February 24, 2025 • 50 mins
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Join us for an enlightening conversation with Anna Tumanova, the Events Marketing Lead at Gorgias, as we unravel the complexities of managing large-scale events. With her impressive track record of orchestrating over a thousand events, Anna offers a unique perspective on how to elevate brand presence through strategic event marketing. From the grandeur of Gorgias Connect to small-scale dinners designed to test new markets, Anna reveals the secrets behind Gorgias's diverse event portfolio and their pivotal role in market expansion.
Explore the meticulous details that go into making each event a success, from choosing the perfect venue in an unfamiliar city to the surprising impact of comfortable flooring on booth foot traffic. Anna shares her insights on how the goals of these events—be it lead generation, customer engagement, or brand enhancement—have evolved over time. Discover the financial wizardry behind budget allocations and how Gorgias tailors events to cater to various stakeholders, ensuring not just customer acquisition but also solidifying existing relationships.
Peek behind the curtain to see how Anna and her team keep their event operations seamless and efficient. Learn about their process of using dedicated Slack channels for event requests, Asana for logistical management, and how tools like HubSpot and lemlist optimize marketing operations. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for marketing and MarTech professionals eager to automate and personalize event communications, drive engagement, and precisely measure success. Anna's expertise is sure to inspire and equip you with strategies to take your event marketing to the next level.
RSVP for Anna's upcoming webinar series here
Find Anna on LinkedIn here
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I'm your host, michael Hartman,flying solo today.
Mike and Naomi will be with usagain soon, I'm sure Joining me
today to talk about runningevents at scale is Anna Tumanova
.
Anna is Events Marketing Leadat Gorgias, spelled
(00:23):
G-O-R-G-I-A-S, if you're lookingfor that.
Anna is an experienced eventsprofessional with a proven track
record in the IT, entertainmentand services industries in over
10 countries.
Over her four years at Gorgias,she has spearheaded, organized
and executed a thousand plusevents for e-commerce brands,
tech solution providers and D2Cagencies, including D2CX
(00:45):
community virtual and in-personevents.
Anna is passionate aboutdriving customer engagement,
partnerships and lead generationthrough diverse experiences.
Anna, thanks for joining metoday.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hi, everyone Very excited about this chat.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, we should have some fun here because I think
for our audience mostlymarketing folks they probably
have worked with events teamsand often usually at the end
trying to make sure things arecommunicated or followed up on
all that kind of stuff.
But I don't know that anyonehas done that at quite the scale
.
I know I haven't, that you'redoing so, so why don't we start
(01:24):
there?
So I know we're going to covera number of things about your
approach and your process andsome of the experience you have,
but why don't we start withthis?
Like, how many events are youactually?
We have 1,000 plus during yourtime there.
How many are you running eachyear?
And I'm curious, what is themakeup of those right?
How many of them are you know,maybe bespoke small events
(01:44):
versus trade shows, versus whatother types of events you might
be doing?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, yeah, of course .
So at Gorgias we do run a lotof events.
We usually aim to run about 350events a year, but
realistically but realistically,that number is usually varying
between 320 and 370.
But we do have 350 as ourtarget, and that consists of
(02:13):
numerous events.
So obviously there is about 9to 12 trade shows a year that we
are participating in around theworld.
Our markets include Canada, US,Europe, Australia and New
Zealand.
Markets include Canada, US,Europe, Australia and New
Zealand.
So we participate in all themajor industry, commerce,
industry, trade shows in thoseregions.
Then, another important thingthat we do that we actually
(02:35):
launched last year, we launchedour very first own user
conference, which is calledGorgeous Connect, and last year
we hosted it in June.
This year we're going to hostit in May.
That takes place in LA and thatincludes over 350 customers
from LA and surrounding areasand also some people flying from
the East Coast as well.
(02:57):
So that's our user conference,where basically 70% of our
attendees are existing Gorgeouscustomers and others are our
partners, our prospects and anyother folk that is involved in
our business, Right.
So that's like our biggestevent, right, that we host
ourselves.
Then we also host a number ofgorgeous workshops.
(03:19):
Those ones are happening aroundthe world as well, in major
cities.
In North America it's usuallyLA, Miami, New York, Austin,
Toronto, where I'm based, by theway.
Um, in um, Europe it's mostlyLondon, Paris, uh, Berlin we
actually had one in Berlinyesterday for the first time Uh,
yeah, Expanding our markets.
And uh, also in Australia we doSydney, Melbourne, uh, and, and
(03:45):
yeah, I think that's it, yeah,Sydney and Melbourne, pretty
much so, yeah, so those ones areusually more hands-on.
We invite 30 to 40 gorgeouscustomers and we basically teach
them how to use our product,how to make the most out of it,
and also invite partners andprospects that also want to
learn about the product, Got it.
(04:05):
And another type that we do isobviously dinner invite partners
and prospects that also want tolearn about the product, and
another type that we do isobviously dinner.
So those are happeningbasically the whole year and
they're happening in majorcities and in smaller cities
Also when we want to expand to anew market.
For example, if we've neverdone an event there, I probably
wouldn't be committing to doinglike a networking meetup or a
workshop, but I would commit todo like a 20 people dinner to
(04:27):
kind of get a sense of themarket and see how easy or
difficult it is to promote anevent there.
So that's a good trick foranybody who wants to expand in a
new market.
Start small, Like if you'venever hosted an event.
Like, let's say, I don't knowin Zurich, for example, you've
never hosted an event there.
You don't commit to like ahundred people workshop, right,
You're only doing like a littlehappy hour or a dinner.
(04:47):
And then when you see theprogress, when you see success,
you keep expanding more and moreand more.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Can I ask you a question about those?
I think it's an interestingthread here about using that as
a way of entering a new market.
Are you usually doing that as away to try to size that market,
like maybe before you go all inon investing say salespeople or
whatever or are you doing itlike we're already committed to
this, we're going to try to kindof it's part of our launch into
(05:15):
that new market?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, so basically what happens here is that
Gorgias is the number oneShopify help desk for Shopify
stores and our marketpenetration is pretty large for
Shopify it's over 50%.
So we are trying to find newcustomers and we're also wanting
to meet our existing customersin real life.
(05:39):
So the main reason forexpanding when I say expand,
it's actually not like startselling to people in those
markets, because we're alreadyselling to them, but we want to
meet them in person and we wantto expand the events channel.
We want to leverage the eventschannel for customer retention,
for customer acquisition, forpartnerships.
So there is numerous reasonsfor that.
(06:00):
And, speaking of team members,our team, so our offices are, if
I'm not mistaken, in ninecities right now, and we even
have an office in Argentina andPortugal.
You know, like we are like allaround the world and team
members that are remote evenleave and complete the different
cities where we don't haveoffices.
So we're pretty internationaland whenever we host an event
(06:22):
where we don't have any teammembers, we just send someone
and fly somebody in who is theclosest right.
So yeah, so to answer yourquestion is we want to make sure
that we expand our eventschannel reach in those places.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Okay, so it's more about the events starting to
have events in those markets asopposed to growing business in
the market.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, pretty much Okay, yeah, pretty much Okay,
yeah.
And then, yeah, sorry, continue.
And I may ask another follow-upon that?
Yeah, I just wanted to touchbase on other event types.
So, yeah, we said trade shows,conferences, workshops, dinners,
hosted, sponsored, and then wealso do ABM experiences.
So basically we call thatexperiential events.
(07:04):
For example, let's say, on May7th Beyonce is coming to LA.
So we rented like a suite andwe're going to do like a little
activation there.
We're going to have like agorgeous person greasing
everybody, we're going to havefood and beverages and we're
going to have a few of ourenterprise clients and prospects
enjoy Beyonce concert.
And this is just like one ofthe examples that we do right,
(07:26):
but we do a lot of musicfestivals, sporting events.
So that's the whole otherprogram that we have and that we
invest in and we see a lot ofreturn from.
Oh interesting, okay, and thenwebinars.
That's probably something Ishould have started with,
because that is our most ROIgenerating channel, and the
(07:47):
reason for that is because?
Well, a few reasons.
Firstly, it's global reach.
You can reach your targetaudience at any time around the
world.
I'm sure any of you who arewatching this right now you're
all in different parts of theworld, so that only proves that
whenever you have a virtualevent, your target audience can
be reached from any place, rightand in any place, and it's
(08:11):
usually free, or well, nothingis free, right there are still
resources that you use.
There's nothing that's free butlike it's very cost-effective to
organize webinars and virtualsummits.
You can involve as manyspeakers as you want.
You can make them many speakersas you want.
You can make them as long asyou want.
I run webinars that have 50people registered and I have
(08:32):
webinars that have 5,000 peopleregistered, so those ones differ
.
If we have a virtual roundtable with 10 experts, we're
probably going to have likeeight to 10 people, but then if
I have a virtual summit that isactually I have one in April
coming up we expect 5,000registrations with 40 speakers
from the industry from allaround the world, and that's
something completely different,different scale.
(08:53):
So it is a very good eventformat if you want to generate
leads in a cost effective way.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Got it.
So it sounds like more I wouldcall that just sort of virtual
events as opposed to webinars.
The webinars kind of fit inthat, but I get it okay.
So, uh, if my math is right,you're doing almost one trade
show a month and like somethingon every work day all year round
.
Is that is my math right?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
yeah, on average.
You can say that in real life,sometimes we.
So you would exclude weekends,and you would usually exclude
Mondays and Fridays too, weirdlyenough, because people.
Mondays are very like.
Mondays are very hard to peoplefor people to come into because
you know you come up to theweekend, you want to clean your
inbox, you have all your weeklymeetings on Monday.
(09:41):
So Monday is never a good timeto run an event.
And Friday is also not a goodtime usually to run an event
because people are already kindof done at like 1 PM their local
time and they just want to, youknow, finish their like, clean
up their inbox and just like getready for the weekend.
So the actual days when you canrun a successful event are
actually Tuesday, wednesday andThursday, unless it's a major
(10:04):
trade show that takes over thewhole week.
When people arrive on Sundaynight, like, for example, on
Monday I'm going to ETL West,which is like one of our major
trade shows happening in PalmSprings every year so people
arrive on Sunday and leaveThursday.
So that's a little bitdifferent but, like normally, we
usually schedule all eventsTuesday to Thursday.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, oh, wow.
Now my mind is really blownlike that.
Very interesting.
So those are all very differentkinds of events too right, in
terms of what it takes to getthem done and the logistics.
And I know that one of thechallenges I've had working with
(10:43):
field marketing teams wherewe're trying to do like the
dinner thing is just somemarkets are really hard to
figure out.
What's a good location, thatI'll call them business
districts, but it's also a veryspread out metro area.
So finding a way, a place, at atime when enough people could
(11:12):
be there that you know peopleare dealing with traffic,
getting their kids back fromschool or whatever it's a real
challenge.
I mean, like, how do you dealwith that, especially when
you're going to a new market?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
That's a great question,because there is a few things
that you need to consider Ifyour dinner is around a major
trade show for example, speakingof Dallas, there is an
e-commerce trade show called SubSummit that happens there every
year.
We're not sponsoring it thisyear, so we don't have a booth,
but we are sending team membersto attend and we are running two
(11:46):
dinners around it.
So, basically, how I approachthat in that case, I just choose
for the restaurant that is inthat specific area near the
trade show, because you're notgoing to, like, send the people
downtown if the trade show ishappening in the suburb of the
city, right?
So you want to make sure it isconvenient and, of course, you
(12:08):
always want the best.
You always want Michelin star,you always want the best private
room and best experiences.
However, I personally alwaysprioritize convenience.
Like, if I have to choosebetween the two, I will always
prioritize convenience, because,no matter how good the
restaurant is, if it is far awayto get there, like nobody will
go.
Um, another thing is toconsider is to send people uber
(12:31):
vouchers.
That's actually reallyinteresting because, uh, that's
actually really interestingbecause, um, you would think
that like, 15 uber vouchers,like why would that even matter
for people?
However, you will be surprisedthat it does matter a lot
because, like I had situationswhen, like I was hosting this
event in Austin a couple ofyears ago, it was like a
(12:53):
networking meetup and peoplejust so in the morning off I
wake up and I'm like in my hoteland like get ready for an event
and then there's like a tornadowarning, which we'll understand
.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I get it.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, so there is a tornado warning and I'm like,
okay, so what's going to happen?
So, uh, I was going to sendUber vouchers anyway, like
regardless of that.
So I send them.
And then when I come to theevent, of course I have slightly
lower show rate because of theweather, but I still had like
over 80 people in there and thenpeople come to me and they're
like hey, Ana, if I didn'treceive that Uber voucher in the
morning, I wouldn't be hereright now.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's amazing.
It's part of the deal.
Well, it's so funny because Iso I worked for Freeman.
I think we talked about this,right, the event company that's
behind the scenes.
And one of the things that wetalked about when we talked to
exhibitors about how they couldget more traffic in their booth
was through things like whatflooring you choose, right.
(13:48):
So people are walking around atrade show for hours.
Their feet get tired.
If you, if you're willing tospend a little extra for a
thicker carpet that's softer onsomeone's feet, they actually
come and they stay longer,whether it's conscious or not.
It's funny how small thingslike that can make a difference,
right, oh?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
100% yeah.
And to answer your previousquestion about the location, so
if it is a trade show,everything is easier because
you're just walking around, ifit is just a completely random
city that you've never been to,and then you just kind of don't
know anything.
You don't know where to go,where people like to go.
Honestly, just a simple Googleresearch, I would just like go
and be like hey, like what isthe top most wanted restaurants
(14:30):
in the city?
And then I will just like,obviously, look at my budget and
see what matches my budget andthen I will just try to find
something either very new andtrendy, where everybody kind of
like that everybody's talkingabout, for example, like Miami,
for example, is huge about that.
They always have newrestaurants popping up.
So like, for example, there islike this big restaurant that I
really like and I've hosted afew events that are called Sexy
(14:52):
Fish and it's like a verybeautiful, gorgeous place with
like beautiful architect fromLondon.
It's a gorgeous place and twoyears ago it was like a buzz,
like whenever we invited, likethat it's going to, our event is
at Sexy Fish, they're like, ok,I'm coming.
So that was like last year.
Just a year later, I decided tohost the dinner there and
(15:14):
people still showed up, but youcould see there was like, ok,
yeah, I've been here like sixtimes.
So you always want to findsomething, something either very
new and trendy, or obviously,ask locals.
If you have any friends,partners, coworkers, you can
always ask that.
And also you could also findsome staples, like, for example,
(15:34):
every city usually has like astaple that is maybe not new and
trendy, but it's kind of likebeautiful and well, like top
rated restaurants wherever youwould go to.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Interesting.
Okay, yeah's, that all makessense.
Um, okay, so you hinted atsomething I wanted to talk about
because I think it's achallenge, which is especially
with the variety of types ofevents that you do.
Um, how do you think about whatis the purpose of the event?
Is it to generate leads, togenerate meetings?
Is it just to enhance the brand?
(16:09):
What are the kinds of goalsthat you try to have with these
different events, and does itvary based on the type?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, so it has changed a lot at Gorgeous in the
last four years.
So when I joined the team atthe beginning of 2021, it's hard
to believe it's been that long,but 2021, I joined the team.
Actually, I wouldn't say mainpurpose, it was actually the
only purpose that we did eventsfor was generating leads,
(16:38):
because we're still like we'reat about, I believe, 6,000
customers.
Now we have 15,000.
So when I joined, we had like6,000 customers so, and they
were not huge brands most ofthem.
So we wanted to kind of like,you know, meet everybody and
everywhere.
So we were like generatingleads and that was the main and
only purpose that we were doingevents.
(16:59):
Then, as company grew and as weevolved and started and our
market penetration increased,then we started expanding our
goal.
So we started to invite morecustomers to our events.
We wanted to make sure thatthere is um like.
We do customer marketing, we docustomer engagement.
We launched our customerfocused user conference.
We started doing customerappreciation dinners where we
(17:20):
only invite our customerswithout generating leads.
Of course, even course, evenwhen you invite existing
customers, there's still ways togenerate ROI, because you do
have add-ons, you do have someproducts that you can upsell to
existing customers, but it'sstill not the primary goal.
The primary goal there ismostly retention and marketing
(17:41):
right.
Then we have lead generationevents still the only thing now.
They are mostly moved towardsenterprise.
So, for example, thoseexperiences like Beyoncé concert
, for example just from the topof my head, that's a pure lead
generation event right when wewould invite our top enterprise
prospects and try to generateleads from that.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Sorry, just a quick question because I'm so.
Do you carry the budget for allthese events, regardless of
what the goal is or if it'ssomething that's like a lead
generation thing?
Does that come from, say, asales budget to pay for, or is
it mixed?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
So actually, lead generation comes always from us.
So we are as an event channel.
We are lead generating channelinitially and still up to
current date.
So everything that is aboutlead generation that comes from
us.
When it comes to customermarketing it depends Gorgeous
user conference does come fromus.
(18:42):
If we talk about customerappreciation dinners, we do have
some budget and customersuccess that is sometimes
allocated to those things, butit's kind of like a mix.
And then we also the third goalof events that we do is also
partnerships.
Right, we don't do solelypartnerships focused events as
much.
I do throw a Christmas partyevery year in December in
Toronto.
(19:03):
That is like for the partnercommunity, but otherwise it's
mostly like it's always a mix.
It's rarely just like unlessthere is like a customer dinner
or customer user focusconference or like a lead ABM
generation event, but otherwiseit's always like a little bit of
everything.
So there's some partners,there's some leads, there's some
customers, so you kind of likedo everything at the same event
(19:24):
very often.
So yeah, answering yourquestion, it is coming from the
events budget that is allocatedto us.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
How do you measure those results differently?
I mean lead ones.
I think it's pretty obvious.
Right, you need to captureleads somehow which we can get
into more detail about.
But what about some of theseother ones, like the
customer-focused ones, right?
Do track, like the fact that acustomer came to your event,
(19:56):
your customer events and theirretention, or is there just
curious?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, so for leads, yeah, definitely easier to track
because there's pipeline, thereis a number of deals created,
deal value, there is ARR revenuetarget.
However, for customer events,it's a little bit trickier to
track.
However, we have some goal ofcustomer upsells.
So if we want to generaterevenue, we just invite some
(20:25):
customers that don't havecertain products.
For example, gorgias originallywas just like a help desk for
Shopify stores, but now we are aconversational AI platform,
meaning that we have an AIsupport agent and we're
launching an AI sales agent inthe next couple of months, so we
are going to be releasing thatproduct to firstly, of course,
(20:46):
our existing customers.
So there is definitely revenueassociated with that.
So there is definitely revenueassociated with that.
So, on that side, it's prettyeasy to track because we do have
our UTM links associated withevery product for every event
that my team is responsible forcreating and tracking.
And then there is also customerretention.
That is a little bit hard thereto measure.
However, what we do, we usuallylook at show rate.
(21:10):
For example, like, if we have acustomer appreciation dinner,
usually for, in general, forcustomer dinner, show rate is
higher than for prospect events,because when it's a customer,
they're more loyal to you andthey want to come have a meal
with you when it's a prospect.
Sometimes they, just like youknow, wake up in the morning.
You're like no, I'm not comingthere, I'm going to a different
event.
So, yeah, so it's harder tomeasure, but there is no like,
(21:33):
unfortunately, magic potion forthat.
However, we do try to track theupsell revenue and we do track
the show rate and the numberpercentage of registrations.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
OK, yeah, ok, that makes sense.
Yeah, it would be.
It would be interesting to seethat tied to not just upsell
like revenue, but also justretention, right, which is sort
of a revenue thing, but at leastof course, for sure, you know.
Um, so okay, so I I've workedin the events industry in
different parts and I've workedwith events teams for a long
(22:05):
time and I I I continue to besurprised at just how bad the
technology is, particularly for,like lead capture, and I'm
thinking like that's probablymostly trade shows, but just in
general it feels like thetechnology for events maybe
outside of virtual, which hasgotten better since covet, I
think.
But what I mean, am I off likedo you see the same thing?
(22:26):
Right, that there's just notgreat technology to support like
lead capture and that kind ofstuff?
And, if so, like how are youcapturing that?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah.
So I would say the biggestchallenge for my team personally
is that when you go to thosetrade shows like ShopDog, for
example, or Retail West, they dohave lead capture devices that
you like scan and you can likeinput them in your system
afterwards.
However, I do lack a lot offilters in there.
So, for example, shopdog has aone-on-one hosted meetings
(22:59):
program, which basically meansthat you pre-purchase, pre-event
, a certain number of hostedmeetings with the leads and then
you go.
Let's say, for example, forShopDog this year we purchased
20 meetings, right, so thatbasically means that I'm able to
go through their attendee listand just like schedule 20
meetings with the merchants thatare potential customers for
(23:21):
Gorgias.
However, knowing that Gorgiasis only integrated with certain
e-commerce platforms for example, shopify, magento, e-commerce,
woocommerce but not integratedwith Salesforce so when I go
into that portal, instead ofjust having a simple filter that
says like, what e-commerceplatform this brand is using
checkmark, it would save so muchtime because, imagine, there's
(23:42):
like 3000 people in there.
So basically every time I needto schedule and actually this is
coming up next week for me,this is my little bonus in my
working week I basically need togo manually through 3,000
people because the filters thatthey have there they are.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I mean no offense, but like there's like it's okay
you can offend.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, they're not there's like okay, what country
it is located in?
Like okay, country Cool.
But like we actually, we cansell to any country, even if we
haven't had any customers fromthere.
We still can sell to them,right?
So it's not the filter thatwe're looking for.
However, we're like, forexample, we want to look at the
gmv band, we want to look at, um, what e-commerce platform we
(24:25):
use.
We want to even, ideally, youcould filter by.
Like, if I was doing that kindof tracker, what what I would do
?
Who are the sponsors of thisevent?
Gorgeous, and then, like, let'ssay, 20 other tech companies,
customers of each of thiscompany.
How amazing would that be If Icould just go into that platform
, filter, remove Salesforce,remove custom cards, only leave
(24:49):
Shopify, only leave the onesthat are not gorgeous customers
and only leave a certain GMVband.
Boom, my job is done in an hourmaybe, maybe less.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It sounds like a great problem for some sort of
AI tool out there.
Right, here's the list.
But then you get into you'reprobably not allowed to share
the list, et cetera, et cetera,right.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
There's not even a list there.
You can't really download thelist.
You only go through the portaland you go through inside their
portal.
You have to manually go throughevery single company copy-paste
, like you know just copy-paste.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
This is such a great example to me of like I don't
events.
Even though we obviously had areal, you know, they dropped off
the face of the earth basicallyfor a year.
They still are a huge part ofmost marketing teams' budgets
and still like.
(25:43):
This is why it blows my mindthat the technology is so bad
and it's like it feels like itshould be pretty straightforward
and I don't know what it isLike, I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
So any of you out there who are working for this
technology, and I don't knowwhat it is Like.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I don't know why.
So any of you out there who areworking with technology, I'd
love to talk to you Like I wouldlike maybe we can have you on
as a guest.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, for sure.
The event, because the event,the data is there, like, for
example, when I say, like, howdo you filter by like gorgeous
customers?
We don't have to go intogorgeous CRM to see that there
is this beautiful tool calledBuiltWith that I use on a daily
basis.
I'm sure you've heard of it.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I was using it just the other day.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, and you can see what is this customer, what is
this brand using, what platformsdoes it use.
So you could just integratethat into the portal of the
conference and then you'd beable to filter e-commerce,
platform, tech solutionproviders, even agency, maybe in
their magic world.
So yeah, there is always ways,but unfortunately it does take a
(26:43):
lot of time and those portalsare just I can tell you that we
need to do that with my team.
We're not excited about it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, no, I can only imagine.
I mean, I wasn't kidding when Isaid this sounds like the kind
of problem that an AI tool coulddo.
Or, yeah, to your point, right,something that could connect in
with Git, with, or Clay orwhatever.
Okay, so, given that there's alot of this manual effort right,
(27:11):
finding venues, findingprospects to have meetings, with
things like that I mean that'sa lot to do when you're doing
the amount of events you'retalking about, with different
scale and scope and timing andoverlapping, how do you?
You know, when we talked before, you said you used templates
(27:32):
for that.
I think you mentioned that'sproject management.
I can't remember.
I think you said Asana, but I'mnot 100% sure.
I mean, how did like?
Is that?
How did you?
Yeah, what is it like?
Can you describe what you meanby template, because I probably,
like a lot of people, I have anidea in my head what that would
look like, but I'm not 100%sure if that matches what you
(27:53):
use.
And then, how much time did youspend up front?
Did you spend like is it?
Have you been evolving that?
Did you?
Do it take a little bit of timeto develop them initially and
then evolve it like what?
What was that process like?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
oh, we keep evolving it every day.
I literally made up today totoday in the morning.
So we do keep evolving it everyday.
I literally made up today inthe morning, so we do keep
evolving it every day.
We add new event types, weremove event types.
So just to give you like it's avery broad question, obviously,
but I will try to give anoverview so how our process
internally works like withimagining right 30 to 35 events
(28:28):
a month.
So whenever anybody on the teamat Gorgeous wants to do an event
or suggest an event, either toorganize or to sponsor or
suggest an idea for an event,they need to submit a request
form to our team.
So they go to a certain Slackchannel and they fill in the
form and then that form has anumber of questions that we're
(28:48):
interested in when we review ifthis event is worth the
investment or worth the effortfrom the team and worth the
resources.
So that forum has a lot ofquestions.
What event type is it?
Is it an ABM experience?
Is it a Beyonce concert?
Is it a trade show?
Is it a dinner?
Is it a webinar, a virtualsummit?
Then there is obviously a costassociated with it.
(29:09):
If it is a sponsored event,then how much it is to sponsor
and what are the inclusions inthe sponsorships If it is a
hosted event, then they wouldput like, okay, I'm expecting
this number of people and Iestimate this budget, and then
we as an events team either say,yes, this is how much it's
going to cost, and we're like,oh no, that's not true, it's
going to be way cheaper or waymore expensive, right.
(29:30):
So, yeah, there's like a numberof questions.
So, once the event getssubmitted, we have our weekly
event approval meetingshappening every Friday currently
Friday morning, our favoritemeeting of the day so we always
like get together and we gothrough all these requests
Usually we have about.
Our team is very active andvery motivated to submit those
events because they do generatea lot of revenue for them, right
(29:53):
.
So it's a it's a very goodchannel for them.
So they submit these events andwe usually have 10 to 20
requests a week.
So we usually have like an hourlong meeting and usually it's a
week.
Yeah, I would say so, wow, yeah,okay, okay.
And that includes everythingdinners, webinars, anything but
yes, yes, that's a lot to choosefrom and of course we don't
(30:15):
accept all of them.
We usually, I would say I don'thave like an average number,
percentage like on how many weapprove, how many we pass on,
but I would say sometimes it's50-50, sometimes it's 60-40,
either way, or 70-30.
So it depends, right.
And then we like either reject,approve events or we put them
(30:39):
in the pending info sectionwhere there is like more, like
we are lacking some information,basically to make a decision.
So we're like not ready toreject it or approve it.
And also, it's not just theevents team that is
participating in those meetings.
We also have our partnershipsteam because we want their input
.
We have our influencermarketing manager, we have other
team members also in thatmeeting.
So it's like my team is leadingthe meeting but other team
(31:01):
members are giving their inputand we all make a decision
together if it is worth theinvestment.
So, yeah, once this getsapproved, it gets assigned an
events manager where threepeople on the team, including
myself, and then I have twoother amazing event managers.
One of them is also based inToronto, same as me, she's
actually right here at theoffice and another girl is based
(31:24):
in Paris and she's coveringmost of our European and
Australian events and alsohelping us in north america.
So the event gets assigned toone of the three of us and then,
once the event is assigned,there is an automated automation
that creates creates a templatein asana template that we
created beforehand, right, andthat template is usually it's
(31:48):
mostly just for internalguidance for an events manager,
because pretty much every eventmanager already knows what to do
.
You need to to book a venue, youneed to send invoices, find
sponsors.
Like there is already certainsteps that we already know.
Like you wake me up at threeo'clock in the morning, I'll
tell you all those steps, right,like I don't need to look at
the template at this point, butit is helpful sometimes, just
internally, to look at it andkind of like, okay, did I send
(32:15):
invoices, did I submitcertificate of insurance?
Did I assign people fromGorgias to attend?
So there is like certain stepsthat are very helpful to check
off.
Yeah, so we do have that and werely on that, but not too much,
I would say.
And those templates are notreally shared externally until
the day of the event, the daybefore the event, when we have
like an Excel spreadsheet withall the attendees, leads, lead
(32:38):
capture, and that's the wholeother thing.
Gotcha, that's somethinginternal.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
So I'm curious.
There's a number of questionshere.
So, as you get, because you'regoing through a pretty large
volume already of events thatare active and have already been
approved and some that areprobably approved previously but
aren't really started yet.
So when you get these newrequests, are you sometimes
(33:02):
having to go like, oh, we can dothis one if we cancel this one
that we already had approved?
Are you going through that kindof process as well?
Speaker 2 (33:10):
We rarely cancel the ones that have been approved,
unless there is a reason so orthere is no budget loss.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So there can be like if you ask me like what you had
to do a deposit or somethingright yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
So if you put a deposit like okay, example we
tried to do an apm dinner lastyear in indianapolis.
We rescheduled it four timesand and for some reason, just
promotion just never performed,we couldn't hit the target, we
couldn't invite the brands wewanted, and then we already put
a deposit in the venue.
I think it was like maybe athousand dollars or something.
(33:45):
We put like a deposit and thenlike the girl, like the events
manager who was running thisevent she's like Anna, like this
has the fourth time we'retrying to do this, the promotion
is not going well.
What should we do?
On the one hand, I could say,yeah, it's $1,000.
Let's proceed and let's stilldo it.
On another hand, we would haveto send another person from
(34:07):
another city to fly into thecity, right, because we don't
have any team members inIndianapolis.
So it would be the cost ofpeople flying in.
It would be their time, theirfrustration and disappointment
upon arrival that there is nopeople in there.
And then we still have to payon top of deposit.
We will still have to pay.
So the loss of actually hostingthat event would be way higher
(34:28):
than the loss of that deposit.
So I'm in a position to cancelit because, yeah, sometimes you
just do what you gotta do, right.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.
Okay, so does it now, becauseyou have this whole process
where that's all captured inAsana in your case could be
another project managementsystem.
Does that also enable you topublish or share the schedule,
like upcoming schedules, sopeople can see what's been
(34:55):
approved, or how do youcommunicate that out to the
teams?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
So for the schedule we have another tool that's not
Asana, it's called Airtable Idon't know if you heard about
that.
It's basically like a tableright, it's like a spreadsheet.
So what happens every Friday?
After we run our approvalmeeting?
Anything that has been approved, we manually input it into
Airtable with all the requiredfields.
(35:20):
So because Asana can get alittle bit messy and confusing
for people because it doesn'treally have like a list view,
but in.
Airtable you filter by city,filter by a person who is
assigned, filter by eventmanager, filter by event type,
filter by event type, filter byanything, literally anything.
So it's very convenient.
We used to have an Excelspreadsheet for that.
For the first two and a halfyears I was at Gorgias and that
(35:44):
spreadsheet kept growing and itworked.
But I like AeroTable way morebecause it's just way more
manageable, it's way moredigestible, it's less
possibility of a human error andtypos because there's like drop
downs.
Yeah, so we use Airtable.
So anytime somebody comes to mehey, anna, where's the list of
(36:05):
all our upcoming events?
Please go to Airtable and seeeverything that has been
approved.
Nothing goes to Airtable if itis still unapproved or in the
pending info or like onlyapproved events, go there.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Gotcha Feels like there's some sort of automation
that could happen, so you don'thave to do that manually.
But we don't have to solve thatproblem.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, that's definitely.
That would be a goodimprovement for that.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
But yeah, you do that manually for now.
Okay, so this is interesting.
Okay, so we've kind of talkedabout the goals you set, but
from my standpoint, anotherthing that's been a challenge is
trying to come up with an ROI,for lack of a better term.
You talked about pipeline andrevenue, but from my experience
(36:50):
it's been tough to do, eitherbecause the technology is tough
on capturing leads or becausethe people on site don't have
the kind of discipline you wantor whatever right.
So it's sometimes hard to tiethat back to pipeline revenue.
So what are you doing?
For I don't know if you call itROI or attribution or something
(37:12):
completely different, like thekind of the financial return on
all these events.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, that's my favorite topic to discuss
internally and externally.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, attribution.
So if it is for something like,let's say, we're at the trade
show, at the booth and thepotential customer comes to us,
so there is a UTM link forGorgias demo associated with
that specific event.
So we create a property that isvalid in our CRM, which is we
use HubSpot at Gorgias andbasically we create a UTM
(37:46):
associated with that specificevent.
And also not only Gorgias demobut also for each specific
add-on product, like AI agent orsome other add-on tools that we
have, we also create a separateUTM associated with that
specific event.
So that's for on-site bookings,right?
So whenever the demo is booked,I look at the dashboard in
(38:07):
Ascense and Periscope and then Ican see okay, shopdoc was last
week and we had five demosbooked and I can see what demos,
how much the deal amount is.
So that's pretty convenient Forthose ones that are not booked
on site.
That, for example, our teammember went to a dinner and they
(38:28):
didn't book a demo while theywere at the restaurant, but they
had a nice conversation and thelead is potentially interested
to learn more about Gorgias.
So then our partnerships orsales team after the event
usually we push within 48 hoursafter the event, unless the
event was on a Thursday or whichdoesn't often happen but on
Friday, then of course we wouldwait the weekend and then we
(38:51):
would send follow-ups to them.
So that would be a manualfollow-up that we all direct
through a tool called lemlist.
So we don't send like directemail follow-ups just because
it's impossible to track, but wedo have like a tool for that.
There is like direct enrollmenttool also has properties
associated.
So anybody who wants to sendthis manual follow-up and say
(39:13):
hey, I met you yesterday, youyesterday.
Here's the selfie with you.
Great times.
By the way, this is thegorgeous demo link if you want
to learn more about the product.
That's something that everypartner manager would send.
And then the third option isautomated follow-up.
For example, we hosted awebinar and a partner manager or
a salesperson didn't meetanybody in person, but they just
(39:34):
spoke at a webinar and there islike 500 registrations.
So we would send automatedsequence for those leads through
the same tool, but automated.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Got it Okay, and then so are you.
Then I'm thinking of a veryspecific example, one place
where the sales cycle was 18months.
This is the high cost item.
It's probably that same asyours, sounds like it's
different and like so.
(40:05):
There was no automatedattribution to this.
Somebody from that companyattended an event 18 months ago,
turned into an opportunity thatwe just sold for X amount of
dollars.
We could see it right.
It was a manual effort toconnect the dots.
Are you doing anythingautomated like that, or how are
you tying the financial piece ofit as well?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
We have a window of 60 days.
So if somebody attended anevent and booked a demo, they
didn't have to.
So sales cycle basically startsfrom the moment they book a
demo, right.
So it doesn't matter if theevent happened two years ago.
But if they booked a demowithin a certain period of time
which is gorgeous in 60 days,but it can be anything.
It can be 30, it can be 12months, right, whatever you
(40:48):
decide.
But whatever the lead booked ademo within a certain time after
the event, it doesn't matteranymore how long the cycle, the
sales cycle, is.
It will still get attributed tothe events department.
Uh, however, if the eventhappened and then two months
passed and they didn't book ademo and they booked a demo
within three months but they usethe event UTM, from example,
(41:12):
for example, they open theiremail three months later or they
just use the demo booking linkfor that event, we'll still
count it towards events.
However, if it is just theybooked organically, it would not
be attributed to events anymore.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Okay, so it's not that much different, but it's
all connected.
The dots are connected inside.
It sounds like you use HubSpot,yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, okay, makes sense.
Okay.
So our audience mostlymarketing ops folks, as I
mentioned probably are workingwith their events teams or field
(41:50):
marketers, depending on whatthey're called at their company.
Their events teams or fieldmarketers, depending on what
they're called at their companythey may struggle sometimes with
them and how they can helpright.
How would you recommendmarketing ops folks or MarTech
folks help their events team?
Like, what are some things theycould be doing to help those
teams to be more efficient, getbetter reporting, whatever it
(42:14):
might be?
Speaker 2 (42:17):
I would say automate communications where you can and
personalize communicationswhere you can.
Don't send the same sequencefor every single marketing
campaign.
Adjust it based on the if wetalk about events, based on
events type, based on the city,based on the.
If a person registered orattended For example, if
somebody registered for a dinnerbut didn't come we would send
(42:39):
them an email like oh, I'm sorryI didn't catch you last night
at the XYZ restaurant.
We wouldn't be like, hey, greatdinner last night, right?
So yeah.
So make sure that, even if thefollow-ups are automated, make
sure that they make sense.
Make sure they're sent to theright people, like if it is an
existing customer, don't sellyour product to them, because
(43:02):
that is not a good look.
If it is a partner, don't sellyour product to them.
If it is a prospect, then it'san appropriate email to look, to
look into your offering, right?
Then make sure that thefollow-up is timely.
(43:24):
If there is any bonus to add,like photos from the event or
recording of the webinar orsomething that will bring value
to the person receiving, ratherthan you just like selling your
product to them after the event,include that, if you can, so
for that marketing teams anddemand generation teams and
growth marketing teams andevents can work together.
Try to share valuable resourcesas much as you can.
For example, let's say wehosted a webinar about a certain
(43:48):
topic, about customerexperience.
Share some links to a blog ortell them hey, you can subscribe
to this newsletter to learnmore about this on a weekly
basis.
Or you attended a webinar lastnight, but actually next day we
have an event in LA.
If you're in the LA area,please join us for the
networking meetup or justprovide some valuable resource.
(44:09):
But in order for that to happen, events team needs to
collaborate very closely to themarketing team, and I can tell
you, at Gorgias we can do abetter job about that, because
sometimes everybody just doestheir own flows, but we don't
sometimes know about each otherwhat everybody's doing.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
So yeah, I mean, it sounds like some opportunities
for templates in a differentsense, right?
So say, you're doing a webinar.
You know that after everywebinar we want to send one
email to people who attended one, to people who registered but
didn't attend one of the.
Maybe maybe the ones whoattended you go like people who
listened for stayed on for halfof it and those who didn't stay
(44:47):
on for half of it or whatever,because that's a standard, right
?
You could say I'm gonna, we'regonna spin up when an event
comes to us, when you get yourrequest, it gets approved.
Maybe it triggers something tothe marketing ops team to go set
up a template for thecommunications that go with it,
right, invitations, follow-up,et cetera, which is something I
know I've done in probably manyof our listeners.
(45:08):
But it sounds like I think whatI'm hearing is like a big part
of it is just like communicating.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Communicating, and equally pre-event, post-event
and during the event EquallyReally important.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah, yeah, and it feels like there's room to have
templates there that could beloose too, right, I mean, I
suspect for different audiencesor different events.
Right, you want, even thoughyou want to be on brand in
quotes, right, uh, you stillwant to leave room for matching,
say, that event's ethos.
(45:47):
So if the event is one that istypically it's a casual one, you
don't necessarily need to haveformal communications, right,
you can have something that isplayful or fun, right?
So you want to leave room forthat kind of stuff, not just the
personalization.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Oh, yeah, for sure, and every single detail matters.
Like a quick example last yearI hosted a meetup in New York
and I just decided to becreative, and sometimes it's a
good thing and sometimes not upin New York and I just decided
to be creative and sometimesit's a good thing and sometimes
not.
Instead of renting a regularkind of event space with, like,
av equipment and you knoweverything, prepared for a
(46:26):
networking workshop, I decidedto rent a photo studio and it
was beautiful, I was like inManhattan and like really nice
studio with, like you know, justa great venue.
With one little detail when youcome to the front door, there
is like a buzzer that thebuilding couldn't remove, even
during our event.
So you couldn't really likeenter the building without
showing the buzzer.
(46:47):
And I casually find out aboutthis buzzer, uh, at like 7 pm
the night before, when I justcome to the venue just to set
everything up and just to walkthrough.
I'm like wait, how is thisgoing to be turned off?
They're like no, no, we can'tturn it off.
I'm like so how do people getinside?
Well, they need to know thebuzzer.
And I'm like, how will theyknow the buzzer and the code?
Well, you need to send it tothem.
(47:08):
It's like 7 pm.
My event starts at 11 am.
You can imagine how, what it islike to rely on people actually
reading my communication intime.
Yes, so of course, what I did?
I sent a thousand emails.
I send uh um notificationreminders by phone, if I had
like for those who I have phonenumbers for and I hired a uh
(47:29):
bodyguard.
That would be just likestanding downstairs outside and
opening the door for peopleright, so not.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, um, I love that because, I'm fortunate, my wife
my wife does a lot of events inher world uh as well,
non-profit world and stuff and Iswear like every every time
there's an event, I hear likevery few of them go off without
something that you just don'texpect.
(47:57):
It seems like, I mean, that's agreat example.
The tornado one, tornadowarning All those are great, so
this has been really interesting.
So we're going to have to wrapup, though, but I know that
you're doing some, some webinarsto yourself, too, about how you
do this, so I'd love for you totell people about how they can
(48:19):
keep up with you and learn kindof learn what you're doing, or
maybe connect with you, and wecan always share the the webinar
series, too, in our show notes.
So what's the best way forfolks to do that?
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah, for sure, I'm always open for a chat, so feel
free to reach out.
I'm on LinkedIn.
Obviously.
You can find me by my first andlast name it's Anna Tomanova.
You can also see it on thescreen.
You can just add me on LinkedIn, and I also have an email
address at Gorgeous.
It's Anna at Gorgeouscom.
And also you can find a link tothe webinar that will be shared
(48:56):
with you after this recording,after the session, and yeah, so
my next webinar is happening onMarch 20th and the webinar is
called how I Run 350 Events aYear and that's going to be
episode number five.
There I basically just talkabout different, more narrow
topics about events.
(49:17):
So I've had episodesspecifically about trade shows
how to maximize your presence attrade shows.
I've had episodes about ABMexperiences.
There was an episode just aboutROI generation and attribution.
So it's not only by event type,but it's also by event type or
by topic.
And yeah, so feel free to jointhe webinar, feel free to add me
on LinkedIn or just shoot me anemail.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
I'm always happy to do.
That Sounds good.
I'm glad you didn't bring upthe how to get the most out of a
trade show, because I think wecould have gone down a dark
rabbit hole.
I have a strong opinion aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Oh for sure, how you staff your booth makes it all
the difference right.
Yeah, oh, for sure, a hundredpercent.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Anyway, Well, and it's just so fun.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for sharing, Um, andwe'll make sure we share your
webinar and to our audience.
Thank you for your continuedsupport.
If you have suggestions fortopics or guests or want to be a
guest, feel free to reach outto Naomi.
Suggestions for topics orguests or want to be a guest?
Feel free to reach out to Naomi, Mike or me, and we'd be happy
to talk to you about that.
Until next time, Bye, everybody.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of
OpsCast brought to you byMarketingOpscom, powered by all
the MoPros out there.
I'm your host, michael Hartman,flying solo today.
Mike and Naomi will be with usagain soon, I'm sure Joining me
today to talk about runningevents at scale is Anna Tumanova
.
Anna is Events Marketing Leadat Gorgias, spelled
(00:23):
G-O-R-G-I-A-S, if you're lookingfor that.
Anna is an experienced eventsprofessional with a proven track
record in the IT, entertainmentand services industries in over
10 countries.
Over her four years at Gorgias,she has spearheaded, organized
and executed a thousand plusevents for e-commerce brands,
tech solution providers and D2Cagencies, including D2CX
(00:45):
community virtual and in-personevents.
Anna is passionate aboutdriving customer engagement,
partnerships and lead generationthrough diverse experiences.
Anna, thanks for joining metoday.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Hi, everyone Very excited about this chat.
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, we should have some fun here because I think
for our audience mostlymarketing folks they probably
have worked with events teamsand often usually at the end
trying to make sure things arecommunicated or followed up on
all that kind of stuff.
But I don't know that anyonehas done that at quite the scale
.
I know I haven't, that you'redoing so, so why don't we start
(01:24):
there?
So I know we're going to covera number of things about your
approach and your process andsome of the experience you have,
but why don't we start withthis?
Like, how many events are youactually?
We have 1,000 plus during yourtime there.
How many are you running eachyear?
And I'm curious, what is themakeup of those right?
How many of them are you know,maybe bespoke small events
(01:44):
versus trade shows, versus whatother types of events you might
be doing?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, yeah, of course .
So at Gorgias we do run a lotof events.
We usually aim to run about 350events a year, but
realistically but realistically,that number is usually varying
between 320 and 370.
But we do have 350 as ourtarget, and that consists of
(02:13):
numerous events.
So obviously there is about 9to 12 trade shows a year that we
are participating in around theworld.
Our markets include Canada, US,Europe, Australia and New
Zealand.
Markets include Canada, US,Europe, Australia and New
Zealand.
So we participate in all themajor industry, commerce,
industry, trade shows in thoseregions.
Then, another important thingthat we do that we actually
(02:35):
launched last year, we launchedour very first own user
conference, which is calledGorgeous Connect, and last year
we hosted it in June.
This year we're going to hostit in May.
That takes place in LA and thatincludes over 350 customers
from LA and surrounding areasand also some people flying from
the East Coast as well.
(02:57):
So that's our user conference,where basically 70% of our
attendees are existing Gorgeouscustomers and others are our
partners, our prospects and anyother folk that is involved in
our business, Right.
So that's like our biggestevent, right, that we host
ourselves.
Then we also host a number ofgorgeous workshops.
(03:19):
Those ones are happening aroundthe world as well, in major
cities.
In North America it's usuallyLA, Miami, New York, Austin,
Toronto, where I'm based, by theway.
Um, in um, Europe it's mostlyLondon, Paris, uh, Berlin we
actually had one in Berlinyesterday for the first time Uh,
yeah, Expanding our markets.
And uh, also in Australia we doSydney, Melbourne, uh, and, and
(03:45):
yeah, I think that's it, yeah,Sydney and Melbourne, pretty
much so, yeah, so those ones areusually more hands-on.
We invite 30 to 40 gorgeouscustomers and we basically teach
them how to use our product,how to make the most out of it,
and also invite partners andprospects that also want to
learn about the product, Got it.
(04:05):
And another type that we do isobviously dinner invite partners
and prospects that also want tolearn about the product, and
another type that we do isobviously dinner.
So those are happeningbasically the whole year and
they're happening in majorcities and in smaller cities
Also when we want to expand to anew market.
For example, if we've neverdone an event there, I probably
wouldn't be committing to doinglike a networking meetup or a
workshop, but I would commit todo like a 20 people dinner to
(04:27):
kind of get a sense of themarket and see how easy or
difficult it is to promote anevent there.
So that's a good trick foranybody who wants to expand in a
new market.
Start small, Like if you'venever hosted an event.
Like, let's say, I don't knowin Zurich, for example, you've
never hosted an event there.
You don't commit to like ahundred people workshop, right,
You're only doing like a littlehappy hour or a dinner.
(04:47):
And then when you see theprogress, when you see success,
you keep expanding more and moreand more.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Can I ask you a question about those?
I think it's an interestingthread here about using that as
a way of entering a new market.
Are you usually doing that as away to try to size that market,
like maybe before you go all inon investing say salespeople or
whatever or are you doing itlike we're already committed to
this, we're going to try to kindof it's part of our launch into
(05:15):
that new market?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Yeah, so basically what happens here is that
Gorgias is the number oneShopify help desk for Shopify
stores and our marketpenetration is pretty large for
Shopify it's over 50%.
So we are trying to find newcustomers and we're also wanting
to meet our existing customersin real life.
(05:39):
So the main reason forexpanding when I say expand,
it's actually not like startselling to people in those
markets, because we're alreadyselling to them, but we want to
meet them in person and we wantto expand the events channel.
We want to leverage the eventschannel for customer retention,
for customer acquisition, forpartnerships.
So there is numerous reasonsfor that.
(06:00):
And, speaking of team members,our team, so our offices are, if
I'm not mistaken, in ninecities right now, and we even
have an office in Argentina andPortugal.
You know, like we are like allaround the world and team
members that are remote evenleave and complete the different
cities where we don't haveoffices.
So we're pretty internationaland whenever we host an event
(06:22):
where we don't have any teammembers, we just send someone
and fly somebody in who is theclosest right.
So yeah, so to answer yourquestion is we want to make sure
that we expand our eventschannel reach in those places.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Okay, so it's more about the events starting to
have events in those markets asopposed to growing business in
the market.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, pretty much Okay, yeah, pretty much Okay,
yeah.
And then, yeah, sorry, continue.
And I may ask another follow-upon that?
Yeah, I just wanted to touchbase on other event types.
So, yeah, we said trade shows,conferences, workshops, dinners,
hosted, sponsored, and then wealso do ABM experiences.
So basically we call thatexperiential events.
(07:04):
For example, let's say, on May7th Beyonce is coming to LA.
So we rented like a suite andwe're going to do like a little
activation there.
We're going to have like agorgeous person greasing
everybody, we're going to havefood and beverages and we're
going to have a few of ourenterprise clients and prospects
enjoy Beyonce concert.
And this is just like one ofthe examples that we do right,
(07:26):
but we do a lot of musicfestivals, sporting events.
So that's the whole otherprogram that we have and that we
invest in and we see a lot ofreturn from.
Oh interesting, okay, and thenwebinars.
That's probably something Ishould have started with,
because that is our most ROIgenerating channel, and the
(07:47):
reason for that is because?
Well, a few reasons.
Firstly, it's global reach.
You can reach your targetaudience at any time around the
world.
I'm sure any of you who arewatching this right now you're
all in different parts of theworld, so that only proves that
whenever you have a virtualevent, your target audience can
be reached from any place, rightand in any place, and it's
(08:11):
usually free, or well, nothingis free, right there are still
resources that you use.
There's nothing that's free butlike it's very cost-effective to
organize webinars and virtualsummits.
You can involve as manyspeakers as you want.
You can make them many speakersas you want.
You can make them as long asyou want.
I run webinars that have 50people registered and I have
(08:32):
webinars that have 5,000 peopleregistered, so those ones differ
.
If we have a virtual roundtable with 10 experts, we're
probably going to have likeeight to 10 people, but then if
I have a virtual summit that isactually I have one in April
coming up we expect 5,000registrations with 40 speakers
from the industry from allaround the world, and that's
something completely different,different scale.
(08:53):
So it is a very good eventformat if you want to generate
leads in a cost effective way.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Got it.
So it sounds like more I wouldcall that just sort of virtual
events as opposed to webinars.
The webinars kind of fit inthat, but I get it okay.
So, uh, if my math is right,you're doing almost one trade
show a month and like somethingon every work day all year round
.
Is that is my math right?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
yeah, on average.
You can say that in real life,sometimes we.
So you would exclude weekends,and you would usually exclude
Mondays and Fridays too, weirdlyenough, because people.
Mondays are very like.
Mondays are very hard to peoplefor people to come into because
you know you come up to theweekend, you want to clean your
inbox, you have all your weeklymeetings on Monday.
(09:41):
So Monday is never a good timeto run an event.
And Friday is also not a goodtime usually to run an event
because people are already kindof done at like 1 PM their local
time and they just want to, youknow, finish their like, clean
up their inbox and just like getready for the weekend.
So the actual days when you canrun a successful event are
actually Tuesday, wednesday andThursday, unless it's a major
(10:04):
trade show that takes over thewhole week.
When people arrive on Sundaynight, like, for example, on
Monday I'm going to ETL West,which is like one of our major
trade shows happening in PalmSprings every year so people
arrive on Sunday and leaveThursday.
So that's a little bitdifferent but, like normally, we
usually schedule all eventsTuesday to Thursday.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, oh, wow.
Now my mind is really blownlike that.
Very interesting.
So those are all very differentkinds of events too right, in
terms of what it takes to getthem done and the logistics.
And I know that one of thechallenges I've had working with
(10:43):
field marketing teams wherewe're trying to do like the
dinner thing is just somemarkets are really hard to
figure out.
What's a good location, thatI'll call them business
districts, but it's also a veryspread out metro area.
So finding a way, a place, at atime when enough people could
(11:12):
be there that you know peopleare dealing with traffic,
getting their kids back fromschool or whatever it's a real
challenge.
I mean, like, how do you dealwith that, especially when
you're going to a new market?
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
That's a great question,because there is a few things
that you need to consider Ifyour dinner is around a major
trade show for example, speakingof Dallas, there is an
e-commerce trade show called SubSummit that happens there every
year.
We're not sponsoring it thisyear, so we don't have a booth,
but we are sending team membersto attend and we are running two
(11:46):
dinners around it.
So, basically, how I approachthat in that case, I just choose
for the restaurant that is inthat specific area near the
trade show, because you're notgoing to, like, send the people
downtown if the trade show ishappening in the suburb of the
city, right?
So you want to make sure it isconvenient and, of course, you
(12:08):
always want the best.
You always want Michelin star,you always want the best private
room and best experiences.
However, I personally alwaysprioritize convenience.
Like, if I have to choosebetween the two, I will always
prioritize convenience, because,no matter how good the
restaurant is, if it is far awayto get there, like nobody will
go.
Um, another thing is toconsider is to send people uber
(12:31):
vouchers.
That's actually reallyinteresting because, uh, that's
actually really interestingbecause, um, you would think
that like, 15 uber vouchers,like why would that even matter
for people?
However, you will be surprisedthat it does matter a lot
because, like I had situationswhen, like I was hosting this
event in Austin a couple ofyears ago, it was like a
(12:53):
networking meetup and peoplejust so in the morning off I
wake up and I'm like in my hoteland like get ready for an event
and then there's like a tornadowarning, which we'll understand
.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
I get it.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah, so there is a tornado warning and I'm like,
okay, so what's going to happen?
So, uh, I was going to sendUber vouchers anyway, like
regardless of that.
So I send them.
And then when I come to theevent, of course I have slightly
lower show rate because of theweather, but I still had like
over 80 people in there and thenpeople come to me and they're
like hey, Ana, if I didn'treceive that Uber voucher in the
morning, I wouldn't be hereright now.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
It's amazing.
It's part of the deal.
Well, it's so funny because Iso I worked for Freeman.
I think we talked about this,right, the event company that's
behind the scenes.
And one of the things that wetalked about when we talked to
exhibitors about how they couldget more traffic in their booth
was through things like whatflooring you choose, right.
(13:48):
So people are walking around atrade show for hours.
Their feet get tired.
If you, if you're willing tospend a little extra for a
thicker carpet that's softer onsomeone's feet, they actually
come and they stay longer,whether it's conscious or not.
It's funny how small thingslike that can make a difference,
right, oh?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
100% yeah.
And to answer your previousquestion about the location, so
if it is a trade show,everything is easier because
you're just walking around, ifit is just a completely random
city that you've never been to,and then you just kind of don't
know anything.
You don't know where to go,where people like to go.
Honestly, just a simple Googleresearch, I would just like go
and be like hey, like what isthe top most wanted restaurants
(14:30):
in the city?
And then I will just like,obviously, look at my budget and
see what matches my budget andthen I will just try to find
something either very new andtrendy, where everybody kind of
like that everybody's talkingabout, for example, like Miami,
for example, is huge about that.
They always have newrestaurants popping up.
So like, for example, there islike this big restaurant that I
really like and I've hosted afew events that are called Sexy
(14:52):
Fish and it's like a verybeautiful, gorgeous place with
like beautiful architect fromLondon.
It's a gorgeous place and twoyears ago it was like a buzz,
like whenever we invited, likethat it's going to, our event is
at Sexy Fish, they're like, ok,I'm coming.
So that was like last year.
Just a year later, I decided tohost the dinner there and
(15:14):
people still showed up, but youcould see there was like, ok,
yeah, I've been here like sixtimes.
So you always want to findsomething, something either very
new and trendy, or obviously,ask locals.
If you have any friends,partners, coworkers, you can
always ask that.
And also you could also findsome staples, like, for example,
(15:34):
every city usually has like astaple that is maybe not new and
trendy, but it's kind of likebeautiful and well, like top
rated restaurants wherever youwould go to.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Interesting.
Okay, yeah's, that all makessense.
Um, okay, so you hinted atsomething I wanted to talk about
because I think it's achallenge, which is especially
with the variety of types ofevents that you do.
Um, how do you think about whatis the purpose of the event?
Is it to generate leads, togenerate meetings?
Is it just to enhance the brand?
(16:09):
What are the kinds of goalsthat you try to have with these
different events, and does itvary based on the type?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Yeah, so it has changed a lot at Gorgeous in the
last four years.
So when I joined the team atthe beginning of 2021, it's hard
to believe it's been that long,but 2021, I joined the team.
Actually, I wouldn't say mainpurpose, it was actually the
only purpose that we did eventsfor was generating leads,
(16:38):
because we're still like we'reat about, I believe, 6,000
customers.
Now we have 15,000.
So when I joined, we had like6,000 customers so, and they
were not huge brands most ofthem.
So we wanted to kind of like,you know, meet everybody and
everywhere.
So we were like generatingleads and that was the main and
only purpose that we were doingevents.
(16:59):
Then, as company grew and as weevolved and started and our
market penetration increased,then we started expanding our
goal.
So we started to invite morecustomers to our events.
We wanted to make sure thatthere is um like.
We do customer marketing, we docustomer engagement.
We launched our customerfocused user conference.
We started doing customerappreciation dinners where we
(17:20):
only invite our customerswithout generating leads.
Of course, even course, evenwhen you invite existing
customers, there's still ways togenerate ROI, because you do
have add-ons, you do have someproducts that you can upsell to
existing customers, but it'sstill not the primary goal.
The primary goal there ismostly retention and marketing
(17:41):
right.
Then we have lead generationevents still the only thing now.
They are mostly moved towardsenterprise.
So, for example, thoseexperiences like Beyoncé concert
, for example just from the topof my head, that's a pure lead
generation event right when wewould invite our top enterprise
prospects and try to generateleads from that.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Sorry, just a quick question because I'm so.
Do you carry the budget for allthese events, regardless of
what the goal is or if it'ssomething that's like a lead
generation thing?
Does that come from, say, asales budget to pay for, or is
it mixed?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
So actually, lead generation comes always from us.
So we are as an event channel.
We are lead generating channelinitially and still up to
current date.
So everything that is aboutlead generation that comes from
us.
When it comes to customermarketing it depends Gorgeous
user conference does come fromus.
(18:42):
If we talk about customerappreciation dinners, we do have
some budget and customersuccess that is sometimes
allocated to those things, butit's kind of like a mix.
And then we also the third goalof events that we do is also
partnerships.
Right, we don't do solelypartnerships focused events as
much.
I do throw a Christmas partyevery year in December in
Toronto.
(19:03):
That is like for the partnercommunity, but otherwise it's
mostly like it's always a mix.
It's rarely just like unlessthere is like a customer dinner
or customer user focusconference or like a lead ABM
generation event, but otherwiseit's always like a little bit of
everything.
So there's some partners,there's some leads, there's some
customers, so you kind of likedo everything at the same event
(19:24):
very often.
So yeah, answering yourquestion, it is coming from the
events budget that is allocatedto us.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
How do you measure those results differently?
I mean lead ones.
I think it's pretty obvious.
Right, you need to captureleads somehow which we can get
into more detail about.
But what about some of theseother ones, like the
customer-focused ones, right?
Do track, like the fact that acustomer came to your event,
(19:56):
your customer events and theirretention, or is there just
curious?
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Yeah, so for leads, yeah, definitely easier to track
because there's pipeline, thereis a number of deals created,
deal value, there is ARR revenuetarget.
However, for customer events,it's a little bit trickier to
track.
However, we have some goal ofcustomer upsells.
So if we want to generaterevenue, we just invite some
(20:25):
customers that don't havecertain products.
For example, gorgias originallywas just like a help desk for
Shopify stores, but now we are aconversational AI platform,
meaning that we have an AIsupport agent and we're
launching an AI sales agent inthe next couple of months, so we
are going to be releasing thatproduct to firstly, of course,
(20:46):
our existing customers.
So there is definitely revenueassociated with that.
So there is definitely revenueassociated with that.
So, on that side, it's prettyeasy to track because we do have
our UTM links associated withevery product for every event
that my team is responsible forcreating and tracking.
And then there is also customerretention.
That is a little bit hard thereto measure.
However, what we do, we usuallylook at show rate.
(21:10):
For example, like, if we have acustomer appreciation dinner,
usually for, in general, forcustomer dinner, show rate is
higher than for prospect events,because when it's a customer,
they're more loyal to you andthey want to come have a meal
with you when it's a prospect.
Sometimes they, just like youknow, wake up in the morning.
You're like no, I'm not comingthere, I'm going to a different
event.
So, yeah, so it's harder tomeasure, but there is no like,
(21:33):
unfortunately, magic potion forthat.
However, we do try to track theupsell revenue and we do track
the show rate and the numberpercentage of registrations.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
OK, yeah, ok, that makes sense.
Yeah, it would be.
It would be interesting to seethat tied to not just upsell
like revenue, but also justretention, right, which is sort
of a revenue thing, but at leastof course, for sure, you know.
Um, so okay, so I I've workedin the events industry in
different parts and I've workedwith events teams for a long
(22:05):
time and I I I continue to besurprised at just how bad the
technology is, particularly for,like lead capture, and I'm
thinking like that's probablymostly trade shows, but just in
general it feels like thetechnology for events maybe
outside of virtual, which hasgotten better since covet, I
think.
But what I mean, am I off likedo you see the same thing?
(22:26):
Right, that there's just notgreat technology to support like
lead capture and that kind ofstuff?
And, if so, like how are youcapturing that?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, yeah.
So I would say the biggestchallenge for my team personally
is that when you go to thosetrade shows like ShopDog, for
example, or Retail West, they dohave lead capture devices that
you like scan and you can likeinput them in your system
afterwards.
However, I do lack a lot offilters in there.
So, for example, shopdog has aone-on-one hosted meetings
(22:59):
program, which basically meansthat you pre-purchase, pre-event
, a certain number of hostedmeetings with the leads and then
you go.
Let's say, for example, forShopDog this year we purchased
20 meetings, right, so thatbasically means that I'm able to
go through their attendee listand just like schedule 20
meetings with the merchants thatare potential customers for
(23:21):
Gorgias.
However, knowing that Gorgiasis only integrated with certain
e-commerce platforms for example, shopify, magento, e-commerce,
woocommerce but not integratedwith Salesforce so when I go
into that portal, instead ofjust having a simple filter that
says like, what e-commerceplatform this brand is using
checkmark, it would save so muchtime because, imagine, there's
(23:42):
like 3000 people in there.
So basically every time I needto schedule and actually this is
coming up next week for me,this is my little bonus in my
working week I basically need togo manually through 3,000
people because the filters thatthey have there they are.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
I mean no offense, but like there's like it's okay
you can offend.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, they're not there's like okay, what country
it is located in?
Like okay, country Cool.
But like we actually, we cansell to any country, even if we
haven't had any customers fromthere.
We still can sell to them,right?
So it's not the filter thatwe're looking for.
However, we're like, forexample, we want to look at the
gmv band, we want to look at, um, what e-commerce platform we
(24:25):
use.
We want to even, ideally, youcould filter by.
Like, if I was doing that kindof tracker, what what I would do
?
Who are the sponsors of thisevent?
Gorgeous, and then, like, let'ssay, 20 other tech companies,
customers of each of thiscompany.
How amazing would that be If Icould just go into that platform
, filter, remove Salesforce,remove custom cards, only leave
(24:49):
Shopify, only leave the onesthat are not gorgeous customers
and only leave a certain GMVband.
Boom, my job is done in an hourmaybe, maybe less.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
It sounds like a great problem for some sort of
AI tool out there.
Right, here's the list.
But then you get into you'reprobably not allowed to share
the list, et cetera, et cetera,right.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
There's not even a list there.
You can't really download thelist.
You only go through the portaland you go through inside their
portal.
You have to manually go throughevery single company copy-paste
, like you know just copy-paste.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
This is such a great example to me of like I don't
events.
Even though we obviously had areal, you know, they dropped off
the face of the earth basicallyfor a year.
They still are a huge part ofmost marketing teams' budgets
and still like.
(25:43):
This is why it blows my mindthat the technology is so bad
and it's like it feels like itshould be pretty straightforward
and I don't know what it isLike, I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
So any of you out there who are working for this
technology, and I don't knowwhat it is Like.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I don't know why.
So any of you out there who areworking with technology, I'd
love to talk to you Like I wouldlike maybe we can have you on
as a guest.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, for sure.
The event, because the event,the data is there, like, for
example, when I say, like, howdo you filter by like gorgeous
customers?
We don't have to go intogorgeous CRM to see that there
is this beautiful tool calledBuiltWith that I use on a daily
basis.
I'm sure you've heard of it.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
I was using it just the other day.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Yeah, and you can see what is this customer, what is
this brand using, what platformsdoes it use.
So you could just integratethat into the portal of the
conference and then you'd beable to filter e-commerce,
platform, tech solutionproviders, even agency, maybe in
their magic world.
So yeah, there is always ways,but unfortunately it does take a
(26:43):
lot of time and those portalsare just I can tell you that we
need to do that with my team.
We're not excited about it.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, no, I can only imagine.
I mean, I wasn't kidding when Isaid this sounds like the kind
of problem that an AI tool coulddo.
Or, yeah, to your point, right,something that could connect in
with Git, with, or Clay orwhatever.
Okay, so, given that there's alot of this manual effort right,
(27:11):
finding venues, findingprospects to have meetings, with
things like that I mean that'sa lot to do when you're doing
the amount of events you'retalking about, with different
scale and scope and timing andoverlapping, how do you?
You know, when we talked before, you said you used templates
(27:32):
for that.
I think you mentioned that'sproject management.
I can't remember.
I think you said Asana, but I'mnot 100% sure.
I mean, how did like?
Is that?
How did you?
Yeah, what is it like?
Can you describe what you meanby template, because I probably,
like a lot of people, I have anidea in my head what that would
look like, but I'm not 100%sure if that matches what you
(27:53):
use.
And then, how much time did youspend up front?
Did you spend like is it?
Have you been evolving that?
Did you?
Do it take a little bit of timeto develop them initially and
then evolve it like what?
What was that process like?
Speaker 2 (28:07):
oh, we keep evolving it every day.
I literally made up today totoday in the morning.
So we do keep evolving it everyday.
I literally made up today inthe morning, so we do keep
evolving it every day.
We add new event types, weremove event types.
So just to give you like it's avery broad question, obviously,
but I will try to give anoverview so how our process
internally works like withimagining right 30 to 35 events
(28:28):
a month.
So whenever anybody on the teamat Gorgeous wants to do an event
or suggest an event, either toorganize or to sponsor or
suggest an idea for an event,they need to submit a request
form to our team.
So they go to a certain Slackchannel and they fill in the
form and then that form has anumber of questions that we're
(28:48):
interested in when we review ifthis event is worth the
investment or worth the effortfrom the team and worth the
resources.
So that forum has a lot ofquestions.
What event type is it?
Is it an ABM experience?
Is it a Beyonce concert?
Is it a trade show?
Is it a dinner?
Is it a webinar, a virtualsummit?
Then there is obviously a costassociated with it.
(29:09):
If it is a sponsored event,then how much it is to sponsor
and what are the inclusions inthe sponsorships If it is a
hosted event, then they wouldput like, okay, I'm expecting
this number of people and Iestimate this budget, and then
we as an events team either say,yes, this is how much it's
going to cost, and we're like,oh no, that's not true, it's
going to be way cheaper or waymore expensive, right.
(29:30):
So, yeah, there's like a numberof questions.
So, once the event getssubmitted, we have our weekly
event approval meetingshappening every Friday currently
Friday morning, our favoritemeeting of the day so we always
like get together and we gothrough all these requests
Usually we have about.
Our team is very active andvery motivated to submit those
events because they do generatea lot of revenue for them, right
(29:53):
.
So it's a it's a very goodchannel for them.
So they submit these events andwe usually have 10 to 20
requests a week.
So we usually have like an hourlong meeting and usually it's a
week.
Yeah, I would say so, wow, yeah,okay, okay.
And that includes everythingdinners, webinars, anything but
yes, yes, that's a lot to choosefrom and of course we don't
(30:15):
accept all of them.
We usually, I would say I don'thave like an average number,
percentage like on how many weapprove, how many we pass on,
but I would say sometimes it's50-50, sometimes it's 60-40,
either way, or 70-30.
So it depends, right.
And then we like either reject,approve events or we put them
(30:39):
in the pending info sectionwhere there is like more, like
we are lacking some information,basically to make a decision.
So we're like not ready toreject it or approve it.
And also, it's not just theevents team that is
participating in those meetings.
We also have our partnershipsteam because we want their input
.
We have our influencermarketing manager, we have other
team members also in thatmeeting.
So it's like my team is leadingthe meeting but other team
(31:01):
members are giving their inputand we all make a decision
together if it is worth theinvestment.
So, yeah, once this getsapproved, it gets assigned an
events manager where threepeople on the team, including
myself, and then I have twoother amazing event managers.
One of them is also based inToronto, same as me, she's
actually right here at theoffice and another girl is based
(31:24):
in Paris and she's coveringmost of our European and
Australian events and alsohelping us in north america.
So the event gets assigned toone of the three of us and then,
once the event is assigned,there is an automated automation
that creates creates a templatein asana template that we
created beforehand, right, andthat template is usually it's
(31:48):
mostly just for internalguidance for an events manager,
because pretty much every eventmanager already knows what to do
.
You need to to book a venue, youneed to send invoices, find
sponsors.
Like there is already certainsteps that we already know.
Like you wake me up at threeo'clock in the morning, I'll
tell you all those steps, right,like I don't need to look at
the template at this point, butit is helpful sometimes, just
internally, to look at it andkind of like, okay, did I send
(32:15):
invoices, did I submitcertificate of insurance?
Did I assign people fromGorgias to attend?
So there is like certain stepsthat are very helpful to check
off.
Yeah, so we do have that and werely on that, but not too much,
I would say.
And those templates are notreally shared externally until
the day of the event, the daybefore the event, when we have
like an Excel spreadsheet withall the attendees, leads, lead
(32:38):
capture, and that's the wholeother thing.
Gotcha, that's somethinginternal.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
So I'm curious.
There's a number of questionshere.
So, as you get, because you'regoing through a pretty large
volume already of events thatare active and have already been
approved and some that areprobably approved previously but
aren't really started yet.
So when you get these newrequests, are you sometimes
(33:02):
having to go like, oh, we can dothis one if we cancel this one
that we already had approved?
Are you going through that kindof process as well?
Speaker 2 (33:10):
We rarely cancel the ones that have been approved,
unless there is a reason so orthere is no budget loss.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
So there can be like if you ask me like what you had
to do a deposit or somethingright yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
So if you put a deposit like okay, example we
tried to do an apm dinner lastyear in indianapolis.
We rescheduled it four timesand and for some reason, just
promotion just never performed,we couldn't hit the target, we
couldn't invite the brands wewanted, and then we already put
a deposit in the venue.
I think it was like maybe athousand dollars or something.
(33:45):
We put like a deposit and thenlike the girl, like the events
manager who was running thisevent she's like Anna, like this
has the fourth time we'retrying to do this, the promotion
is not going well.
What should we do?
On the one hand, I could say,yeah, it's $1,000.
Let's proceed and let's stilldo it.
On another hand, we would haveto send another person from
(34:07):
another city to fly into thecity, right, because we don't
have any team members inIndianapolis.
So it would be the cost ofpeople flying in.
It would be their time, theirfrustration and disappointment
upon arrival that there is nopeople in there.
And then we still have to payon top of deposit.
We will still have to pay.
So the loss of actually hostingthat event would be way higher
(34:28):
than the loss of that deposit.
So I'm in a position to cancelit because, yeah, sometimes you
just do what you gotta do, right.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Yeah, no, I think that makes sense.
Okay, so does it now, becauseyou have this whole process
where that's all captured inAsana in your case could be
another project managementsystem.
Does that also enable you topublish or share the schedule,
like upcoming schedules, sopeople can see what's been
(34:55):
approved, or how do youcommunicate that out to the
teams?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
So for the schedule we have another tool that's not
Asana, it's called Airtable Idon't know if you heard about
that.
It's basically like a tableright, it's like a spreadsheet.
So what happens every Friday?
After we run our approvalmeeting?
Anything that has been approved, we manually input it into
Airtable with all the requiredfields.
(35:20):
So because Asana can get alittle bit messy and confusing
for people because it doesn'treally have like a list view,
but in.
Airtable you filter by city,filter by a person who is
assigned, filter by eventmanager, filter by event type,
filter by event type, filter byanything, literally anything.
So it's very convenient.
We used to have an Excelspreadsheet for that.
For the first two and a halfyears I was at Gorgias and that
(35:44):
spreadsheet kept growing and itworked.
But I like AeroTable way morebecause it's just way more
manageable, it's way moredigestible, it's less
possibility of a human error andtypos because there's like drop
downs.
Yeah, so we use Airtable.
So anytime somebody comes to mehey, anna, where's the list of
(36:05):
all our upcoming events?
Please go to Airtable and seeeverything that has been
approved.
Nothing goes to Airtable if itis still unapproved or in the
pending info or like onlyapproved events, go there.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Gotcha Feels like there's some sort of automation
that could happen, so you don'thave to do that manually.
But we don't have to solve thatproblem.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, that's definitely.
That would be a goodimprovement for that.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
But yeah, you do that manually for now.
Okay, so this is interesting.
Okay, so we've kind of talkedabout the goals you set, but
from my standpoint, anotherthing that's been a challenge is
trying to come up with an ROI,for lack of a better term.
You talked about pipeline andrevenue, but from my experience
(36:50):
it's been tough to do, eitherbecause the technology is tough
on capturing leads or becausethe people on site don't have
the kind of discipline you wantor whatever right.
So it's sometimes hard to tiethat back to pipeline revenue.
So what are you doing?
For I don't know if you call itROI or attribution or something
(37:12):
completely different, like thekind of the financial return on
all these events.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, that's my favorite topic to discuss
internally and externally.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, attribution.
So if it is for something like,let's say, we're at the trade
show, at the booth and thepotential customer comes to us,
so there is a UTM link forGorgias demo associated with
that specific event.
So we create a property that isvalid in our CRM, which is we
use HubSpot at Gorgias andbasically we create a UTM
(37:46):
associated with that specificevent.
And also not only Gorgias demobut also for each specific
add-on product, like AI agent orsome other add-on tools that we
have, we also create a separateUTM associated with that
specific event.
So that's for on-site bookings,right?
So whenever the demo is booked,I look at the dashboard in
(38:07):
Ascense and Periscope and then Ican see okay, shopdoc was last
week and we had five demosbooked and I can see what demos,
how much the deal amount is.
So that's pretty convenient Forthose ones that are not booked
on site.
That, for example, our teammember went to a dinner and they
(38:28):
didn't book a demo while theywere at the restaurant, but they
had a nice conversation and thelead is potentially interested
to learn more about Gorgias.
So then our partnerships orsales team after the event
usually we push within 48 hoursafter the event, unless the
event was on a Thursday or whichdoesn't often happen but on
Friday, then of course we wouldwait the weekend and then we
(38:51):
would send follow-ups to them.
So that would be a manualfollow-up that we all direct
through a tool called lemlist.
So we don't send like directemail follow-ups just because
it's impossible to track, but wedo have like a tool for that.
There is like direct enrollmenttool also has properties
associated.
So anybody who wants to sendthis manual follow-up and say
(39:13):
hey, I met you yesterday, youyesterday.
Here's the selfie with you.
Great times.
By the way, this is thegorgeous demo link if you want
to learn more about the product.
That's something that everypartner manager would send.
And then the third option isautomated follow-up.
For example, we hosted awebinar and a partner manager or
a salesperson didn't meetanybody in person, but they just
(39:34):
spoke at a webinar and there islike 500 registrations.
So we would send automatedsequence for those leads through
the same tool, but automated.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Got it Okay, and then so are you.
Then I'm thinking of a veryspecific example, one place
where the sales cycle was 18months.
This is the high cost item.
It's probably that same asyours, sounds like it's
different and like so.
(40:05):
There was no automatedattribution to this.
Somebody from that companyattended an event 18 months ago,
turned into an opportunity thatwe just sold for X amount of
dollars.
We could see it right.
It was a manual effort toconnect the dots.
Are you doing anythingautomated like that, or how are
you tying the financial piece ofit as well?
Speaker 2 (40:26):
We have a window of 60 days.
So if somebody attended anevent and booked a demo, they
didn't have to.
So sales cycle basically startsfrom the moment they book a
demo, right.
So it doesn't matter if theevent happened two years ago.
But if they booked a demowithin a certain period of time
which is gorgeous in 60 days,but it can be anything.
It can be 30, it can be 12months, right, whatever you
(40:48):
decide.
But whatever the lead booked ademo within a certain time after
the event, it doesn't matteranymore how long the cycle, the
sales cycle, is.
It will still get attributed tothe events department.
Uh, however, if the eventhappened and then two months
passed and they didn't book ademo and they booked a demo
within three months but they usethe event UTM, from example,
(41:12):
for example, they open theiremail three months later or they
just use the demo booking linkfor that event, we'll still
count it towards events.
However, if it is just theybooked organically, it would not
be attributed to events anymore.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Okay, so it's not that much different, but it's
all connected.
The dots are connected inside.
It sounds like you use HubSpot,yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah, okay, makes sense.
Okay.
So our audience mostlymarketing ops folks, as I
mentioned probably are workingwith their events teams or field
(41:50):
marketers, depending on whatthey're called at their company.
Their events teams or fieldmarketers, depending on what
they're called at their companythey may struggle sometimes with
them and how they can helpright.
How would you recommendmarketing ops folks or MarTech
folks help their events team?
Like, what are some things theycould be doing to help those
teams to be more efficient, getbetter reporting, whatever it
(42:14):
might be?
Speaker 2 (42:17):
I would say automate communications where you can and
personalize communicationswhere you can.
Don't send the same sequencefor every single marketing
campaign.
Adjust it based on the if wetalk about events, based on
events type, based on the city,based on the.
If a person registered orattended For example, if
somebody registered for a dinnerbut didn't come we would send
(42:39):
them an email like oh, I'm sorryI didn't catch you last night
at the XYZ restaurant.
We wouldn't be like, hey, greatdinner last night, right?
So yeah.
So make sure that, even if thefollow-ups are automated, make
sure that they make sense.
Make sure they're sent to theright people, like if it is an
existing customer, don't sellyour product to them, because
(43:02):
that is not a good look.
If it is a partner, don't sellyour product to them.
If it is a prospect, then it'san appropriate email to look, to
look into your offering, right?
Then make sure that thefollow-up is timely.
(43:24):
If there is any bonus to add,like photos from the event or
recording of the webinar orsomething that will bring value
to the person receiving, ratherthan you just like selling your
product to them after the event,include that, if you can, so
for that marketing teams anddemand generation teams and
growth marketing teams andevents can work together.
Try to share valuable resourcesas much as you can.
For example, let's say wehosted a webinar about a certain
(43:48):
topic, about customerexperience.
Share some links to a blog ortell them hey, you can subscribe
to this newsletter to learnmore about this on a weekly
basis.
Or you attended a webinar lastnight, but actually next day we
have an event in LA.
If you're in the LA area,please join us for the
networking meetup or justprovide some valuable resource.
(44:09):
But in order for that to happen, events team needs to
collaborate very closely to themarketing team, and I can tell
you, at Gorgias we can do abetter job about that, because
sometimes everybody just doestheir own flows, but we don't
sometimes know about each otherwhat everybody's doing.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
So yeah, I mean, it sounds like some opportunities
for templates in a differentsense, right?
So say, you're doing a webinar.
You know that after everywebinar we want to send one
email to people who attended one, to people who registered but
didn't attend one of the.
Maybe maybe the ones whoattended you go like people who
listened for stayed on for halfof it and those who didn't stay
(44:47):
on for half of it or whatever,because that's a standard, right
?
You could say I'm gonna, we'regonna spin up when an event
comes to us, when you get yourrequest, it gets approved.
Maybe it triggers something tothe marketing ops team to go set
up a template for thecommunications that go with it,
right, invitations, follow-up,et cetera, which is something I
know I've done in probably manyof our listeners.
(45:08):
But it sounds like I think whatI'm hearing is like a big part
of it is just like communicating.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Communicating, and equally pre-event, post-event
and during the event EquallyReally important.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Yeah, yeah, and it feels like there's room to have
templates there that could beloose too, right, I mean, I
suspect for different audiencesor different events.
Right, you want, even thoughyou want to be on brand in
quotes, right, uh, you stillwant to leave room for matching,
say, that event's ethos.
(45:47):
So if the event is one that istypically it's a casual one, you
don't necessarily need to haveformal communications, right,
you can have something that isplayful or fun, right?
So you want to leave room forthat kind of stuff, not just the
personalization.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Oh, yeah, for sure, and every single detail matters.
Like a quick example last yearI hosted a meetup in New York
and I just decided to becreative, and sometimes it's a
good thing and sometimes not upin New York and I just decided
to be creative and sometimesit's a good thing and sometimes
not.
Instead of renting a regularkind of event space with, like,
av equipment and you knoweverything, prepared for a
(46:26):
networking workshop, I decidedto rent a photo studio and it
was beautiful, I was like inManhattan and like really nice
studio with, like you know, justa great venue.
With one little detail when youcome to the front door, there
is like a buzzer that thebuilding couldn't remove, even
during our event.
So you couldn't really likeenter the building without
showing the buzzer.
(46:47):
And I casually find out aboutthis buzzer, uh, at like 7 pm
the night before, when I justcome to the venue just to set
everything up and just to walkthrough.
I'm like wait, how is thisgoing to be turned off?
They're like no, no, we can'tturn it off.
I'm like so how do people getinside?
Well, they need to know thebuzzer.
And I'm like, how will theyknow the buzzer and the code?
Well, you need to send it tothem.
(47:08):
It's like 7 pm.
My event starts at 11 am.
You can imagine how, what it islike to rely on people actually
reading my communication intime.
Yes, so of course, what I did?
I sent a thousand emails.
I send uh um notificationreminders by phone, if I had
like for those who I have phonenumbers for and I hired a uh
(47:29):
bodyguard.
That would be just likestanding downstairs outside and
opening the door for peopleright, so not.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
Yeah, um, I love that because, I'm fortunate, my wife
my wife does a lot of events inher world uh as well,
non-profit world and stuff and Iswear like every every time
there's an event, I hear likevery few of them go off without
something that you just don'texpect.
(47:57):
It seems like, I mean, that's agreat example.
The tornado one, tornadowarning All those are great, so
this has been really interesting.
So we're going to have to wrapup, though, but I know that
you're doing some, some webinarsto yourself, too, about how you
do this, so I'd love for you totell people about how they can
(48:19):
keep up with you and learn kindof learn what you're doing, or
maybe connect with you, and wecan always share the the webinar
series, too, in our show notes.
So what's the best way forfolks to do that?
Speaker 2 (48:32):
Yeah, for sure, I'm always open for a chat, so feel
free to reach out.
I'm on LinkedIn.
Obviously.
You can find me by my first andlast name it's Anna Tomanova.
You can also see it on thescreen.
You can just add me on LinkedIn, and I also have an email
address at Gorgeous.
It's Anna at Gorgeouscom.
And also you can find a link tothe webinar that will be shared
(48:56):
with you after this recording,after the session, and yeah, so
my next webinar is happening onMarch 20th and the webinar is
called how I Run 350 Events aYear and that's going to be
episode number five.
There I basically just talkabout different, more narrow
topics about events.
(49:17):
So I've had episodesspecifically about trade shows
how to maximize your presence attrade shows.
I've had episodes about ABMexperiences.
There was an episode just aboutROI generation and attribution.
So it's not only by event type,but it's also by event type or
by topic.
And yeah, so feel free to jointhe webinar, feel free to add me
on LinkedIn or just shoot me anemail.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
I'm always happy to do.
That Sounds good.
I'm glad you didn't bring upthe how to get the most out of a
trade show, because I think wecould have gone down a dark
rabbit hole.
I have a strong opinion aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
Oh for sure, how you staff your booth makes it all
the difference right.
Yeah, oh, for sure, a hundredpercent.
Speaker 1 (49:56):
Anyway, Well, and it's just so fun.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for sharing, Um, andwe'll make sure we share your
webinar and to our audience.
Thank you for your continuedsupport.
If you have suggestions fortopics or guests or want to be a
guest, feel free to reach outto Naomi.
Suggestions for topics orguests or want to be a guest?
Feel free to reach out to Naomi, Mike or me, and we'd be happy
to talk to you about that.
Until next time, Bye, everybody.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
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