A few years ago, the AdRoll team was struggling to expand the value of their programs due to operational bottlenecks. Since using Splash, they increased registrations by 331% (YoY), increased their email open rates to 48%, and tripled the number of won opportunities that were sourced and influenced from their events.
AdRoll is a marketing and advertising platform that helps brands grow revenue and save time on one streamlined platform. Powered by industry-leading automation and personalization, the AdRoll platform's machine learning analyzes real-time advertising data to drive traffic and sales. AdRoll helps customers generate more than $246 billion in sales annually and has been used by over 140,000 brands since 2006.
Sam Varga, Senior Field Marketing Manager, is a team of one.
She oversees all of AdRoll’s global events –– from webinars to experiential gatherings like dinners, happy hours, conferences, trade shows, international festivals, and more.
When she joined the team a few years ago to rebuild AdRoll’s event marketing program, her goal was to raise brand awareness and get AdRoll’s name back on buyers’ radars.
At the time, AdRoll was using Marketo to collect registrations and Zoom to host their events.
As Sam started hosting more events, she found herself needing specific features to expand AdRoll’s event programs beyond brand awareness.
In regards to the hosting experience, Sam wanted to gain more autonomy over the event creation and management process. It was difficult to build landing pages without needing constant web designer support, and she was reliant on her operations team for all event emails.
When it came to the attendee experience, she wanted to create smooth, fully-branded touchpoints from start to finish.
With her list in mind, she set out to find a new solution.
After evaluating a few options, AdRoll chose Splash as their event management platform. Sam said it was a “no-brainer” for the team.
Here’s why:
Sam uses Splash Themes to quickly create events that amplify AdRoll’s brand.
"It looks like guests are still on the AdRoll site when they click away, which is important to us."
Splash’s themes allow Sam more autonomy to flex her creativity, saving her designer time from manually building every event page.
“Whether we're using themes that we built or one of the Splash ones that overlays our colors and fonts, it allows me to be a little creative and then hand it off to our web designer to clean up without starting from scratch.”
Prior to Splash, AdRoll’s Revenue Operations team sent every email through Marketo.
Now, they only send initial invitations through Marketo and use Splash’s bi-directional Marketo integration to import the list to Splash for all subsequent email sends.
“After the first invite, everything goes through Splash. Having emails in Splash, built out in pre-approved themes, means I don't have to go through the whole approval process with Rev Ops, making it faster and easier to send them. When I build the event, I know when our initial invite is going out. This makes it easier for me to simply build out our reminder invites and emails the day I build the landing page."
Sam uses Splash Studio to host all of AdRoll’s virtual events, enabling her to quickly create fully branded, top-of-the-funnel webinars that provide great experiences for both hosts and guests.
“Webinars are so easy now because it takes me maybe an hour and a half to build out an entire webinar page from start to finish, including all of our emails. I'm more stressed about getting everyone a brief and an Asana project ready for the webinar than building the page, because those tasks can take longer now!"
AdRoll set up Splash’s Marketo integration to refine and optimize their send lists. The integration allows Sam and the Revenue Marketing team to define their event lists in Marketo and pull those lists directly into Splash. Smarter guest list curation and strategic email sends have resulted in a whopping 48% average open rate for their team.
“We use Marketo to define who our population is for each webinar or event and that will feed into Splash. This is why we have a strong open rate. We're very intentional with lists rather than inviting everyone in our book of business.”
“Between the quick and easy experience of building landing pages and the customer-facing event branding options, switching to Splash was a no-brainer.”
Sam Varga, Senior Field Marketing Manager at AdRoll
Looking back, Sam accomplished her initial goal of raising AdRoll’s brand awareness.
Prior to Splash, their average turnout was around 70 attendees. In their first event on Splash, they doubled that number with 144 attendees.
Since using Splash, Sam’s goal has quickly shifted with the growing success of her events to lead generation.
“Today, we host events at every stage of the funnel. Webinars are our top-of-funnel. Conferences tend to be top, sometimes mid-funnel if we're doing something a little bit more hands-on. Field events, like our dinners, or virtual roundtables are bottom-of-funnel, which we're hoping to do later this year. All in all, we’ve been able to develop a full funnel strategy, which is exactly what AdRoll preaches the value of.”
Here’s a look at AdRoll’s event performance over the last year with Splash:
With the right solution in place, AdRoll experienced a 384.7% growth in MQLs from webinars, a 331.4% growth in overall registrations, and a 34-day decrease in the average sales cycle.
They also increased the number of total sourced and influenced opportunities from events by 7x, and the number of won opportunities sourced and influenced from events by 3x.
Sam closed by saying, "Our programs are very diverse and have grown a lot. We started with webinars but weren't 100% sure where it would go. Now, when our Sales team or leadership request to add-on an event it is easy for me to say “yes”, jump into Splash to build a page, and not add workload to my marketing teammates for a small event. It's been fun to find different creative ways we can use Splash to support all of our events, even non-traditional ones."
“Splash hosts all of our events. It lets guests have a branded, unique experience with us from the first time they're landing on that page and getting an email, all the way through the post-event communication. Whether they're coming to a webinar or a dinner, we can give them a fully branded AdRoll experience thanks to Splash."
Sam Varga, Senior Field Marketing Manager at AdRoll
