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Marketing Event Management Report.
My new Vendor Selection Matrixtm research, this time on Marketing Event Management, has just been published by my business partner Research In Action. We had surveyed 1500 business decision-makers around the world on their preferences, challenges plus their opinions and ratings for the MEM vendors they know. Marketing Event Management (MEM) refers to a wide range of processes involved in the management of all customer events such as lead generation events, trade shows and conferences.
Traditionally a more tactical decision made by the event department, or corporate marketing, selecting a suitable MEM vendor will turn into one of the more strategic decisions for CMOs over the next year or so. During the COVID-19 crisis, the immediate goal was to cover an already-planned live event with an online alternative as a work-around and many executives made short-term decisions about the platform — optimization wasn’t yet part of their strategy, just getting it done. And event participants, and speakers, were so-easily pleased to be able to log in to any platform and be able to discuss business topics again.
Whether organizing an event or presenting at one, my personal experience during that time was that most of event platforms deployed were not purpose-built for virtual events; they were originally designed to provide other services—such as webinars, e-learning course management, or just event registration. In the last years, many MEM platform providers released new, dedicated software, to better support virtual events of all sizes; fueled, of course, by massive injections of venture capital into several of these vendors. However, not all vendors have noticed that the buying center has changed dramatically; from a project-oriented event manager to a team of much more strategic marketing executives.
The last years of business crisis increased the demand for digital tools and services for virtual customer meetings of all types: one-on-ones, team meetings, sales meetings, as well as larger marketing events. Virtual events replaced presence-based business conferences and trade shows, and customer meetings were facilitated on digital meeting platforms. With business travel now opened again, virtual is still a factor as other reasons such as cost control and sustainability considerations influence event-attendance decisions.
Here are the highlights of the survey……
- MEM is now more about Marketing than Events. When we asked about the top two priority investments in MEM, the buyers wanted more cost-efficient events first and foremost. However, after that comes scalability for large virtual events, video streaming capabilities and content experience as the next priorities. The latter two investment priorities reflect a significant change in the buying center for MEM software as it moves from being a project spend item to a more strategic investment. Event managers care about the event while marketers want to curate and offer their event content on an ongoing basis.
- Even after COVID, virtual is now standard in the new marketing event paradigm. Yes, in-person events are back, but they need to be more impactful and measurable than before. Digital marketers have now embedded the events calendar into their customer engagement programs; collecting market and customer insights at scale; maintaining a buyer/customer relationship over a longer period than just a buying cycle. But a hybrid event strategy will prevail, as buyers continue to be reluctant to travel, for reasons other than COVID (sustainability, cost, time). So, MEM must be a mix of on-site plus virtual attendance, but with attendees treated equally, with an event calendar of on-site and virtual events coordinated in a hub/spoke engagement strategy.
- The MEM market is under consolidation pressure. The global market for MEM software has moved from its previous boom economy, with businesses buying multiple MEM platforms to experiment with; to a consolidation state as companies now reduce their inventory of MEM vendor licenses to just a few strategic suppliers. Over half of the companies surveyed this year have more than 6 vendors they work with, counting all tools supporting virtual meetings, video conferencing, conferences and events, and trade shows. There has already been a significant consolidation of vendors in the past two years, with the proportion of firms with over 10 vendors reduced by two-thirds and the cohort with 6-10 vendors down 40%.
- Savvy marketers see Events as a feeder for a long-term on-demand video library. Realizing the long-term opportunity of the multitude of event recordings they are collecting, many marketing organizations want to create a branded content hub or corporate streaming platform. The recordings can then be leveraged into new campaigns or even just be discovered by web visitors– something like the Netflix or BBC iPlayer metaphor for their own content. Some are recruiting content producers with studio experience to be able to atomize many of the longer videos, ensuring consistency and relevance in marketing campaigns.
- The MEM vendor landscape bewilders, vendors must tell better stories. The over-100 MEM vendors have a variety of roots. Some have just repackaged traditional offerings through new product positioning. Others are meeting platforms that are good for that but not necessarily larger events, or vice-versa. Most are challenged, however, to communicate the benefits of their technologies to business-oriented marketers. MEM vendors are used to selling to event/project managers, or within IT/Telco departments, and many struggle to present their solutions to CMOs and their management team in marketing language and values.
The report provides a useful guide to important marketing event management market trends and names the Top Vendors as viewed by the market in 2023 (already a quite different landscape from 2021, as vendors drop out, confuse their branding, and/or consolidation takes its toll). As the report name suggests, these details will help buying teams make an informed decision regarding which vendors could best fit their requirements. I hope you enjoy reading it and reach out if you have questions. I did several in-depth interviews in addition to the survey research, so I know more than I wrote here.
I was particularly impressed with vendors BIZZABO, KALTURA, ON24, 6CONNEX, RAINFOCUS and SPOTME, all in the Market Leaders quadrant. These really understand the new needs of marketing executives around MEM and are providing solutions for those buyers.
Always keeping you informed! Peter
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Marketing Event Management is now more about Marketing than Events.
Planning a marketing event calendar for the next year is probably going to be one of the more strategic programmes for many B2B CMOs and marketing directors over the next months. Many in marketing used to see events as nice-to-have vanity driven exercises of corporate PR. Now, for most, it is an integral part of an overall customer engagement strategy.
In the era of digital marketing, marketing plans include both physical and digital events as standard in customer engagement programs; to collect market/customer insights at scale and to maintain a buyer/customer relationship over a longer period than just a buying cycle. A B2B CMO I’ve met recently talked about plans as more of a ‘media strategy’ than a marketing strategy. Furthermore, I know of several large tech vendors that already have concrete plans into 2024 for large scale, multi-media, highly branded events accommodating thousands of delegates and providing an outstanding conference, networking and banqueting experience for business partners and customers alike.
Virtual marketing events will become part of a new marketing channel, scheduled, and atomised across the whole calendar and much more numerous, impactful, and measurable than before. Savvy marketing organizations will even augment that with an on-demand microsite using something like the Netflix or BBC iPlayer metaphor for their own content.
Marketing Event Management (MEM) refers to a wide range of processes involved in the management of all customer events such as lead generation events, trade shows and conferences. MEM software solutions help enhance the quality of virtual and physical events and meetings, as well as providing enhanced management visibility for the event organizers. The applications can streamline the planning, scheduling, and overall event organization.
The global market for MEM software has moved from its previous boom economy, with businesses buying multiple MEM platforms to experiment with; to a consolidation state as companies now reduce their inventory of MEM vendor licenses to just a few strategic suppliers. Over half of the companies surveyed this year have more than 6 vendors they work with, counting all tools supporting virtual meetings, video conferencing, conferences and events, and trade shows. There has already been a significant consolidation of vendors in the past two years, with the proportion of firms with over 10 vendors reduced by two-thirds and the cohort with 6-10 vendors down 40%.
Which means that my new Vendor Selection Matrixtm research on MEM, to be published next week, is going to be more useful than ever for potential buyers of software for that process. As usual, as the report reflects the view of the market, 1500 business decision-makers reported their opinions and ratings for the MEM vendors they know. That is quite different than the standard research reports from my old colleagues (remember, I am ex- Gartner and ex-Forrester) that focus on an analyst’s rating of the product, based on briefing presentations by the vendors invited to speak with them.
Here is a list of the Top 15 vendors as selected by the 1,500 users we surveyed, based upon their rating of product, company, and service quality (listed alphabetically): BIZZABO*, CADMIUMCD*, CERTAIN*, CIRCA, CVENT*, HUBB, KALTURA*, MEETYOO*, NOTIFIED, ON24*, RAINFOCUS*, 6CONNEX*, SPLASH*, SPOTME*, and ZOOM. These vendors* are the Market Leaders as they scored over 4 out of 5 in both the Strategy and Execution categories.
Always keeping you informed! Peter O’Neill
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Martechopia exhibits event vendors
On my first business trip since years, I attended B2B Marketing’s Martechopia event in London earlier this week. As usual, it was a mix of insightful presentations and discussions by the rich team of experts that the organization is always able to collect for their events. Also, my latest Propolis research report for B2B Marketing entitled ”Riding the Wave of Martech Change” was launched at the event.
But I was even more intrigued by the sponsors that exhibited. This was traditionally a mix of a few marketing automation platform vendors, various other software vendors, plus a few agencies – typical providers that target B2B marketing executives as prospects. Well, the big names were not there but a new rising star, the Californian analytics and account engagement platform vendor, 6sense, was present in recognition of their new office in London. Spoiler alert: the day before, I had recorded a video/webinar for them about Account-Based Marketing in Europe to be published in the next weeks.
The intriguing thing was that there were THREE marketing event management (MEM) vendors with booths – I also met event attendees representing two further MEM vendors during the day. It looks like I was right in my prediction in the December 2021 Vendor Selection Matrixtm on Marketing Event Management – that investments for marketing event platforms is going to become part of the B2B marketing budget in the next years.
In their stage presentation, MEM vendor Cvent even admitted that they had totally ignored Marketing as a target buyer till now, they were only focused on event managers (who are not in marketing). That is true; when I contacted them for the MEM research last September, they declined to brief me because I (only) write for marketers. Well, now they are playing catch-up to address exactly that audience.
The other two MEM vendors displaying at Martechopia were in the Top Five in my December report: ON24 and SpotMe. My colleagues at B2B Marketing are now even using SpotMe as their event platform – I had shared my research with them last year, of course. Another spoiler: there is a webinar with ON24 and myself in the works.
My perception was that the staff at both vendors were very good about talking about marketing topics to the delegates instead of event management stuff like registration processes and ticketing. I see MEM becoming an integral part of the customer engagement lifecycle monitored and orchestrated by marketers – from initial kicking-the-tyres curiosity through to offering a Netflix-style library of videos and webinars, most of it collated out of the event calendar. As I write in the report:
- The crisis has accelerated the inevitable. Large Virtual Events are now SOP and many businesses will plan these as routine in their marketing calendars. Webinars are now an accepted marketing tool across most sectors and geographies.
- Over one half of companies used between six and ten vendors this year – most did not have a centralized procurement strategy for this topic. Expect his to change for 2022.
- Nearly three quarters of companies have serious difficulties monetizing their events efficiently. Over half have issues with supporting international audiences, managing presentation content, event registration and ticketing.
I suspect the vendors probably did not collect that many “leads” this year, but they have certainly put their stake into the ground and will be top-of-mind when the strategic MEM projects get budgeted this and next year.
Always keeping you informed! Peter