The Event

Marketing Playbook
Practical Advice to Drive
Measurable Results
 Table of Contents

Introducing The Event Marketing Playbook __________________________________________________3

How to Use This Playbook ___________________________________________________________________3

Account-Based Marketing Strategy _________________________________________________________4

ABM - Take it to the Next Level ________________________________________________________________6

Data Strategy ______________________________________________________________________________7

Data - Take it to the Next Level ________________________________________________________________8

Content Strategy __________________________________________________________________________10

Content - Take it to the Next Level _____________________________________________________________13

Promotion Strategy ________________________________________________________________________15

Promotion - Take it to the Next Level ___________________________________________________________19

Engagement Strategy _____________________________________________________________________22

Engagement - Take it to the Next Level _________________________________________________________24

Metrics Strategy __________________________________________________________________________27

Metrics - Take it to the Next Level _____________________________________________________________28

Technology Strategy ______________________________________________________________________29

Technology - Take it to the Next Level __________________________________________________________30

Mobile Strategy ___________________________________________________________________________32

Mobile - Take it to the Next Level ______________________________________________________________33

About the Authors ________________________________________________________________________37

2
Introducing The Event Marketing Playbook
This playbook is for B2B marketing and event marketing leaders who are looking for ways to drive measurable business
results from events in 2018 and beyond.

Events represent one of your biggest marketing expenditures and if executed well, they can also deliver some of the
highest returns to the business. To help you maximize the ROI from your events, this playbook pulls together B2B event
marketing best practices, complete with specific recommendations, tactics, checklists and more to streamline execution
and improve results.

This playbook will help you plan for and improve execution of your events by discussing 8 specific strategies around:

1 Account-Based Marketing

2 Data

3 Content

4 Promotion

5 Engagement

6 Metrics

7 Technology

8 Mobile

How to Use This Playbook

Look for these icons to get ideas to help you take your specific event type to the next level.

Conferences Field Events Partner Events Summits User Groups

Let’s get started!

3
1 Account-Based Marketing Strategy
To execute account-based marketing (ABM) well, you need sales and marketing to align on the accounts you want to
bring to the business and then join forces to turn those prospects into customers. While ABM touches several teams,
departments and activities within organizations, events as a marketing channel play a particularly significant role. In fact,
if you’re leaving events out of your ABM strategy, you’re missing a fundamental opportunity to move the needle for the
business. Events provide sales and marketing teams with key insights that can help establish and deepen relationships
with prospects and customers.

Here are three ways to ensure your events are optimized for your ABM program. Within this playbook, we will cover
additional strategy areas, such as content and engagement, that support your ABM program.

1 Keep your sales and marketing teams aligned - When it comes to events, marketing and sales teams need to work
together to determine which accounts you’re trying to get in front of and where they are in the buying journey. This
will influence the actions you take before, during and after the event.

A great way to get in front of prospects and customers during an event is by hosting a party or activity that requires
registration. This lets you capture top-of-funnel contact information that marketing and sales can use to determine if
the person registering is from a company on your target account list. It also can help you find “lookalike” accounts,
or accounts that match the profile of your target accounts. Based on the discovery of who will attend, sales and
marketing can determine strategic ways to engage with those contacts. For example, marketing can automate email
invites and reach out via social media to offer a product demo or technical one-on-one. Then, sales can send a
personalized invite for the deep dive session.

The key here is that sales and marketing are talking with each other throughout the process. The two groups need
to work together to determine which accounts you’re trying to get in front of during the event, what type of meetings
or demos to offer and how you’re going to follow up with them after the event.

4
1 2 Use intent signals to personalize the experience - How many times have you attended an event where a company
follows up with you and treats you like one of 2,000 attendees who all did the same thing? Chances are that this has
happened more than once, and it’s a missed opportunity for the company.

There’s a big difference between a prospect who goes to your website and downloads a white paper or e-book
and a prospect who registers for a two-day event, books a hotel and flight and signs up for multiple sessions. The
latter prospect is clearly very interested. They’re showing high-intent signals and giving you face time, which is more
valuable than any other time that they’re spending.

If you can capture that information and understand what they’re doing during the event and then tie that information
to your ABM strategy, you can be more strategic in your approach. By having a better understanding of where they
are in the buying cycle and what they might want next, you can provide a more tailored experience to prospects
and customers, which is going to make any communication with them more powerful. This enables your team to
move the needle forward and accelerate the opportunity.

3 Incorporate partners into your event strategy - Partners can play a key role in how events tie back to your ABM
program because they can help you get access to your target accounts.

For example, if your company is hosting a party or event, or you’re attending one that your partners will also
attend, there may be an opportunity to get in front of new prospects. With a well-crafted co-marketing story and
an overlapping target account list, trusted partners can share resources and take advantage of a wider network of
relationships. Additionally, your partner may have customers on your target account list and vice versa, and each may
broker valuable introductions.

The more marketers capture data about target accounts at events and feed that data into their ABM strategy,
the more they contribute to a refined cycle where they can continue providing experiences that are increasingly
personalized. The information gathered at events shouldn’t just provide sales and marketing teams with insights that
can bolster current outreach efforts, it can and should shape future touch points from both teams.

Reprinted from the blog of the Account-Based Marketing Leadership Alliance. You can view the full article here. For
more information on the Account-Based Marketing Leadership Alliance, visit https://www.abmleadershipalliance.com

5
1 ABM - Take it to the Next Level
Conferences Summits and Tradeshows

Personalized email invites from marketing and sales - In our experience, prospects and customers are more likely
to respond to direct, personal invites than automated marketing emails. Using CRM tools and notes from previous
communications will help establish relationship continuity. A solid invite strategy will combine both personalized
individual invitations to specific contacts with automated emails to larger prospect lists. Once your attendees have
registered, you might want to begin to release content bit-by-bit leading up to the event via confirmation and reminder
emails.

Lead quality NOT quantity - Gone are the days of being solely concerned with attendee numbers or amount of lead
scans you’ve captured. The volume of attendees shouldn’t be prized above the quality of leads. An account-based
model will be focused on lead quality rather than quantity. Make sure you are attracting and engaging with the right
attendee roles from the right accounts at your events.

Field Events

Marketing and sales meet to review target account list and preferred titles for the event - Well before the event,
marketing and sales teams should meet to discuss the specific target accounts within the chosen geographic area
that everyone will focus on. Likewise, the team should review specific titles within those accounts that will be the ideal
attendees. Prioritize titles that are most likely to be decision makers on a sale, but also consider whether you want to
open the event up to affiliated titles that may help introduce you or influence the decision making within a target account.
Marketing and sales should work together to enrich the target attendee list – even if you are contending with missing
contact data, chances are you know someone who knows someone who can help you reach the right person to invite.
Sales, marketing and partners can work together to identify first and second degree contacts they have within target
accounts. Alternatively, a number of third party services specialize in database enrichment, and those tools may be worth
investing in as well.

6
2 Data Strategy
Data is the secret weapon behind some of the most successful B2B marketing campaigns, and it can also be the silent
killer of great campaigns otherwise destined for success. Increasingly it is not about how much data you capture but: 1)
gathering the right data and intelligence that is relevant to your customers’ best interests, and 2) mobilizing that data as
part of personalized but scalable campaigns that break through the clutter and make an impact.

According to research by Forrester, in-person events

accounted for nearly 20% of all marketing spend
yet nearly 30% of marketers admitted that they treat
events as one-off experiences rather than as part of
an integrated digital and physical experience.

Capturing event-based buying signals is critical to determining prospect and customer intent, which can improve
subsequent communications and also personalize event experiences. Mapping those insights to what you already
know about the customer’s buying journey can create more meaningful interactions plus greater efficiency and velocity
of your revenue-generating efforts.

To make the most of your data and customer insights, that data must be integrated and shared across all of your
systems—your CRM, marketing automation and event platforms. With a single view of your customer’s data, not only
can you improve critical compliance issues (GDPR anybody?), but also create an integrated, seamless and more
impactful stream of communication to your customers and buyers across channels and touchpoints.

While events are an interpersonal activity, there is untapped opportunity to capture data on your attendees pre, during
and post event. Before the event, in the course of registration, look to capture more than just typical demographic
information. Ask additional questions to find out key areas of interest. Use a registration technology that can provide
custom questions based on attendee type.

During the event, use the check in process to find out more about your attendee’s preferences and interests. The
more data you can collect on your attendees pre and during the event, the better you can personalize your outreach
to them. For example, if you are able to identify what sessions a VIP prospect is attending, you can send him or her an
email in real time with an offer or message relevant to the sessions they’ve recently attended. After all, personalized
follow up is what will help you drive exponential results. Per research from the Corporate Executive Board cited in
Harvard Business Review, “Individual customer stakeholders who perceived supplier content to be tailored to their
specific needs were 40% more willing to buy from that supplier than stakeholders who didn’t.”

Capturing a holistic, 360-degree view of your attendees ultimately allows you to tailor your outreach with relevant and
timely offers to your most important guests.

7
2 Data - Take it to the Next Level
Quality and Speed
Two things matter when managing data for events: quality and speed. No matter the type of event, you want to gather
event attendee information to feed your demand generation engine. The more intelligence you can gather about the
prospects or customers at the event, the more effective your sales team’s follow-up efforts. Besides the basic statistics of
name, title, company and email, use the checklist below to ensure you are gathering as much intelligence as possible to
fuel your sales process.

Quality

Attendance

}} Which parts of the event did the lead attend?

Engagement

}} How long did the lead attend each talk/workshop?

}} What questions did the lead ask?

}} What pain points did the lead express?

}} What initiatives are underway that your product could address?

}} Did the lead respond to any polling or surveys?

}} Did the lead show any additional engagement through your event mobile app?

8
2 Speed
The 2018 B2B Event Marketing Report found that more than half of B2B professionals experience an ineffective hand-off
of leads from the event to sales. When leads are either lost or inappropriately assigned to sales, it hinders marketing’s
pipeline accountability, prevents the sales team’s ability to close deals, and affects the likelihood of future events.

}} Ensure data gathered at the event can be mapped to unique fields in the CRM and marketing automation. Avoid using
a description field which cannot be easily referenced by a rep.

}} Automate the lead to sales handoff process. Sales should be able to follow up with leads within 24 hours if leads are
automatically routed from your event management software to CRM and marketing automation.

}} Create lead assignment rules consistent with existing rules.

}} In advance, build consensus with sales on qualifying criteria for “hot” leads.

}} Personalize the follow up. With the data you’ve collected before and during the event, you should have a good
understanding of what content and message might be most relevant to that lead. Your attendee will appreciate the
personal touch.

Conferences Partner Events Field Events

Use every opportunity you can to capture additional data on your attendees. The registration process allows you to ask
an additional question or two for better understanding of interests and reasons for attending the event. (What are your
favorite social media outlets? What do you hope to experience or learn at this event?) Upon check-in, gather additional
intelligence on specific interests. (What panel, speaker or session are you most interested in hearing or attending?)
Encourage your attendees to engage through the event mobile app, and collect data from polling, surveys and discussion
boards through the app. Make sure you are capturing what sessions your attendees are going to in order to inform your
follow-up campaigns. Behavioral insights, as well as direct feedback, gathered from your attendees can reveal interest,
concerns and pain points.

Once you’ve captured a holistic view of attendee data, ensure you have a strong integration with your marketing
automation and CRM systems to make it actionable. To increase the likelihood of those leads converting to opportunities,
your sales team should be following up quickly with personalized outreach based on the data you’ve been able to
capture.

Use a registration technology that allows

you to ask custom questions based on
attendee type or interest.

9
3 Content Strategy
Even when you are not hosting your own event, where you have control over the messaging and content that is
presented and shared, you can still leverage your own content strategy to increase the reach, influence and conversion
opportunities. These ideas should help.

Pre-Event Content Ideas

1 Develop an editorial calendar - Do your homework in advance of the event to determine who will be there, what
they care about, and why they’re attending. Then convert those insights into a solid editorial calendar that lays out the
content before, during and after the event.

2 Find the influencers - Figure out the influencers who have attended these events in the past. Then create a plan to
engage the influencers in advance of the event. Get their help to crowd-source or at least share with their audiences
your pre-event content.

3 Engage past attendees - Use last year’s hashtag to determine who either attended or at least watched or participated
from afar. Follow them to engage with them this year. Ask them what they’re looking forward to this year and create a
crowd-sourced blog post featuring their feedback.

4 Engage the presenters - Anyone presenting at an event likely wants to make sure their room is full of attendees.
Interview those presenters for pre-show “teaser” content you can use as part of your marketing.

5 Help first-time attendees know what to expect - Create new-attendee orientation content such as how to survive the
crowds, where to find the best outlets to recharge cell phones, and which parties to attend.

6 Make session recommendations - The bigger the event, the more breakout session choices there are. Even veteran
event attendees can get confused or intimidated by the choices. Create content recommending sessions and
speakers.

7 Write a “what to do around town” guide - Even if you don’t know the city the event is hosted in, work with others
who live or used to live there to get recommendations on where to eat, drink, hang out, get a good breakfast, etc.

8 Crowd-source more event recommendations from past attendees - Capture and publish the “wisdom of the crowds”
in a variety of contexts, featuring survival tips from those who have been there before. This can be about anything—
hotels, transportation, bathroom breaks, etc.

9 Start using the hashtag early and often - Also solicit feedback and input for your crowd-sourced content. Share other
people’s content via your Twitter and social channels as well, before, during and after the event.

10
3 During the Event Content Ideas
It’s hard to keep up with content marketing during events. Once an event is underway, chaos reigns. Things go wrong.
You’re pulled in many directions at once. So create an at-show plan in advance with room for ad hoc content as the show
happens and you’ll more likely be able to keep up with it.

1 Live-tweet the key sessions - Tweet the big keynotes and special speakers in particular and make sure someone on
your team is live-tweeting the highlights using the hashtag. Keep watch on similar live-tweets from the conference’s
influencers and retweet their content frequently. This makes it more likely they’ll do the same for you and expand your
reach beyond your own direct network.

2 Recommend the best agenda - From the data that you have on a particular attendee (for example, session check-ins,
title, and industry), send an email or mobile notification recommending the best agenda for the following day.

3 Retweet the most influential attendees - Sometimes it’s more than just the “known” influencers. At every event, new
influencers pop up when unknown attendees get highly active on the hashtag feeds and make a name for themselves.
Keep an eye out for these opportunities and take advantage of them in real time.

4 Assign “summary” content from key sessions and keynotes to get published ASAP - This is where an editorial
calendar and resource plan comes in handy. Know exactly which sessions you’ll want to summarize in a blog post
afterward, ensure someone attends and takes notes, and carve out time right afterward to draft and publish the piece.

5 Give writing assignments - One great tip is to dedicate a full time resource to write content on demand during the
event. Another opportunity is to give blog writing assignments to people throughout your company, especially from the
product, marketing and engineering teams.

6 Shoot on-scene video - Video doesn’t have to be fancy. You can carry around a basic camera or use your phone to
shoot video and get “man on the street” reactions of the event from attendees. Schedule time with influencers and get
them on camera as well.

11
3 Post-Event Content Ideas
It is incredibly easy to get back from an event and simply move on to the next one—or the next fire drill, now that you’re
back at the office. Or the massive pile of work and emails that piled up while you were out. But after the event is when
attendees are back in their own offices and likely paying more attention to content like yours. It’s your opportunity to
continue building upon the awareness, interest and momentum you generated at the event.

1 Publish a great “key takeaways” post - This may sound basic and fundamental, but it can be the most important
piece of the entire event content marketing strategy. Summarize the session coverage you created during the event,
highlight some of the themes that came across overall, and link to some of the other takeaway blog posts being
created. Once it’s published, send it to those who are covered or mentioned in your takeaways. Send a copy to the
influencers. Help it start spreading, use the hashtag, and watch what happens.

2 Crowd-source takeaways from other attendees -This is a great way to engage leads immediately after the event. If
you want your sales team to increase qualification conversations from booth attendees, have them start with a simple
question to capture a key takeaway for your blog post.

3 Keep engaging the hashtag - Just because the event is over doesn’t mean people stop watching the hashtag feed.
In fact, those who create a custom column in Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to follow a hashtag tend to leave it there for
days, if not weeks, after the event is over.

4 Do an internal postmortem, and make adjustments for your next event - Take a quick look at what worked
(especially related to the immediate post-show key metrics you’re tracking) and figure out what you might do
differently next time.

5 Create a templated process for content marketing at future events - After all of this, take what worked and make it
a precedent for your future events rather than recreate the wheel each time. Write down the whole process so that
it’s easier for you, but also so someone else can take it over … and get it right.

12
3 Content - Take it to the Next Level
Partner Events

For partner events, work ahead of time with your partners to craft a cohesive story. Ideally you are working with
partners who have complementary solutions to yours so work with those partners to develop a “better together” story
and message prior to the event.

Identify how your solutions fit together to benefit the attendees. Focus on these benefits in all content that you deliver
to attendees should your partner event have a content component.

Conferences

When evaluating outside speakers for your big conference, remember the goal is to entertain and inspire.

Event organizers know the potential that a well-known name can bring to their event. Take Jamie Foxx’s keynote at
Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit, which inevitably brought in massive crowds. The right speaker can bring an added
level of exposure to your event and help to promote your event by name alone. As Michael Brenner, CEO of Marketing
Insider Group, notes, “Event marketers are increasingly realizing that they need professional speakers to both attract
attendees and to deliver better content experiences when folks show up.”

There’s more than one way to deliver information, and an effective presenter can set the tone for the entire conference.
For example, a technology conference invited a popular sci-fi celebrity (decked in costume and special effects) to
welcome guests and introduce the conference. Another conference brought in a comedian as a welcoming ice-breaker
before the keynote speaker took the stage. If speakers can connect their performance with the conference theme,
adding the touch of a unique and memorable speaker is an engaging way to introduce the theme of your event.

Take the time to find a variety of speakers who have a story to tell that will not only entertain but inspire your audience.

13
3 Summits

Summits are often highly exclusive events for top executives at your customers and prospects. Keep that in mind when
developing a content strategy for these events. Identify compelling third-party speakers who are thought leaders or
industry experts in the relevant space.

Invite and encourage your biggest customer executive champions to share their success stories during summits. Your
customer can promote their own company’s brand as well as their own personal brand while also being a credible
advocate of your company and products.

With such an executive audience, shy away from too much of the tactical, hands-on demos or best practices and focus
on bigger picture industry trends and market changes.

User Groups

User groups are where practitioners get together to learn cool and innovative new features specific to your product.
When developing content for user groups, look for ways to highlight new product features and solutions. And identify
power users from within your customer community who know the product better than members of your own team. Have
those customers present on your behalf and showcase how they use your product within their own environment.

Your users will want to learn from their peers and take away key nuggets of wisdom on how to get more value from your
product.

14
4 Promotion Strategy

When it comes to event marketing, you have many options available—possibly too many. It can be tempting to try to do
too much as a result. Narrow your focus to those channels that will be the most effective for promoting your event so you
will get the most out of your budget.

To determine which channels are most effective, so you can focus your efforts and budget, look to past methods that
have worked well for you. Also keep in mind what other event marketers say. When B2B marketers were asked about
the most effective channels for promoting events, 46 percent of respondents cited email marketing as the best. In
second place, 18 percent cited personal relationships as the most effective channel, a significant point spread:

3%
Other

5%
Direct mail

5%

46%
Paid social media
6%
Organic social media
8% Email marketing
Word of mouth

9%
Content marketing

18%
Personal relationships

Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/374644/most-effective-b2b-event-marketing-channels

Based on the ubiquity of email and its effectiveness as a marketing tool, email marketing should probably be one of the
channels you use for event marketing. Other means as listed above can be combined with email. Remember you don’t
need to use every means available. Focus on a few and use them strategically.

Also, regardless of the channel, keep your message focused on the reasons for attending the event and the benefits of
doing so, including networking opportunities.

Remember to continue promoting post-event and to do lead nurturing and follow-up. The channels that are most
effective for post-event promotion might differ, but the same guidelines apply: Be focused and strategic in your use of a
mix of channels.

15
4 Pre-Event Promotion
A successful event starts long before the day of, with the marketing that will drive attendance, engagement and brand
awareness. How far in advance that promotion needs to happen depends on the size and type of event, and the
channels you’re using for marketing. In order to plan for enough lead time for promotion, determine which channels you’ll
use and develop a calendar for making it all happen, working backward from the day of the event. Marketing methods
you might use include:

1 Blogging - Blogging leading up to the event should be ongoing with a content strategy to build interest. Blogging
should continue after the event as well, as you provide summaries and highlights. This can include guest blogging if
a speaker would like to contribute, or a Q&A with a speaker for the event or someone from inside your company if
they will be presenting.

2 Press release - Although a press release is unlikely to generate any real press, it’s still a good idea to get the word
out this way.

3 Social media - Create an event hashtag and start using it as soon as you can, closely follow the activity on Twitter
and respond when appropriate. Plan to use other social media—including LinkedIn, Facebook and those platforms
that make sense—in whatever way is appropriate for your company and your audience. The key here is to be
consistent and strategic.

4 Paid advertising - Depending on the event, it might make sense to do pay-per-click advertising or to purchase a
display ad in an industry publication, either in print or online.

5 Email marketing - Like blogging, your email marketing should be ongoing and strategic, and should start well in
advance of the event. It should focus on the value of the event, not on trying to sell a registration. You have plenty
of content options to use in your email marketing, including spotlighting speakers, recommending sessions, and
offering helpful hints. See our Touch Plan Examples below for more specifics.

Pre-Event Touch Plan Example

Time from Event Touch Owner

4 Weeks 1st Invite Marketing

3 Weeks 2nd Invite Marketing

3 Weeks 1st Calling / Email Drive following Marketing Email #2 Sales Development

2 Weeks Personal email to select target accounts Sales AEs

2 Weeks 3rd Invite Marketing

1 Weeks 2nd Calling / Email Drive following Marketing Email #2 Sales Development

2 Days Last chance Marketing

16
4 Post-Event Promotion
Your event is a wrap. By all accounts, your attendees enjoyed themselves. Your job is done, right? Not so fast … the most
often overlooked step is the post-event follow-up. The goals of post-event promotion and follow-up can vary:

}} Nurture leads

}} Turn leads into opportunities through a CTA like ‘View a Demo’

}} Keep the discussion going (stay in touch)

}} Gather feedback on the event

}} Promote sessions or content that may have been missed

No matter how you are following up post-event, make sure your follow-up content is relevant and timely. The worst
thing you can do is follow up with an attendee promoting content or assets that have no relevance to the sessions
they attended, the booths they visited, or the discussions they had with you at the event. Make sure you’ve captured
enough data on attendee engagement to create highly personalized follow up. Prior to the event, design follow-up email
campaigns that are segmented based on the sessions your attendees checked into so you can send them relevant
content or offers immediately post event (or even during event). An example might look like this:

}} Segment A receive ABM ebook - Attendees who attend 2 or more sessions in the ‘Account-Based Marketing’ track

}} Segment B receive demo CTA - Attendees who attend 1 or more sessions in the ‘Product Insights’ track

}} Segment C receive Demand Gen Infographic - Attendees who attend 2 or more sessions in the ‘Demand Gen’ track

}} Segment D receive general thank you email and go on all-purpose nurture - Attendees who did not attend any
sessions but did attend the event

For those attendees who’ve shown greater intent (perhaps they’ve attended more than 1 of your events or have visited
your website and attended your event), you’ll want to follow up with more than just email. Arm your sales and sales
development teams with email templates to personally reach out to the highest priority prospects within 48 hours of the
completion of the event looking for an opportunity to further the discussion and turn that prospect into an opportunity.

The timeliness of post-event follow up is incredibly important. The further you get from the conclusion of the event, the
less likely you’ll see a response from the attendee. Catch them before they are back into their busy day-to-day, while
your event and brand are still top-of-mind.

17
Post-Event Touch Plan Examples
Hot Lead Attendee Follow Up

Touch 1 2 3

Days following
1-2 7 14
event
Email directly from Email/phone directly
Channel Phone directly from Sales
Sales from Sales
Additional resources
Thank you for attending Post-event perspective
available from your
Message message with specific reference via email or reference
company—webinars,
to conversation with prospect blog post
whitepapers, etc.
1-on-1 meeting for more detailed 1-on-1 meeting for more 1-on-1 meeting for more
Offer
discussion detailed discussion detailed discussion
Schedule a time to Schedule a time to
CTA Schedule a time to connect
connect connect

General Attendee Follow Up (Not Hot Lead)

Touch 1 2 3

Days following
2 14 21
event

Channel Email Email Newsletter

Thank you for attending <our Additional resources

session/booth/happy hour> with available from your Latest news from the
Message
post event perspective via email company—webinars, company
or reference blog post whitepapers, etc.
Invitation for next live webinar/ Related asset or blog
Offer Read More
event article
Learn more: Download
CTA Join us at event our content/visit our Stay connected with us
blog

No-Show Follow Up

Touch 1

Days following event 2

Channel Email

Message Sorry we missed you at the <event name>.

Key points covered. Include 2-3 key take-aways made during the
Offer
presentation/discussion

CTA Related Asset

18
4 Promotion - Take it to the Next Level
Partner Events

Get buy-in from partners on event and registration goals - Obviously, a major plus for co-hosting field events with partners
is that you can share event expenses and combine each of your customer and prospect databases. You will be casting
a wider net by leveraging all partners’ online and in-person networks. There are going to be holes in any one partner’s
database and you may have contacts in your network that your partner doesn’t and vice versa. To make the most of the
partnership, all sponsors should agree on the overall event registration goals. Look for overlapping target accounts and
target personas and prioritize those. Ideal partnerships will see all players working equally in terms of promotion to achieve
the common goals.

Create and distribute promo kits between partners - If your team is spearheading the event, it is standard practice to make
it super easy for your partners to work towards shared goals by providing them with email templates, social media images,
registration codes and so forth.

Invite partners to share their promo schedules - Sharing promotion schedules between partners can help everyone know
that each sponsor is pulling their weight and not relying on any one co-sponsor to drive registrations. You are also bound
to have overlapping target accounts or customers that you each want to get to the event. Knowing when your partners
are going to be reaching out will help you plan on the best timing to send your invites so that your prospects aren’t getting
inundated with the same messaging from two or more partners.

Shared account mapping or target account lists - Partners that establish a co-marketing story and are willing to share
their target account lists will help all parties make the most of their combined networks. A partner may have a contact or
customer that is one of your target accounts and they can help get that contact registered for the event and may be willing
to broker an intro during the event itself.

Incentivize most impactful partners - Reward sponsors that are driving the most registrations. This would serve to energize
each partner to do more with their promotional campaigns. There are a number of special incentives you can offer the
higher-performing partners. Some organizers choose to release the overall registration lists only to the co-sponsors that
drive a certain amount of registrations. Other organizers distribute lead lists (post-event) to the higher performing partners
first and wait a while to send it out to the rest of the partners. However, this should definitely be communicated and agreed
upon by all partners at the beginning of the venture. Withholding lead lists may not sit well when each partner has financially
invested in the event for lead generation.

Featured speakers can help promote the event - Lastly, working with partners can help secure marquee speakers or
influencers. A well-known speaker may charge speaker fees that could be divided among the partners. Whether or not a
speaker’s fee is involved, the speaker can be thought of as an additional partner on the event, and can help promote the
event within their own network to secure a larger pool of quality attendees.

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4 Conferences

Branding - From the onset, you want to make your event recognizable to guests both in terms of who you are and
what your event is all about. Developing a style guide and event logo or graphic that is consistent with your brand and
message is essential, as this will help you and your team stay on message without having to say a word.

Next, decide on a unique but recognizable event hashtag and incorporate that into all of your event branding. Hashtags
are a highly effective way to centralize communications and promote interaction before, during and after an event, so
don’t overlook this essential tool for your organizers and guests.

There is no shortage of opportunities to engage your event’s brand, from social media to giveaways, and through event
sponsors, speakers and partners. Incorporate your branding into all your resources and communications from the very
start to ensure that your event stands out.

Registration - It goes without saying that an efficient system for online and onsite registrations has to be not only
established, but thoroughly tested in advance of your event. Potential attendees want to know that even if they have to
register at the last minute, there will be a clear, easy process for doing so; communicating this via your website, social
media, and email is key to getting off on the right foot.

Keep the initial registration process short and sweet, requiring only the most necessary information to begin; you can
always follow up to request more information at a later date. Research shows that when redirected to a third party
checkout provider on another website, 30-50% more people will opt out of making a purchase than usual, so be sure
you have a direct and simplified process for attendees to register that avoids taking them away from your event page.

Influencers - With all the outreach opportunities provided by social media, the role of the speaker should not be limited
to a single appearance, but should also include participation in promoting both their involvement in your event, as well as
the event itself.

Influencers have access to an audience outside of your own, with a reach that you can benefit from throughout your
event cycle. Whether they be speakers, attendees, or partners, call on available influencers to help get the word out
about your event; the results could prove to have a significant impact on the promotion and attention on upcoming and
future events.

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4 Social - Most conferences these days feature a hashtag for both attendees and followers from afar to “meet” each other
and share highlights from the event. But like a lot of things, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. Below are a
handful of best practices for your next event.

Retweet and reply to others - Especially during an event, Twitter is about the community. It’s not enough to just share
your own tweets, ideas and contributions with others. The more you interact with fellow attendees—reply to their ideas,
retweet their content, etc.—the more likely others will follow you, click on your content, and otherwise engage with you
during and after the event.

Give attribution where it’s due - If you’re sharing a comment from the stage, give credit to the presenter. Use their own
Twitter handle whenever possible.

Share statistics - The fastest way to get your hashtagged tweets to go viral is to quote statistics shared throughout the
event. Without fail, statistics tend to drive greater pass-along, especially among those following the event from afar, as
well as from their secondary followers.

Find and meet the high-volume tweeters - Pay attention to those who are most active on the feed, and ask to meet
them while you’re both in the same place. High-volume hashtag tweeters are also often among the more influential
tweeters in that particular industry, association or community.

Tweet only professional photos - Please, no photos from the after-hours parties.

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5 Engagement Strategy
You’ve worked so hard to promote and drive registration for your event. How do you make sure that the right people
actually attend and that once they show up, they have a positive experience, learn more about your brand and gather
the right information that helps them achieve their goals?

1 Identify target attendees and engage them - First, determine who your ideal attendees are. Be specific about
their pain points and what will get them interested in attending the event.

For those events you are sponsoring, get a list of expected companies from the show’s organizer, if possible. Build a
list of prospective attendees from each of those companies and similar companies. Target those you’d like to work
with or learn more about and send them an invitation to visit you at the show. Include your booth number, of course,
but more importantly, give them a reason to stop by. What can you offer them to make it worth their while, to pique
their interest?

For those events you are hosting, make sure you have a clear understanding of the target profile of attendees for
your show. What levels within the organizations do you want to attend? What content and session categories should
be developed for each level to inspire your audience? Create a unique event brand (that’s tied to your corporate
brand) that is compelling to those you want to attend.

For those attendees you’re targeting, find out Twitter handles and look up LinkedIn profiles. Start following people
and get email addresses for them or reach out via direct message to say you’re looking forward to seeing them at the
event. If you can’t get a list of attendees, design your pre-show marketing to appeal to those who fit your profile of an
ideal booth visitor or attendee.

At the same time, have your sales team do outreach to prospects to give them a reason to attend the event. This
could be special pricing for the event, an invitation to a private networking hour, or a free one-on-one consultation.

To help sales in outreach prior to the event or tradeshow, leverage a meeting

scheduling technology so your sales people can connect the right prospects
with the right executives for 1:1 meetings during the event.

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5 2 Leverage social - For larger events that you are hosting, start getting the conversations going early through social
channels. Develop a social presence for your event and invite your guests to connect socially, even those who haven’t
yet registered. It can be a great way to get attendees to connect with one another and build buzz and anticipation
before your event even starts. Drop updates regularly on speakers and sessions that are of special interest to build
excitement.

3 Choose appropriate incentives to drive engagement at the event - In addition to promoting the event to drive
attendance, drive traffic to your booth or any sessions you’re presenting or sponsoring. Incentives can be effective for
driving this type of engagement, but they take some thought.

Think about incentives as more than simple freebies or swag. They are a marketing tool for getting people to your
hosted event or booth during a conference and remembering your company after the event is over. Make sure there
is some kind of tie-in or connection to your company beyond simply printing your logo on the giveaways. If there is a
theme for the conference, try to tie into that theme. Also consider usability. If your incentive is too quirky, it might get
stored at the back of a desk and not used again. On the other hand, if it’s useful, it will be present in your prospects’
mind—and your brand will be remembered. Also take into account shipping costs or transporting the incentives, if
you’re traveling to an event. It could be that a smaller incentive makes more sense financially for the out-of-state
shows, but you can invest in something bigger (and heavier) for events close to home.

When considering incentives, think about your target audience and their pain points. Should you be spending money
on a fun game with your company logo? Or would more targeted visitors be drawn to your booth if you offered a
15-minute free consultation or a how-to guide related to your industry?

23
5 Engagement - Take it to the Next Level
Field Events

Influencer and speaker involvement - Marquee, or well-known influencer attendees and featured speakers can go a long
way when it comes to attracting prospects and getting them excited about an event.

Experiential engagement - Memorability and authentic connections are fostered when you give prospect and customer
attendees something to do, or a common goal to focus on rather than having them remain passive. Look for ways to
engage attendees through fun and relevant activities.

Engage in social media and online community - For field events with an open invitation strategy, it’s a good idea to
leverage custom hashtags on social networks and send direct messages to create dialog with attendees leading up to
the event. Attendees will appreciate your paying attention to any feedback they offer through their social posts. This can
also be a way to measure engagement from your event—attendees posting about your event, event hashtag trending, or
event content being shared and retweeted. Instagrammable opportunities at events are currently very popular (backdrops,
installations, headshot services). Networking environments, inside an event app for example, can enhance engagement
before, during and after the event.

Guest participation in content design - When working content into an event, make sure it speaks to the roles and levels of
attendees who will be at the event, and that the content contains actual value. Work on making sure your attendees will get
maximum value from your speakers’ presentation materials and walk away feeling like they learned something useful. For
smaller, very targeted field events like dinners, consider prompting attendees to suggest content areas that they are most
interested in learning about leading up to the event, especially if you’ve already established a relationship. Depending on
the event type, leave space for attendees to network or otherwise enjoy the event environment, you don’t want to have
educational or sales content span the entire dinner.

Create valuable networking opportunities - Expanding professional networks is a major reason people will want to attend
your event, so don’t overlook this element when designing your event experiences.

Icebreakers and games - Icebreakers and games are helpful for encouraging interaction. They let you get to know your
prospects and customers better, and generally help attendees ease into a jovial event experience while getting them to
actually network with each other.

Post-event engagement - When planning your engagement strategy, a common pitfall is avoiding the post-event
engagement strategy. Follow-up emails or direct messages with calls to action, or even recap posts from events are
important steps in keeping the event—and your brand—alive in the minds of attendees, as well as accelerating sales cycles.

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5 Conferences

Hosting a larger conference requires engagement to become an organization-wide initiative. Communicate to your
organization early and often about your event. Work with your sales, customer success and account management teams
to define a promotional strategy to garner the most attendees from across your customer and prospect base. Arm your
teams with email templates they can personalize to send to their most important customers and prospects. Be smart
about what attendees you want to attend and use marketing or email automation tools to promote and send invitations to
your event.

Be thoughtful about your pricing strategy based on what you want to get out of the event. Obviously making it a paid
event can lessen the number of attendees, but that may be okay if you want to focus only on high quality attendees with
more of an ABM approach. If you want a more broad base of attendees to generate brand awareness, think about a
smaller attendance fee or make it completely free.

Make the Most of Your Trade Show Booth

You’ve spent a big hunk of your budget on your booth,
make the most of your presence there with these simple reminders:

Make eye contact and say hello
The best booth staffers are engaged,
scanning the crowd, and proactively
making eye contact and greeting
visitors. They are not looking down at
their phones.
Script the first five seconds
Craft a very short value proposition
your booth staff can use to get visitors
interested in learning more.
State your benefits in bold
letters in your signage
Forget features. You want to get the
attention of passers-by with your
benefits loudly proclaimed by your
booth display. This will also pre-qualify
your visitors for you.

Move longer conversations out of traffic flow Offer value-added takeaways

When someone wants to know more, get them out of the aisle and
into your booth. It will improve your conversation plus open up the
front area for other visitors and booth staff to engage.
Offer something useful but not sales-y, such as a book, a how-to
guide, a cheat-sheet or something similar. No one really wants to
read your brochure, but they will want to read about ways to be
better at their job or make a more informed buying decision when
they’re ready to buy.

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5 Understand your audience - For greater engagement during the event, develop a program that caters to your ideal
attendee profile. Make sure all content and sessions during the event are relevant to your attendee and any outside
speakers understand and will cater to the audience. Use a mobile event app to help drive engagement socially and allow
attendees to connect digitally, as well as personally, during the event. (See our mobile strategy session for additional details
on driving engagement via the mobile event app.)

Drive more traffic to your booth - To drive more traffic beyond the targeted attendees, come up with creative ideas to
get visitors to prioritize your booth. Maybe validate their parking or offer a drawing for a big prize, or some other kind of
incentive. Also consider joint offers with other exhibitors. Are there a couple of complementary exhibitors you could partner
with in advance to drive traffic to your booths? Also find out which exhibitors will be next to your booth. Does it make sense
to contact them and collaborate on a way to get people to both booths? 


Qualify booth visitors - When talking to booth visitors, start qualifying them by asking questions that are both conversational
and situational. Listen for any of a series of buying signals (based on needs, pains, symptoms) that determine whether the
prospect has a situation or problem you might be able to solve. Questions might include:

}} What brought you to this event?

}} What are you hoping to find or learn?

}} What do you need to take back to the office to justify this trip?

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6 Metrics Strategy
Tracking key metrics around demand and pipeline creation is important to showcase how events deliver on overall
business goals. Too often, planning for how to measure event results comes up after the fact. When all is said and done,
someone asks if it was worth it. Well, was it? And by whose definition?

Measuring engagement and business revenue from your next event starts well before you get there. Here are a few tips to
do it right the next time.

1 Define clearly what success looks like first - There should be a sales or marketing objective independent of the event
that is different from your pre-show expectations. The event, after all, is just a channel. So, why are you doing it in the
first place? Is it about sales? Awareness? Satisfying a partner relationship? Know the objective upfront, and then decide
what success specifically looks like–and how you’ll measure it.

2 Establish immediate and longer-term measures of success - If you’re working long sales cycles, the event may be
more about top of funnel brand awareness and generating leads. And that’s OK as an immediate measure of success.
Just make sure there are farther-out measures you’re managing as well. Leads should turn into opportunities, which
should eventually turn into closed deals. How many opportunities and closed sales do you need from the show after X
weeks or months? Knowing that number and setting the expectation that you’ll measure it not the next day but in due
time, helps set expectations and establish post-show milestones for evaluating effectiveness. Define these measures
upfront and drive your strategy and execution accordingly. Possibilities include net new leads, quality of leads, invitees
vs. registrants (meaning how many people did you invite who registered), and how many actually showed up.

3 Plan your post-event activities beforehand - It’s highly likely that event results are contingent on significant post-show
activity: lead follow-up, the sales team following through on commitments they made to prospects at the booth, etc.
Have a post-show plan to make sure this follow-up and lead nurturing happens quickly and efficiently.

4 Know how you’ll measure 30 days after - A month after the event you should have, at minimum, qualified all the leads
you captured and placed them in the appropriate stage in your pipeline. Be sure to distinguish between MQL and SQL.
Many of the leads may go right into a nurture track. Some will require further qualification, and others may be actively
engaged on a short path to purchase. But you should have an idea of pipeline expectations in the next few months.

5 Know what you’ll measure six months after the show - Depending on your average sales cycle length, this is the
milestone at which you should start to expect closed business, booked sales and revenue recognition directly from the
event. There will still be leads you’re nurturing, but six months should be enough time to see closed business and a
solid pipeline of expected new sales in the subsequent six-month period.

6 Measure and track progress to goals regularly, and make sure you have the technology available to do so - Set
up weekly meetings to review the metrics with your team and identify areas to course correct if needed. With the
investment you put into the event, you’ll need to also be able to clearly update your executive team on how you are
progressing as well as how you did post event. Make sure you have ample qualitative and quantitative data to provide
a full view of success.

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6 Metrics - Take it to the Next Level
Typical measures of event success include:

Number of
Pipeline revenue attendees
influenced
Revenue Number of
created opportunities
influenced
Number of
Customer leads or MQL’s
retention Number of
influenced opportunities
created Event mobile
engagement
(photo sharing,
posting, polls)

Number of Number of
Number of
event event mobile
meetings mobile app
app logins Post event
conducted at downloads
survey
the event results

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7 Technology Strategy
Marketers are often stuck with an ineffective mix of tools and tech. You might have an impactful event, but ineffective
technology could make it so that results are hard to track. Many marketers report that their current mix of technology and
resources is ineffective, resulting in lost data around leads, spend and revenue.

Across an event’s lifespan, a wide range of tools and tactics are used, each with varying effectiveness to their event
strategy. But no matter what you’re using, more doesn’t always mean better, especially when the individual tools lack the
level of collaboration and consistency needed for success.

When asked to rate the effectiveness of the mix of technologies and resources being used to plan and manage events,
only 25 percent of B2B professionals ranked their mixes as effective, with a majority of B2B professionals ranking their
mixes as somewhat effective.

The two tools used most often are a CRM system and a marketing automation platform. However, those tools are
not necessarily the most effective. According to the 2018 State of B2B Event Marketing Report1, nearly 7 out of 10
respondents found the effectiveness of each tool to be lacking.

On the other hand, those marketers who use an event automation platform and an event mobile app rank those tools
as very effective, with 1 in 2 respondents rating their event mobile app as very effective, and 3 in 5 rating their event
automation platform as very effective.

An event automation platform has the potential to dramatically increase event effectiveness as it allows users to:

}} Customize their platform for their organization and needs.

}} Capture and store all attendee information before, during, and after an event.

}} Hold internal teams accountable for their action items and deliverables.

1 http://innovate.certain.com/2018-state-of-b2b-event-marketing

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7 Technology - Take it to the Next Level
Conferences Summits Partner Events

Check-in Technology - Let’s face it: time spent standing in long registration lines is wasted time. By automating the check-
in and payment process, you not only save your guests valuable time, you also save yourself and your team the labor of
manually importing (and later exporting) registrant data.

With the right check-in application, conference hosts can easily navigate the registration process, track the arrival times
of guests or speakers, know ahead of time about special requests or the need for accommodations, and even track food
preferences should snacks and meals be provided.

If you are expecting VIP guests and would like to be notified of their arrival, come up with an efficient system for doing so,
or check with your event management software or app provider to see if they provide this option through their product.
This will enable you to greet them personally, or to achieve that important face-to-face time that you might not have the
chance to get once your event is in full swing.

Field Events

Field events can be a great way to get intimate time with highly targeted prospects and customers; however, the
technology and alignment between sales and marketing must be optimal. To run an effective field marketing event or
event series, you first need to make sure you’ve developed a highly targeted list of prospects and/or customers to reach
out to for event promotion.

Determine overarching pipeline goals - Whether it’s a single event, or a series of field events, determine the desired
outcomes from your event campaigns. These outcomes should fit into the company’s overall goals and will act as your
“north star” throughout the campaign. Start with the number of attendees (or raw leads) you’d like to accommodate given
the budget you have to work with. Project the number of new marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads you
think you will gain from the field event. In the best case scenario, particularly if you are taking an ABM approach, nearly all
of your attendees will be pre-qualified MQLs. But for any number of reasons, unqualified leads will likely trickle in. From
our experience, we may project that 60-70% of our raw leads will convert to MQLs and for every 10 MQLs, we may net 1
new SQL, or ‘Opportunity.’

30
7 Geographic area determined between marketing and sales - With your overall goals in place, marketing and sales can
determine the most strategic geographic areas for hosting field events. You will want to prioritize the areas that have the
most dense cluster of target accounts for your industry. Then, if budget allows, you can span out into areas with a lesser
numbers of target (or lookalike) accounts.

Pull the target attendee list from your CRM platform - Now that you’ve decided on your lists of target accounts and
titles within an area, you can build your invite list with the corresponding lead info that exists within your database
and circulate lists between sales, marketing and customer success stakeholders. In many cases, it will take frequent
‘touches’ before closing an account. If you have already had an all-in-one event automation platform in place, you’ll have
a leg-up. You can draw upon buying signals captured at previous events and will be able to better personalize your
invites by knowing where targets are in their buying journeys.

Use event technology to set up a registration landing page, engage attendees and communicate with your
marketing automation and CRM platforms.

You will want to spend more of your time on the strategic elements around the event than you do on the logistics
of event management. Take a more a data-centric approach to each event campaign and use an event automation
platform to automate management tasks easily. Having an end-to-end event automation platform gives you everything
you need to easily publish the registration landing page, send confirmations, segment and manage attendees during
the event. You can easily check attendees in, capture their activities during the event and take real-time follow-up action
based on the strength of the product’s integration with marketing automation and CRM.

Sales stakeholders review the invite list and determine which relationships may warrant direct and personal
invitations (aka ‘Warm Invites’).

Based on previously captured attendee data and the subsequent interactions with contacts in target accounts, the sales
team can then pick out contacts they already have relationships with and reach out directly.

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8 Mobile Strategy
Just about everyone attending an event will be carrying a mobile phone and marketers can take advantage of that to
engage attendees. To get to the next level of attendee engagement and event data collection, you’ll want to offer an
event mobile app. With a mobile app, you can go far beyond the paper program as you:

}} Build interest in the event as you promote the app.

}} Offer an agenda that allows users to plan for and even favorite those sessions they’ll attend.

}} Enable attendees to communicate with each other, set up meetings and add photos and enhanced profile info to
increase networking.

}} Push out important notifications, such as reminders of location changes.

}} Personalize content for specific groups or even for individual attendees to enhance the event experience.

}} Create to-do lists to gently nudge attendees to complete important tasks.

}} Let attendees take in-app notes on speakers, sessions, exhibitors and other attendees.

}} Utilize live polling for a Q&A session. (No more running around with a microphone!)

}} Use discussion boards, photo sharing and a social wall to engage attendees.

}} Encourage participation in event activities by using customized gamification.

}} Use capacity constraint tools to help manage room size for popular sessions.

}} Gain real-time attendee insights like never before through polling, surveys, session check-ins, presentation
downloads, meeting requests and much more.

Attendees will be using their phones to tweet, snap photos, keep up with emails, watch news headlines and more.
Capture their attention where they already are and use an event mobile app that personalizes content for each individual
attendee. For example, you can offer an attendee a personalized agenda with links to relevant content for that individual
solely based on some information gathered on that attendee through the registration process. Your attendees will
appreciate the personal touch.

Not only can you offer an incredible customer experience through a strong mobile event app, but you can also capture
valuable insights on attendee preferences. Determine what sessions your attendees find most interesting. Find out what
booths attendees are visiting, or what keynotes are generating the most engagement from your attendees.

Event mobile apps can be a treasure trove of information about your attendees that you can use in driving highly relevant
follow-up for your post event marketing campaigns. Imagine knowing an attendee enjoyed a session on account-
based marketing from their polling, social posts or even in-app PDF downloads from the mobile event app. You could
immediately send that individual next-step content related to account-based marketing. Your attendee would appreciate
the relevance and timeliness and could easily blossom into a warm lead or opportunity.

Additionally, make sure your mobile event app is flexible enough to be customized to meet your specific brand and
event brand guidelines. Your attendees need to have a consistent experience from event registration, through the event,
to post-event follow up.

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8 Mobile - Take it to the Next Level
Partner Events

Use a guest check-in app to reduce the lines at your co-hosted events. Working with partners, you can easily upload the list
of registered attendees so it can be a simple click or swipe on a mobile or tablet device when your guests arrive.

At partner events, you often will have a number of walk-ins as well. Most good check-in apps will be able to easily
accommodate walk-ins by entering their information and noting them as having checked in. After the event, download the
list of guests who attended and share with your partner co-hosts so you all can start the post-event promotion.

Conferences Summits

Mobile event apps allow you to gather valuable intelligence in advance of the event so your sales team can then act upon
those insights throughout the event—answering questions, sharing relevant documents, steering to on-site sources—and
follow up post-event.

Pre-Event Mobile ideas

Gathering pre-event information from surveys and exhibitor ad banners help increase customer intelligence and ROI:

Surveys - Survey your attendees in advance of the event about any number of things—topics they don’t see addressed
on the event agenda, their thoughts on the state of the industry—and use that information to trigger discussion throughout.
Also, consider questions like, “What’s your favorite non-work activity?” or “What adjective would your closest friends use to
describe you?” Populate answers in the attendee profile area for great conversation starters.

Exhibitor Ad Banners - A mobile app is also a forum for sponsor and exhibitor ad banners and images. They can be placed
on the home screen or alongside individual session descriptions. The ad might provide information on where and when to
find the exhibitor’s booth. You can also measure the number of clicks-through to the sponsor or exhibitor’s website. Also
consider offering lead retrieval services to your exhibitors for increased ROI.

Remember: The more you plan

how to optimally utilize the power
of your app—bringing your sales
and marketing teams into these
discussions—the more effectively
you’ll leverage its revenue-
generating potential.

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8 During Event Mobile Ideas
Information gathered during the event from these areas can help optimize events:

Check-in Session Discussion To-Do Lists Document Gamification

Registration Boards and Download
Live Polls

Check-In - An element of mobile event management that is

often overlooked is the event check-in process. Checking-
in guests to your event is an important way to make a
great first impression and collect valuable data. Using a
check-in app or a mobile event app enabled with check-
in capabilities, you are able to reduce the amount of time
your attendees wait in line, as well as capture meaningful
insights into why they are attending your event. A good
check-in app should easily and cost-effectively replace the
paper lists or spreadsheets used to manage guest check-
in, even for smaller events.

Many of the better check-in apps can also be used in kiosk

mode so your guests can self check-in for your event as
well as fill out additional questions about why they are
attending or what sessions are of interest. For example, as
part of the check-in process, you may want to know what
session categories are of specific interest to an attendee
so that you can market relevant content to that attendee
during and after the event.

Finally, the best check-in apps will also include compelling features like VIP alerts. VIP alerts are texts that are automatically
sent to specific individuals within your company notifying you that a VIP has checked in. Imagine being alerted that an
executive at your hottest prospect has arrived and checked into your event. You’d be able to immediately locate the VIP and
greet them personally.

Session Registration - A good idea is to create a matrix of the kinds of information you’d like to collect. Then determine how
to act on that information. For example, if an attendee checks into a session on cloud computing or downloads the session
presentation, should they be contacted while still on-site? If so, who should do it and how? And how should those actions be
scored and integrated with your CRM and marketing automation systems for follow up?

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8 Discussion Boards and Live Polls - Gauge group opinions and gain consensus
on key questions using discussion boards. Post your findings—in-app and on
monitors in common areas—along with comments to keep your guests updated
throughout the event. These conversations add texture and help generate richer
participation. Attendees feel more invested because they’re helping shape the
proceedings. They’re being given the opportunity to actively engage with peers
and gain valuable industry insight. Rather than being guided through a scripted
agenda, they’re getting customized, dynamic content.

Interactive polling feedback allows you to check the pulse of your attendees
throughout the event: What did you take away from this afternoon’s keynote? Or
conduct an in-session live poll: How many social media channels do you regularly
use? It allows you to bolster a sense of community: Which off-site activity did you
find most fun? Garner the wisdom of the group: Which customer segment should
be our focus for next year? You can also solicit questions from your audience and
if you see a pattern, you’ll know to address that topic in more depth in the future.

Or consider the concept of the “unconference”: Attendees vote on topics they

want to learn more about, and then the most popular among them become
sessions on the last day of the event. It’s a great way to maintain enthusiasm
to the very end.

To-Do Lists - To-do lists are also great motivators. Prior to the event you can provide each attendee with a personal
in-app list of things to accomplish before the event begins or throughout the event. It’s a convenient way for them to
keep up with their schedules. You can track who has completed which tasks, and if it appears they need a nudge, you
can send a gentle reminder, and perhaps direct them to where they can get assistance.

Document Downloads - There’s so much intelligence to be gained with a customized event app that translates to your
bottom line—information that you just can’t gather through any other means.

For example: Knowing what documents your guests download offers insight into their interests, which can then be
relayed to your sales team. When appropriate, a rep can follow up right away, on-site, offering additional information
and direction on where to learn more. Or you can add that participant to your marketing automation system to receive
the next offering on that topic. Likewise, add detail like your attendees’ survey and real-time poll responses and
information they post about what’s resonating with them or what they’re looking forward to.

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8 Gamification - Gamification is a great way to further engage your
guests, and it’s fun. The leaderboard displayed in-app and on a large
screen makes for some good, friendly competition. Badges can be
earned for attending individual sessions, taking surveys and live
polls, posting photos and more. Again, this allows you to gain a more
rounded view of attendees’ interests. Badges can also be earned for
visiting exhibitors’ booths. Exhibitors get real value from increased
attendee traffic.

Post-Event Mobile Ideas

Hosting increasingly engaging events entails learning from experience,
an ongoing process. The information you’ve now gathered through
interactive feedback allows you to more effec­tively evaluate every
aspect of your event, and improve accordingly. You’re eliminating the
guesswork.

Balance what users told you prior to the event with what they actually
did—what they downloaded and what they said in the live polls or on the
message boards. This will allow you to develop more rounded profiles of
your clients, and to target follow-up messaging based on those profiles.

Metrics pulled after the event from your app from these features help optimize future events, increase customer
intelligence and ROI:

}} Surveys and Live polls

}} Lead Retrieval

}} Badge game for booth check-in and ads clicked

Surveys and Live Polls - Keep the conversation alive. After the event, send out insights gathered from surveys and polls
to encourage ongoing interaction and to get your guests looking forward to the next one.

Lead Retrieval - Give your sponsors and exhibitors the option of using a scan and capture feature for gathering sales
leads for post-event follow up. They can scan an attendee’s badge within seconds, even as they’re speaking casually
at a social event. They can quickly add notes and a rating to qualify the lead right after they’ve chatted. Reports are
accessible instantaneously and no antiquated hardware or separate system is required. With lead retrieval, it’s all about
using the right technology and focusing on building relationships.

Badge game for booth check-in and ads clicked - Encourage attendees to visit the booths of your important partners
with a badge game in the mobile app. Link strategically placed ads to sponsors’ websites.

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Now circle back with your sponsors and exhibitors. The success of your badge game, lead capture and in-app ads means
that your exhibitors are more likely to return next year, having seen a healthy return on their investment. Share with them
what you’ve learned and strategize for an even more productive future. Encourage their feedback throughout—they’re
pros too; take full advantage of their expertise.

Lastly, you can share insights gleaned with your shareholders or board as evidence of the value of your events.

A successful event strategy is the key to maximizing the high returns that events can deliver to your business’ bottom line.
Behind that strategy is a complex process that requires clear communication, collaboration and alignment between teams,
so planning starts with a comprehensive view of the best practices, tips and tactics to achieve results. With the right plan in
place, you can realize quantifiable success by unlocking the unrivaled potential of events.

About the Authors

Certain is the leading enterprise event automation platform that helps data-driven marketers and event professionals integrate rich buying signals and attendee
insights into cross-channel marketing campaigns to improve sales and marketing results. Certain partners with hundreds of companies across tens of thousands
of events with millions of attendees. Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Chapel Hill, NC, Europe and Asia Pacific, Certain serves enterprises across
tens of thousands of events with millions of attendees to deliver flawless events.

Visit Certain on the web at www.certain.com and follow us on Twitter @Certain

Every day at Heinz Marketing brings a new adventure in the world of B2B sales and marketing. We are innovators at heart, and not afraid to challenge convention
in order to deliver the results our customers need. We are passionate about what we do and strive to promote outcomes rather than just focus on activities.

Visit Heinz Marketing on the web at www.heinzmarketing.com and follow us on Twitter @HeinzMarketing

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