Those of you who don't know Lead2Pipeline and probably have no idea who I am, I run marketing at Lead to Pipeline. And even though you might not know us, if you look at this as a small sampling of the tech brands we work with, your colleagues probably already work with us, you're probably running campaigns on our database, 57 million worldwide. We do work with the world's top 500 tech companies. DocuSign is here today. They're a client. Ghazwan is going to be telling you a lot about event marketing and demand gen.

The only other thing I wanted to mention, because it's kind of unique for a company that's only been around two, two and a half years, we're the only demand gen service provider on the planet that's an Inc. Power Partner. And if you don't know what that is, I encourage you to look it up. It's actually an award you get based on the recommendations and direct feedback from your customers. So these logos, all of you helped us win this award and we're super grateful for that. Thank you for that recognition.

That's all I really want to say. If you want to know anything else about Lead to Pipeline, reach out to one of these logos or reach out to us directly. I want to hand it off to the expert of the hour and give him a full 15 minutes for everything we can learn. Ghazwan, they're all yours. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. You have lots of great logos on there. Definitely I recommend reaching out. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'm very excited to be chatting with everyone about the demand generation for events marketers today. I've been with DocuSign for almost three years now, managing our first party and third party demand generation for our events. Before that, I was at Oracle, doing the same but for Oracle OpenWorld in North America and globally.

Lots of learning in the past 12 years we've been doing this event, lots of changes, and then we can always remember that COVID changed everything. So we're not alone. It's changed everything for everyone, for all the companies, big or small. So we're all in this together and the learning journey is just getting started. I'm excited to be here. Thank you, Sourabh.

Perfect, Ghazwan. Yeah, if you're ready, I'm going to take us right into the data that you want to share today of how your events, how the marketing for your events has been performing across your various channels.

Let's do it. This is a kind of overview about the channels, the basic channels that every marketer I believe they should be doing or tap into for event registration, whether it's a digital event or in-person event. You have those key channels that helps you drive registration and awareness and convergence for your event.Now for the digital events, it might vary from the in-person, but email, interestingly enough, I know some people say email is dead. It's still the number one channel to drive event registration, whether it's in person or digital or webinar. No matter how big small your event, email has always been a key channel for us to drive event registration. The rest of the channels, I guess it varies because of the, for example, how big or strong your social media profiles are, the engagement on those channels. Your paid media is always affected by your budget, how big or small your budget is, and how keen you are on targeting specific accounts on paid media.

Sales team, if you're not marketing your event to the sales team the way you're marketing to your customers, you are missing out there. You can't just go to your sales team and say, "Hey, just help me promote this event." They need to see the value in this event, especially for the in-person events, and how events help sales teams close deals or move deals forward, especially with the meetings they book on-site when having those in-person events.

In product, that's always been a key channel. Think about it, if I'm using this product, let's say DocuSign, and then I log into DocuSign, I want to sign something and I see this pop-up promoting this conference event, for example for Docusign it’s called Momentum. It happens annually in North America and globally. When I see this pop-up and I'm about to sign something, chances are I'm going to click on it to learn more. See how this conference, user conference helped me do more with DocuSign since I'm already in the application itself, about to sign something or send an envelope to someone.

In product is a key channel that definitely is overlooked by most marketers, especially for the in-person events. It drives lots of registration, especially when you can customize the message for them and deliver it the way you want for the right audiences, whether a specific product or a specific line of business or a specific company size. So always like the in product being a key driver for us.

And now before we move into, there's obviously one channel here that's standing out, and we've got to talk about it, Ghazwan. As you said, email marketing is nowhere near dead. One of the things that's really interesting in how this data is laid out is if you look at it from right to left, it's sort of the proximity or the closeness to your customer, right? DocuSign customers are in your product, so obviously, like you said, they're responding, they're reacting more than anything else to when they see it in the product. It's relevant and we love the brand there. Sales is next, right?

Sales is next.

Sales is talking to them much more than marketing. And then of course, what does sales use and what does everybody use to communicate with your customers? Email.

Email.

I won't continue the analogy, but it's really interesting how the further we get away from the customer, the more those channels seem to work for digital events and then don't work as well for in-person. Anything you want to say about that, or you want to save that for the other slides?

I'll save it for the other slides, but yeah, definitely. Like you said, it's interesting how email is still the number one channel. It's getting harder and harder to get people engaged with emails. We cannot deny that. But still there's a way, it pushes all the marketers I guess to think more out of the box, whether with the subject line or the email design or the content.

And always keep in mind that more and more people are using their mobile phone to view their emails. So that's something that's also to consider when designing your email and thinking, let's take this example that you brought up. It's the same messaging promoting a digital event that we had few months back here at DocuSign. It was a 50/50 A/B test. There are a sample on the left, just give you a small blurb about the event, and then the key takeaways with this CTA at the bottom.

For the test on the right, I was like, okay, let me think. How would people, what do I need to know in 30 seconds or less about this event? I need to know the title, when is it happening, where is it happening, if there's a specification for that, and then what are the three key nuggets that's going to guide my interest for me to register and sign up for this event, and also knowing that this event will be recorded and sent out after the fact.

So the speakers, so that's why with the design itself, you see we're using bold colors, the neon on the hero banner, and then the small black banner gives you a learn more. You can click on the page to learn more if you need to, if you feel that you need to learn more. And then the key nuggets, key nuggets of attending these events and then we've used the emoji instead of bullet points to kind of spice things up, and then the bigger size for the photo speakers really resonates more when people are looking and connecting with other people when viewing those emails. Whether on desktop or mobile, it really resonates with them more.

And then the CTA to sign up today. This email, this test on the right it tells us like 7% higher open rate and then a higher click through rate, and of course 23 more registrations, although it's the same kind of content that we're using. It's just mind blowing how things are changing in the email industry itself.

And Ghazwan, to be clear, we send thousands of emails, targeted emails every day, and so do you. DocuSign really leads the pipeline. So the higher open rates, congratulations, the click through, fantastic, but the 23% new registration- Could you just give us a little bit, maybe off script, what do you think is happening there? Are those people clicking through on this email because they know you and they already want to go, or is something else happening?

So it's a mix of a variety of reasons. So one of them would be we establish this human connection with them with this email. When they saw the [inaudible 00:08:43] of those speakers, for example, it's a brand, well recognized brand, from Pinterest and Microsoft speakers. So we leverage those in the subject line and the email design itself, like we see here, and then we already established for them why they need to attend this event. It's bold, it's happening, these are the three magnets you're going to get. They didn't need to spend more time on the page, on the [inaudible 00:09:07] page to convert. They're ready to convert already when they hit click the learn more button in that middle section.

So we've already done the grant work before they hit the website, so they would immediately just go and sign up, versus the other test where they felt okay, maybe I need to click on the page to spend some time, learn more about the event. Or maybe we just didn't seem interesting as much to them as the test B looked like when they got that in their inboxes.

And like you said, I mean, we have to move on in the interest of time, but these practices have been prevalent throughout the pandemic for B2C brands. So many more sales and notices of new products. When they drop into our Gmail, not our work email, they look so much more like the emails on the right, even though if you are a big Salesforce product user, your standard default template is probably the one on the left. So if nothing else, I want to make sure people get this one tip, but I'm going to move on because there are many other channels.

Okay. Yep.

So talk to us about digital events. What are you trying to do?

So digital events is kind of interesting because most of the events that you are up until high end of funnel, soft leadership event that we're trying to move prospects from awareness into consideration. So the measuring or the KPI that we're always looking for would be the registration, attendance, NPS, how did they like the event? Did that meet their expectations? Is there something that we can optimize for the next event? And how we can work them to MQLs and down to SQOs down the funnel journey.

The paid media, social media, it's also something that depends on the strength of your social media profile at the company and your presence, how engaged you are with your audiences online, and then the budget resources. I know of companies that go through this budget exercise and then the limited resources. Always it's key that you can be customized, I would say, the campaigns that you're running on paid media, whether LinkedIn or SEM or a StackAdapt or retargeting people who visited your webpage but they didn't convert, you can target them via the paid media retargeting campaigns and then get them to convert from that channel.

With the vote promotion, this is a low-hanging fruit. Promoting your events on most of the webpages that you have on your website is key. Not only the homepage or the events page, but also product page as much as it could be relevant to products or solutions or the pages with the most traffic, I would say. And then email, of course, will help keep it simple and testing, and don't be afraid to use emojis now.

Absolutely. Make it personal now.

Make it personal.

So one thing that surprises me, because as you said, and again we're generalizing, you do many, many events, and some of the folks joining us today are marketing experts at even bigger brands. So you're right in that digital events are just an ideal channel for driving from brand awareness to consideration, to getting you onto that short list for that buyer of hmm, I didn't know they had this capability, maybe I could just extend my contract with them and not have to buy something else.But I'm surprised that you have sales qualified opportunities on here. And is there anything you can tell us about how your digital events are driving past MQL? Is this follow-up or is this from the event itself?

It's both. So from the event itself, depends on the events because some of the events are customized toward some certain products that we run. So these digital events are for people in the middle of the funnel where they are ready to go into the next level talking to the sales team or moving the needle to that pipeline that they are or the conversation they've been having for the longest. But yeah, it's very interesting to see how these small events and the follow-up, I can't emphasize the follow-up enough, for these leads after the event that we host.

Now the in-person events, and this has been a learning journey for us since COVID, each year is a learning year for us. We're all in this together. No year is like the same, the previous one. Our main KPI for the in-person events would be how many leads we scan at those in-person events, the meetings booked. And this is where you need to partner with the sales teams and the customer success teams in booking those meetings while customers are on-site, whether it's a first party event or a third party event.

And then this will give them the opportunity to create more opportunities and even close deals if there's something like the last step they need to just tie off on when they have this face-to-face time on these in-person events. So this is where we're moving the leads from the consideration, if it's a new lead, or the last step of that deal, into the selection and signing up, closing those deals with DocuSign per se or any other company.

Like I said earlier, the in product would be the main key channel for promotion for these in-person events and the sales team you have to have partnering with them early in the process. They give them all the resources they would need, from the email templates, email signatures, outreach templates, whatever they would need to get them to grasp about what's happening at this event and why it's important for them and the customers attending those events. And email and web of course, they're one of the key channels to help us drive this promotion and engagement for the in-person events.

Okay, perfect. So Ghazwan, I know we used our time very efficiently and I'm sure I really need these slides. That's a lot of information. But I already have three questions so I'm going to start on those. I'll put mine aside, and I think I'm just going to hold onto them.

If you can just complete this one other key point, because as you know things have really changed in 2023 in terms of the time when people are registering for our in-person events. There is that loyal audience, that 10, 15%, when we drop the save the date or the early, early discount, as soon as they know they want in, but then there's a much longer, before it gets much closer to the event that the hockey stick kicks in for registrations. Have you guys done anything to address that? Are you trying something?

So this is how it is for most companies where the hockey stick goes up two or three weeks before the event. This is where you get the attention from all of your internal teams, the sales team, the customer success, even the customers themselves. They're like, okay, this event is approaching fast. I need to make a decision, I need to attend this event, I need to sign up.

But how do you make sure they actually show up for this event? It's a key that you keep them updated, but once they register, usually someone wouldn't go back to the event site to check what's been added or what's been new. So it's key to keep them informed about key milestones, like sessions being added or key speakers, or if you're getting any celebrity speakers as well. Before they come to the event, a few days before we send them the Know Before You Go email with all the logistical stuff about how to check in, how to pick up their badge, if there is any information they need to know about parking or the mobile app or the meals or any simple questions. There is no question that shouldn't be addressed in the Know Before You Go email, just the basic stuff that people would like to hold on to before they attend their in-person experience.

And then specifically for the digital events, we give them the reminders the day before, the 20 hours or an hour before, that this event is approaching and hey, we know that you guys might get busy, so what we'll do, send you the recording for the event, for that digital event, as well after the fact.

And then post-event follow-up is key. Keep that conversation going with those leads, with those customers, with those prospects. Go beyond just sending the recording links. Give them related content. We move them also into other [inaudible 00:17:32] as they fit within the funnel of their top funnel or mid funnel. We add them to specific [inaudible 00:17:38] as well to keep the conversation going with them and we give them some curated content as well that fits their needs.

We make sure to listen to them by the surveys and the giveaways that we give for them to take those surveys as well, so we can optimize the next event. So they feel that they are connected to our event experience and they have a say in our content and our speaker selections and our timelines and all of these aspects that we run for our events because eventually you are, I know it's a B2B industry, but really it's really B2B/C because you're really talking to humans, you're not talking directly to companies. So you have to keep it personalized and humanized as much as possible when talking to those leads.

It's funny, it's like you're reading my mind. I know we have to go to Q&A after this, but there's a question that came in that's very relevant to this particular slide, so I'm going to ask it first. And a reminder to everybody, we only have less than 10 minutes left, so if you have questions, please drop them in. This happens every time with our webinars, Ghazwan, we always run out of time, but we'll follow up in the email with other answers. I'll circle back with you.

So the question on this particular slide is around the reminders and the follow-up. At DocuSign, have you guys used WhatsApp or text messaging to do this as well, or is it purely via email?

Very interesting and timely question. So SMS, unfortunately we don't use it now to promote events, although I ask for it, I try to get into that channel every year because it's part of the agreement. People have to opt in to receive messages. But it's part also of the DocuSign service. When you buy the product, if you want to opt in to use the SMS to send envelopes for others to sign.

WhatsApp, however, we just launched our WhatsApp service for DocuSign last month and I plan to use it to promote the event. So if you go on WhatsApp and then you click on the DocuSign profile, you'll see some posts that we have recently added there and then I plan to promote [inaudible 00:19:42] even there.

Don't be afraid always to test with new channels, get on new channels, and be the first. Even if the engagement is still not where you want it to be, eventually it'll get, people will catch up. If anything, lots of noise out there, lots of events, lots of emails, lots of social media posts. You have to differentiate yourself from the competition or from the other companies and to rise to the occasion. So definitely yes, definitely getting on WhatsApp.

And I will say that there's also a regional trend to this, Ghazwan, because I work with a lot of marketers overseas and in certain markets there's a ton of post promotion, but pre-event. So this is when the FOMO is kicking in, when all your friends are going to the event and you're like, oh, maybe I should go. In some parts of the world, WhatsApp is huge for this. Everyone shares with each other on WhatsApp and that becomes a major channel for those pre-event registrations that are not directly from the brand.

Totally. You hit the nail on the head. It's more global channel and now event USA is catching up to that channel as to be soon part of the social media networking channel.

Exactly. Okay, love it. All right, let's get to the other questions, or is there anything else you wanted to cover, Ghazwan?

No, I was going to touch also on the video marketing. It's coming big, up and coming, not only in 2023 but also in '24. So if you want to, like TikTok for example or Instagram reels, it's a great way to engage your audience, to reach out with them, to interact with them and even connect with them about your events and what's happening, whether it's a leadership video or just simple animation about the events, the content, and what's happening. Definitely we are going big in video marketing in 2024.

Perfect. Okay, so now we're going to back up. This is actually our Q&A, so I'm going to take questions that came throughout the presentation. Interestingly, I got pinged via LinkedIn with a question. I'm like we're on Zoom. Anyway, whatever. It's okay. Wherever people are.

So the first question is really sort of at the end. It was about how long after the event, what's the policy at DocuSign to allocate ROI or to measure results after? And I think this is about in-person events. How long do you allow those results to be tied back to the event?

So we report on the 30, 60, and 90 days because that's where we feel the most impact will take effect, especially for those meetings that were booked. If we're deals anywhere, if there were deals that we move forward, 90 days ideally is good timing for those KPI.

Exactly. And it also depends on your sales cycle, right?

Exactly. Yep.

DocuSign is a much easier product for someone to buy initially than some of the brands that are on with us today. They have very large solutions. It takes months to get one deal, right?

Yep, exactly.

Okay. The second question is going back to what you said about paid media, and as you know, and we've seen this at Lead2Pipeline, a ton of paid media budget has moved over to content syndication, to actually reaching buyers directly with your content instead of on an ad.

For your paid media, because it's so scrutinized right now, the spend, how do you budget the paid media targeting and ads? Is it per event? Is it by family of event, or is it one budget? What do you do?

So it's by event and then we prioritize. Let's say for example for the in-person events, I try to allocate the budget for the … I'll start with the ABM accounts that we have. We want to target those by their email, by the landing page, and LinkedIn.

And then we take it a further step where we can do the paid media for the remaining of the accounts that we target via email. We also hit them on LinkedIn as well and Demandbase or StackAdapt or whatever channel they are using, for those who visited your page and then they didn't convert. So always look into the results and then the data that you have, and then from there you can build and optimize your paid media channel based on the dollar amount that you have available.

I just read the LinkedIn question I got. It's a very biased question, I'm warning you. But the question, because they used air quotes in it, the question is, have you had any success using LinkedIn influencers to promote your events?

Great question, and I'm using that starting this year. For momentum or, we're using our CEO and so on, all present growth as well, profile, LinkedIn profile to promote ELT promotions and posts to drive registration. We're moving toward making them influencers on LinkedIn and then we have seen lots of success from other companies. So it's the conversation I'm having now with our LinkedIn accounts executives.

Great question, and I'm using that starting this year. For momentum or, we're using our CEO and so on, all present growth as well, profile, LinkedIn profile to promote ELT promotions and posts to drive registration. We're moving toward making them influencers on LinkedIn and then we have seen lots of success from other companies. So it's the conversation I'm having now with our LinkedIn accounts executives.

Wonderful.

So more to come on that, and I can report on the results next time. Maybe we can chat.

Yeah, I think I'll have to bring you back in 2024. Okay, so another question, and I really do apologize, guys, we try our best to get you out of here in 30 minutes, but there are just two questions left and I'd like to try to finish them and then we can't take any more after that. Because people got to get back to work. You've got to get back to work. Okay. And it's a really good question. How do you differentiate your marketing strategy, your approach, and maybe even your ROI for the events that you host versus the events that you attend/sponsor?

It's the goals that are different for the events or the third party events or the trade shows that we attend. The main goal is the meetings that we book and the lead scan that we get, both in this third party event. When it's our in-person event, it's a mix of that and the other areas that we touched on earlier in the event today.

Okay, perfect. So this is ironic. I'm going to end today with the first question we got, which was very strategic, so I wanted to wait because there's so much more we could learn.

Definitely.

What's your number one concern for event marketing in 2024?

I love this question, where the industry is moving for in-person and digital. We know digital is not going away, but we also have to keep digital part of the in-person events, but yet in a way that digital doesn't take over the in-person event and people still prefer to attend digitally in the comfort of their own home versus attending or traveling to the city or going to that event in person. This is where we're trying to balance our content for events. So for example, for digital, we're not going to offer everything digitally. If you want to learn more and get the most out of the experience, you have to be in person with us in that city or wherever the event is taking place.

Perfect. I'm going to end with one thing I'm surprised nobody asked, Ghazwan. And it might be because it's really obvious to larger brands, but I do have some folks here that are at unicorns, they're startups, but they're worth more than a billion. So they're not very small.

If you don't mind, we don't need numbers, you're a public company. But the question that I really do want to address here is within DocuSign, in the marketing team, are events considered the top-tier marketing tactic as far as driving qualified leads and ROI, or is there something else? And I'll just give you an example. For some companies, they reserve that for sales enablement, that nothing drives more qualified opportunities than sales enablement. But for a lot of B2B companies, it's events. Where does it sit?

It definitely sits as a big driver for leads and then conversions. Definitely. DocuSign has been going through some changes in their leadership recently and definitely more and more emphasis on events to drive leads and to drive pipeline because they see the value in that, especially now that we are going stronger into the in-person events year over year.

Love it. Thank you so much, Ghazwan. I know we ran out of time.

Thank you.

But I'm going to include your LinkedIn in our follow-up because I think folks might have other more specific questions that may not be appropriate or we just don't have enough time. But I'm very grateful, on behalf of everybody, for you to share this knowledge. You're doing a fantastic job, really. Thank you.

Thank you, Sourabh. Thank you to everyone. Please feel free to ping me on LinkedIn. Happy to collaborate with anyone, answer any questions. Definitely great to be here.

Take care, everybody.