MarTech Interview with Dan Wood, Chief Marketing Officer at Jugo

Dan Wood, Chief Marketing Officer at Jugo highlights more on how immersive experiences are taking centerstage in the modern marketing sphere:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Dan, tell us about yourself and more about your marketing journey through the years…we’d love to hear about your new role as CMO at Jugo…

I’ve always wanted to be a CMO, but I wanted to have that experience in a growth company. Jugo stood out to me as a company with a lot of potential, and I had a lot of experience with virtual meetings and events.

In February 2020, I was on the verge of executing a 2000-attendee event in the Netherlands. I had to pivot to a virtual event three weeks before the event. This was a learning experience that I never want to go through again, but it also taught me a lot about the challenges of virtual events.

We pre-recorded the keynote and one of the breakout sessions, and we used our existing webinar platform to build a front end to navigate and select the content. We pivoted all the existing registration data, tripling our registration target in the final three weeks because we made the event virtual.

We received positive feedback on the quality of the virtual experience.

This experience showed the potential of virtual events and made me want to work on a platform that could make virtual events even better. That’s why I’m so excited to be a part of Jugo.

At Jugo, I will be using our technology to create engaging and memorable experiences for businesses and people. Virtual events can be just as engaging as in-person events, and I’m excited to help Jugo build the best virtual event platform in the world.

What are your thoughts on the future of immersive experiences and technologies? How are you seeing brands today use these innovations to power their digital campaigns?

There’s a hunger across the market for enhanced virtual experiences. We’re all grappling with the ‘hybrid gap.’ We’re tired of the standard virtual meetings, and there’s a yearning for more engaging virtual experiences. The advent of immersive virtual technologies means we can enhance our virtual meetings and offer experiences we never imagined could be delivered virtually.

There are a wealth of opportunities in fan and brand engagement and entertainment that are currently not being delivered virtually. The use of immersive technology allows us to elevate these important meetings with employees, partners, and customers, taking our virtual interactions to a whole new level of efficiency.

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For brands at the early stages of exploring immersive tech to power their future goals and campaigns: what best practices would you share with them?

Experiment–you don’t need to get it right the first time. It is an iterative process. Decide what you want to do initially. Do you want to engage with your existing customer base by offering a behind-the-scenes experience? Or do you want to reach out to a new segment? Both are valid approaches. The key is to just start experimenting.

As a seasoned marketing leader, there have been certain core marketing practices and martech that you’ve relied on to drive your goals, can you comment on some of these and share a few takeaways too?

Big, bold events: This strategy encompasses both the retention and nurturing of an existing customer base and attracting new customers. I firmly believe in the power of boldness in our marketing efforts. We need attention-grabbing events for our customers and partners that make a mark internally and externally. It serves as a rallying point for our go-to-market organization and engagement activities for our existing customer base.

These events also provide opportunities for new business development with prospects. It’s common knowledge that large events require substantial time and marketing budget, but they’re worth the risk due to their significant amplifying effect on the business.

We’ve been impressed with the engagement from our existing customer base, the amount of new pipeline developed, and the awareness generated through social and analyst channels due to these events.

Sports partnerships and sponsorships: We had a scenario where we had a large customer base and a broad product lineup but noticed that despite our strong reputation among respective audiences, we were falling short on overall brand awareness. We needed to enhance our visibility within our customer base.

After identifying this lack of brand awareness as a weak point, we evaluated traditional methods like PR and social media campaigns. However, we realized these would require too much time and budget to make a significant impact. Our solution was to leverage the brand power of another established entity, essentially piggybacking on somebody else’s brand, which led us to consider a partnership or sponsorship.

We examined several potential partners and events, finally settling on Jag TCS racing, part of the Formula E Championship. This choice was particularly relevant because Formula E is a technology-driven sport, and Jag TCS, a British brand, aligned well with our identity as a British technology company.

Over three years, this partnership significantly increased our social media following and substantial coverage in traditional media. Plus, we were able to contribute meaningful technology solutions to the races, which gave us compelling stories for our marketing campaigns.

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Take us through some of the biggest martech features and trends you feel will dominate the  rest of 2023, besides the interest around AI, ChatGPT and AR, what else in your view should be on a marketer’s/martech-kers radar?

Immersive Experiences: Thanks to developments in mixed reality technology, which includes virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), marketers can now create immersive experiences for their audiences — globally. These experiences can simulate real-world scenarios or create entirely new worlds for users to explore. This technology can potentially revolutionize industries like sports, retail, entertainment, and media by creating virtual showrooms, productions, or near-real experiences. It can also enhance virtual events and meetings, making them more engaging and interactive.