September 11, 2025 • 17 mins
In this special episode of Sales Pipeline Radio from the Innovation Pavilion at Cvent CONNECT 2025, Matt spoke with Alura Roe, Director of ABX/Field Marketing, and Ashley Biggie, Sr. Field Marketing Manager at 6sense.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matt Heinz (00:15):
Welcome back.
We are here live at Cvent CONNECT atthe convention center floor three right
next to the Stars at Night ballroomwhere the Innovation Pavilion is today.
I'm very excited to haveour team from 6sense.
I feel like if you're in B2B marketing,you know 6sense, you've probably been
to one of their events and excitedto talk today about not just events,
but what happens after the event.
Yeah.
Like what do we do when we move fromthe show floor to the sales funnel,
(00:37):
and how do we leverage all the greatmomentum, all the great conversations,
and turn that into pipeline and revenue?
I'd love to have you guys introduceyourself, Alura, starting with you.
Alura Roe (00:44):
Absolutely.
Hi, I'm Alura Roe, based out of Atlanta.
I help manage our ABX goto market team at 6sense.
I'm more so focused on the one to fewand one-to-one activations within 6sense.
And then Ashley, youcan introduce yourself.
Ashley Biggie (00:56):
Hi, I am Ashley Biggie.
I'm our senior field marketer.
So manage all of our trade shows.
Those fun meetings work on all our eventsin the ancillary that happens around any
of those tier one to tier three events.
Matt Heinz (01:09):
So i'm excited for this conversation.
They're all great conversations.
Every one of them watch every episode,but this one, especially because of what
you guys are doing in the field, right?
Everything from Breakthrough to individualevents to, you've got Empowered.
It's just an amazing amount of stuff.
And so my first question is, whathappens after the badge scan?
But some of these events,there isn't even a badge scan.
(01:29):
Talk about the strategyyou have for events.
Like objectives and the approachthat leads to what you do today?
Alura Roe (01:36):
Yeah, so our strategy is always to make sure that we're
first off, making sure that we'regoing after the right audience.
Before we were going to any tradeshow, whether we have historical data
or not, we're making sure that we'relooking at the audience that's there
and making sure they're relevant to us.
So we're pulling not only the accountsin the ICP and making sure they're
within there, but we're understandingwhere they're at in their buying stage.
If we're going to a trade show andeveryone's an early, early buying stage
(01:58):
account for us, and maybe we won't go asheavy, we'll do more educational pieces
there, educate people on what we do.
Versus if there's a ton of customersor late stage accounts that really
need to get in front of a salesperson, maybe we'll invest more.
In a meeting space to reallyget our sales reps in front.
So it really just depends and startswith the audience and making sure
that we understand and wrap our headsaround the people that'll be there.
Matt Heinz (02:17):
And depending on not just, I think about the audience
sometimes vertically and horizontally.
Right.
I think about it sort of like,vertically in terms of like
who's gonna be in the room.
Is it gonna be the CMO, is it gonna be adirector level sort of driving programs?
Is it gonna be someone who's like handson keyboard with 6sense on a daily basis?
And then horizontally think about likewhere they are in their journey, right?
That buying journey as well asthe customer journey, both sides.
(02:37):
How do you sort of like create a matrixaround that and just manage an event
strategy that accommodates all of that?
Ashley Biggie (02:43):
We look at, like Alura said, the audience, and we determine
where they are in their buying journey,and also what if their customers and
prospects, like how big and how meatydo the conversations have to be.
And then we pick the typeof activation around that.
So for some of our trade shows,they're extremely customer heavy.
(03:04):
So we do our Club6 activation, wherewe ensure that we're getting in
front of our customers and allowingthem to meet with our subject
matter experts and having thoseconversations, while also doing dinners.
And experiential one-to-one activations.
You know, all of the trade showactivations that you have as
well for getting in front ofnew customers and prospects.
(03:27):
When we are super customer heavy,we like to bring in those like
wow, surprise and delight moments.
Matt Heinz (03:33):
Yeah.
I'm firsthand aware of just the qualityand also the quantity of events that
you guys produce on an annual basis.
And I think for a lot of companies,it's easy to just white knuckle it
through each event and move on tothe next event, and that's a recipe
for not getting a lot of benefitout of all the investment you made.
Talk about what it takes to build areally sort of event centric strategy.
(03:55):
That capitalizes on the audiencebefore and after the event itself.
Alura Roe (03:58):
Yeah.
So before we go to any event, I'velived in a world before, I got
sophisticated within my career where,you know, you see how many badge scans
you can get at a trade show and thenyou throw them all to the sales team.
And it's like, everyone follow up.
That is not a world we live in any longer.
We really strive to make sure thatwe have our pipeline even flowing in
before we even get to a trade show.
So we're looking at, like Isaid earlier, historical data.
(04:20):
We're looking at speaker lists, we'relooking at who's local to a city.
Yeah.
We're not siloing ourselvesjust to people that are going
to necessarily a trade show.
We're really trying tofigure out why we're there.
Who can we get in front of?
So it's multi-touch approach in terms of,like she said, if we're going to be in
person at a trade show where we're gonnabe doing a connect space outside of there,
and really how are we gonna engage them?
Events are expensive.
(04:40):
You wanna make sure that you're gettingthe right people in the right seats, that
can be, showing a lot of pipeline for you.
Ashley Biggie (04:47):
During the event.
I like to have, touch points with all ofthe people that are on site and ensuring
that like we're getting voice notes,we're getting notes on handoff, any of the
meetings that they've had, any meaningfulconversations, any events that are needing
to get booked, like book them now, evenif it's just a meeting to figure out a
time to book a larger, broad meeting.
And then when we do take those leadsand give them to our sales team
(05:10):
after, like we have a post eventmeeting where we scrub the tiering
and ensure handoff actually happens.
Because sometimes thingsget stuck in Salesforce.
Right.
And then we are making sure that likethey're consistently being followed up
with and then they are put into 6senseand tiered into their buying journey
(05:32):
where they're at, are they a 6QA?
And then that will determine whetheror not it is one of our AI emails, one
of a real person, the account owner,like how does that get filtered out?
And making sure that those conversationsare happening and doing check-ins,
like you said earlier in your event.
(05:54):
Right after the event, you know, a coupleweeks after, what was that postmortem?
And then continuing to check onthe ROI journey and making sure
that like, we do manual scrubsto make sure that attribution is
happening to all of our events.
'cause they're expensive.
Alura Roe (06:10):
I think a lot of people also, early in their event journey,
it's super critical that youmake sure that everything flows
in dynamically and is automated.
Because whenever you're ona showroom floor, if you're
tracking things in a spreadsheetor a form, whatever it might be.
The time people are getting onflights, they're getting home.
You have to get to your MOPS teamand then you get into your CRM.
(06:31):
It's just delay, delay, delay andlike the touch point immediately after
an event needs to be instantaneous.
While also being personalized.
No one wants a generic follow up.
You want to make sure it's eithera product that is relevant to them
or a pain point that's relevantto that you're speaking to.
And so.
All of that being automatedis super critical and timely.
Matt Heinz (06:48):
Well, and you guys are great about drinking your own champagne
using 6sense to actually sort of triageand prioritize those different leads.
But you mentioned likeleads getting stuck in CRM.
I imagine that's not a problemthat happens to anyone else other
than just us sitting up here.
You know, those next parts of theprocess, even sort of manually having
to scrub lists, it's kind of thereality of a lot of programs right now.
But what is the role of technologythat you see now in moving
(07:08):
forward to really help accelerateand automate pieces of that.
Everything, badge scanning, trackingactivity, triaging that, and you know,
kind of bridging the gap between sort ofthe potential that those events have and
the reality of actually having to executethem in sometimes a very manual way.
Alura Roe (07:23):
Yeah, I think there are a ton of tools, like for
our meetings specifically, I'vetalked about this a lot here.
We use Jifflenow.
If we're meeting with people beforewe get to a show, while we're at a
show or after we're using that tool,everything flows in with our CRM.
And everything can be, dynamically flowinginto maybe someone's not on site and
they can see if someone checked it andthey can see the notes on that activity.
And then, there are other toolsout there that can capture
(07:44):
leads as well that you can use.
I know there's a handful of themin the market, but that as well is
more timely than necessarily onethat's not integrating with your CRM.
At the moment.
I know they have lead capture capabilitieswithin trade shows that you can purchase.
But one that isn't alreadyplugged in and has the appropriate
filters that you're already using.
Matt Heinz (08:04):
That's right.
Alura Roe (08:04):
Just gets you there in a more timely manner.
Matt Heinz (08:06):
Yeah.
Let's start talking alittle bit about handoff.
Like, so you run an event, you've gotsome data, you've got some engagement.
Now there needs to be a follow up.
Right.
Who does that follow up?
Is it in a marketing follow up?
Is a sales follow up?
How do you prioritize that follow up?
How aggressive is that follow up?
When you think about sort of speed tofollow up as well as quality of follow
up, how do you build the playbookappropriately that not only respects the
(08:28):
prospects of the customers, but also helpsyou drive and accelerate business value.
Alura Roe (08:33):
Yeah.
It just depends on us in terms ofwhere someone is in their journey.
Like I said, go to a showand have 3000 badge scans.
We aren't gonna say, have fun BDRs.
Have fun sales reps. We aregoing to first put them in,
make sure they're in our ICP.
Make sure that they areemailing appropriately.
Our team does a backend buildon what our ICP looks like.
And making sure that things areemailing appropriately, but that's
(08:55):
when our buying stage comes in.
Next we want only our BDRs and salesreps to really focus on ones that we
call 6QA accounts, which are accountsthat are in the right buying stage.
They're showing enough intent data forthem to want to have a conversation
with a sales rep. No one wants tonecessarily go on a first date with
someone, like right off the bat,unless you get to know 'em a little
bit or know a little bit about them.
So it just depends on wherethey're at in their buying stage.
(09:16):
And if someone is early adopter,maybe we'll throw them into a nurture.
Maybe like Ashley said, we'll put theminto our AI agent emails and start
to educate them more on what we do.
So it just depends on wherethey're on their journey.
Matt Heinz (09:28):
Yeah, I think this is a place where you guys really excel
at sort of an advanced level of whatwe've been talking about today is event
led growth programs where you've gotintegrated teams working together on this.
Like you've got an event teamnailing getting the event done
and having a great experience.
You've got an ops team that'ssort of managing the back end,
the technology and the list.
Then you've gotta figure outthe sales enablement play.
Like it's not just like, here'sa bunch of leads and follow up.
(09:49):
Please don't follow up with these others.
What does the salesenablement playbook look like?
How explicit do you get in terms of whatto say, what to send, and how to engage
with those prospects after an event?
Alura Roe (09:59):
Pretty explicit.
Yeah.
I feel like we do a good job of this.
I mean, I think everyone's unique inthis, but we make sure that we have
SalesLoft templates that we use thatare relevant to personas for follow up.
We make sure that we have dashboardsbuilt that will outline which reps
have and haven't done follow up, sowe can track it down to a calling
people out level, if you will.
We also make sure that we have contentthat's relevant to them and that we
(10:22):
have everything built out within ourdashboards so they can just take a look
at where check-ins happen, where no showshappen, where attendance happen, so.
Ashley Biggie (10:30):
I think something that feels pretty basic to us, but
I know is not, is we have, an ABXdeck that has pre-event, like all of
the information that you need on aslide for that event after the event,
that slide flips to post event andhere are all the resources for it.
And, that slide is linked in the notesthat are uploaded into every single
(10:50):
lead that comes out in Salesforce.
And then also any of thenotes from those meaningful
conversations that we have on site.
Again, like we'll tier the leadbased off of, was it a meaningful
conversation, were they just there?
And that will help Salesforce and 6sense,filter them into the appropriate type
(11:10):
of response that can be automated.
And I think we're pretty hands on withensuring that they get all this stuff.
Matt Heinz (11:20):
That's great.
Alura Roe (11:20):
We also make sure that every single event or campaign that we do has
a unique Salesforce campaign created.
Which is very, you know,oftentimes the basics.
But we have really done a good job atmaking sure our sales team knows where
to tag opportunities appropriately.
So within those Salesforce campaigns,we also have all of the details that you
could possibly want on that campaign.
(11:41):
So, what was it?
What was the event?
Here are all the assets to it.
Linking to that ABX deck.
So we can make sure that peopleare tagging opportunities
appropriately as well.
Matt Heinz (11:48):
Got it.
Talking to Alura and Ashley,double A from 6sense here today.
A team.. A team.
There you go.
I like that better.
From here on the Cvent CONNECT,show floor, talking about really
a pretty advanced program in termsof event led growth and just very
impressive what you guys have built.
Let's move on and talk a littlebit about ROI and measurement.
Alright.
Which can be a sticky wicketdepending on sort of the organization
(12:08):
you're in and the expectationsof what happens out of events.
Talk a little bit about how youmanage reporting and expectations,
you know, at the event level andall the way up to the C-Suite.
Alura Roe (12:19):
Yep.
So we measure a number of things.
We first off measure, like I mentioned,tagging those opportunities for
source pipeline, which is critical.
We also wanna take a lookat influenced pipeline.
If we're touching customers thathave renewals or deal accelerations.
We also wanna track that.
We also like to look at our ABXwin rate when ABX is involved.
And I think you talked about thisstat earlier, like when events are
(12:40):
involved, like you're more likely tosee pipeline progress, or deals open.
We like to track our win rate there.
We're always striving for a 10xROI for any event that we do.
But to your point, how do youmeasure that up to a C-suite?
Like especially if you'venever done something before.
How are you gonna justify that?
I think oftentimes you're often lookingfor the audience back to the segmentation
of who you're gonna get in front of.
(13:01):
Making sure that thepotential pipeline is there.
But yeah, those are our key metricsthat we're usually looking at.
Ashley Biggie (13:06):
I'll add onto that when we're doing these events.
It's not just leads, it's not booth scans.
Like we're calling out to ourC-suite, what is that source pipeline?
What is closed won?
And then what is influenced andany of the meatier activations.
So how many meetings, how many likemeaningful conversations happened,
(13:29):
how many dinner attendees did we have?
Things where there was thatlike quality interaction versus,
thank you for the sticker.
Alura Roe (13:36):
To add a 6sense plug in there, 'cause it is truly what we do.
Whenever we're pulling those segmentsto see who's gonna be there before we
can see what buying stage they're in.
But then afterwards you can also pullwhat's called a segment performance
report and see how you progressed thoseaccounts, and how you've engaged with
them and how the event has affected it.
So that's another metric that youcould take a look at and start to show,
Matt Heinz (13:55):
Yeah.
... Alura Roe (13:56):
the progression on.
Matt Heinz (13:57):
Yeah.
I've heard Saima [Rashid], yourSVP of Marketing, publicly talk
about this goal of getting 10xpipeline out of an event investment.
And two things I like about that.
One is it's a very explicit number.
Nice big number.
It's not just focused on what happenedat the event, but it really is focused
on what happens after the event as well.
And it assumes a body of workinvestment in that event.
It's not just, we talked aboutthis in our session earlier.
It's not what you spend, it'swhat you're buying, right?
(14:19):
And it helps you rationalize everythingfrom the great work you guys do at Club6.
Right.
The activations outside of theshow, which become not just a
place to hang out a destination.
A coveted destination, thatreally sort of helps promote the
brand and also get more people tocome and more people to engage.
Attribution gets a little hardin that conversation, right?
Because you can say, okay, we did thisamazing thing at Forrester and you know,
(14:40):
you've got a presence here at CventCONNECT, and you got the Club6, but almost
everybody that was at that event wasalso influenced by something before that.
And is likely to be influencedby something after that.
So what are the attribution conversationssound like internally when you're
understanding the impact and maybe theacceleration that events are having?
Alura Roe (14:59):
Yeah.
I think that attribution is, especiallywhen it comes to branding, which is harder
to necessarily get attribution tied to,I think that it all stems back to that
audience you're getting in front of.
And making sure that you have theright people you're targeting.
When it comes to deciding how bigour brand is, if we're gonna rent
out a whole restaurant, do a Club6.
It all just depends again, on the audiencethat we're getting in front of and making
(15:22):
sure that there's the potential there.
Ashley Biggie (15:24):
I think it depends on the type of event.
For Club6 where it is largely customerswe're looking at influence, like how
much of this was influenced on therenewal, how much was influenced on that?
If we're doing more direct mail campaignsfor the event that is more sourced,
like, did that direct mail help source?
So the attribution canbe like anything else.
(15:45):
It all depends on how you tell your story.
Matt Heinz (15:48):
Yeah.
I mean, no one has solved this problem.
Right?
So attribution is hard.
And I would argue that the betteryou're doing sort of an integrated
motion like you guys are, the harderit is to answer that question.
But if you give me the choice of havingbetter reporting or better results,
I'll take better results all day long.
Ashley Biggie (16:01):
A thousand percent.
Matt Heinz (16:02):
Alright, we're wrapping up here with the A team from 6sense
again, last question, I think foreach of you is, you know, for people
that are watching this that are runningevents, whether they're event producers
or event marketers, what do you wantthem to know about how events are gonna
impact their business and should beimpacting their business moving forward?
Alura Roe (16:16):
I think that now that we've talked about this at this conference
a little bit, now that AI is playingmore of a role into everything that we
do, I think face-to-face interactionsare gonna become more prominent.
And I think that another layer to that ismaking sure that as a marketer and event
marketer, that you're not just focusing onquantity, but quality, which is where that
segmentation I mentioned is important.
(16:37):
Making sure you're going afterto the right audience and making
sure that the follow-up is donein a timely manner as well.
So I think.
Leaning into the more face-to-faceinteractions I think we're gonna come
into and the audience building as well.
Matt Heinz (16:46):
I agree.
Ashley, bring us home.
Ashley Biggie (16:48):
As we move more into agentic AI.
I think that human interactionis just going to be so relevant.
People are gonna crave actual humans.
Like do I know the differencebetween an actual human and
an agentic AI, and I think...
Alura Roe (17:03):
the day might come...
Matt Heinz (17:03):
Yeah.
That's been a huge theme for me.
Just over the last couple days.
Just really... until therobot becomes the persona.
Ashley Biggie (17:09):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (17:09):
It's about the humans.
And the more we can ignite thathuman spark, the more we can create
that human moment, the more it'sgonna accelerate the relationships
and the business results we want.
So, Ashley and Alura, thank youso much for joining us today.
Ashley Biggie (17:20):
Thank you, Matt.
Alura Roe (17:20):
Thanks for having us.
Ashley Biggie (17:21):
Always good to see you.
Matt Heinz (17:22):
Good to see you too.
Alura Roe (17:22):
A team.
Ashley Biggie (17:22):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (17:23):
A team.
Welcome back.
We are here live at Cvent CONNECT atthe convention center floor three right
next to the Stars at Night ballroomwhere the Innovation Pavilion is today.
I'm very excited to haveour team from 6sense.
I feel like if you're in B2B marketing,you know 6sense, you've probably been
to one of their events and excitedto talk today about not just events,
but what happens after the event.
Yeah.
Like what do we do when we move fromthe show floor to the sales funnel,
(00:37):
and how do we leverage all the greatmomentum, all the great conversations,
and turn that into pipeline and revenue?
I'd love to have you guys introduceyourself, Alura, starting with you.
Alura Roe (00:44):
Absolutely.
Hi, I'm Alura Roe, based out of Atlanta.
I help manage our ABX goto market team at 6sense.
I'm more so focused on the one to fewand one-to-one activations within 6sense.
And then Ashley, youcan introduce yourself.
Ashley Biggie (00:56):
Hi, I am Ashley Biggie.
I'm our senior field marketer.
So manage all of our trade shows.
Those fun meetings work on all our eventsin the ancillary that happens around any
of those tier one to tier three events.
Matt Heinz (01:09):
So i'm excited for this conversation.
They're all great conversations.
Every one of them watch every episode,but this one, especially because of what
you guys are doing in the field, right?
Everything from Breakthrough to individualevents to, you've got Empowered.
It's just an amazing amount of stuff.
And so my first question is, whathappens after the badge scan?
But some of these events,there isn't even a badge scan.
(01:29):
Talk about the strategyyou have for events.
Like objectives and the approachthat leads to what you do today?
Alura Roe (01:36):
Yeah, so our strategy is always to make sure that we're
first off, making sure that we'regoing after the right audience.
Before we were going to any tradeshow, whether we have historical data
or not, we're making sure that we'relooking at the audience that's there
and making sure they're relevant to us.
So we're pulling not only the accountsin the ICP and making sure they're
within there, but we're understandingwhere they're at in their buying stage.
If we're going to a trade show andeveryone's an early, early buying stage
(01:58):
account for us, and maybe we won't go asheavy, we'll do more educational pieces
there, educate people on what we do.
Versus if there's a ton of customersor late stage accounts that really
need to get in front of a salesperson, maybe we'll invest more.
In a meeting space to reallyget our sales reps in front.
So it really just depends and startswith the audience and making sure
that we understand and wrap our headsaround the people that'll be there.
Matt Heinz (02:17):
And depending on not just, I think about the audience
sometimes vertically and horizontally.
Right.
I think about it sort of like,vertically in terms of like
who's gonna be in the room.
Is it gonna be the CMO, is it gonna be adirector level sort of driving programs?
Is it gonna be someone who's like handson keyboard with 6sense on a daily basis?
And then horizontally think about likewhere they are in their journey, right?
That buying journey as well asthe customer journey, both sides.
(02:37):
How do you sort of like create a matrixaround that and just manage an event
strategy that accommodates all of that?
Ashley Biggie (02:43):
We look at, like Alura said, the audience, and we determine
where they are in their buying journey,and also what if their customers and
prospects, like how big and how meatydo the conversations have to be.
And then we pick the typeof activation around that.
So for some of our trade shows,they're extremely customer heavy.
(03:04):
So we do our Club6 activation, wherewe ensure that we're getting in
front of our customers and allowingthem to meet with our subject
matter experts and having thoseconversations, while also doing dinners.
And experiential one-to-one activations.
You know, all of the trade showactivations that you have as
well for getting in front ofnew customers and prospects.
(03:27):
When we are super customer heavy,we like to bring in those like
wow, surprise and delight moments.
Matt Heinz (03:33):
Yeah.
I'm firsthand aware of just the qualityand also the quantity of events that
you guys produce on an annual basis.
And I think for a lot of companies,it's easy to just white knuckle it
through each event and move on tothe next event, and that's a recipe
for not getting a lot of benefitout of all the investment you made.
Talk about what it takes to build areally sort of event centric strategy.
(03:55):
That capitalizes on the audiencebefore and after the event itself.
Alura Roe (03:58):
Yeah.
So before we go to any event, I'velived in a world before, I got
sophisticated within my career where,you know, you see how many badge scans
you can get at a trade show and thenyou throw them all to the sales team.
And it's like, everyone follow up.
That is not a world we live in any longer.
We really strive to make sure thatwe have our pipeline even flowing in
before we even get to a trade show.
So we're looking at, like Isaid earlier, historical data.
(04:20):
We're looking at speaker lists, we'relooking at who's local to a city.
Yeah.
We're not siloing ourselvesjust to people that are going
to necessarily a trade show.
We're really trying tofigure out why we're there.
Who can we get in front of?
So it's multi-touch approach in terms of,like she said, if we're going to be in
person at a trade show where we're gonnabe doing a connect space outside of there,
and really how are we gonna engage them?
Events are expensive.
(04:40):
You wanna make sure that you're gettingthe right people in the right seats, that
can be, showing a lot of pipeline for you.
Ashley Biggie (04:47):
During the event.
I like to have, touch points with all ofthe people that are on site and ensuring
that like we're getting voice notes,we're getting notes on handoff, any of the
meetings that they've had, any meaningfulconversations, any events that are needing
to get booked, like book them now, evenif it's just a meeting to figure out a
time to book a larger, broad meeting.
And then when we do take those leadsand give them to our sales team
(05:10):
after, like we have a post eventmeeting where we scrub the tiering
and ensure handoff actually happens.
Because sometimes thingsget stuck in Salesforce.
Right.
And then we are making sure that likethey're consistently being followed up
with and then they are put into 6senseand tiered into their buying journey
(05:32):
where they're at, are they a 6QA?
And then that will determine whetheror not it is one of our AI emails, one
of a real person, the account owner,like how does that get filtered out?
And making sure that those conversationsare happening and doing check-ins,
like you said earlier in your event.
(05:54):
Right after the event, you know, a coupleweeks after, what was that postmortem?
And then continuing to check onthe ROI journey and making sure
that like, we do manual scrubsto make sure that attribution is
happening to all of our events.
'cause they're expensive.
Alura Roe (06:10):
I think a lot of people also, early in their event journey,
it's super critical that youmake sure that everything flows
in dynamically and is automated.
Because whenever you're ona showroom floor, if you're
tracking things in a spreadsheetor a form, whatever it might be.
The time people are getting onflights, they're getting home.
You have to get to your MOPS teamand then you get into your CRM.
(06:31):
It's just delay, delay, delay andlike the touch point immediately after
an event needs to be instantaneous.
While also being personalized.
No one wants a generic follow up.
You want to make sure it's eithera product that is relevant to them
or a pain point that's relevantto that you're speaking to.
And so.
All of that being automatedis super critical and timely.
Matt Heinz (06:48):
Well, and you guys are great about drinking your own champagne
using 6sense to actually sort of triageand prioritize those different leads.
But you mentioned likeleads getting stuck in CRM.
I imagine that's not a problemthat happens to anyone else other
than just us sitting up here.
You know, those next parts of theprocess, even sort of manually having
to scrub lists, it's kind of thereality of a lot of programs right now.
But what is the role of technologythat you see now in moving
(07:08):
forward to really help accelerateand automate pieces of that.
Everything, badge scanning, trackingactivity, triaging that, and you know,
kind of bridging the gap between sort ofthe potential that those events have and
the reality of actually having to executethem in sometimes a very manual way.
Alura Roe (07:23):
Yeah, I think there are a ton of tools, like for
our meetings specifically, I'vetalked about this a lot here.
We use Jifflenow.
If we're meeting with people beforewe get to a show, while we're at a
show or after we're using that tool,everything flows in with our CRM.
And everything can be, dynamically flowinginto maybe someone's not on site and
they can see if someone checked it andthey can see the notes on that activity.
And then, there are other toolsout there that can capture
(07:44):
leads as well that you can use.
I know there's a handful of themin the market, but that as well is
more timely than necessarily onethat's not integrating with your CRM.
At the moment.
I know they have lead capture capabilitieswithin trade shows that you can purchase.
But one that isn't alreadyplugged in and has the appropriate
filters that you're already using.
Matt Heinz (08:04):
That's right.
Alura Roe (08:04):
Just gets you there in a more timely manner.
Matt Heinz (08:06):
Yeah.
Let's start talking alittle bit about handoff.
Like, so you run an event, you've gotsome data, you've got some engagement.
Now there needs to be a follow up.
Right.
Who does that follow up?
Is it in a marketing follow up?
Is a sales follow up?
How do you prioritize that follow up?
How aggressive is that follow up?
When you think about sort of speed tofollow up as well as quality of follow
up, how do you build the playbookappropriately that not only respects the
(08:28):
prospects of the customers, but also helpsyou drive and accelerate business value.
Alura Roe (08:33):
Yeah.
It just depends on us in terms ofwhere someone is in their journey.
Like I said, go to a showand have 3000 badge scans.
We aren't gonna say, have fun BDRs.
Have fun sales reps. We aregoing to first put them in,
make sure they're in our ICP.
Make sure that they areemailing appropriately.
Our team does a backend buildon what our ICP looks like.
And making sure that things areemailing appropriately, but that's
(08:55):
when our buying stage comes in.
Next we want only our BDRs and salesreps to really focus on ones that we
call 6QA accounts, which are accountsthat are in the right buying stage.
They're showing enough intent data forthem to want to have a conversation
with a sales rep. No one wants tonecessarily go on a first date with
someone, like right off the bat,unless you get to know 'em a little
bit or know a little bit about them.
So it just depends on wherethey're at in their buying stage.
(09:16):
And if someone is early adopter,maybe we'll throw them into a nurture.
Maybe like Ashley said, we'll put theminto our AI agent emails and start
to educate them more on what we do.
So it just depends on wherethey're on their journey.
Matt Heinz (09:28):
Yeah, I think this is a place where you guys really excel
at sort of an advanced level of whatwe've been talking about today is event
led growth programs where you've gotintegrated teams working together on this.
Like you've got an event teamnailing getting the event done
and having a great experience.
You've got an ops team that'ssort of managing the back end,
the technology and the list.
Then you've gotta figure outthe sales enablement play.
Like it's not just like, here'sa bunch of leads and follow up.
(09:49):
Please don't follow up with these others.
What does the salesenablement playbook look like?
How explicit do you get in terms of whatto say, what to send, and how to engage
with those prospects after an event?
Alura Roe (09:59):
Pretty explicit.
Yeah.
I feel like we do a good job of this.
I mean, I think everyone's unique inthis, but we make sure that we have
SalesLoft templates that we use thatare relevant to personas for follow up.
We make sure that we have dashboardsbuilt that will outline which reps
have and haven't done follow up, sowe can track it down to a calling
people out level, if you will.
We also make sure that we have contentthat's relevant to them and that we
(10:22):
have everything built out within ourdashboards so they can just take a look
at where check-ins happen, where no showshappen, where attendance happen, so.
Ashley Biggie (10:30):
I think something that feels pretty basic to us, but
I know is not, is we have, an ABXdeck that has pre-event, like all of
the information that you need on aslide for that event after the event,
that slide flips to post event andhere are all the resources for it.
And, that slide is linked in the notesthat are uploaded into every single
(10:50):
lead that comes out in Salesforce.
And then also any of thenotes from those meaningful
conversations that we have on site.
Again, like we'll tier the leadbased off of, was it a meaningful
conversation, were they just there?
And that will help Salesforce and 6sense,filter them into the appropriate type
(11:10):
of response that can be automated.
And I think we're pretty hands on withensuring that they get all this stuff.
Matt Heinz (11:20):
That's great.
Alura Roe (11:20):
We also make sure that every single event or campaign that we do has
a unique Salesforce campaign created.
Which is very, you know,oftentimes the basics.
But we have really done a good job atmaking sure our sales team knows where
to tag opportunities appropriately.
So within those Salesforce campaigns,we also have all of the details that you
could possibly want on that campaign.
(11:41):
So, what was it?
What was the event?
Here are all the assets to it.
Linking to that ABX deck.
So we can make sure that peopleare tagging opportunities
appropriately as well.
Matt Heinz (11:48):
Got it.
Talking to Alura and Ashley,double A from 6sense here today.
A team.. A team.
There you go.
I like that better.
From here on the Cvent CONNECT,show floor, talking about really
a pretty advanced program in termsof event led growth and just very
impressive what you guys have built.
Let's move on and talk a littlebit about ROI and measurement.
Alright.
Which can be a sticky wicketdepending on sort of the organization
(12:08):
you're in and the expectationsof what happens out of events.
Talk a little bit about how youmanage reporting and expectations,
you know, at the event level andall the way up to the C-Suite.
Alura Roe (12:19):
Yep.
So we measure a number of things.
We first off measure, like I mentioned,tagging those opportunities for
source pipeline, which is critical.
We also wanna take a lookat influenced pipeline.
If we're touching customers thathave renewals or deal accelerations.
We also wanna track that.
We also like to look at our ABXwin rate when ABX is involved.
And I think you talked about thisstat earlier, like when events are
(12:40):
involved, like you're more likely tosee pipeline progress, or deals open.
We like to track our win rate there.
We're always striving for a 10xROI for any event that we do.
But to your point, how do youmeasure that up to a C-suite?
Like especially if you'venever done something before.
How are you gonna justify that?
I think oftentimes you're often lookingfor the audience back to the segmentation
of who you're gonna get in front of.
(13:01):
Making sure that thepotential pipeline is there.
But yeah, those are our key metricsthat we're usually looking at.
Ashley Biggie (13:06):
I'll add onto that when we're doing these events.
It's not just leads, it's not booth scans.
Like we're calling out to ourC-suite, what is that source pipeline?
What is closed won?
And then what is influenced andany of the meatier activations.
So how many meetings, how many likemeaningful conversations happened,
(13:29):
how many dinner attendees did we have?
Things where there was thatlike quality interaction versus,
thank you for the sticker.
Alura Roe (13:36):
To add a 6sense plug in there, 'cause it is truly what we do.
Whenever we're pulling those segmentsto see who's gonna be there before we
can see what buying stage they're in.
But then afterwards you can also pullwhat's called a segment performance
report and see how you progressed thoseaccounts, and how you've engaged with
them and how the event has affected it.
So that's another metric that youcould take a look at and start to show,
Matt Heinz (13:55):
Yeah.
... Alura Roe (13:56):
the progression on.
Matt Heinz (13:57):
Yeah.
I've heard Saima [Rashid], yourSVP of Marketing, publicly talk
about this goal of getting 10xpipeline out of an event investment.
And two things I like about that.
One is it's a very explicit number.
Nice big number.
It's not just focused on what happenedat the event, but it really is focused
on what happens after the event as well.
And it assumes a body of workinvestment in that event.
It's not just, we talked aboutthis in our session earlier.
It's not what you spend, it'swhat you're buying, right?
(14:19):
And it helps you rationalize everythingfrom the great work you guys do at Club6.
Right.
The activations outside of theshow, which become not just a
place to hang out a destination.
A coveted destination, thatreally sort of helps promote the
brand and also get more people tocome and more people to engage.
Attribution gets a little hardin that conversation, right?
Because you can say, okay, we did thisamazing thing at Forrester and you know,
(14:40):
you've got a presence here at CventCONNECT, and you got the Club6, but almost
everybody that was at that event wasalso influenced by something before that.
And is likely to be influencedby something after that.
So what are the attribution conversationssound like internally when you're
understanding the impact and maybe theacceleration that events are having?
Alura Roe (14:59):
Yeah.
I think that attribution is, especiallywhen it comes to branding, which is harder
to necessarily get attribution tied to,I think that it all stems back to that
audience you're getting in front of.
And making sure that you have theright people you're targeting.
When it comes to deciding how bigour brand is, if we're gonna rent
out a whole restaurant, do a Club6.
It all just depends again, on the audiencethat we're getting in front of and making
(15:22):
sure that there's the potential there.
Ashley Biggie (15:24):
I think it depends on the type of event.
For Club6 where it is largely customerswe're looking at influence, like how
much of this was influenced on therenewal, how much was influenced on that?
If we're doing more direct mail campaignsfor the event that is more sourced,
like, did that direct mail help source?
So the attribution canbe like anything else.
(15:45):
It all depends on how you tell your story.
Matt Heinz (15:48):
Yeah.
I mean, no one has solved this problem.
Right?
So attribution is hard.
And I would argue that the betteryou're doing sort of an integrated
motion like you guys are, the harderit is to answer that question.
But if you give me the choice of havingbetter reporting or better results,
I'll take better results all day long.
Ashley Biggie (16:01):
A thousand percent.
Matt Heinz (16:02):
Alright, we're wrapping up here with the A team from 6sense
again, last question, I think foreach of you is, you know, for people
that are watching this that are runningevents, whether they're event producers
or event marketers, what do you wantthem to know about how events are gonna
impact their business and should beimpacting their business moving forward?
Alura Roe (16:16):
I think that now that we've talked about this at this conference
a little bit, now that AI is playingmore of a role into everything that we
do, I think face-to-face interactionsare gonna become more prominent.
And I think that another layer to that ismaking sure that as a marketer and event
marketer, that you're not just focusing onquantity, but quality, which is where that
segmentation I mentioned is important.
(16:37):
Making sure you're going afterto the right audience and making
sure that the follow-up is donein a timely manner as well.
So I think.
Leaning into the more face-to-faceinteractions I think we're gonna come
into and the audience building as well.
Matt Heinz (16:46):
I agree.
Ashley, bring us home.
Ashley Biggie (16:48):
As we move more into agentic AI.
I think that human interactionis just going to be so relevant.
People are gonna crave actual humans.
Like do I know the differencebetween an actual human and
an agentic AI, and I think...
Alura Roe (17:03):
the day might come...
Matt Heinz (17:03):
Yeah.
That's been a huge theme for me.
Just over the last couple days.
Just really... until therobot becomes the persona.
Ashley Biggie (17:09):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (17:09):
It's about the humans.
And the more we can ignite thathuman spark, the more we can create
that human moment, the more it'sgonna accelerate the relationships
and the business results we want.
So, Ashley and Alura, thank youso much for joining us today.
Ashley Biggie (17:20):
Thank you, Matt.
Alura Roe (17:20):
Thanks for having us.
Ashley Biggie (17:21):
Always good to see you.
Matt Heinz (17:22):
Good to see you too.
Alura Roe (17:22):
A team.
Ashley Biggie (17:22):
Yeah.
Matt Heinz (17:23):
A team.
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