AMA Boston hosted their monthly marketing mingle on Thursday, November 8th at the Back Bay Social Club in Boston. The words “mingle,” “mixer” or “meetup” often strike fear into the hearts of those who proclaim to hate networking events, but never fear anti-networkers! This event did a great job of taking the work out of networking. It was my first time attending this event, and it was great to see so many marketers and creative industry professionals interested in striking up a conversation!
Not only were the AMA Boston board members I met friendly and welcoming to new faces, I had many different conversations that night about a variety of marketing subjects.
The Marketing Director of a venture capital firm was interested in hearing what marketing automation platforms others use as she vets options for her firm as they choose a new platform. A Brand Specialist with a major U.S. automotive brand shared with me his journey in working with sales staff at over a dozen New England area dealerships to help them better understand how they can make use of the latest marketing tools. (Hint: The Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey stars in their newest ad campaigns.) We also talked about the subtleties between the work of a sales professional and the work of a marketing professional and how we can better communicate these distinctive, yet important relationships, across organizations.
I also spoke with a young professional who is a graduate student in international marketing. She shared with me how her experience working in oil and gas marketing in her home country of Kazakhstan is compared to the USA. We discussed the finer points of buying Gmail ad space vs. developing inbound email marketing leads using techniques such as embedding a newsletter sign-up on a website.
And then, Bob Cargill, the current AMA Boston president, took an epic selfie of everyone at the event! It was believed to be the largest group selfie taken at any Monthly Marketing Mingle. Bob also did an excellent job in his role as chapter president to share opportunities and ways newcomers can get involved if interested. There is definitely no shortage of fun and interesting ways local marketing professionals can get involved, which was refreshing to see. Martech was also a topic of discussion, which brought up interesting insights about how different types of industries are incorporating marketing automation into their business.
Plenty of attendees had their smart phones out, but not for browsing social media out of boredom! I was delighted to make new connections on LinkedIn and discuss the improvements LinkedIn has made to their mobile app in recent months and the difference it has made. Are you using the new QR code scanner to add new connections yet? And of course, plenty of connections were made the old-fashioned way: business cards. The time-tested traditional methods of connecting still work well, too!
Join the AMA Boston chapter at their next Monthly Mingle in January to ring in the New Year, make new connections, and see what else 2019 has in store!
