Marketing events have come a long way from the “traditional” and perhaps stale conferences and trade shows that used to dominate the scene. Attendees now expect more – they expect a valuable experience.
The last three years have been an evolution in human interaction, resulting in a steep learning curve to understand HOW and WHY buyers engage with brands. This evolution has led to a New Era of Event Marketing. An era where marketers are being faced with more advanced challenges, communicating and engaging with their target audiences, and increased expectations from key stakeholders to deliver results. Just showing up is no longer acceptable to buyers, they want authentic interactions and real tangible value in exchange for their time.
There are five key trends shaping the new era of event marketing;
In the initial post of our five-part series, we’ll dive deeper into the first “New Era Trend”: An emphasis on events that cultivate authentic experiences and leave a lasting impression.
The experience starts before the event even begins. The time leading up to the event is an opportunity to engage attendees, build excitement, and set expectations. To create an authentic and engaging pre-event experience, you need to think bigger than the old way of extending an invitation and driving registration. There are two key ways to elevate the pre-event process; segment your invite list for a personalized strategy and create a compelling registration page.
Segment Your Invites to Create Personalized Invites by Audience
It is no longer effective to send a blanket invite to your entire list of desired attendees. There is now an additional step before the invites are developed, this step is segmentation. Segmenting your contact list by department, seniority, and location is a must. This analysis will allow you to build a strategic approach for outreach that includes the proper level of thought and relevancy.
One simple way to do this is to create high-touch and low-touch invite tracks. This involves two buckets of outreach plans. One bucket includes the invited executives and economic buyers (high-touch), and the second bucket is everyone else (low-touch). The low-touch outreach is frequently facilitated by a marketing automation platform with templated personalization within the body of the email. The high-touch outreach is highly curated and creative, including items like direct mail, a personalized invite from your executive team, and a strategy with sales to ensure alignment.
Being intentional about how you engage your various audiences makes your invite genuine, and compelling, and increases the interest in attending your event.
Create a Compelling Registration Page
Think about the registration page as a billboard for your event, it has to be captivating.
At a minimum, a registration page should include a description of the event, information about the location and date, a list of speakers, and a call to action, but there are ways to elevate this experience to set your event apart and increase visit-to-registration conversion rates. Here are a few unique ideas of how to really WOW your invitees:
Pro tip: Send executive registrants a welcome gift that shows appreciation for their registration and excitement for their attendance. This helps ensure that your executive guests not only register but also attend.
As soon as your attendees arrive, they should feel excited and intrigued by your brand. In order for this to happen, all five of their senses need to be captivated by the design elements, amenities, and activations incorporated into your event. To create a truly genuine experience, every aspect of your event must be carefully curated, from the entrance/check-in and marketing activations to networking opportunities and break-out sessions, all the way down to the nitty gritty details; everything must be part of an intentional and well thought out strategy.
Entrance/Registration Matter
Many teams overlook the importance of the registration area and view it as a way to cut costs. This is dangerous because the entrance and check-in area is where attendees will form their first impression of your event, so it is essential to make it a positive and memorable one. Everything from technology used, quantity and quality of staff, branding moments, and creative activations for the lobby area matter. If these items are not included, the check-in process for your event could be clunky and leave a bad taste in the mouth of your attendees from the jump.
Harness Production Power
Production quality brings your show to life and, if incorporated correctly, will immensely impact the impression left on your guests.
When thinking about production, it is important to consider wow-factor scenic, video, sound, lighting, and visual appeal. First, outline the format of the different types of sessions on the event agenda. Then, develop a production strategy that best suits each. For example, a keynote should have vastly different production elements than a workshop or breakout session. Lighting, sound, and staging that are coordinated with each session’s structure will make your content more engaging and increase the amount your audience retains of the information.
Pro Tip: Don’t overlook the windows of time in between sessions when developing your production schedule. Taking a strategic approach to the transition times and scheduling time for organic networking will make a big difference.
Networking is Not Optional
The consumer’s need for authentic interaction has made providing networking opportunities a necessity in your event’s schedule. In addition to the value your main sessions provide, your attendees likely have a small agenda of their own. Oftentimes a key objective of attending an event is to collaborate with like-minded peers or to connect with someone who is professionally admired. Providing opportunities for mixing and mingling allows attendees to seek out the connections they crave. A few ideas to incorporate networking in your event are; hands-on activities, social breakfasts, and the tried and true, happy hours. Don’t forget to leave time for organic interactions to take place; creating a space for socializing will pay dividends.
Thought-Provoking Content or Bust
What will your attendees learn at your event that they wouldn’t know otherwise? This is an important question to answer as you build the content arc for your event. Delivering a thought-provoking content strategy must include a combination of keynote speakers, customer panels, open forum discussions, product demos, and workshop sessions.
Once you have a compelling and diverse agenda, give your attendees the keys. Allow them to take their own path through your event - attending only what they want to. When your guests are in control of what sessions they join, they are only engaging with content that resonates with their interests and needs. This increases their enjoyment and excitement about the time spent with your brand.
Add Some Razzle Dazzle
No detail is too small. Every step your attendees take during the duration of your event is an opportunity to reinforce your brand and make it more memorable (AND shareable!) for your attendees. Creative branding elements can help form a cohesive experience.
Think big and small! What are the big WOW moments and what are the small details that will make an impact? A few show-stopping ideas are; an insta-worthy photo wall, a dog petting yard with local rescue pups, or a large community paint-by-numbers mural. When thinking through the small details a few ideas are; branded ice cubes, branded tech charging stations, and branded coffee sleeves. The sky's the limit with these ideas but, incorporating a few into your event will go a long way with the satisfaction and fun your guests have.
The event is over…. What now? At this point, many companies take a deep breath and don’t allocate enough time to defining a strategy past the event itself. The post-event workflow is just as important as the event itself because it is the process that converts the attendee’s excitement into pipeline for the sales team. This is an opportunity to continue the experience, thank attendees for participating, and move them along the sales pipeline.
The first step in creating effective follow-up is to define who will be responsible for executing it. Depending on the size of your organization, this could be handled by sales, marketing, SDRs, or a combination of them all. The key is to ensure that all outreach is timely and personalized.
Similar to the efforts to drive registration, a simple way to organize a follow-up strategy is to divide the attendees into two buckets; high-touch and low-touch.
Depending on the size of the organization, low-touch follow-up can be handled by SDRs or triggered to run automatically via a marketing automation platform. This messaging should be a 3-5 touch sequence, include basic personalization, and contain content generated from the event. The high-touch audience requires a more strategic and coordinated effort. Typically this strategy is led by the sales team because these contacts are their top priority. This outreach is highly customized and oftentimes includes a combination of marketing collateral, executive air cover, and a clear and specific call to action.
Creating an authentic event experience that immerses your attendees from start to finish is one of the keys to making your brand unforgettable. By adopting a more strategic approach to driving registration, thinking through all details of the event in a pragmatic and creative way, and activating a follow-up strategy, you guarantee your attendees don’t merely attend your event, they truly experience your brand.
At Thinkstream, we're passionate about helping our clients set the standard in the industry for event marketing. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you create an immersive experience that will leave your attendees talking for months to come. But, elevating your event execution is only part of it…
Throughout our five-part series, The New Era of Event Marketing, we'll dive deeper into the other trends that have emerged in the post-pandemic climate. The next trend we will divulge is, how the motive behind events has changed. It is no longer solely about making money. It has become much more nuanced than that.
Stay tuned!
