Every marketer knows the importance of data in a winning strategy. If you don’t have a data-driven approach to marketing, your performance will suffer. Especially given recent changes to privacy data, meaning marketers have to be strategic about how they use it. Each area of the marketing function has a set of data that make up their targets, KPIs and measure success. Except for event marketing. Until now.
For event marketers, so much time and money goes into researching, planning, and attending events. For you to then turn up and realize that hardly any of your prospects have actually turned up, can be heartbreaking, and not to mention the negative impact on return on investment (ROI). With event intelligence, event marketing no longer needs to be a guessing game. In this blog, we explain everything you need to know about event intelligence and how you can use it to ensure positive ROI in your event marketing strategy.
What is Event Intelligence?
Event intelligence combines first-party data from historical events, with real-time data monitoring and uses AI-predictive modeling to forecast who will attend or sponsor future events.
Event intelligence helps you make data-driven decisions about what events to attend to reach your marketing goals. By collecting insights from thousands of sources, it gives you contact information for upcoming events so you know whether or not your ideal prospects will be there.
Why is Event Intelligence Important?
With the return of in-person events, knowing which ones are most likely to drive ROI is arguably the most important tool in an event marketer’s backpocket. Event intelligence is important for marketers as it:
- Saves time and increases efficiency
We know how time consuming event research, outreach and organization can be. Event intelligence mitigates that by doing the hard work for you. Instead of pouring all your effort into deciding what events are worth it, it pulls that information together for you so you have more time to build strategies and plan for the day.
- Making sure you’re in the right place at the right time
As B2B marketers we all know how important timing is for closing deals. Businesses may not always be in the market for your product or service, meaning sometimes successful B2B marketing means simply being in front of the right person at the right time. Event intelligence helps you find the right events to put your company in front of your prospects. Generating more quality from each event, meaning you could get better ROI from attending less over more.
- Helping you build better relationships with your target audience
The more information you have on prospects, the easier it is to find common ground, discover their pain points and showcase how your product or service creates a solution. With the data you receive, the relationship building doesn’t start and end with the event itself, it gives you the leverage you need to reach prospects at other touchpoints too.
- Giving you a competitive advantage
Do you constantly attend events and every time bump into your competitors? Maybe they got a sponsorship slot before you, or are speaking on a panel when you only attended. The ability to forecast which events your prospects will be at, ensures you’re always one step ahead of your competitors, who may not use event intelligence to drive their strategy.
Why Use an Event Intelligence Platform?
When included in your strategy, an event intelligence platform can strengthen your event marketing capabilities and generate more leads for your business.
Vendelux Fusion is the world’s first event intelligence technology of this kind, using Vendelux’s extensive network of over 35,000 sources to find information on past events, attendees and sponsors. So we are slightly biased, but here are some of the reasons why you could benefit from using a platform to discover these insights.
Data-Driven Strategy
Marketing as we know it is changing and with the demise of third party data and cookies, marketers need to find other ways to use data to their advantage. With the sheer increase of in-person events this year, event marketers need to use technology to provide insights they wouldn’t otherwise have access to.
While historically event marketers might report on event data after it has happened, with an event intelligence platform you can use the data to inform your strategy and decisions before the fact. With access to event attendee contact information at your fingertips, it’s easy to research, plan and execute a better event strategy.
An event intelligence platform can also help the wider team, by assisting them in gathering insights on user personas and giving them an idea as to what the strategic reason is for prospects attending specific events. For example, what topics are they interested in learning about and what goal does that event fulfill for them? Marketing and sales teams can use this to inform their content strategy, targeted ad campaigns and sales outreach.
Impact of Insights on Marketing Teams
Event intelligence platforms give sales teams, Sales Directors, CMOs and CEOs the insights to improve the quality of conversations with prospects. Information is power and even if you didn’t attend an event, but know a prospect did, those closing deals can leverage it to appear more knowledgeable. For event marketers with the CMO title in their sights, this can only strengthen their case and pave the way towards a more regular route for event marketers to become CMO.
Arguably, CMOs have one of the toughest jobs and shortest tenures in organizations. With an industry that’s always evolving, increased pressure on marketing and budgets at an all time low, CMOs need to show new strategies to senior leaders to stay afloat. While AI technology might not always be a CMO’s strongpoint, when the leg-work is done for you in a simple platform, it’s a no brainer.
Reach Marketing Goals
Data-driven marketing strategies are successful ones, and event marketing is no different. With event intelligence by your side, you can improve the quality of your leads, ensure you’re speaking to the right decision makers and achieve your goals quicker than ever before.
From intimate networking events to large scale conferences. By being strategic about which events you attend, speak at and sponsor, you position your company in front of the people that matter, creating opportunities you wouldn’t normally have.
Vendelux is the only technology platform that offers this level of event intelligence to marketers. But don’t just take our word for it. Learn about how Customer Support Platform Gorgias increased conversion rates by 400% by using the tool.
Interested in trying it out? Start your search today.
