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Category: Tip of the Month

Tip of the Month: Delivering Value to Attendees to Maximize Sales

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Welcome to BDI’s Tip of the Month, where we share lessons learned about field marketing events. We’ve been at this since 2001 and have learned most lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to!

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[push h=10]We get it. Sales leaders pressure field marketers to produce a targeted audience to be sold to. However, field marketing leaders need to first and foremost deliver value to the attendees. It’s focusing on what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for us that will produce the best results in terms of new pipeline opportunities. At BDI, we run over 100 field marketing events per year for 20+ clients.

[push h=10]Regardless of geography, function, or company size, attendees want three basic things: to learn, network, and have a good experience. So how do we deliver that?

[push h=10]Answer #1: Use a format that is interactive and provides a peer-to-peer learning environment. A roundtable room setup works much better than classroom or theater style. Allow time for attendees to interact with each other. Feature industry panels on relevant topics to deliver thought leadership content instead of an infomercial-style company/product presentation.

[push h=10]Answer #2: Pick geographically convenient venues with a strong brand. We tend to use private rooms in well known restaurants that have great reputations for food, service and ambiance. Trust venues that have a proven track record to take care of your guests, because an attendee’s experience at your event helps form their impression of your organization.

[push h=10]So it’s just another example of you must give to get. Happy, satisfied attendees are more likely to turn into new customers.

[push h=10]We hope these tips and tricks help you strengthen your field events!

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ABOUT BDI

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Business Development Institute (BDI) is an award-winning ABM event marketing agency specializing in producing custom, thought leadership driven, client acquisition roadshows called Accelerate Events. Using an ABM approach, we are able to successfully brand our clients as thought leaders in their industry while simultaneously generating qualified leads thorough our Accelerate Events. As a turnkey partner, BDI handles all of the heavy lifting from conception of the program content, to recruiting our client’s qualified buyers, to executing the event day of.

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Tip of the Month: Minimizing Attendee Attrition

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Welcome to BDI’s Tip of the Month, where we share lessons learned about field marketing events. We’ve been at this since 2001 and have learned most lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to!

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[push h=10]We all know the feeling – it’s 10 minutes before the event kicks off and there are too many empty seats in the room. We take deep breaths and tell ourselves people tend to arrive a little late as we periodically glance at the door in hopes of seeing a big group enter. When they don’t, we scramble to pull chairs and force the perma-smile and pretend everything is fine.

[push h=10]Over the years we have learned how to answer the ever-important question, “How do you minimize attendee attrition?”

[push h=10]Answer #1: Know your audience. Not just the personas and industries, but know your audience down to location. BDI uses a data-driven approach in every step of the planning process. We not only know that the IT function tends to have higher attrition than, say, marketers and HR folks, but we also know that the average attrition rate for a New York City event with a senior IT audience is 35%. But in Denver it’s 25%. With this data, we know that if the goal is 25 senior IT leaders in the room for a NYC event we need about 40 people to register in order to meet our goal. Gather data on location, personas, industries, and topics; turn that data into actionable insights and learn from it.

[push h=10]Answer #2: Create and execute a post-registration communications plan. Now that you got ‘em, how do you keep ‘em? Some of the same incentives you use for attendee invitations that originally got people to register will come back into play to keep these registrants, and ultimately have them show up day of. One week before the event day, send an email to re-confirm their participation, and include attendee incentives: peer-to-peer learning, high value networking, and a fabulous meal. In this same follow up, be clear that if they no longer plan to attend, it’s important that they let you know at their earliest convenience so you can free up their reserved seat, and offer their seat up to others on the waitlist. Additionally, we recommend picking up the phone the day prior to the event for a friendly confirmation call – this personifies you and creates a more substantial commitment. Lastly, always send a quick “see you today” email in the wee hours of the morning as a final reminder.

[push h=10]We hope these tips and tricks help you strengthen your field events!

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ABOUT BDI

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Business Development Institute (BDI) is an award-winning ABM event marketing agency specializing in producing custom, thought leadership driven, client acquisition roadshows called Accelerate Events. Using an ABM approach, we are able to successfully brand our clients as thought leaders in their industry while simultaneously generating qualified leads thorough our Accelerate Events. As a turnkey partner, BDI handles all of the heavy lifting from conception of the program content, to recruiting our client’s qualified buyers, to executing the event day of.

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Tip of the Month: Invitation List

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Welcome to BDI’s Tip of the Month, where we share lessons learned about field marketing events. We’ve been at this since 2001 and have learned most lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to! This month’s tip is all about building the invitation list of prospective attendees.

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The first step is to work with your sales team to make sure you have the right accounts for the city you are targeting. Aligning the goals of the event with sales is very important – for example, do you want to recruit net new logos for your top of funnel or will it be a mix of prospects and current customers? Once your account and event strategy is in sync with sales, the next step is to research specific contacts for the accounts.

[push h=10]We build a new, organic invitation list for each event we produce at BDI. We don’t purchase lists or rely on past attendees, although we will invite past attendees if they are still a fit. By using a combination of B2B tools such as DiscoverOrg, Data.com and LinkedIn, we identify specific contacts based on their company, location, function, seniority, title, and often specific keywords. For example, if we are doing an Internet of Things event, we will use IoT as a keyword. The result of this ABM-targeted research is a list of potential buyers from named accounts that are located in the event’s specific city.

[push h=10]We share the list real time with our clients’ marketing and sales teams so they can confirm the list is on track and modifications can be made. LinkedIn is a valuable tool to verify people are still at the company and their geographic location. People self-maintain their LinkedIn profiles so often we find it to be the most useful tool when it comes to verifying location, company, and seniority, plus you can do keyword searches on LinkedIn.

[push h=10]Happy hunting!

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ABOUT BDI

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Business Development Institute (BDI) is an award-winning ABM event marketing agency specializing in producing custom, thought leadership driven, client acquisition roadshows called Accelerate Events. Using an ABM approach, we are able to successfully brand our clients as thought leaders in their industry while simultaneously generating qualified leads thorough our Accelerate Events. As a turnkey partner, BDI handles all of the heavy lifting from conception of the program content, to recruiting our client’s qualified buyers, to executing the event day of.

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Tip of the Month: Topic

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Welcome to BDI’s Tip of the Month, where we share lessons learned about field marketing events. We’ve been at this since 2001 and have learned most lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to! This month’s tip is all about choosing the right topic for your event.

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Last month’s post was how to pick a venue, now it’s time to strategize on an event title and topic. The right topic is one of the most important ingredients for success. Too often, we see enterprise tech and services companies using their product as the genesis of the event content. Product marketing does not equate to effective event content marketing because product marketing is about you. It’s also about prospects or customers who already demonstrate interest in your product. When trying to get net new prospects in the top of your funnel, your ability to fill a room with qualified senior executives is based on your ability to communicate the promise of what’s in it for them, not you. Here’s how we do it for our clients at BDI.

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The first step is to understand the most important topics your audience is interested in. There are many ways to do this. Talk to your best sales and accounts team members, they know what’s on the mind of your targets. Read industry publications. Research competing events. For the IT audience, here are examples of successful topics we have been using: Enterprise Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, and Internet of Things. The art of crafting event content is about focusing on the needs of the audience while picking a topic that is related to your product and company. Many failed events lead with a product topic vs an audience topic. It needs to be the other way around.

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The next step is to craft an event title that differentiates your event from its competition. For example, we have been using Enterprise Blockchain – Beyond Cryptocurrencies. Note the focus is on the “Enterprise” and the point of differentiation is “Beyond Cryptocurrencies”, which drives most of the media hype on the topic of blockchain. This topic resonates with a senior technology leader for a Global 1000 company who is very interested in learning about how blockchain technology may impact his organization, not the latest hyped cryptocurrency that everyone is talking about.

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After the topic comes the abstract. A good abstract will briefly describe the opportunities and challenges associated with the topic followed by specific examples or use cases that will be covered. It will also provide a promise to the attendee about what they will get out of the event – benefits such as interactive peer-to-peer learning, high value networking, and a great meal in a private room at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Provide photos and videos of what they can expect. Don’t overlook the attendee experience in the abstract, it’s just as important as the topic. Click here to view an example of a BDI abstract for our upcoming Enterprise Blockchain for Insurance & Banking – Beyond Cryptocurrencies.

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ABOUT BDI

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Business Development Institute (BDI) is an award-winning ABM event marketing agency specializing in producing custom, thought leadership driven, client acquisition roadshows called Accelerate Events. Using an ABM approach, we are able to successfully brand our clients as thought leaders in their industry while simultaneously generating qualified leads thorough our Accelerate Events. As a turnkey partner, BDI handles all of the heavy lifting from conception of the program content, to recruiting our client’s qualified buyers, to executing the event day of.

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Tip of the Month: Venue

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Welcome to BDI’s Tip of the Month, where we share lessons learned about field marketing events. We’ve been at this since 2001 and have learned most lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to! This month’s tip is all about choosing the right venue for your event.

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So you figured out the best location for your field event (see last month’s post on how to pick a location). Marketing and sales are aligned on producing an event to attract new logos and position your company as a thought leader. Next step is to select a venue.

[push h=10]At BDI, 99% of the venues we use for our clients are private rooms, located within best restaurants in town. These are the restaurants with strong local brands that senior leaders already know and in many cases, love. They dine at these restaurants with their significant others, as well as business colleagues. Having an attractive venue is one of the several main ingredients to producing successful field events. While throughout the years we have built an internal venue database in just about every major metro area, we find Yelp to be the best publicly available tool to perform location-based research of the best quality restaurants with private rooms to meet our venue requirements.

[push h=10]The next step is to reach out to the list. Most restaurants have a private event section on their website with an online form and contact information for event managers that specialize in corporate events. If they don’t, that’s a red flag that often disqualifies them. While we complete their online inquire forms when possible, we also send them an email with our own form, asking questions that are often not covered or addressed on their websites and/or their common responses. The list of questions we ask is quite long but here’s a taste:

  • Do you host multiple events at once?

  • Are you open to the public at the same time as our event?

  • Is the room truly private separated by walls and doors? Please provide photos and dimensions of the room.

  • Are there any obstructions within the room that may block line of site during a presentation?

  • Is there any renovation in progress at the time of our event date?

  • What is the location of the kitchen to the room selected?

  • Where does the serving team exit/enter the room from?

  • Does noise filter into the room when this occurs?

  • What is the maximum seating/capacity of the room?

  • What type of tables do you offer and what is the maximum seating per table?

  • Can you offer a three-course plated meal? Please provide lunch menu options.

  • What A/V is built into the room?

  • What type of parking is offered at lunch? Valet? Self-park? Street parking? Third party lot?

  • What is the food/beverage minimum and is there a room rental fee?

[push h=10]After you select the best venue, it’ time to move into contract with them. I can write a separate blog post about contract negotiation best practices so I will save that for another time. Once signed, we send the contract back to the venue and ask for them to complete a Venue Prep Questionnaire. This document has additional information needed for the planning stages, such as the need for barstools for the panelists, table numbers, printer on-site for name badge printing day of, if needed, shipping information, address to use for parking, printing of menus with logo, and more details specific to the room selected. We are proactive throughout the planning stages about communicating with the venue when needed. Two-three weeks prior to the event, we provide a menu selection to our client. Once confirmed, this and the logos for the menu are shared with the venue. At this time, you begin to work on AV needs as well.

[push h=10]As you get closer to the event date, a final count and room set up is required. Be mindful that each venue has their standard requirement of time when this is needed. When providing this, we also include pertinent information necessary such as the amount of barstools needed, room set up with amount of tables with specific number of place settings, pre-poured water in glasses by 12pm, request a registration table, ask for table numbers to be provided (when applicable), provide the flow and timeline of the event with number of panelists so their entrees/desserts be held until after the presentation, parking solution decided upon, and a reminder to use client logos on the printed menu. This is requested to be on the Banquet Event Order (BEO) to be received and reviewed for accuracy. Things like the menu, non-alcoholic beverage options, if AV is set up by the venue are also listed on the BEO. Every venue offers their version of a BEO, so have your own checklist to compare and confirm information. The BEO is more important than the original contract in making sure everyone is clear on the expected needs for the event.

[push h=10]On the day of the event, we arrive no less than 2 hours prior to the start of the program to give ourselves plenty of time to make any last minute adjustments to the room setup, meet with the A/V staff, and perform set up activities. Remember that the entire venue staff is part of the success of your event. Work collaboratively and enjoy the event!

 

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ABOUT BDI

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Business Development Institute (BDI) is an award-winning ABM event marketing agency specializing in producing custom, thought leadership driven, client acquisition roadshows called Accelerate Events. Using an ABM approach, we are able to successfully brand our clients as thought leaders in their industry while simultaneously generating qualified leads thorough our Accelerate Events. As a turnkey partner, BDI handles all of the heavy lifting from conception of the program content, to recruiting our client’s qualified buyers, to executing the event day of.

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Tip of the Month: Location

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Welcome to BDI’s Tip of the Month, where we share lessons learned about field marketing events. We’ve been at this since 2001 and have learned most lessons the hard way, so you don’t have to! This month’s tip is all about choosing the right location for your event.

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So, great news- you’ve decided on a specific city for your field marketing event, in a region where you want to drive new leads for your sales team and brand your company as a thought leader. Before you can research the best venues, you need to pick the right location. The ‘right location’ in this case is simply the most convenient area or neighborhood for most of your target accounts in that particular city.

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At BDI we roll up our sleeves to help our clients pick the best locations by plotting target companies on a map and analyzing them spatially.

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The first step is compiling a target account list built specifically for the city you are producing the event in. Most of our clients have national target account lists, which are a good place to start, but won’t cut it for a field marketing event. Working with your sales team, filter the office addresses of your target accounts to produce the local target list.

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The second step is to plot those addresses on a Google map so you can visually select the most central locations- those that would be most convenient for the strongest clusters of target accounts.

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Finally, consider things like access to major highways, traffic patterns, where most people live (not work) and how attractive the neighborhoods are.

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Now you are ready to research venues in that location!

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ABOUT BDI

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Business Development Institute (BDI) is an award-winning ABM event marketing agency specializing in producing custom, thought leadership driven, client acquisition roadshows called Accelerate Events. Using an ABM approach, we are able to successfully brand our clients as thought leaders in their industry while simultaneously generating qualified leads thorough our Accelerate Events. As a turnkey partner, BDI handles all of the heavy lifting from conception of the program content, to recruiting our client’s qualified buyers, to executing the event day of.

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Tip of the Month: P³: Plan Perform Post-Event

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Congrats, you just had a great field marketing event with the right quantity and quality of registrants!

BUT…

The real work begins after the event if you want to maximize ROI.

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Your job doesn’t end just because you filled the room with the right people, delivered compelling content, and ran a flawless event.

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It’s critical to create and execute a post-event strategy that clearly outlines how marketing and sales will effectively partner to make sure all leads are captured, tagged, assigned, and contacted after the event.

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How to successfully wrap up your events:

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Immediately after your attendees leave and before your on-site team disperses, schedule a mandatory post-event debrief. The objective of the debrief is to capture as much new information that was learned about the prospects in attendance.

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Hopefully your event embraced an interactive format that allowed your sales reps and execs to be a sponge and absorb your attendees’ questions, feedback, and insights. Discuss each and every attendee, what was learned collectively, and outline a plan of action for next steps. These notes should be taken formally, using a laptop so you can easily transfer the data into your CRM system.

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As the adage goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”. This is especially true with event ROI. When you enter each lead into your CRM system it’s important they are tagged properly so you can claim credit when the opportunities move throughout the pipeline and hopefully convert into a new revenue producing customers.

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Unfortunately, the emotional shelf life of happy attendees that experienced a quality event is very short. We recommend immediate follow up within one business day. Every day that goes by decreases your sales rep’s chance of being effective. It goes without saying that a thoughtful “thank you” email with relevant thought leadership content links should be sent also within 24 hours.

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Tip of the Month: Prep Your People

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So you are ready to host a field marketing event with the right quantity and quality of registrants. Great job!

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BUT…

To maximize ROI, your sales team needs a plan.

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It’s not enough for you to fill the room with the right people, deliver compelling content, and run flawlessly through the program.

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Prepping your sales team is what turns your event into new revenue opportunities. You need a detailed plan that spells out how the sales team will prep before, act during, and follow up after the event, making sure roles, responsibilities, and expectations are crystal clear.

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BEFORE THE EVENT, communicate clearly the time commitment you expect from your sales team. For example, each sales person should arrive at least 30 minutes prior to the event start time and plan to leave at least 30 minutes after the event ends. “I need to leave during the event to catch my plane” is not acceptable! In those 30 minutes following your event, the entire sales, marketing, and thought leadership teams should formally meet in a debrief where each attendee is discussed, notes are taken, and followup activity is agreed upon. Do not settle for a meeting the following week – it’s human nature to start forgetting the details of conversations that may be the key to personalized followups. All of this fresh data needs to go into a CRM system such as Salesforce.com and be coded in a way that you can track and measure results over time.

Prior to traveling to the event, the sales representatives should recieve a full registration list so they can analyze the individuals, the represented companies, and any existing relationships. This way, they can easily research the registrants and attending companies (LinkedIn or Google both work well) so they are better prepared for introductions and conversations during the event.

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DURING THE EVENT, the sales team should be actively networking with attendees, not talking with each other. Instruct them to actively listen, and be a sponge- the more the attendees share, the better prepared you are to focus on their needs and convert them to new customers. Take care to set boundaries with your team- during the event, they shouldn’t spend too much time talking about your company or your products. Instead, it’s a valuable time to listen and learn- they’ll soon find themselves armed with more than enough business development intelligence to build real relationships.

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AFTER THE EVENT, it’s critical that followup is done within 24 hours, so the attendees’ experience is fresh in their mind. Our data proves that the success rate is greatest within 1 day of the event and goes down as time goes on. It’s also important that any and all followup activity is logged in your CRM/Salesforce system so that both the marketing and sales team can measure and quantify the results and ROI of the event.

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Tip of the Month: Registration Communication


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So you’ve got a strong response from people interested in coming to your event? Awesome!

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BUT…

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You may be surprised to learn that the need for registrant communications increases after folks have RSVP’d yes to your event. It’s not enough to have a strong response from folks interested in attending your event, you have to keep the line of dialogue open in order to maintain engagement and minimize the dreaded no-show rate. Keeping your registrants engaged ensures that your event is top of mind.

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At BDI we use proven methods to confirm all registered attendees prior to the event in order to minimize the percentage of no-shows. Advance cancellations are preferable to day-of no-shows because you can best equip your team with all the information you need to have a killer event! In the weeks prior to the event, we take steps to re-confirm all registered attendees and cancel registration for those who can no longer attend.

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Having accurate registration numbers puts us in the best position on the day of the event for two significant reasons: the venue can prepare the meeting space based on the most accurate head count, and the client is made aware so they have realistic expectations of the number of final attendees.

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This is how we pull it off:

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  • Immediately after a guest registers: send a calendar invitation with all relevant event details.

  • Two weeks prior to the event: send an update featuring the speakers and sharing the registration list in order to garner excitement about the upcoming event and networking opportunity.

  • One week prior to the event: send an invitation to all registered guests encouraging them to bring a colleague. In the event that the registration list is full this becomes optional.

  • Two days before the event: make personal phone calls to every registrant to further confirm they’re still planning on attending. Leave enthusiastic voicemails for any registrants that cannot be directly reached.

  • Day before the event: send a final confirmation message and include the updated registration list and request that if they are no longer able to attend to please let us know. Additionally, we request that if/when possible and, if possible, to send a colleague in their place.

  • Morning of event: send an enthusiastic “See You Today!” message reigniting their interest in the event and including any last minute details (e.g. notices about traffic, directions, valet instructions, etc.)


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