The Business of Events: Get to Know Your Attendees a Little Better

One quick question about your live events: when it comes to attendee data, are they a goldmine or a landmine? For many marketers, it could go either way. When it comes to conference, meeting, and trade show data, even some of the best-of-the-best marketers are flying blind, with little or no insight about attendee behavior beyond a post-event survey. But as we all know, events are an expense. From user conferences to trade shows, event programs can take up 1/4 of your marketing budget. And, as a result, the C-Suite at most organizations is scrutinizing the costs associated with these programs more than ever before. It's wise for marketers to get a better handle on things. For example: According to the Modern Event Marketing - Viewing Events as an Asset not an Expense Study, conducted by The CMO Club in partnership with Cvent, we learned a few things:

• Over 68% of CMO’s executive colleagues perceived events as very or extremely valuable in facilitating revenue growth.
• 50% of CMOs need to see more proof/justification of the contribution being made to their revenue goals by their events programs.
• 75% of CMOs believe face to face events are very important or critical in accelerating the sales cycle.
• 60% of CMOs say ROI is very important or critical when it comes to allocating budget to their events organization.
• 43% of CMOs are not receiving the business analytics they need in order to validate their event spend.
• 75% of CMOs say their most pressing challenge with their events program is proving ROI or understanding overall effectiveness of their events program.

So proving ROI, accelerating pipeline, and understanding the overall effectiveness of event programs is critical. It’s not as difficult as you might think. It’s all about understanding your attendees, and their behavior, a little better. The truth is, their wants, needs, and activities can all be captured onsite during events. That data can reap many rewards, from better engagement to higher ROI. In this new series, the Business of Events, we’ll address the ways marketing professionals can not only improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their events but can also better demonstrate financial impact through the use of data and analytics gathered with event planning software and technology.

Take Your Events Online

If you’re a marketer and you’re reading this, you probably know everything your prospects and customers are doing on your website and other digital channels. But when it comes to your live events, things get a little fuzzy. Because your live events provide some of the most valuable prospect and customer insights you can get, stop thinking of events as an “offline” activity.  You measure your website performance, why not your event performance?

Your Attendees Are Talking. Are You Listening?

When it comes to capturing attendee data, there’s little debate left about the right way and wrong way of doing things. The rapid emergence and adoption of event technology means bringing your events in-line with your digital marking mix. For too many marketers, relying on disparate point solutions and manual processes leads to wasted effort, lost time you can’t get back, and ultimately, lost value. We hope this series will help you understand the best ways to capture the information you need the most, not just logistics and cost information, but all the customer data you can collect across your total event program. Just because your events are all over the place—it doesn’t mean your event data has to be.

For more on this subject, check out this blog post: Why Session Tracking Makes Better Meetings and Events: For Everyone