Reinventing Regional Roadshows for Success

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Category: B2B

Type: Demand Generation

Channel: Regional Live Event

Industry: Technology-Financial

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Challenge:

 

Prior to 2015, CO-OP Financial Services (CO-OP) had tried holding regional roadshow events, but they were deemed a major failure with low turnout and poor lead generation results. 

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Under the directive of their new CEO, CO-OP wanted to re-imagine these events with the goal of attracting a large audience coupled with a lead generation component.

 

Solution:

 

To determine the best regional event locations, we mapped where we had our highest concentration of clients within a 200-mile radius. Southern California, Denver, Des Moines, Detroit and Philadelphia were chosen for the 2018 schedule. Additionally, we added Boston and Tampa as strategic markets as they were deemed the greatest opportunity for attracting new clients.

 

We then partnered with the local credit union leagues (trade group) to provide regional content as well as help us promote the event to their members. Wherever possible, we also partnered with our large credit union clients that had meeting spaces—this benefit was multi-fold:

 

• Larger credit unions were frequently early technology adopters

• Partner space significantly reduced event cost

• Smaller credit unions were often inspired and motivated to learn from market leaders

 

To better promote the events, we developed a dedicated registration site with details of the agenda along with venue directions and hotel information. National promotion of the CO-OP Roadshow series started eight weeks before the first event to build awareness. This was followed by six weeks of targeted regional promotion before each event.

 

Result:

 

For our smaller markets (Denver, Des Moines, Philadelphia, Boston and Tampa), we averaged over 75 registrations and 50 attendees with approximately a 33% no-show rate for the free event.  For our two larger markets (Southern California and Detroit), we averaged just over 160 registrations and 98 attendees with approximately a 39% no-show rate. Attendance was about 150% higher than past events.

 

To aid in Demand Generation, we developed a post-event survey and gave out Starbuck Gift Cards to attendees who completed the survey at the event. The survey contained several questions that pertained to sales and we averaged about 15 MQLs for the smaller events and 30 MQLs for the larger events.

 

Key Learnings:

• Venue needs to be commuter-friendly with free parking or validated parking

• Involving the local credit union leagues greatly aids in attracting an audience and promoting the event

• Guest speakers provide for much more interesting content—we preferred to have at least one client success story with a CEO or CTO from a credit union coupled with an industry analyst discussing trends in the market (we worked with Filene and EY)

• Executive team participation is key – clients want to hear from the CEO (strategic vision) as well as from the CTO (product road map)

• In rotating Master Classes (90-minute deep dive course) between payments, data and member/customer experience, we found that member/customer experience is universally a very popular subject

• Running a practice rehearsal session a few days before the event is key to a successful event and needs to be scheduled optimally several weeks in advance with the executive team 

• Events that start around 9 AM and end by 3 PM had the best attendance

• Using self-service check-in with tablets greatly expedited the check-in process

• In most cities, lunch networking works best as people arrive too late for breakfast and want to leave right away after the last speaker

• Round tables facilitate networking and are preferred by most attendees

• Using paper surveys makes it quicker to get responses and avoids mobile device connectivity issues accessing an online form

• Offering an incentive to complete a survey at the event is key to capturing leads

• Providing a dedicated post-event content resource hub (we used Uberflip) builds further engagement and further aids in capturing leads

• In looking at attendance, Influencers (VP, Director) and Operators (Manager, Specialists) were much more likely to attend a roadshow event

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