More than 70 brands and agencies attended a special event this morning where judges and winners from the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards (EMMAs) and Effective Digital Marketing Awards (EDMAs) shared advice on how to put together a winning entry.

Delegates from the BBC, Boots, Britvic, TUI, OMD, Zenith, Mindshare and MediaCom, heard EDMAs judge Mark Beckwith from the FT interviewed by David Murphy, who chairs the Judging Panel for both awards, to kick off the event. Beckwith told delegates that for him, a good entry should tell a story in language that is easy to understand, avoiding jargon and acronyms.

ROI figures should be credible, he said, and where they are, literally, incredible, the entry should show exactly how the figures have been arrived at, to convince the judges that the numbers are not simply plucked out of thin air.

Catherine Loftus, senior CRM & product marketing manager at TrustedHousitters, was next up. The company won two EMMAs last November, including the Most Effective CRM Campaign and Most Effective Consumer App Award.

In her presentation, Loftus explained why the company entered the Awards; how they went about completing the Entry Form; the feeling of winning two awards on the night, against stiff competition; and how the award wins had positively impacted the company since.

The event closed with a panel session in which five judges from both awards programs – Maria Reyes from Bauer Xcel Media; David Ironside from Argos; Cadi Jones from Beeswax; Karen Campbell from Odeon Cinemas; and Amer Hasan from Minicabit – shared their views on what to include, and what to avoid, when putting together an awards entry.

The 2019 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards open for business in February. The 2019 Effective Digital Marketing Awards are accepting entries now. The Entry Deadline is 29 March. There’s more information here.