Human connection: It’s a universal social need and why event marketing is consistently praised as one of the most effective marketing channels.
There’s more to it than just event promotion and production, though. To truly boost business through event marketing, you need to build a lasting relationship with event data and weave it into your strategy — whether you’re running in-person, virtual, or hybrid events.
But let’s face it: When insecurities and fears get the best of us, relationships (with data) can be complicated, stressful, and just downright depressing.
Changing this is possible, but it’s up to you to make the effort. Being confident and happy in your relationship with event data is your responsibility. Recognize what triggers your anxieties and understand how to let those go. Acknowledge what you want from this relationship, and don’t settle for anything less.
There are so many rewarding benefits from having a healthy relationship with event data: more personalization, value, and results, to name a few. You deserve them all, but hard work and determination must persevere over your insecurities and fear.
In this special collection of Dear Splash — our advice column for event marketers stepping into the new era of event marketing — we focus on all things data relationships. If you’re ready to take the next step in strengthening your connection with data, we’re here to help.
My company is very diligent about following data privacy laws, but our event marketing function is fairly new, and we aren’t well-versed in what these laws mean for events. Are there event-specific details we should know about these laws? We don’t want to lose the great relationship we currently have with compliance.
Sincerely, Crazed by Compliance
Security and privacy concerns across the globe have never been greater, for both marketers and other professionals, so ensuring data privacy for your prospects and customers is more important than ever before. The biggest piece of advice we can give you: Invest in an event marketing platform.
The right event marketing platform will let you capture opt-ins, share legal information, and keep unsubscribe data current. And by integrating your platform with other business technologies, you can easily respect your attendees’ data privacy and avoid compliance nightmares.
One great example of what an event marketing platform can do is not only share legal information, but share it based on registrant location. So, if your registrant indicates his or her residency as Denmark, for example, a platform should let you add logic so that registrant automatically sees legal information specific to Denmark. No one can claim they didn’t get the legal details.
This is just a small piece of compliance though. We’d highly recommend downloading The Uncomplicated Guide to GDPR and Event Marketing for many more details on this topic.
P.S. The California Consumer Privacy Act went into effect January 1, 2020, and future data regulations will undoubtedly impact the events industry. Get in front of your event data processes now.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
My leadership team absolutely loves our one annual conference. The ROI from that event is positive, but I know a more diverse events program — one including repeatable, scaled events — could bring more results faster. They say we only need the one program, and I’m having a difficult time communicating with them about why they should reconsider. Can you help me with some talking points?
Sincerely, Woes with Leadership
There’s huge untapped value in repeatable, scaled event programs, and those are the events taking the spotlight in the new era of event marketing. It’s quickly becoming an industry-wide conversation, so you’re smart to get ahead of it.
Tell your leadership this: Scaled event programs can empower your internal teams to maximize the event data at their fingertips, without worrying about inaccurate data. They can let you get back to the important, strategic projects. They can have an immediate impact on revenue targets. And last, but not least, they can help grow your event marketing programs without adding more resources.
We’re not suggesting you should do away with your annual conference. We’re simply saying this new era of event marketing can yield quick and impactful business results — and your leadership should know that.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
We have a sophisticated event marketing strategy that includes effectively measuring ROI, but I would love to take our ROI visibility to the next level. I’m hesitant to make the first move, but only because I’m not sure what’s most appropriate. What advice do you have on proving ROI across the organization?
Sincerely, Shy with Proving ROI
Proving ROI is important in any event marketing strategy, but we’d encourage you to think beyond proof. The question you should be asking is: How can I optimize ROI across programs? This is what will get you to the next level.
By optimizing ROI, you can confidently accelerate future event programs and their results based on evidence of past program successes (your existing event data). To show you what we mean, let’s look at an example.
Salesforce connected their own CRM products with Splash, enabling them to report on more than just vanity metrics. Beyond tracking who attends their events, they also calculate how much open sales pipeline is represented in their attendee list, based on their past interactions with the company.
After the event, Salesforce measures how many new opportunities were created within the first 90 days following an event, segmented by existing customers and potential customers who attended. They also associate the event with that new pipeline of sales opportunities in Salesforce, so they can follow those opportunities every step of the way until those deals close.
All of this lets them truly optimize ROI across all their events, ultimately demonstrating the value of not only their individual events, but their programs as a whole.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
At my organization, we have a marketing operations team that manages our marketing tech stack. I want to work with them to integrate our event marketing tool with our other business systems, but I’m having communication issues with them. I’m not a super technical person, so it’s hard for me to understand them, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual. What advice do you have for talking to my marketing operations team?
Sincerely, Not Fluent in Marketing Ops
Like any other cross-departmental effort, getting marketing operations to prioritize your event data integration project requires a solid understanding of what their goals are. If a project doesn’t align with their goals, it’ll be more difficult for them to get on board. (But if your goals have anything to do with increasing data visibility, chances are they align with marketing operations.)
Find out how they define priorities, objectives, and measures of success, then convert your request into those terms. If you can map exactly how event data integration supports (or enhances) their goals — and in their terms — you’ll be in a better spot to communicate with them and get the job done more quickly.
Also, keep in mind all the projects and moving pieces coming to marketing operations (it might just help you flex that empathy muscle). If you choose a technology that can integrate seamlessly with their existing systems, they’ll be much more inclined to support your project with a smile.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
About six months ago, I hosted an event that was a huge risk for my company. We had never done anything like it before and had no idea how it would turn out. It seemed to go fine, but I actually didn’t even pull data afterward because I wasn’t sure what the results would say. Uncertainty gives me so much anxiety. What if my event data doesn’t work for me the way I want it to?
Sincerely, Anxious
There are few things worse in a relationship than the anxiety caused by uncertainty. When it comes to your relationship with data, refocus on the possibilities it can hold. Understanding your event data and knowing your results, particularly ROI, means you have information that’s key in optimizing your event marketing programs and making them better year after year. Plus, if your ROI reporting is strong, you can prove that your efforts are influencing the business, which could lead to more budget, more resources, and more headcount.
To help alleviate some of your anxiety, let’s look at how easily you can measure ROI with a commonly used method: first-touch attribution. Simply put, this means you are allocating all value of an opportunity to the first event a prospect attends. (Note: This formula also works if you want to allocate all value to the last touch before a prospect converts.)
The formula for this attribution is:
Event ROI = (Sum of value of opportunities closed-won where lead source was the event − Total cost of event) / Total cost of event
We recommend downloading this guide on event ROI to learn even more about this topic — everything from forecasting ROI and determining total event investment to attribution methods and measuring KPIs other than just ROI.
A final tip: Everything we just mentioned is so much easier with the right tools that are integrated.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
We have a successful event strategy at my company, but we have a challenge with keeping momentum between events. My sales team has even mentioned a few times when their prospects felt ghosted after some of our recent events. I want all of our prospects to feel the love at all times. How can I help the sales reps?
Sincerely, Unintentional Ghoster
Keeping the spark alive with your prospects and customers is just as important between your events as it is right before and after your events. It’s great that your sales team has given you this feedback; not so much that your prospects are feeling neglected. The good news is that you can change this.
You can identify event attendees’ level of engagement with your company by looking at how they behave in the days, weeks, and months following your event. But you and your sales team need to ensure those attendees continue receiving relevant content that keeps them interested or, even better, converts them to a customer.
There are buying signals to look for in these interactions that could change how you communicate with specific prospects or customers (including which future events you should invite them to). These signals most notably include email opens or clicks, form fills, and demo requests. By syncing these details to the event campaign in your CRM system, your sales team can more easily take advantage of this information.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
I feel like something is missing from my relationship with data, specifically after the end of my events. I’ve crafted the perfect post-event survey that typically results in areas for improvement, but I’m always left wanting to know more. What other pieces of information can I gather after my events to prove performance?
Sincerely, Unfulfilled
When it comes to gathering post-event data, your survey is only the tip of the iceberg — so your intuition is right on. There are a number of other ways to collect feedback and information that can not only help improve future events, but also show how your event performed. Using this complete list should help to fill the gap you’ve been missing.
And as always, we highly encourage you to sync post-event attendee data to your CRM and marketing automation systems to continue personalizing the prospect and customer experience.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
My team is on the brink of breaking up with our post-event survey. We’ve always sent one for every event we host, but we never do anything with the data because it doesn’t really say much. They’re ready to throw in the towel, and I have to admit that I’m not far behind them. Is there any hope for our post-event survey?
Sincerely, In a Survey Slump
Ask yourself and your team: Do you really need to ditch your post-event survey forever, or are there a few simple changes that’ll make it work? It sounds like a new survey strategy might be in order (and this involves very little heavy lifting).
If you can’t make improvements from the answers you’re getting, you’re not asking the right questions. For example, knowing that half of your guests traveled fewer than 10 miles to attend doesn’t give you any action item, but asking them if your event was too long, too short, or just right does. Audit your survey questions and ask yourself: Why do we need to know this?
Another tip: Make sure to send the survey to your guests within 24 hours after your event ends. After this time, attendees are more likely to forget details — even for the most mind-blowing events.
There are several other dos and don’ts for post-event surveys, and we recommend you take a look at those as well.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
Six months ago, I wrote to you about a new data relationship (you might remember me as Relationship Rookie), and I’m happy to report things are still going well! Thank you for your advice on collecting pre-event data.
Now, we’re in the home stretch for the same event, and I’m hoping you can help again. What information should we gather while on-site at the event?
Sincerely, Soon-to-be Relationship Rockstar
Collecting on-site event data can help inform prospect and customer conversations, and it can influence the success of future events. That’s why it’s so important to have a comprehensive list of data points to collect during the event, and we’re happy to share ours.
Before we do, a quick reminder: Just like you synced pre-event data to your CRM system, make sure you are doing the same with any on-site attendee behavioral data. All of this information will continue helping your sales team send the right content and communications to your prospects and customers.
We’re glad to hear everything is still going strong in your relationship with event data. Here’s to bringing it to the next level!
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
I’m in a brand-new relationship with data, and I really want it to work. I’m about to start planning the first event for my company since beginning this relationship. I want to start things off on the right foot and make sure I’m thorough when collecting pre-event data. Luckily, everything on our registration form will sync to our CRM system, but what should I include in that form?
Sincerely, Relationship Rookie
Being thorough with your pre-event data helps set a solid foundation for a long-lasting and gratifying relationship. Collecting all the right data can greatly influence your event programs’ success.
Don’t limit yourself to what’s on the registration form. Collect anything that could inform a more customized experience for your guests. This checklist will help you identify what to collect on the form and otherwise:
Kudos to you for making sure your pre-event data will sync to your CRM system. Your sales team will be thrilled to access all this incredible data before having conversations with their prospects and customers.
Best wishes on your new relationship!
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
My fear of commitment is becoming a big problem. It’s really difficult for me to commit to using event data, even though my job depends on it. I’m pretty sure it stems from the fact that I’m not a math person (honestly, name someone who went into event marketing because he or she rocked calculus), but it’s time to figure this out. How can I overcome my fear of commitment to event data?
Sincerely, Dataphobic
A fear of commitment is one of the biggest reasons why relationships with data suffer. What’s more, the root cause is often because data can be intimidating if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. You’re putting yourself out there to conquer this, and that’s the first step. Understanding what data to collect is a good second step. The fact is you’re most likely already capturing more data through events than you realize. If you’re collecting any of the following, you’re in a prime spot to take your event data to the next level:
Just having this data isn’t enough, though. Information about attendance, participation, and preferences can help your team engage more deeply with prospects and customers on a personalized level — but you have to use it. The best way to do this is by integrating your event data with other systems your teams use. For example, by integrating with your CRM system, your sales team can get instant access to all this event data, empowering them to have informed conversations with their prospects.
If you’re interested in learning more about event data integrations, we have a whole guide dedicated to this topic.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
The new era of event marketing is all about repeatable, scaled events (think field marketing programs, roadshows, sales dinners, in-store activations, and the like), and companies are already spending significantly on these kinds of events, according to SiriusDecisions.
One way today’s most successful event marketers scale their events is by scaling their data. They do this by integrating and sharing event data with other technologies used across their organization, thus empowering other teams using those systems — like sales using Salesforce and marketing using Marketo, Eloqua, or HubSpot — to customize prospect and customer interactions with that event data.
This helps continue the momentum from their events, frees up event marketers to do what they do best, leads to higher ROI and greater business impact, and can grow event marketing programs without adding more resources.
In other words, this is data at scale. Learn the ins and outs of data at scale by downloading this guide.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
The competition out there is fierce. As an event marketer, it’s a big challenge to get the attention away from our competitors and to us. There are so many companies with prettier interfaces and smarter functionality that are hosting events just like ours. What’s one way you’d recommend we up our game to host unforgettable events and differentiate ourselves from the competition?
Sincerely, No Game
Interface envy is a real thing, but instead of highlighting their strengths, focus on yours. Recognizing what differentiates you from the competition and being confident in that will help you rise above the competition.
To get you started on the right track, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. The single biggest differentiator between average and spectacular event marketing programs is something you already have: your event data.
Unfortunately, an event data strategy is often an afterthought for many event marketers, even though it’s more important than ever before. Tapping into this data means you can give your attendees more customization and value in their communications and event experiences, which can accelerate business results. The key to doing this most effectively is by sharing your event data across business systems so everyone in the organization can access and use it.
We recommend reading this guide on data at scale to explore this topic more in-depth and learn techniques to build an event data strategy.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
With all these in-person events transitioning to virtual, several teams at my company have been rushing into relationships with new virtual tools. They aren’t taking the time to really evaluate solutions, and I’m concerned all of this chaos will have a negative impact on our ability to understand and use event data. Am I right to be concerned? How can I get other teams to understand the severity of moving too fast?
Sincerely, Taking My Time
The fast shift to virtual events has left many organizations few options other than rushing to understand this landscape and master a new solution. Although things have to move quickly and with agility today, your concern is legitimate. Other event marketers who share your concern have reported data loss, delayed event follow-ups, and lack of event reporting. Without these, you’re risking huge opportunities to understand your attendees, drive action, and reach business goals.
Scaling your data with a connected marketing tech stack is the best way to help you understand which events are making the biggest impact. Whether your events are virtual, in-person, or hybrid, event data still needs to move fluidly across systems. Plus, this lets you keep today’s virtual events aligned with past and future in-person events, so no data gets lost in the meantime.
The bottom line: If your organization doesn’t take the time today to scale your event data in a connected way, it will be harder to prove the impact your events have on the business.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
Event marketing has changed so much lately with in-person events being postponed, canceled, or transformed to virtual. I’m not comfortable with change, so this has been really hard. I miss the in-person, face-to-face interactions, and I’m constantly worried about what the future of event marketing holds. What advice do you have for me to better deal with these changes?
Sincerely, Worried
Change is hard. Many people have the same difficulties with it as you do, so know that you’re not alone. Yes, things are uncertain right now, especially when it comes to the future of event marketing. But the fundamentals of event marketing haven’t changed, so we can take comfort knowing that.
Event marketing goals — generating leads, building brand awareness, and more — are still relevant. Event marketers are still looking to create engaging experiences. And of course, event data still matters. During times like this, we find that focusing on these constants curbs some anxiety and keeps our eyes on the end goal.
And to get to that end goal, you need to keep event data top of mind. Unfortunately, many event marketers are so distracted in the scramble to figure out virtual events to the point that they are breezing over the details that mattered so much to them in the past.
So while you look for a platform that can manage your webinars and other virtual events, make sure it can connect with your event marketing platform. The visibility into all of this connected data will help your team continue building relationships and accelerating business results.
Get inspired by how event data at scale can drive results for your live, virtual, and hybrid event programs. Read more about this.
