Every organization constantly battle with decisions centered around growing the business and simplify processes. Organizing the perfect trade show is a complicated task as it is. And with the number of functions that go with it, merging certain functions can prove to be enormously useful to event professionals. Technology has luckily stepped up to the plate and bridging the gap between the customer and the organizer.
Event technologies have made it considerably easier to manage the entire process and simplify certain aspects of the trade show management process. In this blog, we look at a few integrations that can help you supercharge your trade show experience.
Badge scanning
When badge scanners were first introduced, they were an integral part of the event professional’s arsenal. The ability to scan badges meant that they did not have to collect business cards and manually update this information in their system. As an isolated function, the process did not really add much. But as a combination, a badge scanning integration can feed the contact information from the badges scanned into the meeting management system. This can enable customers to schedule meetings with sales representatives or vice versa.
Related: Why you need a badge scanning integration at B2B events
CRM
According to Hubspot’s CRM statistics for 2017, close to 45% of companies use a CRM software and this number is bound to become a majority in the coming year. With such a massive use case, coupling the meeting management software with a CRM can prove tremendously useful. A CRM like Salesforce can not only keep track of where customers are in the sales cycle but can help meeting managers track the number of meetings that took place and establish the impact of these 1:1 meetings on the sales pipeline.
Further, this helps meeting managers view the number of external attendees that participate in meetings across the event and create a follow-up process to close these opportunities. Such increased visibility means that attributing the influence on the sales pipeline and calculating ROI from events becomes a straightforward task.
Related: Building a rock solid sales pipeline with Salesforce
Registration system
At large trade shows, there is a need to keep track of the number of registrants in order to create relevant conversations with them. The challenge here, though, is scheduling 1:1 meeting instances with qualified leads that have registered for the event. The registration and meeting management functions are usually isolated. And due to this, the process is painfully time-consuming. Meeting managers have to manually upload registrant information into the meeting management interface before scheduling meetings with their attendees.
An integration enables the seamless flow of attendee information from the registration system into the meeting management interface. As registrations come in, the registration system database can be synced so that marketing teams are able to schedule meetings without having to manually add them as attendees into the meeting management instance.
Venue information
At large scale events, the exhibitor’s floor is chaotic with numerous activities like tracks, sessions, keynotes, and meetings happening all at once. Keeping the user experience in mind, schedules and sessions on the event floor had to be optimized. This meant that there was a need to loop these systems together in order to ensure that their time was best made use of. An event information platform like EventBase can be used to obtain event-specific information like exhibitor floor plans, timings for tracks and sessions, etc. With a meeting management integration, both the external and internal attendees are able to view their meeting engagements as well.
Lead management
In most cases, strong opinions and buying decisions are made even before prospects have met sales representatives on the exhibitor’s floor. This means that marketing has a pivotal role in defining the success of these interactions. This is where a lead management system comes into place. A successful initiative ensures that the lead or prospect is warm, informed, and ready for a sales conversation. So why does a lead management software require a meeting management integration? When these prospects step into a meeting, their information is fed directly from the meeting instance to the lead management system database. This completely bypasses the need to manually export this information into the lead management system. Furthermore, the meeting information is mapped as a custom object to these leads so that the interaction is tracked accurately.
Integrations can either be driven by or can spearhead change. In order to integrate these software within the trade show instance, it is important to make use of a complete meeting management platform, like Jifflenow. Want to learn more about how you can use these integrations at your next event? Reach out to us here:
