Marketers have become obsessed with measuring every element of marketing and knowing all they can about their buyers. For example, marketers track prospects as they engage on the company website and interact with online advertising. They capture new leads through a variety of online channels and use email to nurture these leads through the buying cycle, as they push the performance of their marketing automation platforms, such as Oracle|Eloqua and Marketo.
But despite the fact that companies are spending over one-quarter of their budgets on events – they have no idea how to measure the value and have little insight into what’s really going on with their prospects and customers. Marketers simply aren’t treating events like every other marketing activity.
The marketing chasm.
In-person events (conferences, tradeshows, roadshows, seminars) offer rich opportunities for companies to get closer to their prospects and customers. Throughout the lifecycle of an event, prospects and customers take all sorts of actions that could result in a rich set of data for marketers to harness. From the profile data attendees submit during the registration process to the actions they take at the event itself, including the sessions they attend, the people they meet with, their social engagements inside and outside the event, the exhibits they visit, and much more, events can be a hotbed of valuable insight.
Unfortunately, the data from events tends to fall into a chasm. Marketers lose sight of prospects and customers and fail to leverage the rich data from events into their overall cross-channel marketing strategies.
The diligent tracking marketers are known for in their online worlds is too often lost when it comes to events, which is significant considering this might be one time where you have the opportunity to meet face to face.
What can you do to cross the chasm?
The single best way to close the chasm and bring the power of event data to your marketing programs is to connect event management and marketing automation through a seamless integration. Doing so will bring two of your enterprise systems—events and marketing—together for data sharing, profile building, lead scoring and nurturing, sales follow-up and a more complete view of ROI.
Consider what this looks like during the event registration process. Starting with the profile information you already have in marketing automation you can have a clear picture, upfront, of your attendee types and during the registration process can use progressive profiling to enhance the profile even further. For example, if you know Jane Smith’s job title, the size of her company, and her mailing address, you can go beyond those basics when she registers for your event and present her with a series of questions that address her interests or ask her to provide additional demographic information. The data you collect during the registration process is then shared with your marketing automation platform to build a more complete profile of each attendee/prospect.
Throughout the entire event lifecycle there is a similar back and forth exchange of information made possible by the integration of marketing automation and events. Notably, event data can reveal the underlying interests of your prospects and customers. Continuing our example, as Jane attends sessions or meets with fellow participants in one-to-one meetings, her activities and the interests that drive her activities, can be captured and used to enhance her lead score and improve your sales follow up.
With event technology that tracks session attendance and ratings on those sessions, you can identify the topics your prospects are interested in. And when an individual’s interest aligns with the strengths of your products or services, your lead scoring models can help prioritize them for sales follow up.
By leveraging the knowledge you have about attendees in enterprise systems, using new technologies to engage attendees, and then tracking their behaviors and interests, events can be incorporated into larger corporate programs designed to propel buyers through the buying process.
Are your events still operating separately from the rest of your marketing channels? Are you ready to fill the chasm? We invite you to discover the Certain enterprise event management platform.
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