In today’s fast-paced and digitally connected world, event planning and management have become essential to many industries, including life sciences. Organizing events, such as hybrid and on-site conferences, workshops, webinars, and meetings, to drive forward relationships and engage with their wide-ranging audiences of healthcare professionals, key opinion leaders, and customers is critical to accelerating a sales pipeline.
This rings true as research by InEvent found that 41% of marketers consider event marketing the most effective channel for lead generation, and a survey conducted by Forrester Research noted that 60% of organizations using integrated event management platforms experienced a significant improvement in their overall marketing ROI.
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Event Management: an Integral Part of Omnichannel Marketing
In the ever-evolving landscape of modern marketing, event management has emerged as an indispensable pillar of omnichannel strategies, seamlessly bridging offline and online touchpoints to deliver a holistic brand experience; the benefits include:
Unified Customer Experience
- Omnichannel marketing focuses on providing a seamless customer experience across multiple channels. Events, whether physical or virtual, are one of these channels. Integrating events into the overall omnichannel strategy ensures a consistent brand message and experience, regardless of how and where the customer interacts with the brand.
Data Integration:
- In today’s data-driven marketing world, insights from every customer touchpoint are crucial. Events can generate a wealth of data, from attendee demographics to engagement metrics. By integrating this data with other channels, marketers can gain a more holistic view of their audience, informing personalized and effective marketing strategies.
Brand Consistency:
- An event represents the brand, and its management reflects its values, image, and promise. In an omnichannel approach, the brand’s representation must be consistent across all channels. Proper event management ensures that the event’s messaging, visuals, and experience align with other channels.
Amplification Across Channels:
- Events can be amplified through other channels, such as social media, email, and the brand’s website. For example, highlights from an event can be shared on social media, drawing attention and creating buzz. This interconnectedness ensures that all marketing channels support and reinforce each other.
Personalized Customer Journeys:
- Marketers can create more personalized journeys for attendees by integrating events with other channels. For instance, after an event, an attendee might receive follow-up content via email or be retargeted with relevant ads on social media, leading to a more cohesive and tailored experience.
Enhanced Engagement:
- Events provide a unique opportunity for direct, face-to-face engagement (or real-time engagement in virtual settings). This deep engagement can be leveraged in other channels. For instance, feedback or testimonials captured at an event can be showcased on the brand’s website or used in video marketing campaigns.
Synergy in Campaigns:
- Events can act as a catalyst for more extensive campaigns. For instance, a product launch event can be supported by social media campaigns, PR efforts, and email marketing, ensuring the message reaches the audience from all directions.
Understanding that event management and omnichannel marketing are deeply intertwined is crucial. A well-managed event can bolster the effectiveness of other channels and benefit from the synergies created by an integrated omnichannel approach.
Understand Your Events Management Needs Before Investing
Before investing in events management software (EMS), it’s crucial to understand your needs and consider what factors should be evaluated before purchasing to maximize the return on investment. Read below what they are:
Regulatory Compliance
In particular, life sciences companies and Medical Affairs face strict regulations. They must ensure that their events comply with guidelines such as HIPAA, GDPR, and industry-specific rules like the Sunshine Act. When selecting an EMS, it’s vital to choose a solution with built-in compliance features, including data security and privacy measures, transparency in financial transactions, and reporting capabilities to track and monitor compliance-related activities.
Integration with Existing Systems
Integrating existing systems, such as a CRM, Learning Management System (LMS), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), is crucial in streamlining event management. This can enhance data sharing between systems, improve attendee engagement, and provide a seamless experience for event organizers. Choose an EMS that offers robust integration capabilities and APIs to connect with your company’s existing tools and technologies.
Scalability and Flexibility
Life sciences events range from small training sessions to large international conferences, so scalability is critical. Opt for a life sciences solution that can quickly adapt to your company’s growing needs and support various event sizes and types. Look for a cloud-based EMS with flexible pricing models, allowing you to pay for only the required features and scale up or down as needed.
Customization and Branding
Life sciences companies often require tailored event experiences to meet their specific needs. A customizable EMS enables you to design and manage events in line with your company’s branding and objectives. Seek a solution that offers extensive customization options, including personalized registration forms, event templates, and communication tools to reinforce your brand identity and create a memorable experience for attendees.
Data Analytics and Reporting
Data-driven insights are crucial for understanding attendee behavior, evaluating event success, and informing future strategies. The below insights can help you optimize your event management processes and make data-driven decisions for future events. A robust EMS should provide the following:
- Comprehensive data analytics and reporting capabilities.
- The ability to track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as attendance rates.
- Attendee engagement data and metrics.
- A return on investment per event and channel
Customer Support and Training
Implementing an EMS can be complex, and ongoing support is essential for success. Choose a provider that offers excellent customer support, training, and resources to help your team fully utilize the software’s capabilities. This can include live chat support, dedicated account managers, and access to a knowledge base or online training materials.
Marketing Automation with Built-In Events Management is Key
A marketing automation system with built-in event management capabilities offers significant value over a standalone event management system. The advantages of an integrated approach include the following:
- Streamlined Processes: Integrating event management within your marketing automation system ensures seamless coordination between various marketing activities, from planning to execution. This streamlines workflows, reduces manual intervention, and eliminates the need for data transfer between separate platforms.
- Data Consolidation: With a combined system, you have a single source of truth for all your marketing and event data. This centralization simplifies data management and analysis, making it easier to track and evaluate the performance of your marketing initiatives.
- Personalized Experiences: An integrated platform enables you to create more personalized and targeted experiences for your event attendees by leveraging the data from your marketing automation system. This can increase engagement, higher event attendance, and improve customer satisfaction.
- Enhanced Analytics: By combining event and marketing data, you can gain deeper insights into your audience’s preferences, behavior, and interactions. This can help you make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing strategies and event planning.
- Improved ROI: The integration of event management and marketing automation allows you to measure the impact of your events on your overall marketing objectives more accurately. This can help you allocate resources more effectively and maximize the return on your marketing investment.
- Time and Cost Savings: By leveraging the synergies between event management and marketing automation, you can save time and reduce costs associated with using multiple platforms and tools. This can also minimize potential errors caused by data discrepancies.
- Scalability: An integrated system offers greater scalability, as it can handle the growing needs of your organization without the need to invest in additional tools or platforms. This ensures that your marketing and event management efforts remain synchronized as your business evolves.
A marketing automation system with built-in event management capabilities provides a more efficient, data-driven, and comprehensive approach to managing your marketing and event-related activities. This can lead to improved outcomes, better resource allocation, and ultimately, increased success for your organization.
Omnipresence CRM integrated Marketing Automation and Events Management
Omnipresence and its integrated events management cater to the diverse needs of event planners and their diverse audiences, offering a choice of virtual, hybrid, and in-person conferences, webinar events, and more. The platform’s flexibility allows organizations to choose the most suitable event format based on their requirements, whether to host an entirely virtual conference or a hybrid event that combines in-person and online elements. It’s easy-to-use interface and powerful tools make planning, managing, and executing events of any size or format simple.
Features include:
- Venue and Speaker Management: The platform allows event planners to search for and book venues, manage room layouts, and coordinate speaker schedules. It also simplifies managing speaker contracts, payments, biographies, and other essential information.
- Event Promotion: With Omnipresence, event planners can create customized portals, landing pages, and targeted marketing campaigns to promote their events, track the success of these campaigns, and analyze data to make informed decisions. The platform also integrates with social media channels, enabling planners to leverage the power of social networking to boost event visibility.
- Attendee Engagement: Omnipresence facilitates seamless communication between event organizers and attendees, allowing personalized content delivery, real-time updates, and interactive features like polls and surveys.
- Budgeting: The platform offers advanced budgeting tools that help event planners create, track, and manage budgets effectively, ensuring that events are financially viable and sustainable.
- Surveys: Omnipresence provides a comprehensive suite of survey tools that enable healthcare providers to collect valuable feedback from attendees, which can be used to refine and improve future events.
- Simplification and Automation: Omnipresence simplifies the event planning and management process by automating many tasks that were once time-consuming and labor-intensive. From tracking attendee registrations and managing waitlists to sending out personalized communications and scheduling reminders, the platform streamlines each stage of the event lifecycle. Automating these processes frees up valuable resources to focus on more strategic initiatives.
- Native Microsoft Teams Integration: The native integration between Omnipresence and Microsoft Teams provides a unified experience for managing events. This integration allows event planners to easily schedule and manage Teams meetings, share content, and collaborate with colleagues, all within the familiar Omnipresence interface. Additionally, the integration enables attendees to join events directly from their Teams calendar or Outlook, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free experience.
- Seamless Interoperability with Outlook: Omnipresence’s seamless interoperability with Outlook allows life sciences organizations to manage events and attendee communications more efficiently. The platform automatically syncs event data with Outlook, making it a seamless and efficient user experience.
- Insights and Advanced Visualization Reporting: The platform offers powerful analytics tools that allow event planners to gain insights into attendee behavior, preferences, and demographics, helping them make data-driven decisions and optimize future events.
When considering which events management software to invest in, remember to consider Omnipresence CRM, mentioned by Gartner as the Salesforce-based alternative. Its integrated marketing automation and robust event management capabilities are the ideal solution for life sciences organizations. By leveraging its comprehensive suite of features, including streamlined event planning and execution, real-time data tracking and reporting, and enhanced attendee engagement, organizations can optimize their events and ultimately drive greater business success. With the benefits of easy integration with existing systems, scalability, and flexibility, Omnipresence CRM is the perfect solution for any life sciences organization looking to elevate its events to the next level.
Get in touch with Exeevo to learn how we can help.