise in the team and reviewing process agility in order to digitize and flexibilize as much as possible. Conversely, this means a lot of work for an industry that is largely benefiting from the coronavirus crisis, but is also facing new challenges.

We continued with Oliver Frings from Nexum AG and the exciting topic "Adieu Sales Funnel: How the path to the purchase decision is becoming increasingly complex and how we can respond to this". In a very captivating way, Oliver told how he wanted to buy a new bike and was overwhelmed by the enormous choice of types and brands during his research, so that it was not easy for him to make a decision. Something that all of us are probably familiar with, and not just in relation to bicycles. He then explained which elements, such as social confirmation, expert opinions or availability, have a positive influence on the purchase decision and how it is possible to avoid giving customers a reason to look for alternatives during the purchasing process. Namely, by means of a learning AI that calculates at which point of the purchase decision the customer is, but also determines, based on previous behavior, whether a customer tends to read many or few emails and automatically sends emails with information or purchase incentives accordingly. A really interesting option for eCommerce, which will certainly be further developed in the future.

Nexum AG

This was followed by Anja Buchner from mr. pixel KG with the emotional topic "Emotional commerce - emotions in e-commerce". She emphasized that there are no rational purchasing decisions and advocated focusing on the ESP (Emotional Selling Proposition), i.e. the emotional added value that a product offers, instead of the somewhat outdated USP. This is because people actively seek out good feelings and avoid negative ones, and emotions always take precedence over rational decisions. Anja recommended immersing yourself in the customer, asking yourself what their needs are, what their values are and what kind of person they are.

As the SEO presentation in the afternoon was unfortunately canceled, we listened to Stefan Wacker and Janine Kreienbrink's (CXdoing) presentation "Customer Experience: Everyone is talking about customer centricity - and it's up to you!". They emphasized the topic of customer centricity and how important it is that the customer journey connects all departments. After all, every contact that customers have with a company counts and everything has to run smoothly, even small things like a change of address. One-off action is also useless, but it is important to keep working on topics, which is why they rely on the CX loop. The aim is to find allies, because customer experience is not conceived in a quiet room, to deliver hard facts (key figures), to integrate customer experience into all processes and decisions and to make the customer experience visible and tangible for everyone. If all employees of a company are on board and work together to offer customers the best possible experience, the corporate culture will also change for the better in the long term.

CXdoing

In what was for us the last presentation of the eCommerce Day, mr. pixel KG posed the question "eCommerce - is it catching on?". The two discussed the differences and similarities between online and offline retail in an interesting, sometimes almost humorous way. It also addressed the opportunities and risks associated with e-commerce, for example through the tracking of customers using cookies. A successful conclusion to this informative day.

mr. pixel KG

New Work and social sustainability

In between all the eCommerce topics, there was another interesting presentation on Thursday by Marilena Bluhm and Rainer Schubert, who are responsible for the development of new working environments at DATEV EG. Topic: "Work from anywhere - How will we work in the "new normal" in the future?". It was very interesting to see how a company like DATEV deals with topics such as working from home, coworking spaces, etc. - which also exist at spo-comm to some extent, and not just because of the pandemic. We are curious to see how the whole thing will develop for us. One thing's for sure: we'd love to have a colleague who invites us all to her farm to work from home and have lunch together!

We will then deal with a completely different topic on Monday, 19.7. when Claudia Lazai and Carolin Mehnert, also from DATEV EG, reported on "Social sustainability as a corporate strategy". They talked about the company's focus on diversity and sustainability and how these topics are communicated to employees, for example through action weeks. It was particularly interesting to see what goals they set themselves and where there is still an acute need for action, such as further promoting diversity in management positions or drawing up their own inclusion agreement. They also emphasized how important it is for managers at various levels to act as multipliers and role models by using and communicating the offers themselves. All in all, it was a really exciting topic from which we, as a medium-sized company, were able to gain some inspiration.

DATEV EG