Felicia Asiedu, marketing director for Europe, Cvent shares key takeaways from her session ‘How Marketing and Event Teams Can Collaborate to Achieve Success and Drive Impact’ delivered at this year’s International Confex.
Marketing and event teams share a vested interest in ensuring that their events are successful and drive impact for the organisation. Traditionally, these teams operated in silos, each focused on their remit with minimal interaction beyond surface-level coordination. This traditional approach has resulted in event teams being largely responsible for building in-person programmes, while the marketing team focused solely on the digital aspects. However, the rapid digitisation of the industry has led to a convergence of these teams’ functions, with events evolving into an integral channel for successful marketing campaigns.
According to the latest fourth Annual Event Planner Research Report by ICE (In-House Corporate Events), the global community for in-house corporate event planners, 71% of corporate event teams report into marketing (up from 55% in 2022). As events assume a central role in most marketing strategies, the need for collaboration between marketing and event teams has never been more critical for business success. Whether that’s driving leads, increasing sales pipeline or building brand awareness.
Here are three tips explored in my session at International Confex you can use to help achieve alignment and cultivate a culture of collaboration to drive impactful campaigns and foster meaningful engagement.
- Reimagine traditional team roles
Break down silos by reimagining traditional roles. Begin by discussing the responsibilities of each team and their contribution to event and marketing success. Often, the events team is brought in when it’s time to execute – when marketing stakeholders have already determined the why and the what. Flip this mindset; think about cross-functional alignment and work together from the outset to ask the questions: Why are we doing this event? Where does my role sit in the attendee journey? How will we measure success?
- A shared purpose strategy
Every strategy begins with a goal or objective, but without a shared purpose, there’s little reason to collaborate. Therefore, after discussing the responsibilities and contributions of each team, cultivate an environment of increased collaboration and communication by adopting a shared purpose approach when formulating the strategy. Both teams should come together to identify the objectives, determine where these intersect, align on goals and establish shared metrics to demonstrate ROI.
- Leverage event technology
Integrated event technology can help to enrich the overall event experience, streamline processes and facilitate data sharing to optimise future strategies. Working with a tech specialist provides access to digital engagement tools, enabling tracking of the attendee journey and delivering insightful analytics. Integrating these event insights into your marketing data helps you measure ROI, prioritise leads and create targeted messaging.
By breaking down silos, prioritising collaboration and embracing the right technology, you’ll set your event marketing strategy up for success with better engagement, deeper insights and larger impact. In the words of Henry Ford, “Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
