On June 19, a new edition of the Growth Marketing Summit (GMS) took place in Frankfurt. Or rather, “the conference formerly known as Growth Marketing Summit.” Because in this rapidly changing market, a conference must also grow with the times. This year konversionsKRAFT, which has been successfully organizing this conference for years, has renamed the GMS event Growth-Minded SUPERHEROES. Right, note the abbreviation and of course the capital letters!

In a new look

There were indeed quite a few heroes on the stage of the impressive Alte Oper, a beautiful concert hall right in the center of Frankfurt. They were various growth minded experts who, although not professional speakers, were experts with a lot of practical experience, new talents or an absolute authority in their field. SUPERHELDEN, in other words. Heroes with exceptional strengths and skills who are eager to share their stories.

Reinier Koolmees and Shirley van Haalem were at GMS 2024. They share the key insights and takeaways from the 3 superheroes most salient to them, each with their own superpowers.

These speakers' topics are very timely and relevant to us. Indeed, in addition to stakeholder management and the discussion around quality vs quantity within an experimentation program, we also do Product Discovery projects with our clients.

Luke Frake: Optimizing Optimization for More ROI
Experimentation Lead User Growth (Spotify)

Luke Frake (Spotify) his talk was about balancing speed and quality when experimenting to maximize ROI. Or as he himself calls it, “optimizing optimizing optimizing.” Luke argues that it is not enough to focus only on speed or quality, but to integrate both for the best results. In fact, each approach has advantages and disadvantages. Besides, it's all not so black and white. What matters is the impact you make by integrating both. Specifically, by making maximum impact on that one North Star metric.

Takeaways:

• It is important to balance quality and speed: optimal impact comes from the combination of speed and quality. “We are all running our own race. Avoid false starts and don't fall at the last hurdle.”.
• Automated tools and data democratization: use automated QA tools and democratize data to improve quality, speed and culture of experimentation. “Everyone should be able to do an analysis.
• Long-term perspective and user focus: aim for long-term impact (LTV, Average Order per User). “We are running a marathon, not a sprint!”.

Shagun Aulakh: Optimizing Optimization for More ROI

Director of Product Management & Experimentation (American Express)

Shagun Aulakh (American Express) explains in her talk that senior leaders (C-level) often do not prioritize experimentation. They simply don't care. Or they are biased (“We should only test for things that will be positive”). This is mainly because they don't understand it, underestimate its impact, or may be surprised at the investment required. But perhaps most importantly, they have their priorities elsewhere. This is worrying because they should be paying attention. After all, experimentation creates innovation, better understanding about your customers (what they do and want) and reducing risks. So bottom line, in the end, there is no investment. The time is there to influence, engage and get buy-in from HIPPOs. 

Takeaways:

• Align with leadership goals: frame experiments around North Star metrics and align results with C-level priorities.
• Simplify communication: avoid detailed discussions about individual experiments; focus on broader impact, the bigger picture and how experiments can spur innovation and reduce risk.
• Engage and educate: listen precisely to senior leaders and HIPPOs, emphasize the strategic value of experimentation and create a joint joint value statement. That way you can align goals and foster a supportive culture.

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Stefanie Grimmling & Anastasia Shvedova: Product Discovery - How Could Product Benefit from CRO Methods

Management Team & Senior Consultant (konversionsKRAFT)

Stefanie Grimmling and Anastasia Shvedova (konversionsKRAFT) had a good story about closing the gap within product teams and how CRO could play a role in that. While these teams build products for the customer, they themselves often overlook the reality of the user, and the pain points they experience. This is due in part to the pressure of a backlog and many sprint releases. Without a good product discovery process, chances are high that own biases (biases) have influence. As a result, they get the upper hand on the choices that are made. For example, the false consensus effect or consensus bias (“everyone in the world thinks like me”) and confirmation bias (“we prefer information that supports our ideas”), but also the curse of knowledge (“we know very well how our product works and are blind to new problems”) and the bias blind spot (“we think we have no biases”) play a role here.

Using behavioral design frameworks and validating solutions through user research is important. It can help you better align customer needs with business goals. To involve CRO in this, two things are important. First, you need to be aware of the (shared) goals. In addition, it is valuable to know the challenges faced by colleagues on the product team. Then, to convince management to do more Product Discovery, you need to focus on numbers rather than benefits. Show them what they will miss if they don't invest further. It's as simple as that!

Takeaways:

• Integrating CRO and Product Discovery: using CRO methods helps discover user needs and align them with business objectives 
• Bias Awareness: recognizing and reducing bias is crucial to making informed decisions about your product
• Proactive user research: it is essential for effective development of your product to regularly interact with users and validate your solutions by doing user testing

Other points that stood out to us:

Michael Agaard - Expectation Gap 

Companies can bridge the gap between user expectations and actual experiences to avoid disappointment and build loyalty. This can significantly impact user satisfaction and trust.

Lukas Vermeer - interaction effects

Lukas’ talk was about interaction effects. This is the No. 1 topic of questions he gets asked during Q&As. He wants to settle this question once and for all. Therefore, in his talk he shows why interaction effects while running two tests simultaneously are not a cause for concern. These effects occur in very few cases and are easily avoidable. In fact, they can be detected by interaction analysis (calculator available in the CRO toolkit from Online Dialogue).

Maria Luiza de Lange - European Accessibility Act

In her talk, Maria punctuates the European Accessibility Act which is coming up in exactly one year (June 28, 2025). What was very striking is that no one in the room raised their hand when Maria asked who was already ready for this legislation. She also showed in the next slide how many people there are with disabilities:

In conclusion 

We thought it was another fun and educational edition of the GMS. It was a day full of good presentations where we gained many insights. The next GMS will be held on June 18, 2025. Who knows, maybe we'll see you there too!

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