BACKGROUND

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) offers a broad portfolio of high-performance and adaptive processor technologies. In 2022, AMD acquired Xilinx, which delivers the Adaptive Platform for accelerated computing. Katie Moon, Senior Manager of Corporate Events, is responsible for the strategic execution of field marketing events at AMD. Her team facilitates the outreach of brand and messaging through their events program to maximize customer engagement and increase the sales pipeline, in addition to supporting leadership initiatives globally. “We have a combination of corporate events that serve a small subset of stakeholders, like high profile executive dinners, customer events, summits, and industry events like trade shows,” she explains. “We also have proprietary events like user conferences and webinars.” Xilinx has partnered with Cvent to power their events program for the last six years; during this time, they’ve grown their portfolio of Cvent solutions. Katie has been instrumental in bringing the partnership forward to AMD to power their total event program.

Prior to the pandemic, Katie’s team utilized several different Cvent solutions across Xilinx’s events program. These included Cvent’s Registration tool, Access Portal, Premium Surveys, Onsite Solutions, and Universal Appointments. In September 2020, they were one of the first organizations to adopt Cvent’s Attendee Hub platform. Though they utilized Cvent’s professional services upon initial adoption of the Attendee Hub, they are invested in ensuring their team’s self-sufficiency in the platform moving forward.

When the pandemic hit, Katie’s team had to quickly mitigate loss for the business. “We had a large number of programs that were canceled outright, and what that did was rapidly remove an essential part of our sales cycle,” she notes. This meant they weren’t able to readily engage with their customers during a challenging time within the industry. Katie began researching virtual solutions to support their flagship conference, Xilinx Adapt, which would need to move forward as a virtual event. “The solution of integrating virtual events was a no brainer, and though we didn’t have a lot of experience producing virtual events, we knew we had to learn,” Katie explains.

They needed a trusted technology partner to support the pivot to virtual, which at the time was relatively uncharted territory within the industry. Moreover, they only had ten weeks to flip their entire program to virtual. “As part of our evolution for incorporating virtual events into our event program landscape, we had to do the thing that was most natural to us, which was to go to our partners,” Katie explains. It was crucial they were able to effectively support their customers at a time of great uncertainty. She adds, “We were, in real time, strategizing with Cvent together on how we were going to not miss that component of the sales cycle, not miss that opportunity to engage with our customers, but continue to be that heartbeat.”

APPROACH

Powering the Xilinx Adapt conference with the Cvent Attendee Hub

As early adopters of the Attendee Hub, Katie’s team was able to capitalize on initial product functionality to support their virtual event. They continued to adopt new features that became available for their subsequent events and provided valuable feedback to help guide Cvent’s product development. “To be one of the first early adopters of Attendee hub and work side by side with Cvent on the benefits and implementation of that programming, it was really eye-opening and strong way for us to feel like we could continue to impact our stakeholders at AMD with the caliber of programs that they were used to, despite the fact that everything had shut down,” Katie elaborates.

The AMD team soon realized that the complexity of filming so many sessions across various global regions meant pre-recorded content would work best. “We had 50 plus speakers in six different time zones,” Katie shares. By pre-recording their sessions, they were able to capture high-quality presentations and ensure all content was ready for consumption by attendees. With such short timelines to pull off the virtual event, AMD knew they needed support from their industry partners.

They leveraged Cvent’s Integrated Events professional services team, which provided end-to-end project management. With an emphasis on white-glove service, the Cvent team helped manage the event build process through a consultative approach. They configured the registration process and Attendee Hub platform while coordinating all technology needs through a dedicated project manager. This Cvent expert served as the primary point of contact for AMD, coordinating technology and resource requirements to ensure timely execution. This also included advanced production and full day-of support to ensure a seamless experience for all stakeholders.

Within the Attendee Hub, users could easily navigate from the home page to build their agenda and access their personalized schedule, joining sessions with a single click. Each session could be customized with speaker information, session details, and related links and files to drive continued engagement. Attendees could also view all speaker information from the home page and choose from featured sessions, which helped drive session performance. Engagement features like integrated chat, live Q&A, and polling ensured attendees felt connected throughout the conference. In fact, sales team members could chat directly with attendees in addition to meeting via embedded collaborative video through exhibitor booths. Here, attendees could submit contact information for follow up and access key collateral. Embedded surveys ensured the AMD team could easily consolidate feedback through on-demand reports at and evaluate performance at both the session and event level.

Ensuring seamless integrations with AMD’s MarTech stack

To ensure a seamless dataflow across their event lifecycle, AMD relies on several integrations between Cvent and their MarTech stack including Marketo, Tableau, and Salesforce. “We were really able to capture some strong data, which is important because AMD has spent a lot of time and money in the last two years investing in our MarTech stack,” Katie explains. With these integrations in place, they were able automatically sync contact lists and updates, eliminating the need for manual labor and capacity for human error.

Katie notes all event data and activities flow between these systems, saying, “We’re taking that Cvent technology, and then immediately tying that into our Tableau integration and into our Marketo integration, which ties to our Salesforce instance.” Through these integrations, they are able to track marketing engagement and overall campaign performance. They can automatically sync contact updates and activities as well as automate task and opportunity creation within Salesforce. Katie insists, “That is just a real-life, wide breadth picture of all of the data that we are capturing from our customers in real time, and turning around to show our stakeholders the benefits of the programming that they got in a fraction of the cost.”

Using these integrations, Katie’s team is able to capture the entirety of the attendee journey for more targeted campaigns and better follow up by their sales and marketing teams. “Those integrations are really, I think, the key to the success in maximizing your events portfolio and showing your stakeholders that what you’re doing is bringing actual opportunities to the table,” she notes. This data allows her team to show the ROI of their events program more clearly with faster, more qualified leads. She explains, “We were able to set the stage for quality MQLs and post-event sales enablement to continue the success of our program.”

In evaluating the success of Xilinx Adapt, Katie says the conference exceeded all expectations. “The most notable takeaway from Xilinx Adapt was that we tripled our ROI” she offers. “It was wildly successful, and that data visualization really gave us the opportunity to show amazing ROI.” The AMD team exceeded their business goals and increased attribution to pipeline, growing global attendance by 165% and garnering 38% net new attendees. Katie adds that the impressive performance not only positively impacted the business but also increased the visibility of her team. “Due to the success of Xilinx Adapt, other Xilinx stakeholders felt confident in transforming their additional ancillary events into virtual with the use of the Attendee Hub, and we successfully proved the value of event marketing in the face of an unprecedented global pandemic,” she adds.

In fact, Katie notes that the success of this and other subsequent events has been highlighted by their executive leaders during company-wide meetings. They are achieving 4.5x their program goals at an average 6x cost savings. She adds, “Being one of the first accounts at Cvent to engage with Attendee Hub put us on the ground floor of industry-leading platform technology and has allowed us to be peer leaders and advocates for virtual programming - both internally and externally.” The success of this event was truly impactful for their department. “Events have always been important to AMD, and there’s a huge investment in event management, in event marketing, and field marketing at AMD,” she explains. “So not only was the net outcome of this event surprising, but it brought to the forefront the impact of events at AMD. This event really escalated to the top of that experience for me, professionally and personally, and for my team.”

LOOKING FORWARD

Fostering the future of events at AMD with Cvent technology

Having worked closely with Cvent for years - first at Xilinx and now at AMD - Katie is excited to continue expanding the scope of their program through this continued partnership. “I think it really speaks to the partnership and the trust that we have together with Cvent on what it is that drives AMD’s programming forward,” she says. In fact, the reciprocal relationship between her team and Cvent is of immense value to both companies. “I believe our program feedback has made a difference in how enhancements and updates have been incorporated since the platform’s initial launch,” she says. By maintaining the momentum of their events program through the quick pivot to virtual, as well as the evolution of hybrid and the return to in-person, Katie believes her team helped AMD maintain valuable relationships with their clients. “The success of that drumbeat has led the company into higher program ROI than imaginable,” she adds.

She notes, “Being able to sit down with our vendor partners and create that ecosystem of success, that’s the cornerstone and that’s the building block on which all of your events are successful.” Katie adds that the additional opportunities to not only grow their program, but their professional careers as event marketers and event managers, can only further benefit the business. She says, “I’m so excited at what’s next because we’re going to bigger and better and more professional events, and that’s really exciting.”