Why the old B2B event marketing playbook is breaking

JADE

I am Jade, co-founder and CEO of EpochX, and this is our From Invite to Impact interview series, where we spotlight leaders and innovators within the space.

Today, I’m so glad to be joined by Christine. So, a quick intro of Christine, who is the Director of Marketing for the U.S. at Croud. Christine has built marketing functions from scratch on both sides of the Atlantic. Christine is also from Finland, most recently as the first marketing hire at The Shelf, where she also ran their invite-only brand summit. Before that, she led global brands and comms at Celtra, where she produced and hosted a podcast that’s now over 360,000 streams, and she was named Storyteller of the Year at the Top Women in Marketing Awards.

Christine, thank you for doing this with us today.

CHRISTINE

It is just such a delight.

JADE

Well, okay, let’s kick right off then. Christine, what type of events are you hosting today? I know you’re holding things for Croud, but then also community events.

CHRISTINE

Yeah. All day, every day.

So, in addition to being a marketer, I’m also a creator, and I’m a corporate creator, B2B creator. LinkedIn, I know some people say LinkedIn is cringe, but that is where I found my people. That’s where I’m doing my brand deals, and that’s also where I’m finding a lot of community and events.

And so I’m wearing these two hats where I’m running events for Croud in my day job. And what we really want to do is build a community with brand and media leaders, primarily in New York, but also in other cities.

So, for example, we’re going to Brandweek this fall. That’s going to be in Atlanta. That’s where we have our second HQ.

And so what we do is we run this series called ROI Social Club, or Return on Intelligence Social Club, where we bring together about, depending on the format, like, we did a caviar brunch that was only 12 people, and then we had like 25 people at La Mercerie.

But the concept is pretty simple. It’s great food. It’s merch that’s both branded but also non-branded. So, for example, for Cannes, when we ran this series at Zuma, I had Apple AirTags for each of the attendees because, you know, when you’re traveling, that’s one of the things you really need to have with you.

So, really creating value through amazing food, amazing company, great gifts, but then also we don’t talk shop. Every time we bring these people together, we have a theme for the night.

And the first one that we did was actually with Patrick McGinnis, who, believe it or not, is the inventor of FOMO, the term FOMO, right?

I think he gave a TED Talk on it years back, and so now that’s kind of his thing. So he was our guest of honor, and he gave a little spiel about it, and then we discussed how FOMO is showing up in your personal life and your professional life.

But it’s really been a very, very effective way to bring together marketing leaders. And you know how hard it is to get people to say yes and RSVP. We’ve had like two- to three-times waitlists for these events.

JADE

That is incredible. What type of personas or audience are you trying to invite to these?

CHRISTINE

Oh, it’s going to be mostly consumer brand-side leaders. So we’d say CMOs, VPs of Marketing, Directors of Marketing.

Being an agency that has both media performance measurement, but then also creative via Born Social, that is part of our agency as well, we also want to bring in some of those influencer marketing leaders and brand marketing leaders.

But it is marketers mostly on the consumer side.

JADE

Yeah, that is such a mix, especially to your point, getting their attention, making sure they show up is, I’m sure, such an uphill battle at Cannes especially.

So for these events then, it sounds like you’re doing a lot of smaller, curated ones? Or how does that look across your portfolio of events?

CHRISTINE

Yeah. So I’ve been in this role, I want to say, a year and a half now.

And so in the first year, what we really wanted to do is just kind of get the lay of the land, and we tried a few different formats.

Again, being an agency that doesn’t have millions and millions to put into sponsorships and events, we tested a mix of trade shows, a mix of speaking at smaller, let’s say, an SEO-focused event and getting some of our experts on stage there.

Whenever it is a little bit more verticalized or specialized, I think that’s when we’re seeing value in also putting people on stages and paying for that level of exposure.

But I do think, and I’d love to hear your opinion as well, but I feel like we’re really moving from these, you know, you’re doing 12 big conference sponsorships a year and putting a lot of money into that, or paying for one-to-one meetings. I think the old event marketing playbook is really becoming outdated quite fast in B2B marketing.

And I think it’s also because what we’re seeing in B2B as a whole is this almost lifestyle-ification or consumer-ification of marketing.

So there are a few companies that I actually think are doing a great job of this. Like if you think about Ramp or Air, the marketing that they do, they’re fantastic.

And I think there’s a halo effect to that, where I think a lot of B2B events are starting to feel a lot more like brand events, brand trips, and creator events. And they’re also bringing creators there.

I’m also seeing that on the other side of it. I’m getting invited to events and dinners with companies with marketing leaders, right? So we’re blurring those two together.

But I think the key term there really is lifestyle experience, and not feeling like, “I have to go to a work dinner tonight,” but rather like, “I can’t wait to go. I’m invited to this Michelin-star restaurant, and this is an experience I wouldn’t have otherwise.”

JADE

Yeah. And because you’ve seen so much of that evolve, especially just doing marketing as a whole and now seeing events to be such a strong channel, how have you seen it play out in driving pipeline or that brand awareness?

CHRISTINE

So, I would definitely say that when I, and this is actually a really funny story, I used to despise event marketing.

I’m a copywriter.

JADE

Okay. Wait, why despise?

CHRISTINE

Because I think it’s a mix of, A, I feel like I’m pretty, people wouldn’t know this because I have a podcast and I’m always out there and I’m always at events, but I’m pretty introverted, right?

So I’m not one of those people that, you know, I go to an event and I get energy from crowds. But rather, for me, it’s like I need to be in a silent room with just myself and maybe a couple Bravo shows after an event.

And so I think there was a mix of the personality side, but also the fact that I started out as a creative. I was a copywriter my first five years of my career, and then I pivoted into B2B content marketing coming into the U.S.

And so, being a creative, I always was more on the ideation side and writing. You know, spreadsheets and project plans weren’t something that I would touch.

And then all of a sudden, moving from content marketing to just integrated marketing roles at companies like Smartly and Celtra, all of a sudden I’m responsible for multi-million-dollar budgets and having to run that budget and having to run events and going through contracts.

Today, I love it. I love overseeing and just being in charge of everything. But I was just staring at that budget sheet, and I was terrified when I got that first role.

And I think going from that, and also going through, at the time when I got my first big budget and I joined Celtra as a Senior Marketing Manager back in 2019, I joined six months before the pandemic hit.

JADE

Oh my God.

CHRISTINE

And so I had negotiated a year’s worth of trade shows and events, and everything went virtual.

And so we had to pivot that.

So, I think that was an interesting evolution where we went from spending a lot of money at events like DMEXCO, putting together this massive booth where we were doing live demos.

And I was actually, this is just such a side tangent, but I was the announcer at the booth. So, I was hiding. We had this little side area, I would say behind the massive screens that we had, that we would just leave merch and have all of the backend stuff needed to run the booth.

And I was there running announcements from the booth, and we had such a powerful sound system that it felt like DMEXCO was running official announcements—

JADE

From you, to people to go to our booth.

CHRISTINE

It sounded like that.

And so, you know, going from that and going from these big IRL presences to everything being online, everything being virtual, virtual conferences, summits, and webinars, and it did work for a while.

And so I think we were driving a lot of pipeline from that. We actually, I think, if I remember correctly, drove like a 60% increase year-on-year in qualified opportunities for marketing during a COVID year, right?

But then, as things started getting back, I feel like we collectively as an industry fell into this almost like, okay, virtual events and webinars, everybody’s still running them.

And I think there’s still a place for them, especially in customer marketing and especially in SaaS and software. I think whenever you need to educate your users on use cases, I think that’s extremely valuable.

But I think especially in more services-led businesses, and if your ICP is more senior and less hands-on, they’re not going to join a webinar on, like, your latest AI feature.

They want to know more so, okay, what’s the top-line savings, incremental revenue, or efficiency that you’re driving for them?

And so I think we’ve kind of moved from, okay, yes, in-person came back, and came back with a vengeance. I think everybody got a little bit tired of just going to every single conference and paying for the 15 meetings with double opt-in.

And brands are getting tired of that, too. I’m hearing it a lot from the brand side saying like, “Yeah, I love going to all these free events because they comp their travel, but at the same time they have to meet with 15 vendors that they’re not necessarily in-market for.”

So I think we’re seeing some of that efficiency drop off in those types of programs.

And then I think, like I already said, we’re kind of doing this move back into, okay, I actually want to spend time with people that I like, that I get.

Like, we were just together at an Epoch event, and I had some of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time around B2B marketing, and I learned so much from the people around my table. They got my challenges, my problems.

So I think it’s really about, I know it’s such a buzzword right now, but community. And I think that’s where the monetary value is ultimately going to reside as well.

JADE

Yeah. You see that resonate with people probably especially in your position, where you also have a community for B2B content creators and you being one yourself.

CHRISTINE

Absolutely.

And so actually last, I think this was, yeah, March 31st, that’s when we ran our first event.

JADE

Oh wow. Yeah, that’s incredible.

CHRISTINE

Yeah. So we’re pretty new.

So, my co-founder Lana, she’s also a corporate creator and an Ad Age Gen Z to Watch. She’s just an absolute powerhouse working in big tech.

And so, we actually met at an event as well. I kind of accosted her on the street at Brandweek last year, and I was organizing an invite-only Paul McCartney concert experience for brands.

JADE

Oh my gosh.

CHRISTINE

And we partnered with Mailchimp, who are one of our partners there. And so we were going to bring around 20 people to see him during Brandweek. He just happened to be in town.

JADE

That’s incredible.

CHRISTINE

And we had a couple last-minute drop-offs. And so I was like, “I need to fill these seats. It’s Paul McCartney.”

And so I saw this woman on the street at the Brandweek venue, or near the Brandweek venue, and I was like, “Hey, do you want to come and see Paul McCartney with us tonight?”

And she was like, “Are you guys going to kidnap me?”

I was like, “No.”

JADE

You’re like, “What’s the catch?”

CHRISTINE

I know. I know.

But, long story short, we remained in touch because there’s a lot of synergies with how we approach things, how we think about things, and also because we’re both corporate creators.

And so, I actually was approached by Air to use their communal space for an event. That’s their whole strategy. They opened a new headquarters here in New York, in SoHo, and so they were giving out that space almost every day to different companies and individuals to use to build community.

I think it’s, just a side note, an incredibly genius way—

JADE

Yeah.

CHRISTINE

–to build community and brand affinity.

And so I was like, “Okay, so I have this space. I want to do something for B2B tech and corporate creators,” because we kind of feel like the ugly ducklings sometimes of the creator economy because everybody’s inviting fashion and lifestyle and beauty creators, and, you know, we’re doing posts on LinkedIn talking about pipeline and whatnot.

JADE

Which I love. It’s my only social media.

CHRISTINE

I know. I know. I cannot get anything else to grow but my LinkedIn, and you know what? I’m good with that.

But so we had this space, and I had this idea, and I just texted Lana. I said, “Will you co-host this with me?” And she’s in L.A. She was like, “All right, I’ll fly over.”

We ended up actually selling a sponsorship to Adweek to sponsor the event.

And then it kind of snowballed into, okay, so if we’re doing this event, and we had a waitlist of about 100 creators—

JADE

Wow.

CHRISTINE

—so we should maybe, like, should we announce something there?

And we’re like, “Yeah, let’s announce we’re going to start this community called the C2C Network, which is for corporate and tech creators.”

And since, we’ve also organized a meetup and a session at Adobe’s space in Cannes Lions. So we’ve done two events.

I think we’re looking into doing a couple more this year, testing out different formats. We want to do dinners, experiences for creators.

But yeah, so I think it’s that thing of both sides of my 9-to-5 and then 5-to-9 feeding into each other and getting those connections.

But I’m a really big believer in just being IRL and bringing people together.

JADE

No, that is incredible. Especially that journey, because it looks like you’ve been doing it for so long in terms of the community aspect, but it was just this year.

Amazing. So I guess, for you then, when you’re thinking about an event audience, how do you determine who should be in the room? Like who gets an invite, who gets off the waitlist?

CHRISTINE

Yeah. So I think it’s a mix of a few different things.

Now, if I’m looking at events that I’m running for Croud, we work with our sales team quite closely, both sales and then also our clients, in putting together a custom list for every single event.

We’re looking at who we want in the room in terms of, okay, so we have these clients that might be very happy with us and they’re our champions. You always want to have a couple of those in the room.

I think then also having a mix of, and one of the things that I’ve heard a lot from our attendees is that they like the fact that we’re not narrowing down. It’s not just like, “Oh, these are just supplement brand leaders,” or, “These are just the media people.”

But we have these cross-functional people, because people end up talking about work as well, even if it isn’t in a theme of the night.

And so people have said that, look, it’s so refreshing to hear more from, like, a DTC business. Like, we’re a big CPG company, and so we don’t want to limit that too much.

We do try to bring in a mix of a little bit more senior people in the room, but also if there is a person who’s very interesting, has an interesting job background, we’ve also brought in more junior people and mixed that up a little.

And so we’re building from the place of, like, do we have a couple of Croud champions in the room? I think that’s important.

But then also we bring in repeat attendees, people who love coming to our events. Those, we just want to make sure, because the whole idea is building community. So you don’t want to accept one for one event and then the next event you’re on a waitlist.

So I think that’s another piece there.

And then I also think looking geographically where you are, for example New York, and then also narrowing down, okay, so maybe we want to target, you know, $50 million-plus in revenue companies that are on the consumer side.

And that’s where we start building it.

But I think overall, because we have quite a wide remit in terms of the marketers we want to reach, I think that’s something that also helps us cast a wide net, but still have the room be specific enough.

JADE

Yeah, because that’s a lot of variables to consider.

Even when you think about setting up an event from idea to launching it and then after the event, what has been the most manual process for you?

CHRISTINE

It’s the attendee lists. Absolutely. It’s the whole invite flow, I think.

And it’s especially because we also have maybe four or five hands on deck at any given time sending the invites. It’s not just one person.

They’re coming personally from me. Sometimes I’m even texting marketers. I’m sending a lot of LinkedIn DMs. My Senior Marketing Manager does the same.

And so I think, and I actually think, that’s a piece I don’t necessarily want to automate.

I think then, you know, pre-event comms, follow-up comms, those types of things, you can just set those flows and use HubSpot, whatever you use, and just send mass.

But I do think the first invite should be person-to-person.

JADE

Yeah, because that is the whole major part of the experience. Like, who else am I going to be in the room with? So it makes sense. It’s so thoughtful.

CHRISTINE

And actually, one of the things that, you know, because I also go to a lot of events, one of the things that I really appreciate is when the event organizer actually sends you, like, “Hey, by the way, these are the people who are going to be in the room.”

And then even as follow-up comms, like, “These are the LinkedIn profiles of the people you met last night. Here’s how you can connect with them.”

So I think thinking about that kind of facilitating and ensuring that the attendees make the most out of it in terms of them building their network as well, I think it’s a really important point.

JADE

Yeah. And speaking to that as well, because definitely there are pieces that need to be high-touch, but then AI is so top of mind for everyone right now.

How are you thinking about, out of all the different steps you mentioned, maybe the comms leading up and after could be automated, what other areas would you see to be a big opportunity for you or the broader industry to explore applying more AI into?

CHRISTINE

So, I use AI a lot for research purposes as well.

So, for example, uncovering up-and-coming, fresh restaurants that are not on Eater yet. For example, like, okay, what are people seeing on social? And aggregating that.

So finding different ideas of, like, okay, how do I give this event a unique twist?

Or, for example, now I’m planning for Atlanta and I wanted to have something very local in the gift bags. And so I actually used AI to do a little bit of research, and I said, “Give me local companies that do anything related to peaches,” because the Georgia peach, right?

JADE

Oh, I love that.

CHRISTINE

And so I found peach-flavored popcorn, like mini bags of peach-flavored sweet popcorn, and that’s what we’re going to be putting in the gift bag.

So it’s things like that that kind of help me be more creative.

Again, coming from a creative background, that’s one of the things that, you know, just getting those initial batches of ideas also helps me a lot with just the design work of it all.

Not necessarily in creating the final product. I do use a few different design software for that, like Canva, Adobe.

But because I’m not a designer by background, what I do is a lot of the times I ask AI to critique my designs or give me layout instructions, right? Like, I don’t want it to do the final designs—

JADE

Right.

CHRISTINE

—but I actually want to understand, like, how do I put together this layout or constellation?So I think that’s very helpful.

And then I also think, just in terms of invite workflows, because a lot of the times you’re working off of like five different lists and there may be overlap, right?

And so sometimes I will just take list B that I just got, and I’m able to use Gemini to cross-reference two lists and only populate the ones that are net new for me to do outreach in.

And so it’s things like that, or filtering and things like that.

But it’s very much a strategy and workflow tool.

JADE

Yeah, I can definitely see that.

And then even speaking about the attendee list and then looking at who registered, I guess beyond that and all those types of numbers, what else are you looking at when you think about if this event was successful or not?

CHRISTINE

So, I sit in weekly revenue meetings with our growth teams. And we have a shared dashboard where we look at, obviously, I have marketing-qualified leads that are incoming, and we track all of that in HubSpot.

But then there’s the second layer of opportunities. And so what I keep an eye on is the overall percentage of opportunities and then also pipeline and revenue won from events.

And so that’s something that’ll help me then also make the call for, let’s say, when I start planning for next fiscal, which events I want to show up at, where in the industry trade shows should we at least be spending some money or getting some visibility.

I think the other side of it, though, is that event leads can take anywhere between like nine to 18 months to convert, and especially for a services business.

Because, again, I come from a SaaS background, and so there was a little bit of that learning curve where software, you can, again, depending on the price point, of course, but you can buy that any time. You just need to make the case, and if it’s easy enough to implement, you can just buy it within like three months, right?

For services businesses, especially for agency work, and again, if we look beyond, because the majority of our work is retainer work, it’s ongoing. Like, you’re not just going to buy a measurement or SEO project. You can still kind of buy, like, okay, we’re going to do this four-month sprint, right?

But if it is managing your media spend, it’s not something that you’re going to buy for a project. You’re going to buy it for the next two, three, four years, right?

And so I may have all of the right prospects in the room, but if they are not in that moment of, like, okay, we’re going to open the RFP season, we’re working with our procurement, we’re going to send in the brief within the next four months, right?

If they’re not in that window of, like, “We’re looking for a new vendor,” it could take years before they convert. They could go to another company even, because we know the marketing tenures on the consumer brand side are extremely short, right?

And so I think there is something to be said around having leadership that understands that. That it’s not just, okay, so you have this big skincare brand at your event. Like, where’s the revenue opportunity there?

There are so many variables.

But I do think building distinctive programs over time, it will also be your brand assets. Like ROI Social Club for us. We’ve done, I think, four or five of them in three different countries now.

JADE

It’s impressive.

CHRISTINE

And it’s this year. It’s a pretty new program.

But I think people are starting to recognize that, and it’s starting to be something, again, that’s our whole proposition as an agency. We are the Return on Intelligence agency.

And so being able to use events almost like a branding play as well.

It’s that sort of both sides of the coin. It’s your brand, but then also it is putting your senior leaders around the same table eating caviar with brand leaders. So, like, what’s not to love, you know?

JADE

Yeah. One of our investors always says marketing, especially events, is kind of like the snowplow to make way for the sales to then come in. But you first have to have that brand awareness—

CHRISTINE

Relationship.

JADE

Exactly.

So for you then, what should other event marketers consider when connecting what happens in the room to sales activity and pipeline?

CHRISTINE

I think even then, it’s all about relationships, right? It’s relationships with both the people, the attendees in the room. Like, are you going to be the liaison between the sales team and these prospects?

Because a lot of the time, you know, as marketers, even if they are our prospects, they’re more comfortable with us because, you know, they feel like, “Oh no, she’s not a salesperson, like we can just...”

And so being able to maybe do some of that initial digging, even in terms of, like, what does this person need? Are they right for this organization? Who are the other people that might be deciding?

So there’s a lot of soft-selling, I think, that goes into it.

And I think some marketers maybe underestimate the role that they have in that sales process and being that forward and front-facing person.

So I think that’s the first part.

I think the second part is generating event demand.

And so, how do you think about your event as almost like a campaign asset? Like, how do you build out the content coming out of it? The almost FOMO of, like, you had to be there?

Thinking of it almost like, okay, if this was a brand event, like an influencer brand event, how would the brand be leveraging this event to build that feeling of, like, “Oh my God, I really want to go to the next one.”

And so, I think there’s that piece to it, too.

And I think the third piece is, and this is maybe more so for any marketer that’s considering a new role or looking at where to go next, I think you need a really social and front-facing sales force to be able to convert those opportunities.

If you’re going to an organization where nobody wants to schmooze with prospects, where nobody wants to be sending out invites or, you know, even manning those events and just being there, or hunting the grounds, so to speak, I don’t think you’re going to be successful.

Because some organizations are built more so for inbound selling, and their sales style is different. There’s no right or wrong.

But if you want to get value out of events, you really need to have almost like a squad team of people who can do that well and want to do it as well.

JADE

Yeah. Last two questions for you.

What’s one belief you personally hold about event marketing that others in the industry might disagree with?

CHRISTINE

Ooh, that’s a good one.

JADE

A spicier one.

CHRISTINE

I don’t really believe in the value of dropping like $200,000 or half a million and being the title sponsor of any given event.

I think, you know, if you have that money to spend, do your own events.

And do it well. Do something experiential. Like maybe you’ll take a group of marketers to the U.S. Open, or you’ll have a private booth at the Knicks, or whatever it may be.

But if you have that money to spend, there’s just so much that you can do. Like, I’ve heard people flying marketers out to F1 Monaco.

JADE

Oh my gosh.

CHRISTINE

Yeah. Yeah.

So think about that. Like, what’s going to be more memorable?

Like, you saw this guy give a keynote speech as a headlining sponsor at a trade show, right?

JADE

Yeah.

CHRISTINE

Or you getting an invite to Monte Carlo. And so I think they’re running around the same budget ranges.

So that’s something that I believe pretty steadfastly.

JADE

Absolutely. No, I love that.

Last question. What’s one unexpected or non-traditional tactic you’ve used to make sure people show up?

CHRISTINE

I name-drop the merch and gifts that I’m going to give people.

Yes. I kind of list out, like, “Hey, by the way, we’re really excited to also leave you with a little something-something. This is what’s going to be in the gift bags this time.”

And I think it actually works super well, especially if I, and again, this is one of those instances where I flip the tables and think about when I’m an attendee as a creator.

Some of the best events, I walked away from my friend Gigi Robinson, who’s also a creator, and she runs these creator brunches around key industry tentpoles.

She did one right before Cannes in New York, and I came to the event, and I’m actually wearing the sandals that I got as a gift from the gift bag.

JADE

So relevant.

CHRISTINE

Yeah, yeah.

So they gave gift cards to Teva to buy their own sandals. They had, like, everything you might ever need for you to travel to the South of France, like a full gift bag.

And I thought, like, I didn’t know about that in advance.

And so that kind of clicked for me, like, okay, when I’m doing my next event, I’m definitely going to tell people what you’re going to get out of it.

Like, yes, there’s the one side of it where, if you have a good enough restaurant, people are like, “Oh my God, I really want to go to this.”

But then also giving, like, “Hey, by the way, this is what you’re going to get.”

It works.