We talk with Javier Blanquer Sierra, director of marketing and digital strategy
In July of last year, Javier Blanquer Sierra joined IFEMA MADRID to define and give a strong boost to the digital strategy at IFEMA MADRID . His incorporation is part of the entity's digitalization project, which aims to accompany the outstanding investments in technological infrastructures that the entity is undertaking. In addition, one of Javier's main challenges is to improve the customer service and experience process through all digital environments. We have talked with him to know in depth how he is facing this exciting task.
A strong professional background.
Javier Blanquer Sierra has a long professional career in the technology sector, having held different positions in the digital field in such companies as Vodafone, as online marketing manager, strategy and innovation manager, and at ONO, where he directed projects and strategic agreements, as innovation and alliances manager.
Changes in the digital area.
In Javier's words, “we are focused on improving the way we interact with our clients and exhibitors. IFEMA MADRID wants to standardize, modernize and centralize all these digital processes and place us at the forefront.
"We are setting up a digital ecosystem far ahead of other venues and exhibition fairs"
We have separated it into two large segments, and what we have implemented in the new website is a new system for ticket sales and event search and filtering which is both very special and very adapted to our business. A careful support for visitors and exhibitors has also been incorporated, and machine learning has been included to detect the needs of organizers, exhibitors, etc. and streamline the document search process.
Long-term goals.
Any digital ecosystem will always be alive and evolving along multiple phases, but it will never come to an end. Today, we have the basics of this entire digital environment, then plan to move on to a second level, and in 2020 release a new app that can combine leisure and professional ecosystems. All the fairs we work with have an app, in total we have about 50 or 60, and we want to centralize it under the same umbrella.
New CRM: more digital and agile.
In addition to that, we will implement a new CRM that will merge the information we have of our clients, with the entire digital project. We will begin to extract the value of all the data that users leave us, enriching it with the digital and registration part, and thereby better reach our visitors and exhibitors, anticipating their requirements and needs.