Sponsored events are an important tactic to acquire new leads. They are also quite expensive. The right media company might have a huge database that it can expose you to. But remember that it's your content and tactics that will dictate whether paid events yield results or not.
We at Parmonic love sponsored events and use them ourselves. But data indicates that more than 60% of registrants don't end up attending the event/webinar they registered for. If you are participating in a multi-sponsor event with several tracks and sessions, you are competing for time and attention with all other sponsors!
Of those who attend, almost half end up dropping during the event. We call them 'low-shows' for their low attendance time.
Due to the high price tag and huge whitespace of no-shows, you have an opportunity to generate more leads and increase the ROI from sponsored events.
Conference and webinar hosts typically provide marketers with a list of "leads". This list typically contains email addresses and demographic information as well as data on registration/attendance/time spent, etc.. This lead list can then be imported into a MAP or CRM, or shared with the sales team.
A lead that registered but did not attend has shown interest but was unable to fit the event in her schedule. Target no-shows with a follow-up email that gives them key moments (takeaways) right inside the email. By removing friction and barrier to content consumption, you can make it easy for leads to give you a signal that proves they really are interested and allow you to increase the MQL score.
Access to a lead list from your event that includes data on registrants and attendees. Access to Parmonic.
Target the low-shows with a recap of key moments. Since they didn't attend much of the event, their action on your follow-up email will dictate whether they are MQLs or not.
Provide a copy of the follow-up email to your sales team (Parmonic makes that super easy for you) and ask sellers to use this new way of following up with leads from events.
When someone attends an event, they often go back to their team and share insights and learnings. Explicitly ask email recipients to forward the munchable recap email to their colleagues. They are more likely to share this 'cliff notes' version.
An important purpose of these recaps is driving content recollection in the minds of buyers. Add explicit CTAs in your email that allow people to ask questions about content topics.
In order to engage and track imported leads you will need to have their permission and they must accept your cookie tracking.
When you email these imported leads, your MA system will be able to track their behaviors if the cookies have been accepted by the visitor when they land on your website.
Some marketers can choose to ask visitors to sign-up using a form on the email landing page. A compelling recap email paired with the right landing page has much higher probability of converting.
For visitors coming to your landing page via email, you can choose between gating or direct access to content based on your policies and priorities.
Convert more leads from sponsored events.
For most companies these additional leads will decide whether the event ROI was positive or negative.
By reducing barriers to consumption of content, you can get brand exposure via event hosting and media companies, and then proactively convert leads to higher quality MQLs.
