SaaStr Insider Webinar: Ancillary Activations Overview

insider webinars, so everything you need to know about partnering with Zaster. We've been using these last few weeks to do kind of an overview of our 2024 events, but also to look at what worked well for 2023 events that we just wrapped. So I'm gonna do a little bit of that here today. So let me share my screen. So cool, hopefully you guys can all see this. Let me go full screen. Screen. Perfect. Much better. Okay. Well, there's a few things we want to talk about today. We'll try and keep this short and sweet and kind of hit some of the high points that we, that we haven't talked about the last few weeks. So if you have missed any of the last few weeks, you can find them on our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/taftor. They are all live streamed as this one is being, and good to tune into. I know the last couple of weeks we went through an overview of TASC Europa. And we also gave kind of a recap on Zaster Annual and some of the stats there from our partners and sponsors. So those are some pretty good ones. I'll try and hit some of those here today if you missed those and just talk about it from a high level. So if you're new here, thanks for joining. My name is Amelia. I help run, you know, marketing, content, and events here at Zaster, and I'll be your guide for all things ancillary activations today. So just a fun fact, we did mention that with some of in the last few weeks of our webinars. It is now 12 years of SASR. Next year is an exciting year in 2024. We've been doing these live events for quite some time now. And this will be our 10th SASR Annual and then the 5th SASREuropa. So some good solid even numbers there. And yeah, really exciting to see the growth of both of these two events. If you haven't seen the dates quite yet, Festeroval will be the 4th and 5th in June of next year. Should be great weather in London to do so. Um, we try and do it, you know, indoors and outdoors, um, to kind of mimic the festival style feel we have at Sastre Annual. Um, and then yeah, Sastre Annual is our flagship event. So if you were there this last September, um, we'll be back at the San Mateo County Event Center, um, the 10th through the 12th. Um, it's completely festival style. So yeah, it is indoor, outdoor. And again, it's the 10th SASS for Annual, so should be a good one. Probably, you know, pulling out all the stops for year 10 of annual. So yeah, a few things I wanted to chat about, primarily focusing on SASS for Annual first and foremost. You know, with how we sell tickets, we do sell tickets year round, just as a fun fact. So early bird tickets are indeed on sale for Annual and Europa based on how they're tracking. You know, this is how we kind of project our projected attendance at both of these events. So, you know, right now for annual, we're projecting about 13,000 people to come. Again, it's the 10th one, so we imagine there will be a lot of alumni, some new faces that are coming along, but should be a really great gathering of folks. It's 3 days, like I said, it's September 10th through 12th, so it's kind of midweek, which is really nice. It's in the Bay Area, so if you haven't been before, you know, the San Mateo County Event Center is kind of handy because it's in between the city proper and then kind of the, you know, Peninsula, Silicon Valley side. So if you've got customers, it's really great to layer customer meetings. I think it's never too early to start planning those kinds of things. It is, yeah, like I said, outdoor, indoor. So we've been very gracious to have nice weather the last 3 years we've done it there. We do these things called Brady Days, so we have a lot of networking sessions that end up going on on-site, as well as our ever-popular Meet a VC program. So we always get hundreds, if not thousands, of VCs and investors that come. Do the show and do get pitched and participate in our Meet a VC program and have actually given out term sheets at SaaSFair. Yeah, next year for our 10 years, we'll probably have about 300 speakers or so from, you know, the world's leading SaaS companies. If you've been on our YouTube channel recently, you might have seen some of our, you know, most recent content from SaaSFair Annual has been gaining popularity, going a little bit viral. So yeah, we always try to get, you know, the most tactical advice, and I feel like it's very topical and performs very well and hits close to home. And then, yeah, you know, we'll probably have about 200 or so sponsors and partners showcasing, you know, their SaaS products and their latest innovations in SaaS. So that's the annual. If you missed kind of, again, our overview, we do talk about this audience breakdown and how it's changed a little bit year over year. So basically the TL;DR is our core audience has remained the same, which I think is really great. We are heavy in that CEO Founderscape. So you'll see that 34% here. That is the core of our audience. Now, a lot of CEOs and founders are coming to SaaStr. And then right below that, right, are all the revenue leaders. So your marketing, you know, your CROs, your CMOs, your VP of sales, your CS leaders, those are the next most popular attendee demographic. And then, you know, CXOs have been rising for the last few years. I would say this is one that used to be lower. Now it's up to, you know, 14%. So, I would say too, something we covered was like more of these CXOs are having that CCO, VP of Finance, or Ops, or CFO titles. I think that's just the nature of how people, one, travel to events, and two, if they're looking at investing in any new tools, you kind of need to have the signer there. So we are seeing more of those folks actually come in attendance to SaaS-Terps, followed by products and ops and then investors. A good healthy mix there. That is our core audience. It's very similar to our core audience that consumes our content across Saastr.com. Our company stages are pretty much mid-core. So pretty, you know, SMB 33%, mid-market 40%, and then enterprise 27%. But yeah, the biggest change I would say year over year is that we actually jumped up in percentage, which I think is really fascinating, in how many attendees are VP level and above. This is a combination, right, of like folks who've been coming to Saastr getting promoted and also just more folks people coming at that VP level. We did see also an increase in folks coming in teams the last couple years, you know, post-2020. So I think that's always interesting to see that more people are coming with their teams, you know, they're coming with their CXO and their decision maker. And they are all, you know, again, more than half of them are VP level and above. So it just speaks to the quality of folks that you're going to have conversations with at SAPPHIRE. So Yeah, so a few things I wanted to touch on on annual. You may have seen this kind of like sponsorship at a glance. There's a lot of different levels. You don't need to cuss them all out or memorize them. We can always walk you through them and, you know, help you figure out which one makes the most sense. There's kind of different features that come along with our different packages and levels, but this is maybe more helpful and a bit more simple. So I'll spend just a few minutes here. So if you didn't see on faster.com, we put out this really great blog post of like, you know, are big booths at event conferences worth it, right? And so we used our own data to say, yes, they seem to be worth it when you do them right. And this is also the first year we had more than 30% of our sponsors do what we call an activation. So a booth is what you can typically imagine as, you know, a turnkey booth. There's like a back wall, a monitor, front cabinet, like, you know, your typical— some people call them exhibit stands, same thing, we call them booths. So booths are probably easier for you to imagine. And then activations we classify as anything that's not a turnkey part of your booth. So we had folks bring in things like food-related items, so like coffee, boba, ice cream, popsicles, popcorn, that kind of stuff. And then we also had folks bring in non-food activations, like, you know, basketball games, shoot hoops, different kind of like guessing games and stuff, interactive activations, like we had somebody do headshots in their booth, which actually was quite popular. And again, different things like a magician, so it doesn't always have to be food related. But just know that when we talk about activations, this is what we mean. So anything that's not a, not, that's a non-turnkey part of the booth, we consider to be an activation. So this is the first year we've been presented the data more simplified this way. So whether you're new returning sponsor here, I think it's really helpful to see it at this point. So you can one, set expectations between yourself, you know, maybe your CEO and your team of, you know, how many leads you might get faster. And then two, if you have budget, right? Like we did see there is this 60% lift in leads when you do your boost plus an activation versus those that didn't have an activation. So, you know, a bit of nuance there that yes, activations obviously cost cost extra budget and do require a bit more coordination from your team, right? It's gotta be approved by the venue and kind of like San Mateo County, which we do help all of our sponsors to do. But I think good to see here out at LAANC. I think, you know, I think there are no bad booths as we always say at FASTRIDE. It's quite different than maybe a Dreamforce or an Inbound. The booths are really front and center of the show, so you literally can't miss them. We've actually gotten the feedback that sometimes there's too much traffic to our booths. Our sponsors are not able to take as much of a break. But yeah, it's really good to see that kind of engagement there. So yeah, so yeah, I think a really helpful point too is like, you know, like I said, since 56% of our audience is at that VP level and above, you know, these are gonna be high-quality scams. We got that feedback a lot from our hosts sponsor calls we've been doing with all of our sponsors from the 2023 events is like, even if they were on the lower end of this kind of range of leads, you know, even if you just have 200 or so high quality, high value, you know, VP level and above decision makers, they have a much higher propensity to buy when you've met them in person, they've got the right title versus maybe, you know, going to these trade shows where you wanna get a lot of leads, but then you end up with a lot of leads that, you actually can't work or are not feasible or you need to just return to marketing. So good call out there. And yeah, I would say, you know, of the data that stands out, I think the, if you know, if you've got budget for it, I think the Platinum is the natural kind of entry point based on this data. And then the Diamond or Unicorn are always for folks who wanna go bigger, right? They're either launching something or promoting something new or they have the, you know, the footprint of the brand to really support that size of a booth and a footprint. And so yeah, I think that's kind of an interesting thing to see there on where folks have netted out. So yeah, that was just our category. The other thing I was going to cover today, because we do talk a lot about our Cherokee booth and it is linked in here, so for folks wanting to see it, I will link the slides and the YouTube recording in the deck. You can also just email us. My email is ai@fasttrain.com. Super easy, it's just my initials. So yeah, I wanted to cover some additional sponsor opportunities because we do talk about our engaged with a lot. And since, you know, sponsors with activations have this lift in leads, we want to talk about some of the activations that were included in those, in those counts. And also these are more venue-wide. So I think the more venue-wide you can go with your activation, obviously they are a little bit more limited in number to be campus-wide. But the more you can be campus-wide, the more folks will, you know, be your brand and have multiple touchpoints with you. Versus maybe some of the smaller activations where it's like just in your booth. So there is, you know, two flavors there of you want it to be campus-wide or do you want it to just be in your booth? And there's different things you can do within those two things. But yeah, we'll just cover off a few of these here. So first and foremost, I'll just go in order here. We've got our Speakeasy sponsorship. So this is something we started a couple years ago when we went to like a festival style. We do this Speakeasy and actually we've moved it, I would say, every time each year just to keep it a again, not so secret bar. But basically, when folks find the speakeasy, it does become super popular because then, you know, word of mouth spreads and they're like, this is where the speakeasy is. It's a really cool lounge, right? You can, you can think about it as being a really cool, insanely cool lounge, you know, complete with full beverages throughout the day. So there's like full coffees and stuff in the morning and then alcoholic beverages in the afternoon. And it's a really fun hangout area. The I think Vonage has sponsored this the last couple of years. That's really fun. You know, their team has brought in like a DJ and stuff. It's like you can kind of go nuts in the speakeasy. But yeah, it's really fun because I think you get the branding and it's like a cool thing to associate your brand with is having a speakeasy sponsorship there. And it does include, you know, branded signage and all that kind of stuff. So the speakeasy is a fun one, especially if you want to lean into maybe like that dark kind of speakeasy, not so secret vibe. That's where we've seen it work well in the past. The coffee sponsorship, this one is already kind of have a tent— has a tentative hold on it, but just throwing it out there for future years, right? We do this coffee sponsorship that is venue-wide. Think about coffee at any event, people need their coffee, buy my coffee. So yeah, it is our most popular activation. I would say other than our unicorn sponsor this year, that was our Sensify, literally the coffee sponsor was number 2, so. Good to be the coffee sponsor. And I really like this activation because we've actually made it better throughout the years. Like, I feel like a lot of people are like, ah, you know, when I just want some coffee, I'm just paying for like branded cups and that's kind of it. Well, like, yeah, you do get that here, but you also get a branded coffee cart. So this year Mercury had it actually in their booth. So that was really great for them because they could scan folks as they were coming up to get coffee, talk to them about Mercury, literally in their booth. So you know, hard to miss those folks that are coming up naturally to get their morning brew. We also did a secondary location of a mobile coffee van, so this includes the branding for that, right? Merkur actually sent folks over to the van to do like a, they did like a fill-in-the-blank on their coffee cups, which is a fun like social activation and engagement. So they were getting folks to do that and striking up conversations that way. Again, it's how they generated a lot of leads by having the coffee sponsorship. So yeah, there is a branding element to it, but I would say too, it does drive a lot of traffic, right? Just think about every morning people are gonna wanna have their coffee. And so it does drive a lot of traffic to you. Yeah. And then the next one I would say that people see everywhere are the lanyards. Like everyone has to wear their lanyard and badges all day. So if you're the lanyard sponsor, not only will everyone be wearing your logo for 3 days, but it's also in photos. So, you know, it is co-branded with SaaStr on all the lanyards. We do a system where, you know, all the lanyards are the same color and format. So yeah, it's this year with Secure Frame, as you can see in the photo there. Yeah, everyone will see your logo throughout the conference, but also in photos of attendees for literally years to come. So that's kind of a fun one if you're into brand awareness and, you know, you want to get in front of literally everyone in a very turnkey way, right? You literally just set a logo. It's really easy. Low lift, high ROI. It was the lanyard sponsorship. A few other ones that I want to touch on because we do a number of lounges on site just with the way that we have festival style for South by Annual. So the Founders Lounge is something we actually added this year. This was a hit. I'm gonna say this is the first year we did it. It was absolute hit. Like it always had CEOs and founders in it having really great conversations. So I really love the Founders Lounge. It's in a really great location. So basically if you can envision this, this is a VIP founder only lounge. It is gated, so there's literally people like standing at the doors being like checking your badge, like, are you a founder? So yeah, I mean, you can get like, if you really wanna hit just founders, like your ICP is just founders, that's after, this is a great way to get in front of them. Because it does come with, you know, kind of this turnkey sponsor branding. People do use it. It does have, you know, food and beverage throughout the event days. So people are kind of like naturally hanging out in there, driving traffic to it. And it does include a branded, like, you know, high voice space with a monitor so that— and some signage that you can engage attendees as they visit the space. So it's a great way to have natural conversations with everyone, and you already know they're a CEO and founder if they've gotten in the lounge. Like, it's a really easy thing. You don't even have to ask them, like, do they— they're by nature a founder or CEO only. So yeah, that's a really fun one that we added this year that was a super popular activation. We similarly added a VC lounge this year, and it was also a hit. I'm gonna be honest, I was a little skeptical when we were like, let's add a VC lounge. It was always full. Like, I, even at one point we were like trying to close the lounge early for the party, I was like, we gotta just let them stay because there's so many people in here. Um, so yeah, the VC lounge was packed full. Um, very similarly to the Founders Lounge, this one's a little bit different in that it's open to investors, founders, and CEOs because it's for the, it's for the investors plus whoever they're meeting with, right? So slightly different audience, but if, you know, investors are your target market plus the CEOs for some sort of, or you're like an alternate financing platform, this is a good one for you. Yeah, the VC Lounge is busy all 3 days. I would say there was never a dull moment in that lounge this year. And it's very similar to the Founders Lounge, right? Kind of works the same way. It's gated. We have folks there. It's got food and beverage throughout the event days. And again, it comes with a space where you can engage this audience specifically if you want something more targeted, right? That's not a booth, that's not just in the show floor. The other thing we've done for the last few years is this thing called Brain Dates. This, this is like kind of the heart of the Expo, if you will, because it is in the Expo. It's a huge lounge networking space. So you could think of it as a networking lounge. Literally, I think like more than half of our attendees do Brain Dates. So you're going to hit a lot of people throughout the entirety of the conference. Plus, I really like the Brain Date branding because not only is it on-site branding, But you do get a fair amount of free event and post-event branding just because of the nature of how Brain Dates work. It does include, you know, kind of desktop browser plus mobile app experience branding with when we promote Brain Dates. And let me tell you, we promote Brain Dates a lot. So it is a lot of branding that you get leading up to the event to build brand awareness. You get branding in the app, you get branding literally physically on site, and it— I like this I like this one a lot too because you do get the opportunity to include some of your key company leaders as Braindate mentors, which is really fun. Gives you like a leg up on the platform. And again, you kind of have the space to engage with folks as they're coming up to their Braindates. Very similar to the founders in the VC lounge, the Braindate lounge is always packed, right? Because Braindates have set times that they are throughout the day, right? They're like 20 or 30-minute increments. There's literally a constant flow of traffic of people coming through and from their Braindates to come network throughout the day. So you do get, again, a large swath of people that are participating in Braindates, and a really great one to, I think, sponsor because not only can you, you know, engage folks as they're coming or going from their Braindates and after checking in and participate in Braindates as like a mentor, but you do get this additional, you know, mobile app kind of desktop branding and email branding, which I feel like is really great value add if that's something where you want to drive traffic, you know, kind of pre-events and build upon your Braindate Lounge activation at the event. Okay, a few more here. We do have our speaker lounge, so I can fit all lounges on one page, but we do a speaker lounge. Again, similar setup here. This one is speakers only, all 3 days of SaaStr Annual. I know Callan Lee did this a couple years ago. Not only do you get the turnkey branding throughout the lounge space, you know, there's food and beverage in there. You do get like an activation area where you can provide like a premium branded swag item or activation for speakers and VIPs. And honestly, if you've looked at our past speaker list and you're like, I really wanna get in front of those types of bigwigs, like, this is your way to do that. Like, I know some speakers who literally only come to the green room and then they leave. Like, they never, and then some of them, you know, they do stick around, they come through all 3 days, they walk the show floor, hang out in the founders and the VC lounge. But if you're really keen on getting in front of the speaker set, really the green room's the best way to do that. Because we do have some folks who come in and they come out, but you do have to go through the green room if you're a speaker. So that's a really interesting one there if the caliber of speakers is something you want to get ahead of. And then registration, I mean, everyone's gotta go through registration. So it says you have to wear your badge all 3 days. So yeah, this is the exclusive sponsorship of the registration areas. I will say too, Annual has more than one registration area. So this is really nice 'cause you get multiple touchpoints for branding. So no matter where people enter, Your branding is there. It's the first thing they see when they enter. It's the last thing they see when they leave each day. First thing they see when they come back each day. So yeah, registration really keeps you top of mind. You know, this one does include things like co-branded teachers and registration counters. And you can also do like a fun giveaway thing. So like this year when Greenhouse did it, they gave folks like a token to then take to their booth and then, you know, basically play this game with them and talk to them more about what Greenhouse did. So has a fun activation, and we actually branded the counters in like the Greenhouse green, so it's all co-branded. So yeah, it's a really fun activation, and you know, obviously a conversation starter for when folks enter and leave each day. The Big Party. So the Big Party is near and dear to my heart, as everyone probably knows if you've watched these before. This would be an exclusive sponsorship of our Big Party. It's basically our big concert of the annual. We only do one of these. So yeah, the Big Party, the last few years we've had Cheat Codes. This last year, Duke Dumont last year, Cash Cash the year before. So great lineup. It's always a crowd drawer and a crowd pleaser. It's super energetic, like literally GCOES was like getting into the crowd this year. It was really a lot of fun. So this is a great way, like, you know, if you wanna be known for being a bit more fun, being more on brand, this is a great way to do it. And not only, again, we try and make these a little different from maybe your typical ancillary sponsorships and the fact that, you know, if you do sponsor the big party, It is something that includes a VIP area for the sponsoring company and passes to come to the show, right? So that's a really great value add because you can invite your customers and prospects to come, you know, meet you at the party, go to the annual and enjoy a red carpet experience right there at the festival grounds. So it's really fun. I really like that one quite a lot. And, you know, our attendees always, our attendees always remember the big party. So that's a good one. There. Okay. I think this might be our last one, or there's one more. Oh, there's two more. Okay. So yeah, the last few here. So key cards. We had access to buy two of these this year. These are really fun. These are branded. And so this is what their branding looked like, which was super fun. And then on the back, it like continued the branding, which is really fun too. But basically, these branded room keys go to the staff or guests that are staying in our dedicated hotel block. Listen, they're fully customizable front and back. I think you guys get the key cards, but it's a great way to engage folks via conversation starter. Like on the back, Expensify had like their QR code for Expensify Chat. It said, you know, to come meet them at their booth number. Really great conversation starter, plus the fact that, you know, attendees are gonna look at this every time when they're checking in, when they're going to the room, they have to keep in their wallet so they can get back in their room. So yeah, these are pretty cool and we have these become a conversation starter because of the cool branding. That expensive if I did with them. Next, kind of similarly, the water bottles. I mean, these things honestly show up for years everywhere, like in photos. Just people will email us when they lose their water bottle. I don't know if that is a normal occurrence, but for Fastbirders, they'll be like really sad and be like, I lost my water bottle, please send me a new one, like I'm devastated. I mean, sadly we actually don't have any more from 2023. We ordered the right quantity, but yeah, we ran through our water bottles. Basically everyone at the show got one. These are co-branded where it's like Sapporo on the front, co-branded Sapporo on the back. And then you do get the fully branded hydration station. So this year we actually used these vending stations that were really sparkling water, which is really nice. So those were nice 'cause they drew, they drove a lot of, you know, traffic throughout the days. Again, similarly to coffee, people need their water, they need to stay hydrated and these water bottles are a great way to do that. So these are really nice. I actually have mine. Ooh. Look at that. These are like the nice stainless steel ones. I put a sticker on mine that will put your logo here. Yeah, those are water bottles. Yeah, they're great to travel with. All right, happy hours. So this one is interesting because you can either do it exclusively or you can, you know, sponsor for one of the days and then have a co-sponsor with you. It's limited to 2 per day. So if you think about this, you know, there's kind of one happy hour per day each day of the event. So there's technically 6 slots, but there could be 4 if, you know, one of the dates is exclusive. So again, this is why they're co-exclusive— or sorry, co-branded or exclusive— includes Provia branding on the agenda, which I think is quite cool. I know this year a few folks that were our sponsors did like more of an activation during happy hour, which I think is quite nice. And then I think too, if you have a booth, this is where for the next year, something new we're doing is including like a branded bar at your booth so that during happy hour, you know, it helps drive traffic to your booth to drive a bit more of those lead scans. And then, you know, it includes all the fun kind of like branding things on site you might expect. Plus, again, this added opportunity to invite your customers and prospects to attend the happy hour, which I feel like is quite nice. Even though, you know, it's a one-day kind of turnkey thing, still kind of a nice value add to do so. Okay, and the last few we have that are campus-wide, they're a little bit maybe more fun and out of the non-traditional, I would say. The Airstream sponsorship. So you can see we've branded it all Dexter this year. These are our Airstreams that we do on site. They are basically refreshment stations. So they've got cold beverages throughout the day. They also have a lounge area right outside it. So every time I kind of drove by this year, I saw folks sitting at the lounge, having cold drinks, using it for meetings. People use it as a meeting space. But this is nice because it includes that logo placement in the lounge. So that's really a fun one there. The pedicabs, I always say, should 100% be sponsored because we have a few of these drive around the campus. If you've seen these like pedicabs or the bicycle cab, you may have seen them at like Coachella or any other music festival or just, you know, in your neighborhood near you, like Central Park or something. But yeah, these pedicabs literally zoom people around the campus. It's quite large. So people do take these all day when we have them available. You could do some fun co-branding that says, you know, meet me at my booth on them. It's a great, literally billboard. You can think of it as a billboard for the 3 days of SASTR. Like, these are quite fun, and actually I think $30,000 is probably cheaper than a billboard these days. So it's kind of like a moving billboard during the time at SASTR for all of our attendees to see. And then last but certainly not least, our dog lounge. So we've had puppies at SASTR Annual, I think, the first or second one. Anyways, we try and do these— we try and do this every year that we can. Um, this is the sponsorship of our adoptable dog lounge, so any dogs that come to FASTR, um, are fully adoptable. A lot of us have dogs on the team and are dog lovers, so we really like this one. Um, yeah, this one includes like, you know, branding and all that kind of fun stuff, um, for the people and the dogs. Um, we do donate a portion of the proceeds from this one to the organization on behalf of the sponsor, which I think quite nice. So that's kind of a nice one there if you're into that kind of thing. Who doesn't love puppies? All right, since it's 9:30, I do want to try and keep this short and sweet. So again, if you're more interested, this is what I mean by turnkey when I was talking about turnkeys all that time before. But yeah, I wanted to spend the majority of our time on more of our, you know, what we call additional ancillary activations that you can see are campus-wide. We do also have a number of activations that are just booth related, but want to mostly spotlight and highlight the campus-wide ones because these are limited in how many we have, right? I'm like, this is— even though this feels long, like this is it from now until September, like these will all get taken. Some of them are already earmarked. So if you do see one that you like, just let us know. Again, I'm AI at SAS for AIM2Go, so those are my initials, the letter A, the letter I. At sastrink.com. Um, and thanks for joining. We hope this was super helpful. Please reach out if you do have any questions, and we will see you all next week.