How to Rock the World of Events and Marketing Automation

Posted: 19 Sep 2016 06:00 AM PDT

Did you know that 82% of marketers cannot quantify the data that is collected from attendee interactions at their company events? That leaves only 18% of marketers that are actually utilizing event data to its full potential. The good news is we can flip this equation by using event and marketing automation together. Doing so leads marketers to convert in-person event interactions into digital buying signals that seamlessly feed data into marketing automation to make real-time decisions on the best next steps in the buying journey, and simultaneously improve operational efficiencies. That’s powerful.

As marketing automation has evolved, it has significantly helped streamline event marketing processes. Event automation integrated with marketing automation now takes that a step further; empowering digital marketers to create fully-integrated, cross-channel campaigns that deliver targeted messaging and capture real-time attendee data to personalize the buyer’s journey. Below are ways that you can leverage marketing and event automation to ensure that your events are not only trend-setting from a technology perspective, but most importantly deliver outsized business results.

Don’t Work for Events, Make Events Work for You

Raise your hand if your marketing team has spent countless hours uploading Excel spreadsheets or you’ve walked around trying to extract important demo notes and get them manually entered into your marketing automation system. Now if your hand is currently in the air, you are working for events. What if we made events work for you. For example, you can record receiving a product demo as a “named” buying signal, and then set up a digital next step or trigger in marketing automation so that all event attendees who receive Product Demo A immediately get an invite to the corresponding thought leadership session later in the day.

Mapping content based on event behavior to establish event-specific nurture tracks enables field marketers and demand gen marketers to optimize events. By eliminating manual inefficiencies, your marketing team will have more time to connect dots for your prospects and customers, creating an excellent brand experience and driving a high value to the business.

Use Data to Your Advantage

Marketers run on data and it’s critically important, and transformative to use data to its fullest potential — which is why you should capture as much behavioral data as you possibly can from events. One way to do this is through mobile event apps which you can use to get a better understanding of your attendees while delivering a great experience. According to Marketing Charts, “88% of event attendees say access to meeting or event schedules in an event app is important.” By allowing attendees to have mobile access, marketers can start to collect data to see which sessions prospects attended, what they thought and where they were engaged, and then leverage that data for targeted nurturing and relationship building. The customer is always right (or in this case, the attendee!), so use event apps to create a more enjoyable and successful event.

Events serve many roles. They increase brand awareness, drive demand, help you market products, accelerate pipeline, drive revenue and strengthen your relationships with customers, right? In fact, B2B marketers rate in-person events as the #1 most effective marketing strategy. With marketing and event automation being utilized throughout the event cycle, marketers see a huge increase in qualified leads accompanied by a better and smarter nurturing experience. For example, if a prospect exits Session X on predictive scoring, you can immediately email the accompanying product video that kicks off a nurture track on predictive scoring that runs through and after the event. This enables marketers to maintain a high touch and targeted approach with prospects.

Take an Cross Channel Approach to Promoting Your Events

Event and marketing automation streamline launching event campaigns, which makes it easier for marketers to not only increase qualified attendees at events, but also to drive higher revenue. Additionally, leveraging social media as part of your overall event marketing strategy is important to increasing brand awareness and driving event success.

According to Hootsuite, “The great thing about social media is that the size of your event doesn’t dictate the level of success you can achieve by incorporating social. Whether you’re organizing a networking event with a hundred industry professionals or a music festival with thousands of attendees, social media can help you get the word out and connect with your audience.” To achieve your goals, you should have an event marketing strategy planned for before, during, and after the event. Because of social media’s ability to reach vast audiences and maintain bonds with them through pictures, posts, and videos, marketers can easily reach out to potential leads before, during, and after events with more success. It’s a tool that, when used correctly, can be very valuable to a successful campaign — so use it!

Moving from the old ways of event management to the new world of marketing and event automation integration enables marketers to better collect and utilize behavioral data in more powerful ways. At the end of the day, events remain at the center of a leading B2B marketing strategy. From field events, to product roadshows to conferences, events are powering the relationships your business is built on and ultimately achieving your mission of delivering the best customer experience.

Learn more about how events are being transformed and the benefits of taking a data-driven approach to event marketing in this infographic.