More, Better, Faster: How Seqera Leverages Vendelux for Data-Driven Conference Marketing
COMPANY
Seqera is a bioinformatics / scientific-data platform that helps life sciences teams manage, scale, and reproduce complex data pipelines. Founded by the creators of Nextflow, Seqera offers both open source tools and enterprise features to streamline R&D workflows—from genomic surveillance to AI-drug discovery—while ensuring compliance, versioning, and cross-team collaboration.
The Challenge
As part of their marketing strategy, says Irina Silva, who leads Seqera’s field marketing, they’re looking for bioinformaticians at biopharma and biotech companies at conferences.
“Every year I need to find a very specific customer set,” she says. “Without Vendelux it was an overwhelming and imprecise task. It’s the dark days when all your colleagues are emailing and Slacking you with suggestions of conferences to attend,” she says. Her schedule was a blur of online research, long meetings with conference organizers, and ultimately, guessing which conferences were the best. “It was really really hard,” she says.
– Irina Silva, Field Marketing – Global Team Lead, Seqera
The Solution
Seqera realized that they had to use a more data-driven approach. Vendelux was their first option.
“All I had to do was upload a list of industries and specific job titles we were targeting, along with conference presentation topics,” Irina says. “Within 15 minutes I know where the topics are aligned, if our ideal customers will be there, and if our competitors are going.
– Irina Silva, Field Marketing – Global Team Lead, Seqera
With a prioritized list of conferences in hand, she can then hand a list of specific leads to her sales team.
“You need to prepare the troops for battle,” she says, since making the most of even the best conference requires multi-channel marketing outreach in advance. While the sales team is sending targeted emails, Irina is organizing networking events—and can build the ideal guest list.
“I can wine and dine the exact right people,” she says, “and put our C level execs in front of the best leads.”
– Irina Silva, Field Marketing – Global Team Lead, Seqera
The Results
Vendelux has become the foundation of Seqera’s conference planning, and instrumental in its growth. “It makes me confident that I can invest in conferences,” she says, noting that the company is sponsoring nine conferences this year—up from only two last year.
“It also helps with thought leadership,” she adds. “I know exactly where the right audience will be for our CEO, where he will meet the right people.”
A shift to account-based marketing is next.
“With Vendelux we can not just target the account but laser-focus on the exact right people who work there,” she says. “They might pick 2-3 conferences to attend in a year, and we will be right there with them.”
In numbers:
- 2x more in-person conference meetings scheduled ahead of time
- 75% less time to assess if a conference matches company lead generation goals
- Given conference marketing success, Seqera is doubling their presence at events in 2024
