The Client

The Client is a London, UK-based B2B events organizer with a portfolio of in-person exhibits, tradeshows, and conferences across various industries worldwide. The company also offers web and banner advertising services, B2B broadcasting and data services, as well as digital and print media services.

Founded in 1918, the CLIENT is widely considered to be one of the largest B2B events coordinator today, with 70 offices in 20 countries. THE CLIENT currently operates in two main service segments: one for events, and the other for general marketing services. The company is subdivided into three geographic units: Americas, Asia, and EMEA.

As of 2017, the CLIENT has over 3,500 employees and has reported annual revenues of more than $1.3 billion.

The Challenge

Since 2014, one of Singapore’s major professional and industry events organizer has been working with Callbox to help promote several of their B2B events in Asia.

When the Singaporean event company was acquired by the Client in 2016, Callbox remained the organization’s official marketing partner tasked with handling their portfolio of high-profile tradeshows and conferences, including:

EVENT A – An annual event billed as Asia’s largest conference for professionals and businesses in the global telecommunications industry that typically draws more than 40,000 attendees
EVENT B – A biennial trade event for the food and hospitality industry that features exhibitors from 70 countries and attracts more than 47,000 visitors
EVENT C – An annual international event that highlights trends in the professional audio, film, digital media, and broadcasting industries
EVENT D – A leading trade event and conference held every two years that showcases Asia’s oil and gas industry, attended by more than 18,000 visitors
EVENT E – A biennial industry event for Asia’s machine tools, precision engineering, and metalworking sectors that generates more than 12,00 attendees in event turnout
EVENT F – A paid, annual event that focuses on IT security and cyber threats, widely considered as the top InfoSec industry conference in Asia

While each event has its own unique requirements, the key challenge is to connect with the right number and the right kind of attendees to impact event turnout. Also, with so many live projects lined up in its calendar, the CLIENT faces very tight time tables to prepare and generate enough buzz for each event.

The Callbox Solution

Throughout its four-year partnership with the CLIENT and its Singapore subsidiary, Callbox planned and launched an end-to-end event marketing campaign for each of the live event mentioned earlier. With the exception of the infosec-focused conference, Callbox has ran multiple campaigns for each of these events.

Each campaign centered around using targeted outreach through a mix of different marketing channels (phone, email, and social media) to engage attendees and prospects at key points in the event process.

A. Setting up the campaigns

Before each campaign began, Callbox and point persons from the CLIENT worked out a campaign plan and completed the needed preparations.

THE CLIENT was assigned a campaign team that handled all aspects of the event marketing activities.
THE CLIENT reviewed the call scripts, email templates, and other campaign materials prepared by Callbox.
THE CLIENT also provided the list of target attendees which Callbox would update and profile (the next figures show record counts and target industries for each list):

CS_OTH-B2B-Events-Firm-Gets-Solid-Registrations-from-Long-Term-Partnership-with-Callbox-records

B. Profiling and screening potential attendees

One month prior to each event, the team started the pre-event outreach activities. Aside from sending out invites, completing registrations, and confirming attendees, the Callbox team also scrubbed and cross-checked the target attendee list.

Since database profiling played a crucial role in each campaign’s success, Callbox devoted a great deal of time and resources to thoroughly validate and enrich each database record through desktop research combined with email and phone verification.

THE CLIENT wanted the campaigns to focus on driving online pre-registrations and to collect deeper intelligence on each potential attendee.
For the paid infosec event, Callbox coordinated with reps from the Client’s subsidiary to handle contacts who wanted to find out more about payment details and other information.
The machine tools/precision engineering campaigns focused exclusively on data profiling.

C. Following up and converting prospects

The post-show re-engagement phase of each campaign was launched two days after the event. This step began with a personalized thank-you email and continued with a series of follow-up phone calls.

Callbox prioritized registered attendees who came to the shows, and the team also reconnected with other prospects.
Each contact was thoroughly screened based on the CLIENT’s requirements before hand-off.
Throughout each campaign, the CLIENT kept track of each prospect’s status through Pipeline CRM.

Results

In all, the campaigns generated the following results in terms of registered attendees and other KPIs:

Events-Firm-Gets-Solid-Registrations-from-Long-Term-Partnership-with-Callbox-results

To date, the CLIENT continues to partner with Callbox for targeted promotion of its in-person events. Callbox will be handling pre-event and post-event outreach for all upcoming conferences and exhibits hosted by the CLIENT in Asia.

B2B Events Firm Gets Solid Registrations from Long-Term Partnership with Callbox

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