Transcript
Almost everything in this world is automated these days. Yet, so few event marketers are automating their marketing processes. Today, Nicola Rossetti from etouches is calling in to talk about what event marketing automation can do for you and where to begin.
Hi, Nicola. Welcome in our studio.
Thank you. Welcome.
We're going to talk about event marketing automation. But what is it about?
So, event marketing automation is starting trading in the event industry. The idea is, often event planners were to send email blast using very basic tool, just setting up an email template and basically shooting the template to... everybody.
To everybody.
Marketing automation is one step ahead. The idea is to use a software not only to do segmentation, that's one thing, but to automate that process. So, instead of shooting one big email blast, you would design maybe two or three different email. And, given the profile of your attendees, of your prospects, you will have what we can call 'nurturing campaigns' that will be automatically sent to those profile, optimizing, so to speak, the lead conversion. So, everyone will receive
a different message as soon as they enter the database either as a new prospect or as a new attendee. You can run several different program through marketing automation tools.
But, that means that you will need to gather some profile information about your guest to then target
the campaign on.
Absolutely. But, the profile can be seen in different manners. For example, a profile can be determined given the acquisition channel. So, if someone came throughout a banner, that's an information, a full profile. If someone came from, I don't know, a pay-per-click like a Google AdWords, or if someone came from a web search, you can track what's the channel origin. What is the source of that lead, of that future attendee, and then, given where it comes from, apply a different scenario because one was really engage with the brand already, one just, you know, discover the brand. So, you can send different message. It's not necessarily only about getting more attendees because in some cases you get attendees and you expose those attendees to programs, to obsession, to some eCommerce feature, where you wanna sell them either, I don't know, sponsored dinners. You wanna sell them additional sessions that are high level.
So, again, it's not only necessarily about getting more attendees. It can be, in some case, if you buy lists, for example. Optimizing, for example, the no-show. So, making sure, for example, you don't have no-show at your event by having those automated program.
It's a lot of work in the first place but then, when the event process starts to roll out, you don't have time to send a lot of emails. And, this is being taken care of by, you know, the automation program. So you can really focus on fine tuning your event instead of spending a lot of time shooting blast email to everybody. And, thus, you can really improve your event marketing.
And, from your experience, with your clients, is the additional work, the investment in time and effort. Is it worth the results in lessen no-show and so on?
Yeah. Again, it depends. These programs are kind of heavy because you need to implement the software. And, there are several tools in the market. We're using, at etouches, we're using Silverpop. But, you can use MarketTool, Eloqua, HubSpot, that can seamlessly sometimes integrate with given software. For example, Silverpop and etouches are talking together, and, when you start to implement the software, it's time, it's effort, it's bandwidth. So, it doesn't work with all kinds of events. If you have very small events, might be not worth, you know, spending the time doing that. But, if you start to have either multiple events, or very large events, then it makes sense to start applying those techniques,to enhance your, not only your marketing, but your event.
But, you mentioned, in my opinion, something very crucial, and that's the fact that the software needs to work together.
Absolutely. That's the key aspect, because we're talking about marketing automation. So, marketing automation means that the software itself, the marketing automation software, excuse me, automates the campaign. But, you need to feed that software with profiles, with attendee lists. Then the software needs to be part of your global ecosystem, and it requires seamless integration between your event software and your marketing automation software, Like you would do for, for example, CRM, like, SalesForce. You often integrate, for example, etoucheswith SalesForce. It's exactly the same,
but not for the sales, but for the marketing.
Okay. That's interesting. But, if I, as an event organizer, want to start with it, where do I start? How do you start to implement that kind of process?
So, there are a couple of ways to do that. Either you have a big organization and your events is just one marketing component amongst other channels. Big corporations, as customers, they already have the marketing in place. They already have tools. Sometimes marketing automation, too. The other way is to look at vendors, event solution vendors like us, that already offer integration with the marketing automation products. So, it makes that very easy, because you don't have to go through the whole process of implementing the software by your own. You can really use what's the registration platform offers to you.
But, then again, you need to think about, "Okay, what will my profiles be, and how will I interact with the different profiles." So, that's your homework as an event organizer.
Absolutely. You have to remind what are the best options to either, I don't know, enhance your attendee volume, or to make sure that you have a better conversion rate, or you drop the no-show rate with those programs. And, you can have multiple goals but you have to determine your goals given your context, your type of events. But then, there are a lot of best practices now in the event industry that can really help you to determine what are those goals and how to achieve them. Again, the time will be spent in designing beforehand those programs, those emails, and those, each areas. But once it's done that just rolls out. And, it makes things very easy, because it truly automates. And, we're talking about a huge bandwidth that is now available to focus on, you know, what matters, delivering, you know, great experience and events, not in, you know, email blasts, when you're on the rush. It not only helps your marketing because it's more accurate, it's more relevant to your audience. But, it helps you, as an organizer, to determine what is working and what's not working. So, it's really valuable to implement
those techniques.
Okay.
It's kind of, you know, new. But, it's getting to the event industry because, of course, there's a lot of marketing spent in the event industry. It usually applies to eCommerce. So, it really started with eCommerce websites, applying those techniques. But, now it's slowly moving to the event industry, and a lot of, you know, large companies, trench organizers, PCO's, event organizer, event planner, are starting to look at those eMarketing solutions because they're very valuable for them.
Okay, Nicola. Thank you for sharing these ideas with us.
Sure, anytime. My pleasure.
And, you at home, thank you for watching our show. I hope to see you next time.
