An open letter to trade show organisers, conference producers and B2B event marketing teams.

We need to apologise to all of the trade show organisers, conference producers and event marketing teams that we’ve worked with in the past. We f*cked up.
We don’t like to admit making mistakes, but it’s become very clear that we’ve let you down by not insisting that you use personas to market your events. With 79% of consumers saying that they’re only likely to engage with an offer if it’s personalised to reflect previous interactions they’ve had with a brand (Marketo), we can’t let it slide anymore.
I know, I know, since incorporating personalisation into our methodology we’ve recommended using personas to quite a few of you, but we should have been firmer with you because personalisation truly works. In fact, 88% of U.S. marketers have reported seeing measurable improvements due to personalisation. More than half of them report improvements of more than 10% (Evergage).
To make matters worse, you’re wasting marketing budget. McKinsey & Company notes that personalisation reduces acquisition costs by as much as 50%, lifts revenue by 5-15% and increases the efficiency of marketing spend by 10-30%.
Now that I’ve laid out our past lack of pushiness, I’d like to prepare you for our change of attitude moving forward. Don’t expect us to give in easily when you try to bypass creating personas and jump straight to marketing. We’re going to push back. Hard.
It’s for your own good. Your campaigns (and cost of attendee acquisition) will only benefit from the extra time and energy invested before you start chasing those registrations.
To show you that our apology is sincere, we’ll be giving every new trade show and conference clients a free persona activation to use in their marketing. Get in touch with us here so that you don’t need to apologise to your director for not using personas.


Eric Louw
CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
Some people are just destined to market B2B events. Eric is one of those people. It’s not because he’s passionate about B2B events (that’s a given), it’s because he’s passionate about helping B2B event organisers maximise their marketing budget with digital marketing tactics.


Eric Louw
CLIENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
Some people are just destined to market B2B events. Eric is one of those people. It’s not because he’s passionate about B2B events (that’s a given), it’s because he’s passionate about helping B2B event organisers maximise their marketing budget with digital marketing tactics.