Name: It Takes A Village: Utilizing the Full Marketing Org for Events
Uploaded: 2025-03-06T20:05:06.314Z
Duration: 1 h 15 min
Description: It Takes A Village: Utilizing the Full Marketing Org for Events

Transcript for "It Takes A Village: Utilizing the Full Marketing Org for Events": And we are back. I'm going to wait a few seconds to let everybody jump from one session to another, but, again, another great chat, another great ESPN roundup as well. And I can't believe we're already in the last session of the day. It's absolutely flown by. And, frankly, this is the perfect session to close the event because event success requires cross functional support. And so I am thrilled to welcome our lovely panelists. We've got Carly Williamson, who's marketing campaign manager at KitBash three d. We've got Calliana Cockroberton, senior manager at Simpler, and we have Peyton O'Neil, an early stage cybersecurity and DevOps marketing leader. As a group, they're going to be sharing how to leverage your marketing for success alongside our fabulous moderator, who you all know, Lisa Gregory of Gregory Event Services. So welcome on stage, everyone. And Lisa, passing you the virtual microphone. Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate you, Chloe. Alright. So we have Peyton. Hi, Peyton. How are you today? I'm great. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Of course. I miss Carly. Hey. Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Two of my favorites. Yay. Yeah. Me too. And then we have Carliana who might pop on, but she's having some technical difficulties. So if she does, great. If not, we've got a great panel here. So this is where we bring it all together. We had day one to talk about trade shows and field marketing, day two to talk about user conferences and VIP events, and day three has been focused on experiential, marketing and ROI. This panel today is gonna bring it together as far as how to work with the marketing team cross functionally, so that we can excel in all areas. So first question or actually, let's do a little introduction so everybody can get to know you a little bit better. So, Peyton, why don't you go first and just introduce yourself? Hello, everyone. I'm Peyton O'Neil. I have been doing marketing mostly in, cybersecurity and DevOps as mostly an early stage leader, kind of cross functional building functions from events to ops to product marketing and content. So really excited to share many experiences from early stage. Also, went through a big acquisition and have some bigger company experience too. User conferences, VIP happy hours, lots of trade shows. If anyone is in cybersecurity, you know all the trade shows. So, yeah, excited to chat. Perfect. Carly. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm, Carly Williamson. I've had the pleasure of working with both Lisa and Peyton. I'm currently a marketing campaign manager at KitBash three d, just like b to b ecommerce, which is a new space for me, and I'm really excited about it. I have a long history of event marketing, as Peyton said. Lots and lots of trade shows. Peyton and I have been all over the world together, as have Lisa and I, as well as some, like, own conferences. So, yeah, I come at it from both a life cycle marketing demand gen and the kind of event marketing side as well. Alright. And to give you guys some background too, these folks have worked in a variety of different companies for many, many years. Carly and I actually worked at the same company, which was an association management company in tech. I've also worked in nonprofits and done all sorts of stuff in my twenty five years. So we're coming to you with lots of experience. So we're gonna talk about promotional outreach first. The first question is organic versus paid marketing. How should teams balance their efforts for maximum event impact? Peyton, we're gonna go with you first. Huge question and lots of, I think, caveats here. I think it'll vastly differ for the type of event and the budget and the goals and the internal goals and your executive buy in. But generally, like any event, I like to approach organic first is basically always capped. You have so many LinkedIn followers, you have so many email subscribers, your employees have so many LinkedIn followers, your speakers, if it's an own user conference, have so many followers. So, starting with, like, doing the best you can calculate what that potential reach is as realistically as possible. And then in an ideal world, moving on to paid by looking at, like, ideal cost per lead across all of your channels, whether it's paid social or if you're working with a publisher to do a blast, or a podcast or working with influencers, whatever that might be, to ideally kinda sandwich top down help with your budget to determine what your KPIs are or with your budget, or with the KPIs determine how much budget you need. Obviously, that's not always the case. If you have unlimited budget, amazing. Never ever the case. Although Carly and I, Carly and I have been in that situation one time, which is great. And then always, I think like the x factor is always creativity. So you can sort of like amplify or exponentially increase specific paid or even organic, methods with, like, a more creative approach. And then one thing that maybe is like a sub answer to this question is not only looking at from, like, KPIs, you're lagging KPIs. So not just looking at reg numbers, but also, defining early on. And this is more like about selling, your plan to executives or the team. What leading metrics. So the number of activities, the things that you can better control, whether it's organic or paid. I think that those like, that gives you kind of the trifecta of having a well rounded plan that you can then sell internally and track how well you're executing against it. Perfect. And Carly, what about you? Anything to add? Yeah. I mean, I would echo everything that Peyton says. I think that, I've seen a lot of teams put so much energy and pressure on organic, which I think can just be really stressful for a team also. You know, you can only tap your audience so many times. And then I would also another caveat is there are lots of caveats to this discussion. I think it's really important to think about who your audience is and where they live. Like, you know, if you're spending a bunch of money on LinkedIn ads and that's not where your audience is, you're not gonna get the ROI ROI out of it. And I would also say, like, if the KPIs you're going for are retention, and expansions, then don't spend a bunch of money unpaid. Like, it doesn't make sense to you. So, I think really just, like, continuing to map back to your goals and be really realistic about how much time your team has to spend on organic and paid also, like, revenue but also, like, time and energy. Yeah. And I'll add on to that as far as influencer marketing. So working across the entire marketing org and the entire company and your entire community, sitting down and taking the time to identify who your top influencers are. I think a lot of people don't do that. And then, additionally, enabling them. Right? Enabling speakers with the speaker promo videos and the cards, enabling your sponsors, having an internal enablement doc and deck, and messaging, keeping, in the forefront, in front of your team to help with just social marketing. If you are excited about something, you give them the capability to easily just copy and paste or repost something, you'll get way more engagement. So working across the entire marketing team and your entire company, you'll accomplish a lot more. Alright. So next question. What's a common mistake teams make when driving attendance and how can they avoid it? We'll go with Peyton first. I'm first all the time. I think it's so easy for us to get caught up in the numbers that we commit to. Oftentimes like, the most simplistic being, like, reg and then attendance. But, Carly, you mentioned retention and upsells. Like, I think those are really important, but I think it's very easy to get caught up in the number that you're gonna put on your recap slide, whatever that number is. And I I think one thing to also focus on that I learned maybe, like, later in actually working in a bigger company is just as impactful as that sort of, like, quantitative number is also the qualitative. It's super time consuming, but putting in the time to, like, actually look at the titles and the logos and sharing that both, like, in your recap and your progress updates. And then going a step further and having, like, one on one conversations with your sales team. This is maybe more for, like, pre event outreach, whether it's a happy hour, or or user conference, making those connections, knowing where your reps are in their regions and what their target account counts are, and calling those out one on one. Again, super manual and time consuming. But that's, I think, what is gonna make or break that, like, down funnel success, which oftentimes is, like, meetings booked from an event. So much effort needs to go into the pre event reach out and not just, like, promotion, but, like, putting time on the calendar for the actual event, whether virtual or in person, probably more relevant for in person. Yeah. So not basically, a short short answer is not going the extra mile to make the connections with the real people and instead being too, swept up in the the numb the big number on the slide. Love it. Love it. And, we have Carly Anna. Oh, she just dropped again. Darn it. She made a quick cameo. So thank you, Carly Anna, for making a quick cameo. She's having some technical difficulties, but she'll try to come back. So, Carly, same question over to you. What's a common mistake teams make when driving attendance and how can they avoid it? Yeah. I mean, I would echo what Peyton says. I think that getting really specific about who your ICP is and setting yourself up operationally to define those metrics outside of just, like, registrations and attendees or booth scans, or how many people showed up to your ancillary event. I think that I've seen, like, that be a common mistake that a lot of event marketers make is they focus on these kind of, like, vanity metrics. But what your leadership and your sales team really cares about is, like, okay, but who was there? And I think that part of avoiding that of, like, driving attendance is also what you do with them. So, making sure that you have that post event follow-up really, really, nailed down and really solid so that even if you don't hit that attendance number, you still have something to show for it. Yeah. I'll add on to that. So the number one thing I see they they have mistakes in is they spray and they pray. Y'all, you can't spray and pray. That's that's you can't do that. You have to be very, very specific on who you're trying to get there. So my recommendation is if you're doing an event, work with your sales team, actually create your, list of people that have to attend, have to be there for success, and then make sure they're getting personal invites. Another thing people do is they wait. K? Get if you create a list of 500 people, say, I'm gonna get these people registered by this date, these people registered by this date, then you're not just crossing your fingers. Get those personalized invites out. Marketing should not just be sending a bunch of emails and crossing their fingers that people come in. Those days are over. We get too many emails. There's too much noise. So be very prescriptive, and Carlyanna is back. Hi. Well, I think we always talk about as events professionals, poise and calmness in chaos is an important trait. So, yes, thank you for your patience with all of the things. Yeah. No. You're killing it. You're doing a great job. No. Alright. It's jumping in just a little bit about that invite. One piece that I always think about is when people are at events, it's their opportunity to bond with their team as well. And so I know when it's like director level and above or it has to be this certain tier when I've been in that position to be invited to an event and I'm with my support team or people that I work with, I don't want to go unless they can come. And so sometimes being able to say and I wouldn't necessarily say that to an invitation, like, well, if, you know, this person can't come with me, I'm not gonna go. But adding a little bit of and if there's anyone on your team that would you'd wanna bring with you, let us know. We'd love to accommodate it. And so just that extra step or that extra bit of inclusivity can really help on people actually coming and joining because, yeah, I might be the director and running this event, but I don't wanna leave this amazing person that's supporting me and making it all happen out of that opportunity. And so a lot of directors might have their senior managers or their, you know, direct reports who are actually gonna do the legwork and do the research for your companies. And again, kind of the director might have the signing or the buying power or above, but it really is those managers and those other levels that do the due diligence to then promote your product, to promote your software. So just that's kind of my thought is that little extra inclusivity step can go a long way in people showing up. Well, and it helps move that lead right through the funnel. So if you can get them to buy in even more and be like, hey, If I'm gonna go to the event, but I can bring Carly, am I gonna no show? Nope. Yeah. It's a lot more fun. Right? Like, if Lisa and I are working an event together and we get to go together and network and meet people, it's a lot less intimidating. There's you're reducing the friction. Right? So it's not always adding fuel to something. It's not more emails, more outreach, more dings and pings, but eliminating the friction of why somebody might not come or might not attend. Yep. And I think communicating the value of the event. A lot what we're seeing a lot of is a lot of events are coming in last minute. I just had this idea and we have to do it. So your ROI is gonna We've all been there. Yeah. Your ROI is just automatically you can just tell your manager. Your ROI is just automatically gonna go down because you didn't provide the strategic time to actually enable the entire marketing organization, your entire company, your entire community. You have to give your prospects time. You have to be respectful of your speakers. So feel free to push back. We can even do a little ideation session, follow-up session on what ideal timelines are for these types of events to communicate to your managers. But any anything to add there? We'll we'll go to Carly Anna. Go ahead. Just real quick. I know, you know, Peyton was mentioning the importance of the follow-up, the one on one with the sales team. What I've also found is really helpful is develop those relationships and those champions within the sales organization so that when you're doing your post event recap, tap one of the players from the sales team that's really well respected and has a different voice and a different lens to be part of your presentation. So it's not always marketing talking to sales about the ROI and the event, but that you have these sales champions and these people that are closing deals and making money saying, I'm really glad I supported the event that Peyton organized. X, y, and z came out of it. This is what we're doing, and this is what's happening. Because even just that shift in the narrative and that shift in perspective changes the delivery, and it stops being you banging that meeting drum. Like book meetings, book meetings, book meetings, show up, help me, support me, to, wow, there's really this value add and it's successful for these other highly respected presidents club attendee folks on my sales team. Yeah. Absolutely. Actually, Carly, I'm gonna ask you next. I'm gonna change up the question. But in our careers, there is a moment, right, from when we go from we're a logistics manager to when we're an event marketer, we're an event producer. So when that happened for you and you went into a new company and you had to utilize the entire marketing org, what were your learnings there, and how did you activate them for success? Yeah. I think for me, a lot of it was, like, speaking the language of the rest of the teams. Like, you know, I think as an event marketer, like, your role is really thinking about the experience of the people that are there, the like, what happens afterward, what happens before. But, like, touting, like, oh, we have this VIP room and all of those things. Like, I it's not necessarily what sales is interested in, what leadership is interested in. And so that was a really big learning experience for me and kind of watching, like, you know, how the rest of my the team spoke about their programs. Like, you know, the ROI or the KPIs that I'm working towards might not necessarily be the same thing that, like, product marketing or demand gen is, but we can all be speaking the same language because it all rolls up to what marketing as a whole is trying to do, and that rolls up to what the company is trying to do. And so I think for me, a lot of it was just, like, speaking the language and figuring out what was most important. And so even, like, oh, and here's the MQLs. It was like, and then what? Like, great. Like, we've got those initial like, you have those top of funnel. That's great. We can pass these off. But, like, what happens next? And I think one of the things that I did early on was create, like, thirty, sixty, ninety days follow-up. So I think we also have a tendency to say, like, and this is how it went, and it was great. But what's the follow-up? Especially for an event you're gonna try and repeat, being able to early on show that value. And so when you do have an event that comes up, you know, three months later and you need not only, like, the funding for it and the budget for it, but the buy in. And then also, that's gonna take time from the whole marketing team. Right? Like, it takes a village. And so having them go, oh, cool. Like, I saw her ninety day report for a similar event or a similar program. And so, you know, there's trust that's built there too. And, in understanding that, you know you know what you're driving towards and it's not these, like, vanity metrics. Yeah. Peyton, what about you? Yeah. Lots of points touched there. Totally agree that you have to be individualistic in who you're speaking to, including the marketing org. I think, especially bigger events, having every single person involved. I personally believe, like, content and product marketing should be just as much involved, especially in the messaging of whatever signage, of course, like booth messaging, but also the post event success. The whole team, the whole marketing team should be just as bought in as the events marketer. And then in terms of buy in, I think being individually focused on different leaders. If you're talking to a sales leader to get buy in, maybe it's helpful to look at the logos that are attending the event that you know will be there to talk about opportunities, meetings booked, look at competitors. Obviously, sales leaders are very competitive. So competitor x, y, and z are doing this. I find with leaders, with, like, CEO, founder types, they really care about being either the best or the most innovative or the most creative. So really, like, emphasizing how this event is in line with, like, more strategic initiatives. Either it's, like, your marketing plan initiative or, like, maybe in line with the mission. It sounds like a little silly, but these these, like, very high level strategic thinkers really do they have it's a different currency. So don't start talking about MQLs to your founder, CEO. Talk about how this aligns to the mission and the vision of the company and how it'll position the company in x y z way. Yeah. Absolutely. So, Carlyanna, I'm gonna ask you to add on here in just a second. But I had a CEO give me feedback young in my career, and he said, Lisa, you're amazing at the logistics. Like, you can kill it. But you need to work on getting people in your boat. Right? How do you get people in your boat? Because if you're just hanging out all by yourself, you're not gonna be successful. So figure out the makeup of your team. Maybe you have a big team, maybe it's small, and get those people in your boat. So, Carliana, this question's for you. How do you get the whole marketing org who, obviously, they're not event planners, this is not their full time job, right? You have to get them to pay attention and help you. How do you get them bought in to your event programs so that they are in your boat? Well, I think it kinda starts from the integrated approach that the marketing team is taking. So that we're not doing these, like, random one off events, but that they're part of a larger integrated campaign and that it's just a next step or a milestone or something that you can say, hey. We're gonna have this product release. It's great if we do it two weeks before Black Hat so that we can have all the conversations and showcase it at Black Hat. Let's pair with the press release. Let's you know, there's, GitLab had a really cool mid show at reInvent last year where they did this big release, and it drove a ton of traffic to their booth and a ton of action because they had one branding. And then the next day, boom, it was this big product release. Right? So trying to be strategic with the rest of the organization and not trying to kind of Frankenstein your event on top of the other plan, but build it in from the beginning. And so it can be tricky because we all know launch dates move. There's, like, malleability in everyone else's schedules, typically, except event people. Like, just because that move doesn't mean we get to kick reinvent down the road or black hat down the road. That's still gonna happen. And so the integrated approach does require, like, an a b. You know, a is what we wanna do. B is what happens when I get that phone call that nothing's gonna be ready, in time. But I think that, again, making your event a milestone and a highlight in the campaign that the marketing team is running is a great way for people to have something to look forward to and that punctuates some of these larger, you know, six, eight, twelve month campaigns that you're running. Yeah. And to add on to that, also a tool. Like, your content team should be using events in person as a tool to create video content, do interviews. Your PMMs should be speaking with analysts. Like, every single person on a marketing team, in one way or another, should be able to make have a positive impact on the event execution and be able to use that event, whether they're there in person or not, for their personal success. You might have to get creative, but easier easier in small teams as well. Like, probably not, like, major, huge, 200 person marketing teams, but small lean teams, everyone should have a hand. Yeah. You did. Real quick. If you didn't attend day two, go back to day two and watch Devin's session. It will totally transform the way that you do work. He talks a lot about executive buy in and team buy in as well. But, Carly, go ahead and add on. Yeah. I mean, I was gonna say, like and also include, like, those support people. Right? So, like, we think of design as, like, we all collaborated on this, and then we pass it to design. And I think, like, teams like that, like, web dev, like, a lot of teams like that get kind of like the oh, and also we have this. Your social media person is like, here's this event. We have a brief. And I think that, like, those people can be really critical to the success of an event, even if it's, like, a trade show, a small ancillary event, like, including those people at the beginning rather than just, like, handing them another task and putting something on their Asana board. It's like they're those are very creative, like, critical assets to the success of it. Like, all of your messaging, your content, all of that is gonna should be reflected in the design, in the emails you send out, in the web dev, like, in your, social media. And so I think it's also really important to include those people from the beginning. Like, one of the things I do is have, like, a kickoff sync. And no matter how big or small your part is, like, I wanna hear your ideas. Like, it's not a we have copy decided, like, go do your thing. And so I think it's really important to include those people from the beginning. They're more likely to hit deadlines as well. Like, those teams are overloaded, but when they feel like they have a stake in the game, they're gonna hit those deadlines for you and you you won't have to pay extra for your booth backdrop. Well and I do just wanna add with bringing everybody in. I think it's really important. I know it sounds kinda corny, but that attitude of gratitude. So not only do you bring everybody in, but when you are presenting, when you are showcasing your event to groups, you really wanna be able to say, like, Carly had a great contribution and highlight if you came up with a really interesting traffic driver. Peyton has sourced this idea for swag. We're really excited to try it out so that people know you're the kind of leader and the event manager that recognizes contributions, recognizes all the effort. And I think when you are the event head, you get a lot of praise and a lot of recognition when things go well. You also get a lot of criticism if it doesn't, but I think we're all a very used to things going well group. And so I think it's really important to thank those, like you said, the design team and the people behind the scenes, if somebody is helping with social copy because they don't typically get the same sort of recognition as the people that are there on the floor running the events, hosting the events, having that FaceTime. And so by really showcasing appreciation for everyone's talents and contributions, it builds that culture and that team that works together, that connects, and that people want to be on your projects and want to have fun. So it, again, reduces that friction of people being, like, more work instead of, oh, wait. That's a really fun way to spend my time. Yeah. And, one way that I make sure I'm doing all this stuff, because guess what? There's competing priorities all the time. Put it in your work back schedule. K? So same with all the ID ideation and ROI. Build that. Create a line. I'm gonna do executive buy in. I'm gonna do my racy. I'm gonna do my kickoff call. I'm gonna do my precon. I'm gonna do my appreciation. Add it in your work back schedule. So one thing that I, am still trying to perfect, and maybe you guys are too is reporting. There's over reporting, under reporting. How do you report and, like, keep your team communication streamlined via Slack or email or however so everyone is involved in, hey. Everything's going great or it's not going great. We need to change things in this way. So, Peyton, what about you? I love that you mentioned to Racy in the chat. Always have a bomb, and and to the point, like, building everything into your work back schedule, even if it's for you. I think it's very common if you know mentally you're, like, managing this project and you have all these tasks, but it doesn't really help the broader team to know what tasks you're working on. I think that does yourself a disservice what in the future when you're reporting all of the work that goes into a project. I love a bill of materials. So build that bomb, like, put as much effort into, like, the organization, the realistic time it's gonna take. Setting that expectation upfront is gonna make everything less painful down the line. Even if you need to advocate, you said earlier, if it's a if it's crunch time, you don't have enough time, having a realistic timeline for how long every single thing is gonna take internal. If you need external assets made, that'll help you really set expectations, with leadership early on, and then it kinda takes reporting out of the question. Like, if you have a great bomb, you have really good timelines, then you can kinda let that bill of materials plus, of course, the RACI. So making sure that everybody knows exactly what they're responsible for, informed, consulted, etcetera. Thank you, Stephanie, for putting that in the chat. And then you can kinda let it manage you. I know that sounds kind of like a cop out, but it's the most gratifying thing to me to really put the effort upfront and then let the work do itself. Yep. And, Carly, how do you do centralized project management? So sometimes we're working with massive companies. There's a lot of, you know, turnover. It it can get chaotic. All of a sudden, if you got a lot of funding, there's a huge hiring round. How do you manage the project management cross functionally across the marketing org to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks? Yeah. I think that, you know, like, obviously, a task management system is gonna be super critical. I think that getting people aligned and feeling, involved, feeling like they are accountable to things, feeling like they are responsible for things, but also that you have that, like, excitement built in, I think will also help. Like, I am contributing to this, not like I have a to do list for this. And so I think that that's, like, really important. I also think, like, predictability is really important when it comes to, like, internal communication. So I know exactly where to look for, for my tasks. I know exactly where to look for, like, how we're progressing towards our our our KPIs. I think the same is for stakeholders. They don't need to be in, like, your, you know, ClickUp board. Like, they don't need to see all of that nitty gritty. But maybe you have a deck that they know is updated every Friday. And that they know they can go there. You have a Slack update that you give that's, like, very, very, like, templatized. Like, everyone knows where to look for things, and they know that it's consistent across all your events, I think is really important. Just that there's otherwise, you get those one off asks of, like, what am I supposed to do this week? Hey. Where are we at with these KPIs? And so having people know exactly where to look and when, I think is gonna be, like, really critical to not only, like, the project management side, but also just, like, minimizing that, like, anxiety of, like, hey. We're spending, like, a hundred thousand dollars on this or, you know, $500,000 on this. Where are we mapping to? I think that that's, like, really important so that people feel, eases that anxiety and then also helps you be able to focus on the execution and the marketing of this rather than, managing everyone else's time and anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So Carly on something you said? For sure. On the tracking KPIs, Carly, you we did a a very big event together with a lot of cooks in the kitchen. And we all know as event marketers that registration is not linear, that we have a lot more reg closer to the time of the event. So you developed sort of like, almost like a formula for, like, each week, how many regs we should be up to. And so communicating that really well and then sharing that consistently, was amazing. And you weren't always having to explain, like, we only have 10% of reg, but we're only a week you know, we're ten weeks till the event. It sort of, like, eliminated that stress. And then you you always feel like you're behind even though you know you're not. That was really important. And then coupled with tracking how your budget is being spent and, like, the typical, like, time that you expect budget, like, meet media dollars to be in the market. That took a lot of, like, words you didn't even have to say. If you just can present all that data consistently, you never had to feel like you were on the back foot trying to, like, explain why why you're behind when you were. Yeah. So thank you for that and huge huge hugely valuable. Yeah. Yeah. We are pretty much done with this panel, but I do wanna leave everybody with one closing thought. Again, this is Can I add one thing for people just quickly? So when they were talking about pace reports and different ways of tracking to see if you're behind, For those of you who are doing international events, something I really wanna encourage you to do is follow the currency exchange rates and the trends because when there's a dip and you pay down your bills when the currency is more favorable for your funding, you can actually save your clients, your team a ton of money by being strategic when you pay. Again, it's a risk. It's, kind of a gamble. But when you look at past patterns, you look at past industry trends in the global markets saying, hey. We're in a really good time right now. I know this deposit's not due till x date, but let's pay it now. I've saved clients hundreds of thousands of dollars following those trends. I hope you have a side hustle like trading currency. You should. Everybody in audience I know that's not relevant to this, but when you're talking about registration, pace reports and, you know, tracking that, I do just wanna throw that out there as like a concrete thing you can do to, again, if you're hosting events overseas. I know the world's a little bit chaotic and uncertain right now, but you can still get some really solid wins for your budget by just putting in that extra layer of effort. Yes. Love it. And I will lead with saying, make sure you understand the whole cross functional marketing org and company, what their workload is, design, product marketing. Make sure you're kind of forecasting that because we have one lens. Right? But we need to walk the world through various lenses from people in throughout your organization. So that will really help you win. And then don't forget to forecast. If you're not hitting your timeline or you don't know where you're going, no one else is going to know where they're going. They're following you, so you have to forecast. So thank you, Peyton. Thank you, Carly. Thank you, Carly Anna. That was awesome. Really appreciate you all for joining us today. Thank you, Carly. Thanks for us. Alright. I'm gonna have you guys drop and have Chloe join me back on stage. Hi, Chloe. We made it. Yes. Amazing. I can't believe that we're already at the end of day three of the event professionals now. Your choose your own adventure virtual experience created just for you, the event professional. Lisa, it's been such a pleasure to not only host today, but to learn with everyone that's attended and really to bring this amazing content to fellow event professionals. Because when we lift each other up, obviously, we uplevel our entire community. For our attendees that are still online, before you drop, we have a couple of reminders. First of all, please, please, please complete our NPS survey. Your feedback means the world to us, and it's definitely a robust measurement metric after everything we've been talking about today. So make sure you get that in. And, secondly, if you'd like to provide even more details about what you loved, what you learned, or maybe even areas that we could improve, there's always the option to do so because both quant and qual data are important to us. And thank you to everybody in advance. Aw. Thanks, Chloe. Yes. We really appreciate it. And, before we go, don't leave yet. I have a few reminders, but we're gonna do a quick fun recap video from day one and day two, just to share the excitement. And don't forget to go back to those sessions and watch the records. I will do a recap and email it to you all, but there's definitely some specific sessions you do not, I repeat, do not want to miss. Also, huge thank you to our whole team for producing this show at Gregory Event Services. Wanna thank all of our emcees. We had Chloe, Jeff, Anne, Elek. We had three different entertainers on the DJ side, tons of sponsors and tons of speakers that helped us make all this possible. This is all a nonprofit event, produced by our team, but, also the event professionals network leadership team. If you're not in the Slack, definitely join us. There's over 700 nearly 750 event professionals in there. It's a free resource where you can go in any time and ask questions, and then we'll continue to provide you with great amazing content just like this. So yay. Alright, Chloe. Any final words before we drop? Just from London. It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day, and keep measuring your ROI. Perfect. Well, that's it, y'all. Thank you so much, and enjoy the rest of your Thursday. Okay, Lisa. I see you. Jess is dancing. That's what I'm talking about. That's the energy I needed. It is from chaos to clarity, mastering multi event excellence in 2025. And at the end of this session, I'm happy to answer questions. So feel free to, like, pull questions together, and we will go over those later today at the end of this. We already do the job of many people and wear many hats. Make it easier on yourself in some way. You're in control of your own bandwidth and capacity. So to take your learnings and be able to put them into action right away. I wanna take a few seconds to thank our sponsors. She's going to be presenting experiential marketing, implementing b to c tactics for b to b marketing. Hi, Valerie. How are you? I'm your features and benefits and your brand values, but there is really zeroing in on your individual decision makers and, you know, learning as much as you can about them through conversations. Vendor resource center. This is free to event planner. So some of the not all trade shows are worth the money, for your particular company. Let's say Today, we're gonna talk about making AI as your event co pilot. We're gonna be streamlining processes and collaboration. It's gonna be hosted by Tracy Myers of Pulumi and our very own Lisa Gregory of Gregory Event Services. So Yeah. Hey, everyone. Alright. Using AI isn't cheating. We're evolving. All major event platforms, Cvent, Bizzabo, Hopin, they're all investing millions in AI capabilities. And I want to ensure we're not scanning just any lead, but quality leads with our ICP. I'm excited to continue this conversation in the Slack channel and hear what what prompts people use. Right? Like, their tried and true prompts to get the best. I want to say that My favorite call out from Belle was saying, oh, I did this booth with by myself with the vendor, and I set everything up. I'm just like, okay. So, a team of one could also do this. I'm like, you know what? Levi and Kemba. Alright. Excuse me. So our mascot is this unicorn. We named her Inspire, but you all are a variety of unicorns. Y'all add different levels of greatness to our community. So Hi, everybody. How are you? Good to see everybody. Bye. As you A lot of the times, you know, that outreach to let even know about the event and a presence there kinda falls under the cards. Thank you, Adrianna and Oscar and Stephanie. If you are a job seeker or hiring manager, in the event professional Slack, you can click on the jobs board. People are posting in there constantly. You have the trendsetters panel, the future of trade show activations with our lovely friends here. And they brought in five brand ambassadors, but a DJ with a branded DJ booth and a beatbox performer, which completely blew the crowd away out of me. And like we said, this is all about community. We are a small knit community. We you're gonna see us again. You know, if you work in this event industry, you're gonna see each other again, whether it's at a trade show, whether it's another event, maybe it's another company. So don't forget, connect with each other. Get on the Slack channel. It's got great information. If you need help on anything, lots of people there to help out, and that's joining us and throwing all of your really just interesting ideas and new ideas to me and to this group. You know, who knew we would talk so much about AI? You know, that's what's so great. We are launching what's called ESPN zones. We're trying something new. So, speaker is going to lifestyle. Get the shuttle on. We're gonna test things, we're gonna learn, and we're gonna share. It's our clock range right now, and give it up for the one and only, Bethany Murphy. Hi, everyone. Really, really excited to be here today talking about how to build a standout user conference. So it's not an inexpensive activation, but it was super cool. But I think budget management is both an art and a science. Right? Yeah. Okay. Your manager comes to you. You've never planned a user conference before. How much time do you need to execute it? Great. 500 people. 500 people. And it we'll say it's a two day conference. I would say nine months minimal. Again, hello all you guys, gals, and non binary event pals. I am pumped to be here today, and thank you so much for having me. So that that is the first step in this playbook. Three different approaches to planning at a high level, if you will. The next thing is about event leaders ourselves. Share this today. Thank you so much for the time. I hope that you were able to take something away from this. And again, without further ado, I just wanna say a big thank you to Lisa and the team for today's opportunity. And again, good luck. Implement those playbooks, and let's see what you can come up with. Outside of that, and who else do we need outside of our event team that will help us succeed and will help our events succeed? So for me, that was like there was like a million things that I that I loved, but that was my number one takeaway. Welcome our next speaker to the stage. We have Marissa Nimboski. So today we're gonna be talking about the VIP shift, what that looks like in terms of strategic experiences for top tier engagement. So VIP programs can essentially be your best asset for building pipeline, driving positive brand sentiment, and increasing customer loyalty. Well, Marissa, thank you so much. That was awesome getting in your Thrive state. This is a great, state to be in when you're trying to learn. It gets your energy boosted. It enhances your brain function. You're awesome. Once again, Chloe Richardson. We have Chloe and miss Tamar Beck coming up. Chloe Richardson. Tamar Beck. We'll be putting our heads together to chat about one of the core elements of effective measurement metrics that matter. My my name is Nikki Major. I'm coming to you from New York City, and I've been doing events for probably close to twenty years. You know, a lot of this conversation just talking about ROI and, you know, as an exhibitor or an organizer, really hot topics and things that we talk about all the time. So I found it really interesting. In our industry, a lot of the time, we don't have a boss that actually knows what we do all day. Okay. So we're kinda just thrown in and expected to learn, and we don't have a manager or any sort of mentor to help us thrive. So we're launching this. It's a new mentorship program. This session, we're gonna talk about sourcing strategies, areas to negotiate, given the current landscape. So we're looking forward to sharing what we have here. They would gain from it. So in terms of their persona and their company and what they wanna reach from it. So rather than giving them all the information of it, like, if I'm speaking to a field marketer, I'm like, this is how many leads you get, and this is what the audience demographic is. This is who you Hello. Hi, Jillian. Hi. How are you? To it. We know that there are a lot of pros to having these virtual events, and one of those pros is having all the content that comes from it. I'm shocked a lot of times that our thought leadership webinars that are an hour long of an author do really well. Sandra, Sarah, thank you so much for joining us. That was awesome. Again, I know a lot of you are here watching live, but the replays is where you're gonna be able to scoop up more information on it. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Everybody out there, you take a question. It's been a blessing to be your event MC. One more time, get up for my DJ, Chase the Matrix. Keep your clap in your hands. Hey, Carrie. So Carrie and I are gonna do a special monologue for you. This is really what the event professionals network is all about. It's just being there for one another. And to all of you who are watching this record and didn't attend live, thank you so much. We hope you got a ton out of it. We're pleased to support this thriving community of event professionals globally.