I spent last week at Marketing Velocity in Barcelona with 300 of our global partner marketers and marketing experts within Cisco. What an experience. I left inspired, energized and confident about our future together, and how we can accelerate our partners' marketing practices.

While there were many great discussions and insights shared over the course of the week -too many to highlight in this blog post -I want to share some of my key takeaways.

• It's all about the experience. In this digital era, the experience that we create for our customers and drive as brands is essential to being a trusted and profitable business. In fact, 53% of buyers choose a vendor based on the buyer's experience (CEB). Karen Walker said it perfectly in her keynote, "The best customer experience anywhere sets the bar for customer experience everywhere."
• It's time to get personal. Marketers must merge their physical and digital capabilities to deliver real-time, personalized engagement. According to Salesforce, 65% of business buyers will likely switch vendors if the current vendor doesn't customize communications to their company and 89% expect vendors to understand and anticipate their business needs.
• It's not digital marketing, it's marketing in a digital world. And in this new normal, everyone is a marketer. All roles and functions represent your brand -an engineer writing a blog about a recent innovation or a finance representative sending an automated follow up on a renewal. The digital era means constant evolution. Organizations must continue to adapt to match customer needs and expectations to deliver a positive experience,and everyone plays a role.

If you weren't with us in Barcelona, I encourage you to check out the keynote replays, review the workshop session materials, and share with your teams. During the week, we heard from some amazing speakers including Jonathan Mildenhall, the former CMO of Airbnb. He delivered a truly powerful keynote around purpose-driven marketing and reinforced my belief that we all have the ability to bring about impactful change in the world. He also joined us on Facebook Live and answered some great questions from our social media audience.

And, don't forget to access the marketing services we offer to help engage your customers. Marketing Velocity provides 24/7 access to marketing education and thought leadership content, and Partner Marketing Central gives you campaign materials, content and data to activate your marketing practice.

I've never been so excited and optimistic about our future. Together, we can create amazing experiences and own the new era.