The Challenge
In order to drive revenue growth, Illumina’s Sales team depended heavily on the marketing team to deliver an ever-increasing number of events in an expanding number of regions. Furthermore, as Illumina grew, their Customer Success department also leveraged the events team to deliver trainings necessary for customers to successfully utilize the technology to its fullest extent. Needless to say, the events team was central to Illumina’s overall success. “We had grown to over 400 events a year. Our main event registration system consisted of a form submission to our web team that they would send back to me in an excel spreadsheet with first name, last name and email address. We recognized that we were ready for a commercial solution that could scale with us as our program grew” said Kim Scott, Senior Regional Marketing Manager.
“Additionally, we had no viable marketing data on our potential customers that would allow us to have meaningful and continued conversations. Integrations with Marketo and Salesforce were incredibly important to us so that we could deliver accurate lead data while getting sales reps from all the different regions engaged as quickly as possible” said Scott.
The Solution
Illumina ultimately decided to employ several Cvent solutions to improve the event experience, engage attendees, and capture more data and insights for future sales and marketing activities.
- Cvent Event Management was implemented to capture more usable attendee data and streamline the registration process.
- OnArrival is used at Illumina’s flagship event to reduce check-in wait times and the number of on-site staff.
- CrowdCompass mobile event app was used to keep attendees engaged, personalize schedules, conduct live polls, and house a sales document hub.
- An integration between Cvent and Marketo, Illumina’s marketing automation system was developed to pass data to the sales team. By connecting interested persons immediately with sales representatives, Illumina was able to accelerate the sales cycle by holding contextual and timely conversations with potential customers.
The Outcome
Illumina identified events as a core strategy to support its ambitious growth objectives. When they decided to begin investing in event technologies, their annual revenue was valued at $1B. Six years later, and the development of a strategic event marketing program of over 400 events a year, Illumina has over doubled its revenues to $2.2B.
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