In-person corporate events are only as useful as the planning that goes into them. Making sure they achieve their objective is a major undertaking—as well as a significant expense for any organization. This is especially true for in-person B2B affairs, where the objective is to make lasting connections with other businesses.
That said, the rewards are well worth the effort. You’ll strengthen bonds with current clients and partners while developing new business relationships. And with in-person events making a comeback, there’s no better time than now to plan one!
A large, in-person corporate event requires the alignment of several teams—most crucially, marketing and sales. And the more seamless their collaboration, the more effective the event will likely be in achieving optimal ROI.
Let’s have a look at some actionable tips for improving communication and meeting setups—and guaranteeing a successful corporate event.
Align With the Sales Team First
Corporate events begin with a list of stated goals to help teams plan appropriately and move in a specific direction. Without that focus, you risk wasting a lot of money without even accomplishing your objectives.
The sales team is your perfect starting point. But they need to be properly briefed from the get-go. This includes making sure that they understand the purpose of the event and are in sync with the expectations of the marketing team.
Communicate your goals clearly. This includes emphasizing the importance of fostering a collaborative relationship between team members, as well as open and honest feedback. An online space can be great for boosting communication and improving connections between team members—especially in hybrid work environments. In addition to facilitating messaging and asking questions, said online platform can help source information and share documents and ideas.
Next, establish measurable benchmark goals so you can track and analyze the outcome. Further, clarify who your attendees are—this includes understanding what they expect to get out of the event. Other strategic details to cover might include:
- Who are the Buyer personas
- How close those Buyers will be to offering terms
- Personalized content for potential clients or partners
- The right technologies needed to execute the plan
Formulate a Strategy for Engagement
One chief concern for marketing and sales teams is making critical customer touchpoints engaging for attendees. That means keeping prospective leads interested—while leveraging the brand-building potential of live corporate events.
First, consider the specific engagement types most suited to in-person corporate events. Some popular options include live demos, tracks and sessions, booth tours, customer advisories, and dinners and receptions. A range of meetings can be scheduled too; for instance, those with partners, experts, analysts, and PR representatives.
Then, take a more in-depth look at these engagement offerings, based on factors like buyer personas and personalized content, the stage of the buyer’s journey, shared goals and metrics, and technologies that will be used. It helps to segment your attendees into distinct groups, such as:
- New prospect opportunity
- Existing customers
- Walk-ins
- Senior executives
- Partners
That way, you’ll be able to engage attendees with the most appropriate touchpoints.
Streamline the Meeting Booking Process
The goal of corporate events is to increase sales and close prospects. Now that you’ve aligned your sales and marketing teams—and you’ve formulated the ideal strategy for engagement—it’s time to streamline your booking process. What you need is a meeting scheduler specifically designed for events; one that helps salespeople easily schedule meetings, ensures that attendees can request meetings directly, and simplifies managing and reporting for event teams.
Software that automates the meeting scheduling process for corporate events reduces time wasted on back-and-forth emails. Further, a meeting scheduler prevents mistakes such as double bookings and lost calendar invites.
With Jifflenow’s eEvent software for scheduling meetings, you can automate the most time-consuming part of the sales process—so salespeople can focus on selling. eEvent integrates with other software for effective data synchronization and provides a superior experience for your attendees. These features are essential for handling the myriad challenges of corporate events. Some benefits include automating strategic details like calendar invitates, room bookings, and scheduling changes. Moreover, eEvent keeps the entire team in the loop—for both in-person and hybrid events.
“[Jifflenow] just works. The most important thing I can provide my sales team is a really smooth and frictionless customer, prospect customer, and partner meeting booking process.” – Adam Kranitz, VP of Marketing, LucidLink
Analyze the Results
Analyzing the results of corporate events shouldn’t be confined to a post-event review. Rather, it’s something that’s part of the entire workflow. This includes:
- Pre-event meeting scheduling—the agenda, calendar invite, location, reminders, and approvals
- In-event management—check-in, resources, contents, and tracking
- Post-event reporting—measuring, analyzing, surveys, reports, and ROI
eEvent integrates with Salesforce software to ensure that survey data, meeting notes, information about participants, and more, can be captured—and shared. For example, the software enables the automatic sharing of opportunity data with internal stakeholders via meeting requests. Moreover, meeting data can also be pushed into Salesforce reports and dashboards.
Optimize Event Collaboration With Jifflenow
Live corporate events are more important to business success now than ever. And the right software package can make sales and marketing infinitely easier. Jifflenow offers solutions that include enhanced meeting booking software and resources to coordinate in-person and hybrid events.
For organizations eager to capitalize on key B2B occasions, this software can be a lifesaver. Contact Jifflenow to request a demo, and find out what a difference the right technology can make!
