Every day in business, we connect with prospects and customers on countless digital channels: email, social media, video conferencing, Slack, and the list goes on.

But when we want to forge a strong connection with a customer or prospect, there’s no more potent channel than in person.

That’s why experiential marketing is so critical to relationship building. Live events and event marketing help businesses connect to customers more deeply. In fact, 74 percent of event attendees end up having a more positive opinion about a company after attending a live event.

How to connect with prospects and customers using live events

But it’s not enough to throw a bunch of people in a room for a cocktail party or panel discussion and hope for the best. To create successful business outcomes with live experiences, B2B event marketers must be strategic in their planning, execution, and follow-up.

Set benchmarks for success

Before you begin to plan an event, take the time to get clear on what you’re hoping to achieve. Your goal might be to spread awareness of your brand, collect new leads, or you might be hoping to nurture your existing customers with an eye on customer retention.

What would give you the best return on investment (ROI) from your event? And how can you track those benchmarks? Once you have a clear picture of what you’re hoping to achieve, you can make better decisions as you plan.

Invite the right people

Your invite list will have an enormous impact on the outcome of your event. If brand awareness is your goal, getting as many people in the room as possible makes sense. But if you’re hoping to generate quality leads from particular companies, focus on inviting decision makers from the right lines of business.

Knowing exactly who you’re trying to attract helps you strategize your marketing. You might throw the biggest bash your community has ever seen, but without the right demographics in attendance, it’s a waste of time and budget.

Use digital marketing to your advantage

Perhaps you’re hoping to attract HR professionals within a certain geographic radius and particular income range. Once you have a target demographic in mind, you can plug these parameters into the advertising options of various social media platforms.

While the big platforms today all offer targeted ad options, each has its own particular event-marketing merits.

Facebook has extremely sophisticated and highly flexible audience targeting features.

Instagram is an ideal place to engage an influencer to help you promote the visuals of your event.

LinkedIn’s Sponsored InMail capability allows you to send messages to specific people while they’re online and most likely to see your message.

These are just a few of the best ways for online event promotion. For most events, the best marketing strategies rely on a combination of digital marketing techniques.

Use event tech to execute an optimal experience

You’ve drawn the right people to your event. Now, give them an experience that will help create those lasting customer connections.

Customers today have little patience for generic experiences. They demand personalized moments that speak to their exact needs. Event technology can help you craft experiences honed to attendees’ desires. Here are just a few ways:

• Custom event apps allow attendees to build their own itineraries and see, at a glance, detailed schedule, vendor, and map information
• Beacons allow you deliver messages to attendees’ phones depending on where they are in space and time. As they near a certain stage, a message lights up letting them know a special guest is about to present. Or as they exit a marathon workshop, they receive a message that refreshments are waiting around the corner.
• Gamification turns learning and networking into a competitive, fun experience (think digitally driven scavenger hunts or event-wide contests).
• Live streaming helps your event connect with those who can’t be there in person and widens your reach. Facebook live and IGTV are both great options for event marketers.
• SMS technology can help boost engagement and there are multiple ways to use it at events. Check out your options here. 

Using technology to create a richer experience for attendees makes each individual experience enriching and memorable.

Use your data to build your business

Whether your goal is to capture leads, nurture existing customers, or simply spread awareness of your brand, data is your ally. It starts with the information you collect right up front from attendees — their names, companies, and contact information. If you use a digital registration platform like Eventbrite, that data is automatically captured and recorded when someone registers for your event.

You can easily access visual reports that help you break down the metrics of your attendees. You can also automate the use of that data in other apps.

For instance, using Eventbrite’s Add to Salesforce integration with Zapier, you can automatically record event attendees as new lead contacts in Salesforce (or a number of other CRM software tools, for that matter).

Other integrations allow you to use that data for things like:

• Automatically adding attendees to your email marketing lists to streamline communication with segmented lists.
• Sending surveys to attendees to ask them for feedback and ideas.
• Quickly creating custom badges, wristbands, and other types of printed IDs.

Bottom line: if you use a CRM for your pipeline, choose an event registration platform that integrates with it to ensure your sales team gets accurate, instant data from your event.

Follow up immediately

It’s a common myth that once your event takes place, your work is done. Any connections you’ve made at your event are for naught if you don’t make the effort to follow up quickly with participants.

A thanks for coming email is a general way to reach out to your entire participant list and let them know you value their presence. This is also a great opportunity to ask for feedback and mention next steps. You can start with one of these event email copy templates or reach out to specific high-value leads personally.

Then, it’s time to…

Throw another event

The first Dreamforce — which took place in 2003 — only saw 1,000 participants at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. This year? Dreamforce, easily one of the most well-known conferences in the world, drew a crowd of 171,000. It takes time to build momentum with events, but the payoff can be huge.

Build on the momentum of your event by planning the next one right away. You can even include a save-the-date on your follow-up emails. The more events you execute, the more connections you build with customers, and the stronger your prospect pipeline becomes.