SaaStr Insider Webinar: SaaStr Events Insider Tips for Success

Fantastic, Dave. Let's kick it off.

Yeah, no, excited for today. Um, Europa is coming up in less than 2 months back in London.

I actually can't believe how fast it came upon us. Uh, I'm Brian Alcesser. I'm on the sales team here at Saastr.

Hey everyone, I'm David Jankelovich. Same thing, helping out sales at Saastr. So we're here to talk a little bit about Saastr Europa 2024, which is coming up um, in less than 2 months, June 4th and 5th in London. Um, it's our second year in a row in London, and because we're back at this same venue, um, we have some really great tips to share, uh, from the experience last year and some things that really can make the event extra special, um, for sponsors to get great results.

Yeah, David and I have been now with SaaStr, I think, almost 4 years, and so we've seen quite a bit within all the shows that we've been part of, and Europa for sure is a unique show. So we're happy to share some tips as we're going through this.

Yeah. And so with that, yeah, too, feel free to reach out to Brian or I directly, you know, if you want any bespoke advice or to talk more about this. So here we go. 5 insider tips for SaaStr Europa 2024. Number 1, Brian, you want to talk about number 1 a little bit?

A solid activation. So I think one of the big potential misses that can happen at Europa, or at least any of our SaaStr events, but definitely Europa, is leaning too far on your swag as the way in which people are going to come to your booth. Obviously have swag. We're not saying don't have swag, but you can really use an activation to make the most of your show. And so we partner with, I mean, dozens of local companies to help give options to you all at cost. This isn't— this is really how we help support our sponsors. But to go and get activations on site within your booth. Now these are available at Super Gold or above. And what we've seen data-wise is that at least there's at least an over 50% lift on your daily lead rate on days that you have something. I think Europa is unique in that some of these activations are super fun. There is— I mean, you see the deal cart on the bottom left for ice cream. But there's like ice cream and churros and all sorts of really unique, I would say, in-country yummy things. And then there's games, right? And gamification. I've seen everything from lockboxes that need keys in order to open them for prizes all the way to, you know, you can see the putt-putt golf at the top there. And as long as it's really gamified and done well, it'll get out there. But At the end of the day, I, I really, my personal favorites are usually food, food related. Not because I'm always hungry, I am always hungry, but because they are, they're really some of the more, I think when you're on a, when you're in a show and you're running around and you can get something to eat, it's a, it's a call to action to go check out what's going on over where people are getting the ice cream.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah, food's great. Some of this other stuff could be simple, right? The putt-putt, simple. Easy to execute, and folks had a lot of fun with it. And Make, Make had this really cool wheel. Like, it wasn't just any wheel. This was like a super wheel. It was really well designed. It like lit up. It was pretty awesome. So yeah, I mean, all sorts of fun things. Don't forget about the activation. Talk to us about what you're thinking. As a reminder, you do need approval for the activations. Mainly, we would just wanna make sure there's no issues with the venue and the fire marshals and all of those details that we know about. So give us a buzz. Let us know what you wanna do. Talk to us about options and we'll help facilitate.

We also want to avoid duplicates, right? Like we don't want to make sure that your, your opera, your thing is unique to the show so that it's not competing with another one.

If everyone had putt-putt, it would be a little weird.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We can make holes though. We can do 18 holes at, at, I don't know. There's an idea.

All right, let's go to number 2. Yeah. And let me just click here. Number 2, after parties.

Yes. Okay. Why don't you kick this one off?

Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So one of the things, you know, SaaStr London is a destination. We have folks coming from all over the world, across Europe. We had folks from India, Israel, US, even from Asia. So we had, you know, a huge conglomerate of folks coming from everywhere. So they're in London and they have, there's a great opportunity to engage with them. Outside of the event. So here's a couple of examples of what some folks did last year. Verdane did an awesome rooftop cocktails, Paddle and Topline had an awesome like boat party. There was tons of other happy hours, dinners, events, and just a great way to kind of offer more value to attendees, focus on, you know, your ideal profile, focus on your customers and invite them to, you know, a get-together post-event. The other thing that's really you can see this, uh, this was a blog post here, uh, by Jason, a guide to some of the, uh, ancillary unofficial and side events. So if you're planning something, um, as a sponsor and you let us know, um, we will promote it to the audience of the event. Um, it doesn't mean you have to, you know, have a, uh, something for everyone because we're going to have, you know, thousands of people. Uh, but if you want to do, you know, the boat— the boat was limited in capacity. Um, you could set parameters around it. It could be, you know, request an invite type of thing, but we will help you promote it. And just a great way to get, you know, even more value out of the time in London.

Yeah, look, it's, it's a really walkable area where we are. I would say that if you're going, just like a word of caution, if you are going to do an afterparty, be mindful that the venue you're looking at doesn't require a cab because it could take a long time. London does have traffic issues, right? Like it's so you don't want to, you don't want to be in a cab 28 minutes to get to a party because you might have a really hard time getting turnout. But luckily, like you can kind of see in the right-hand side, this picture is like the exact area where Tobacco Docks is, give or take a little bit of room, but it's pretty much right there. And London Bridge has so many different little cool areas, including you can kind of see like the ball-like building, the spherical building on the right. If you keep going to the right, there's one of the tallest towers like right there, and it's a really nice place. Got some great rooftop restaurants and everything as well. So it's very walkable. I would, I would stick to the walkable areas to do things, and, and there's plenty of opportunity to do so.

Yeah, I'll just add, if you notice here, you know, teaming up is also a good way to do this. Um, there was plenty of examples of that both at Annual and Europa, but here you can see Paddle and Topline got together, um, to host the boat. And so it's a, you know, great way tap into each other's networks, offset costs, and, you know, drive even more awareness of your brand and what you're doing.

Yeah, 100%.

Cool. Awesome. All right. Number 3, invite your customers and prospects.

This is such an important one.

This is the one.

Look, here's the thing. There will be 4,000 people at Europa this year, and that's great for getting top of the funnel awareness, especially in bringing your brand in front of new eyes. But what I would definitely double down on is the fact that this is an opportunity where you can go have fun with your customers, right? I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn, and one of my favorite posts that I talk a lot about is about the importance of building relationships with your customers, because we're all in this SaaS game together and we're going to be doing it for a while, right? At least most of us are. And in doing so, you build these relationships. You're going to be working with these people for your career. So bring them together, go have fun with them, have them come here. We, we offer, um, for especially for our, our, our Super Gold and above partners, tickets are included within your, your sponsorship. We want you to come invite your customers. Now every sponsor of SaaStr also has a discount code associated with tickets, right? So use it, get your customers to come. But you might wind up finding that by doing so you get that closed deal that is at the finish line that you're just trying to figure out how to have that compelling moment, that important aspect to get them over the line. That can be, and for many is, SaaStr for sure.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to kind of echo here or double-click on for a moment is the concept of engaging your mid-funnel, right? You have a funnel of opportunities and just letting them know, hey, we're going to be at SaaStr, would love to invite you as our guest. Just the gesture can activate opportunities. Hey, we're also doing an after-party. Great way to wrap your arms around that funnel and get you know, pretty quick ROI for the folks who do this right. And of course, your customers, right? You don't want to forget about them. What a great opportunity to engage them, you know, IRL. So pretty powerful. Cool. All right. Number 4, Brian.

Rushing right along.

2 more. Ah, this one, this one. I'll jump in here a little bit. You know, look, SaaStr, it's going to be, it's going to go, it's going to be 2 full days. There's going to be all sorts of fun stuff. And it's going to go go by fast, but there's an awesome opportunity to continue the engagement and learnings from the event and get more out of it post-event. And sharing learnings is a great way to like continue to, again, get that engagement with the audience that you met. So there's a couple great examples of that on social. Something that I love, Make actually did a video. They had like a videographer come in and do a video of their experience and their CEO talking customers and all the action happening at the booth and things that they saw. And so that just, it got a ton of like traction on social. I remember this one flying around and something that they used for a while as well, that asset. And so that was really great. It was ChartMogul on the right. They put out a benchmark report that they timed with SaaStr and they leveraged, you know, post-show engagement to continue promoting that, not just at the event, but post-event. And so things like that, um, are great ways to get more out of your experience. Um, and I'd also say to plan for this before the event, right? Don't just, you know, wait for the event to happen and then say, okay, what are we going to do now? Uh, I think what we see, the best teams, the one that get the best results, the best ROI, um, are the ones who are planning what to do post-show, pre-show.

I, I, I'll, I'll also just say one other thing too, is that you know, finding out a little bit about your customers on site, like, or your prospects on site, the people you're talking to, where are they located, where are they coming in from, capturing those moments, capturing those little location aspects are really going to help you throughout your year because the teams that work these leads throughout the year, knowing that some of these are at the top of the funnel, they're, when they're doing things in, let's say, New York or they're doing things in London or Berlin or wherever they're doing the next event for their own personal company, if they're pulling lists of those individuals of where they are, it's a great way to keep them within your community and keep them engaged with you so that, you know, maybe it's a way in which this is the first of a series of catalyst events that help to get to that, that close one deal. So 100%, you know, capturing those, capturing some insights about your, the people coming to booth is important. And then, yeah, I love this post, David. I don't think we talk about this enough about the, the learnings piece, like what happened, you know, what did you take away, what was their highlights. And I, you know, the people that do this the best are doing it constantly. So yeah. Yeah.

Okay, cool. And lastly, taking advantage of an ancillary or media opportunity. I think, Brian, you've been the master at this in terms of just, you know, helping sponsors really get the most out of it in terms of those, you know, let's talk about ancillaries for a minute, right? Like ways that you can really extend your brand and your reach at the event outside of, let's say, your booth.

I think one thing is for sure, right? We all go to events and we go there to learn. We go there to network and engage with each other. But like when we do, we want natural, really positive opportunities for engagement. And the most natural opportunity for engagement are these little intermediary aspects, right? Like something as subtle as the water bottle, a water bottle branding, right, is, is huge because it touches everyone and you're putting your brand in the hands of everyone. Whereas even like you can see the pub, which this one is, is sold at the current moment, but the pub, like it's an example where you're setting up a space that's branded, right? And you're, it's going to be yours. You're going to engage the people that are in there. In a natural, very positive way. And you see this done at every single conference, the big conferences anywhere anyway, especially the ones like I'm thinking, the ones in Vegas, AWS, like you see these where like the restaurants are taken over or different spaces are taken over or certain experiences are handed out. These ancillary moments are really important to getting in front of those eyes. No, Second to that is that you have a huge audience that follows the content of this show. So Saastr's shows are, are always live streamed. They're always promoted. We have a half a million audience that just follows Jason alone. We have 2 million people that follow our content on a monthly basis on our website. And so when you're able to then say, okay, well, there's 4,000 people at the Europa Show that I'm gonna be in front of, but I could actually get in front of the rest of the audience that's gonna engage with the content in a more holistic fashion by just doubling up and getting into the media side. That's where we see our media opportunities like our podcasts and our newsletters and even our webinars leading up to it really come to life. So there's really opportunity, especially— I would also say that on our digital side, we see our traffic spike at our hot moments, at our hot months like June and September where our big events are. There's more eyes coming to SaaS, so there's more content being consumed and there's more eyes against your assets. So It's really the best possible time for you to be in front of this. And whereas some brands have already taken advantage of this, we do still have some availability on the media side. It's accessible pricing, it's accessible in terms of availability, and then also it's really quick to put on. It's pretty turnkey. So if that's interesting, do take advantage of it. You know, as an example of just the mass, our daily media, our daily newsletter and our media side gets over 800,000 impressions a month, right? Our podcast every year— well, last year it had over 1.2 million listens. Like, we are— we have massive reach that can come along with your on-site presence. And so really flexing that is a great way to make sure you're maximizing the opportunity SaaS is presenting at this moment.

Yeah, I, I'd say that's definitely an insider tip, right? We see sponsors, um, who secure their sponsorship and at the same time say, I want Jun for my, uh, newsletter for, uh, June and July so that I can get that post-show bounce, or I also want May to get a pre-show. So yeah, a lot of our returning sponsors book those media months with their sponsorship. Like Brian said, we've had great audience growth, so we do have some more availability. And so there's a couple spots left. Let us know what you're interested in, but it's just a great way to, you know, you're already coming, you're already investing in the event, in the audience. You know, it's the right audience for you. And so it's just a great way to really extend that reach beyond the couple thousand folks in person.

Yeah, I'll lastly say, look, like we're coming into the most exciting months of our year. There's no joke like June. And then we have July, August and September, right? Like these are our main months. We do June with Europa, September with Annual, and it's where we're getting the most amount of traffic. This is our exciting moment. This is— we really heat up for the summer. No pun intended, maybe pun intended. Anyway, we do like we—

so not in the Southern Hemisphere. Come on, Brian.

I mean, this is true. That's— they're getting a little different. Yeah, but we definitely get fired up at this point of the year. So it's— I do say like if you're thinking about ways in which you can deploy your brand in front of an audience, a qualified audience, this is the place to come and do it. Our ICP, our target it really leans founder. It has a huge amount of executive presence in some of the assets. It stretches all parts of the organization, really. So like, just if you're interested in learning more, you want to see what it could be to be in front of a certain, a certain target demographic, reach out. We're happy to share.

Yeah. So I got one other thing here. We went through the 5 tips. I think those are pretty good insider learnings. Thank you, Brian, for bringing all your experience to talk about this. In terms of the ancillaries, there are a few still available. And so I kind of— a lot are taken, but I brought them together in one slide for us to talk about. So there's a couple of really great ones that I thought were worth highlighting for a couple of minutes. Yeah, I'll just kick off with the first one or two here just to, you know, bring a little light onto what they are. The Wi-Fi sponsorship, really cool opportunity. Everyone comes on site, uses the Wi-Fi, all the attendees. And what you have the opportunity to do is both name the network right? And then also name the password. So it, you know, would be Saastr Wi-Fi from XYZ brand. And the password, you know, could be something related to your brand. So like, everyone's got to type it in. Not only that, we got to promote the Wi-Fi all over, you know, as you walk in, it's on the badges, everyone has to know how to log into this. So we're promoting your brand everywhere, everyone's going to type your name in, everyone will know your name at some point during Saastr. So Wi-Fi is just a great way to reach everyone.

Yeah, I think that, so there's two on here that stand out right away to me. Well, three, but I'll just start with these two because they're next up on the list, the coffee and tea. So I think there's an epidemic in SaaS where coffee is a thing and then in London, tea, right? Everyone loves their tea. So coffee and tea, it's gonna touch most of the hands in this show. It'll touch most of them multiple times. And what this is, you're getting all the branded signage on your cup, on the cups, and as well as on the actual areas where the, where this is, where the, where it's—

Yeah. And there's always a line, right? I mean, that's just like—

it's a massive line. It's a really great opportunity to just place yourself in front of the largest amount of the audience. And I think that's the same thing with registration. Our registration sponsorship is the ability to touch every single person coming into the show. Literally, like, you have the ability to be in front of them.

You can't touch them, you can't touch them, but you can, you know, you have the ability to be in front of them.

You also give them something, um, you know, at, at the entrance, right? You could do something that's a little extra that goes above and beyond even the $30K because you're, you're doing the— you have the ability to, you're in front of them. This is a really powerful sponsorship, um, in, uh, at Annual, we've had Paddle, we've had, we've had Ramp, we've had a few of the, some really big brands take advantage of this and they always yield some of the highest outcomes in terms of lead count just because of this opportunity to be in front of the audience.

You see that brand as you walk in the door, it's like the first thing you see. So very cool. What else? We also have happy hour opportunities, another way to, you know, highlight your brand at a time that folks are getting together. Everyone loves the happy hours and putting your name there is just a great way to get it in front of folks. I'm going to skip down to swag store. You know, everyone comes to Saastr and gets swag. It's something that we're pretty famous for. I got a closet full of Saastr t-shirts and hats over here. But yeah, I mean, everyone comes to get that and putting your brand right there at the swag. We've seen some folks that are kind of in the swag business or swag adjacent business, you know, sponsor that station over the years and have always gotten great results. Excuse me. And then lastly, there's Brain Dates, right, Brian? And that's something I know you've, you've been pretty involved in.

Brain Dates is one of my favorite and really our most tried and true, I would say, ancillary sponsorship we have on site. Tried and true because we've even done case studies over the years on it. Bless you, David.

Thank you.

We've even done case studies on it over the years to show its effectiveness. And what's really interesting, so our Braindate area, every single person that comes to Saastr has the ability to do a Braindate. A Braindate is pretty much a roundtable discussion on a topic that you can either set yourself or you can join one that's already preset. And that's, it's a really, really great opportunity for not only networking, but to go in and have a deep dive kind of conversation in a topic you like. And so their sponsors not only get to do this, but they can also lead what we call Super Brain Dates, which are mentored, a little bit larger sessions inside the Brain Date area. And so it's a way in which you can have some cool topic-specific content that you can drive alongside having your brand right next to it. I love the Brain Date sponsorship. It's one of the most popular areas every single year at Saastr, at every single Saastr event we do. People know that they're gonna, when they come to Saastr, that they're going to do a brain date. So if you wanna have some, some really great interaction with the audience, this is a really great opportunity.

Especially in Europe. I, I don't know what it is. Look, it, they, it's great in annual, but in Europe, I mean, it's just everyone loves this. And putting your brand in front of all those great conversations and thought leadership really associates you with, I think what Saastr is probably most well known for, which are those really great Conversations that happen, discussions about really important topics. And so just a fantastic way to really extend your reach and position your brand with thought leadership, with conversation, with learnings. So it's a good one. These are good ones. They're still available. They probably won't be for long. There's also, yeah, we're moving into full production. So this is it. This is the time.

This is the time. This is the moment. Yeah. We're pumped, everyone. I think that what we have ahead here for London is going to be super exciting this year. It's going to be our biggest Europa event ever. I know we say that every year, but honestly, we're growing every year. So that's kind of a fun way to— it's going to be bigger. It's going to be awesome. So that's exciting. And then, I mean, I can't wait for us to get back to London. So for all our friends overseas, we're coming, we're coming for you. Can't wait to see you.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, listen, if anyone wants this deck, I know that it'll be available on YouTube with our recording from the livestream. And feel free to reach out to Brian or myself for any questions if you want to talk about any other tips and tricks or if you're interested in any of these. Ancillaries or media, we're available to help in any way we can. And, um, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll talk soon, right?

Game on. Uh, well, if you want to reach out to me, um, you can get me on LinkedIn. You can also find me at my email, which is brian@sasterco.com.

Great.

Thanks everyone.

Thanks. Bye-bye.