Digital Summit holds conferences around the United States throughout the year, and each one is a gathering of the top companies and minds in marketing and technology. We recently attended Digital Summit Phoenix and are looking forward to Round II at Digital Summit Seattle in April as well.

With speakers like former GoDaddy CEO, Blake Irving and BlogHer Co-Founder Lisa Stone, Digital Summit Phoenix had a wealth of actionable takeaways. Here are our top, most actionable learnings:

SEO

Google changes their algorithm nearly every day, and the insights at Digital Summits focused on some of the best standards moving forward.

  • Improving site load time to under 2 seconds is vital. 70% of websites take 7+ seconds to load, while search engines favor websites with load times under 2 seconds, so improving the speed can be an easy way to get a significant boost in rankings.
  • Character limit of meta description has been increased to 300. A meta description longer than 300 characters will be truncated in search results, but the new limit gives you a lot more room to play with your copy (previously, the character was just 156 characters).
  • It is now recommended to start SEO research with persona analysis. Persona research is not just for traditional marketing. What concerns or problems does the target audience experience? Which websites do they visit? What language do they use? This information can go a long way to building a more effective SEO strategy.

EMAIL

Email marketing remains one of the best ways to stay in touch with your audience, but it has become a highly competitive space. Increasing creativity around email campaigns is critical for success and audience retention moving forward.

  • 69% of users will report spam by subject line alone. Ensure your subject lines are not salesy and always A/B test. Every email marketing service offers A/B testing capabilities for different aspects of your campaigns, so be sure to make use of this feature—especially for subject lines.
  • With every extra field in a submission form, the conversion rate drops by 25%. Think about what the most important question to ask your audience is and focus there. Keep forms short and follow up with additional questions later via email blasts.

LEAD GEN

Attract new customers in effective, new ways in 2018.

  • Landing pages should deliver as promised, and drive visitors to take an action. These are key characteristics of a successful landing page. There should be no surprises when a customer visits your page, and the reason for their visit should be clear.
  • Employ usability studies when testing your landing pages. Ensure you have the most effective design to drive lead gen. If you’re not sure where to start, try tools such as Usability Hub and Helio.
  • “Date” your customer before trying to sell them something. No one enjoys being rushed into a decision. Take time to nurture the customer relationship and choose the path of least resistance for users to ensure high conversion.

AI AND MACHINE LEARNING

New technology and big data are bringing exciting new possibilities to the field of digital marketing.

  • People will be more creative in the future, while computers focus on the mundane. Soon, many mundane and repetitive marketing tasks will be outsourced to computers, freeing up the human workforce to be more focused on creative tasks and problem-solving.
  • AI beats humans in subject lines 98% of the time. AI knows best thanks to big data. Use tools like Phrasee and Equals3 to craft masterful marketing language using AI.