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Case Study: Event Activations with Universal Lead Capture

Case Study: Event Activations with Universal Lead Capture

In this case study, we discuss some common pitfalls in event preparation, participation and execution. We’ll also take a look at how Event Activations with Universal Lead Capture can add layers of protection to these types of investments, and increase ROI at any virtual, live or hybrid event such as a webinar or trade show.

It’s important to do some research on the event organizer before the event. Do you have a history with them? Have they delivered consistently? What do other participants have to say about their experience with this show organizer as show sponsors or exhibitors?

What if the organizer has a great sales team but delivers a poor marketing or event management experience?

We’ve all been in a conversation with a salesperson who promises the moon and stars to get us to sign on the dotted line… And many have signed-up based on expectations implied from a conversation with sales. Unfortunately, the sales team isn’t responsible for delivering goods and services… Marketing and event management are however, and there can be a great divide between the pitch and the delivery!

Document Your Expectations Prior to Paying

Documenting your expectations from verbal agreements at the beginning of the process can be difficult, especially if you’re in a hurry to meet submission, material, or payment deadlines. Remember, if you don’t get it in writing, then you can’t enforce expectations or seek reparations.

In this case study, conversational expectations were:

  • The webinar would have a maximum of 4 sponsors.
  • This would be a single-day webinar event.
  • The expected turnout for this event would be 400-600 live attendees.

We paid top dollar to participate, with those expectations. In fact, the organizer forced another year of paid participation in their online directory (which netted us zero leads during the previous 18 months) in order to be eligible to participate as a sponsor in this webinar, and we agreed to the terms so we could participate in this opportunity to demonstrate our solutions to our ICPs for 8 minutes.

In preparation, we:

  • Produced a 3 minute video demonstrating the benefits of our platform and solutions, plus interview Q&A to showcase the solutions that would benefit our ICPs the most.
  • Developed marketing strategies, multi-channel campaigns, follow-up campaigns & workflows.
  • Incentivized event participation with $350 in gift card rewards.
  • Established business development processes for post-event follow-up.
  • Held meetings with the event organizer, event host, and sales representatives, as well as multiple internal planning meetings.

Delivery, however, wasn’t quite as expected. What we actually received was:

  • An event overpacked with 10 sponsors
  • A two-day webinar series
  • A last place position on day one
  • 192 live attendees on day one

The webinar organizer was raking in money from 10 sponsors, so why stop at 4? Unfortunately, from a sponsorship perspective, too many conversations just diluted all our messages and undermined the value of participating.

As one of the first interested sponsors who prepaid and submitted materials by deadline, surprised us by asking, “which day” we wanted to participate in after we had already established, and paid for, a particular date. It was like they were hinting that they wanted to push us to day 2, which they never mentioned from the beginning… So we stuck to our guns and chose day 1, and they placed us last in line for day 1. 

At this point, we were committed to an event. We had seen no email promotions go out from the organizer, and decided to take success or failure into our own hands…

Ensuring success despite under-delivery

Prior to important events, good team members will be at high alert and hoping for the best. But what if the event organizer under-delivers on expectations?

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

  • Involve partners to help boost campaign reach and share costs.
  • Market the event as if you are the only voice promoting the event. Success is your responsibility, not the event organizer’s, even if they are disorganized or fail to meet your expectations.
  • Employ solutions that give you control and flexibility in case the worst case scenario becomes a reality.

Pre-event marketing from the webinar organizer was not strong. 

The organizer promoted the event in their newsletter a week before the event to 27,149 recipients.

They sent a dedicated email promotion out four days later to 41,772 recipients.

They sent the same dedicated promo to an additional batch of 14,113 recipients 2 days after the first.

As a single sponsor, Lead liaison sent email and social media promos to over 80,000 recipients and drove just over 1,500 page visits to the organizer’s webinar registration page. We partnered with two virtual event platform leaders, providing them with email, social media and graphical assets to further boost messaging and share costs as well as brand exposure.

How many people registered? 306

How many attended? 192 live attendees

Attendee demographics – what type of attendees? 

55% Corporate Marketer / Event Professionals (our ICP)

29% Industry Supplier (partnership opportunities)

16% Other

Distinguishing your experience from the competition:

Realizing we were up against 4 competitor sponsors late in the game didn’t really phase us, because we knew our solutions would speak for themselves, and we had a secret weapon none of the others had: live event activations with universal lead capture.

We were going to present our solutions, then let attendees participate in our experiences, saturate them with our brand and messaging, entice them with instant gift card rewards, and capture them with universal lead capture – before they could finish hyperventilating from all the fun they were having.

Lead liaison’s event activations increase engagement

On average, marketing and event professionals see a 35% increase in engagement in the form of booth visits, virtual experience visits, and campaign conversions.

How we distinguished Lead liaison from the competition:

  • Promoted opportunity to win up to $200 in gift card rewards at the end of the event to encourage people to stick around for our presentation
  • Invited live participation from all attendees by offering a game they could play.
  • Invited the host to play live while participants watched.
  • Offered instant e-gift card rewards to the leaderboard top 3 winners.

Yes, we were last in line to present that day, but the innate desire inside people to win kept the crowd around to discover what Lead liaison was all about.

Lead liaison’s event games and rewards drove the participants into an instantly immersive experience. As the last of 4 sponsors of an event with 192 live attendees, analytics reported 135 game plays. At the end of the experience, 82 unique leads submitted contact information to learn more about Lead liaison Games, Gift Card Rewards and Universal Lead Capture.

That’s nearly 43% of all attendees present and 61% of all who played our branded game experience.

Lead liaison’s Universal Lead Capture retrieved the leads and delivered them immediately into our CRM.

Before anyone on the webinar clicked the “Leave” button, our lead management solutions were busy scoring and assigning our new leads, adding them to customized, well thought out follow-up workflows. Prospects were getting personalized emails from our Business Development Director along with information that they requested to help them in the decision making process.

Unfortunately, because of a system glitch, the organizer’s lead capture solution failed to collect any leads for the other sponsors. In an effort to recover vital lead data for the other sponsors, the organizer was forced to send out another email communication asking event participants to respond to a survey to indicate which sponsors they were interested in receiving information from.

This process cost 2 additional days, and while 4 other sponsors were relying on the organizer to send them their lead data, we were deep in conversation with our new leads.

Lead liaison Universal Lead Capture gave us the data we wanted, when we wanted it, and the first mover advantage.

Days later, we received an additional 44 leads from the organizer’s follow-up survey (about half compared to our gamified lead capture experience) from the webinar inquiry, which we were able to compare with our own lead capture list and follow up with immediately.

Follow up with incentives and offers

In addition to personalized email and telephone outreach, follow up days ahead of the competition.

We earned the right to land participants’ inboxes by announcing the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners, offering free downloadable resources, and opportunities to get started with an exclusive discount on our solutions.

What sort of ROI would we have seen if we had trusted the show organizer with promotions & leads?

Ask the other sponsors…

Important Takeaways

NEVER:

Trust your event data with someone else.

Wait days for your precious lead data.

Miss an opportunity to follow up – FIRST!

Pay per-user fees for lead capture.

Lead liaison promises to save you from all this, plus:

The ability to OWN the first-mover advantage at every event.

Drive significantly more traffic to your booth, presentation, or digital experience.

Provide you an ALL-IN-ONE SOLUTION to run your events.

Empower your entire team with Universal Lead Capture that works anywhere – any time – all the time.

 

For information about Lead liaison for your next event or marketing campaign, or to get started with Lead liaison: CLICK HERE.


Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

To see how Lead liaison’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!

Determining ROI on events: Why are you operating blind?

Determining ROI on events: Why are you operating blind?

One of the biggest challenges event managers seem to have is determining the return on investment for the events they participate in. The reason for that is because they are consistently lacking one piece of crucial information. In fact, it is a piece of information that is readily available to them if they would just ask this simple question of their CEO, CFO, CMO, or owner of the company. It’s a magical question that opens up all sorts of possibilities and releases your creative energy once you have the answer. It causes all aspects of your business, and the company’s short and long-term goals to become crystal clear. So, what is this question?

 

What is the value of a new customer or client to the company? 

I am continually amazed at how many event managers from both small to medium-sized businesses, all the way up to fortune 100 companies have no idea what the value of one new customer is to their company. Now, one of the most common reasons I have discovered for this lack of information on the part of event managers is that no one ever told them the importance of the question, you can’t ask a question you don’t know you should ask.

A lot of companies view events as just another line item on their overall marketing budget, and as long as marketing is producing results, then hi-five! But, that doesn’t mean event managers and their teams don’t benefit from knowing what a customer or client is actually worth to the company. Just as the Sales team needs to know what the value of one new customer is in order to determine salaries, commissions, and bonuses, the event team needs to know this information if they want to put together an effective strategy, and/or evaluate new technologies and tools that can help them achieve their goals.

In so many cases, event teams are left to rely on the show organizer to provide them with their leads, and then it’s up to them to try and qualify them or send them onto sales to qualify and pursue. This makes it even more difficult to determine whether what you are doing at these shows is effective. But, when you know exactly what a new customer is worth, you then begin to look at your budgets differently and can make a case to those within the company who have the final say on approving your budget that investing in a more effective lead capture system will be worth it because you can justify the return on investment. Imagine no longer needing to rely on the show organizer to provide you with a lead list that is also being distributed to your competitors as well. But, because you know the value of a new customer, your ability to move your events team forward with an effective strategy for growing the company will give you the upper hand. 

As live events come back, and with the increased implementation of hybrid events, knowing exactly what you’re aiming at will make all the difference in the world when it comes to planning which events will be the most profitable for you, and creating a strategy to CRUSH IT at those events. 

We sincerely hope that this will inspire you to dig a little deeper into what each new customer actually means to your company, rather large or small, and will help you become more empowered to make impactful decisions for your team and the company as a whole.

For information about Lead liaison for your next event or marketing campaign, or to get started with Lead liaison: CLICK HERE.


Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

To see how Lead liaison’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!

tracking event ROI

How to Evaluate Event ROI from Your Trade Show

How can you execute an event, spend the money, and not know what you got out of it? Let’s say you are the CEO, and someone comes to you asking for a budget for an event. You’ll likely want to know your previous event ROI so that you can make the right decision. 

Did you know that 23% of marketers can track event ROI (source)? That means 77% of marketers cannot. Yikes.

To download this infographic, click here.

Top Challenges for Tracking Event ROI

  1. Calculating Cost is Difficult – With expenses coming from every direction, it’s hard to keep up with it all. You’ve got to consider the cost of your booth space, travel and expenses of the team, sponsorships, and any other miscellaneous costs. 
  2. Deals Don’t Happen on the Show Floor – To calculate the ROI, you need to know the return you got. That’s from the deal itself. The average sales cycle in business is 102 days (source). It might be a while before you can give an accurate event ROI.
  3. Too Busy to do the Math – There is a lot to do immediately following an event; the first of which being executing the necessary follow-up. 
  4. Nobody Asks! – There is so much work leading up to an event, during an event, and after an event, that the biggest considerations are easily overlooked. 

Popular Ways to Measure Return

Here are some popular ways to measure return, in order from most helpful to least helpful. 

  • Revenue
  • # Meetings Set
  • Engagement
  • Forecasted Revenue
  • # Opportunities

After calculating success, consider these important numbers:

  • Cost of event
  • Cost per lead
  • Cost per opportunity

Software Systems Help Calculate Event ROI

Software systems help connect the dots between your campaign efforts and your end result. For example, in Salesforce.com you have a lead that starts as a contact, then onto an opportunity, then to closed/won. When that deal closes, for $10k for example, you should be able to tie that revenue back to the campaign (and more importantly, the cost of the campaign). Where did that lead come from? How did they find out about you? Having software in place that either tracks all information within one system, or having a few that integrate (communicate) with one another, can help you attribute those deals and make better decisions for your organization going forward.

Hard Event ROI vs Soft Event ROI

Don’t forget to consider both the hard ROI and the soft ROI. 

Hard ROI is more about the direct benefits to your company. This can include how many leads you were able to collect, or how many deals you were able to close. The concept of hard ROI is more about financials.

But, there’s also a Soft ROI that you shouldn’t overlook. Indirect benefits like facetime with customers, increasing awareness of your brand, and any success you had networking should all count for something when evaluating the success of an event. Just because you didn’t close a deal, it doesn’t mean that you weren’t able to familiarize the industry with your product or solution. The more they see you and hear about you, the more likely it is that they will come to you when their need arises.  

In Conclusion

Calculating event ROI can be tricky, but is an essential part of the event process. The process of calculating your event ROI will be specific to your business and your goals. There is no magic equation. What might be helpful, though, is setting yourself up to be able to easily track as much of this data as possible so that answering the question, “What was our event ROI?” is achievable. 

Choose a software solution that helps you build event campaigns, captures exactly the data you need onsite, supports immediate follow-up, and tracks ROI. Lead Liaison’s event lead management solution, GoExhibit!™, does all of this. To learn more, click here

How to Run a Webinar: Syndicate Webinar Content

How to Run a Webinar

This is the ninth and final installment in the series How to Run a Webinar.

In our most recent post in this series, we talked about pre-webinar bonding & follow-up. The last step of the process is to syndicate your content.

Syndicate Webinar Content

You’ve invested a ton of time planning and preparing for your event. Make sure you get the most out of your investment by syndicating your content. Syndication means taking the content and reformatting it to fit other mediums or marketing channels. For example, take your webinar recording and:

  • Have the video transcribed. We suggest using Upwork to hire someone to transcribe your video. It’s super affordable and worth the money!
  • Format the transcription into a white paper. Place the white paper on your website as Trackable Content in your marketing automation system and gate the content.
  • Put your video on an internet video hosting and analytics company like Wistia, embed it in your website, and gate the video.
  • Break down the white paper into smaller blog posts. Schedule the blog posts using your CMS.
  • Include the video, whitepaper, and any other related tools or documents in a downloadable “kit”, which is a fantastic lead generation strategy. Prospects are more inclined to give you their email address in exchange for lots of value.
  • Put the webinar recording in a “Resources” section on your website.

What to Expect

Attendance depends on the factors described in the beginning of this document. About 40-60% of registrants will show up for live viewings, but you can expect more registrants to trickle in and watch on demand over the next few days following your webinar.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series. If you’ve got an idea for a series, we’d love to hear it! Comment below.

Do you want your own personal copy of the entire guide? Download the full white paper here.

Interested in a demonstration of our robust marketing automation tool?

 

How to Run a Webinar: Pre-Webinar Bonding & Follow-Up

How to Run a Webinar

This is the eight installment in the series How to Run a Webinar.

In our last post in this series, we talked about building a compelling landing page and “Thank You” page. The next step is to get comfortable with pre-webinar bonding and follow-up.

Pre Webinar Bonding

If possible, create further short pieces of content that cover any possible objections and start building more trust with registrants. This can be drip fed via email before the webinar. This content could be short videos or articles or just a nice webinar cheat sheet to download and print off before the webinar. Your marketing automation software can help you build a simple drip track for new registrants prepping them for the event.

Follow Up

Make sure to follow up with attendees and no shows once the event is over. We suggest doing so three (3) days after the event. In your follow up, include a video recording of the webinar. Put it into an email, but only include an image of the video. When clicked, the recipient should be taken to a landing page, separate from your registration page, where they can play the video. Separating your follow up page from your registration page will help you isolate statistics and get better tracking from your marketing automation system. This is especially handy for people that couldn’t attend the event as they can watch the video later at their convenience.

In the next, and final, installment of How to Run a Webinar we’ll talk about syndicating your content.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the entire guide? Download the full white paper here.

Interested in a demonstration of our robust marketing automation tool?

 

How to Run a Webinar: Building a Compelling Landing Page and Thank You Page

How to Run a Webinar

This is the seventh installment in the series How to Run a Webinar.

In our last post in this series, we talked about Promoting your webinar. The next step is to build a compelling landing page and “Thank You” page!

Build a Compelling Landing Page

Your marketing automation system should have some great tools in place to help you build a landing page and web form that’s styled and customized to fit the look and feel of your brand. Here are a few ways you can make a compelling landing page:

  • Keep your communication succinct and list out the three benefits to joining the webinar (what you’ll learn).
  • If the presenters are well known, consider putting a picture of the presenter on the page to personalize the event.
  • If you’re offering an incentive, make it clear to the user what that incentive is.
  • Keep the focus on the page, and converting the visitor. Don’t put other things like your website navigation menu or other links that could divert the user’s attention.

Build a Great “Thank You” Page

Similar to the landing page, you want the Thank You Page to be simple, with an easy way for the user to add the event to their calendar. Add a “add to calendar” button with instructions on how to add the event straight to their calendar. AddToCalendar has some neat tools to create buttons and links for this purpose. After the registration form is submitted, make sure to send a thank you email. All of this will increase your attendance rate.

In the next installment of How to Run a Webinar, we’ll talk about pre-webinar bonding.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the rest of this intuitive guide? Download the full white paper here.

Interested in a demonstration of our robust marketing automation tool?

 

How to Run a Webinar: Promote the Webinar

How to Run a Webinar

This is the sixth installment in the series How to Run a Webinar.

You’ve figured out how marketing automation can help you with the entire process. The next step is to promote your webinar!

Promote the Webinar

Don’t rely solely on emails as the gateway to webinar success! Your target database is just one of the ways you can get people to attend your webinar. Think out of the box, get help from companies in your network, and promote the event through other channels. Here are some suggestions to maximize promotion of your event:

  • Issue a Press Release at least two (2) weeks prior to the webinar. Make sure to include a link to your webinar registration landing page (more about that later!) in the Press Release. The Press Release will also give you a little SEO boost on the topic. Here are some tips from a 3rd party on how to write your press release. Here’s an example of a company doing a press release on their webinar.
  • Consider getting help from your partners to announce the webinar to their database and send prospects to the same registration page.
  • Don’t forget to invite your customers!
  • What about your partners. Don’t forget to actually invite them!
  • Hire a list broker who can send out email (through their resources) to drive contacts to the same registration page.
  • Post the webinar on social media. Your marketing automation system should offer a way to schedule posts. Spread out your posts leading up to the event.
  • Create a handful of blog posts on the topic leading up to the event.

In the next installment of How to Run a Webinar, we’ll talk about creating a landing page and “Thank You” page.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the rest of this intuitive guide? Download the full white paper here.

Interested in a demonstration of our robust marketing automation tool?

 

How to Run a Webinar: Have a Marketing Automation System in Place

How to Run a Webinar

This is the fifth installment in the series How to Run a Webinar.

You’ve defined your invitation and registration process. The next step is to consider using your marketing automation software to help you with the entire process.

A marketing automation system can help you automate your webinar and create a repeatable model to use for future webinars. Marketing automation is used to manage the Invite, Registration, and Follow Up Processes. It can also help:

  • Qualify prospects based on their participation in the event
  • Log their status (no show, registered, etc.) with the event to use for future targeting
  • Automatically create a Prospect in your database
  • Nurture Prospects that attend or do not show up for the event
  • Automatically sync leads into your CRM system, such as Salesforce.com
  • Track landing page conversion rates and email statistics
  • Keep everything in one place (folders)
  • Measure ROI of the webinar, including cost per lead

In the next installment of How to Run a Webinar, we’ll talk about how to promote your webinar.

Can’t wait to get your hands on the rest of this intuitive guide? Download the full white paper here.

Interested in a demonstration of our robust marketing automation tool?

 

Buzzwords in Marketing Automation: PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

pay-per-clickPPC (Pay-Per-Click): its meaning and how it relates to marketing automation. A part of the series Buzzwords in Marketing Automation.

Are you ready to build a marketing beast with PPC ads and marketing automation? If you think that pay-per-click (PPC) ads and marketing automation are two separate animals, you aren’t alone. Many marketers run their PPC ads and marketing automation campaigns separately, which is why they get subpar results. If you combine the two, you can create a marketing beast that not only lets you deliver qualified leads to your sales team but also allows you to maximize your ROI.

First, let’s take a closer look at PPC ads, and then, let’s go over how you can add marketing automation into the mix.

An Overview of PPC Marketing

PPC ads are ads that you pay for every time someone clicks on them. While several companies offer PPC ad opportunities, AdWords is the most popular. If you use this platform, you create an ad and then place it on the Google Search or Display Network. The ad is triggered when someone types in a keyword or visits a site that that you’re targeting. Then, if the person clicks on your ad, he or she goes to your website.

AdWords and other PPC networks have some tracking methods, but they are pretty weak. Because of that, it’s easy to get in over your head with PPC ads.

At least it was before marketing automation came to the rescue.

Marketing Automation – The Key to Running a Successful PPC Campaign

Marketing automation can do everything that AdWords and other PPC networks can’t. It can track your visitor from the moment he or she reaches your website. Then, the automation software creates a digital profile of each lead that visits your site. This allows the software to know what to do with each visitor. For example, one visitor might be ready to receive a call from a sales representative while another person might be ready to get an email about an exciting new product that you have.

This also provides a way for you to track your ROI for in a campaign. You can find out, without fail, how much your campaign is really costing you. You can also find out what your visitors expect when why come to your site after clicking on an ad.

If you’re using a PPC network on its own, you’re missing out. Don’t make the mistake of going solo. Pair your PPC campaign with marketing automation software so you can get the most out of PPC ads.

 

Bridging the Gap Between Content and ROI with Marketing Automation

Bridging the Gap Between Content and ROI with Marketing AutomationIt’s well known in the world of marketing that content provides the fuel necessary for successful marketing. That is no less true with marketing automation. Ultimately, you cannot expect a positive ROI, if you do not have a solid content strategy. Even the best marketing automation program in the world cannot resolve a lack of quality content. Determine ROI with marketing automation.

Despite the importance of content, many businesses continue to struggle with implementing quality content for their marketing automation needs, with their ROIs suffering as a result. Below, we go through several critical steps you can take to bridge the gap between your content and your return on investment.

1. Analyze your Content Plans

Quality content does not develop on its own and it does not happen by accident. In order to feed your marketing automation program quality content, you must first stop and analyze your content plans as well as what it is that your target audience actually wants to see. Of particular importance in terms of marketing automation, is mapping the customer journey and ensuring that your content plan aligns with that journey.

2. Think More in the Long Term than the Short Term

Far too often, many marketers focus more on the short term than the long term when it comes to their content development goals. In order to ensure you are making the most of content within the context of marketing automation, you need to pay attention to any gaps that might exist in the various stages of the buyer journey and ensure you create highly targeted content to address those gaps. This means you must stop thinking in the short term and think in the long term.

3. Develop a Content Development Calendar

Do you create content as it is needed or do you have content on reserve based on your objectives? The problem that many business owners encounter is that they create content only when they need it. In order to succeed with your marketing automation strategy, you need to have a solid plan in place. Creating a 12-month content plan can help you to do that.

4. Evaluate, Evaluate, Evaluate

Marketing automation can help to automate many of the processes related to your marketing campaign, but it cannot do everything for you. The same is also true for your content plan. You must take the time to analyze how you are utilizing your marketing automation system and how well your content is working for you. Make a commitment to evaluating your current systems at least once per quarter.

5. Make Improvements

Analyzing only works if you take the information from your evaluations and put it to work for you. After evaluating the data generated by your marketing automation system, determine what is working, what is not working and make changes to generate necessary improvements to boost your ROI.

Want a copy of our Marketing Content Map (MCM) document? Contact us with a brief note requesting the MCM and we’ll send it to you.

Marketing automation can drive a higher ROI. By implementing the steps listed above, you can bridge the gap between your content and your ROI. Learn more about how you can benefit from marketing automation today.