Amy Barone, Sr. Director of Marketing Events & Engagement Programs at Tableau Software, shares her event marketing secrets in our A New Era in Event Marketing webinar with Harvard Business Review and AdAge. Below, she gives an inside look at how Tableau  grew and scaled a high-performance event program.

The events industry is evolving, and with that, marketers are saying hello to events that go beyond the “big show” (i.e., massive conferences with thousands of people) and instead looking at multi-city, repeatable programs they can run globally. 

While you can throw a large tentpole event — the one that involves year-long prep and half the annual budget — have you considered smaller, repeatable programs throughout the year that can have an immediate impact on your revenue targets?

Splash recently partnered with SiriusDecisions to host a conversation focused on going Beyond The Big Event with expert and Research Director, Demand Marketing Strategies, Cheri Keith of SiriusDecisions; veteran Senior Field and Partner Marketing Manager, Natalie Graham of Medallia (recent IPO); and Splash’s savvy Senior Director of Product Marketing, Sasha Pasulka. 

The trio covered the new era of events, defined repeatable event programs, and addressed the business impact of repeatable events, including topics: modern and effective event strategy and management, building field marketing programs, and event marketing at scale. This set the stage for event program owners and marketing leaders to consider how they will navigate going beyond the “‘big-event” mentality.

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person next to them?

Ten years later, our annual conference attracts nearly 20,000 customers and partners, our company has grown to 4,000 people, and we have a first-class marketing team with dedicated event professionals who are the best in the biz. Events have been a crucial part of our brand and help us better connect with our community, evangelize our customers, and ultimately grow our company.

Here’s how we did it:

No matter your business’s product or service offering, or if you are a large-scale enterprise or an up-and-coming fast-growth company, part of an organization’s growth strategy includes event marketing. As a marketer or event manager, you are the driver of your programs and responsible for deciding the type of event, cadence, goals, and of course budget — determining just how much are you willing to put on the line to get the results you need.

Let’s rewind to the first line of this blog post — we’re saying goodbye to the big-show mentality. I know what you’re thinking: Is Splash suggesting I should hit the pause button on hosting my large annual conference?! No, definitely not. We are, however, suggesting that implementing a strategy that allows teams to test ideas and move quickly to action can yield some truly amazing business learnings and results. And, we know repeatable field events are becoming a key tactic in marketing plans, as they help drive quantifiable outcomes; just ask the team at Index Exchange. These smaller, rinse ‘n repeat events are not only easier to pull off than a 1,000+ person conference, but significantly cheaper, and will likely prove a better ROI since they are higher, more curated touchpoints for your audience.

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In the latest study on event marketing, Harvard Business Review found that rapid revenue growth was fueled by event marketing — 52 percent to be exact. So maybe you’re nodding, perhaps even bought into the idea of the repeatable half- to full-day field event strategy — fantastic! Here’s how to bring your event programs to life, effectively and in a scalable way:

The first step to any event program is to take a deep breath and ask yourself, Why am I actually doing this?  Whether you’re an event marketer, demand gen marketer, or field marketer, it’s easy to lose focus of what you’re truly attempting to showcase for the company’s webinar, live event, or customer conference. Is your award ceremony an opportunity to showcase branding or a platform to give out your sustainable swag? What are you telling your sales team when they ask for follow-up materials? How many customers versus prospects are you inviting? Collaborate with your marketing team, ask your sales team questions, and put something on paper that will serve as a north star for the entire initiative.

For example, if you see in your analytics that one organization isn’t engaging with the initial email, it probably means they have a very strict firewall in place. So, now you know to follow-up personally or adjust your strategy for the next email.

This first email could come in the form of a teaser email to drum up buzz for your event, or even something a little more vague to get people interested (and curious).

Field marketers adjust their programs based on the needs of varying customer and prospect types. To do this, they need reliable tools to keep their brand, data, and communications consistent. 

If you or your field marketing team are leveraging one-off tools to showcase regional events, strategic scale and brand continuity is not feasible, and the value proposition you worked so hard to define will be overshadowed by the technical difficulties you encounter every step of the way. Your brand is your company’s identity, so why would you use tools that are not powerful or flexible enough to showcase it? From your landing page to email communication to name badges onsite, make sure your field marketing team has the proper tools in place to execute on-brand, seamless experiences every time.

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Here’s an example of a great looking event email:

Don’t just take it from us. Having a field event or repeatable event strategy that is consistent, scalable, and globally friendly pays off beyond what you (or your boss) thought was possible. Natalie Graham, who joined us for the previously mentioned Beyond the Big Event conversation, explained it best:

Image: Penguin Random House

Image: Conference Matters

When Natalie started at Medallia in 2018, she was faced with one-off tools for field marketing programs. The Medallia brand was not always displayed properly, teams were working in silos, and if field event data existed, it was hard to track down. Natalie is responsible for scaling the global field marketing program and had all the right ideas in motion to make an impact on the business, but was missing the tools to do so. To set a registration page for an event and ensure email marketing was ready to rock quickly wasn’t a thing; there was a ticketing process in place that usually took days, if not weeks. It was the furthest thing from self-serve, and the marketing operations team was saddled with the stress of handling all technical aspects of a global field program (landing page, emails, list management, campaigns... the list goes on). This simply wasn’t scalable.

Enter Splash. Once the Medallia team was onboarded with Splash, they were able to streamline all field event programs and the weight was lifted from the ops team. What used to take over a week and involved multiple departments, now took a mere 24 hours; and Natalie was able to build out the whole event herself.

Splash helps the people behind the event programs deliver a beautiful, branded, digital experience, and allow hosts to measure event impact accurately. "It felt to us that so many parts of businesses have breakthrough technology that really enables scale. We hadn't seen that in events yet, so we built it." - Sasha Pasulka

Want to see how we built it? Check out every corner of Splash's event marketing platform here. 

Image: Google Books

When it comes down to it, the goal of any event is to grow and nurture the relationship between your guests and your brand — whether you’re promoting a product, building community, or looking to increase brand awareness.

You also need to think about who you’re sending your emails to. Make sure you’re only sending to your engaged recipients — a good rule of thumb is to send to those who have opened or clicked emails in the past few months.

And of course, don’t send emails to users who have unsubscribed or whose emails have bounced in the past. This also means you need to constantly maintain your lists, and update them with any unsubscribe or bounce information.

^{Post-event page made with Splash}

This way, guests didn’t have to worry about memorizing each other’s names or drawing a blank when they turned to chat with the person next to them, and we also got to show off  our product in a natural way.

One of the best ways to improve email deliverability is to build a solid reputation with email services by sending high-quality emails day after day.

For example, you shouldn’t just send an email to 500,000 people in one day (that’s a huge red flag to servers). Instead, build up to a large email send by breaking it up over several days, and increasing the volume with each send (in other words: sending to 100,000 people five days in a row isn't great either).

P.S. If you're a Splash customer and considering a large-volume email send, talk to your CSM about the best approach for your strategy.

This is the most effective email deliverability tactic, but it’s also the most complex to achieve. Depending on your relationship with your guest list (e.g. VIPs or high-value accounts), you can request that their IT team have your company’s IP put on a “whitelist,” which would allow your promotions to bypass any company firewalls.

Even if your event doesn’t require a full seating chart with assigned seats, think about how you want the flow of your event to go, and how you can create natural opportunities for meaningful connections.

Image: designworkplan

•   A sense of privacy: a completely private and closed off room for dinner proved to be an extremely crucial element. At one of the venues, an open section in the room allowed noise to disrupt the flow of conversation — making it feel less private and less special of a night compared to dinners that were completely closed off to the public.

At the end of the day, throwing events mean nothing if you’re not providing value to your customers.

At our conferences, we provide “Tableau Doctors” on-site that help customers or prospects with any questions about our product. Not only do these one-on-one appointments empower customers to engage with us in a meaningful way, they’ve also been the critical to driving event ROI.

Event marketers are on the hook to create more than just in-person experiences. We are responsible for creating promotion plans to drive registrations, cultivating content that fuels outstanding event agendas, drawing up on-site activations to increase social sharing –– the list goes on. 

But what happens when the event is over? Does all of the pre-event hype you worked so hard to create die when the last attendee walks out the door? Unless your team is hosting events on a weekly cadence with the same audience, you’re likely experiencing this loss-of-engagement issue in some capacity. But with a few tricks up your sleeve, it doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s where you can start. 

Having been both an event host and an attendee over the years, I’ve seen some outstanding follow-up communications and some not so great. The keys to being on the outstanding side of the equation are simple:

1. Be prompt. Have your follow-up plan locked and loaded long before the day of the event. If you’re not sending some sort of follow-up communication within 24 hours post-event, you’re already late.

2. Be meaningful. We’ve all received the obligatory, “It was great to see you at our event! Here is a link to our website” email that we immediately delete. A follow-up email like that will generate the same results as not sending anything at all. A general marketing rule of thumb: If something doesn’t have a specific desired outcome, don’t do it. Instead, go the extra mile and keep your attendees engaging with you by asking them to complete a survey about their experience and ask them how you can improve the next event. Or, my personal favorite: If the event they attended was part of an ongoing series, encourage a subscription to the event calendar to stay in the know for upcoming events. 

3. Be personal. This is not to say that you need to create custom, handwritten notes that get delivered on a silver platter to your attendees. It means you should go the extra mile to ensure an email isn’t generic and bland. For example, instead of writing, “Thank you for attending the event” in an email subject line, use personalization tags and create something like, “One more thing before you go, John!” This conveys promptness, meaningful action, and obviously, a personalized touch.

If you hosted any speakers, sessions, or content at your event, this is your ticket to keeping engagement up. Events are a gold mine of thoughtful content and a great way to keep your attendees listening while attracting new faces for the next event is creating thought-leadership content that expounds on on-site learnings. Some of my most popular blog posts and articles have been event recaps because the reader can relate to the findings and weigh in with their own perspectives. 

Anything you can create after an event that sparks recall with attendees and gains some new eyes with the broader audience will never be pointless. Blog posts are the easiest win, LinkedIn articles will get you social visibility, and media bylines are gold mines.

                         Total Event Cost: $50,000

                         Total Ticket Revenue: $57,125
            [(57,125 - 50,000) ÷ 50,000] x 100 = 14.25% ROI

But Hannah, the event program I run doesn’t involve ticketed events. Can I still measure ROI?  Glad you asked! The answer is yes, but I call it something a little bit different: event influence.

Social media –– you either love it or you hate it. But like it or not, it’s an event marketer’s best friend when it comes to creating and keeping the hype around events. Frequently we see events take over social platforms on the day-of, but the next day it is complete crickets from both the attendees and the host. While it’s easy and natural to want to take a deep breath of relief and relax knowing your event kicked ass, fight the urge and keep your social tabs open. 

First, go for the quick hits: a recap post full of pictures that thanks speakers, sponsors, partners, etc. Tag everyone you can to please the sacred algorithm and watch as the likes, comments, and shares pour in. If you did some sort of award ceremony at your event, make a post about the winners (remember, visual content galore). 

After the initial buzz becomes quiet, take all of the post-event content you created and post it anywhere you can. Keep any event hashtags alive, tag any speakers whose work might be mentioned in your content, host a Twitter or Instagram poll where attendees can vote on what content they want to hear at the next event, etc. Again, visual content always wins, so once you have any sizzle reels or video highlights ready to go, rinse and repeat the above. 

Speaking of the little details, here are 51 of the tiniest things that can make the biggest difference at your next event.

Events are part of the bigger marketing puzzle that is always multi-touch. Whether you’re part of a one-person or fully stacked event team, the message you’re putting out into the market is the same as the broader marketing team. So lean on them –– ask for help creating content, encourage multiple people to post on social media, and bring your demand team into the room to help create follow-up email campaigns. Better yet, get multiple departments involved and brainstorm even more ways to keep the attendees you worked so hard to get in the door, involved and engaged.   

The reason these surveys are valuable is that they provide immediate feedback—both qualitative and quantitative—and are condensed into reports for the team at HQ to review. Sure, they might get this in a quarterly or annual report, but the district managers and team at HQ may need access to this feedback immediately. With Splash, everyone with a license can access the reporting tools in Splash and review activity shortly after each event.

Image: Google Books

When it comes down to it, the goal of any event is to grow and nurture the relationship between your guests and your brand — whether you’re promoting a product, building community, or looking to increase brand awareness.

You also need to think about who you’re sending your emails to. Make sure you’re only sending to your engaged recipients — a good rule of thumb is to send to those who have opened or clicked emails in the past few months.

And of course, don’t send emails to users who have unsubscribed or whose emails have bounced in the past. This also means you need to constantly maintain your lists, and update them with any unsubscribe or bounce information.

^{Post-event page made with Splash}

This way, guests didn’t have to worry about memorizing each other’s names or drawing a blank when they turned to chat with the person next to them, and we also got to show off  our product in a natural way.

One of the best ways to improve email deliverability is to build a solid reputation with email services by sending high-quality emails day after day.

For example, you shouldn’t just send an email to 500,000 people in one day (that’s a huge red flag to servers). Instead, build up to a large email send by breaking it up over several days, and increasing the volume with each send (in other words: sending to 100,000 people five days in a row isn't great either).

P.S. If you're a Splash customer and considering a large-volume email send, talk to your CSM about the best approach for your strategy.

This is the most effective email deliverability tactic, but it’s also the most complex to achieve. Depending on your relationship with your guest list (e.g. VIPs or high-value accounts), you can request that their IT team have your company’s IP put on a “whitelist,” which would allow your promotions to bypass any company firewalls.

Even if your event doesn’t require a full seating chart with assigned seats, think about how you want the flow of your event to go, and how you can create natural opportunities for meaningful connections.

Image: designworkplan

•   A sense of privacy: a completely private and closed off room for dinner proved to be an extremely crucial element. At one of the venues, an open section in the room allowed noise to disrupt the flow of conversation — making it feel less private and less special of a night compared to dinners that were completely closed off to the public.