Marketers are Using Event Tech to Increase ROI, Lead Generation and Revenue

As revenue generators, field marketers play a central role in their company’s success. They do this by serving as chief liaisons between marketing and sales teams. They work in tandem with these departments to generate leads, feed sales funnels, drive brand awareness, accelerate marketing outreach, and ultimately generate higher earnings.

How field marketers achieve these goals can vary depending on the industry they’re in and the targets they need to reach. But it’s safe to say that just about all of them were relying heavily on the tactics of in-person field events before the pandemic.

When health concerns led to the cancellation of those in-person experiences, ever-adaptable field marketers rose to the challenge by transitioning to virtual events. They relied on multiple event technologies to help them produce, execute, and measure the success of these digital experiences.

Hosting more virtual events organically increased field marketers’ adoption of event technologies. In doing so, they found that the use of event tech contributed to a higher ROI and generated a better quality of sales leads. So much so that field marketers have continued to leverage powerful event technologies once in-person events resumed.

Centralized event marketing improves ROI

Today, event technologies used primarily for virtual experiences are now being applied to all kinds of events—big or small, digital, hybrid or in-person. Because of this, field marketers are spending more time managing an increasingly large tech stack, putting them at risk of losing the ROI benefits that the applications initially delivered.

Here’s the thing though, field marketers that utilize an event marketing platform that centralizes event planning and design processes, facilitates collaboration across teams, and integrates event data with existing CRM systems will continue to see a healthy return on their investment, and I’ll tell you why.

1. Lower Cost per Acquisition (CPA) increases ROI

Using an event marketing platform that allows branded events to be quickly replicated and centralizes all attendee data helps field marketers produce high-quality events faster, and with less financial investment. Prospects and customers acquired at a cost-effective event are captured at a lower CPA, improving both the event’s ROI and the field marketing team’s overall efficiency.

2. Strategic networking elevates ROI

Using multiple event technologies means viewing multiple data insights. Put these insights under one roof, and field marketers have a better chance of identifying and seizing opportunities when they present themselves.

For example, when the response rate for event invitations and digital ads is easily viewable, field marketers can assess which ones generate the most (or least) responses.

They can then adjust their approach in real-time, changing messaging, images, subject lines and even expanding invitee lists to ensure high event attendance.

Field marketers can also improve event ROI by using session attendance to pre-plan their event networking. This ensures that they are prepared to engage with top prospects that attend their sessions.

3. Accessible event resources improve future ROI

A comprehensive event platform serves as a multi-application repository, hosting previous event materials, graphics, and data insights. Utilizing this repository during event planning creates a snowball effect that increasingly improves ROI and reduces costs.

After all, it’s much easier to repurpose transcripts from Q&A sessions and reuse presentation graphics when assets are consolidated. It’s also easier to maintain brand consistency when all event design components are centralized in one platform.

Not only that, but field marketers can also improve the value offering of future events by reviewing which sessions generated the most audience interaction and applying that intelligence to guide future event themes, invitations and marketing.

Post-event data can feed your sales funnel

The data intelligence that event technologies collectively deliver can improve lead generation year-round, but only if the data is easy to access.

Insights like which sessions were most effective at keeping attendees engaged can be used to make sales follow-up more impactful, too. Leads go from cold to hot when post-event communication includes a topic that targets want to learn more about.

Your marketing strategy stands to benefit from accessible post-event data too. For example, email campaigns typically achieve a higher response rate when lists are segmented for personalization. Field marketers can merge event attendance lists with outside campaign lists, expanding a marketing team’s ability to segment and target their email messaging.

When it comes to improving your brand’s overall voice and content strategy, harnessing the right post-event insights can yield major results.

Reviewing things like event Q&A transcripts helps in understanding customer pain points, and empowers companies to create engaging content for blogs, social media, and thought leadership pieces that will resonate deeply with their target audience.

Get your event tech together

If you worked remotely at any time during this pandemic, the chances are high that you’ve increased your use of communication apps like Teams and Slack, as well as file-sharing platforms like SharePoint and Google Docs. Field marketers that are producing events have experienced the same increase in work-related technology, only in triplicate.

Hosting online events made even the most die-hard Excel devotees loosen their grip and adopt technologies explicitly built for event production and outreach. In doing so, field marketers learned that event tech, and especially comprehensive event marketing technology was the best way forward.

I would urge any field marketer who is currently Alt + Tab’ing their day away to consider using a centralized event marketing platform. Doing so will not only make your life easier but will increase event ROI, feed your sales funnel, and improve marketing outreach all year round.

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Billy Bahnsen is the Senior Field Marketing Manager at Splash. He is responsible for strategizing with revenue teams to uncover net-new and drive expansion opportunities. Before his time at Splash, Billy partnered with sales and success teams as a Field Marketing lead at PagerDuty, Anaplan and Tagetik (now Wolters Kluwer).