Events are excellent ways to engage with your audience. Events, whether online or in person, add an increased level of engagement with you audience, helping build stronger relationships with them. Events such as webinars and trade shows are also a great way to position your company and display the knowledge of your team on a range of topics. Marketing automation tools, like Marketo, can be used to help you manage and promote your event.
From program setup to reporting, here are practical tips and strategies for managing events in Marketo:
Plan Your Event Wisely
Events will be successful if you offer the right message, delivered by the right speakers, to the right people. Choose a speaker or speakers that are known to the audience and have a reputation for being a thought leader on the topic of the event – this is critical in the case of webinars and speaking sessions at conferences and other live events. If you are planning a webinar, include multiple speakers, as it will make for a more engaging conversation and you will likely hold the audience’s attention for a longer period of time.
Choose a day or days, and time that gives you enough time to plan your event and promote it properly. If people have to travel to the event, consider adding additional time between the initial promotion of the event and the event date, as people have to make additional arrangements in order to attend. Webinars can be attended remotely and generally require less time between the initial promotion and the event date. Also in regards to webinars, choose a time that isn’t too late or too early in the day for your audience. Consider the main time zones of the potential attendees, and if needed, hold different sessions at different times so that people in all areas of the world can attend at a time that is better for them.
Marketo Program Setup
Before creating your event program in Marketo, review the available program channels. You want to ensure that the program statuses available within the channel are reflective of the journey that someone would take throughout the program. You can add and remove statuses to meet your needs – especially when it comes to program reporting. Here are some common program statuses for different types of events:
Webinar:
- Invited
- Registered
- No Show
- Show
- Attended on-demand
Live Event:
- Invited
- Registered
- No show
- Attend
Trade Show:
- Invited
- Attended show
- Visited booth
- Engaged
- Influenced
Assets and Campaigns
Before you can begin promoting your event, and once you have finalized the event topic, date/time and speakers, you can begin creating the necessary assets. The assets involved often include a landing and thank you/registration confirmation page, a registration form and multiple emails – invites, reminders, additional event details and follow up emails, to name a few. Once you have created your assets and approved them, you can move on to building the campaigns for the event program. Campaigns often include:
- Initial invite – send the invite email to a defined audience.
- Confirmation – send a confirmation email to those who register.
- Reminders – these can consist of reminders to register and reminders of the upcoming event.
- Followups – send emails to those who attend and to this who were not able to.
- Alerts – if there are certain activities or leads you want to follow up with, create a campaign that would send alert emails to specific members of your team.
Reporting and ROI
Planning for an event also means that you have to take ROI into consideration. After the event has taken place:
- Provide real-time insights and reporting
- Optimize the sales and marketing follow-up process ultimately leading to faster buying cycles
- Accurately report on sales and revenue results linked to specific event activities
- Prove the value of the event
- Make necessary improvements to future events for all stakeholders
By analyzing your investments in all of your marketing activities – new names generated, opportunities created, opportunities influenced, revenue won, etc., you can determine where to allocate future marketing budget by investing in the events that bring you the greatest return.
For more information of event marketing, check out Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Event Marketing.