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For professionals working remotely, communities are all the rage. They are trusted inner circles that help them grow, connect, interact and upskill. 

But what separates a thriving online community from the rest?

Events.

A variety of community events can play a huge role not only in engaging members but also in connecting professionals and building relationships.

To understand this from an insider’s perspective, we recently spoke to Asher Mathew, CEO & co-founder, Partnership Leaders. Asher runs a community that’s dedicated to providing a space for (yes, you guessed it) partnership professionals to come together, share and gain insights, upskill and grow.

Here are the four top takeaways from the conversation:

Have a game plan

For starters, you’ll need a marketing function to manage and run your community’s event needs. Once you have your marketing team in place, it helps to get the pulse of what your members are talking about or interested in learning. 

Here’s how Asher describes his event strategy for Partnership Leaders:

“We would take the top conversations that are happening inside of PL and would say, okay I think people would want to listen to about this and so we would just run a webinar or event on the topic.”

From a quarterly perspective, Partnership Leaders’ event programs are typically broken into:

• Month one: Do a event that is crowdsourced 
• Month two: Do another event that was crowdsourced
• Month three: we would do a much larger event and bring thought leaders from outside onto a virtual event to talk about the same two topics.

‍The best time to start running events is now

For those starting off with creating a community, is there a perfect time to consider hosting a webinar or virtual event? 

Asher suggests the sooner the better, simply because of the power that events hold in getting people together.

“When you run an event, you can connect people on a panel, and then there's another relationship that those people form, so events really help you promote people's brands”, says Asher.

Co-creation is the way to go

To truly run events that make a difference to your community members or promise value to prospective members, it pays to understand what they want. This is where it can be a great idea to, let’s say, involve your members while you’re conceptualizing your topics and sessions and get real-time inputs as you put your event together.

Asher highly recommends this approach for anyone looking to engage and grow their community with events. 

“Our upcoming conference, Catalyst, is being built with its attendees - so the 150 or so people that have bought tickets already are participating in building the content for the conference! it's just a very different way of building something and making sure that you ensure value because the people are on the journey with you.”

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Measure event success from different angles

Any event’s success is tied to its goals. For communities, events are run to engage and nurture existing members as well as to acquire new ones. When we asked Asher how he measures the success of events at Partnership Leaders, he suggested looking at events as products.

“You really need to look at event as a product and say well what is the output of the event? Yes it is about attracting new prospects and converting them into customers but the customer success view of an event is to promote people's brands, connect them at a different level and help them tell their story so that they can be viewed as a human who has rich experiences.” 

He then adds that you can gauge your event’s success from these angles:

• From a customer acquisition perspective, look at how much your database has increased in terms of new sign ups, post your event

• From a customer success perspective, track how many members attended your event, how many times have they attended your events in a year - this will help you with renewals.

So, go ahead and consider experimenting with four strategies outlined here. By running successful events, you’ll not only help grow your community but also deepen your relationship with your existing members. 

Also, it doesn’t hurt to listen to your community's feedback and adjust your approach accordingly to ensure your events continue to meet their needs and expectations!

For event marketers, seeing a low registration-to-attendee ratio is as heartbreaking as being stood up on a dinner date.

Think about it: you have a great topic, a solid marketing plan that is driving registrations, and a popular guest speaker as well - yet getting registrants to actually show up can be a challenge. 

But fear not – the 4 tips in this article are certainly worth your time if you’re looking to jazz up that attendee-to-registration ratio.

Send Automated Reminders and Calendar Blocks:

It’s fair to assume that all your potential attendees have busy work schedules. 

Hence, it’s a bit of a stretch to expect them to remember which event or webinar they registered for. This is where event marketers can leverage technology to send automated reminders, including calendar blocks. 

Additionally, set up run-up emails that will be sent out a few days before, the day before, and a few hours before the event. Include details like the date, time, and how to join the webinar platform to ensure attendees know what to expect. (Protip: Get a ready-to-use event promotional timeline and free email copy from our brand new ebook: 'A Guide To Before-Event Marketing: Basics, Best Practices, Blunders' as well as insights and hacks on all before-event challenges such as sourcing event speakers quickly to building a truly value-add event agenda).

Here’s an example of how you can plan out your email reminders, for instance:

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Select a time slot (and day) that suits your audience

From an attendee’s perspective, nothing can be a bigger buzzkill than them registering for an event and then learning that it’s happening at an unearthly hour. With the digital realm, event marketers have to be mindful of time zones. So pick a webinar slot that is neither going to clash with prime-time Netflix viewing nor is going to be an unearthly hour for your attendees. 

If your attendee time zones are spread out, pick a common time that is great for a majority of them.

‍This article by datadrivenmarketing.co indicates that the 10 AM - 12 PM PST slot could be ideal (with 11 AM being am the most popular start time). This timing is convenient because it corresponds to 2 PM EST and 8 PM in Europe, making it accessible for viewers across different time zones. 

Similarly, you are not going to want to host a webinar on a day when your attendees are observing a particular holiday etc, for obvious reasons. 

Since your target attendees are largely B2B professionals, the article recommends that you optimize attendance by scheduling webinars on weekdays, with Thursday being the top pick, followed by Wednesday and Tuesday. 

Make attending your event as simple as possible for the attendee

Let’s face it; nobody likes a tedious login process, especially when it comes to events.

This is where you as an event marketer can introduce some magic into the experience, quite literally. Yes, we’re talking about Magic Links. 

Why use magic links?

When these are enabled, your attendees will be provided with a distinct URL that enables instant access to your event or webinar with a simple click. This means no need for authentication, no usernames to remember; and most importantly - no passwords to forget!

Scarcity and FOMO go a long way

The psychological phenomenon of “people want what they can’t have” is the basis of scarcity marketing. 

With social media showcasing a world of experiences, around 69% of millennials feel the FOMO bug, spurring them to attend, participate, and share.

So how do you weave this into your marketing campaign effectively?

According to this article by Forbes, the right formula to create a ‘must-attend’ mindset is to make sure your campaign makes your target audience curious while giving them a compelling promise.

Here’s how you can build scarcity and FOMO in your webinar promotions:

• Experiment with limited registration slots or cut-off time for registrations
• Offer sessions that truly feel exclusive. For example: “The 1 event marketing mantra that the top 5% of CMOs use - and how you can use it too” is way more compelling than a run-of-the-mill title like “5 event marketing mantras to use”.
• Get video testimonials from attendees who attended previous sessions - social proof of positive experiences always help justify the quality of your sessions.

So to quickly wrap up, creating an irresistible hook, crafting a seamless post-registration experience, stoking the fires of FOMO and tapping into the power of social proof all have the potential to spruce up attendee turnout and repair the wounds of a passionate event marketer’s broken heart!

We’ve already written about the many events in 2023 that marketers would be interested to attend, but of the many, Pavilion’s  in-person CMO Summit is one to highlight. 

What is Pavilion?

Pavilion is a community-powered learning platform for high-growth professionals such as CEOs, GTM leaders and their teams. The company is known for its learning suite of solutions such as the structured training in Pavilion University, private, moderated peer groups and in-person events, which all aim to help current and future leaders unlock and achieve their professional potential.

When is their CMO Summit?

March 23, 2023

Where is it?

San Francisco, CA

And why should you attend it?

You’ll get a front-row seat to learn from leaders who have succeeded in driving results for their teams. We love that it’s no-nonsense, and straight-to-the-point. This one’s a hidden gem.

Let’s dive into what you can expect from the event.

🎯🔑Expert-led sessions with leaders from Hubspot and Gong

When you attend the Summit, you’ll be in the same room from some of the most knowledgeable minds in the industry, learning strategies and getting advice from bigwigs at top Saas companies like RedHat, Postal, Demandbase, and 6sense. These expert-led educational sessions cover topics like using benchmarking data to build your budget, calculating ROI on marketing efforts, and aligning sales and marketing.

You’ll learn from Kipp Bodnar, CMO at Hubspot, about what he’s learned as part of the team that has grown HubSpot to an $800M company? And from 6sense CMO, Latane Conant about how she (and therefore you) is thinking about budget and CFO alignment, pipeline creation trends and how to adjust in a tough economic climate.

Plus, you’ll hear directly from these leaders too:

• Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist, Gong
• Kyle Coleman, SVP Marketing, Clari
• Will Allred Co-Founder, Lavender
• Stephanie Robotham Value Accelerator Operating Advisor,
  Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Who’d want to miss out on this? Not us, that’s for sure.

🔍📈Deep-dive panels and roundtables

The CMO Summit’s panels enable you to get different perspectives from industry experts about a topic - it’s essentially access to complimentary consulting, and it’s a huge value. The learnings are further augmented by moderated roundtable discussions with peers.

Here are a couple of panels that we’re looking forward to:

• How data is fueling results in modern marketing organizations
  In the era of big data, the CMOs that have the biggest impact will be those who embrace the power of analytics. This panel will explore how marketers are using data to get ahead.

• Positioning to WIN in an Era of SaaS Rationalization
  At a time when buyers are cutting their SaaS spend, this panel will dig deeper into how leading SaaS marketers are using positioning to stand out and drive pipeline.

🤝 Opportunities to network with CMOs + VPs from top brands

At the CMO Summit, you’ll have plenty of chances to connect and network with marketing and demand generation leaders from around the world; there are breaks scheduled during the day as well as a networking happy hour you can look forward to. Additionally, there’s a VIP and All Access Attendee Dinner at the end of the day that you could be invited to attend.

The takeaway

With the industry continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, practitioners must keep pace for their businesses to stay relevant. At Pavilion’s CMO Summit, you’ll be able to learn how to win today’s race whilst running tomorrow’s through insights and advice you can’t get anywhere else.

🥁🥁🥁 

Adobe Summit 2023 is just around the corner! 

For the uninitiated, the Summit is basically like one of the Superbowls of the marketing world. It’s 3 days of explosive new ideas, insights, and hands-on learning opportunities from the best in the business, networking with 100s of peers, plus lots and lots of creative energy ⚡ Last year's edition was attended by more than 100,000 people from around the world!

When is Adobe Summit 2023? March 21-23

‍Where is it? This year’s edition is hybrid, with attendees able to attend at the in-person venue at Las Vegas or tune in virtually.

Here’s what you can look forward to this year:

🎓Hearing directly from visionaries

‘The West Wing’ fans (like us) are thrilled that Aaron Sorkin, Academy Award–winning Writer and Director will hit the stage for keynote speeches, alongside Shantanu Narayen, Adobe chairman and CEO, along with Anil Chakravarthy, president of digital experience business. The A-star lineup also includes:

• Karen Hopkins Global CMO, EY
• Marcus East, Executive VP & Chief Digital Officer, T-Mobile
• Susan Somersille Johnson CMO, Prudential Financial
• Dave Ricks CEO, Eli Lilly and Company 

…making the Summit a must-attend if you’re looking to learn directly from leaders from the world’s top brands.

🧠Actionable learnings from Super Sessions

Super Sessions span nearly all Summit tracks, including commerce, customer journey analytics, personalization, B2B marketing, and more. Each gives you the opportunity to dive deep into Adobe product innovations and customer-driven use cases. You’ll walk away with tactical  insights and intel that’ll earn you praise from your leadership. Here are a couple of sessions that caught our eye:

🪄Impactful Experiences: From Content Creation to Personalization

As the demand for more and better content continues to rise, organizations need new ways to create, manage, and personalize content. Discover how to transform your disjointed content supply chain into a well-oiled content machine that drives value at scale.

💡Using Data and Insight as a Force Multiplier for CXM

Customer engagement is inherently omnichannel, which can produce silos of unconnected data with fragmented insight. Learn how to transform your CXM approach with unique omnichannel insights that fuel real-time acquisition, retention, cross-sell/upsell.

📈Scale Your B2B Organization with Next-Generation Experiences

It’s time for B2B businesses to scale using a new blueprint that focuses on the right prospects, creates a fast-track to sales, and optimizes for revenue impact. Learn the keys to a highly efficient marketing-led growth engine fueled by next-gen experiences and automated marketing and sales collaboration.

🤝Network with Adobe experts and marketing peers around the world

There’s nothing quite like striking up a conversation with a peer who ‘just gets it’ ie. can understand your challenges, struggles and goals in a way your well-meaning best friend can’t. These conversations are great foundations for exchanging and sparking new ideas, building an authentic professional relationship, and laying the groundwork for new opportunities. At the Summit, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to do just this, and connect with marketers and creators as well as Adobe peers.

🤌Attend virtually - for free!

If you can’t make it to Vegas, don’t worry. You can still attend the virtual Summit,  and watch the same keynotes and take part in the same Super Sessions as those at the venue. Plus, you can do this for free! Yes, you read that right. 

If you’re on the fence on whether to attend in-person on virtually, click here for information that can help you decide.

The takeaway

The depth and breadth that Adobe Summit offers - in terms of the topics covered, and the deep dives led by industry leaders - means that instead of attending 20 different webinars throughout the year, you can just attend this one event instead. Whether you decide to attend in-person or virtually whilst in your pyjamas, this one’s worth your time.

In the world of B2B events, success hinges on much more than simply gathering people in a room. As per our trends report, today’s attendees are hyper-focused on finding tactical value at an event. Hence, the key to making these events truly transformative lies in the feedback loops you design.

In this article, Alex Temple, Senior Corporate Relations Manager at Explori and also a PADI-certified diving instructor will help us ‘dive’ into the nitty gritty of all things feedback.

This is a must-read if you’re looking to design feedback loops that can unlock the full potential of your events.

Let your event objective be your guide

One of the key factors to designing a solid feedback loop is to identify the goal behind your event. Why are you having the event? What do you want to help your attendees achieve through it?

Once you answer these questions, your approach to designing feedback will be more focused and aligned to your event.

“So I think the first thing would be to think about your objectives, design your questions around how we can understand how people have met the objectives that we want them to meet and then designing the survey from there and cutting out things that don't actually matter.” says Alex.

Analyze your event metrics from a holistic point of view

While popular customer experience metrics such as the Net Promoter Score (NPS) are important to track, they need to be viewed with context. Firstly, getting an idea of the current benchmark can help you better understand your NPS. Secondly, it helps to dig into the score and see how many attendees have voted for a particular score - this will help you better improve your events.

Alex illustrates this point with a good example. “So let's have a look at the people who scored six, let's have a look at their comments and if we can bump them up next year into your seven and eight, you know, and your sevens and eights and nines and tens, then all of a sudden you've got this massive switch swing upwards as a positive NPS.”

Talking about having a more complete understand of feedback, he states, “Use NPS as part of a suite of metrics that measure every aspect or different aspects of the event experience and then kind of bring those together so that you can actually look at it from a holistic viewpoint.”

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How the 5-step feedback loop methodology can help you get started

For event marketers who are thinking of incorporating feedback into their event strategy, a great place to start is by following the feedback loop methodology, which Alex breaks into five clear steps.

‍Want better feedback? Always close the loop

When it comes to collecting feedback from attendees, involving them in the process of building their experience can have a significant impact on the quality and honesty of the feedback received. By giving them a sense of ownership in the process, attendees are more likely to provide thoughtful and insightful feedback that can help improve the overall event experience.

To this end, Alex stresses the importance of closing the loop with your audience. “The way to drive response rate and drive engagement with surveys and feedback is to complete that feedback loop.  Once you have decided that you're going to make a change based on what your audience said, tell your audience that that's what you're going to do, don't hide from it.”

So as you see, measuring your events isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have! By showing the value of our events, B2B marketers can secure more budget, create better experiences, and propel businesses forward. 

Prefer to consume your content via audio? Head to our podcast episode with Alex!

Picture this: Your association just held an amazing hybrid event for its members with networking opportunities, authoritative speakers, and professional workshops that helped members tap into their own growth. Now that it’s come to an end, you can still drive member engagement further by repurposing content created during your event. 

From photos and videos to blog content, your association can show off your latest event to keep existing members invested in your organization and attract new members, allowing you to develop a thriving member base. Use these tips to successfully repurpose content from your association’s event. 

• Develop high-quality social media content. 
• Expand your members-only resources. 
• Create promotional materials for future events.

Creating new, authentic content takes time and energy. Reduce your administrative burden and streamline your marketing efforts by repurposing content from your events. This way, you can help members continue to see the value in your association, all while showing prospective members the many benefits of joining your organization. Let’s begin. 

Develop high-quality social media content

Photos and videos taken during your event are a prime marketing opportunity for your association. By sharing these visuals on social media sites, your organization can increase its brand visibility, boost credibility, and introduce prospective members to what they can expect if they join your association. 

Ensure that the content you share is tailored specifically to the social media platform. For example, if you take multiple videos of speakers that total to several minutes in length, you can break down this content into short, digestible clips for Instagram or TikTok, featuring the highlights of each speech. On Twitter, you can share inspirational quotes from these speeches so users can quickly scan them while scrolling through their feeds. 

These photos and videos don’t have to be taken solely by your association staff. Member-driven marketing can be a great way to tap into your members’ personal networks and help even more people learn about your event. Throughout the event, encourage members to take photos and videos and share posts online along with a hashtag related to your association’s unique event name. 

Once you roll out your social media content, you can feature it on your website with the help of an association-specific website builder. The ideal website builder, in addition to offering features like custom forms and member portals, will come with social media integration tools. This allows you to share your social media feeds right on your website, enabling new members to engage with your content and learn more about your event offerings.

Expand your members-only resources

Your association event likely had a lot going on, from several lectures taking place at once to a variety of networking opportunities, making it difficult for your members to capture everything that went on. Or, perhaps there were two virtual workshops taking place at one time and attendees could only pick one to actively participate in. If this is the case, it’s likely that your members didn’t get a chance to absorb all of your event’s many activities and they might be curious to hear about what they missed. 

To navigate this issue, record your event content and upload relevant event resources so that members can access these materials later in their member portals. Building out your members-only resources not only allows members to fully engage with everything your event offered, but also gives them more opportunities to grow professionally and reap the rewards of being an association member. 

Your association should work with a membership website builder that makes it easy to upload new content to your members-only pages, allowing you to build out your digital resource hub. Your CMS should also make it simple to incorporate accessibility elements into this content so members of all abilities can engage with these resources. 

For example, let’s say your organization uploads the recording of a lecture. To make this content accessible, you should:

• Add captions that are synced with the video’s audio. 
• Create a complete video transcript that transcribes what was said and any actions that took place. 
• Use a compatible format so your video works on multiple browsers. 

Putting accessibility at the forefront of your digital strategy creates an inclusive culture and boosts members’ user experience, allowing them to access these resources with ease. 

Create promotional materials for future events

Your association will likely hold the same event (or a similar one) again in the future. To help members understand what they can expect when they attend future opportunities, you can repurpose previous event content to create marketing materials for your future events. 

For example, let’s say your association is promoting its upcoming annual conference for attendees all over the country. You can create an event landing page that features the following elements from the last time you hosted your event: 

• Quotes from attendees reflecting on the skills they gained, networking opportunities they experienced, and other event highlights
• Photos and videos of attendees and accomplished speakers 
• Statistics of how many people participated in your event activities

For example, the International WAGR Syndrome Association (IWSA) created an event landing page for their annual “WAGR Weekend” event in 2022. To help promote this recurring event and encourage attendance again in 2023, the IWSA included images of guests in attendance, a video recording of their main conference, and statistics that cover the families and individuals that attended. 

You can also repurpose your past event’s content into blog posts. Blog posts are a highly engaging way to drive more traffic to your association’s website and bring attention to your next event. Consider these blog post ideas to reflect on your past event and get your members excited about your future event: 

• Before members leave your event, ask them to fill out an exit survey that briefly asks them what they enjoyed about their experience. Then, compile these statements from all members into a blog post. 
• If your event includes speakers, create a list of the top ten most inspirational quotes from your event.
• Take a video recording of a workshop or lecture, transcribe it, and post the full transcript as a blog post. 

By showing everyone how great your last event went, you’ll be in great shape to boost registration numbers for your upcoming conference, workshop, or another event. Share these blog posts across your social media networks with the help of social integration tools from your association CMS. 

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Save your association’s team time, energy, and resources by repurposing existing event content to support your goals. Then, post this content on your social media and association website to create hype for your upcoming event and allow attendees to access resources from your past event. Do your research to find an association-specific CMS so you can upload and share this content with ease. Good luck! 

When Fast Company published a piece by Elizabeth Segran asking if we can ‘finally kill off cheap, disposable conference swag?’, it really struck a nerve.

The promotional products industry body (up in arms) issued a statement challenging the piece’s thesis that people throw away most of the free goodies they receive at events. Twitterati angrily tweeted that the piece was “really out of touch with the industry of giveaways.” And other industry voices chimed in saying that everyone loves promotional products, and that they get the job done.

But Segran’s got a point. 

It’s not that swag should be altogether done away with, only that which is cheap and disposable. Think about it: how many times have you thrown away a free badge or paperweight given to you? The point is that companies need to create merchandise that is so fantastic that they’ll keep your business in the minds of other conference attendees long after the event is over.

However, that’s far easier said than done, especially with challenges around cost and considerations around sustainability in the mix. So we asked Vishal Krishna, Zuddl Designer Extraordinaire, who designed Zuddl’s swag kit for IMEX, for tips on how to create your most memorable swag kit yet.

1. General vs. specific purpose

“The more specific the goals you have in mind when designing your swag kit, the better its effectiveness”, says Vishal. 

In other words, all marketers have the same overarching goals when it comes to swag - namely, increase your brand visibility, awareness + recall, and amplifying lead gen efforts. But when evaluating event swag ideas, you need to unpack your big-picture goals into more specific goals. This will make it that much more actionable.

For instance, ask yourselves:

• Do you want your brand to drive immediate impact (give attendees something they can use or wear immediately at the conference) or more long-term (something that they can take back and use at the office everyday)?

• Do you want to be remembered for swag that is completely unique to that of everyone else, or just want to ensure that you’re able to hand something to visitors to your booth?

• Do you want to give away something to remember you by, or create an experience that keeps them at your booth longer (like a swag spin-the-wheel)?

The answers to these questions will help you shape your swag kit items.

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2. Make Mario Kondo’s mantra your own: items must be useful, durable and/or beautiful

You can’t just think of anything, stamp your logo on it and then call it a day. “Ideally, you want the gifts you’re giving attendees to add some value to their lives, or at the least make their day-to-day easier”, points out Vishal.

Examples of useful, branded swag include:

• Tote bags: Can be extremely effective in driving short and long-term awareness, as attendees can use the bags to carry swag from other businesses at the conference, and use it well after the event ends - maybe for groceries, or for use on your commute. Protip: Don’t put a date on your bag, unless it’s worthy of memorializing.

• Mobile charges or power banks: There’s nothing worse than your phone suddenly dying on you, and especially on a day that requires you to be using it to take down notes or the numbers of new leads or partners. That’s why a mobile charger or powerbank will be happily received and definitely be used for years.

• Water bottles: Reusable bottles are a great option as attendees are bound to use it after the event, either taking it to the office or to the gym, promoting your brand to anyone who sees it.

• Wireless earbuds: Small and high-value — this is something that attendees will want to hold on to.'

• Seasonal items: Attendees are bound to pick up and use items that are practical, and relevant to the conference location. For instance, if it’s a winter conference, some warm scarves would be a nice touch, or sunscreen or flip flops at a summer conference.
  
  As these will all probably make the flight home to attendee’s homes or offices and (hopefully) serve as a reminder of your existence around them for months and years on end, you’ll be getting an incredible amount of mileage from this seemingly benign top-of-the-funnel activity investment.
  
  In fact, 89% of consumers can recall the brand on a promotional item they received within two years. To quote, Rob Clark, Sr. Director, Insights, Intelligence & Measurement at Proof Strategies Inc, here’s why durable swag matters so much:

3. Choose items that are highly visible

“There’s no point in making items like stationary (think paper pads, diaries) because they’ll probably just be hoarded and never see the light of day”, says Vishal.

So ideally, your swag items need to be ones that come into contact with/or are seen by a lot of people on a daily basis. Your visibility doesn’t end with the campaign, and keeps going for as long as your products last and are used. It increases your reach and repeats exposure, boosting brand awareness.

Umbrellas, daily-use cosmetics, and stickers are a great example of this type of swag.

4. Apparel can be a hit or a miss

Tshirt, sweatshirts and sweatpants can seem like a great option to include in your swag kit because they can be worn in many different contexts outside of the event and because by wearing them, attendees act as walking billboards. “However, anything that requires you to customize items based on gender and size can become too complicated very quickly”, says Vishal. Here’s why:

• Issues with fit - Today, there’s no one-size-fits-all. If your carefully ordered t-shirts arrive and you find that they don’t fit recipients the way you thought it might, it’s a waste of time, money and effort. A promotional t-shirt that doesn’t get worn isn’t really promoting anything.

• Ordering the right number of sizes is tricky - You might assume that you can just order the same number of small, medium and large sizes but this can cause issues. You might quickly run out of popular sizes, which would mean that some attendees would have to pick from sizes that don’t fit, or don’t receive a t-shirt at all. Or you could be left with a large number of leftover sizes.

5. Make them ergonomic OR go virtual

“Don't’ go for large items,” Vishal warns. Not only will this be a logistical nightmare for you (as you’ll have to oversee shipping/delivery from place of production to the venue), but also for attendees; no one wants to lug around heavy and cumbersome pieces of merch for hours. 

Ideally you want to choose items that are easy to ship and easy to carry. If items are too heavy, too large, or weirdly shaped, they’ll probably be ditched at the venue, hotel room or airport.

You can also opt to give away a virtual swag kit with goodies such as gift cards/vouchers or masterclasses/ebooks/whitepapers/ and other exclusive content - like for instance, in Zuddl's case it would be our brand new ebook 'The Guide To Before-Event Marketing: Basics, Best Practices, Blunders' which is packed with insights from industry experts, proven strategies, free checklists etc. to help you solve all your challenges, from sourcing event speakers quickly to choosing which format is right foryour next event (#shamelessplug).

While it might not seem as exciting as something tangible, virtual merchandise comes with a lot of advantages:

1. No logistical nightmares 
2. It’s a data goldmine as you can easily track when attendees access the bag or used a gift in it such as gift coupons
3. It’s more sustainable
4. It lets you deliver a more personalized experience (see point 6 of this piece)
5. You can be more creative with the types of gifts you can give. For example, you could give experiences around wellness (gift cards to yoga and fitness classes, discounts to gym memberships) or philanthropy (donations to a relevant charity).

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6.Go green if possible

More than 60% of consumers in the U.S. want businesses to improve societal and environmental issues (“Millennial and Gen-Z consumers are far more socially conscious than generations that came before” writes Segran in her piece). You can set yourself apart and make a powerful impact by prioritizing intentionality and sustainability in your branded merchandise.

To this end, virtual swag options like the ones we listed before are a good option to be more sustainable.  Alternatively, check to see if you can opt for your items to be made from biodegradable, recyclable or renewable materials. Since many companies still rely on cheap, plastic promotional products, it can be quite simple to stand out from your competitors.

You will need to make a decision about how much you want to invest in your products. Eco-friendly swag can also benefit your business, but it is often more expensive than standard items.

7. And personalize if possible

Everyone loves feeling special, so it’s no surprise that anything personalized leads to better outcomes (90% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands that provide tailored experiences). But often companies decide to avoid this route as they think it involves a lot of extra effort. It doesn’t need to be. Here are two simple ways to personalize your swag:

• ‍Let attendees build their own kit: Offering attendees the opportunity to personalize their swag kit can result in big dividends. For example, Postal’s Field Marketing team created branded t-shirt shaped cards that had a QR code on them. When scanned, attendees could access a collection of items that could be customized, such as a tote bag or t-shirt, and which would be sent directly to their addresses.

The effort to personalize paid off, with the gambit delivering 7 opportunities and creating $155k in pipeline for Postal’s sales team.

Here’s another example:

• Personalize it for them:
  Use registration forms creatively, and insert a few leading questions to help you identify what branded products the attendee will most likely use and benefit from. This could be “How stressful is using 5 different tools to market and run your event?”  If they mark this as ‘high’, include some calming tea or a stress ball in their kit. If they mark this as ‘low’, then give them a branded Rubix cube because they’re already a master of solving complex problems.‍

8. There’s nothing like a little intrigue to get people to come to your booth

Most companies will give away free stuff, so that alone is not enough to stand out (if that’s your aim from your swag). Try and find something that is unique and creates a memorable brand moment.

Here’s a great example of a creative conference giveaway:

When attendees at a Marketingprofs event reached the venue, they received a swag bag filled with promotional information about exhibition booths in the hall.  

Directive Consulting, a B2B search marketing agency, used that opportunity in an extremely creative way. They gave attendees an exclusive key that could open a safe at their booth which had an  Apple Watch to be won. Naturally, this prompted attendees to go to the booth, resulting in way more traffic than if they had simply given away a brochure. 

It was a genius tactic, because it recreates the same thrill of opening a gift on Christmas morning, or opening a parcel from Amazon. Something attendees won’t forget.

9. Be a careful buyer

While it’s important that you don’t skimp on quality, it’s also essential that you shop around for the best deal. The last thing you want to do is settle for a vendor that doesn’t have your brand color, or won’t send you samples before you make a bulk purchase. 

Resources: Use our swag vendor evaluation checklist to make the right choice.

10. And an even more cautious printer

Now that you’ve got a better idea of what types of items you can put together for your swag kit, we’ll leave you with just a word of caution about what to get printed onto them. “Just stamping your logo onto products won’t do”, says Vishal. “People don’t want to be walking billboards, and they won’t wear products with logos unless the brand is aspirational or a luxury brand. So therefore, you need to incorporate a lifestyle element into your design, or make it relatable in some way, like using a pop-culture reference.”

No one in the conference has swagger like us

With hundreds of businesses competing for attention at a conference, a well-designed swag kit can act as a silver bullet. A single piece of merchandise can generate tens of thousands of impressions, drive heavy booth traffic, and can result in booked meetings as well as a huge increase in opportunity value. It just requires more than choosing any item and slapping your logo on it.The more thoughtfulness you show in creating a useful or fun experience, the further it will take you with attendees. 

Resources: Use our swag vendor evaluation checklist to make the right choice.

First impressions play a huge role in reeling in your audiences - and this month’s offering from Zuddl helps you do just that.

Put your best foot forward with conditional registration fields and the landing page builder, which give you even more control over how your audiences perceive your event.

Psst... we’ve also added support for more in-demand integrations to make sure your needs are covered.

Conditional registration fields

Use conditional logic to branch out your registration forms

Your registration form can now be made responsive using conditional logic. This means you can show or hide certain form fields based on what the user enters in the form. However, conditional logic can only be applied to custom fields and uses information from other custom fields placed before them.

Landing page builder

Custom design your landing page end to end.

You now have the option to create and design your landing page from scratch or by choosing from a set of pre-defined templates. An editor mode gives you all the necessary tools to design a beautiful website and eventually increase your website conversion. You can add widgets and pages, change design elements globally, and do many more settings.

Cancel an event or webinar

Sometimes, you just need to cancel. We have you covered.

You can now cancel an event or webinar and notify your participants via a customizable cancelation email. Cancelation also removes any calendar blocks sent to your participants. The action is permanent, but you can still access the setup for a canceled event/webinar or duplicate it if needed.

Salesforce Import Integration

Now don’t just export, but also import registrant data using the Salesforce integration.

It is now possible to import campaign members from any campaign in Salesforce to a Zuddl event. The campaign members are imported as registrants and appear inside People > Attendees in your Zuddl dashboard. The integration can be also easily clubbed with any existing export integration to achieve a bidirectional data flow.

Pardot integration

Introducing the all-new, Pardot integration.

Straight out of the box, the integration supports the bidirectional flow of registrant data from Zuddl to Pardot and vice-versa. The integration utilizes Pardot segmentation lists to export Zuddl registrants and also import Pardot prospects. The integration also allows mapping Zuddl registration fields to prospect-level custom fields in Pardot.

Map custom fields - All integrations

Got custom fields in your registration form? Map it.

We’ve designed all our integrations to allow the mapping of the custom fields that are added to the registration form. An additional step is added to the installation process, in which you can map custom fields from a dropdown and map them to their counterparts in your app instance.

Other noteworthy mentions

• Presentations inside rooms are now made easier. The side panel now automatically collapses when anyone shares content inside a room.
• We’ve also improved the polling experience for mobile and iPad. Participants using mobiles and iPads are now sent notifications for polls, quizzes, and Q&As.
• Data gathered through polls inside rooms is now available under the Analytics page. This is also enabled for quizzes and Q&As.
• The landing page for webinars now shows a countdown timer to the start of the webinar.

Speakers, speakers, everywhere, but not a soul that suits your webinar series?

The struggle is all too real, innit?

In a recent study by Vimeo, 64% of participants said the quality of their speakers drive them to register for an event or webinar.

So clearly, no pressure there 😛

But the fact of the matter is that finding the right speakers doesn’t have to be difficult; it just requires a smart approach.

In this tactical piece, we'll give you five easy steps to find the right speakers for your webinar series.

Step 1: Define your target audience (and their interests)

Who is your typical audience? What topics are they interested in learning more about? What challenges are they facing in their industry? Answering these questions up top will help you identify speakers who can provide relevant insights and solutions to their problems.

Step 2: Create a speaker persona

Once you have defined your audience, go ahead and create a speaker persona that outlines the ideal characteristics of your speakers. Consider the essential superpowers - their experience, expertise, communication skills, and their ability to connect with your audience. This will help you pick the best of potential speakers who can deliver a message that resonates with your audience.

Step 3: Let the search begin!

There are various ways to find potential speakers for your webinar series. Start by looking at industry events, webinars, and conferences to see who the keynote speakers are. You can also use social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to search for thought leaders and experts in your industry. While you’re at it, check out guests of competitor webinar series - this way, you can not only get a feel of their presence in a conversation, but also ensure you approach them with a fresh topic that they haven’t covered elsewhere - two birds in one stone!

Step 4: Finalize that beautiful speaker list

Once you have identified potential speakers, you need to evaluate them based on your speaker persona. Review their experience, expertise, and communication skills. Look for any public speaking videos they have available online to assess their presentation style and ability to engage an audience.

Step 5: Reach out to your final list of speakers

After you have evaluated potential speakers, reach out to your selected candidates. Send them an invitation to speak at your webinar series. 

• Be sure to introduce your webinar theme for context. 
• Also, highlight the reasons why they are a good fit for your audience
• Make sure to include the date and time of the webinar series, as well as any additional details about the event, so that you can quickly lock in on a calendar slot (most speakers have super busy schedules!)

With these 5 steps, you’ll be able to streamline the process of not just getting the right speakers for your webinar series, but also building a pipeline of speakers way ahead of time so you don’t have to hustle every time you have a new edition to put out.

Need some ready examples to help you get started? This checklist is all yours - you’ll find a step-by-step approach, email templates and much more!

The curtains have come down, the last in-person attendee has just left the venue, and you've said "thank you!" to all your speakers. High-fives all around! But what do you do now that your hybrid conference is over? Sometimes, we’re so hyper-focused about making sure that the event runs successfully, that we don’t really think about what comes next. 

And that’s a big mistake.

84% of event attendees say that they have a more positive opinion about a company, brand, or product being promoted after the event occurs. That’s why it’s critical to keep in touch with attendees immediately after your hybrid conference ends, with relevant and personalized information.

So what you need is a strategic after-event plan. It needs to encompass as many touchpoints as possible to keep the momentum going. You may already be wondering “which channels are best to follow up with attendees?” or “do you need to create any collateral?” We’ve answered all of these questions in this article.

Read on to learn everything you need to do to get the most mileage from your hybrid conference strategy:

1. Turn your conference landing page into a post-event page (a.k.a what happens at your event should never just stay at your event)

Every day that passes after your hybrid conference, you run the risk of your attendees losing interest. To keep it top of mind, either create a dedicated new page on your website or transform the landing page for our event into one that lets attendees relive the fun they had at your event (or in the case of those who couldn’t attend, see what they missed out on). 

How do you decide what content to feature?

Let your after event analysis data (courtesy your platform’s analytics) guide you toward finding the most valuable bits of content to share, whether it was a popular speaker who received tons of engagement, or a post on your event platform’s activity feed.

How does it drive more mileage from the hybrid conference?

On the page, create reasons for your audience to want to re-engage such as a ‘lessons learned’ follow-up webinar, or more events they can attend or link them to a forum where they can continue discussions of the event's topics with other attendees. 

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2. Follow up with attendees via email RIGHT AWAY

This one’s a no-brainer because the case for email is already well known. But, as all B2B marketers know, the key in getting the results you want from your event follow-up is segmentation. At the least, you should divide your attendee data into these two groups:

• Attendees
• Registered no-shows

You can use the content that you put together for your event highlights landing page - digital media, key metrics, information about new events - for your emails.

Here’s an example by Litmus Live:

How do you decide what content to feature in each email for the two groups?

Here’s a framework you can use when building your nurtures:

How does this drive more mileage from your hybrid conference?

Using a hybrid event platform that can integrate with your existing CRM enables you to use insights from any after event analysis reports to plan campaigns, and send automated outreach at scale, and with context. This helps to warm up prospects incrementally, without annoying the bejeesus out of them. 

If leads show promising engagement on emails (ie. open and click throughs on assets you’ve already identified they will be interested in via analytics), they can be automatically routed out of the core email nurture flows to SDRs for individual, white-glove outreach.

This brings us to our next point.

‍3. Have your sales teams personally follow-up

It’s a recipe for disaster if marketing and sales teams aren’t hyper-aligned when it comes to event followup.

Especially in the case of email marketing, if there isn’t a set process in place and a centralized platform to use, both teams could end up emailing the same prospects at the same funnel stage, causing some leads to get emails and others none at all. 

Pro tip: That’s why using analytics from your hybrid event to lead score attendees is so critical. Determining which attendees who showed most potential for conversion (consider early registrations, agenda blocks or role they clicked on during registration. time spent at the event, amount of engagement, email open rates, etc.) and which ones were also receptive to event followup emails is extremely helpful.

Once prospects are identified and warmed up, Sales colleagues can swoop in with hyper-customized 1:1 communication and calls, whether with a relevant piece of content or “what did you think of the event?”

Want more tips on boosting Sales-Marketing collaboration throughout the event lifecycle? CLICK HERE TO READ OUR FREE EBOOK.

4. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose

Use event content as your “hero asset” and repurpose the information in different formats.

This will keep the discussion going and give your followers a second chance to see and understand your content.  And by doing so, you’ll be tapping into the core purpose of the event and your audience’s desire for education and connection, and to repeat your message so it stays at the forefront of everyone’s minds.

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What’s the best way to repurpose event content?

Here’s a simple way to do this:

1. Event video can be made into:

• On-demand mini-courses: This is a simple but effective way to engage your participants immediately after your event and nurture them with your content. Create mini courses or lessons around main event tracks or key areas of interest using presentations from each track or a deck of slides. Or have a team member compile top moments and teach via recording or hosted live as a webinar. Add learning resources, such as a downloadable workbook or other collateral material.
  
  ‍Protip: Create mini certifications for each course and use this as a basis to develop a unique community post-event. Here’s a great example of how Drift does certification courses.

• Video snippets: Snackible bits of video from your event are extremely versatile. They can be used in the following ways:

1. Audio transcribed into a blog post(s): You can provide additional commentary to support the ideas. Translate key moments into tips, lessons and best practices. For inspiration, take a look at HubSpot’s blog content which showcases key quotes or lessons from their event speakers.
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2. Aggregate key messages into an ebook or even a yearbook that has insights from events held over a year. Gate this downloadable piece of content on your site to drive MQLs.

3. ‍Infographics of best quotes from speakers and attendees. Here's a great example by IBM

4. Video snippets uploaded into a Youtube playlist
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5. Audio turned into podcast episodes 

2. Content from audience engagement activities such as Polls and Q&A can be turned into ‘How to’ and FAQ articles or tactical guides and spreadsheet templates. Copy from the articles can be shared as slide decks on LinkedIn or as bite-sized info nuggets via Twitter threads. 

‍Protip 1: Don’t forget to leverage the reach of your event speakers and partners when distributing your repurposed content on social platforms

‍Protip 2: Gamify social sharing (here’s an example) with prizes like swag or Amazon gift cards, or discounted tickets to your next hybrid event

Proptip 3: Click here to learn how Rocketlane repurposed the content from their virtual customer onboarding conference, 'Propel '23'.

How does repurposing content drive more mileage from the hybrid conference?

It now takes a whopping 27 interactions before a potential buyer is willing to have that sales conversation with you (yes, you read that right). And buyers do a lot of self-directed research checking a variety of sources, from social media to website to forums etc. 

So the advantage of developing a library of content from your event for different channels and distributing it effectively (this is key), is that each piece serves as “one in a series of stepping stones” pulling people deeper into the funnel. Each builds visibility, familiarity, credibility and trust.

5.Create online communities for attendees 

The last tactic we recommend to help drive more mileage from your hybrid event is to create activities and spaces where attendees can continue conversations and connections from the hybrid event. 

This can be in whatever form suits your need - happy hours, accountability groups, or just simple online forums like Slack groups where you can break people up into cohorts based on topics from the hybrid event so that they can have targeted discussions with like-minded folk. Event and page moderators can facilitate discussions by starting threads during or immediately after the event. 

How do communities help to drive more mileage?

Giving attendees a group or a community in which they can talk freely about your event, related industry topics, ask for advice and make new relationships, helps to build camaraderie and instil a sense of belongingness. (Look for instance at the Notion subreddit that has 155000 members). It helps them to feel like more than a lead, or a customer. And this in turn can build trust and generate organic traffic and leads.

And by activating more people to jointly contribute towards a shared goal, you are increasing the capacity and impact of your efforts as an organization or brand.

‍Protip: These spaces are also a great way to gather valuable insights into your event attendees’ interests through the conversations they have, questions they ask, and challenges they discuss. These insights not only help in creating future events but also in segmenting your leads in a better way for your campaigns and offerings.

After-event tactics should not be an afterthought

Clearly, any hybrid event strategy you create is incomplete without you incorporating a plan for after-event activities too. 

It’s not easy, but we guarantee that if you invest time and thought into crinkling out the processes for after-event activities beforehand - like how you’re going to even create event videos (solution: a video production tool incorporated into your event platform) or making clear the baton pass between marketing and sales - you will see improved efficiency and returns from your hybrid conference.

Event tech today is nowhere near where it was even 6 months ago — because the industry itself is constantly evolving, and goal posts are continually shifting. Zoom fatigue might have been the primary challenge a year ago, but today it’s creating demand (as per 62% of marketers), and it’ll be something else a few months down the road.

Our Co-founder and CTO, Vedha Sayyaparaju joined other panelists at a recent discussion hosted by NXUnite to speak about High tech, high impact: Event Technology for modern associations and mission-driven businesses. Panelists discussed challenges around tech, and offered insight and advice. Here are the three top takeaways from the talk:

1. Let the goals of your event determine what features you need to look for in an event platform

There’s so much tech nowadays that being able to choose from what’s available can be overwhelming. Start by analyzing your event goals, as this will help you zoom in on where and how technology can help. And this then becomes what you need to look for in the platforms you evaluate, the panelists recommend.

For instance, perhaps your registration is too cumbersome so you would look for platforms that could help with that. “Look at where your inefficiencies are - where are you spending so much time on low return or high risk” said speaker Nikki Bell, Co-Founder at Fundraising Everywhere.

2. But don’t feel pressured to use all the features available on the platform you choose

Echoing an earlier point: there’s so much tech available, and as each platform is always promoting its suite of features, people can feel pressured to use every single feature that is available to them. But this is a mistake.

“You don’t need to use everything,” cautioned Vedha. “All the features on the platform you’re using may not be a fit for the goal of your event or for its agenda. So you need to really first figure out what is the experience you want to curate and then choose features that enable that.”

3. You don’t have to go it alone. Lean on the event community for help

“Be bold”, urged the panelists. Having to navigate the modern event landscape can be scary - the industry is changing as are audiences, but organizers shouldn’t let this discourage them, and can lean on the event community for help. Here’s how:

• Ask peers for advice: “People are more forthcoming nowadays about their experience hosting events'', Vedha said.” They are more willing to share tactics - what worked and what didn’t.” Your peers in the community are therefore a great resource to turn to, and happy to share what they learned over the past few years. (Click here to join our online community for event professionals!)

• Work with experienced partners: Working with a company that has worked in turn with many others in the event space can be helpful. “They’ve already seen others through [event hosting] journeys, and can help guide you,” Vedha said. “They can tell you what worked best, and what mistakes to avoid making.”

• You don’t have to invent the wheel: Attend as many other virtual events as you can and look to ones you enjoyed for inspiration, Vedha recommended. “It’s okay to see what you like at those events and pick up ideas from there. You don’t need to be the first to try something entirely new.”

Want to hear more?

Watch a video recording of the entire panel here!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

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This past week was historic for us, as we launched Zuddl’s very first quarterly product launch, Spotlight. Now, the objective of this quarterly event series is to share key insights and practical tips about the future of B2B events, which makes it perfect for B2B marketing professionals as we strictly stick to actionable information and leave out any fluff. 

Given that this was our first edition of Spotlight, It was heartening to see a 94% attendee turnout! Of course we’re just getting started; we’re now pumped to make the next edition all the more impactful and engaging.

Since we really like you, we’ve picked out some key highlights from Spotlight 2023 that are TOTALLY worth a quick read:

How B2B events are evolving as the year unfolds

B2B events have changed from being just a brand building exercise to becoming a demand generation engine that can help businesses drive revenue.

To break down this evolution of events, we had on-ground insights from Vedha Sayyaparaju, CTO and co-founder, Zuddl, Mark Whalen, Director of Sales, Zuddl and Ketan Pandit, Head of Marketing, Zuddl.

The session set the context by diving into the changing landscapes of B2B events in terms of expectations, goals and outcomes and also how virtual events have become more measurable thanks to advances in event technology - a must-listen if you’re looking for perspective.

How B2B events marketers can do more with less

As per our survey in December 2022, over 50% of B2B marketers stated that they use at least 4-5 tools across the lifecycle of an event. That’s 4 tools too many. Using different tools is a logistical headache - you already know this. It creates workflow challenges and data silos.

To address this, Arpit Maheshwari, Product Lead at Zuddl took attendees through the latest features that have been designed to empower B2B marketers with a unified approach to events.

The best thing about the session was that it was highly interactive - we saw attendees ask about specific new capabilities on Zuddl such as automatic calendar blocks as well as best practices for attendee engagement.

How to outperform your competitors by redefining B2B webinars

Traditional webinars are on the decline; nobody wants to attend a never-ending monologue, especially online. 

Is there a way to transform your webinars from just another virtual meeting to an engaging experience? That’s exactly what Clinton D’souza, Product Manager at Zuddl, addressed as he walked attendees through the latest updates on Zuddl that are designed to cater to the evolved business needs.

Touching upon Zuddl’s latest integrations and Demo CTAs, Clinton showed attendees how they can run webinars that convert higher number of prospects and eventually contribute to business growth. He also highlighted the ease by which you can stream out your live webinar to leading social media platforms as well as get your on-demand webinar in place in no time.

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How you can unleash Zuddl’s true capabilities and get desired results 

Talking about possibilities is one thing; doing it is another. This is why Ansh Mehra, Product Marketing Manager at Zuddl, took to the stage to take attendees through a step-by-step walkthrough of how B2B marketers can leverage the powerhouse that is Zuddl’s Video Production and Live Streaming Studio to run live events that deliver results.

From creating an immersive brand experience with themes, backdrops and overlays to making a live event a seamless experience for organizers, speakers and attendees with features such as Showflow, this crisp session covered it all - all in a few clicks.

... and that's a wrap from us, for now! Be sure to join us every quarter for exclusive insights on trends and tools that will help you ace your B2B events in 2023 and beyond!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

Cue the drum roll…

WE DID IT! 🎉

We're thrilled to announce that Zuddl has been named among the top 50 Marketing and Digital Advertising Products and one of the top 100 Fastest Growing Software Products on G2! This is a huge honor for our team and a testament to the hard work and dedication we've put into building a top-notch product.

These awards mean a lot to us because they represent the voices of our customers and users. G2 is one of the leading sources for unbiased software reviews, and being recognized by them is a true validation of our efforts to provide a unified event and webinar platform that exceeds user expectations, so, yay!

Here's a little bit about our latest wins:

Top 50 Marketing and Digital Advertising Products

The top 100 companies are ranked based on a combination of Satisfaction and Market Presence scores for each vendor, and the top 100 products are ranked based on reviews across all categories they are a part of. The recognition as one of the top 50 Marketing and Digital Advertising Products on G2 is based on user satisfaction scores, as well as market presence and popularity. This award speaks to Zuddl's effectiveness in helping businesses succeed in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising.

Top 100 Fastest Growing Software Products

To be recognized as a Best Software Award winner, a software company or product must receive at least 50 approved and published reviews during the 2022 calendar year. Scores reflect only data from reviews submitted during this evaluation period. Being named one of the top 100 Fastest Growing Software Products is a testament to our company's rapid growth and success. This award is based on customer growth, employee growth, and overall company growth over the past year. It's a recognition of the strong demand for our unified platform and the impact we're making in the industry.

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We're proud to be part of this elite group of companies and we're committed to continuing our efforts to provide the best marketing and advertising solutions on the market. Thank you to our customers and partners for your support and for helping us get to where we are today.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

B2B marketers, assemble!

On 9th February, we’re hosting Spotlight 2023: The Future of B2B Marketing Events, Zuddl’s Quarterly Product Launch! Join us for the most advanced conference for B2B events and marketing. And it’s free. 

Need more reasons to help convince your manager to give you time off to attend?

Keep reading.

1. Stay ahead of the B2B event marketing curve

What will B2B marketing events look like for the rest of the year? At Zuddl, we already know. 

Join us for what we call ‘the future in present tense’ session led by Bharath Varma, Zuddl’s CEO & co-founder and Vedha Sayyaparaju, CTO of Zuddl, that is packed with key insights and practical tips about what you can expect this year - and before any of your contemporaries do. 

There will be no fluff. 

Like you, we’re not interested in highly theoretical sessions or trivial and simplistic advice that have zero actionable components. This is not event marketing 101. 

Instead you can expect extremely granular and tactical insights to challenges, which will inspire you to try things that worked (and avoid things that didn’t).

Having hosted hundreds of events over the past two years for clients all around the world including Google, Microsoft, Highspot, StackCommerce, NAMIC, HBA and others, we are uniquely positioned to know the secrets behind high-performance events that deliver real business value.

2. Get a sneak peek at Zuddl’s new unified platform features + roadmap

B2B marketers are working harder than necessary.

Our survey revealed that over 50% of B2B marketers stated that they use at least 4-5 tools across the lifecycle of an event. That’s 4 tools too many. Using different tools is a logistical headache - you already know this. It creates workflow challenges and data silos (not to mention the downloading and uploading you have to do for every tool at every event).

Additionally, there's dependence on external teams for implementation or assistance when something glitches. Not to mention the costs that build up for each tool. All in all, it’s too much time, stress and effort spent. 

Which is why using a unified platform can be a gamechanger for your events. At Spotlight, you’ll learn how a unified platform’s key capabilities and technologies (eg. an  inbuilt video production tool, better tracking for sales-marketing collaboration) drives better results across your event programs, resulting in sustainable revenue.

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Expect exciting updates about  new product capabilities, Zuddl Studio (our powerful yet simple web-based video production and streaming platform) and feature announcements too!

3. Learn the tech and tactics that will kick your webinar into high gear 

Even if you’ve been able to navigate the challenges of the past few years, we’ve worked with enough B2B marketers to know that there's likely at least one webinar conversion rate that you’ve either struggled with or always wanted to improve upon. And we’ve built solutions to optimize all of them.

Whether it’s registration-to-attendee, or attendee-to-demo, we’ve zeroed in on really practical ways to improve the webinar experience for both organizers and attendees, that result in overall improved outcomes from the event. We don’t want to give away too much, but here’s just one example of insights you can expect to learn: triggering automatic calendar blocks after someone registers improved turnout for one of our customers by an incredible 20%. 

During Spotlight, you’ll get to see and learn how our new suite of features helps you increase performance, convert more customers and enable better sales and marketing collaboration (yes, you read that last one right). These sessions provide a look at what’s possible — and how other B2B businesses are benefiting from Zuddl-powered experiences.

4.Build and expand your network

We want you to get the most value from your time at Spotlight. So apart from the sessions, you’ll also be able to meet and mingle with peers and practitioners from the B2B events marketing space.

You will engage with industry experts, marketing professionals, business leaders as well as Zuddl users and product experts. Get answers to pressing questions, swap stories of success and failure, and make professional connections, new partnerships and possible business opportunities.

The next step

Register now!

Join us for 2 hours of focused, tactical sessions.

Leave a better B2B marketing professional.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

We’re firmly in the ‘you can never have too much of a good thing’ camp, especially when it comes to events - and marketing conferences in particular.  

Getting together with marketing peers and experts, learning from each other, and making useful professional connections can be energizing, exciting, and dare we say it ‘fun’?) It’s why we’ve put together a list of top B2B marketing conferences that one can attend in 2023. 

But let’s be honest. The list we’ve put together will only grow longer and longer. 

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However, there’s only so many marketing conferences you can attend in a year before your manager looks askance at your time off requests and your expenditure slips. So how, out of hundreds of events, do you choose the ones that will be the best value for your time and money?

The ones that help you prove ROI to your managers (ie. those that help you achieve your goals within your budget).

Here’s how to figure this out/what to take into account when making a case to management:‍

1.  Your goals

Why do you want to attend this conference? Is it to drive brand awareness? To drive pipeline for your sales team? To get insights and new ideas in your field, and upskill? The answer will determine what type of audience you want to reach and interact with whilst attending the conference.

To this end, do not hesitate to email conference organizers for any information they can share about the attendee profile - industry, company size and location for example, or any other factors that are important to your ICP. At a minimum, ask for a previous year’s attendee list.

2. Location, location, location

In 2022, the event ecosystem evolved to see a co-existence of all formats, so this year you’ll find marketing conferences in a variety of shapes, sizes and formats. For example, while Salesforce’s Dreamforce will be held in-person at San Francisco this year, Adobe’s Summit will be hybrid, with attendees able to join virtually or at the venue in Las Vegas.

So the essential question a la Hamlet is: to travel or not to travel.

Pros: An in-person B2B marketing conference is great for marketers who are hungry to feel part of a crowd, to socialize, collaborate and network via spontaneous watercooler conversations - and thrive from it. Yes, most things can be accomplished virtually, but there is still no substitute for some in-person intangible experiences: a new relationship forged over a drink at a bar near the venue, or a level of trust that’s built from a casual conversation about sports teams or Netflix shows and a handshake for instance. 

Cons: However, putting people on planes is not cheap. And spending that extra dollar for fuel, hotels, food, and drink at the event all adds up. (Plus, for eco-conscious organizations, there’s the environmental cost of transportation to reckon with). Consider whether that amount would be better spent attending a conference or marketing summit that have virtual components.

3. Opportunity cost

Very simply, this is the marketer’s equivalence of FOMO. If you don’t go to the marketing conferences you’ve picked out, what connections or partnerships would be lost? Or what knowledge or skill set would you miss out on? 

For instance, in this age of AI and ChatGPT, marketers who don’t already know how best to leverage these tools are already a step behind the competition. Wouldn’t it be invaluable to hear experts share their successes and cautionary tales? Keep in mind that the average impact for a single cost-saving improvement idea is around $31,043.

It’s not always just a question of, “Is this event worth the money” but also “What would be the qualitative cost to your team? or “Which option gives me the comparative advantage?” which leads us neatly to our next point.

4. Competitors and competitive advantages

Checking to see whether your competitors, or other successful companies that you may look up to attended the marketing conference last year, and whether they were able to drive engagement from it can help you better understand the potential ROI for your business. 

5. Speaking opportunities

If you plan to attend a marketing summit as an attendee, well and good. If you can attend as a speaker, even better. To this end, check the conference website to see if they’ve put out a call for speakers, or send organizers an email explaining your interest leading a session or joining a panel.

This contributes to ROI in many ways:

1. You can establish yourself and your business as an expert in the industry 
2. You can reach cross sections of people who are likely to use your products or services an increase brand awareness.
3. It's a great PR opportunity
4. While compensation for speaking at conferences varies, at the least organizers will usually waive attendance fee. As they say, a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

6. Exhibiting and sponsorship

Check to see what the exhibition and sponsorship package prices are for any conferences you plan to go to as an attendee. If you’re going to fly halfway around the world to attend the conference, you might as well make the most out of it.

Exhibiting

Pros: Exhibiting enables you to increase exposure and connect with prospects on a personal level by letting them experience the product firsthand. 

Cons: However, it’s expensive. Booths are priced as per size and placement so the better options can be pricey, and you’ll also have to pay for add-ons like an internet connection at the booth (yep!). And you need to factor in the costs required for booth design such as banners, standees and swag. These add up, so you should figure them out in advance.

‍Sponsoring

Pros: Based on the sponsorship opportunities available - eg. gift drops at attendee hotel rooms, branding at venue touchpoints, sponsored sessions - you’ll be able to reach and connect with the audience in a way you normally would not be able to. 

Additionally, as a sponsor you usually will receive an attendee mailing list aka the motherlode. 

Cons: There is no guaranteed return on investments because of the complexity involved in attribution; the results of sponsorship are more tenuous than the effect of an ad campaign. The conference audience may or may not remember your brand after the event, and consequently may not follow up on a CTA from an email or a phone call.

7. How much content can you create by attending

You’ve got to be able to squeeze every drop of ROI you can.

So evaluate what kinds of content you can generate from going to the conference, for instance can you write a blog post recapping your experience and learnings from the event (we did this after attending IMEX 2022 - read our piece here). Whilst at the event, can you interview some of the speakers or other leaders of companies attending the conference for your podcast?

The more opportunities you identify to create content from the event that can be used to generate awareness, traffic and pull leads into your funnel, the more compelling the argument to attend.

A short recap/TLDR

As you’ve seen, when evaluating which conferences to attend this year, you’ll need to check the expenses vs. the benefits of attending. While some factors are qualitative and some quantitative, when you get down to the brass tacks, it all comes down to how much pipeline (or how many opportunities) you should be able to generate, and therefore how much you can afford to spend.

The factors that we think should go into your decision-making is not exhaustive, but it's a good start.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

“We have a Hulk!” was Tony Stark’s response to Loki’s threat in The Avengers 2012; this month’s offering from Zuddl is no less than a Hulk. In this article, we’ve got some power-packed features and capabilities that will really help close the distance between you and your audience. So suit up and read on.

Use Studio as backstage

Zuddl Events are now supported by Studio as the backstage

A much-awaited Zuddl feature is now available — Studio can now be used as backstage for Events. You can now make full use of Studio’s video editing and streaming capabilities to take your events a notch higher.

Individual stages inside an Event can be configured to use Studio as backstage in the stage setup. You can choose to use the original Events backstage or switch to Studio.

Stream and content transitions

Experience Studio with smoother, more refined transition animations

The transitions for speakers and content on Studio have been greatly improved. Every layout change onstage is now visibly smoother with clean and fluid transition animations.

The result is a significantly more polished viewing experience for your streaming audiences.

Filler media for webinars

Make the breaks in between sessions better with filler media

A new Fillers tab is added to the Studio backstage, where you can upload and use images, videos, and audio files as fillers. They help you fill the gaps between streaming sessions, keeping your audience engaged during the breaks.

These fillers can be shown on the webinar stage when sessions are not live. When a session is live, fillers can be queued to play after the session ends.

Email access control

Running a private event? You can now you can allow or restrict specific email address domains at the time of registration

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More than just a nice-to-have feature for someone who hosts private or corporate events quite often. This option can be found under Advanced settings inside the Registration page menu. You can either quickly restrict non-business email domains such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, etc., or upload a CSV file to allow/ restrict specific domains in bulk.

Email builder

A timely email that speaks about your brand is always lauded by attendees

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As attendees stay excited about your next event, you can make them feel more connected by sending event emails directly from your own custom email address. This offering doubles up as an email builder, a simple drag-and-drop editor to custom-build your email design and content. So the attendees and registrants can now not only receive all event-specific communications directly from you but get to read a well-crafted and personalized email. Nonetheless, transactional emails will still be sent by Zuddl.
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You can easily add a sender email address which after verification, it can be made the default email address on an account level. Inside the Communications menu, you can also select specific senders for each email type.

Embeddable form builder

Customize your registration form and some layout changes for the better

Presenting an embed code option (at the bottom-right corner) that lets you copy an embeddable and customizable javascript code of the form you designed. This code can be pasted inside the body tag of your HTML site code and voila’ you’ve got yourself a custom-made Zuddl registration form inside your website. When you update this form from the dashboard, the changes appear instantly on your site, after reloading, of course. You can add logos, background color, and more to the code. This will be shown inline on the landing page of the third-party website where is it embedded.

To accommodate this feature, there have been a few rearrangements; the branding option is now replaced with the “Embeddable form” tab which provides branding and a few new options. Also, you can now find the advanced settings option on the sidebar which provides settings such as font family for the form, and button options such as text, color, text alignment, and text font color.

This feature is applicable to both events and webinars.

Capture UTM & IP details in registrations

We now capture and store the UTM and IP details from the registration links for your event

The IP details include; city, state, and country along with the ISO code. These links are specifically consumed for third-party integration and are currently not displayed on the platform.

Some updates on integrations

We’ve gone a bit further down the rabbit hole to make some updates to our integrations. Let’s talk about them

In our Salesforce and Marketo integration, you can now capture certain user activities in addition to user registration and attendee event entry such as sessions attended, breakout rooms attended, CTAs clicked, polls answered, and a few others.

For the Slack + Salesforce integration, the integration can now notify a lot more things on Slack. The notifications will now include the following details if available for a contact/lead: Account details such as account name or account owner, latest opportunity details such as deal size, deal stage, deal close date, and any custom contact fields added

In addition to sending notifications to a Slack channel and the lead owner, notifications will now be sent to the following recipients, based on availability in Slack; Account owner > Contact owner > Lead owner.

That's all for now! Want a hands-on experience of what you read? Get in touch!

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Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

Ask any B2B marketer what they care about most in the world, and they’ll wax lyrical about family, friends and MQLs - and not necessarily in that order. 

We jest, we jest, but, in all seriousness, any day of the week, you’ll find B2B marketers are hyperfocused on generating MQLs via content, podcasts, webinars - and especially events.  It’s a no-brainer why, especially in our post-pandemic landscape; marketers were able to have their pick of event formats to generate a set quota of leads, by marrying the energy and community spirit of in-person events with the scalability, reach and inclusivity of virtual and hybrid events.

Now, this may sound peachy, but in reality this MQL myopia can hurt your business more than help it. Events are actually a full-funnel job. B2B marketers need to approach events as a lever for long-term revenue growth instead of solely delivering on short-term MQL goals. (And anyways, there’s already a growing school of thought that MQLs are dead, so what does it matter?)

To this end, here’s a primer on how hosting events - and a calendar of different types of them - can influence conversion throughout the funnel and generate revenue. Scroll down to read about each in detail.

Event formats that elevate brand awareness

Perhaps the most straightforward reason that B2B marketers use events is that they are a powerful brand awareness accelerator. They give your company the opportunity to raise its profile and name recognition within an industry, and build familiarity with your brand.

Now, in their own way, almost all event types, from webinars to large-scale conferences can help to keep your brand top of mind when people think about the industry that you’re in and the type of products or services you sell, such as customer onboarding software for example. But, of these, large summits or industry conferences are two of the best events formats for the top of the marketing funnel.

• Industry conferences and summits

1. Reach a wide audience in your industry (especially if its a virtual or hybrid event)
2. Demonstrate thought leadership via the theme of the event
3. Provide information on key subjects and use it as a chance to promote your products

Hubspot’s ‘INBOUND’ conference is a great example of this. Their conference is all about bringing together experts and practitioners to learn about the latest trends in marketing, sales, customer success, and revenue operations. The event is a smart way for the company to continually position itself as the absolute center/power broker/Beyonce of this industry (and it pulls this off successfully)

However, it goes without saying that not all businesses have the budget or manpower necessary to host a large-scale summit or conference. So, alternately, if you’re a B2B SaaS company, participate in these events instead.

Here’s a couple of things you can do to boost awareness of your business when you’re there:‍

1. Spending time on pre-event activities is worth the patience: Before you turn up for the event, there's plenty you can do, from using the event platform's capabilities to spread brand awareness (eg. if it's a hybrid or virtual event - getting your signage placed in the lobby or at a Stage, customizing a virtual Expo booth, etc.) to pre-booking meetings with prospects.

2. Getting a table or a booth is worth the money: Many conferences will let companies purchase tables or booths to show off their products. Get one and bedazzle it with your company branding.

          - Put up banners and standees

          - Put out marketing collateral such as a well-designed one-pager

          - Set aside some dedicated space to demo your product

3. Making swag giveaways is worth the effort: From branded apparel to laptop stickers, giving away unique  company-branded merchandise can help to attract the right crowd, and increase brand recognition/recall. Just look at these goodies that Team Zuddl gave away at IMEX 2022.

4. Spending time networking is worth the time: Whether virtual networking or in-person mixers, getting some face-to-face time with peers or potential clients you identify ahead of time is a great opportunity to build relevance, trust, and connection with people. And if you don’t - your seat may just be taken by your competitors.

As you can see, conferences are pretty great places to raise your profile to a captive audience. And this is not just theoretical - we know this from first-hand experience. Check out everything we got up to at IMEX 2022, from handing out some of the best swag at the event to being interviewed by organizers.

Event formats that educate prospects about the product

Once you’ve got your prospects’ attention and interest, and they have a general idea of what your company does and what product or service you offer, it’s time to actually demonstrate how your business can solve their problems or help them achieve their goals - beyond an elevator pitch.

And one of the best ways to show instead of merely telling, is through hosting events that are smaller in scale and more focused - such as roadshows and webinar demos.

Let’s look a little closer at each of these event formats:

• ‍Roadshows: You know how comedians or musicians go on tour and expand their audience base by visiting smaller venues in many different cities? Roadshows operate the same way. These events are smaller gatherings held in several locations. They used to be traditionally in-person - ‘taking the show on the road’ so to speak, but now can be either virtual or hybrid too. 

          Roadshows are a great source of pipeline generation because you can:

1. ‍Reach lots of new prospects - Roadshows are all about bringing the event to the people, which means you can reach those you may not have been able to otherwise. And by focusing on a smaller audience, you might be able to build trust and increase confidence in your product in a way that might be difficult to do at a large-scale conference.

2. ‍Establish yourself regionally - Driving brand awareness can be made more effective if you can tailor your content to address the goals of each regional cohort rather than marketing it as a one-size-fits-all solution. This means that leads will think of you when they need help or when they are in a position to purchase your product. Relevancy drives revenue. Forbes’ roadshow series called Forbes Live is a good example of doing this event format right. Each show is dedicated to one of the topics covered on their website, and therefore targeted at a specific audience core to their business goals.

• ‍Workshops, ABM lunch and learns, and seminars: Hosting smaller-scale educational events is a way to build-up credibility and earn respect as a brand driving value for industry practitioners  - but without all the effort it goes into organizing an industry conference.
  
  On top of providing relevant information which is of value to your land, you have the opportunity to teach them about your organization as well, and nurture them through to a sale after the event is over.
  
  Additionally, your seminar and workshop content is valuable to attendees, those attendees will spread the word for you, making it easier over time to attract attendees.

• ‍Webinar demos: Hands down, the best way for prospective customers to see your product in action, and visualize how it solves their problems is a demo. This is why a weekly webinar demo of your product is a cost-effective and efficient way to solidify the trust and relationship that you have already started to form, and nudge them towards the bottom of the funnel. 73 percent of B2B marketers said that webinars are the best way to generate high-quality leads. 
  
  ‍Click here to check out Zuddl’s weekly product webinars:

Event formats that nurture relationships with leads

At this stage of the funnel, you can assume that your leads already know about your brand and your products, but need a little something to bring them closer to the sale. But first, consider these stats:

• 73% of B2B buyers say most sales interactions feel “transactional’ 
• 80% of consumers believe a brand must demonstrate that they care about customer experience before they will even consider a purchase (Wunderman)

To this end, VIP events like C- Suite roundtables,  networking mixers, closed group panels, meetups can make all the difference because they’re a proactive way to show leads the value they’d get as they become a customer. Here’s how each event format does this:

• ‍C-Suite roundtables: These are high-value and intimate discussions between thought leaders, founders and C-suite executives (typically the final decision maker in the purchase decision), and so are useful in positioning your company as a  strategic partner to the C-suite. Check out how Bloomberg runs their C-Suite roundtables for an idea of how to run your own.

• ‍Closed door events: While the format of the event is up to the organizer, these events consist of a small-medium sized group to keep it exclusive, and usually are invite-only or price discounted for leads and customers. SparkToro’s ‘SparkTogether’ event is a great example of this. 

The all-day virtual story-focused marketing summit featuring powerful and unfiltered stories from growth and marketing leaders. But what sets this event apart is that there are no event recordings made available after the event ends - this lets speakers speak without any varnish - they can share real numbers, financial figures, and ugly truths. This ups the exclusivity of the content, and concurrently tickets to the event are $300. However, customers - and leads we imagine - get special treatment: they are able to purchase tickets for as low as $100. 

• ‍Networking events:  ‘It’s not what you know. It’s who you know’ is the driving force between organizing networking events. Small-scale in nature, but executed in various formats (moderated conversations in virtual rooms, AI-networking powered sessions, trends report discussions), they can enable you to curate a targeted audience within your industry, which can be useful in these two ways:
  
  1. Being a Good Samaritan: By hosting networking events whereby your leads and customers connect with new buyers or partners for their businesses, you’re indicating to leads that customers aren’t just buying a product from you, they are acquiring a relationship. It’s a show of good faith - a way of showing customers that you’re their partner in helping them achieve their goals.
  
  2. Benefiting from referrals: It’s highly likely that at your networking events, current and potential customers will interact with each other. This is hugely beneficial as your current customers can act as advocates for you. And as any B2B marketer will tell you, pipeline generation through customer referrals is one of the best ways to generate revenue.

NOTE: When leads are mid-funnel, having them as guests at your event as a touchpoint to connect and build a relationship with the guest themselves and not just the audience is an often overlooked but important way to nudge them further along the funnel.

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Event formats that build customer loyalty

You’ve closed the deal, now what? Keep your customers feeling valued and respected through positive reinforcement and recognition. These event formats can help:

• ‍User group conferences: These events are held exclusively for your existing customers and leads, and are a great way to build long-term loyalty as they really champion the voice of the customer.
  
  During these events, attendees have the opportunity to discuss their experiences with your product, and exchange ideas and best practice. They can connect with the company's senior management and product team to get exclusive advice. And finally, the C-suite can share an overview of the company’s strategic direction and new products in the pipeline.
  
  All this helps to build a sense of belonging in your community. When members have a say, share their opinions and feedback, and a company actively listens, it builds collective buy-in because they feel rewarded for their participation and continue to actively participate. This serves as a foundation for forming strong connections that last beyond the event and translates into long-term sustainable revenue.

Events as a powerhouse content generator

Any event you host is a content gold mine. You can repurpose your event into many different forms of powerful pipeline generation assets. Keep in mind that people consume content in different ways, so it’s important to cater to all types:

• Video: Turning highlights into video snippets is one of the powerful forms of event content you can create. In fact 52% of marketers say video is the type of content with the best ROI — and with good reason. Through each video, you can extend the memory of each event, and consistently remind people of the value of the content learnt. Videos can be used for social media, email marketing, and to share with sales colleagues to share with leads even long after your event occurred.

• Podcast: Given that 388M new podcast listeners are expected by 2024, it’s a smart move to convert video snippets from your event, seminars or webinars into audio for your podcast. This builds credibility, and can also generate interest in subsequent events.

• Blog posts or ebooks: This can take a bit of work, but it delivers great dividends by boosting SEO, and increasing the time on page (according to Wistia, people spent, on average, 2.6x more time on pages with video than without).

Conclusion - Events can influence conversion throughout the funnel

According to a Gallup report, a whopping 60% of B2B customers are indifferent to the businesses they buy from, because of a failure on the part of companies to engage customers. But that’s where events can play a valuable role.

Use a blend of different event formats to create valuable touchpoints between your brand, leads and other stakeholders. A strategic mix will help you foster connections that generate revenue.

💡 Keep in mind: every customer experiences your marketing funnel differently, and some events have value across different stages of the funnel. A user conference can serve as a MOFU event as well as a BOFU one. Be very mindful of where your leads are in the customer journey and then plan your event calendar accordingly.

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.

In today's fast-paced business environment, events play a critical role in driving brand awareness, lead generation, and customer engagement. However, with so many different types of events available, it can be challenging to understand how to effectively leverage them to drive marketing success. 

In this post, we'll explore 5 ways to map your events to your marketing funnel to ensure that they are aligned with your overall business goals and objectives by channelling expert insights from seasoned event marketer, Kelsey Taylor, who recently joined us for a webinar as part of our Event Heroes series!

1. Let your event goal dictate your format

One important factor that will help you determine your event format is the objective of your event, says Kelsey. In other words, defining the desired outcome of the event will inform you about which format will help you achieve it best.

“If you're launching a new product or have new features to share, a webinar either pre-recorded or live is a great way to deliver this message especially to your customers.”

2. Use the crawl-walk-run approach to mixing event formats

When asked about whether there’s an ideal stage at which companies should consider mixing up their event formats, Kelsey recommended starting with simple, low-stakes events, and gradually increasing the complexity and scale of events over time. This can help organizations to build the necessary skills and infrastructure to successfully execute larger, more complex events in the future. 

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“You can look at what’s working really well across your marketing functions, and where you see places where you can insert something different and test things out.”

3. Think long-term when it comes to attendee experience

When asked about how to create attendees who will want to continually engage with your brand, Kelsey’s pertinent advice was to think beyond just one event and rather view each event as part of a larger audience-building process.

“Continuing to think strategically and take into consideration and take good care of your attendees no matter what they attend will build that obsessive brand for your events.“

4. Your average deal size can help you determine your event budget

While there is no rule of thumb when it comes to setting your event budget in stone, Kelsey recommends using your average deal size as an indicator while formulating your event budget.

“If we're going to have 10 people at an event and an average deal size of let's say ten thousand dollars, we need to have at least double that in the room to make it worth it.”

5. Ensure your event content is actionable

While tracing the evolution of event needs, Kelsey highlighted that the bar for events is much higher compared to pre-COVID times, as attendees have limited time to offer to events, and that they’ll only look for events that give them tactical value.

“We want to ensure that we're delivering valuable actionable insights that they can take back to their teams and implement immediately, again no matter the format. 

There isn't really anything worse than attending an event and really not finding any value in it!”

Want to catch the full conversation? Click here!

Zuddl is a unified platform for events and webinars that helps event marketers plan and execute events that drive growth. The platform has clients across the globe, such as the United Nations, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, HSBC, VMware, Google, StackCommerce and Cipla amongst others. In January 2022, Zuddl announced that it closed $13.35 mn in Series A funding.