Get Connected: A Sneak Peek of What’s to Come at Cvent CONNECT 2023

Intro: Great events create great brands, and it takes a village to put on an event that engages, excites and connects audiences to your brand. And we're that village. I'm Alyssa. I'm Paulina. And I'm Rachel. And you're listening to great events, the podcast for all people interested in events and marketing.

Paulina: Hi everyone. Welcome to Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. For today's episode, we are very excited to welcome one of our amazing colleagues, Robin Clark, who is the senior manager of trade shows and events at Cvent. And before we get into this great conversation I'm also joined by my co-host Alyssa Peltier.

And we're going to just kick it with Robin and talk about all the amazing things related to her particular role, sales enablement, and how it relates to our total events program. So with that, Robin, welcome and would love for you to just introduce yourself to our listeners today.

Robin Clark: Oh yes. Frankly, you already did a great job there, Paulina, so thank you for that. I am Robin. I'm so very excited to be here with some of my work besties and favorite colleagues and really can't wait to get started. I've been with Cvent for something shy of a decade and have had a whole gamut of roles but all within the events space.

So most recently I focus half my time on our trade shows. We spend a lot of time at trade shows at Cvent and event marketing. So today I think I'm a guest. You guys correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm a guest to lend some words on the event marketing front for our beloved Cvent CONNECT. If I'm not wrong.

Alyssa: Yeah. Paulina, you said we're going to kick it with Robin. I think we're rolling with Robin

Paulina: We're rolling with Robin.

Robin Clark: are we rocking and rolling

Alyssa: rocking and rolling with Robin. Even better. Love an alliteration moment.

Robin Clark: Yes. And I'll sing for you. No, I won’t, but I would do the Rock and Robin anyway. Carry on. Carry on. Carry on.

Paulina: Okay. I feel let's start with a question. We're thinking about Cvent CONNECT taking place in Las Vegas. I think we're just a mere what, just under two months, month and a half out. And I think we've done a great job of promoting it and, it's, the same great content that our customers and, year over year attendees are used to.

We've got some really great surprises, which we'll get into in a little bit, but, I think I want to focus today's conversation on our secret weapon, which is our event marketing

Robin Clark: Me.

Paulina: Robin

Paulina: and whether you're listening and you're a one person, show whether your customers and prospects are referred to as potential leads or if it's growing your membership organization.

I think what's really important for us to talk about today is how you enable the colleagues who are customer facing, Whether they're sales reps, whether they're customer or client success reps, and how you inform them of the value of your events program so that it translates and converts to really incredible registrations.

And so I'd love Robin, you to take us through, what it looks like. When you're preparing a sales kickoff, a sales enablement kickoff. And what are the first steps that you take? How do you think about the project management of it? Yeah, and we'll go from there.

Robin Clark: Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. Usually if I'm going to run a sales kickoff, I usually start about one day before I'm going to host it, which is. Almost a joke, but not really. So there is some prep work that goes into it. My dear colleagues know that any time I'm putting together a presentation, it legitimately does come together in the last 24 hours and it's good work guys.

I do my best work then but the conversation’s around what do we need to be sharing? How do we need to be sharing it? What's going to jazz up our team? What's going to get them motivated? What do they want to hear? What's going to be too much to hear? All that, those conversations start pretty early on, and it's an, it's ever evolving and cumulative feedback year over year, we always just get to improve on it, right? This is something that we will never not do. And so we take our feedback from prior CS kickoffs. We have client services when we say CS client services, so those client facing front lines, they're working with our clients all day, every day.

Same on the sales side. These two organizations are most critical, I think, in this promotion action activity because not only are they delivering the information, they have the, like the real time voice, the real time they can carry it through in their passion for the event. They can make things much more particular, clear, provide a degree of clarity than we can do in an email or in a social media post or whatever. They have that degree of exposure to our clients and prospects. They also are able to take immediate, real-time feedback, which is incredible because that gives us, so I get in front of my sales team, I tell them all the things.

They go out into the world, they start talking to all of our folks about it, and they can immediately start to say, Robin, We're missing the ball on this, we've got to slightly adjust our programming or what we're saying or what we're doing, or when is this going to be available. They're able to give that in real time, which is great.

So going back to what, what goes into the preparation? I meet with a lot of our sales leaders. Not too many cooks in the kitchen. Just the right number of cooks in the kitchen most of the time. I think and we really do, we nail what is the essential, like sales motivated by numbers, right? We're going to need to talk numbers, we're going to need to roll up numbers, we're going to need to know our goals, right?

Sales motivated by, I just want to know exactly what I can tell my people, right? Give me, they can riff, right? But they need that minimal talk track. They need that minimal email template. They need, like just gimme the baseline Robin. And so we'll talk through that. CS very similarly, they are client services.

They need to understand what's sales doing, right? Has sales been assigned a task? A have they been told to go out and call Joe? Sally? Betty, right? That way CS knows. Okay. Joe, Sally, Betty, sales has already talked to him. I know contextually where I'm picking up on the conversation. And then finally, and this is the biggest part, is spending the time with sales and CS is my favorite part of my job.

I get to crunch a lot of numbers and come up with a lot of strategic stuff and mostly just give opinions that sometimes are helpful. But I really get to just work with people, right? I get to I come with a certain degree of charisma maybe, and I like to lead with that with my sales and my CS partners because they need to pass that same passion through to our clients, to our prospects, because Cvent CONNECT any of the events where Cvent is present. It's a big frigging deal, right? It's exciting. What they are asking their clients to come participate in is a really, it's a missed opportunity if you're not there.

Alyssa: I have a question for you. How do you transfer that energy to, you're like two to three degrees removed when you're working through sales management and then get to the front lines. How do you prepare to transfer that energy? Obviously our planning group here, Paulina and Robin being part of that, get very passionate about what it is that they do, but you have to now transfer that to an additional team.

So how do you go about preparing your keynotes?

Robin Clark: Alright. So a lot of layers I think we. Nothing is a one-touch, right? I can't have a kickoff meeting with sales and CS and they just know what to say and they run with it and they're good to go. It does take a lot of nurturing, right? I need to be available. Our core team here needs to be available.

I. To sales and CS to answer just like very, like baseline questions at all times. But best of all, I spend time in, in some of our department meetings, right? I get to hear like we have sales development reps, our SDRs, they're like really frontline sales reps, right? They are out there making the most calls.

They're talking to the most people. They're outbound prospecting folks, right? And they do a lot of role playing. And it is so much fun for me to be present. When I hear them role play because I'm able to give, first of all, cheering them on because it is incredibly intimidating to talk about something that you really understand about 3% of.

And we ask them to go talk about it, like they're experts. So saying, Hey, it's, that was great. It's really okay if you don't know exactly what you're talking about, here's a resource that can help you, massage your way through the conversation. And if they have a question that you don't know the answer to. Super easy. Let me go find that out for you. Not a big deal at all, right? But being that kind of I'm Robin, real person. I'm available to you sales. I'm available to you, CS, you have a question? Let's talk it through. Let's ideate, let's figure out the right way to address this. We've got an objection, we can overcome it.

But it takes a lot of that. It's it is a significant portion of my time and part of my job is being available to sales in two Cs to make sure that they are confident because they have to have some degree of understanding. And like we say all the time, we are so buried in this event. We know way too much about it.

And even I still get confused. I still have to go back and check my notes. Wait, what was it? What I priced this event? What did I price this event again like? Constantly checking myself, so just being available and making them feel confident in knowing that they don't have to know everything at all times.

Alyssa: I think the other thing that you had mentioned too was the goals, but also incentives associated to that. Because you're talking with a group of individuals who are highly motivated by numbers and also the awareness that they stand to gain a lot of revenue potential from an event like Event CONNECT.

I don't think it's a mystery for anybody who's listening here that Cvent CONNECT is a user conference. We do, hinge a lot of our end of year sales on the conversations that happen at that event. So I think instilling that passion and understanding of what they stand to gain and potentially what they stand to lose by not having passion in those conversations and not getting those individuals to the event, I think is equally motivating for those professionals though.

Robin Clark: absolutely. And I don't want to misquote the data, but those that are in attendance, so like that, what's the skin in the game? What, why should I care? Kind of sales rep perspective there. Those that attend their clients, that attend Cvent CONNECT are. Significantly more likely to sign with Cvent, they are significantly more interested to purchase the product because what they're doing is stepping into this immersive case study at these events, and they're able to start to see things come to life around them.

They're able to get that inspiration of, this is how I can use Cvent to my advantage. I want to buy more of your things. So that's where sales starts to really see that. It pay off, right? I put a lot of, I like put a lot of emphasis into getting these people there. Why am I doing it?

Also, we know that ultimately this drives greater business to Cvent and so we incentivize sales accordingly. We incentivize CS accordingly. Sometimes it's with a little gift card spiff. Sometimes it's, Hey, take the next hour to blitz your tasks. And other times it's literally built into their compensation plans where you are paid directly based on the number of registrations that you get to Cvent CONNECT because we know that this is going to turn into pipeline and bookings. This is a revenue generator period. We all know it, so we incentivize accordingly.

Paulina: I think you started to touch on something here, and I think a lot of the people tuning in would benefit from this, but in addition to Robin's passion and flair for appealing to our sales stakeholders, our CS reps, there is an enormous amount of support resources beyond the accessibility, right?

Beyond reaching out to her one-off via slack, right? Or scheduling a meeting with her or giving her a call. There is a, when I say enormous, enormous amount of resources that she and her team have developed that are meant to streamline any kind of frequently asked questions that are for internal purposes, but, beyond that, this sales enablement approach, right?

Trying to get more customized for the attendees who are joining us on site, trying to make it feel that we have a space for everyone to really gain a lot out of coming to Cvent CONNECT. And a little bit of that is, in our email communications really having a very customized approach to that, but also collateral right here is, here's a guide, an attendee guide for a marketer. Tell us a little bit about how you and your team have taken it up, another level in terms of this customized approach.

Robin Clark: Absolutely. So first of all, it's mostly my team. I do much less than they do. I have an incredible team, mostly of one. And she's phenomenal. Blow the roof off the place. Killer, right? And what she develops, what we develop is based on what we see in our trends, in our attendee behaviors, registration numbers and in that data, right?

We know that we've got. We are inviting our hotel leaders, our hospitality professionals to attend our event. We're event inviting our event professionals to attend our event. And within both of those categories, it does break down to a certain degree of pretty clear cut personas, right?

So when we start to launch our agenda, the first thing that we want to do is equip directly put into the hands of our registrants, this resource, and also to put into the hands of our sales and CS Reps so they also can leverage this. But those attendee guides that Paulina referenced, and those are broken down by persona.

So I'm a marketer, right? I, here are the value props that I specifically am going to be getting out of this event. Here is a recommended curated agenda just to start. You can take it any number of directions that you want to go, but here is a start at your curated agenda that we know you would be so benefited by.

Sitting in attending, engaging, networking with your peers, right? Calling out all of that level of detail to that persona level. And then what we further do, if you go out onto our website or if you, once you've registered and you're in attendee hub and you're navigating, we have an incredibly methodical buildout of our filters, right?

I am of a specific vertical. I am life sciences. I am higher ed. Please speak to me. Steven. Tell me what I need to know. We got you right. Filter out exactly to that level. You can filter by your experience level. You could, all of these things are at our finger. Our attendees fingertips for that very purpose.

We want to cut out as much noise as we can and make it so digestible as soon as they register to understand this is the experience that I can have, this is the value I'm going to be able to glean from it. And really creating those resources just as piece as Paulina’s dag nav. It's P internally, guys, I'm sure that's several times in this podcast prior, but when I say p I'm talking about Paulina.

You. Exactly what she referenced. Those attendee guides, the other resources, everything that we have out on the website, every word on our website is man, a lot of time goes into planning exactly what we put out there because we want to bring forward what we know our attendees are just so desperate to hear, to see, to understand about this event.

And so it takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of, let's cut that out. That's too much white noise. Let's keep this forward. This is going to be, this is the most simplistic, straightforward, clear cut way that we can deliver this information. Let's go.

Paulina: Yeah. And just, those attendee guides are, like Robin said, featured on the website. So if you're looking for inspiration for how to incorporate this in your own program planning, definitely encourage you all to check those out. I feel like now's a good point to say, okay, what are we maybe doing a little bit differently this year at Cvent CONNECT?

And maybe give a couple highlights of what's going, what's been going well, what's different

Robin Clark: I love that.

Paulina: I'll kick it off and then I'll throw you, Robin, you tell me. Okay, so this year we branded, if you will, the conference. It's part industry event, part user conference and boy oh boy, are we we're, the weight is a lot on user conference.

We have, I think, tripled the number of training camps we're offering this year. So in addition to them being complimentary or as a part of your conference registration, we are now offering upwards of 25 unique titles. And so we're really excited about that. And of course, that informs a lot of our strategy, right?

People are hungry for training, workshop style programming. And so a lot of this and how it, plays out on site is going to be super informative to our event design practices for next year, and certainly inform a lot of our event marketing tactics next year. What else? What else are we doing differently or anything you want to add to that, Robin, as it relates to

Robin Clark: My, what I'm most excited about and what's really been pretty fun to promote internally with our sales, with our CS. And To some extent through some of our communications, it gets difficult to get to this layer of granularity. But man, the something for everyone. Take Cvent’s organization, for example, we have a full gamut from our CMO to our VPs. To our director of events who heads up all of our global events. We have hundreds and thousands all over the globe, all under the, at with our director of global events at the helm, we have the mes and the Paulina’s like running various aspects of our events. So from our Leadership Summit, which is for our director of global events to the training camp, which is for the Paulina’s in the Rachel's in the room to all of our incredible sessions and getting into innovation pavilion and sourcing the entire years, worth of sourcing in one day at our trade show.

Some of this is new. Some of this is year over year, but the beauty is that this year, more than any year prior, We have taken into account there is someone, something for everyone. Make sure your team is there and then lest I forget, come on. You can't be with us in Vegas. That's heartbreaking and we will miss you, but definitely join us virtually and every single human that I just spoke about, they're going to glean something very different from this conference.

You take that opportunity to, we facilitate it on site in a number of our networking and free workspace areas, but sit down with your team. What was your takeaway from your morning keynote? What was your takeaway from your morning sessions? What did you get to touch, feel, experience in the innovation pavilion that might be different than what your colleague did?

It's that kind of mentality, that kind of experience, and I'm so excited to hear from our clients this year. Just, top to bottom the full gamut of experiences and takeaways that folks are going to be coming away with. It's second to none. I am so excited about it. The promotion, again, like I said, promoting that from the sales and CS perspective is something I'm particularly jazzed about.

And. It's not exactly like our forte right now. Like it takes a little bit of guys, don't forget, it's not that only training camp is the way to get the best out of this event. Like you've got to remember, it's literally every piece of programming. Our tech tours, oh my gosh, you guys, the most popular, most jazzed about piece of our programming are these tech tours. These behind the scenes. Let me see the tech action, that kind of exposure. It's reminding sales and CS. Don't forget, there's something for everyone. Let's understand the programming and be able to speak to it. So fun. So fun.

Alyssa: I will, I'll add to the conversation too here something that I'm particularly excited about, and this is coming from somebody who will impart be staffing the event, helping to support a lot of our client facing programs, but I get to attend some of the things a little bit more than our event planning team does.

So something that I'm personally really excited about are the keynotes that have been secured for this year. I think they are exceptionally unique and very different from what's been sourced in the past for this conference and for other conferences, for that matter. What you typically see at a user slash industry show like this might be athletes big celebrity names, those kind of big budget, big draw, big brand type personas. This year I think our team has taken a little bit more of a different angle, a different strategy, and trying to leave our customers with more inspiration and creativity, which at the end of the day, I think we are in a room or in a in the company of so many creative professionals as event planners.

Yeah, we handle a lot of the logistics, but I do think at the end of it, there is such a core competency surrounding creativity, and There are, and Paulina, I'll ask you their exact names because I don't remember them because they aren't, the, it's not, Tom Brady or Oprah who's coming/

Paulina: Not that we would turn them down, let's be clear.

Alyssa: We wouldn't turn them down, but Right. We're being really strategic about our investment in making sure that we leave the audience with something not just tangible but inspiring. I think that's one of the key motivators in, in the design of this conference. So I'll let Paulina testify to who these individuals are.

Paulina: Each year we really try to tick, three, three boxes per speaker, right? There's got to be, obviously they have to have a business lens of our industry and be able to speak to it, right? That's table stakes. But then there's this like emotive response that we want to come from our attendees because whether everyone wants to admit it in the meetings and events world, I think we should all consider ourselves creatives.

And so there's that emotive response where someone feels like they're emotionally appealed or relating to the person on stage’s story, their passion for what they do etc. And then the second piece is really around, our traditional event, professional role. That creative, seeing, ideating something and then seeing it come to life, right?

And how all of those come to life on stage. So when we were looking at potential speakers and working very closely with our partner speaker bureaus, looking at Hannah Beachler and her story and her sort of crescendo to success and there are some really important conversations happening across all industries, whether it's about accessibility or diversity, equity and inclusion.

And she is someone that we think reflects success across all of those sort of thought leadership discussions and I'm really excited for everyone to hear it. Not only is she a creative and, a successful academy award-winning production designer for, let me just drop them, Beyonce's Lemonade music video, Wakanda forever. But she has all of these intentional decisions that she makes for her business, right? She is thinking about, I want, minority members to be on staff. I want to do the deep reflection and research to ensure that what I'm designing on set is a reflection of authentic experiences and authentic decisions.

I think a lot of us of event professionals can relate to that, right? Whether it's, an executive boardroom meeting or if it's, an inspirational incentive trip. There's the spectrum is of opportunity to relate to her intentional design decisions is definitely there.

I'm not going to spoil anything yet for Wednesday morning, but Wednesday morning is it going to be a hugely impressive panel conversation. We'll do a whole probably episode around that.

Alyssa: That's a good teaser.

Paulina: Yeah, Wednesday afternoon, Deanna Marsigliese, she is the director, creative director for Pixar. And she is just, another creative in call it the, Hollywood realm, but a completely different angle.

The hottest conversation right now is anything related to AI, and I am so excited to hear her talk about animated design and the thought of finding creativity in perhaps some of the most typical or normal circumstances. The coolest thing about this session, it's interactive. It's going to be a workshop.

Every single person in the room is going to have a pen or pencil in hand, and they're going to be leaving with a tangible takeaway and hopefully some creative inspiration of how they think about whether it's their day-to-day interaction with sort of the regular regularity of life or inspiration for designing unique experiences.

And then not to play favorites, but I am so unbelievably excited for Thursday's closing keynote Jennifer Hyman, who is the CEO and Co-founder of Rent the Runway. She, to me, embodies what it is to be a female boss, right? She is just breaking down ceilings and barriers and came up with this really unbelievably creative, sustainable, community built concept that is a booming business and she's going to, her conversation is going to be very much about her story and how it started and how it's been activated and extended by virtue of building a community and what that community is getting from the experience economy. And I just think there's a lot of synergy between the meetings and events industry and how Rent the Runway has it's seen a rollercoaster effect of, the economy shifting, expanding, and what have you, and navigating to a very digital first space. I think a lot of us in events have still that digital first mindset over the last two years. So I think I've talked entirely too much..

Alyssa: I also the last piece to call out on that too, Paulina, is I don't think it's an accident that there's three powerhouse women who are gracing the main stage. Plus, I don't know what's planned for Wednesday morning, but I assume there will be a woman involved in it as well. But I think that's indirect reflection of what our industry is comprised of, meaning an event professionals. I think the latest stat was somewhere around 70% plus or minus a handful of digits. There was a profession dominated by women. So I think that the way that Cvent CONNECT comes to life is really a reflection of those that come to this conference.

We want to make sure that they're getting not only the right content, but it's being delivered by the right voices as well. Hats off to you guys, Paulina and Robin, and the whole planning team for developing this. Entire agenda, because I think this year is going to be quite stellar as we are now in this true post pandemic recovery mode, it really is like cause for celebration. So can't wait to be in Vegas in the next, what, eight weeks or so. It's going to be great.

Robin Clark: Yep.

Paulina: Going to be here before we know it I feel like we've covered a lot. I apologize. I spoke entirely too much. It just shows you how excited and passionate our whole team is about this event, about making it a memorable experience for our customers. And like Robin mentioned, if you aren't able to join us on site, you can still have a really powerful and memorable experience by tuning in virtually.

Robin, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today. We can't wait to have you on another one. You just bring a whole new level of energy.

Alyssa: I have one more question for you. Where can people register for Cvent CONNECT if they're listening and want to join us?

Robin Clark: CventCONNECT.com. Go right now. Go right now. Yes, absolutely it is at your fingertips. If you want to drop in Google, Cvent CONNECT 2023, you'll find it very first SEO. Okay. All right. So you'll see that pop up. We would absolutely love to have you. Please don't miss it. We will just be delighted. We are very jazzed. We have a lot in store and we're just excited to hear from you all and, and just see it, hug your neck, all the things.

Paulina: Hug your neck is a Robin Clark phrase that I just absolutely adore. She is true to that phrase too. If you guys. If you have enjoyed our conversation today and you are interested in perhaps reaching out to Robin, sorry to put you on the spot, maybe send her a quick direct message on LinkedIn.

She's got a whole wealth of just unbelievable experience and resources that I'm sure she would love to share with our industry peers. But thank you all so much for joining us. If you have any topics that you would like us to add to our 2023 season, send us a DM on LinkedIn, Instagram, or send us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Thank you so much again for tuning in to great events. See you on the next one.