Presented by Cvent
Live events are your biggest marketing opportunity — but do you know the ROI of every customer interaction, and how to turn each one into a conversion? Learn how event marketing technology can help you measure event success, boost your bottom line, and more.
“We throw everything into our conferences,” say Sharon Summers, Director, Global Events, CPA Global. “This is where we really heavily rely on the power of face-to-face.”
And event technology has been transformative, Summers says, not only for their conferences but for her own career.
“Because of the technology and the platform, and all the ROI data I’ve been able to collect and feed back to my executives, I’ve been able to progress and advance within my career,” she says. “The wealth of data that we never had before has been really amazing.”
The tech has allowed them to go completely paperless, while being able to collect feedback through a mobile app, add gamification to increase engagement, send push notifications, and keep session data accurate up to the minute. It has saved money while improving attendee satisfaction. And automation has freed up their event marketers and hosts to do important networking with their clients.
For instance, at their events software lab where customers can book one-on-one appointments with a product expert or a customer success consultant, they’ve implemented on-site badge printing with a QR code. Staff can scan attendee badges, capture the conversations, and then have an augmented follow-up process. All that information goes back to the sales force, and that helps them track the conversations that took place on the event floor, as well as stay informed of anything that happens following the event.
At their next conference, they’re implementing session tracking for the first time which includes seven to 10 concurrent sessions over seven different tracks.
“That’s going to get us a deeper dive insight for follow-up,” Summers explains. “We’ll be able to dive deep into the content and track the progression of our customers to find out where they were throughout the conference. I’m excited about getting that data.”
Attendee feedback and surveys are also essential to understand conference success. With the survey right in the conference app, it’s easier for attendees to fill out and easy for the company to capture that data and shuffle it to the marketing teams.
“That’s a wealth of data right there, because anyone in marketing knows that when you’re doing campaigns, you’re always trying to figure out what’s the next big topic,” she says. “Our customers are telling us what they love. We can take that data, filter through their favorite sessions and content, and then we can start working on campaigns and webinars after the conference.”
Pre-event, there’s so much data that you can capture, just in the registration phases, she adds. For example, the company has gone through quite a few changes and acquisitions as they’ve grown, and that means that they’ve added products that have gotten lost in the marketing mix. That means they might not even know how many products a customer is using without diving deep into Salesforce.
Now that information can be served up quickly at registration. Summers’ team is able to dive into what exactly a customer knows about their own product mix, and what that customer is interested in learning about next.
“That way, we know we’re on the right path with our breakout sessions,” Summers says. “We know what data to collect. We know exactly what to provide them. We know how much content to focus on certain products.”
The mobile app also allow them to track their social feeds. They bring some of their global marketing people to help with live tweeting, and live feeds. They can keep track of all the social feeds that are tied to the conference, what people are saying across platforms, and it has helped them build up excitement among current and potential customers.
After the event, all those conversations that were captured on site are fed back into Salesforce, including the data they’ve tracked with customer ratings. They’re using feedback from their last conference to determine if they repeat any of those sessions at their North America conference, or even go back to some of the low-rated speakers and ask them to revisit their sessions.
“We take that feedback very seriously,” she explains. “It helps us figure out how heavy we should go on some of the content for these sessions at our next conference.”
The time that has been saved in turning around their leads has been a huge win for everyone, Summers says, and they’ve been able to look carefully at all the information they’ve captured around every customer and consider what each customer’s need is — do they need a diagnostic? Do they need to talk to someone else? Is there a cross-selling opportunity or an upselling opportunity? The notes section can be continually updated so those conversations can keep evolving and the team can more easily identify upsells, cross-selling opportunities, and bring on the right people to engage with every customer.
“I think a lot of event managers would be surprised at the amount of time we can spend on [entering] these leads,” Summers says. “Take that back, explain how much it’s costing the company, and I guarantee you, the crazy amount of hours that you’re going to save far outweighs the cost of event technology.”
To learn more about the ways event technology can capture customer interactions from start to finish, how to leverage that data, sell your company on its importance, and more, don’t miss this VB Live event!
Don’t miss out.
You’ll learn how to:
- Pitch events as an important part of a holistic marketing strategy to leadership
- Run an integrated event marketing program and optimize it for success
- Capture the data that uncovers attendee behavior at events
Speakers:
- Sharon Summers, Director, Global Events, CPA Global
- Patrick Smith, CMO, Cvent
- Ivo Lukas, CEO/Founder, 24Notion
