This article is part of an Events Insight series paid for by Cvent. See the first two in the series here and here.
Events, both in-person and virtual, are full of data points. Attendees are registering, attending keynote sessions, asking questions, sending messages, networking, visiting booths, talking to staff, and more. But often times, event organizer and marketers struggle to capture and activate all of that event data.
On its own, event data simply tells us what an attendee did at the event, with sometimes overwhelming details on how they engaged. But the real question is how can event organizers package the data so sales and marketing teams can action it with minimal lift?
One strategy is to use technology to score your event interactions so you can quickly gauge interest and engagement, and therefore qualify and prioritize your leads. Assigning a weighted score to each event activity can create useful insights. This also allows you to compare current engagement score rates with previous event rates, with scores across different activities.
Event organizers can then use this information to pinpoint the activities that are most effective at generating attendee interest. Further, marketing teams can use individual attendee engagement scores to prioritize those for immediate follow up, and to establish where in the marketing funnel contacts should be entered. Here’s how to do it.
The value of event data
The data gathered at all stages of the event can provide powerful insights for your sales and marketing team. Your marketing team wants to know which session topics are most likely to resonate with potential customers, and how far along each contact is in the buyer’s journey so they can share the most relevant marketing materials with sales.
The data you gather about attendees before the event gives your sales and marketing teams information about who your attendees are. This demographic and psychographic data is particularly useful for identifying key similarities between qualified and unqualified contacts. In turn, the data gathered post-event can provide useful information about why attendees engaged, what they achieved by attending the event, and what they plan to do next.
During the event, you typically gather engagement data which provides information about what attendees did during your event. Data about which sessions were attended and which booths were visited can be highly useful information for sales and marketing when packaged correctly. It can indicate what attendees are interested in, and where they are in the buyer’s journey.
What is event engagement scoring?
Scoring your event data is a process used to assign scores to every type of pre-, during-, and post-event interaction along the attendee journey, which then add up to an attendee’s overall qualification score (typically ranging between 0 and 100). The higher an attendee’s score is, the more qualified they are and the more they will be prioritized by sales and marketing.
Depending on what makes the most sense for your business, scores can be assigned both at an individual level and at an account level.
How you attribute scores depends on which activities matter most to your organization. For example, you may want to assign higher scores to people who attend the keynote session about your latest product rollouts versus attending a generic keynote session. Look at all the data you gather for your events and discuss with sales and marketing which interactions they consider to be high or low value.
Why is scoring important to sales and marketing?
Scoring event data has three clear benefits which aren’t entirely exclusive to the sales and marketing teams — they also positively impact the events team. Benefits include:
- Making it easier for sales to convert leads and fill their pipeline
- Determining the follow-up paths for registrants
- Providing quantifiable evidence of the marketing impact that events have
At Cvent CONNECT Virtual 2020, Cvent showed their product’s engagement scoring system in action, using it to determine the follow-up paths for registrants.
- The highest 10% of engagement scores went to a direct sales rep
- The next 50% were sent to sales development representatives (SDRs)
- The remaining 40% were placed into marketing nurture buckets.
Scoring their data allowed them to identify the most appropriate way to follow up and fill their pipeline.
What’s the best way to implement scoring?
This may sound like a huge mountain to climb if you have nothing like it set up already, but it’s not. There are technology platforms out there that can help you get set up. Cvent is an event marketing and management platform which prides itself on making it easier for event professionals to report on all key metrics across their event program, including engagement scoring. Customers have access to easy-to-use templates, as well as guidance from a customer service team with expertise in designing the most effective engagement scoring systems.
Events produce a wealth of data about attendees. However, oftentimes this data goes ignored because it all the different numbers can get messy. Event scoring can package it in a way that makes it easy for sales and marketing teams to use. Scoring your event interactions is a powerful way to create insights that teams can use to determine how to follow-up, fill their pipelines, and convert leads. Using a technology platform that can automate the scoring process — and integrate with your CRM and marketing automation systems — is ultimately the ideal way to implement this strategy.
Want to learn even more about engagement scoring? See how Cvent’s meetings and events team handled this at their hybrid user conference in the Post Event Activation chapter of their new ebook: Keeping Up With the Connectors.
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