Conquering In-Person First User Conferences
Introduction
Your user conference is your very own "Super Bowl" or "Comic-Con" for your industry.
It's the time when your existing customers get a hands-on opportunity to learn about the latest updates to your product or service offering. It's also where they can meet fellow industry peers, share their experiences, and learn from the best in the business.
For some attendees, user conferences also serve as the ideal platform to meet potential business partners, prospective employees etc.
Now, you should consider running a user conference for any of the following reasons:
Community
Engagement
You've nurtured an active community of users who actively engage with your product and participate in discussions.
Customer Engagement
You bring your customers and prospects together to interact with you and each other to drive your company's growth and retention goals.
Skill
Enhancement
You notice a growing desire among your users to deepen their understanding of your product and improve their skills.
Product Launches
You have significant product updates or exciting launches in the pipeline that you're eager to share with your community in a grand manner.
Brand Building
Amplifying your company's brand presence and cementing its reputation in the market is at the forefront of your strategic goals.
And when done right, user conferences can be a game-changer for your business. They have the potential to elevate your brand, strengthen customer loyalty, and generate buzz that extends far beyond the event itself.
What’s Inside
We’ll break our approach into 3 digestible chapters - before-event, during-event and after-event - so that you can take the right steps towards a successful in-person user conference from beginning to end.
Before Your User Conference
During Your User Conference
After Your User Conference
Before Your User Conference
Planning a user conference rests on four key factors that will shape the event's success: date, location, target audience, and budget allocation.
These elements tie together intricately, so their individual selection has to balance with the others, ensuring a well planned event.
So, if we are to determine a starting point to your planning, it would be when you start writing out your brief.
Event brief
At this stage, you are defining the mission statement and ethos of your user conference. It's the one source of truth that aligns all teams to the high level goals.
So first set the primary elements in place: your Event Name, Event Purpose and Strategic Goals.
Your event brief is a holy grail that will capture all the essences of your planning, so be sure to update it as you progress.
As time progresses, you can keep updating this sacred document with more details about the event and share it with the greater internal team. Closer to the event, when you’re fielding dozens of daily questions from various teams, this can double as a FAQ master doc too!
Budget determination and negotiation
This is a great starting point when it comes to the four key elements we discussed earlier, because your budget will pretty much dictate every other decision you take. For higher chances of internal buy-in from your CFO, back your budget ask with data indicating the pipeline impact from previous years - even if you don't have specific numbers from the most recent conference.
If this is your first user conference, reach out to peers in your partner ecosystem and ask them what kinds of results they saw from their first year in terms of number of attendees, ROI multipliers, ticket pricing, etc.
Target audience and turnout estimation
Next, you’ll need to identify your target audience and estimate the total number of registrations, total number of attendees and as well as your target registration-to-attendee ratio. It’s important to do this at this stage because these decisions will guide your venue selection and logistics.
A scaling formula typically used suggests aiming for a 20% increase in attendance from previous events. However, keep in mind that this is a topic that requires careful consideration and discussion. The most significant conversation revolves around the "how much" aspect, which involves analyzing past numbers.
Decide if you need to have an agency onboard
With your budget, date, and audience finalized, it's a good time to consider scouting for an event planning agency especially if yours is a large conference. Agencies bring expertise and support to ensure your conference's success. Be sure to detail out how much of your budget you’re willing to spend on the agency, as this will affect other overheads.
Agencies will help you source your venue, and that’s why it’s better to shortlist one before you break your head about venues.
Date selection
Pin down the dates about at least 6-8 months ahead.
If you're planning a recurring user conference (say, annual), it's suggested to aim for a four-week buffer around the same date of your previous event. This means, if your event was held on July 1st this year, aim to hold your next event approximately four weeks earlier or later next year - so around the first week of June or the first week of August.
Also, ensure your dates do not clash with major events in the chosen month. For instance, if February is your selected month, steer clear of significant events such as the Super Bowl or other large industry conferences to avoid clashing schedules.
Location
Choosing your event's location is like setting a stage; it impacts the vibe and heavily influences the budget. For optimal balance, brainstorm potential locations that fulfill your criteria with key stakeholders such as the VP of Marketing, Head of Finance, CEO, CMO, Chief Customer Officer, VP Operations and so on (may differ from company to company).
This decision should be made at least 6 months in advance, considering factors such as city accessibility, available facilities, and potential weather conditions.
For instance, if you expect to hold your conference during colder months in the USA, a location in the southern region that features outdoor activities can make the experience more enjoyable for attendees.
Collaborating with key internal stakeholders
It’s time to share your now updated event brief with your internal teams!
When it comes to pulling off a user conference, it truly takes a village. Event marketers have to collaborate with different internal functions to fulfill tasks and sub-tasks, which is an event in itself! This could look like members of your internal marketing team, sales, partnerships, customer success, finance, legal, and many more.
Garner some goodwill by going to leads of each of these teams early, defining the level of support you are requesting, and asking who you should loop in – they will appreciate the advanced notice!
How Rocketlane pulled off the world’s first customer onboarding conference, Propel ‘23
However, as you already know, it’s not all roses when it comes to collaborating with internal stakeholders - so set your expectations right and expect from friction along the way.
But these 3 tips should help make it a smoother and effective process:
Overcome resistance through trust and communication
It's never easy to sync with different personalities, functions and goals, but trust and communication can go a long way.
Align event goals
Start by identifying the 'why' behind your event and who your target audience is. Once this foundation is clear, communicate with each department to understand their specific goals. Whether it's sales targets, brand visibility, or networking opportunities, understanding these objectives will help you align your overall event planning and execution with them.
What metrics will determine the success of this event?
What is your target number of high-intent leads that you hope to convert into closed sales during or after the event?
What methods will you use to gauge your success in advancing deals?
What kind of return on investment is being looked at?
Get buy-in from your customer success team
For user conferences, it’s crucial to align with customer success because they're responsible for getting your existing customers to your event, which means you know the people that are going to sell on your behalf. So collaborating with the customer success team can help leverage existing customer relationships to drive sales and build trust at your conference
Initial event announcements and choosing a conference platform
This stage marks the first part of external communication about your user conference - a 'Save the Date' notice about four to six months in advance. Concurrently, you should launch a dedicated event website to provide information about the conference's purpose, intended audience, and date, along with a mechanism for capturing email addresses for regular updates.
Here are key considerations you should look for in a conference platform:
An all-in-one solution
Ensure the platform offers ticketing, registration, multi-channel communication (such as email, SMS, push notifications), onsite check-in, badge printing, and a tailored mobile app for attendees.
Personalization
Choose a platform that supports a personalized attendee journey. This means creating distinctive communication strategies, in-event experiences, and post-event follow-ups tailored to different attendee types, be they customers, partners, or prospects.
Brand extension
Your event is an extension of your brand. Platforms like Zuddl offer customizable landing pages, emails, and mobile apps through easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionalities. This ensures your event resonates with your brand identity, deepening attendee engagement.
Smooth integration
Opt for platforms that are purpose-built for your type of conferences. Essential features include easy-to-setup native, bi-directional integrations with Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack etc that ensure a continuous flow of all activities for effective follow-ups. Comprehensive analytics and reporting are vital. It should integrate smoothly with leading marketing and sales platforms, presenting data in actionable formats.Establishing a two-way link between CRM and event data is crucial. This aids in boosting attendance and fostering desired actions at all event stages.
Efficient session management
Session and speaker management can be complex. Platforms with a built-in studio that simplifies these processes can ensure a more seamless conference experience.
Reliable partnership
Your platform provider should be more than just a tech supplier. They should be partners in your event's success, offering strategic guidance and tactical support throughout the event journey.
Speaker and sponsor reachouts
Soon after, start sourcing your speakers. Leverage insights from your customer success team and quarterly business reviews to identify customers with compelling success stories. Don't overlook individuals who made an impression at past smaller events; they could be potential candidates for your larger conference stage.
PS: You can also turn to a speaker sourcing agency - but be sure to factor this into your costs.
Getting the right sponsors:
Sponsors play a pivotal role in the success and dynamism of a conference. The challenge lies not just in identifying the right sponsors, but also in ensuring they resonate with the event's theme, audience, and objectives.
Your goal is to establish partnerships that are mutually advantageous, reinforcing the conference's credibility while offering sponsors a platform to connect meaningfully with their target audience.
Publishing the agenda and going live with ticketing
While the speaker selection is underway, about five months prior, publish a placeholder agenda and make your ticketing system live. This agenda acts as a blueprint for your anticipated themes and sessions and will undergo changes as you finalize your speakers and their respective topics. Generally, you should finalize this about three weeks before the event, allowing ample time for legal approvals.
Here are 7 tips on getting your agenda right:
Learn from others
Look at how other companies, including competitors, are structuring their agendas. This can provide inspiration and help identify trends, speakers, and session topics.
Use before-event surveys
Send out surveys before the event to understand what attendees are interested in. This can help shape the content and structure of the event.
Manage session lengths
Keep sessions to around 30-45 minutes with breaks in between. This helps maintain attendee focus and energy.
Arrange sessions by 'Tracks'
Group sessions under different umbrella topics to make the agenda easier to navigate.
Create catchy session titles
A well-crafted session title can make your event agenda more memorable and entice more attendees.
Schedule high-demand speakers strategically
Place your most important speakers at the beginning and end of the day to energize your audience and keep them engaged.
Include networking time
Provide opportunities for attendees to meet and interact with each other. This can be done through breakout and networking sessions. Also, while meal times are often utilized for networking, consider incorporating structured networking activities and creating a conducive environment for attendees to connect and network.
Getting your ticketing right
One of the most stressful aspects of planning a user conference is dealing with complex registration and ticketing flows. This is precisely why you need a robust platform that can help you:
Personalize your event registration forms as per your attendee persona
Create simple or complex tickets tiers across multiple sessions
Specify quantity, expiry and add couponing
Seamlessly integrate with payment gateways
Promotion and logistical coordination
From the moment you send out the 'Save the Date' until the day of the event, maintain consistent promotion of your conference through social media campaigns, advertisements, and your company's main website.
Meanwhile, attend to the details of your logistical coordination and marketing material design; they play a substantial role in the successful execution of your user conference.
Also don’t lose heart if you don’t see too many early registrations. Keep at it and you’ll be sure to see them kick in like a month before the go live date.
Here are 4 quick promotion tips:
Have event-specific branding
Create a unique, event-only brand identity that stands out. This helps distinguish your event from others and makes the experience cohesive and memorable.
Show with video
Videos in campaigns can significantly increase conversion rates. Use a variety of video content such as teaser videos, recap videos, and invitation videos by speakers to drive interest and engagement.
Rope in speakers and sponsors for promotions
Your speakers are one of the best event influencers you have. Make it easy for them to promote the conference by providing them with promotional materials and social media templates. Similarly, a word from your sponsors can help you amplify your reach in their networks.
Get CS and Sales teams to reach out to customers and prospects respectively:
Incentivize sales and customer success teams to increase the number of registrations for the event. This cross-functional collaboration can improve promotion results.
Planning your swag
The potential of thoughtful conference swag is undeniable. In order to ensure you plan out gifts that are not only memorable but also practical and sustainable, it’s good to ideate and arrive at which items make the most sense for your event.
Most marketers may have the same overarching goals when it comes to swag - namely, increasing your brand visibility, awareness and recall, as well as 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.
At this stage, there are 3 important questions you should answer:
Do you want your brand to drive immediate impact?
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)?
Its’s important to find the right vendor who can bring your swag items to life. Use this checklist evaluate vendors easily!
Factor in surprise activations and engagements
Surprises are a fantastic way to delight attendees and create memorable experiences. While you’ll want to collaborate with sponsors to design unique activations that align with the event's theme during the planning stage. Whether it's a pop-up activity, interactive game, or unexpected entertainment, surprise elements add a sense of excitement and anticipation.
Okay, so far, so good.
Take a deep breath.
Your conference is on track to success, but it’s just the beginning :)
Don’t worry - you got this!
Psst.. the master checklist for before-event planning for your user conference is available here!
During your user conference
The day has arrived, and it's time to bring your beautiful agenda to life! Remember, the success of your conference hinges on seamless execution and the ability to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, so stay focused and power-through.
At this stage, it’s more about keeping a pulse of how your event is unfolding and checking for delays and staying on top of things - remember you’ve already done the heavy lifting in the planning stage; you just gotta see it through!
Let’s look at the key things you should keep in mind:
Venue management
Arrive at the venue at least three days in advance. Use this time to finalize menus, organize badging setups, and ensure everything is in order. Meet with vendors, verify guest counts, and manage registrations to accommodate last-minute changes. Review the attendee list to determine room capacities and make necessary adjustments to maximize space and seating arrangements.
Speaker coordination and dry runs
Arrive at the venue at least three days in advance. Use this time to finalize menus, organize badging setups, and ensure everything is in order. Meet with vendors, verify guest counts, and manage registrations to accommodate last-minute changes. Review the attendee list to determine room capacities and make necessary adjustments to maximize space and seating arrangements.
Avengers, Assemble
Your internal team will play various roles during the event, including staffing the registration table, guiding attendees through the venue, managing sponsor areas, and providing on-the-fly design support. Depending on your needs, you can quickly take a call on shifts and other intricacies.
Early challenges to watch out for
Unregistered attendees
There may be instances where people show up without prior registration. While it may not be a major issue, it's important to address it promptly. Take them aside, guide them through the registration process using iPads or other devices, and have a conversation about the registration fee if necessary.
Assessing attendee legitimacy
In cases where the attendee is completely unknown or unrelated to your sales force or target audience, it may be appropriate to require payment for entry. However, if the individual is a recognized customer or partner, it's advisable to handle the situation differently.
Issues with badging and printing
When it comes to badge printing and preparation, thorough testing is crucial to avoid any last-minute surprises. For worst-case scenarios where your printer fails you, have a backup plan like stick-on name badges
Here are key considerations you should look for in a conference platform:
A cost effective check-in and printing solution
No need to lug archaic check-in and printing boxes anymore.
Personalization
QR Code or text based app check in that can work offline as well
Brand extension
Customize badges in any format and print using portable hi-speed printers
Out-of-the-box integrations
Ready integration with Salesforce, Hubspot, or other CRMs ensures in-person attendee registration and attendance is updated in real time
on Zuddl’s Salesforce integration
Communication and execution
As the event begins, focus on your communication plan for the day. It’s highly recommended that you use a dedicated in-person app for your conference.
Your in-person event app can help you:
For recording important events or lead info, it helps to utilize a Slack channel for real-time communication, where important conversations and notes from the event can be shared with your team.
Ashley Mauras, Director of Experience Marketing at Quantum Metric, suggests implementing a walkie-talkie system with key personnel, usually comprising 8 to 10 individuals. This enables seamless communication throughout the day as event marketers are constantly on the move.
Make final touches, walk around the venue to ensure everything looks perfect, and then - it’s time to head to the main stage for the opening!
Overseeing networking sessions
At this stage, all you have to do is make sure that your structured networking sessions and breaks are going as planned. Not just this, for unstructured networking like cocktails or a karaoke speakeasy, you’ll want to do some additional audio checks and overlook venue setups to ensure things go smoothly - because a bad networking experience is not just a buzzkill but can also break the mojo of your event!
Weather contingencies
Plan ahead for potential weather disruptions. If you have a planned activity that is outdoor, collaborate with vendors and see if they can give you prompt weather updates so that you can explore options for setting up a tent or securing an indoor venue nearby.
Establish clear communication channels to promptly inform attendees of any changes and provide detailed instructions on accessing the new location.
Emergency preparedness
While we hope for the best, it's essential to prepare for the unexpected. Identify key contacts at the venue who can assist in case of medical emergencies or unforeseen circumstances. Set up a designated "war room" equipped with necessary supplies, including first aid kits, tape, scissors, and backup technology.
Medical emergencies aside, another important aspect to consider is being excessively prepared for any unforeseen circumstances. This involves having contingency plans in place, such as having a backup session or speaker ready to go in case a speaker falls ill or encounters travel delays.
Placing your swag at the venue
Strategically planned swag and gifting can enhance the conference experience for attendees. Once you’ve determined what swag items align with your brand and create a positive impression (in the planning stage), place swag items strategically throughout the event space, encouraging attendees to explore and discover these items. Maintain a stock of additional swag items in the war room for restocking as needed.
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Executing surprise activations and engagements
In Chapter 1, we spoke about factoring in surprise activations. At this stage however, it’s about communicating these surprises effectively and building anticipation among attendees.
And then, it’s about overlooking the execution so that the impact is optimal.
We set up a puppy adoption center in the sponsor area. Attendees were thrilled to encounter adorable puppies! This activation not only attracted a significant number of attendees to the sponsor area but also ended up with two dog adoptions!
Now, let the event unfold - and enjoy it!
As the conference wraps up and the atmosphere buzzes with the culmination of countless hours of meticulous planning and execution, take a look around at the sea of satisfied faces - you’ll realize that every minute was worth it!
After the conference
The conference may be over, but your work isn't - don’t worry, you can always unwind with a drink and get some much-needed sleep before jumping on to this stage :)
Ok, back to business.Post-conference activities are crucial for measuring success, gathering feedback, and planning for future events.
Any good event deserves a water-tight after-event plan, so make sure you don’t lose focus, just yet.
On-demand content
Collaborate with your content and design teams to upload the recorded sessions and make them available to attendees. This allows attendees to revisit the sessions they found most valuable and catch up on any sessions they might have missed. It also provides value to those who were unable to attend the conference. While it may be attractive to get additional leads post-event, consider making the on demand content ungated making it easy for your attendees to share with colleagues to ensure the furthest reach.
Here are some cool ways to turn your user conference into a content flywheel:
Data reconciliation and follow-up
Reconcile the attendee data, lead session information, and reports. Gather the leads of your sponsors and promptly share them with them for timely follow-up. You can also provide sponsors with a post-event report that summarizes attendance metrics, industry representation, and company profiles.
Pull reports based on account executives to track interactions and follow-up activities. The slack channel you created can help your sales team to reachout to hot prospects with context (e.g.Mr. John from Company X liked Session 2 the most).
Feedback collection & debrief
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.
Here are four expert hacks on creating a solid feedback loop for your conferences:
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.
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.
Use the 5-step feedback loop methodology
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 is broken down 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.
Psst.. this checklist contains sample survey questions to help you get started.
Then, conduct a debrief call with your on-site team and leaders from different departments to discuss observations, what worked well, areas for improvement, and ideas for the next event.
Future planning
As Freddie Mercury rightly said, “The Show Must Go On.”Start gathering input from your audience on potential locations for future events, allowing them to have a say in the decision-making process. Consider planning the next event in advance to ensure a smooth transition and keep the momentum going.
And that’s a wrap! (for now)
Final thoughts as we sign off...
As you wind down from the conference, take a moment to appreciate your team's effort and the success of your event.
But remember, the end of your user conference is the beginning of a new phase. You've successfully cultivated an environment for knowledge sharing and networking.
Now, it's time to sustain the momentum. Go forth and conquer!
