Tag Archive for: Customer Relationship Management

14 Ways Show Organizers Can Increase Attendee and Exhibitor Engagement at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events

February 14, 2023/in Best Practices, Lead Generation, Revenue Generation Blog, Sales and Marketing Tools, Sales Enablement/by Lead Liaison

14 Ways Show Organizers Can Increase Attendee and Exhibitor Engagement at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events

We’ve been working with show organizers as they navigate changes in the events industry. We understand the challenges they face putting together live, virtual, and hybrid events. Many show organizers have different needs; however, when you search for the common thread across all organizers, we found engagement to be the number one need. The other need is creating additional revenue streams (see our other blog post titled “15 Ways Show Organizers Can Create New Revenue Streams at Live, Virtual, and Hybrid Events”).

If you’re a show organizer reading this article, you’re in the right place! We decided to consolidate the top 14 ways show organizers can increase engagement with attendees and exhibitors. Here’s the list:

1. Digital treasure hunt

In the “olden days” show organizers would hand out physical, paper cards that attendees would bring with them as they searched for key items throughout the event. When they found an item, a staff member would use a rubber stamp to stamp the card. When the attendee filled in the entire card, they’d return the card to the front desk to claim their prize. Modern technology has eliminated the need for paper. Now, attendees use their mobile phone to scan QR codes, reducing reliance on resources required to staff the station and the use of raw materials. Attendees can traverse the event floor or virtually hosted environment to find the treasure hunt items. When found, the attendee scans the QR code on their phone, receives points, then proceeds to search for the next item until all items are discovered.

2. Exhibitor tour

This concept is similar to the digital treasure hunt; however, exhibitors are the treasure. When we attended ExhibitorLive, our main event, it was interesting to see their “Tech Tours”. As an exhibitor, we paid $1,500 to be part of the tech tour. Exhibitors would pay a premium to be a stop on the tour. A QR code posted in their booth could have a uniquely branded message or look on the QR code, indicating the stop number on the tour. For example, there might be a total of 10 stops on the tour, one for each exhibitor, and the signage with QR code represents “Stop #2” on the tour.

3. Experience getaway

Waypoints (stylized QR codes) represent a way to get attendees to do what you want them to. This might include a visit to a specific location, downloading a brochure, a conversation with a particular representative, attending a presentation…just about anything you can imagine. Consider having pavilions or zones at your event. To get your attendee to visit all the pavilions/zones, use Waypoints!

4. Speaker polls

With all your educational sessions, keynote speakers, or anything similar consider having a poll / survey for your attendees. Speakers, or an assistant to the speaker, can control what questions are asked and when they are displayed. The audience can launch the questions via a QR code and view / answer the questions on their personal device. Data is collected on the backend to give show organizers a better understanding of what the audience thinks of whatever it is that is being presented.

5. Live photo booth

Show organizers can present a photo booth at live events running in a few modes. The photo booth can be launched on an attendee’s personal device from a branded QR code, or displayed in the lobby on a physical device. A customizable Gallery can be displayed on a computer screen or on the wall using a TV or projector.

6. Virtual photo booth

Similar to the live experience, a photo booth used on a virtual platform can work in combination with a live event (hybrid events). The photo booth can be embedded in a virtual event platform, such as Bizzabo, Swoogo, etc. or accessed via a customized QR code (for mobile). Using the attendee’s web browser or mobile device, their photo can be posted to a Gallery, which they can share with friends and team members.

7. Touchless attendee gamification using QR codes

In an environment where safety is a concern, games can be launched via customized QR codes spread out throughout the live or virtual event. Instead of hauling hardware with you, attendees can play games on their mobile device.

8. Educational opportunities

Trivia and Quetrix (spin off of “Jeopardy”), among other games, present great educational opportunities for show organizers. Attendees engage with these activations by being challenged with questions that can also deliver specific messages about your event.

9. Participation awards

Encourage attendee participation on initial attendance or at individual sessions. The more sessions an attendee joins, the more “points” they get, resulting in higher participation levels and a chance to be atop the leaderboard.

10. Digital prize drawings

The various types of attendee engagement that we’ve alluded to above can be scored using points. Points can be rolled up into a master leaderboard. Winners can be selected at the end of the day or at the end of the event. Winners can be rewarded with digital gift cards. I like to think about this like an online shopping spree. For example, if the first place winner (the attendee who was the most engaged) won $500, then they can spend the $500 across more than 150 brands such as Nike, Dunkin’, Airbnb and many more.

11. Fundraiser for charity

Many events enjoy raising money for charity… and why not? It’s all for a good cause! Attendees like to be part of these giving opportunities, and it often serves as a breath of fresh air outside of the pandemonia of the event.

12. Casino-based networking event

Use a suite of casino games, such as roulette, spin to win, three cups, blackjack, roll doubles, and more to create a unique experience that like-minded attendees can participate in. Create a leaderboard dedicated only to this experience to connect attendees to others with similar interests.

13. Hold team competitions

Break audiences into groups or use companies to automatically create teams. Companies and groups can compete against each other for a chance to be placed atop the leaderboard.

14. Clue

Use Waypoints with tips to create a game based on clues. Who killed who? With where, and what? Waypoints support the clues as each attendee scans the Waypoint and receives a clue for where they should look next.

If you’re a show organizer looking for ideas to increase engagement at your event, let us know! We’re happy to ideate with you to increase engagement at your next event. Contact us and schedule a meeting today!

Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

To see how Lead liaison’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!

The Importance Of Customer Experience For B2B Relationship

February 9, 2023/in Best Practices, Lead Generation, Revenue Generation Blog, Sales and Marketing Tools, Sales Enablement/by Lead Liaison

The Importance Of Customer Experience For B2B Relationship

Efficiency, service, quality, and reliability…

These are just a few of the terms we often hear when discussing the topic of customer satisfaction. Most businesses understand that retaining customers is a fine art that requires a well defined process.

Oftentimes, we see that a basic framework for customer experience is built at the beginning of an organization’s founding and once built, time and resources are pulled away and reallocated to other areas of the business leaving the skeleton framework to run itself. However, successful businesses understand the value in continuing to measure and optimize and grow their approach towards enhancing the customer experience.

One of the best ways to optimize your customer experience and retain customers is by collecting data from customer satisfaction surveys, or by using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) process. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a simple but powerful tool to measure client satisfaction with one single question, an indication of the growth potential of your company or product.

Marketing research, focus groups, and client satisfaction surveys are oftentimes polarizing topics. However, it is our belief that the data you collect is always less scary than the data you ignore. We would argue that the benefits far outweigh the negatives when implementing a customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey.

First and foremost, simply giving your customers or clients an avenue to voice their feedback goes a long way. Sure, any major issues or problems can be communicated on a daily basis without a survey, but an effort like this allows customers and your company to take a step back and think about larger themes and strategies outside daily minutiae. A good analogy is playing football everyday on the field focusing on one play at a time, versus stepping back and viewing plays from the booth. You need to spend time doing both, and we all get so busy worrying about the little things that we forget about the big ones.

When organizing a customer satisfaction survey, here are some items to consider:

We will dive deeper into each point below:

5 basic aspects:

Who should be interviewed?
What needs to be measured?
How should the survey be carried out?
How should customer satisfaction be measured?
How to use the results to increase satisfaction, loyalty and profitability.

Who Should Be Interviewed?

When it comes to the target audience for our survey, we must consider the big picture. Take, for example, a truck manufacturing company. Who should be interviewed? The driver, the transport manager, the general management of the company? Similarly, in other b2b markets there may well be influences on the buying decision from production, QA’s, research, engineering or development staff. Because each department evaluates suppliers differently, the customer satisfaction survey will need to expand and shift to cover the multiple views.

What Should Be Measured?

In researching the satisfaction level of our customers, we are searching to uncover the respondents’ view on a variety of categories that will help us identify how the company is currently performing and how we can improve in the future. This understanding is obtained at a high level (“how satisfied are you with Lead liaison overall?”) and at a very specific level (“how satisfied are you with the clarity of invoices from Lead liaison?”).

How Should The Interview Be Carried Out?

While customer surveys are important, there are other indicators to help measure your customer experience. Sales volumes from cross-selling are a great indicator, but they can fluctuate for many other reasons beyond customer satisfaction. In addition, the complaints you receive from customers speak volumes, but they may also reflect the views from a more narrow portion of your clientbase. Positive words relayed through an email or spoken out loud during a conference call are also worthwhile indicators, and should be noted. However, each of these haphazard pieces on their own are not enough to provide understanding on a higher level.

We believe that you must tie it all together by using several different tools in a very intentional way. The toolkit for measuring customer satisfaction boils down to three options, each with their advantages and disadvantages:

Online Surveys
Face-to-Face Interviews
Phone Conversations

How Should Satisfaction Be Measured?

Customers may express both their satisfaction & unhappiness in a variety of ways. The best thing to do is to be intentional about asking for their opinion.

By using the basic concept of the NPS survey, your customer can accurately relay their happiness by rating you using a concept they are familiar with – Numerical Scoring. Once the respondent has been given the anchors of the scale, they can readily give a number to express their level of satisfaction. Typically, scales of 5, 7 or 10 are used where the lowest figure indicates extreme dissatisfaction and the highest shows extreme satisfaction.

Developing An Action Plan That Rectifies The Weaknesses And Builds On The Strengths

The purpose of customer satisfaction research is to improve customer loyalty, and yet so often surveys sit collecting dust. Worse than that, customers have generously given their time to assist in the customer satisfaction survey believing that some positive action will take place. Their expectations will have been raised. The process of collecting the data seems easier than taking action to improve satisfaction levels.

Spot the gap
Challenge and redefine the segmentation
Challenge and redefine customer value propositions, customer journeys and understanding of customer needs
Create an action plan
Measure and review

In conclusion, implementing this type of survey is one of the best ways to continue to build on your customer experience framework. You must remember, however, that customer satisfaction indexes are a snapshot at a point in time. People’s views change continuously and the performance of companies in delivering customer satisfaction is also changing. Measuring satisfaction must be a continuous process. Whether you offer a reward, such as a coupon for a free e-gift card, or customers complete your survey without prompting, be prepared to dig far enough that you discover information that can require anything from a mere tweak in company policy to a complete change in your operating paradigm.

Convergence of PRM and Marketing Automation Facilitates Superior Marketing Alignment

October 24, 2012/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

One in every five B2B organizations use a marketing automation platform (MAP), and the present trend indicates that it will grow to 40% by 2016, according to B2B research and advisory agency SiriusDecisions. Organizations are increasingly integrating marketing automation with their CRM databases and Partner Relationship Management (PRM) strategy to facilitate efficient lead nurturing and achieve the most favorable sales potential. This three-way alignment optimizes stand-alone solutions and multiplies sales capabilities of the organizations, creating marketing alignment.

The Case for Marketing Automation Platform-CRM-PRM Integration for Superior Marketing Alignment

The prospect of efficient business processes and enhanced benefits has made marketing automation a key attraction for businesses. Organizations operate in a complex ecosystem that demands attention to a variety of factors. It has become increasingly difficult to track and report marketing progress and sales opportunities across partner networks while managing campaigns and opportunities. Many fall upon PRM solutions to maintain and boost partner-vendor relationship and ensure superior coordination among different channel players.

The PRM is aligned with the CRM, holding customer database and marketing automation tools for better visibility and tracking of performance of partners, co-ops, and other assets. While the former focuses on customer lifecycle management, PRM solutions take care of reporting and analytics suitable for partner lifecycle management. Marketing automation integrated with the two enables businesses to integrate records and track and monitor typical sales opportunities created in a partner network and specific interested customers.

Vendors and manufacturers can also set up on-demand services through marketing automation using social media, telemarketing, and email. By integrating PRM and CRM with marketing automation platforms, businesses can offer instant portal access and training courses in their chosen language and medium. A big plus is that partner branding can be aligned with marketing resources and increased ability to monitor and manage leads and campaigns.

There is no need to employ multichannel strategies, tools, and resources for deal registration and management of opportunities. Often channel managers run helter-skelter as they work with manual systems and spreadsheets to deal with partners and customers. Marketing automation facilitates use of same system by brand owners and partners, reducing time and gap in interaction. With vendors rolling out campaigns and leads in no time to partners using the vertical-sharing system, both can work side by side, enhancing coordination and cooperation.

PRM-Marketing Integration: Summary of Benefits

Integration of PRM with marketing automation offers three important benefits.

1. It helps in automatic lead distribution to partners without any coordination issue.

2. It helps bridge the gap between a business and its partners. All solutions are immediately available to partners. They can interact, learn, receive training, and lead sales efforts without overburdening the business.

3. It is easy to monitor and manage a campaign and activity on leads and holistically measure direct and indirect sales benefits to partners using the marketing automation platform.

With increased availability of SaaS solutions, there is no major technical obstacle that impedes PRM-marketing automation integration. Many consider budget and disconnect issues caused by failure of the system as key hindrances. However, the benefits of aligning the two outweigh the concerns. No doubt PRM can be a stand-alone solution, but when integrated with marketing automation, its compatibilities multiply, assuring better lead development and campaign execution.

Tag Archive for: Customer Relationship Management