How ThoughtSpot Consistently Built On-Brand Events

ThoughtSpot is a modern analytics cloud company that empowers you to create, consume, and operationalize data-driven insights. Since its founding in 2012, ThoughtSpot’s mission has been to provide companies with the data they need. With ThoughtSpot, you can put the full power of your modern data stack in the hands of every employee and customer with consumer-grade analytics.

Before the pandemic, ThoughtSpot hosted all kinds of in-person field events, from executive dinners and targeted thought leadership roadshows to sporting suites and golf outings. To deliver unique virtual events, they integrated direct mail with live virtual experiences to engage their audiences. And today, they’re strategizing to bring in-person events back while also continuing the momentum from their virtual events.

They can do this because two critical pieces of their events strategy never changed: their event goals and the technology behind it all.

We recently chatted with ThoughtSpot’s Risa Peterson, Head of Field Marketing, and Brendon Ritz, Director of Marketing Operations, to learn more about their field marketing strategy.

ThoughtSpot’s field marketing program looks much different today than even just five years ago. In the mid-2010s, the team was running a lot of small happy hours that their sales team could manage on their own with a little marketing support.

“They ended up running so many events, which was great for our pipeline,” said Risa. “But the marketing team was small at the time, so spinning up landing pages for every event was a huge pain point.

“There were also major limitations with the system the team was previously using. Unless we knew HTML or had a creative team to help full-time, we couldn’t customize the design as much as we would have liked.”

Like many others, ThoughtSpot’s field marketing team felt the pain associated with limited design functionality: rogue events featuring far too many brand inconsistencies.

“With the workload increasing, and all of these off-brand events happening, leadership started looking for a solution that would let the field marketers create on-brand, professional-looking events without much effort,” said Risa.

And so their search for an event marketing platform began.

Duplicating events in Splash has been a game-changer for the team. It’s 100% been a time-saver for the field marketers. We have more speed into event execution rather than dealing with all of the intricacies that come with creating a whole new set of assets for an event.
_{Risa Peterson, Head of Field Marketing}

ThoughtSpot’s list of priorities in an event marketing platform was not a short one. But they knew when it came to great design, useful data, scalability, and attendee experience, it was not the time to settle.

According to Risa, the ability for customization and ease of use were huge pieces of what the team wanted, and Brendon agreed.

“One of our VPs is someone who notices when one pixel is out of place,” said Brendon. “He really wanted to find a platform that would let anyone create on-brand events without him having to intervene on everything.”

Event branding and design is one part of a successful event program. But an important part of measuring that success is with event analytics and easy integrations.

“The ability to integrate with our existing marketing tech stack was another must-have for the team,” said Brendon. “As marketing operations pros, we want to help determine what’s working and what’s not for our broader marketing strategy — not be bottlenecks in the event setup process.”

And last but certainly not least, the team wanted to ensure that the overall attendee experience would be an excellent one.

“We obviously wanted a platform that was going to work for us, but also for the people who are registering to attend our events,” said Risa. “Visiting our event pages and registering is the beginning of their event experience, so if that’s not positive, we generally won’t be able to convert those leads.”

After evaluating a number of event marketing platforms, ThoughtSpot found one that checked all of their boxes: Splash.

In this new work-from-home life, Splash has been where I spend a lot of my days, and the on-demand learning was and still is my best friend. I especially love the ease of access and simple, user-friendly interface when navigating and managing events. I appreciate the modern approach to making event-handling as simple as possible with style.
_{Lily Yoon, Field Marketing Specialist}