7 Things that Always Work in SaaS Events: SaaStr Sponsor Insider

OK, hopefully you guys can see this. I always hit the wrong button. Slideshow. Slideshow. OK, fun. We decided we would do a fun version of— we've been doing a few of these series lately on our main SaaSer kind of content, if you will. Jason M. Lemkin just did 10 Things That Always Work in SaaS Marketing. Nick Madon on Workshop Wednesday yesterday did, like, and things he learned along the way as a founder and like mistakes that you could avoid. So we thought it'd be fun since our team actually does go to some of the largest events in the world to talk about, I started with 5, but we ended up at 7, 7 things that always work in SaaS events. And if at any time you have any questions, comments, inspiration, let us know in the chat or the Q&A. We'll try and keep this, you know, not one of our lengthy hours. Webinars. And hopefully it's, it's really the goal is to help you guys get inspired of, you know, whether you're doing Europa or Annual later this year, or your own events. This is really to help, you know, kind of jog creativity and inspiration just from some of the things we've seen at Post-Aster and some of the largest events we've attended recently. So without further ado, I'll dive right into the tips. Actually, before I dive into the tips, maybe with further ado, quick 30-second plug. We have a— this usually does not happen because our podcast is so full. We had a drop. So usually our podcast, as you guys know, is very coveted and sought after and very full in terms of sponsor ads. We did have a drop for May. So if any of you are thinking about getting on the SaaStr podcast, you have something you want to promote in this quarter, next month, it's fairly turnkey. We literally just need 15 seconds of a script, we record it, we'll get you in for the May run. Um, so yeah, just a quick spiel, 15 seconds on the fact that we have a drop in a sponsor for the podcast. So that means there is an opening. So if you've ever thought about, um, sponsoring the SAS podcast, now is a great time because usually our availability is like months and months out around our events. And so yeah, quick plug there. Okay. Now, with— now, without further ado, thanks all for joining, and we're gonna get to the 7 things that always work in events. I'll disclaimer this on, I've gone to both myself and the SaaStr team, and Jason included in our speaker team, have gone to a lot of events in our lives, as well as produced events like the SaaStr Annual, like SaaStr Europa. I always think it's great to go to other people's events because they're always good visceral reminders, I would say. Of what to do, what not to do, what to improve, what to maybe steal and make your own. Really great for ideas. So I put some images here of some of the events I went to literally in the last month, because we do go to a lot of events to draw inspiration for Zaster. And so yeah, we went to ShopTalk as a team. So that is a big retail and e-commerce. So, you know, really not anything hugely to do with SaaS. There's a few SaaS sponsors and speakers there, but really that is a large e-commerce and tech conference that we go to. We know the organizers, we love to share, you know, with them, and we swap stories and ideas all the time. So Shop Talk is one which you'll hear we mentioned today. The middle photo, yes, ladies and gentlemen, is from the Eras Tour. I was honored enough to go to the Eras Tour. I'll talk about some learnings there that you can steal from our BFF Taylor Swift. The last image on the side is Last weekend, actually, I did go to Coachella, which is one of the largest music festivals in the world. I think it's second to Glasgow Festival that happens in the UK. I've gone a couple years now, mainly as a learning. Also, this is how we sourced Duke Dumont for the big party last year at annual. So yeah, all this to say, like, these events are not— and these, like, learnings are not specific just to B2B and SaaS. They're across the board of what I've seen, things that always work at any kind of event that you're doing, whether it's your own customer event, whether it's big, whether it's small, whether it's hugely at scale, right? These are all conferences and events of different sizes. There are different things that always seem to work in events no matter what it's for, what the content is. There's kind of things that always tend to work. So we're gonna talk about those 7 things today. One, this is maybe a bit more SaaS specific just based on the goal of it. And this is one that I actually stole from 10 Things That Always Work in SaaS Marketing. But for folks more specifically on this call, since you guys are all in B2B SaaS, we want to kind of tailor the tips, even though they're for any event, more so for you guys, is to one, always invite/host your customers and prospects at your events. They will do the selling for you. Now, I know it's very varied right now based on the folks who are in the room on the webinar, who may be watching the livestream later. Of where you are in your event cycle and maybe your marketing budget. So you might say, we're not doing any in-person events this year, we're not doing our own events, we can only do small, like get on a plane and go to a dinner. Guess what? Getting on a plane and going to dinner is still an event. It's just a small event. So first reminder, and something that always, always works that we always see, is to invite your customers and your prospects both. They will do the selling for you. So one thing I've noticed between myself and Polya and the rest of the sales team is anytime we're talking to our sponsors, and this rings true for the Europe event that's upcoming, is a lot of folks talk to us about like, how can I maximize traffic to my booth for leads, for scans, for new meetings, for prospects? What I don't hear a lot of people talking about is customers. And I think it's such a miss. And I always, that's why I made it number 1. I always try to remind folks with this when I unfortunate to join a customer call or a sponsor call. This always works at events is hosting both your customers and your prospects. You'd be surprised how many sponsors tell me they do not measure the impact of in-person meetings on site with their customers as part of their ROI of the event. And I think that is a huge miss and a big missed opportunity, especially in 2023. You should absolutely be meeting your customers, on site, and you have to absolutely be measuring that because guess what? Your competitors are probably at SAPPHIRE or at CHOPDOC or whatever it is that you are also at. Like, they are probably also there and they will probably pitch your customers hard. So if you're not counting these meetings, if you're not putting energy towards it, planning towards it, inviting your customers, guess what? Your competition is gonna do that, just that. So It is very important. So I made it number 1 to host both your customers and prospects and try and get them in the room together as much as you can. So I'll give some examples of this. One, if you're already sponsoring a SaaS event, which is highly likely based on the folks in this room, super easy thing to do is invite your customers and your prospects to the event. Okay. Like I know a lot of folks, we have literally gone to some of our top sponsors for Europa Inviting them to invite their customers and prospects to the event. I know people are still doing this, but not everyone does this, and I'm always surprised by this. Like, I think this is such a gift to get your customers and prospects together, host them at the booth, do something informal. You can say, hey, we're getting everyone together at our booth, you know, in, in, in exchange for us getting you a ticket to SaaStr, you know, let's meet at the booth at, you know, whatever, 10:00 AM. On day 2, we're all going to have coffee together with our CEO, with some fellow— you can meet some fellow customers, fellow new faces, prospects, you know, fellow CEOs, fellow revenue leaders, whatever it is. Do something informal. Meet with them at your booth. Invite them there. Get them there. I know that sometimes it's really hard to wrangle your sales and marketing team to actually invite your customers and prospects, but the ROI is not to be missed. I do think this is something that people don't spend enough energy on. Or they don't think about it until the very last minute. So that's why I made it tip number 1. It's something that always works is get them together, make sure you invite them so that they can have this informal or more formal get-together, which to my next point is we know a lot of folks who do their own side event, whether it's a customer dinner during, you know, after annual or Europa. We see folks do their own, you know, happy hours, dinners, breakfasts, office runs, whatever it may be. It doesn't always have to be food related. It can be, you know, a, I've seen people do SoulCycle classes. I've seen people do yoga classes. I've seen people do runs. Like I've seen people do activations for their customers and prospects specifically to Mingle. It doesn't matter what it is. You can make it your own. You can put your own creative spin on this, but I guarantee you this will work if you get your prospects and your customers together in a room. Doing it around an event like SAS does help because then they're already there. You don't have to worry about like, OK, when is a good date to do this? How am I going to get people there? How am I going to drive engagement? Like, that's already done. They're probably already coming to SAS or they're already attending. Like, you don't have to worry about picking a place on the spot, which honestly makes logistics a lot easier. Hosting your own side event can be really great. I've always seen these pay off. What I don't see pay off, and this is actually maybe something to avoid, is I've seen sponsors co-do their own like offsite dinners, offsite happy hours, and then split the leads so they can try and get more lead gen. These never work. I've done them in the past as a marketer. I've seen some of our sponsors do them. They're always like, okay for ROI. But let me tell you, when people share with us, when they have really great ROI, it's when they do their own side event. So I would say even if you do your own dinner and it's just dinner in a private room for 10 people, or it's 8 people and you just booked it on OpenTable and it's you, your CEO, like 3 customers and 3 prospects. Guess what? That'll probably be better than forking over more money to do a side event with somebody else because these are where you can have those conversations and connections more intimately than doing a big side event where you can't talk to everyone. Then you have to split the leads. You're not sure who you really talk to. They're not sure who you guys talk to. You're not sure who they talk to. It becomes really convoluted. So again, that's, I've seen it done okay in the past, but I would say as much as you can, go for a smaller event that is your own event and be sure to invite your customers and prospects. Listen, I know budgeting is really hard right now in 2023. This could be, an event could be as small as hosting a dinner. Go to where your customers are, right? Nobody was going to dinner parties on Zooms. Everyone, I know we're on a Zoom right now, but I know it's very, it's tedious, it's tiring at the end of the day. I know a lot of folks now who like do walking meetings, or going to in-person meetings or cafe meetings. Like our sales team has probably had more in-person meetings this year than all the other years combined. So I would say go to where your customers and prospects are. They'll always appreciate it. Because if you don't get on the plane, again, as a reminder, your competition probably will. So always good to make previews. And I will say, we've written this up on Saastr.com recently. I had an experience where we, one of our software vendors was up for renewals that we use here at Zaster. And I was like, man, I really would've loved for them to come to us, like where we are to have this meeting. This is a not small renewal, right? And it was on Zoom and it's fairly lackluster. So yeah, I will say it always helps to have that call in person, right? Like again, it doesn't need to be a fancy steak dinner. If you go back and watch the 10 Things That Always Work in Marketing, Jason M. Lemkin shares why it's steak dinners aren't always the best choice, but man, I would have loved to have that call face to face and ask my questions and get some face time. And honestly, sometimes it's just good to have your exec team get face time with your customers. A little bit goes a long way, so that always works. One thing, and I'll explain why I put the Brex booth on here, and this last example here is make your customers and prospects the hero. So there's a lot you can do, and this always works Jason M. Lemkin. I put the breakfast here. On the outside, it talks about how corporate cards and spend management loved by your team is their tagline. On the inside, it actually had different quotes from actual customers, basically making their customers the hero of the booth on the inside. So like the outside was to draw you in, the inside had their customer quotes on the booth, which I thought was pretty cool. I haven't seen a whole lot of that. I also haven't seen a whole lot of it, but when it— when I do see it, I know it always works. I have seen some sponsors in the last few years do things like when they have customers come, they have literally a customer kit of like, okay, when a customer comes, this is what we're going to give them. We're going to take a photo with them, put them up on social, make a TikTok, make a video, make an Instagram, whatever it is. Like when you make your customers the hero at an event, they will always remember it, especially if you give them a little take home, they will always remember it. So, but it can be anything, right? It doesn't have to be swag. It could be in your printed material. It could be in the video that's on your booth loop. It could be on your swag. Of course, it could be on your booth. It could be something creative leading up to the event. But yeah, anyways, we've done this thing where on, on the SaaStr side, we do these what we call SaaCelebrities, where like we kind of stylize all of our speakers and make them the heroes, if you will. Of our events as well as our sponsors. So yeah, when you do that, people always remember it. And I've got so many photos of, you know, speakers in front of their staff celebrities or anyway, they always take them home. So one quick tip here on point number 1, I'll try to go through the rest of these faster. It is okay to start small. So again, as small as a dinner for 3 people is fine. It's an event. It counts, right? Host a weekly webinar. We do these. You're on one right now. Can't tell you how much value we've gotten out of these weekly webinars and honestly surprised about the quality of folks who come to these webinars. You guys have been fantastic. We've gotten CEOs, directors, like event marketers, everyone comes to these webinars or at least watches the recording, you know, a mix of both. So it's okay to do these. The key there is to be consistent. And again, remember that the magic is getting your customers and your prospects together, which is why sometimes you'll see on these webinars, we'll bring like some of our current sponsors. And some of the people in the audience will be prospects. So some of that is in getting those folks together and it's, I think it's never too soon to start this. So again, I know 2023 is an interesting year and budgets can be tight, but yeah, always, always works to get your customers and prospects together at events. Okay. Number 2 thing that always works in events, and I feel like when people don't do this, they always regret it. It always pays to start your prep early. And I put early in quotes because it's never too early, right? But literally start today if it's for your own event, if it's for SAS Europa, even if it's for SAS for Annual, which is not till September. September will be here before you know it. So whatever it is that you're doing in your events, if it's webinars, like, plan out your calendar of webinars today. Plan out your calendar of customer renewals today. Plan out your customer events. Today, like plan what you're doing for SaaStr Europa or Annual today. Like it is never too soon to start, and I'll give you a few key examples why. I'll give you a big example 'cause I know we're talking about events. I've not gone to the Met Gala. I wish, but I'm not in that world. But just for fun, there is a show on Netflix about it. You can look it up. I think many people know this for like celebrities that go to it, but I'll tell you the Met Gala, it's, you know, the first week of Feb every year. That event has literally zero downtime, and neither does SASTRA Annual or SASTRA Europa. That is a year-long cycle for many, many reasons. You know, Coachella doesn't have downtime either. A lot of these big productions do not have downtime. They are the same time each year. They happen rain, storm, whatever it is. So a lot of these events, you'll notice, do not have any downtime because the prep always changes. Like, even if you're doing the same menu, Or same concept, you know, like the Met Gala or Coachella, which do not change locations. Something always changes, right? The lineup changes, the artists change, who's coming to your event changes. Even if you're doing your own events, for us, our attendee demographics change every year. Like, they're— the overalls are pretty much the same, but you'd be surprised now. We're always surprised right now about how many CTOs and CFOs are coming to Europa. Like, fascinating change for us that we're now trying to serve, right? Of like, okay, our audience slightly changed, new venue. But anyways, all that to say, it's never too early to start prep. And I'll give you a few concrete examples why. For those who are maybe not in the world of production, in 2023, I will tell you firsthand, everything takes longer. The ordering times are longer, the shipping times are longer. There's more holidays, there's more like furlough, there's like more everything. Like everything takes longer in 2023, sometimes even double the amount of time it literally took to do the same item in 2022. Lead times are really long. There's like shipping issues, logistic issues, production, supply line issues, whatever it might be. All of these things that are out of your control, right, that you cannot solve for, but you can plan for if you start the prep early. So that's why I included this as number 2 thing of like things that always work is to start your prep right now. Like if you start immediately, I'll give you some good examples which I put in here. Um, Expensify's booth. This is a booth that they built. I think it took them a year is what they told us. Um, this is literally a full-blown turnkey booth that they take to different events. Um, this took them a lot of time to like from maybe more than you're actually by the time it was proof of concept to actually build. And then there's actual build time and retrofitting that they had to do for Saastrøm Annual, right? So like, even though this is a custom turnkey booth that they are taking from event to event, this is something where even with our team, I think we started, I don't know, maybe like 9 months before Saastrøm Annual last year to bring the White Castle. And I remember getting on phone calls with their logistics team of how to retrofit a booth that was built turnkey for inside to be outside. And that took time and prep, right? That is literally phone calls with their logistics team. That is something where like their builders literally had to build that roof that you see on it now, 'cause it didn't have a roof like that. Anyways, so that took a lot of retrofitting and planning, and if they had started that too late, we just couldn't have done it, right? So all this to say, if you start early, it pays off because then you'll have it in time for your event. There are certain things you cannot rush, so Build times is one of them. Order times is one of them. That's why I put that example on there. Another example I'll give on the bottom half of images, the speakeasy that we did at SAS Re:Invent. That was actually a long time in the works from a concept of we've always wanted to do a speakeasy that was sort of hidden at SAS Re:Invent. And so that was a lot of planning. And we were like, OK, this is finally the year we can do the speakeasy. It was a lot of planning in terms of— conception, like we had literally started this planning in 20, like before SASRA Annual 2021. So in the summer of 2021, we had started planning the speakeasy for the September of 2022 SASRA Annual, knowing we could not do it in the September of 2021 SASRA Annual. So it was a long planning cycle for the speakeasy. We knew we wanted to do this. Akuna, for example, we were like, why is there a random telephone on the slide? These telephones are actually Pantone spray painted to the Vonage, who was our sponsor, orange. That is their color. Like, that is something that you, again, cannot rush. You literally cannot rush paint drying. So I put it here as an example. You can't rush paint drying. You cannot rush, you know, UPS shipping times. All these things take time. A lot of them, you'll notice, are out of your control. Sure, you can use different vendors, which sometimes can get you there faster, but they're all gonna have about the same lead time. So again, it's never too early to start your prep, especially if you're gonna do something that, you know, needs— that, you know, needs to be ordered, or even sometimes where you're like, oh, it's just swag, like, I'll just order that a couple weeks before. That's not the case anymore. I know people who have to order— like, now you need to order your swag months out to make sure you get it in time for the event. So even if it's something that you think is small, I would start on it now. 'Cause lead times are much longer. Okay, livestreaming. This is a fun one that I pulled from a few different events that we've seen now and have also done ourselves. So I know we all probably think on this call that virtual events are dead. Well, let me tell you guys, livestreaming is thriving. Okay, I'll give you a few examples of this, and I think this is something we do not do enough of, and I think if you wait too long, it's gonna be it's never too late to capitalize on the livestreaming audience, and I'll explain why. I know many of you on this call are not new to virtual, but are probably new to livestreaming. I was not a livestreaming expert before the year 2020. I, you know, obviously I know about Twitch, I've seen Twitch streams, I've seen YouTube streams, but I think, you know, Coachella started livestreaming in, I wanna say 2018 or '17, they started livestreaming. I think they started with like, one week, I could be wrong, but yeah, like one weekend of the festival, then they went to both weekends, and now they put more effort into it. So yes, you know, listen, half a million people go to Coachella, but millions of people watch the livestream. And something I'll say that is, you know, cross events, right? 'Cause this is, these are 7 things that always work at events, thing number 3, livestreaming always, always, always works. It is an investment. I will tell you, like, we have really invested a separate team for Europa Annual. We've, I, you know, become an expert. I've trained the whole team on streaming for our speaker team. It is something you have to invest in and really learn and understand what works and what doesn't livestream. I would say we're much better at it now than we used to be, but you just gotta, you know, rip the Band-Aid and start livestreaming. I have this on the next slide, but also note that it is, it is stressful sometimes, and I think that's why people kind of avoid live streaming, because it is a live event that is now being live streamed. So like your amplification factor for something going wrong has now just doubled, because it's a live multiplied by a live. So I get that's really scary for a lot of you, but live streaming is the way to go. I've got a few examples on this actually, so there's one example from CASTOR. We've gotten much better at our live streaming, The top singer that you guys see, this is Rosalía from Coachella. I put this in there because Coachella livestreams and they, you know, they have their own production company. Rosalía actually brought her own supplemental production company to do her livestream because she was like, I want this livestream for myself. I've invested in it for my fans, for my audience. I mean, her fans are her customers if you think about it that way. So she wanted to invest in it. She put in the money and she literally had her own production team come and supplement the livestream that Coachella does. If you go back and watch the streams from the last few weekends or look hers up, you'll notice even her clips from hers, hers are much better than everyone else's livestream, like by tenfold, because she actually invested in it and cared about it. So this is one of those things where like, yes, listen, even if you have an event for, you know, 100 people or you've got a customer event or we've got SaaS for annual, which is 12,000 people, or SAS Europa or SAS APAC, which is on this slide. You'd be surprised how many more people will watch a livestream regardless of the time zone. I think that is something that still surprises me. No matter what time of day it is, people will be watching the SAS livestreams. They'll be up at 3:00 AM watching Workshop Wednesday. They'll be up at 7:00 PM or 11:00 PM watching SAS Re:Annual somewhere else. It is crazy to me how many more people, customers, prospects, fans, attendees you can reach if you livestream. Not everyone is in the room. Sometimes we have literally seen up to 5 times the audience, if not more, on the livestream than the people in the room. So just think about this as a giant megaphone. I stress each one of you, or challenge each one of you to try livestreaming for your next event. Do it now before it's too late to capitalize on this audience. It always, always works. Okay. And it doesn't have to be a big stage production. I've seen people livestream their podcast recordings. I've seen people livestream like we're doing right now, these style of webinars or meetings or customer roadmap meetings. I've seen people livestream literally like their QBRs, whatever it is. Like if you do it, people will come and it will amplify your reach. The other thing I'll say, if you miss it, The last screenshot is from Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. She is notably not live streaming. I feel like if I had to take a guess, it's because she's going to record it and put it on like Netflix or whatever and sell it to them. But listen, if I were her, I would just charge the Swifties on a subscription for access to the live stream. She'd actually probably make more than she would from selling her tour. Footage to Netflix or Hulu or whoever the heck she's going to sell it to. That's just my two cents. I do think live streaming is way more worth it. And also you can, you know, monetize it as a lot of other people do. We do it all for free. A lot of people do it for free at the moment because you can monetize it other ways. But yeah, anyways, if you don't do it, that is a screenshot of somebody who livestreamed themselves Taylor Swift and got 50,000 views in like 3 days because she she is not live streaming it. And so she's now missing out on that monetization. So anyways, even though she's great at all this, she's missing out on this live streaming thing. Some keys here, cause I know this is a newer one for most of you. We use Restream. I love it. It is a one-stop shop. The moment we found it, it made our streaming lives easier. So if you steal any hack and start streaming, use Restream. It's basically one platform. I'm using it literally right now. I'm staring at it on my other monitor. Use Restream, it's one platform, you push it once and then it goes to everywhere. YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, like LinkedIn, anything you want, one platform. It's great. Invest here if you can, both on the backend and the frontend. And what I mean by this is like, we literally sent our entire team and speaker team mics. We've sent speakers mics, we've sent people lights, we've sent people virtual backgrounds. Like we've told people to get a headset if their audio sucks. We've told people to change backgrounds or change rooms. Literally nothing is off the table when you are streaming. Like it is a live production, which we always remind people. And honestly, when you tell people you are live streaming, they are more receptive and willing to actually put in the work. If you tell them ahead of time, hey, we're going to be live streaming, make sure your audio is crisp, make sure you've got lights on, make sure you've got a clear background, you know, take it seriously because it is a live event. It's not just a Zoom. They will do it. And again, remember I explained this kind of math earlier. It's a livestream of a live event, so it does kind of multiply your factors that something could go wrong. Let me tell you, my streaming team literally blew a fuse box during Staffster Annual. It's fine. We just restarted the stream. It is okay. It's bound to happen. Literally it overheated because it was streaming all day and we just restarted the stream 5 minutes later. It was fine. No one, you know, No one was upset at us. We said on the YouTube, we'll be right back in 5 minutes, and then we're back in 5 minutes. It was fine. So yeah. All right. Tip number 4 that always works in events. You can turn one event into one year of content. I don't see enough people doing this. I see a lot of people doing it, but not everyone. This is something that always works. You can capture the content at the event, not only of the content, but there's so many attendees at the event. There's so many speakers. Speakers that you could interview. There's so many customers and prospects and revenue leaders and just great, amazing people at these events that you could interview and talk to for content, for inspiration, for tips. There's so much content you could generate. You could literally fill your content calendar from like a 3 or 2-day SaaS or annual event or a bigger industry event for the rest of the year. Um, I don't see a lot of people doing this, so I put some examples here. The top one is, um, One of our sponsors, Storyblocks, literally interviewed attendees at SaaStr Annual. They turned it into a blog post, they did it on social, they used it on their website. They're like still using this content. Like literally, that's what I mean. You could turn it into content for a year. There's a lot you could do. You can record— we've seen people record videos. We've seen people do onsite surveys where like, again, there's a lot of people. So, you know, if you get a marketer that comes, oh, what's your best marketing tip for, you know, whatever your industry is? Security, cloud, whatever. Um, also the fact that your whole entire team is together, you could film what you guys are doing as a behind the scenes, whatever you're working on, what you're thinking about, your experiences, more of a vlog. I've seen people do that. Again, I've seen people, we've livestreamed. I haven't seen a sponsor do it yet. I'm waiting for the first one. Ready? Um, livestreaming always works as you guys know now. Um, I've seen people literally record podcasts on site. During our events. Listen, it all works. Like, you can turn, you know, again, 3 days of jam-packed content into a year of content if you pre-plan, to plan early, and do it right. And just keep in mind, right, there are literally thousands of people at something like SAScare. So they're all content creators. Cross-collaborate with them. This is where cross-collaboration does work, right, for content. You know, drip out the content over the rest of the year. The bottom screenshot is an example from Avneo. They literally made their own video game that they're still using for SAS for Europa. So it doesn't have to be, you know, necessarily just a video, although video works great. You can get super creative with it, and I've always seen that work in events. So, all right, creating scarcity always works. So I'm not gonna talk about too much about some of the, you know, just normal big events that we go to at scale. Which is always helpful. As you can see from these screenshots, these are more, you know, all right, people are in line to buy merch. Why are they in line to buy merch for hours? Because it's scarcity. Like, you cannot get this online, or not the same version of it online, or whatever it is. And when you see people in person, creating scarcity also always works because it creates FOMO. So I'll give you more of a faster example. Just to think about this, because I don't see people do this enough, of creating scarcity at their booth at our events. And I do think when people have done it, like Google Cloud and others, it always, always, always works. So it's kind of a tip that we've stolen from bigger events, but also want to put a more concrete example. We've literally seen that's after. So Google Cloud, the top photo is like the calm before the storm, if you will. GSP, you know, their Google Cloud. Cool. All right, what is happening in the chaos of the bottom two photos? They literally did timed giveaways where if you watched a demo, as you can kind of see on their top photo there, if you watch a demo, you are entered to win a Pixel 3. That happens to be a Google product, right? They're literally giving their own product away. So what they would do each day is they would, you know, have people scan their badge, watch the demo, and then they would time their giveaways, not just like, oh, at the end of it, we're gonna give away one pixel. No, no, no. They did like 3 pixels a day and they gave people specific times. They're like, all right, the next giveaway for the next pixel is 12:45. So like, if you watch the demo between, you know, 10:00 AM, 12:45, come back at 12:45 and we're gonna literally live pick the card out of the thing and see who wins. And that is what the chaos of the bottom 2 photos are. This is how many people were like— I mean, this is not even a 360 shot, which I wish I had, but these are photos I took. Like, it was crazy to me how many people were literally like from like the depths of the sponsor hall just went to Google Cloud to come to this giveaway each time of day they had it, which I think was 3 times a day. Like, every time it was this crowded. Every time it was like so many people like having that FOMO when they saw like this giveaway and they weren't part of it, they were like, ooh, How can I get in that? Which is what I mean by creating scarcity. Always, always, always works. Like, this works like gangbusters for them. Yeah, you do this 3 times a day. And literally, it's fun when you do it in real time because it's like, you know, they would pull the business card out at certain times. I mean, that person wasn't there, they didn't win. So it's not like, oh, I'm just going to give this random business card to be the winner at the end of the show and no one really knows and there's no hoopla over it. They're kind of making also, you know, your prospects and the customers the hero by glamorizing this giveaway, right? They, they knew they were going to do a giveaway anyway, but from the simple fact that they timed it, they announced it, they made it a whole thing, like, it turned into a much bigger success than I think they thought it was going to be. Um, so that's what I mean by, you know, a concrete example of where creating scarcity at events always works. There are other things you can do. It does not need to be a timed giveaway. It could be something like you're doing a limited edition of whatever your flag is, or even badge or a limited edition like product feature. We've seen people do that around SaaStry Annual. I've seen people do world tour things where like, you know, they're doing both the annual and Europa, and so they do slightly different things that if you collect them all, then you get something better for being a customer or a prospect and meeting them at both events versus like just one event. It's also a good reason for folks, you know, doing something like a world tour idea. It's a good reason for folks to come back to you. So like, even if they did see you at Europa, you want them to still talk to you at Best Triennial, you know, that's like 4 months later, a lot could change in your product between now and then. So I've seen that work really well. The last one I've seen work really well are things like customer badges, right? G2 is a great partner of ours. They always give people customer badges of, you know, fellow sponsors of like, oh, we're highly rated on G2 for compliance, or we're highly rated on G2 for you know, sales enablement. People always love them. I always see them stick them on their booth. I don't think they always know what's coming. It's just something that G2 does for their customers. I've seen that work really well. So, and that is a scarcity play, right? Like you've gotta be on G2 and literally highly rated to get that badge that they then give you. So yeah, scarcity always works. A fun one, and then I'll go to the last one. So there is no such thing as too much signage. Ironically, I made this one slide, but there is no such thing as too much signage. Quick example is we did the sign back in 2021. It was the first after annual back. The sign went a little bit viral. Like, I didn't even think something so simple as a welcome sign would go viral on Twitter, but it did. So anyways, there's no such thing as too much signage. It could be something as easy as like a fun sign like this one is. It could be directionals. You can never have too many directionals. I can't tell you how many times in these events that I've gone to, literally in the last month, that I have gotten lost. And I have been to these events previously, and it's the same venue, and I've still gotten lost. Or I've gone to a venue I've gone before, and it was a new artist, and I got lost. I'm like, I literally get lost all the time with these events. I don't know how I don't get lost with Caster, but, um, probably because we have a lot of signs. We always have too many directional signs. We always have tons of like people, people's wayfinding signs. Like there's no such thing, I can tell you now, it's too much signage. Even if you think it makes sense in your brain of how to get around the venue, it does not make sense to someone who's not stared at it, you know, for the last 6 to 12 months that you've been planning the event. They've just gotten there. Most, you know, a lot of our attendees are international. So yeah, there's no such thing as too much signage. You can never have too much signage, directionals, printed agendas, whatever it is. We always do more and more and more of this, because there's no such thing ever— it's too much signage in events. It always works, it always helps, and sometimes, you know, your signs could even go viral, as this one did. So, all right, last tip, which was kind of an inspiration from yesterday's workshop with Nick Meta. He talked about this as a CEO. I'll talk about it more from an events perspective, but honestly, I don't see enough people being themselves at their booths, at their exhibit stands, in their own events, you know. I see a lot of turnkey stuff in catalogs that I've seen. I've seen a lot of activations that are turnkey, and turnkey is great, and we do it too, and it works, but it doesn't work for everything. There comes a point in time where you need to inject some of whatever your brand's personality is into what you're doing in order to stand out from the other booths, exhibitors from other events that are going on. We've seen a lot of people do this really well at SaaStr, fortunately. So we've got a lot of great examples on the next slide. But if you do it, you will get more leads, have better conversations, and maybe even close some deals right then and there. We have seen people close deals on site when they have really cool branding or really cool activation or something that just draws people in that ties back to their brand or their product. Or whatever it is in a creative way. I don't just mean like put screenshots of your product on the booth. It's gotta be in a creative way. So some examples, right? It could be something as simple as the two brands on the right, Bandwidth at the top and then Hook at the bottom, coordinated their team uniforms, if you will, so that during the event, no matter if they were at their booths or walking around the show, you always knew like, okay, the people in highlighter is the Hook team. The people with the shiny sparkly jackets is the Bandwidth team. Like, you always knew who they were. They kind of stood out. It was really fun. So anyways, and it worked for their product. And it, you know, it tied into both of what they were trying to promote. The Salesforce one, which I put in, is a great example of a photo booth they did at their SaaStr Europa. And this is something where like they wanted to showcase their ecosystem. And so they came up with this photo wall and they brought a bunch of props and like they basically had people take photos, I think, to enter a giveaway. So that was one where it's like, okay, some of their fun personality as well as, you know, if it's a photo booth, then those people are going to put that on their social, amplify your reach, kind of some free marketing there. But again, something fun that just showcased their personality. The bottom one is a video game that Cladera did. They did one that was related to their product. You had to like grab as many subscriptions as you can. That's literally what their, you know, their product helps you manage your subscriptions. So that was again, a fun one. Like literally all day people were doing this VR game. So good examples are like, you know, make sure it ties to your brand, to your product. You can do something like a mascot. We've got a mascot. ChiiChii brought their mascot. Like we've had Maxio brought their moon man, like We've seen people do that, you know, you could showcase it through activations or again product giveaways. It doesn't always have to be swag, it doesn't always have to be uniform, it just has to be something that is unique and creative to you and your brand and something that you can tie back as a giveaway or as like a leave behind for attendees to remember your brand from everyone else that they saw and met at FASTR. So That's always a fun one. I think that's the last slide. We might have made it here. Let's see. Yeah, that's the last one. So yeah, in totality, hopefully this was super helpful for you guys to help brainstorm, you know, what you guys are doing at events. These are the type of things we've always seen work at events no matter their size and scale. Some of it was from SAFTR, some of it was not from SAFTR, so Hopefully that was helpful for all of you guys. Thanks for listening. If you guys have creative ideas you want to do at one of our upcoming events in particular, or stuff you want to do at your events, like, you're like, Amelia, we want to livestream our event, we're not sure where to start, happy to send you guys the guide. Yeah, let us know. Like, I know some of you on this call are doing some creative things with us at Sashu Europa. So thanks to all of you for doing that. Hopefully this is a fun one and got some of your creative juices going. And as you think of fun ideas, and if you need help with them that are related to faster events or activations, just let us know. We always try and accommodate as many fun ideas as we can, because we do know it helps folks kind of stand out in our event. So without further ado, then, that will end today's webinar. Thanks all for joining. Next week we'll be back at the same time, live, 9 AM Thursday. We are going to do a deep dive on SAS Europa. I know we did one a few weeks ago. We're going to do a refresh just for everyone who is a SAS Europa sponsor. Also good to attend, though, if you're sponsoring annual because a lot of that translates. So yeah, next week will be a deep dive on Europa. If there's anything you want to see specifically in that webinar, just email me and let me know. Or if you've got any questions about what I shared today, hit me up. My email is just ai@sasdrank.com. And we will see you all.