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Large or small, in-person events like customer conferences, tradeshows, seminars and workshops are a marketing tool leveraged by 77% of B2B companies. And for good reason: They work. The vast majority of brands that produce or participate in events rate them as ‘highly effective’ techniques for generating sales, creating loyalty, and better understanding customer needs.
At Salesforce, we do events in a big way--especially when it comes to Dreamforce (have you pre-registered for 2016 yet?). In 2015, we hosted over 150,000 guests in San Francisco for a week filled with great sessions, thought leadership, foundation activities, networking and much more.
For an event of this scale, relevant and timely post-event communications can be a major challenge. Admittedly, they once were for Salesforce as well. While we were always sure to communicate with everyone who attended Dreamforce, our messages were lacking in several fundamental areas. We weren’t using 1-to-1 personalization, rather, all attendees received one of six variations of emails based solely on attendee type and industry. Likewise, we weren’t leveraging event data, like which sessions were attended. Plus, we weren’t that great about our timing--too much time transpired between the event and send.
That certainly was not the image we wanted to convey or our attendees expected.
As you might suspect, the solution to our post-event journey was and is Marketing Cloud. It enables us to utilize the insights we gather during the event to send truly personalized emails. Each email includes dynamic, data-driven content for a specific recipient. We’re also able to source content from contributors throughout the organization using the solution’s collaborative creative tools.
It all begins with data. We pair the CRM data we’ve previously stored about attendees with the scanning data we gather at the event to meld known attributes with activity. For example, we’re able to dynamically custom-create a message for a mid-size, B2C marketer who is not an existing customer, but attended multiple sessions related to social marketing and digital advertising.
Using common templates, each email it tailored for the recipient. Dynamic content components include subject lines, headers, images, body copy, call to action, and more. For even greater personalization and relevancy, we include country-specific offers based on where the attendee lives. The perfect combination of content is automatically included based on the data extensions identified.
Creating the right content and offers requires contributions from multiple sources throughout Salesforce. Following Dreamforce in 2015, we had over 50 contributors involved in the creation process, all of which was managed through Marketing Cloud’s collaboration tools. The data was consistently in sync thanks to the use of data extensions, and since we had created HTML templates, the process of building emails was as simple as dragging and dropping content. Once Dreamforce concluded, were able to rapidly pull on-site data, press send, and watch tens of thousands of truly personalized, relevant and timely emails reach attendees.
Pairing CRM data with onsite activity enables Salesforce to deliver custom emails for every Dreamforce attendee. In 2015, this resulted in 5,814 permutations from a single template--and exceptional open and click through rates upon receipt.
Interested in learning more? Register today for an interactive webinar for more details on how you can create engaging, personalized post-event emails (or any occasion!). On March 16 at 12:00 EST, you’ll hear more details from the team behind the email strategy, and have the opportunity to discover how you can attain similar results.
