Picture this: your company has attended numerous tradeshows this year. You’re trying to figure out if they were worth your investment and if they are something you should continue investing in for the future. So, you start digging into the numbers. You know how much it cost you to attend these events, but you realize you have no idea how much revenue was generated from your efforts at these events or, better yet, you realize you generated no revenue from these events.
Cue really, really sad violin music.
But, not all hope is lost. You don’t have to give up on attending tradeshows just yet! Tools like atEvent, among other digital marketing solutions, can help you address and overcome these woes.
What is atEvent?
It’s badass, is what it is. But, by actual definition, it is “the most comprehensive Event Lead Automation Platform. (atEvent) connects pre-event, at event, and post-event prospect engagement to accelerate sales velocity.” And for your sales team that doesn’t want to spend time interpreting what that means; it’s a mobile app that is going to make their lives a whole lot easier and your marketing team’s lives a whole lot easier, too.
Here’s how:
- Manual transfer and entry of a lead from a conference into a CRM is a thing of the past. The atEvent mobile app card scanner allows your sales team to take a picture of a business card, and the information will automatically be parsed and transferred into your integrated CRM. (Because we all know if your sales team comes back with a stack of 100+ business cards from an event, that shit will never make it into your CRM. Sorry, boss.)
- atEvent gets you one step closer to actually gauging ROI and closing the loop. Lead information can also be entered into the mobile app directly without a business card as you're talking in real time with the lead, too, and will be attributed to the specific event they were generated from. You can enter the cost of your event ahead of time, and the app will automatically calculate your cost per lead as you continue entering them in throughout the event (this functionality also works the same for scanned business cards).
- You literally cannot make it any easier for your sales team to follow up with their leads. Why? Because you’re eliminating all of the possible excuses they have for not following up (didn’t have time to put them into the CRM yet, forgot who they were, etc.)
- You can keep tabs on hot leads you know will be attending events ahead of time. You can do this by pre-loading them into the app, so all you have to do is check them in on the app and engage them in conversation without worrying about anything else.
Taking atEvent to the Next Level
It’s not enough just to download the mobile app and take pictures of business cards, though. While this feature is obviously the most appealing to sales teams as it eliminates a lot of manual, grueling data entry, the real appeal is yet to be discussed (and this is where CEOs and Marketing Directors will want to pay close attention).
The real value that atEvent brings to the table is the way it can integrate with your marketing platform and CRM for intelligent and automated pre- and post-show follow up and nurturing. Remember those issues we were discussing earlier? They will be a thing of the past: closed loop attribution can be achieved because you’ll actually be able to track the leads that came in from each specific tradeshow effort, your team will actually be working the leads that were generated, and you’ll be able to see which ones actually closed into deals so you can determine tradeshow ROI for future business decisions and budgeting discussions.
Use-Cases for AtEvent
It all sounds pretty amazing in theory, but after actually integrating the platform with HubSpot for clients, we’ve been able to see it for ourselves. Here are some key examples of how we’ve integrated the atEvent app into our marketing efforts in HubSpot to take full advantage of the tool (and full advantage of the leads gathered from tradeshows):
Use-Case #1: Built smart lists that automatically populated with leads synced over from a specific event.
How to do it in HubSpot: if we attended the “ABC Tradeshow”, we set up a HubSpot smart list ahead of time called “ABC Tradeshow Leads” that enrolled contacts based off of an atEvent property and then also used this list for a workflow to set a custom HubSpot “Tradeshow” or “Lead Source” contact property for segmentation and attribution based off of the information synced over from atEvent. Eventually, if one of the leads attributed to that tradeshow from that list or tagged with that contact property became an opportunity and then had a closed deal associated with them in the sales pipeline, we could track revenue generated versus the cost of the lead from the tradeshow to gauge ROI.
Use-Case #2: Built nurturing workflows based off of topics and follow-up actions entered in for the tradeshow lead through atEvent
How to do it in HubSpot (using topics): if a pre-loaded topic your sales team talked to the lead at the conference about and documented in atEvent was “What service are you interested in?” or “What is your biggest challenge currently?”, we then took that information and automatically enrolled them into nurturing workflow sequences that addressed the services they were interested in or the challenges they were facing.
How to do it in HubSpot (using follow-up actions): if the sales person marked the lead as someone with a follow-up action “Ready to Book a Sales Meeting” instead of “Needs to be Enrolled in Nurturing Sequence”, a reminder task would automatically be set for the appropriate sales person to follow up and book a meeting with that lead in the HubSpot CRM.
Use-Case #3: Helped make the sales team’s job easier by automating the first couple of touches during and after the tradeshow
How to do it in HubSpot: after the lead was added into atEvent during the tradeshow, we would delay a workflow enrollment by 1 hour and then would send a simple follow-up email letting the lead know that the salesperson really enjoyed speaking with them and hoped that they would enjoy the rest of their time at the tradeshow that week. That way, the lead would still remember who the person was and what they talked about and could stay top of mind since they were still at the tradeshow and had just spoken a mere hour ago. They would then get enrolled into whatever the next step would be based off of the follow-up action the salesperson indicated for timely and effective nurturing or follow-up after the tradeshow.
As marketers, business owners, sales professionals, and tradeshow attendees, we’re all trying to find ways to make our jobs easier, be more successful at what we do, and make more money. Integrating a tool like atEvent with your marketing platform and CRM will make your tradeshow efforts more worthwhile, which allows you to do all three.
If you want to chat further to figure out how else we can help you make your job easier, make you more successful, and help you make more money, request an expert consultation today!