How Your MarTech Stack Impacts Event Success
Discover how the right martech stack helps orchestrate personalized content within the most memorable experiences at the right time for customers.
As events evolve from in-person to remote and to hybrid, the challenge for marketers is delivering memorable event experiences. JR Sherman, CEO of RainFocus, believes that with the right martech stack, marketers can orchestrate personalized content within the most memorable experiences at the right time for each and every customer.
It is hard to remember a world where attendees registered for events via snail mail. Our industry has evolved quite a bit. Yet, for the most part, events remain on a proverbial island. For far too long, marketers have been siloing event marketing tools and behavioral data away from their marketing tech stack, disconnecting experiences from their customers’ journeys.
With the resurgence of virtual events in 2020, marketers expanded their content delivery options and discovered the value of online engagement and the repurposing of high-value content. The broad access to virtual events led to a rush toward hybrid events in 2021, when marketers sought to blend virtual content with in-person activities for customers eager to return to a sense of normalcy. As marketers look at 2023 and beyond and the return of in-person events, the challenge for marketers shifted from creating in-person or hybrid events to simply overcoming the uncertainty.
With expanded options for delivering experiential content, leading marketers have now shifted their focus from creating an event for thousands of customers to orchestrating thousands of unique and personalized experiences. Equipped with a healthy portfolio of virtual, hybrid and in-person event experiences, the modern marketer will focus on engaging customers in meaningful, content-driven experiences that map to their journey with the brand. These marketing innovators will leverage an experience platform to connect the dots and deliver the right content at the right time in an experience that maps to each customer. The unification of events and digital marketing creates a strong competitive differentiation, enabling personalization at scale.
See More: Data: A Key Element To Creating Better Event Experiences
Understanding the Event Landscape Means Understanding the Customer Journey
While it remains tempting to assume one type of event is “better” than another, this binary thinking can be counter-productive, especially when developing global marketing strategies. In fact, with a customer-centric strategy and an integrated event management platform for content orchestration, marketers can create a portfolio of memorable experiences and achieve exceptional ROI.
A level above the online vs. in-person debate, marketers and martech teams are shifting their technology decisions away from the ‘event’ and towards their customers. By making technology decisions for an event or event series, event marketers have siloed their tools from the rest of their martech stack and, as a result, limited or eliminated the integration of rich customer behavior data with marketing and CRM platforms organizations depend upon for growth. Simply put, an integrated experience platform is necessary to ensure a comprehensive and real-time picture of a customer journey. With a proper platform in place, experiences are far more personalized, but the entire customer journey with the brand becomes seamless.
Personalization Is Critical
It is common sense that customer engagement duration with a virtual event, a hybrid activation, or an in-person conference or meeting is exponentially greater than web clicks, emails and social ads. Yet, compared to digital marketing, little effort is made to map these engagements to customers on a personal level. To date, event technology tools have presented too many disparate integrations, security risks, and scalability issues for marketers to integrate them securely and make sense of the disconnected data. A modern experience platform solves these challenges, but more importantly, it enables the personalization of events and experiences across all phases of the customer journey.
An integrated experience platform infuses unparalleled personalization into your event portfolio. AI and targeted content recommendations are only the beginning. A unified martech stack allows marketers to deliver personalized content. And a smart event platform orchestrates that content at the right time and in the optimal experience to meet the customer’s preferences and accelerate their relationship with your brand.
Do Not Forget About Data
Understanding the customer and offering personalized experiences cannot happen without data. A customer’s time is limited, and there is a great deal of competing signals crowding their mindshare. It is no surprise that customers are often searching for experiences that can precisely provide what they are looking for, with minimal clicks, intuitive UI and minimal distraction. Whether an event is in-person, virtual, or anything in between, data enables marketers to gain real-time insights to hyper-personalize the next step for the customer. AI and machine learning algorithms are just scratching the surface. Anyone with a spreadsheet can analyze event data and deliver recommendations on content. When event leaders integrate a platform into the martech stack, the walls between digital and experiential marketing dissolve. Modern marketers can now create unique journeys for each and every customer at scale. Within those journeys, the engagement data from events are often the richest source of behavioral insight available to drive personalization continually. Integrated properly, event data can guide and trigger omnichannel communications to deliver the most efficient and effective journey to brand affinity.
See More: How Companies Can Engage Attendees Better in the Hybrid Events Era
Mapping Out Event Success
To be successful, marketing and event leaders must understand that technology is no longer a decision for an event but a critical martech platform decision centered around your customers. The right platform can both unify marketing data and enable the personalization of the customer journey at scale. Similar to CRM and marketing automation tools, event technology is now a platform decision for organizations that have recognized the value and contribution of events.
The pandemic has changed how we work and manage events. However, I know the industry is still evolving. I believe in providing solutions that work for organizations, brands, and customers. Whether you invest in hybrid, in-person, or virtual events, be prepared to pivot and scale on short notice and focus on each unique customer relationship. With the right platform, you can orchestrate personalized content within the most memorable experiences at the right time for each and every customer.
How have you organized your martech stack to deliver the best event experiences to your customers? Share your thoughts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Image Source: Shutterstock
MORE ON EVENT MARKETING
