Event Strategy That Actually Drives Business Impact

Jennifer Perry (00:00):

And we think of creative as colors and fluff and design and decor. When design is a term of engineering, and when we think about innovation, we think about technology, but without a user interface, it's useless. Without the human way to perceive it or absorb it, it can't happen. So I think we both have a deep respect for the idea that we are problem solvers.

Mark Correira (00:20):

It's really important to really, kind of blur the line in between creative and technology.

Alyssa Peltier (00:25):

Great events, create great brands. But pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences? Well, that takes a village, and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews (00:37):

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu (00:38):

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier (00:39):

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Hey everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. He's back. Matt Heinz is here, one more time in 2025 to break down marketing and events. In this episode, Matt chats with partners in crime at Workhuman, Mark Correira, Director of Go-to-Market Technology, and Jen Perry, Senior Director of Event Content, Creative and Brand as they talk about the power of aligning brand and technology to drive real results. Together, they've built event experiences, especially at their flagship conference that don't just look good, but they also move prospects through the funnel by blending storytelling, data, and hands-on product interaction. This convo might be one of my favorite of the year, so luckily we've saved it, the best for last. Listen in.

Matt Heinz (01:40):

Welcome everybody. Welcome to Cvent CONNECT. I'm excited to kick this off with Mark and Jen from Workhuman. Guys, thanks so much for joining us.

Jennifer Perry (01:47):

Thanks for having us.

Mark Correira (01:47):

Glad to be here.

Matt Heinz (01:48):

So this is kind of a last minute addition to our schedule, which is apropos on brand for conferences and events, as much as we tried to plan them. We were talking before we got started, it's a lot about that sort of chaos and living and leaning into that chaos of events.

Jennifer Perry (01:59):

You have to love it. You have to love the chaos, or this is not the field for you.

Mark Correira (02:03):

Yeah, yeah. I'm ready for it. Thanks.

Matt Heinz (02:06):

So you guys have worked together a long time, right? It's like 10 plus years or something.

Jennifer Perry (02:08):

Yes.

Matt Heinz (02:08):

Just quickly introduce yourselves and the role you play and how you work together. What's the magic there to make success, make events work successful?

Mark Correira (02:14):

I'm Mark Correira, I'm the Director of Go-to-Market Technology at Workhuman. I've been there about 14 years now, and I've been working on Workhuman Live, which is our flagship event since its inception.

Jennifer Perry (02:24):

Yeah, same. So you've been there longer than I have. I've now been with the company for 10 years. I started the same year that we started our big flagship event, and I oversee content and creative for all of our events, which includes a couple in Europe as well as here in the States.

Matt Heinz (02:38):

There's so much we have to talk about here. And the one thing I want to start with is not just producing events, but thinking about event experiences. What's the difference between doing an event and really prioritizing and planning for experiences people have there?

Jennifer Perry (02:50):

I don't think there should be a difference.

Matt Heinz (02:51):

Okay. That's a question you better ask. Yes.

Jennifer Perry (02:54):

So I come from brand and I think that all events are brand expressions, but they're the fullest form of the brand. Somebody said that on stage yesterday, and I loved the way that he said that. I think it was actually your CEO about how the brand expresses itself in 3D, how your people are.

Matt Heinz (03:12):

That's right.

Jennifer Perry (03:12):

All of the fonts, colors, all of the things, but it's really ... What is that statement about? Nobody remembers what you said, it was how you made them feel.

Matt Heinz (03:20):

Exactly. Exactly.

Jennifer Perry (03:20):

And so there's this whole sensory and three-dimensional experience of a brand in its event. It either fails or it succeeds and it's true or it's false when it comes to your brand promise when it's an in-person event.

Mark Correira (03:33):

And I think from my perspective, being in charge of the event technology and those kinds of things, it's important for me to understand and to ensure that our attendee experience is as seamless and as flawless as possible. Jen and I talked in a session we gave yesterday about the best parts of creative and technology are when they're not something memorable, they're almost invisible to the attendee. Like registration, you want that to be a seamless flowy experience that someone comes in, gets their badge and walks away and it doesn't leave a lasting impression in their mind.

Matt Heinz (04:04):

Yeah. Talk about the importance of having the people thinking about the brand and the experience, really collaborating tightly with the tech teams that are producing the events. Because sometimes they don't always speak the same language, right? Talk a little bit about what best practices of making that work.

Jennifer Perry (04:18):

Again, some of the things that we had said yesterday, and I think we talk about all the time is bring your tech people into the conversation early. If I have five ideas and I take those ideas to leadership, they approve one of them. I take the one idea to my tech person when really my perception about how we would implement it on the other four, it might be wrong, it might be incomplete.

Mark might say, "Oh, well, actually, I could make that work. It might be different." So what got approved, it wasn't a true representation of what was possible. And I like to live in the land of the possible and never sleep on a great idea. So if I have five ideas and I take to Mark and he can tell me ... Well, two of those aren't actually viable. If that's the outcome, we need to do different things. But then he can one-up an idea. He could say, "Okay, I could actually make that bigger. I could make that an augmented reality. I could make that all sorts of different things."

Matt Heinz (05:06):

That's right.

Jennifer Perry (05:07): 

How do I achieve that? So bring in your people as early and collaborate with them on the ideas. Let them come up with half the idea.

Matt Heinz (05:15):

Yeah.

Mark Correira (05:15):

And I think that's my role is really to bridge between the creative and the possible, understanding our tech stack and knowing what our limitations and our capabilities are and being able to think not just outside of the box but be able to take an idea or a proposal and be able to pivot that slightly so that it fits more closely with what's feasible within our tech stack and doesn't blow us out of budget or isn't overly complicated for the attendee. So it's important really to have that collaboration and have that give and take so that we can both kind of step on either side of the aisle and I can give Jen some creative feedback or she could give me some technical feedback. "What if it did this? Or what if it was that color?" It's really important to really kind of blur the line in between creative and technology.

Matt Heinz (05:55):

So let's take that another step and talk about the difference between creating those or the integration between creating great experiences at events and getting people into the product. Especially when you're doing, think about the flagship event you have. We're not doing this just to give people great experiences. We need them to keep paying us, right? We're doing this to get new customers, to keep customers happy and loyal. So we want them to see typically we're doing new features, we've got new products we're launching, we want them to get into that, but there's an experience component to that as well. Talk about bringing those together.

Jennifer Perry (06:24):

When technology is, again, siloed in that executional sort of way, they're not often told to think about the business outcomes. And I think when you involve your tech partners and you think about the business outcomes and creative doesn't get too in love with its ideas and you're thinking about the business outcomes, that's when the collaboration really starts to happen. And so we talk a lot.

We're both very friendly and have deep relationships with our sales team and with our customer experience people. We know how the product works. We also use the product at our company. We are the biggest super user of our product and it is a fantastic thing to use. So we have a personal interpretation of it. So when we get together and say, "How do I get somebody to understand this quickly?" Because our competitors like to say that our technology is complicated, and I'm going to say it's robust.

Matt Heinz (07:10):

There you go.

Jennifer Perry (07:11):

And there's a big difference between the two. But at an event, you have the element of time. It's shortened. How do I get you to experience what our product can do for you in a shortened gamified way? So I don't know if you want to explain the gratitude bar, I like how we sort of got to that.

Mark Correira (07:25):

Well, sure. I mean even before we get to that, one thing that we do with our activations are make sure that we tie a line, some type of analogy between what the attendee is experiencing in their activation and some portion of the product. So they're not just running around grabbing swag, water bottles, socks, stress balls, all those kinds of things.

We make sure that almost all of our activations have some common thread that ties back to either a thought leadership or a focus area for the product and some stress point or some issue that the product is trying to solve, but also tie it back to the way that the user might interact with the product. So one thing, as Jen mentioned that we developed over time throughout the event was our version of what we call a gratitude bar.

So, obviously, Workhuman sells rewards and recognition, it's peer to peer, and we came up with kind of an outside of the product, very light version of the rewards and recognition flow that we call the gratitude bar and we activate that within the event via iPads. We have a digital wall that shows the award feeds, so all the moments that are going back and forth between our attendees.

And in recent years, we've actually embedded that into the mobile app as well. So everywhere the attendee goes throughout the event, they have that ability to give and receive recognition and it really takes almost no effort from there to be able to introduce them to a salesperson. And it's really a much warmer introduction into the sales process than it would be if you were just hovering or the salesperson was just hovering, kind of waiting to pull someone into their demo booth. It feels almost car sales mini if it's that way.

But if they have that warm introduction and they say, "Oh, I noticed you just gave a recognition moment to one of your colleagues, why don't you just step over here for a couple minutes and I can show you how you can bring that back to your company and really build and foster culture within your company using our product?"

Jennifer Perry (09:11):

This is one of the ways that I think we get a lot of executive permission and alignment and approval on something that's very expensive. Events are not cheap. We know that being in the business, if you were using events as a cost per lead, that's expensive when you're thinking about it from the business' point of view. And so when we create these activations and things for the users and the attendees to get value out of playing with a thing and networking and learning, but we need to tie it to something in the business.

If I'm going to pay to build some crazy bespoke activation, it's got to tie to the theme of the event pain points of my audience, which is a way that the brand shows our audience, we know you, we understand what your pain points are, and then also tie it to the product. And so every activation ties to performance recognition, gratitude.

We use them a lot to flip myths or preconceived notions about what the product is or what the product can do. How do we use all of these playthings to say, "You think you understand what rewards and recognition are, but not the way we do it. We have something new to show you." And sort of bring them in, like Mark said, to draw them into those deeper sales experiences when they're asking deeper questions or they're interested in it and then it's a little less somebody spraying you with perfume at the mall.

Matt Heinz (10:21):

Yes. Such great event storytelling example so far here. We've got Mark and Jen here from Workhuman. We're outside the Innovation Pavilion at Cvent CONNECT. Mark, you're the Director of Go-To-Market Technology. Jen, you run content, creative and brand, that is oil and water at some companies, but you worked together for 10 years making this work. What's some of the keys to the successful relationship you have working together?

Mark Correira (10:38):

I think the ability to see each other's perspective is something that's important to both of us. We never come into a conversation or even a meeting about the event or anything that we might be trying to do from either a tech or a creative perspective with a hard-set agenda. We always come in open to collaborating, to being able to be flexible on either our ideas or what the end outcome is and the means to get there. So I think that collaborative spirit is really, really important and paramount to us.

Matt Heinz (11:06):

Love that.

Jennifer Perry (11:07):

Yeah, this is one of those places where I want people to think about creative and technology differently. Creative and innovative are two synonyms there. And we think of creative as colors and fluff and design and decor. When design is a term of engineering and when we think about innovation, we think about technology, but without a user interface, it's useless. Without the human way to perceive it or absorb it, it can't happen. So I think we both have a deep respect for the idea that we are problem solvers. We are here to help someone get to someplace better, to some new thing. And we definitely have a no gods no kings mentality when we get into a room to brainstorm it. It's great idea can come from anywhere.

Matt Heinz (11:48):

Good, good, good. I think a lot of people when they design events, even when they talk about doing the next event after something, they use a lot of intuition, they use a lot of emotion, they use a lot of anecdotal evidence. You guys use a lot of data to pull this together. I want to understand what's on that dashboard. What's some of the data you use today to sort of make the next event better?

Mark Correira (12:07):

One thing that we certainly pay a lot of attention to are our session and post-event surveys. We pay huge attention to the comment section. Obviously, we want to know, aside from the questions that we're asking, what are the things that are top of mind for our attendees that we may not be considering even in the questions that we're asking in those surveys.

So it's really important for us to come back, really synthesize all of that data that we come through and compare it year over year. We do the same thing. With our event, we tend to move it around. We don't repeat locations very often and every year is somewhere new.

So we even follow that mantra. Are we too far away from a hotel in this particular city? Are we too far away from the downtown for evening activities? And all of that really goes into a lot of the planning as well around some of the less fun logistical things, like are we having to do shuttles and all that type of stuff. But it really does depend on feedback from our attendees and we're constantly listening. We're always gathering feedback either in person or through an event app or a post-event survey. So that feedback from the attendees is really paramount to us.

Matt Heinz (13:09):

And Jen, I know a lot of branding creative folks that think of data sometimes as a limiter, but I know in your case, it actually gives you flexibility and freedom to use that as a launching pad.

Jennifer Perry (13:17):

Absolutely. And again, our teams are very strategic creatives. We might like the blue ad best, but if it's not performing, it's not worth anything to us. I think our creative team looks at it like a science experiment all the time. How do I make them move, do something different? How do I change a behavior? Even if we launch the agenda a different time every year or big keynote speaker, what effect does that have on registration?

We've learned it doesn't. Our double down data, our double down date year-over-year, we have a decade's worth of data. So sometimes you're like, "Oh, well, was it the location? Was it all these other things that we change about the event? What's steady versus what's flexible?" And it teaches my team what they have power over. Where can we make strides? Where can we test new things? Where can we flip a table and start all over?

Matt Heinz (14:03):

Yeah. You've referenced sales a couple times and I want to dig into that a little bit, because the end of these events, we can talk about experience and everything else, but we're going to look at some hard pipeline numbers at some point and there's a couple angles I want to take on that.

First, as you're designing an event and as you're designing the ... It's like the Innovation Pavilion here, right? Here at Cvent CONNECT, there's a significant portion of that that is Cvent space. How do you design that at Workhuman to not only allow for a great customer and attendee experience, but to give sales the opportunity to do their job?

Jennifer Perry (14:33):

Cvent is only used at events. It is a site-specific technology, right? It's on your websites. It's a part of an event experience. Where human as a technology should be a part of the daily life of all of your humans. I think that design should be on onomatopoeic. It should feel like what it is in every space that it exists, and so they're woven together. There is no space that is without sales, without the product, without the company's brand because it's a philosophy, it's a thought leadership. We're about connecting human beings to one another. And so that should be present in all the spaces.

So while we do have specific places for demos and people to ask a question, that's only by the nature of humans want to know where to go to get breakfast, get coffee, get a thing as far as wayfinding is concerned, but we try to weave their experience in, they attend the sessions, they go to the parties. We want sales to be there to create relationships. I don't want to say this too loudly. I don't care how many demos they show, as long as they have deep conversations and connections with the people who matter, we're going to measure things like how many demos did we have. Of course, those things have to exist in the day-to-day of the business, but really it's about creating spaces for them to have connection that then exemplifies this conversation was so great, we worked together. I would've given you a recognition moment and we would've changed the culture of our company together. And to give sales that narrative is paramount to our company.

Matt Heinz (15:57):

I think that's so important. I want to reiterate that for the people in the back that may not be listening. In the room, the experience you have, it's not the only opportunity to sell. It sets up future opportunities. Sometimes three steps is faster than one. And so engineering that and reiterating that and then getting consensus from the sales team to sort of be patient and to be disciplined to do that the right way, that isn't always an easy thing to get done.

Mark Correira (16:20):

No, absolutely. And we also spend a lot of time thinking about opportunities for putting those attendees in front of our sales reps. So even when we design our Workhuman Central, which is what we call our trade show floor at Workhuman Live, we do spend a lot of time thinking about traffic flow, traffic pattern. We tend to use a lot of either quadrant based or hub and spoke model so that everything flows through the center of that space.

And one other feature that we tend to keep year over year is putting our main stage content adjacent to Workhuman Central. And we use that as a forcing function so that the only way in and out of main stage is to pass through that trade show floor. It's forced traffic and it might seem like something that's trivial, but the amount of conversations that happen even in that transition time in between leaving main stage and going to a breakout session are just another opportunity to get our attendees in front of our sales folks.

Jennifer Perry (17:09):

I think that's one of the places where I believe that language is where you win the game of brand. And so as they come out of main stage where they've heard all of the language that we want them to hear, whether it's from our speakers or people we've hired, we have a thematic narrative. People have come to talk about certain ideas. They walk into this space and we reiterate those words are on signage, whether it's digital signage that's moving or a stagnant signage that's there so that they're receiving these messages over and over throughout it. And then the sales team bringing it down to a conversational level where they've been surrounded by a whole concept. It's a 360 understanding of the brand.

Matt Heinz (17:42):

Love it. All right. We only got a couple minutes left to finish up with you guys. I want to do a lightning round question for each of you. So we talk about best practices. I want a cautionary tale. It can be a dumpster fire, but I want a short, very short story of something that you would recommend other people avoid in doing events based on your experience.

Mark Correira (17:59):

I'll say over-complicating registration. We talked about this in our session as well, but at one point we had 18 different badge types that needed to be printed at registration. And just taking all of that philosophy and all of those touch points and simplifying that down to as few, that's still accomplished the same goals.

Matt Heinz (18:16):

That was fantastic.

Jennifer Perry (18:17):

Same in creative, over-complicating, too many names, too many colors, too many elements. We did this one year where every space had 17 things going on, and I was like, "That's so confusing." And one of the places where we realized how confusing it was is we were trying to consolidate it into the app, and I was like, "Why does this have 92 ways to categorize itself?" Which was unnecessary. It was very pretty and very shiny, but also not simple, not this easy from the user perspective.

Matt Heinz (18:40):

Yeah. Less is more.

Jennifer Perry (18:41):

Yes, less is more.

Matt Heinz (18:41):

For the user, for the experience for you to have to produce this as well.

Jennifer Perry (18:44):

Yes.

Matt Heinz (18:45):

It's a great lesson. Awesome. Mark and Jen from Workhuman, thank you guys so much for joining us today.

Jennifer Perry (18:49):

Thanks so much.

Mark Correira (18:49):

Thanks so much. A pleasure to be here.

Matt Heinz (18:50):

Thanks.

Jennifer Perry (18:51):

This was great.

Alyssa Peltier (18:54):

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews (19:03):

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers, just like you, discover great events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu (19:13):

Stay connected with us on social media for behind the scenes content, updates and some extra doses of inspiration.

Rachel Andrews (19:20):

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Felicia Asiedu (19:31):

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier (19:40):

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.