Introduction

In the ever evolving world of marketing and sales, events have emerged as a cornerstone for effective brand communication, audience engagement, demand generation and overall community building. Although self fulfilling, at Sessionboard, we’ve always believed in the power of events and their pervasive impact on sales and marketing and recent trends affirm this vision.

The Rising Importance of Events in Marketing

Significant Market Growth:

The global events industry is projected to reach $2.194 trillion by 2028, a significant leap from $887 billion in 2020​​.

The Most Critical Channel:

A staggering 80.4% of event organizers consider events as the most critical marketing channel for achieving business goals​​. (Of course they would :))

Challenges in Event Marketing:

The biggest challenges for event marketers are not having enough team members and budget constraints, highlighting the increasing demands and importance placed on event marketing teams​​. As well as the need for technology to support the additional workload and expectations.

Events as Part of Omnichannel Strategy:

Utilizing events in omnichannel marketing campaigns can significantly increase purchase rates, indicating the effectiveness of integrating events into broader marketing strategies​​.

Events as a Source of First-Party Data:

With increasing privacy concerns and the move towards a cookieless future, events have become one of the best ways to gather first-party data. This data is invaluable for personalizing marketing efforts and improving sales outcomes​​.

Increase in Event Marketing Budgets:

There was even a study done last year where a significant 73% of respondents expected event marketing budgets to increase in 2023. If that trend continues, it definitely underscores the growing significance of events in sales and marketing strategies​​.

Our Experience: In our own experience, we’ve found the face to face experience of events have been incredibly impactful on building a deeper relationship with our customers, which definitely impacts customer retention and expansion, but also referrals, product prioritization and the success of new features. And as we grow, events will be a cornerstone for demand generation, thought leadership and our sales and marketing in general.

The Underutilized Asset: Your Speaker Network

As events grow in importance for marketing and sales, the significance of speakers and the content they are delivering are even more critical to the success of every organization’s increasing goals and objectives.

Speakers are subject matter experts, brand champions, content engines and motivated influencers. Which is why the best marketing and sales teams see their network of Speakers as an extension of their team. And if leveraged right, these speakers and their content can be repurposed and used in periodic webinars, regional field events, case studies, surveys, product research, thought leadership blog posts, etc. 

Just like sales has a CRM for customers and prospects, we believe content and speakers have become such an important asset for companies to leverage that the marketing department needs a CRM of speakers across their entire portfolio of events, webinars and activations.

The Speaker Network is a gold mine of opportunity for marketing and sales. It just needs to be harnessed correctly.

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The Challenge Is: 

The historically available options weren’t built with this opportunity in mind.

The challenge is that up until Sessionboard launched Speaker CRM, the options in the market to track, search, communicate with and activate speakers inhibited the events team and marketing team’s ability to optimize their speaker network in an efficient manner. There was/is just way too much friction for this to work, without an incredible amount of manual intervention. 

A majority of event marketing teams track their speakers in more than one spreadsheet across 2 or more team-members or an outside agency. Others try to manipulate their attendee registration system to serve as the source, but usually have to go into each event to find speakers or have to access multiple registration systems because they use one registration solution for their flagship conference, one for field events, one for webinars, and a different project management solution for other activations (Case Studies, blog posts, socials, etc.)

These legacy solutions (if you can call them that) essentially: 

Inhibit inter-departmental communication: because of how much friction there is to access this data across events, across managers and across systems, which creates an enormous amount of redundant work, trust issues, over-use of a small percentage of speakers, under-use of a majority of your speakers, content without a ton of substance, speakers in the wrong format (great for a panel, but should be on the main stage), etc. 

Lead to Information Loss: Without a CRM, critical information about speakers can easily get lost or misplaced, especially when handling multiple events and speakers.

Are Inconsistent because Data Lives in Multiple Sources: When data is spread across various spreadsheets owned by different team members, there’s a high risk of inconsistencies and incomplete information.

Is Typically Out of Date: Keeping speaker information current is challenging without a centralized system. Changes might not be uniformly updated across all records.

Create Accessibility and Search Challenges: Locating specific information in a spreadsheet requires time and understanding of how the data is organized. This can be inefficient, especially under time constraints.

Lead to Data Entry Errors: Manual data entry in spreadsheets is prone to errors and inconsistencies, making it difficult to index and retrieve information correctly.

Have Version Control and Permission Issues: Managing versions of spreadsheets and controlling who has access to what information is cumbersome and prone to errors, leading to potential data breaches or outdated information being used.

If you have been in event marketing for a while, none of the above is new to you. 

The Solution: Speaker CRM

The benefits are clear and numerous.

Here’s Four that your executive team will like:

Improved Demand Gen from Higher Quality Content: Having a system that helps optimize the discovery of the ideal speaker and champion for each session, event and activation will lead to more engaging content. More engaging content leads to greater reach and greater demand.

Higher Cadence of Content Production: It’s no mystery that marketing teams are going to leverage ChatGPT for more content creation, which will make it harder and harder for brands to rise above the noise. Having your SME’s, champions and influencers at your finger-tips will allow marketing teams to spend more time on distribution and engagement. The right speaker may also have a network to help the content rise above the noise as well. 

Time Savings: Teams can quickly access speaker profiles, history, and availability, saving time otherwise spent sifting through multiple spreadsheets or communication threads. This also allows multiple team members to work simultaneously, reducing delays in information sharing and decision-making.

Cost Savings: Reduced administrative overhead, decreased training costs, minimization of errors, long-term scalability all lead immediate and long-term cost savings.

Other Benefits:

• ‍Centralized Data Management
• Enhanced Speaker Engagement:‍
• Efficient Search and Match Capabilities ‍
• Real-Time Updates and Accessibility
• Analytical Insights for Better Decision Making ‍
• Scalability and Adaptability
• Streamlined Communication and Collaboration
   

As you think about your sales and marketing goals for the year, a speaker specific CRM may be the best ROI available.

If you are interested in a demo and more details on Sessionboard’s Speaker CRM, feel free to reach out.

NEXT UP: Why a dedicated CRM for Speakers will have the highest ROI, will be the least expensive and simplest system to implement for any team.