If you’re like the team here at Pardot, you’re probably buckling down in preparation for the marketing event of the year: Dreamforce 2014. For an event that only lasts a few days, it’s unbelievable how much time goes into preparation, execution, and follow-up. And that’s not just specific to Dreamforce, either — event marketing in general can eat up a lot of your time, budget, and resources.

When you think about it, it makes sense. Sagefrog Marketing Group recently asked B2B marketers to identify which marketing tactics delivered the most ROI, and trade shows and events emerged with the largest share of respondents (36%).

With the potential to give you the most bang for your buck, it’s no wonder marketers are sinking so much time into preparation and follow-up. But what if we told you there was a way to be equally prepared and even more successful — with less work?

Folks, I give you marketing automation.

How can marketing automation improve my event marketing strategy?

With marketing automation, your online and offline efforts don’t have to lead their own, separate lives. You’re used to being able to follow up and report on your online marketing campaigns. With marketing automation, you can do the same with offline events, too (think trade shows, conferences, speaking engagements, and more).

It’s not only about your preparation and follow-up strategy, either. Much of your event success is determined throughout the course of the event: while collecting leads, spreading brand awareness, and more.

This is where marketing automation can come to the rescue with some much-needed heavy-lifting. Let’s take a look at a few ways that marketing automation can help streamline and improve your offline event process from beginning to end.

What can marketing automation do to help me prepare for my next event?

Event success hinges on your preparation. Want people to visit your booth or attend your session? They need to know you’ll be there first. This is why your pre-event communications are so critical.

It may sound like a hassle to reach out to your various audiences with relevant messages (after all, no one likes a generic email blast), but it doesn’t have to be. Targeted email blasts are much simpler with a tool like marketing automation to help segment your database. With the ability to break your audience into more targeted segments (sorted by location, for example), you can schedule out your pre-event communications without having to worry that someone might get an email that doesn’t pertain to them.

Can it help me during the event too?

Of course! Some of marketing automation’s most handy features come into play during an event. Think about it — what’s one of the main drives to attend an event (from the perspective of the company)? If you answered “to generate and collect leads,” you’re correct. Marketing automation can help marketers achieve this goal through the use of landing pages and forms.

Although many trade shows rely on a scanning method to collect information from leads, having a dedicated landing page set up on a computer or iPad to collect information from leads is still an important best practice. With marketing automation, there’s no longer a need to manually input information from handwritten forms or collect pockets full of business cards.

Having a landing page where leads can input their information allows you to collect more information, more quickly.

Setting up autoresponders (emails that will deploy as soon as a prospect submits a form) for each of the landing pages used during an event is also a good practice.  Use autoresponders to thank your prospects for stopping by, then provide them with some extra content to keep them interested.

What about post-event follow-up?

If you want to get the most out of your event marketing efforts, you’ll want to make sure you’re following up with leads, placing them on appropriate lead-nurturing tracks, and keeping tabs on your ROI.

Once you’ve imported all of your leads into your marketing automation system (you can read more about this process in our latest eBook, linked to at the bottom of this post), you can begin assigning them out to sales or placing them on drip nurturing tracks. This is a great option if you come back from the trade show or conference with leads who aren’t quite sales ready, and could use some education on your product, service, or company.

And reporting??

Whew, you’re thorough! Good question. Another important part of your event strategy is, of course, measurement. How can you justify the time, resources, and budget that went into your event presence?

Because prospects are attached to campaigns within a marketing automation system, it’s easy to attribute revenue to its source. With this insight, you can see how many trade show-generated leads were converted to customers. You can use this information to calculate the ROI of your event presence and forecast future event attendance and budgets.

Want to learn more about the benefits of using marketing automation at events? Get additional tips, tricks, and recommendations in our new eBook, 9 Ways to Leverage Marketing Automation at Events.