Event Management Blog - Driving High ROI Events!

Picture this: you’re exhibiting at one of your largest revenue-generating events of the year and your check-in time exceeds two minutes and the line at your booth is 20 people deep. Your check-in process is slow, leading to a backup of your pre-scheduled appointments. Slow check-in creates a stressful environment for your attendees, booth staff, and sales team, and negatively affects the user experience. So how can you optimize your check-in process at crucial events to maximize sales and marketing opportunities? Dealertrack, the largest automotive solution provider faced this exact problem. However, by leveraging Certain’s Event Automation, Dealertrack decreased event check-in time by 50% and easily reached their aggressive sales goals. (Read More)

I’ll admit it. I’m a marketing technology geek. I’m always on the lookout for the latest cool, innovative technologies that can help my demand generation and marketing team become even more productive and successful. (Read More)

Events play an important role in any marketing effort and a successful event means higher ROI and an increase in attendee engagement. In order for events to be successful, the right strategies and support need to be in place, whether it’s new event tech, Event Automation, or a great venue. But what’s an event’s best friend? An Event App. (Read More)

What if you could cut your planning time in half for your next Silicon Valley event? Well, now you can with our holiday event planning kit! It features a master event plan, top Silicon Valley locations, and tips and themes for throwing your next event that’ll wow your attendees. (Read More)

Having the best swag at any event is crucial to get attendees to visit your booth and convert them into potential customers. When you attend events, you’ll notice that companies who bring  alluring swag are swarmed by attendees and companies who bring uninspired swag are ignored and fade quietly into the background. Make sure you cut through the noise at your next event by understanding what separates good swag from lackluster swag so you can bring your swag A-game! (Read More)

The annual company holiday party might be viewed by your coworkers as the event of the year, while others might be doing the wallflower side-step, doing anything and everything to avoid it. For those of us on the officially sanctioned social committees, this means that we are blessed with finding the ideal venue and plan for a holiday party for partygoers of all stripes — a plan that provides enough boredom relief to minimize any regrettable shenanigans and also pleases the more discriminating trendsetters on your team.   (Read More)

It’s the holiday season, which means you’re probably struggling to find thank you presents and thoughtful marketing gifts that show your team that you care. Last minute gift shopping is common, but the hardest part about gift shopping is finding that perfect gift that is both thoughtful and breathtaking, right? (Read More)

Are you looking to increase marketing engagement during the winter months? You’re not alone, the myth of the B2B marketing slump during the holidays is a strong misconception, when in reality, successful B2B companies often experience a holiday spike in sales if they plan properly. So how can you leverage targeted outreach, events, and marketing strategies to rake in sales before the end of your quarter? (Read More)

Are you wondering what is killing your marketing conversions at events and preventing you from reaching your targeted amount of event leads? 20-25% of a company’s marketing budget is spent on event marketing. Knowing this, you begin to understand that events are an invaluable marketing strategy for companies, and need to be done right. By creating a successful event, and enabling conversions, marketers can provide credible ROI from their events and optimize their efforts. (Read More)

You’ve put the time in for planning your big event and you’ve used social media to generate buzz and interest. But how do you increase engagement on social media once you’ve got people in the door? There are lots of ways to engage with prospects through social media – and continue the conversation once your event has started. (Read More)

Did you know that utilizing event surveys is a successful technique for B2B lead generation? When used correctly, surveys can make sure that your event is a success by enabling marketers and event planners to capture attendee insights on the event. This data can be used to measure event success and leveraged for future events, helping keep attendees happy and leads generating. (Read More)

One of the considerations when creating an event app for your meeting, conference or trade show is the type of login, or authentication, you will require for your app. Deciding the type of login you want can be a bit confusing because you have so many choices. Apps on the Apple App and Google Play […] (Read More)

Want to increase and update your marketing resource library? The modern marketing landscape is constantly changing and evolving, meaning that sources of information are changing as well. A resource that was once relevant becomes irrelevant and a new one takes its place rapidly. Because of this, it is hard to maintain a well-kept marketing resource library that has up-to-date and relevant information for all your marketing needs. But don’t worry! Ahead of you is a carefully selected list of resources (in no particular order) for general marketers, event planners, demand gen professionals, and event marketers. (Read More)

While I’m at Dreamforce, I’m recalling when I first started my job as an editor at a New York lifestyle magazine, one of the first questions that I was asked by my Editor in Chief was: do you know what guerilla marketing is? This was back in 2008 before ambush marketing was a thing, when blogs were “new,” web design was clunky, and phrases like ‘below the fold’ actually held weight. So, I poured over copies of Adweek, I bought a book on guerilla marketing, and soon, I was that annoying editor adding comments on popular blogs and articles like: “Great post, for more information on top fashion trends, read [Insert my magazine’s article].” Every time I hit the comment button, even if I was providing valuable information or a link to an article that readers might actually enjoy, I felt skeezy. Where was the line between being helpful and being self-promotional? Instead of feeling like I was using an innovative form of social networking, I felt like I was spamming the comments section. It made me wonder, is guerilla marketing for everyone? Where does good personal branding end and bad form begin? (Read More)

As a Product Manager at Certain, I realize the importance of marketing metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs), and how to measure successful events. In high-performing marketing teams, success is not measured by lead volume, but by lead quality. So marketers are not only tasked with crafting quality content, but in honing in on their unique persona-set, capturing data that provides marketers with the information that they need to send out personalized follow-up campaigns, and then ensuring that this data is tracked, leveraged, and most importantly, delivers results. (Read More)

Want to learn how to network at Dreamforce 2016? With this event right around the corner, it’s important to gear up and prepare yourself so you can network effectively. Networking at events is a crucial component in meeting prospects, strengthening partner relationships, and expanding your industry knowledge. Events are excellent opportunities to accomplish these objectives. With such a large group of people who share interests in similar products and services all in one place at one time, it makes them a very efficient way for you to meet people in your field, and learn first-hand from prospects, customers, and vendors. (Read More)

When you’re blogging to promote an event, what are event blogging best practices and how can you get your content to create buzz, increase qualified attendees, and generate leads, before, during, and after your event? Event blogging needs to present information in a way that hasn’t been done before, generate interest around your event, and also provide valuable, compelling reasons to attend your event. Let’s get started on how you can use event blogging to drive demand at events. (Read More)

Marketing Nation Online is not only an excellent opportunity to level up your data-driven marketing skills and become a digital marketing expert; this year, you can also win big! Certain has teamed up with PFL, Vidyard, and EverString to bring you the ultimate Marketing Scavenger Hunt. All you have to do is watch our presentation How to Build a High-Converting Event Experience with Event Automation and visit our partner’s booths for your chance to win an Airbnb vacation, plane tickets, or lift tickets. You can check-off becoming a digital, video, event, and predictive marketing expert and get some well deserved R & R. Let the games begin! (Read More)

69% of B2B marketers consider in-person events effective, making the need to scale events one of the most important strategies for modern marketers. Events present great opportunities to promote your product, network, and collect rich data that can then be used later by your marketing and sales teams. Because of new technology, events have become a wealth of attainable information, and by utilizing marketing and event automation, you can increase lead conversion and scale your events across your enterprise. Here is an overview of the valuable tips you will learn in our How Marketing and Event Automation Help You Scale Enterprise Events guide. (Read More)

As we approach event season, wouldn’t it be awesome if, instead of experiencing event management disasters, we could prevent event planning nightmares? With thousands of marketers developing their event marketing strategy for Marketing Nation Online, Dreamforce, and SiriusDecisions Technology Exchange, marketers are staying up late at night thinking about what could go wrong at their next event. The heat is on to eliminate manual processes, improve the attendee experience, and leverage as many opportunities before, during, and after the event as possible to create conversions. So let’s address our nightmares and establish how marketers can set themselves up for event success. (Read More)

Developing session topics, event agendas, and event content to create an award winning event experience is challenging. Marketers are constantly scaling the content marketing burden, dealing with multiple, competing deadlines at any given moment, and every project we complete needs sign-off from a variety of stakeholders, all of whom have different perspectives and needs. And that’s only internally! Additionally, you have the needs of prospects and attendees to deal with when crafting an event content strategy, and the question that haunts every marketer: how can my message rise above the rest?   (Read More)

Are you having trouble developing a high converting landing page for your event registration page? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Visitors spend 3-5 seconds on a landing page before deciding to learn more, or leave. That doesn’t leave much margin for error. Across industries, the average conversion rate of a landing pages was only 2.35%, and the top twenty-five percent of conversion rates are at 5.31% or higher. Knowing this, it becomes clear that having an effective landing page is important in generating leads and obtaining valuable data from website visits.   (Read More)

In today’s digital world, leveraging data gathered from event technology (like statistics) is the key to achieving higher ROI. Marketers can utilize new trends in event technology, like event apps and event automation, to increase attendee engagement, collect rich attendee data, and provide attendees with what they desire: an informative and enjoyable user experience. (Read More)

Marketers and Event Professionals: are you working for your corporate events or are your events working for you? Phrased differently, are you leveraging events and event technology to their full potential? According to Engaging Events, 91% of event professionals stated that increasing engagement at their events was a top priority for their organization, which means that in the world of B2B events, there is a lot of room for improvement. In our infographic below, Events: From Rock Bottom to Rocking ROI, we cover how events have evolved and what best practices you should have in place to rock your next event. (Read More)

Sponsors and exhibitors are crucial to the success of many conferences and events. As an event planning professional, you’ll want to make those key partners happy and keep them coming back year after year. You can do it with a solid strategy for helping them get the most from your event. Mobile technology has transformed […] (Read More)