Chris Strom:
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the RevOps Hero Podcast. We have a great new episode here today. We have my guest, Jacqueline Freedman and we'll be talking about incorporating in-person events in your company's marketing operations. So Jacqueline, glad to have you on here. Can you give us a brief intro to yourself?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Sure. Thank you so much, Chris for having me. Excited talking about this topic. I am Jacqueline. I am the CEO and founder of Monarch Advisory Partners started up early last year. And I'm a fractional go-to-market MarTech and MarOps consultant helping all different companies, B2B, B2C, C2B get their tech stack in order and their MOPs structure and teams.
Prior to that, I worked at Grammarly in-house, was the founding marketing ops hire and also as the fifth marketing hire at WeWork and had been a consultant in between as well. And so helped a lot of different types of companies during hypergrowth. It's been a lot of fun.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I'm excited to talk through this with you here. Also, I know when we talk with a lot of people, our clients and prospects and other people too, lot of people are doing a lot more in-person events in their marketing strategy, but a lot of them are also really struggling with a lot of aspects of it.
And so I'm really excited to talk with you about doing in-person events as part of your marketing operations. So first off, I'd like to hear your thoughts on why should a company consider doing in-person events as part of their marketing strategy.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, it's a great question and I think it's a valid one because it costs to run an event of any sort in-person, between a venue and catering, you name it, getting guest speakers. But especially in such a remote-forward culture now, in-person events are that much more sacred and important.
And this is my own personal belief outside of MOPs, but the intention around any sort of gathering, there's a really great book about that called the Intention of Gathering where every event has a singular purpose and those are the most successful events.
And thinking about it from a business perspective, there's a couple of purposes, but the true and sole one should be bringing value of some sort to your customers and potential clients. And then as a byproduct you get potential pipeline or increased sales, things along those lines. So it depends on one, your business model and things like that, but it's great from a brand awareness perspective, which is not as measurable, but we won't focus on that fully in this conversation.
That said, it is just such a vital part. As wonderful as webinars and virtual events are, and they should still be part of your general consensus of your strategy and navigating how to bring events best to your company, in-person is just next level.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I know. I value in-person events way more highly myself as a participant than virtual events.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Same here. I mean, I just got back two weeks ago from a fantastic in-person event and it's kind of like a college reunion with all of your professional friends and colleagues. And so it's always nice to get together, and that community is so important too. And so that's where really having the actual strategy of the purpose and reason for said event and why you're doing it, whether it's a CAB to an actual panel fireside chat, really depends on what you're kind of going for, even a full-blown conference. There's a lot of options and a lot of opportunity.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I agree. So if a company decides, "We need to branch out beyond just emails and webinars. We want to do some in-person events," but they don't know where to start, types of events, what sort of options would they have for types of events and why would they want to choose one type over another?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, there's so many types of events from big to small, small being executive dinners to larger-scale full-blown conferences. There's also of course, relatively in between where it's like maybe it's a fireside chat or panel discussion highlighting some of your customers, and then a networking happy hour afterwards.
So it's really dependent on what your budget is, your goals, and how you want to go about it. They're all fantastic options, but they take investment. And so from a MOPs perspective, you need to also have the equivalent of field marketers. You need to have salespeople able to be bodies on the floor and help you navigate.
So it's definitely something to keep in mind depending on the size and scale and maturity of your current company. If it's a very lean team, it's going to be a lot harder. It doesn't mean it's not possible. You just might need to outsource in some capacities, whether it's through an agency or bringing on consultants and freelancers just for a couple of days to make it possible.
So I would look at one, what your revenue goals are, what your strategic company-wide goals are, and then determine, "Okay, based off of the size and maturity of our company, what can we actually make achievable and pull off?" You need to make it, whether it's a marketing solely or marketing in partnership with sales, revenue, OKR, if it's just one a quarter or one a year, either make that a company-wide initiative.
Chris Strom:
So that leads us into our next question here, which is the operational planning and setup for an event. Yeah, a lot of things we can talk about here, but once you decide to do an event and you put it on the calendar, what should the next steps be after that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. I would make sure you know what the purpose of the event is, what your goals are. And once the kind of just general outline and framework of what you're wanting to do is ready, immediately on the marketing side, meet with sales. Get full alignment and buy-in with sales to define the goals, define who the audience is. Is it all prospective customers? Do you want current customers? Is this meant as a retention play or is this meant in different capacity?
So making sure you fully understand and are aligned because then you can also define your follow-up strategy and your tracking strategy together, especially if you don't have that framework already in place where it's just a playbook for every event, that getting started zero to one, you got to be in full tandem with your sales team.
Chris Strom:
What are the one or two most common goals that companies set for an event?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, it's really dependent. So we can take it in a couple of different directions. So we'll do the CAB, that is all for customers and that's kind of product marketing, customer marketing, but in a lot of capacities it is opportunities for expansion and upsells.
So there's that one which is a little bit more kind of closed-door. It's not as large versus if you just do a fireside chat and you can host up to 100 people. That has a very different goal in outcome, but the tracking can be very similar ultimately of, who's actually registering and attending? Are you making tickets free? And kind of thinking through all the different strategies of what is or is not revenue-impacting or benefiting.
Chris Strom:
The first example, did you call it CAB?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yes, customer advisory board.
Chris Strom:
Customer advisory board. So, kind of like a feedback from your current customers?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yep, exactly. And also, you get to kind of preview your roadmap and really from your ... Typically, the CAB is the most important or VIP customers essentially, whether they're your largest customers or highest-paying, you name it, they're the ones that you want the feedback from.
So, very much depends on if we're really thinking kind of demand gen side of the house or more retention lifecycle. Both are equally important, just obviously different phase, different part of the funnel.
Chris Strom:
All right. And then you had just mentioned previously too, things like tracking and registration.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, how do you typically advise companies to go about planning and tracking touch points with the people who interact with your event?
Jacqueline Freedman:
For sure. Yeah, well starting point, obviously you need to get them to register. If it's kind of a laid-back event, you do want people to check in, whether it's to get a name tag or something along those lines, one so you know who actually is attending and in attendance. But that also just means you know who your two post-event segments are, your actual attendees versus those who weren't able to make it, something came up, or no-shows, because you're going to want to have your follow-up strategy be vastly different between those, especially if it's a closed-door, you're not recording.
If you're recording, obviously that's a very different follow-up strategy as well. But same goes if you are thinking the difference between a self-hosted event or a trade show conference.
Typically, at a conference, whether it's yours or someone else's that you're an exhibitor at with a booth, you have the QR codes usually have certain sponsorship or contractual agreements with the trade show conference itself, to get access to the QR code tagging and registration. But also, often days now you're going to see folks like, "Hey, let me scan your QR code," and it's gamified.
I think the conference I just came from, it was you got as many points, you would get free prizes up to a certain amount based off of how many points of going to each booth you got and/or attending sessions. So there's a lot of opportunities to gamify in that capacity and also use that as reporting and data, too.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I've started to see more of those -ified approaches for trade show events as well, or other types of events with sponsors.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Oh, for sure.
Chris Strom:
What are some of the more commonly used tools you see for implementing and tracking these touch points like that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. There's so many options out there. It's a C, that's for sure. I mean, I've seen everything from Accelevents, to Cvent, to Goldcast and so on and so on. And then of course there's a bunch of really excellent layers thinking through the hybrid piece, whether it's Zoom, Goldcast, BigMarker, SQL, you never know. There's so many options, but it's all about how you set up that integration with your map or your CRM, whether it's Salesforce or HubSpot, you name it. It's, how are you going to track back all of that information automatically so you don't have to be the one to manually do it as well?
Chris Strom:
Yeah, or even on the simpler end even just having a couple of forms for signups and/or signups at your booth or something like that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. I mean, as long as it's, in my opinion, digital. The reason why I say that is when it makes everyone's life easier. But I will say from my perspective, having someone hand type their things is not ideal. It doesn't mean it is not a valuable approach if we can't figure something else out, but highly recommend thinking digital, thinking scanning or adding on LinkedIn and then having a flag where you're automatically inputting them into the system and just making sure tracking is there for the entirety of that net new lead or that conversation as well.
Chris Strom:
And is that for just being able to get more structured data, or just to make it easier for the attendees themselves, or both?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Ideal state, everything is easy for the attendee, but long-term, the preference is for segmentation, that is for data purposes and also information. Whether you're customer success, or sales, or the marketer, to know how to communicate and speak to said customer as well.
Chris Strom:
So that's some of the things you want to think about for the planning and the setup of it. And that leads into the next thing we wanted to talk about with events, which was a measurement and reporting on the event afterwards.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Oh, yeah. Big topic.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, let's talk reporting. So yeah, what sort of metrics do companies typically choose to define success from an event?
Jacqueline Freedman:
For sure. I mean, the two most typical ones are, how many opportunities were actually created, and pipeline generated? A lot of folks fall into, in my opinion that MQL folly of, "We need this many MQLs," but in reality MQLs are meaningless if and only if they don't become generated pipeline or potential opportunities for the sales team to take on.
So if we recall earlier in the conversation I mentioned, pretty much the second step after defining what you want to do for an event, is meeting with the sales team. This is where you define the success metrics with them. How many net new leads are we wanting? How many leads do we want to qualify, to send to sales? And the answer can't just be any and everyone because that defeats the purpose of what an actual MQL is, and the shared definition and understanding of what qualifies anyone to be sent to sales.
So one, it's super helpful from there because then you can define, what is an MQL for this event? I'm a huge proponent of MQL reasons. So essentially it's not just, we're sending MQLs to sales. It's, we're sending these types of MQLs. So it can be hand raisers, those who went through a contact sales form, to organic customer lead scoring and behavior-based, to these are actually event-specific MQLs as a category.
So one thing, the sales team knows exactly where these folks came from, why they're coming in. And also, the marketing team should have equipped that follow-up strategy. Whether you're an Outreach or a Salesloft, whatever the outbound tool you're using, equip those sales teams with the content they need depending on the type of individual coming in through the door.
So those are some of my favorite ways with sales in partnership because if there's no alignment, you're not going to get very far very quickly, but those are the primary metrics I like to track.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, yeah. Pipeline generation is the goal of all of this, all your in-person events plus everything else you do on marketing as well. And then with pipeline generation, there's also, that's when we get into what we call sourcing versus influencing as well, like did this ... Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. How do we distinguish between sourcing and influencing in your pipeline? Well first, what do those mean and then how do we distinguish those?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. Admittedly, this is a tricky one and I don't think anyone has the answer. I think this is one of those, we're told they're important and so we try to use them and define them, but ultimately a lead is a lead is a lead. Yes, we want to know where they're "sourcing" from at the very top of the funnel so you know where to allocate budget.
In that regard, it's very beneficial, but ultimately it really depends on how your company likes to track things. So if you have established practices, hopefully the way you have standardized lead sources, you have an understanding, anyone that comes into your form, they might have come through the form, but they came in most likely through either a direct search on Google, organic search on Google, which meant they had the brand awareness before that.
So, a lot of these things are the intangibles, and so there's a lot of question marks of, how do we make this make sense? So I personally am not a huge fan of distinguishing and even seeing influence versus source. I've been through a lot of heated conversations about it just for the fact that it's an imperfect solution no matter the circumstance.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I know it can pretty easily devolve into, well, what if, what if, what if?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Exactly.
Chris Strom:
What if we didn't go? Well, what if lots of things? Yeah.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, and there's a lot of-
Chris Strom:
You could say that about anything in life.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Exactly. There's a lot of intangibles here. And because it's not concrete, that's why there's question marks. And so I have a feeling we're going to start talking about attribution, and I'll be the first person to say there is no attribution model that actually works. They're all helpful, but there is no clear-cut solution. The only real option is incremental.
It's really paying attention to differences year over year, month over month, seeing what changes were happening at a big level. That said, it is helpful to see last touch. And whether you're in Salesforce or in HubSpot, even touch, data-driven, first-last. All those are very beneficial, but they're not the full picture because you're not actually tracking everything. You can't track everything no matter if cookies are here or not, or you've got the perfect UTMs. All of those aspects are so valuable and necessary, but you can't track in-person conversations in that same way.
Maybe in the future we can, that sounds kind of creepy if we're recording everybody, but hopefully that's not and that's not legal in many states. But to that end, the best thing here is just consistency in campaign over campaign analytics, and having just the main dashboards and reports that are not only repeatable, but are showing events over time or changes over time to really identify like, "Ah, did we have a spike on this day in terms of our MQL to SAL rate or ratio and continued on through?"
And you always have to look, depending on your sales cycle, 30 to up to a year depending on how long it is, see what the cohorted changes have impacted positive or negative.
Chris Strom:
Is this what you're talking about here, is that what you called incrementality reporting?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, it's, I would say probably the most rudimentary version of it. There's folks who really focus on it that do an amazing job, but I'm a big proponent of attribution models are broken because they don't attribute everywhere and there is no real way to do it.
So I mean, I've seen so many companies waste millions upon millions of dollars trying to make this make sense in-house, using solutions. You name it, none of it's great. Just start tracking consistently, and that is day over day, month over month, year over year, campaign over campaign, and really getting into the nitty-gritty and the analysis.
I think so many folks get lost in the sauce of, "Our attribution model is perfect. We want to do this," and really it's just, "What is driving impact? And let's just see campaign by campaign, what is doing that?"
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I've seen myself, there's so many things that are just impossible to measure, almost any word of mouth unless you ask them and they remember clearly and they tell you, but beyond that, word of mouth. Does someone from company A goes to the show, talks to you, they leave. Their coworker asks them a question, a week later they give them your name. Your coworker Google searches your company and comes to your site, fills out a form and then-
Jacqueline Freedman:
Totally, and that's why marketing is always put in a difficult position, is because you can't track brand awareness. You can track sentiment, you can track many things, but it's never the full picture. And so that's where you just have the same metrics that you just are tracking consistently and really seeing, based off of goals.
If the goal of an event is solely retention or solely net new leads, and you can have more than one goal, but don't let that get in the way of the event in and of itself and tracking. But being sure to understand if this event is, for example, like we were mentioning, a CAB, a customer advisory board event, that is a very different goal, purpose and outcome, and you want to track that compared to years prior or if you meet every six months, things like that.
What are the upgrades that happen? What types of insights were brought in? Things along those lines, which are not as easy to track, but extremely important. And so there's a lot of operational just rigor and structure that needs to be in place so that that reporting is easier.
It's never going to be easy. It'll only be repeatable. And just understanding how it's going to continue with each and every event, you need to see what metrics you're getting and how they change from there too.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, cool. Maybe we can talk a little bit about how you would specifically go about setting up the campaign reporting in, say the marketing automation system of your choice mapping over to a Salesforce org for say, a fireside chat event for your prospects in a particular city.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah.
Chris Strom:
What would you set up for the campaign for that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. I love that question. Hopefully we've got some rigor already in place for the campaign structures, so you can kind of know the differentiation of event versus virtual, hybrid, in-person. Just some of those basics so you can do further reporting on it, but if not, that's okay, just start.
Chris Strom:
Are you talking about in the campaign name, like defining-
Jacqueline Freedman:
Campaign name, but also actually the way campaign hierarchies are structured too, in terms of when you're dropping down and you see the different channels and things like that. But beyond that, you also want to make sure at a minimum, your member statuses are one, succinct, the same across all the boards.
So you're going to get your default connected, which only means so much, not much of anything actually. So why not make sure they're consistent and you've got everything from registered, to attended, to no-show, to canceled or refunded, if that's necessary in your opinion, of just having the basics of your registrants, attendees and no-shows, that will be a game changer from a campaign membership. And then you can build your reports and dashboards if you want to keep it in Salesforce based off of that, and it becomes a repeatable and understood process with every event you're doing.
Chris Strom:
Okay. So make sure you're grouping your campaigns, parent and child campaigns systematically by-
Jacqueline Freedman:
It'll save a lot of heartache.
Chris Strom:
... maybe other themes?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Exactly.
Chris Strom:
Yeah. And then also maintain, use the same consistent campaign member statuses across the different campaigns as well, so you actually have a apples to apples comparison?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Exactly.
Chris Strom:
So that's the Salesforce campaigns. Do we need to get into more details on the marketing automation platform for setting up custom UTM tags or things like that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, we definitely can. So Pardot, or Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement should never be called that, Pardot in and of itself. It has the tightest integration with Salesforce, and so you're able to update through automation rules or through kind of a setup Engagement Studio program, all the updates to your member statuses as it's happening.
And using external actions, you can bring in, whether it's a Zoom, Goldcast, you can set up all of these integrations, or if all else fails, you've got Zapier, you've got your middlemen, middleware management platforms available too.
But the beauty of setting up these integrations, whether there's a native one or not, don't let it to be a blocker. But if you just set up the main structure for every single event to automatically update campaign status, and that in and of itself becomes super repeatable and easy.
That said, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes work required to make sure that's reportable and trackable. So if you haven't given it a try, definitely toy around, play around, see what platforms could benefit, like I know for example, Accelevents, in my opinion is one of the best out there for really in-person, especially conference-based or larger-scale events. And it has native integrations with HubSpot and you name it.
Pardot, kind of harder. It's old-school. In a lot of capacities, HubSpot's definitely more at the forefront in that regard, but there are native connections that could beat a Salesforce or HubSpot in and of itself too. So you just kind of have to look to see where your tech stack is, what your actual needs are and requirements are for any sort of event platform, and go from there.
Chris Strom:
You mentioned Accelevents, and I think that's Accel, like A-C-C-E-L-E-V-E-N-T-S?
Jacqueline Freedman:
You got it. Yep.
Chris Strom:
Not Excel, like Microsoft Excel or something like that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
No. That's probably going to be needed at some point during the conversation, but no, not-
Chris Strom:
Probably not as the main backbone of it.
Jacqueline Freedman:
I hope not, you know? We've all been there, but let's try not to.
Chris Strom:
Oh, yeah. And then so that's how you typically go about planning out the campaign reporting structure and the nomenclature and all of that. And so you set that all up, you host the event, and then that comes to the last part, which is, what do you do after the event?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, great question. Hopefully that Afer mentioned, sales alignment meeting. You have this process down pat, and if not, at the outset, needed to figure out what the follow-up process or nurture flow from the marketing and/or the sales side.
So for example, those who didn't show up, would you like to send them highlights of what transpired, or certain kind of quotes or information versus do you want to recap it for those who did attend? Everyone has kind of a different perspective. At minimum, please share recaps of some sort even if folks can't attend.
But outside of that, is there additional content you want to share? Whether it was recorded or not, do you want to share that information? Then, especially if there were any potential leads that were identified as interested to speak to sales or interested in learning more, you let the sales team take that on with the nurture series that you created just for them in Outreach, Salesloft, you name it.
So there's a lot of prep and planning, and obviously slightly different content based off every event, but it is repeatable. And highly recommend you get all the things in place in advance, otherwise you're going to be scrambling at the last minute. And after an event, everyone is exhausted. That's not the best use of everyone's time after the fact. Instead, execute the plan that you already had in place and be prepared.
Chris Strom:
Yeah. I know you'd mentioned previously, some of the common campaign member statuses you use for segmenting the different types of people involved in the events. Would you be able to give us an example of a common type of follow-up for people in each of those member statuses?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Sure. I'm going to have to think about that.
Chris Strom:
Oh, yeah. So you'd mentioned registered but not attended, maybe you send them a recap. But then registered and attended, would it be appropriate to assign them as prospects for the salespeople to just do a prospecting follow-up? Add them to that list of people?
Jacqueline Freedman:
I love that question. I'm going to say, absolutely not. No one who's not qualified should go to sales, should go to sales. Folks did not attend your event to talk to a salesperson unless they explicitly, not only gave consent, but ask, "I do want to speak to someone on your sales team. I want to learn more about X features and receive a demo."
And that's where you have to, either your sales team needs to update things accordingly or you need to find out in the moment of like, "Hey, I realize X company, someone asked a really important question about the features when we're at the end of the fireside chat. Maybe they're a perfect qualified individual to go to sales." And so that's where really understanding what that goal and your audience is, it's so important. Otherwise, it's a broken process.
And the, in my opinion, absolute worst thing you could do is just automatically have every attendee or no-show receive a sales email. That is not what they signed up for. And if anything, you're better off just not having an event if that's immediate follow-up. And so that sales-marketing alignment meeting is where you set the ground rules and also guardrails of who speaks to whom in what segment by what category?
That said, of course if there's active sales cycle deals happening and a rep was there and their potential customer was there, that's not saying don't have that sales rep reach them like, "Hey, it was so great to see you. I'm glad," blah, blah blah, blah, blah. "Do you have any questions or want to get on a call?" That's very different.
And so that's where you start getting into, I don't want to call them micro segments because they're not, but it is the sub-segments within. It's the folks who are currently in the SQO. You're dealing with an opportunity with them, or they're a win-back churned customer, you name it. There are different approaches for each.
And so one, you got to be prepared for all of those things, but it's also not hard. Once you get the original kind of playbook out, then it's just tweaking and of course, experimenting from there too, and seeing what language and what content works best for said audience.
Chris Strom:
Gotcha. So don't just queue up the whole attendee list into your sales people's prospecting-
Jacqueline Freedman:
Oh, please don't. Absolutely not. That is where, in my opinion, doing something along those lines, it's where the sales and marketing team begin to have distrust for each other. And that is the most difficult, eroded relationship to get back because then the sales team's like, "Well, these folks weren't qualified." Yes, they were not, so why did you reach out?
Chris Strom:
Oh, yeah.
Jacqueline Freedman:
And so-
Chris Strom:
Oh, yeah. But they let us hit our MQL number for the month.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Exactly. And that's where I hear all of these rumors of, "MQLs are dead. They aren't and important anymore." All these other new terms. No, the old definition of MQLs of just sending anybody who seems interested, straight to sales, that never was the definition.
Folks just want to inflate numbers because the going gets hard out there, especially when you look at macroeconomic conditions or maybe your product has a competitor and the competitor is outpacing you in certain regards, it gets difficult and sales is always wanting more pipeline.
So I understand the trap. There's no shame in the trap, but it's the awareness and recognition of what it actually is and how to fix it, and that is having those defined MQL definitions, reasons, the approach to it. It needs to be in complete unison and it can't be stagnant. It has to be continually updated in partnership.
And so anytime there is not a partnership, that is the first place I look to build trust. And that is definitely what I would focus on well before even thinking about events, is make sure you've got a good relationship with the sales team, and it's a normal relationship. You have to keep at it. It is not something that is just you meet once onto the next. Everything marketing does, inform sales and vice versa. So make sure to invest in it.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. I wish more folks listen to it.
Chris Strom:
Oh, yeah. It's easy to just talk about on a podcast like this, but it's-
Jacqueline Freedman:
100%.
Chris Strom:
... a lot harder when it's your executive team defining what's going to be your criteria of success and now everyone's getting judged according to that.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah. Yeah, it's tricky. It's complicated. There's personalities at play, there's different management styles and ways of communicating. And so that's where, in my personal opinion, having a really strong RevOps, SalesOps, and MOPs team to really kind of clear out the pipes, make things make sense so it's structured, so then the reporting sings and it can be very straightforward. It's easy. And getting just those basic standard dashboards, reports, and this is not just event-specific, this is your whole sales funnel, is getting that in perfect unison. No such thing as perfect, but in a agreed upon way and approach makes a world of difference.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, absolutely. So we've talked a lot about defining the segments and triggers for different types of sales follow-up, if any, after an event. The last thing we wanted to talk about for the post-event part was outside of attribution and defining sales follow-up, if any, are there any other feedback or data we should be collecting and reviewing from the event besides that?
Jacqueline Freedman:
For sure. We should definitely be sending out a post-event survey of some sort. Do not make it more than five questions. It's not needed. And the reason for that is, you want to understand if your audience actually found it to be valuable, interesting, informative, and that is a helpful factor for the marketing team to know areas to improve.
And also, those who are vocal and constructive and maybe not so constructive ways are still helpful in terms of potentially new ideas and new event concepts and themes. So it's a treasure trove of knowledge you can leverage, and that's where that post-nurture series is so important.
Obviously, maybe no-shows, don't send them that because that doesn't quite make sense, but really understanding what was and wasn't working for the customers who were there, it's super valuable for short and long-term understanding.
Chris Strom:
Get that qualitative feedback on the content itself and how much it connected with, how much they got out of it, how much value they got?
Jacqueline Freedman:
You've got it.
Chris Strom:
Yeah, that makes total sense. Cool. Any final things you would like to touch on here, on events before we wrap up this episode here?
Jacqueline Freedman:
Sure thing. I just want to emphasize, MQLs aren't broken. Your sales process and conversations with sales can be. So, the marketing team needs to really work to translate. And vice versa, work with that RevOps, SalesOps team to unify and make things make sense because otherwise you're speaking different languages, because marketers aren't speaking in pipeline in the same capacity as sales. That's their day in, day out.
Marketing is thinking about a multitude of other ways in order to generate that pipeline. So make sure you're translating and speaking the same language, and that's where having that alignment and understanding to make sure there aren't broken processes is the most important.
And so that's the one takeaway, befriend your sales team, become champions of them and vice versa because sales cannot do marketing, or excuse me, sales cannot do their job without marketing, whether they realize it or not, and marketing can't do its best job if the sales team is not set up for success as well.
So, everyone's success is how you will achieve goals and make everyone happy, both your customers but also the greater company and progressing forward as well.
Chris Strom:
I think that's a great place to wrap up this episode here.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Yeah, I think so.
Chris Strom:
Yeah. Thanks, Jacqueline so much for taking the time to join me on this and record this together. I think this will be really valuable for the people who listen to it.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Agreed. Agreed. Events are so important, and especially now as we're all oftentimes working from home want community, it is the way of doing it, and tracking it is how you determine whether it's something to continue doing. And so highly recommend folks invest in it, but also know where the limitations are, too. And it's extremely beneficial. So host events, it's great.
Chris Strom:
All right, sounds good. Yeah. Thanks again, Jacqueline.
Jacqueline Freedman:
Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
