How we realized ROI for Adobe's Dreamforce event (no booth required)
In the words of Dreamforce, “it’s an experience like no other”. Salesforce’s tech conference draws almost a quarter million attendees to San Francisco each year. That number also happens to be how much it will cost you to purchase their premier sponsorship. Of course, there are more “reasonable” options starting at $25,000. Keep in mind that’s only the physical space, if you want your brand to stand out you’re going to need to invest heavily in booth design, giveaways, and additional passes for your team.
Adobe began to ponder, was investing in a booth the only way to “get noticed” at Dreamforce? Or were there alternative solutions to grabbing the attention of your target buyers in the city that week? Our client, Adobe Sign, challenged the traditional conference strategy.
The Strategy
Adobe Sign used the annual conference to get their Salesforce integration in front of decision makers, but instead of exhibiting at the conference, they chose to host satellite events.
They knew they needed a strong incentive to drive attendance to events off campus. The solution was three celebrity dinners coupled with executive meeting spaces. The strategy? Warm leads at the dinners to move them down the pipeline to in-person meetings.
After the planning was complete, they handed the project off to us. Our responsibility was to pack the house with decision makers. We quickly sourced a list of highly targeted leads and worked closely with Adobe to ensure there was no crossover.
”"Alleyoop preserves our brand while developing event creative, driving registrations, and doing
Sharon NabhanGlobal Sales & Marketing Director, Adobe
follow-up to maximize event impact”
The Result
Our team was able to drive 727 interactions with C-level or above prospects, including 84 face-to-face meetings for Adobe Sign at Dreamforce without being a sponsor. This was done through the following strategy:
- Prospects are sourced from Alleyoop’s internal database who are most likely to attend Dreamforce based on historical data.
- Additional best-fits are sourced externally and aggregated into Alleyoop’s list.
- Two invitation emails were designed for each event to drive prospects to our landing page.
- A system was implemented to send confirmation emails to prospects who have registered.
- Two reminder emails were designed for each event to automatically remind prospects the day before and the day of the event.
- A call-heavy sequence was developed to convert prospects who showed activity with our materials.
- Alleyoop’s team of SDRs executed the call sequence to drive as many registrants as possible.
Conclusion
Dreamforce, like any conference or trade show, is a significant investment. Most (41%) marketers believe that events are the single-most effective marketing channel over digital advertising, email marketing and content marketing (Bizzabo). This reflects a 32% increase since 2017. However, success isn’t measured merely in number of impressions but number of qualified leads passed to the sales team. As a field marketer, how can you guarantee an ROI?
With EventGo by Alleyoop.
A solution we developed after seeing hundreds of events with hefty price tags create cool impressions, but yield no ROI. Luckily, we have the tools to achieve the same kind of attendance and engagement for your next event. An Event Marketer can think of Alleyoop as their own personal sales team, working solely to ensure that the right people (the decision makers and influences) pack the house at your event.
To see a demo of how EventGo can work for you, click here.