SaaStr Insider Webinar: The Ultimate Guide to SaaStr Europa Sponsorships

And then, alrighty, let's see. Cool, see some of our Europa sponsors in the room. Thanks for joining. Make Brian a co-host here. Alrighty, I think, let me just check our stream. Hello everyone. Wow, that was so loud in my ears.

I'm so sorry.

Oh, wow. Wow.

At least I know the microphone's working.

It's working. All right, welcome, everyone. We're recording and live streaming. So we thought we would use today's— let me go slideshow here. We thought we'd use today's weekly sponsor webinar, an insider that we do every Thursday at 9:00 as a deep dive to SaaS for Europa. I see a lot of our Europa sponsors in the room and on the live stream. So we're excited. There is quite a bit to get through. As we were making this deck, we realized it was a little dense. So we'll try and keep it light. If you have questions at all, any questions related to things you see on the screen or things we might be missing, please drop it into either the chat or Q&A. Either one works. That's part of why we're here is to do the ultimate sponsor guide to this year's SAS Europa. Waylon and Brian are here to help me, you know, just with their best tips and tricks to help activate. You know, kind of final, final-ish reminders because we're about a month away from Europa. So super exciting times. Um, so yeah, without further ado, we're going to jump right into it. Again, I'll try and speed through most of this. Yeah, since a lot of it is in the sponsor portal, which we'll chat about in a second. A lot of this I think we've covered on individual calls, but if you haven't had one with us yet or you feel like you need one after this call, obviously just let us know. Um, and yeah, without Without further ado, yeah, SAS Tour Europa 2024. Let's get into it. So overview, I think you guys know this, so it is the 4th and 5th of June. There is some stuff on the 3rd. So as a sponsor, if you haven't booked your travel yet, good idea to have at least some of your team arriving, you know, either early morning of the 3rd to be there to activate in the afternoon of the 3rd for sponsor load-in and then the opening reception that we're doing on site. So I'll cover all that, but just to call out there on the dates and times, I'll I'll also call out in a second what times you, you know, are technically done done with the show, if that helps folks travel out if you haven't done so already. Because most of you know we're at Tobacco Docks, so if you were a sponsor last year, this is the— or an attendee last year and are now sponsoring, this is the same venue we were in last year. It's in central London, Tobacco Docks, fairly easy to get to, you know, by— which is on the next slide— rail, cab, all those things. Uber, super handy. As a sponsor, I'm going to call this out. I do recommend clicking this link once we send the full slide deck, or you could just go on the 2BagOut Docs website. There is a link that they have for their 3D tour. I do recommend doing it if you haven't been before. It'll just give you a good sense of like the bearings. They've got like one of these Matterports. The one you'll want to really go through is the ground floor. This is where like 99% of things are. The Sphere is on the ground floor. So it kind of drops you into this like Let's see where it drops us. Dollhouse mode, I think. So yeah, it'll drop you into Great Gallery, which is like Stage A, which is a little confusing. But if you come right out here, this is like, and go up, like this is where the first sponsor section is over here. Why I call this out is like, this is a perfect example of Tobacco Docks is an indoor-outdoor space, as you can see in this walkthrough. Like, obviously you're undercover as a sponsor here, right? But you are in the— you're covered, but you're in the elements, if you will, just because the fact of like, you know, the roof doesn't go all the way, the way across. It is contiguous, or it isn't contiguous, I should say. So yeah, just one thing to keep in mind there, right? So like, if you're in the, you know, um, uh, Diamond, Platinum, and Super Gold level, this is basically your area here under the COVID you know, right outside of Stage A, right across from the networking. And then hopefully without making you guys nauseating, I'll just go real quick to where the golds are, which are down, down this walkway. But you'll see kind of the same thing. It is, it's undercover, but also, you know, the roof doesn't go all the way. So just bear that in mind. You know, we do have things like umbrellas and stuff for shade if the sun moves and hits you. But yeah, you guys are under this cover here. So again, same idea, you know, it is the roof doesn't go all the way across. You guys are under. Where the canopy is if you will, but it is indoor-outdoor. I just got off the phone with the venue and they're like, it's great weather today. So, and it was last week.

I love this virtual tour. This is, they, we've done a virtual tour of the space. This is excellent. This is great.

No, it's super handy. Yeah. I actually feel like I need to get one made of San Mateo next, but it's, it's super handy. So yeah, if you haven't done that, look around it basically to get your bearings. Like it was an old, it is a historic building in the UK. It was an old shopping mall, I think they've said at one point. So once you kind of know that, it kind of makes sense how the buildings are spread out. But yeah, recommend doing that before you come. It'll, it'll actually help get you a good sense of things. But again, just calling out those two areas there. So now you kind of know where your sponsor area is at least. Okay, that took me in a weird direction. So I'm coming back. Yeah, super, super handy to do that as a sponsor. And then again, I know I call it out on other slides, but just again, bear in mind it is indoor-outdoor. So again, we do have things like extra umbrella. You are undercover, but we do have extra things like, you know, umbrellas, that kind of thing. But if you haven't ordered your swag yet, you know, good call out there of how the look and feel and the vibe is. But, you know, it's super gorgeous. We did it last year. It was great weather. We do a lot of things like, you know, iced coffees and like cold beverages. I know a lot of you have activations, which we'll chat about. And I said I would be speedy and I'm not. So I'm like, All for being speedy. You're doing— you're doing— we're doing great. Okay, accommodations, getting around. So as a sponsor, if you don't know the area or if you have some of your team, I think when I've seen people register their teams, I've seen a mix of both like local and then like, you know, kind of like North America contacts or worldwide. Again, really easy to get to. You can just literally get in a cab and tell them Tobacco Docks. They'll know where to take you. There is a car park. So if for some reason you're driving with some of your stuff or you have a rental, um, this is how to book the parking at the car park cuz you do need to pre-book it. It's literally right across the street. Um, it does have standard operating hours though. So like 7 in the morning, which will cover you in the mornings. It does close at 7 in the evening though. So that's one thing to be mindful of. Like if you're coming and staying late, let's say on day zero, or if you're staying late for loadout, you wanna make sure you move that car before the gate closes at 7. Because it closes promptly at 7. So just one thing to keep in mind there. I'd say most people, I don't think you need a car unless you really want one for some reason, because it's easy to get off of the, you know, the rail, the tube, and just by cab. So it's in central London, so it's really easy to get to. All right. The sponsor portal. Hopefully you guys have all been in this. I know you all submitted your bids there, so you probably have been. But for any extended team members, we're, for instance, going to be adding this recording and all of these slides to the sponsor portal. So we're going to keep updating it. Even going up to the event. So the latest and greatest will still live there. Just calling that out. And then, yeah, in terms of schedule, for those who maybe haven't booked travel or maybe finalizing like your schedule within South Europa, within the bounds of your travel, calling out on Monday, June 3rd, we do an early badge pickup and then a sponsor early booth setup. What do we mean by setup? The booths are turnkey. So like we'll print all the graphics. Your booth will be fully set up with like power. Um, your monitor, everything we'll go over in a second for your booth inclusions, that will all be set up. This is really if you're shipping anything via GSM or you're bringing anything on site yourself, um, and you wanna set up your booth and get your badge early. This is really the best time to do that. We do highly recommend it for all sponsors. I know a lot of you have like activations and swag and giveaways. It's a really great time to get in beforehand, um, so that you can set up your booth and your space, you know, manage your storage. Get your booth all set up and finalized and squeaky clean, um, and ready for the next day. It just saves a lot of stress versus having to do that all the day of, and it also being day one. Day one turns into a really long day if you do it that way. Can be done, it just turns into a, a long day in my opinion. So that's why we have the third. Um, also good idea to take advantage of our opening reception. So this is at Tobacco Docks. We're using just like the outside area where the ships are, um, as well as our registration area to do like a little kickoff reception. That is open to all ticket holders. So yeah, come, you know, have a drink, get your badge, start to mix and mingle. We also concurrently have a VIP— not to be confused, but we also concurrently have a VIP reception. It is invite only. So this is one that we are inviting folks to. So as you're registering your team, we're keeping an eye out. If they're at like a VP level and above, we will add them to this reception. If you feel like you have people in particular that meet that bar and you want to make sure they get added, just email myself. And we will help you look into that. Were you gonna say something?

I mean, I might just add one thing. Yes. First and foremost, take advantage of the, of the day before. I think a lot of people don't and then they regret it. So I'm just gonna double down on that. Take advantage of that. But most importantly, I just, that area, London Bridge, pretty busy area, especially during, especially like around the times of this event. I would, Maybe if you're considering driving in for like bringing in your swag or whatever it may be, like that might make sense. But if you're going to the event, that's really weird that I just did that. Sorry, the trigger. If you're going to the event, I would maybe— London has such really excellent things from cabs to trains to everything else that just look at the— look at transportation. It might just make more sense and it's going to get you more flexible. Yeah, I would plan for that.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a, yeah, there's a lot of great, you know, hotels and stuff in the area. So yeah. Yeah, it's central. So fairly easy to get to. Yeah. I would say, I think I only know of like 2 people who rented a car last year. But yeah, I, I don't think you need one unless you really want one. Coming into the first full day. So Tuesday, June 4th. So sponsors, you know, have some early access here in the morning before it's open to the general audience. You've got half an hour in the morning. So 7:30 to 8, pretty much, you know, come to get your badge early and then you kind of have between 8 to 9 to finalize your booth setup. I say this about all SaaStr events and it's true of Europa. We always have early birds. So I know the sponsor hall doesn't officially open till 9, but registration opens at 8. There will inevitably be some people walking around. So doesn't mean you have to fully staff, you know, your booth, but if you've got at least one person there, there's always early birds at Annual or Europa. They know the sponsor hall obviously officially opens at 9, but some people really like to get there early. And so just calling that out. You do have that extra half hour too to pick up your badge if you have, for instance, team members who are just coming on the 4th or the 5th. Not everyone needs to come on the 3rd. But that is something where you could take advantage of that so that they can get their badge before, you know, the general crowds kind of start coming at 8:39. It's usually when we start to see that. When they start to come. And then day 1 happy hour. So 3:30 to 5:30. Again, make sure you've got, like, hopefully an exec in the booth at that time to take advantage of happy hour. We set up bars all throughout the campus, but specifically in the sponsor area. So gonna be a ton of traffic all day, but especially during happy hour. Similar to the 5th, you know, same lineup here where you have early access in the morning. It's just half an hour later. Batch pickup will still be open if you have any new team members coming or rotating in. Sponsor Hall is open, you know, 9 to 5. We've got the happy hour and closing reception. Again, that's one of those things where like if you can stay through the full duration of the closing reception till 6, we do recommend it. And then loadout officially starts at 6. Quick call out there on loadout, like what do you need to do? So the booth is fully turnkey. This would just be if you have anything you do want to ship back because you have too much that you brought or you acquired some stuff that you want to ship back. That would be really all you need to do during sponsor loadout is like take what you brought with you, with you. And then yeah, if you wanna ship anything back, you know, you'll coordinate it with ourselves and then GSM just to ship it back to wherever you want. Doesn't have to be where it came from. And that's kind of it for loadout. It's fairly easy. You know, we'll talk about the leads in a little bit, but those are all in real time. So that's really all you used to do for loadouts. Really easy. So that's kind of like the latest you can expect to be there on the 5th if you're trying to also fly out. Out that evening. Okay. Coming into a few things on the campus. I know a lot of you have already seen this because you've been picking your boots. So try and again go quickly on this. Hopefully, you'll do the walkthrough. Just a few areas I wanted to call out here. So, you know, Stage A is, you know, our— Stage A? It's Stage A. You'll see a lot of really great content on there. If you're on sastreuropea.com, you can see the full schedule of like which content is on which stages. As I mentioned earlier, you know, this area between Stage A and then what we call the pub is host to our super gold, platinum, and diamond sponsor. The pub, which is presented by IBM, hosts a— it's as the name entails. If you're like, what the heck is the pub, Amelia? It's as the name says. So in the mornings, the pub actually has iced coffee because we're not trying to get people lit at 7 in the morning. It has like breakfast snacks, coffee, iced coffee, I think Skelly Juice or something like that in the mornings. It's like breakfasty items in the pub. Then it flips to lunch, then it flips to like, I think cold drinks, and then it flips to like a bar for like happy hour and like snacks. So like it is an all-day food place cuz it is the pub. You just are not, and it will have beer in the afternoon, just not at 8 o'clock in the morning. So yeah, it is actually a working pub if you will. You can come grab a drink at any time. It just may not always be beer. Here, but you can come grab a drink at any time. It's also hosted where we're doing the one-on-four group Brain Dates. So I, I appreciate that there are two kind of Brain Date lounges. One of them is in the pub with the group. So if you have a group Brain Date, go to the pub. That's really the difference there. Um, so yeah, pub is a great place to hang out. It was really crowded last year, which is great, you know, great place to network and meet folks. If you're looking for a place to just hang out, the pub is a good one. Um, a few other places. So we've got like a Founder's Lounge that Rome is hosting, and then a VC Lounge. Again, if qualify for those, these are access controlled. So just calling that out, we will have people checking, you know, badges at the doors to make sure if you're in the Founders Lounge, you know, you have to be a CEO or founder or a guest of that person if you're going with them. And the VC Lounge, you have to either be an investor or a founder. So that's the, that's the onus there. Hopefully that's straightforward. The other thing I'll call out is the sponsored meeting room. So I know a few folks were asking us just in the lead up to this, if they have a space on site where they can take calls, meetings, et cetera, there is a sponsor meeting here across from the workshop stage. I think I call it out later as well, but I'll just call it out now. It's not like pre-bookable or anything. We tried that at Annual and we saw most people just wanna kind of like come in as they want. So yeah, it's just, you know, first come, first serve. There should be space in there for sponsors, but that's a dedicated meeting area you can use. Obviously, it's not private, but you can always use that space to take a meeting or take a break. Other places you can take a meeting, there's the coworking space that's in Quayside 4 and 5. The Cantina, which has, you know, some more kind of snacks and stuff, has seating in it as well. Honestly, since it's supposed to be really nice out, knock on wood, I would go outside and take a meeting. It is gorgeous by the ships. We've got, you know, tons of tables and umbrellas out there. There's food out there too. Like, it's— I would go outside. That's just me though.

So that's photo opportunity. Let's just be real.

Like, yeah, that too, right? Yeah, I like the outside a lot at both of our events, but I do like the— I feel like it's very London that you're like by by the, all the pirate ships. So it's kind of fun. Yeah, it's very fun.

Yeah.

Okay. Very London. So again, read through the rest of this map. Just get yourself situated. Obviously you'll get the, the swing of things as you come in. Just know that, you know, most things are upstairs. Last thing I'll call out on this, 'cause we are kind of, I wanna get through a lot of other points I wanna hit, but just 'cause we are going through this, like why we label Pennington Street and Wapping Lane. So there's technically a registration entrance no matter where you're cab drops you off. That's why there's two. It's why we call out the streets. Even if you tell your cab to drop you on Wapping, for instance, they may drop you at Pennington. So I wouldn't worry about it. Like, if you get in a cab and just don't— you can enter either way. That's why we do it this way. Wapping Lane is technically more of a busy street than Pennington. Pennington has like an alley behind it where people can drop off. That's usually where they'll drop you off. So it's just to say that if you enter on that side, that's fine. You can walk in and registration will be open on that side. And then you can just walk up the stairs to where everything else is. So doesn't matter where you get dropped off, as to say, like, you're gonna hit registration no matter where you walk in the doors. That'll be the first thing you hit. So if you're on one side or the other, don't walk all the way around. Just go in, cuz we will have the means to do that. Obviously you'll, you'll see other people walking in, but I just wanna call that out for sponsors of like, if you get dropped on the wrong side, it's really not the end of the world. Just walk in. You'll see reg is the first thing. You'll get your badge and then you're good to go. OK, I think we've had a few people ask about the audience breakdown. So I think I have a few— oh, yeah, that's a good callout too. I think I have a few tips on this. I was like, wow, great callout, self. I think I have a few tips on this later in the, like, how to staff your booth. But calling out that 45% are C-level and above, plus another 27% are director level and above, This audience is, you know, strong in terms of execs that are coming. I also, I know I say it later when you read this later, but it is, you know, the top 3 countries are obviously, you know, if you do count the UK as London still on Brexit, but you know, London kind of being the, or GB I should say, kind of being the first, you know, a core audience that sends delegates to Europa. The rest of, you know, Europe being number 2. North America being number 3, and I have checked this as of yesterday, it is still number 3. So I call this out later, but calling it out now in terms of like staffing and how you're sending folks, because I see people registering their teams, want to make sure you have at least probably one person who is like, you know, North America territory, uh, because that will be a third of the audience. So calling that out, I think that's not probably super clear in that breakdown, which is our bad. But, um, yeah, just calling that out that, you know, should probably plan to have hopefully at least some one person or one person who can speak to, you know, maybe North America specific for your platform and audience, just because we do have a fair amount of people coming from there. So calling that out. Okay. We've kind of touched on this, but where do I need to check in and go when you get there? We've talked about the two entrances. The other thing I'll say, which is important for sponsors, everyone on your team should be registered individually. You do have to go pick up your own badge. So like if Waylon's coming and I'm coming and Brian's coming, I can't come get mine, Brian and Waylon's badge. I'll get my badge. Brian gets his badge. Whalen gets his badge. So everyone needs to pick up their own badge. You cannot pick up early for somebody. They need to pick up their own badge. We do daily ID checks. So like if Amelia picks up her badge on Tuesday, Amelia has to come back Wednesday. She can't give it to Ashley, um, and say, oh, she's a girl. Like they're not gonna check. We do check IDs. So, um, badge swapping is strictly prohibited. It just means like if you have more team members than you originally thought, just, you know, email me events@spastorinc.com. Um, we can help increase your ticket allotment because we wanna make sure everyone has their own pass to the show. Super important. Also super important you do it through us so that you have the sponsor access, which has, you know, all that early access times versus just a normal attendee pass. Also important for customers that you use the attendee pass for them because you don't wanna give them accidental early access. So, yeah. Any other questions? You know, we'll be on site during the event. I've put my number here. You can text myself or call me. I would say text me first. If you try and call me, I'm usually running around. So, but I can answer a text really fast. So at any point, feel free to text me during, either during, before, now, whatever you want. That is my real cell phone number. So Samira has a great question in the chat. Will a copy of passport for ID suffice? Yes, it will. So we've done things where, you know, if you want to, if you have a photo of your passport, passport on your phone or your driver's license, as long as you match up to that, right? Making sure it's you. That's fine too. I appreciate some people don't want to, like, carry their passport to the venue. So great question. Schedule we've hit, and it's in the, it's in the portal. So I'm going to skip some of this. Again, just if you haven't registered your team here, friendly reminder to register your team. You should have your code in your email. These instructions are also in the portal, but just to call out, I know I've seen some more of you do it this morning. But yeah, make sure you register your teams. How should you staff your booth? So this is one where Brian Whalen will, will jump into. We've talked about it a little bit, but again, just keep in mind these factors because we do see you guys registering and kind of like finalizing your staffing. So as I mentioned, you know, our top countries are UK, EU, and North America. So if you miss out on having somebody who is North American, like territory-based, you might miss out on having like a better conversation with those folks in that audience. And then, yeah, Brad, I don't know if you wanna take the next point on having a C-suite member in your booth to do booth duty.

Yeah, I, I think it, it's, it might, my point might touch a couple of points here, but the, the first, yes, have an executive in the booth. Why? Well, there's probably nothing more powerful on talking about your product than your CEO or founder. But if you don't have them, your CRO or CMO is probably also really good at it and you should probably be there. If they're not good at it, definitely look at that CEO and, or CRO and ask questions. But that said, definitely have those people there be in the booth. They should be talking to customers. They should be— you have to remember our audience is mostly founder and exec and they like talking to like-minded, like-titled individuals. I would also say there's nothing more intimidating than having a booth of 12 AEs and SDRs standing around waiting like a mousetrap. Okay, don't do that. That's That's not going to give you the, the return that you want. You can have a couple in there for sure, but if they're all— I have visions of booths in past. I've been doing this a while where, you know, they built this beautiful lounge and in the lounge was full of that company's employees ready to pounce. Don't do that. It's not going to work. Yeah. Try to envision the, the environment you're looking to create and then match the right people.

Yeah, match that vibe. I would say too, you know, we put out, we'll let you guys read, you know, you guys are all smart. You've all been in the portal. You all submitted your graphics in time. So I'm like, I, you'll, you, I'm sure you'll read all these slides. So we'll just call out to, you know, we recommend a mix of, you know, exact sales, marketing, and product just based on the folks who are registering to 2024. And yeah, you know, last thing I can't say enough is, you know, rotate your team members if you, if you really can at all possible. That helps you take advantage of things like, you know, content, sitting in content, chatting with the audience members, going to lunches, going to happy hours, doing brain dates, right? Like if they're stuck at the booth all day, you can't really do that. So yeah, really recommend if you're able to, even for a little bit, to rotate folks. Go ahead.

Really, really important point here that you just touched upon, Amelia. Like the ROI won't just come from your booth. Okay, you're counting only on your booth for ROI and nothing else. You missed the concept of SaaStr entirely. We're not just an expo floor at—

Yeah, that's true.

Like a different event, right? Like, oh, we have to staff it. No, no. Like, we give really incredible opportunities for really personal connections on site. And if you don't take advantage of them, you're missing out on the ROI of the show. So that's—

And your lead scanner works. It's not like proximity sensor just for your booth, right? Like it all works.

100%.

Yeah. Talking to somebody, you know, at a Brain Date during happy hour outside by the ships, your scanner still works there. Yeah. So, yeah. All right. What should I wear? We've gotten this question a little bit, so this is a great throwout to the Hooked team, um, who I think is on this call. But, um, yeah, they did this cool, they, I think they've done this highlighter for the last, I was looking at other Europa events and I saw the highlighter at other events, so I was like, oh, I think there's been this for the last few years, but They go highlighter.

They may have shared with me their plans for this year. I may or not be excited by it.

Okay.

Very excited by it.

But don't steal their highlighter idea. No, but they get—

they totally get the idea.

Yeah. The idea is, you know, to wear something that, you know, if you— if you wear something— I mean, the overall dress code of the event is business casual, right? That's just our overall dress code for Europa. You will see attendees in like, you know, a blazer but their company shirt or like a skirt and their company shirt. So, yeah. People do try and stand out. If you— I will say one thing that I'll call out. If you do have somebody who's coming in costume, please tell us. Otherwise, our security is going to think it's an attendee just trying to crash the party. That way— I'm serious. Like, I know. I know. I'm like too serious about this. This is a real thing. But like, just tell us. Like, if you have a mascot that's coming or a costumed whatever it is, again, totally fine. We encourage it. We would just like to know so that we don't like stop them at the front door being like, oh, are you part of a sponsor? And then we have to go check and it's a whole thing. Like, just tell us, even if it's last minute, you could just text me like, hey, I've got, you know, people coming in, I don't know, costume. I'll be like, okay, tell me their name so I can get it to our teams and security, right? And give security a heads up. Otherwise security's gonna be like, why are you coming in this costume? So again, just that is, that is the venue security. So just please. Let me know. I'll get it out to the teams. If you do have folks coming in costume, I love it. We had some people last year for Europa come in costume. Again, it's allowed. We don't— I don't care, but just tell us. Just tell me. Okay, cool. Accessibility. There are, as I mentioned, there are some steps. The other thing I'll say for Tobacco Docks especially, it is a historic venue. So as you can kind of see in this photo, there's a lot of these like flagstone and like cobblestone steps. Around. So yeah, wear comfy shoes because I don't recommend like wedges or heels and cobblestone, like sneakers or like cool sneaks are your friends. Cool sneaks. Okay. We've already talked about the sponsor hall because we did the walkthrough. The last thing I'll call out is, you know, to Brian's point, everything is manufactured around making sure these are extremely high-traffic areas. We did this last year, which you get all the benefits of, of like, you know, we kind of actually moved one of the sponsor halls to be where some of the more traffic was last year. So you get all that, all that to say you are gonna have all day foot traffic, right? There's early birds, there's late birds, there's people who skip content and go talk to sponsors. Like, because both areas are also like in between where stages are, you have a natural all-day traffic. So again, maybe unlike other shows that you've been to, kind of plan for this. It's not just during happy hours, right? I think it's often I've talked to a lot of sponsors now who've said like, you know, I'm kind of used to other shows where, you know, it's kind of just in the mornings and then just during happy hours. Plan for all day. So again, that's why it's super important to rotate people, but just things to be mindful of. Okay. Reminders on the booths, we'll try and hit quickly. The cabinet that you guys all have does lock. However, last strike and dagger, I would not— I say this for all the astronauts— I would not leave high-value items in there overnight. We also have managed storage, but like if you're giving away like a high value item as like a price point, I've seen a lot of sponsors lately not actually bring the item with them. They'll be like, you know, win a Peloton, but it's like, you know, come talk to us and then we'll ship you the Peloton or we'll ship you an Xbox. Or if it's like a PS5 last year, or I don't know, I saw a lot of like high value item or like a phone, you know, VR headset, whatever it is. Like you don't always have to bring it with you. So just calling that out. You know, things like laptops I would still take with you overnight. There is 24/7 security, but again, just for peace of mind, I would take any of your high-value items with you. You also probably need your laptop to work from in the evenings and check your leads. And so, yeah, again, that's all that. If you're shipping a bunch of swag and you're like, oh, it's not all going to fit in this one cabinet, don't worry. We do have managed storage on site. Just work that out with, you know, Jason M. and Lynn, who's on our shipping team there. She'll help you manage kind of like And she's really great about going out and like around between her and our SaaS team. We'll make sure like if you're like, oh, hey, I'm feeling low on my swag. Can someone, you know, help grab a few extra boxes? We help do that so that your booth looks really clean and tidy. So want to keep it clean and tidy. Monitors, I think, as you guys know, are mounted. They do have a standard HDMI hookup. So how that works is like, you know, the HDMI will come around to your front cabinet basically. So you're, you're, you're, you're not just like dangling your laptop from the, from the mounted monitor and then you hook up there. So if you're a Mac person like me, you know, bring a dongle. We'll have some extra, but just bring a dongle because, you know, all Macs are a little finicky, so you might have a dongle that works with yours but not mine. Um, yeah, what else do I want to say here?

That's a fire call out on the dongle. I remember when— dongles, yeah, one, one show, I can't remember how long it took me, but I went to like 3 or 4 stores looking for dongles. Uh, don't, don't be me.

I always bring in my bag. Well, one, I always have an extra dongle. I always bring a dongle and then a clicker. So I didn't put that on the slide, but if that's one of those things where you're like, I wanna click through the slides that are there and I don't wanna be tied to the cabinet all day, just bring a USB clicker. I always have one in my bag because I've been trained to. But yeah, I always bring in like a dongle and a clicker and then an extra AA battery. 'Cause if one of those things dies, then you need a battery. Also, like us, if you're coming from North America, bring the power adapter thingy, travel thingy, cuz you know, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

That, I mean, you're gonna bring one anyway, but you might only bring one for your hotel room, right? You might not be like, oh, let me pack an extra one for the booth. So yeah, if you're, if you're American, bring, bring the adapter guy.

Get the correct one for London too. It's different than rest of Europe. You have to get—

yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Pro, pro tip. Again, we'll let you guys read through this, but I think a few people were asking, you know, if I'm a Super Gold, what, what does my stool look like? They all look the same. So they're white, you know, they're kind of just neutral. All right. We talked about the HDMI power. I'll call out, 'cause I think this is a question I've gotten a lot is like, how does power work? How much power do we have? So, you know, your, your monitor's gonna be mounted to the booth, the cable for the HDMI will come around to your cabinet and basically go through the hole at the top. Same thing with power. The power will live in the cabinet. It's a, it's what they call a 4-way. Um, we just call it a power strip here, but you know, it's a 4-way and that's why I called it a 4-way power strip. So you get a power strip. Again, if you have to plug in adapters like I do, you'll probably get less of the power strip because those adapters take space. Uh, but you do have a strip, right? It's not just one plug. So you got a strip, you can probably plug in 3 or 4 things depending on depending on how big your plugs are. 'Cause I know like for instance, you know, the MacBook plugs are really big and the PC plugs are just small. So depends on what you're plugging in. There's, you know, 4-way. So there's 4 slots, you know, if you need more than that, let us know events@fastring.com. We can help you order more. I think most folks are set with the 4-way and you know, you could rotate who charges whatever. Bring again, pro tip, bring, you know, I don't have mine on my desk, but bring your, you know, detachable portable battery for your phones and stuff. That's just a good way. I'd say especially for lead scanning, which I think is on the next-ish slide. Okay. Coming up. But whatever phone or devices you're using for lead scanning, I would definitely just like put a battery on it because it does suck up some battery. So keep that in mind. Wi-Fi. So Wi-Fi at Sastre Europa is, you know, venue-wide, et cetera. For most purposes, you will be fine on venue Wi-Fi. The Super Gold, Platinum, and Diamond sponsors do have one hardline included. If you're a Gold sponsor, you need a hardline. Again, just email events@sasring.com. These are the options over here if you need extra hardlines, or if you're a Super Gold, Platinum, and Diamond and you need more than one, these are the options for hardlines. It's just different speed. Honestly, you're probably fine with 4 or 10 depending on what you want to do. But if you have like a super beefy demo, might be worth getting a hard line just so that you know that it works. Or, you know, some people have done like preloaded demos on their, in their environment. So either one works, but just calling out for Wi-Fi situation there. There will be, once we get on site in like your final email, you'll get the like code for like the sponsor Wi-Fi, because we'll have like, you know, attendee Wi-Fi sponsor. So you'll be on your own sponsor Wi-Fi. And we'll share the password. You can also just ask us when you get there. Okay. Lead scanning. Gonna cover this quickly. So there's nothing to do now. I'll say that except for, except for nominating a primary user to be your admin on lead capture, which many of you have. I'm still missing a few. So if you haven't done that yet, let me know who should be your admin. I just need like, you know, their name and email. Obviously, which company is from. How we do this is actually a little bit better, I would say, for Europa this year. So I will, I'm just gonna click the portal here for logging into our backend. So this is what it's gonna look like once you get invited. So no one's been invited yet. So even if you've said, Amelia, here's who I nominate to be your admin, we've not sent the invites out yet. They go, they don't go out until May 17th. 'Cause again, there's nothing to do. There's no one to scan yet. You know, you're not gonna scan your dog, you know, There's nothing to do yet. Once you get access on the 17th, there's a few things you'll need to do. And I linked a whole guide here. So like there's a whole guide that walks you through what you have to do. It's super easy, right? We obviously use Bizibo for registration and also the lead capture. So, um, you'll see some of this is like within the Bizibo catalog stuff. That's fine. You know, there's a whole guide here of what to do. Basically, you're going to come in, set up your profile. You can add your additional staff members here. There's a whole guide here of how to do that. So like if I'm the admin, Amelia, I can add Brian, I can add Waylon, in so that they're set up to scan on their devices. And then really the thing you're gonna wanna do after that is configure your capture form. So in this you'll see you can set it, and this is per person, right? So I'm logged in 'cause Saastr has its own account for scanning at the event. You can like drag and drop things here as you want, right? So if you want people's addresses or if I'm like, I don't need it on the, oh no. Oops, it's gonna upgrade me. If you're like, I don't want it on the element, you could just drag and drop these things over. And that's how you do it. If you wanna do things like custom questions, right? There's a few ways you can do that. So you can do things like checkboxes. If you're like, I wanna check if they're a hot lead or if I wanna check, you know, I actually talked to this person versus just scanning them or they took our activation. You could do checkbox, you can do radio, you can do a section for notes, write notes. Survey. You could put a selfie with the lead if you wanna remember what they look like. So again, there's, it's a little bit more configurable of what you can put here based on like what your company needs to address. The standard things that SaaS provides in the lead capture are name, so first and last, you know, email, company, job title, and then country. Phone is optional for attendees. I'll call that out. Like if you really want phone numbers, I would ask them for their phone number because it's optional for us and most people don't fill it out. So again, if that's one thing you really want, then I would make sure you add that to your lead capture form so that your team fills it out as they go. Other than that, super easy. As you've seen in that backend, I don't have any leads yet because I, there's no one to scan. But once I do, they will show up here in real time. You know, you just refresh and then your leads will show up in real time. So you don't have to wait for us to send you leads. It's all in real time. So your admin can go in at any time and just, you know, refresh and then download your leads. You can just export these as a CSV file. So super easy there. If you have any questions after you get onto the platform, obviously just let us know. We've talked about the meeting room. We'll talk a little bit about customer passes here just because it's all within the vein of like, you know, registration and activation on site and making the most of your sponsorship. So a few of you already know about this. I'll just cover it off for the group. One thing we've done for the past few annuals, and I appreciate a lot of you are also annual sponsors, so Many of you asked us for this for Europa, is we do these things called customer passes where you can bring your customers or prospects on us. If this is something you want to do for Europa, again, just let us know. You can nominate up to 5 people. Some of you already have a spreadsheet going with us. If you don't, again, just email us. We'll, we'll make a spreadsheet for you, or you can just plan to say, hey, Amelia and events team, I want to do this. I'll plan to email you. Our nominations. It's really easy. We just need, you know, their same registration details that we would need to register them. So, you know, first name, last name, company title, country, all that stuff, email. And we will see if they're already attending or not. And then if not, we will ticket them. So it's super white glove. Highly recommend taking advantage of this. Brian, I know you've had a lot of people do customer passes. Yeah. How do you position it or think about it just to make it easier?

I think it really depends on the company. Some companies use this as like a giveaway in a way to their, to their customers. I know one in particular is like, hey, like it's an incentive they use around their top customers to like get things done that need like an action item. Others are really looking for that opportunity and intimacy of meeting with their customers more in person. I think we get a— we kind of got away with that. It got away from that a little bit in COVID, and it's been really hard for a lot of brands to get back to, but getting in front of the is super hard. I think the other thing too is budgets have been pretty restricted on a lot of companies in terms of traveling and getting there. So this is a really great way to bring a bunch of people into one place at once, right? To have more of that proactive connection point. I think that's kind of the big ways I've seen it. And again, for those that know the Saastr community, these are really valued. Your customers are going to love these. If they don't know who we are, Well, one, remove the rock that they're underneath. But two, just, you know, that's the— it's, it's probably not the best fit, right? But if they know us, they're going to value this big time and they totally— and you're going to, you're going to be a superhero for offering it to them.

So yeah, tickets are like, they're like the last minute ones. So they're like $999 right now. Like they're not cheap. They're the last minute ones. So yeah, it's a good value add for either customers or active prospects that you have in the area. So again, if you wanna take advantage of it, just email me, CC events@sastrinc.com. We'll get you all set up. I know some of you are already set up. I think the majority of you are, but just calling that out for everyone else. Okay, activations. So many of you are already doing activations, but I think I had a few people ask like if there were any last minute ones they could still do. So I'm putting them here. So, and by last minute, I mean, please tell us within the next day or two if you wanna do these. Or early next week because some of them you can brand, some of them are more just like turnkeys so they can come to your booth super easy activations. We say this is annual, I'll say it for Europa. We've always seen like, you know, a 40% to more lift on leads and, and scans when you have an activation in your booth. I appreciate some of you that don't have activations are in a gold booth and so you don't have a lot of room. These are small, these are like small ones that can fit within the bounds of a Gold booth. So that's covered off on, if you wanna do any of these, take a look at the list again, email me in events@sastrang.com. You can CC Brian or Waylon if that's, or David if that's your guy. And yeah, we will help, you know, try and do the best we can to make this happen for you if you still want an activation. The other thing I'll say, if you're bringing your own like games or Don't bring your own food because it's not allowed. But like, if you're bringing your own anything else that's not food, 'cause food has to go through the venue at all of our events, let us know again, just if you're bringing like, you know, any games or stuff. I know some people brought some games last year that required power and then they were like, oops, I forgot to order power. The more we know about what you're bringing, the better. Just helps us to make sure, you know, you have all the right things and also that we can keep a heads up for it 'cause we're there early. So yeah, that's what I'll say on activations. Again, if you have any further questions, let us know. Networking. So I hopefully, I mean, a lot of you are on here, so hopefully you got my email that invited you to this webinar, but also did a brief overview on Brain Dates. Brain Dates, if you're unfamiliar, at SaaStr are the primary way we do networking. So once you are registered, and I'll call that out, you do have to be registered for the event to get access into Brain Dates. Otherwise, you're going to get an error that's like, user not found. I will also say too, it's not instantaneous. So like, if you register your team members and then you're like, cool, here's the link for Brain Give it like half an hour before you're like, here's the link for Brain Dates. Like it does take a minute to sink in the air between Biz Dev to Brain Dates. So just give it a second. But once you do that, yeah, really great idea to come in here. You can see there's already some really great topics in here that people have posted for, you know, Brain Dates, Super Brain Dates. And how this works is like as a sponsor, you can join one of these existing ones, right? So if you wanted to join. This one on, you know, in— let's actually go to an encouragement for women founders, non-technical SaaS startups. That's a cool one. If you're like, okay, actually I wanna do that. You would just book a spot and you would join that Brain Date. You can also host a Brain Date. So when you come in, the default that it jumps you into is what they call the topic marketplace. So this is where you're gonna see all the Brain Dates that have already been posted. So it will also give you a good idea of like the kinds of things that people are signing up for, right? Like this one, for instance, you can see, you know, some people have already joined. So you can see, all right, like PLG, obviously that's gonna be a good topic that people are gonna wanna join. This one on enterprise SaaS, people are joining this one, right? You can see when there's faces populated, which ones people are joining, which ones are still open maybe that you wanna avoid doing a duplicate of, you know, AI employee stuff. So lots of, That's kind of, you know, to be expected on, on what's trending. So the thing you could do is like, okay, get a good idea here. And then if you want to host your own, you would create a new topic here. And then really you just pick if you want this to be a one-on-one or a group. I would say if you're gonna do a group topic, we do treat them as like micro presentations. So a lot of times when people do a group topic, they will make slides. Like they will just, you know, post up their laptop on the table and be like, I made slides about this. Those are the best group brain dates. Make 5 slides and do your topic. If you don't want to make slides, do it as a one-on-one. I would say the groups that where the host doesn't make a slide, at least a couple, it's really hard to follow along with their thing. So again, if you want to put in the effort to do the slides, do a group brain date. If you just want to do like a one-on-one on like, hey, I just want to talk about, you know, AI in marketing. I can't spell. You know, I'm going to say, okay, that That's, you know, trending. I'm gonna say it's a one-on-one and basically a one-on-one means it's gonna post this topic once it goes through moderation and then people can join your Brain Date as a one-on-one and they'll pick a time, right? They'll pick a time based on your Brain Date schedule. You can set your own schedule and then say, okay, you know, if Brian likes Amelia's topic, Brian can say he wants to join my one-on-one and then he'll suggest the time and then Amelia will accept the time and then your Brain Date is booked. So that's how that works for one-on-ones. For groups, you know, you do have to pick a, in real time times. I'll just show you that next. Hi, Kitty. Hello. So if you do a group, it will make you pick a time. Right now there is pretty much availability, but groups will start to fill up. You know, this is early days because we just launched Brain Dates. So again, if you want to, if you want to put in the time to do some slides and do a group Brain Date, highly recommend you do this now because groups do start to fill up fast. The other thing I'll say is, yeah, we do moderate everything. So whether it's a group brain date, a super brain date, or a one-on-one brain date, you'll notice that once you push like confirm, which I'm not going to do, it will go into our moderation queue. Meaning if you're not— you guys, because you guys are great, but like if the topic is too much of a pitch or too much of a commercial or too much of a plug, the team will send this person back a note saying, you know, this is too much of a product pitch please update your topic. Everything on Braindates is meant to be about, you know, thought leadership, sharing, you know, really great content, tips and tricks, right? Like, it's meant to be, again, micro content. It's not meant to be, hey, come meet with me because I'm the VP of product at XYZ company. Like, okay, you could do that on LinkedIn. So it's meant to be thought leadership, right? And again, the best group Braindates are ones where the host makes slides. We do encourage your teams to do this, right? So I've seen some of you submit topics already, which is great. So yeah, I encourage everyone on your team to do this, but do it in a thought leadership way, right? So, so that you're, you're, you're giving back to the community. There's an open question here. Can you host a Brain Date? So yeah, anyone can host a Brain Date. Again, it's just a matter of do you want to host a one-on-one? Because again, that is still meant to be a thought leadership session, but you know, you maybe don't have to make slides for a one-on-one. It's just more of a discussion, free-flowing discussion. Um, but anyone on your team that is registered can host a Brain Date. Again, it just goes through that moderation queue. So if you keep it thought leadership, I don't think we've rejected any yet. There's been like 50 that have come in. We haven't rejected any yet. Knock on wood. Uh, but if you keep it thought leadership or like, again, tactical, then your Brain Date will be accepted onto the platform. Uh, okay. Answered that one. Good question though. Um, all right. Few last tips and tricks because I know we're, I think we're coming up to the end. Of the slides, hopefully. Sorry, I've made so many slides, guys. There are, as we mentioned earlier, kind of like 2 places to check in for your brain dates. So if you are booking brain dates, you know, the group ones will be in the pub. The supers and the one-on-ones will be in East Mall 1, which is just across the way. So you're basically going to go like across and then across one more time. So super easy to get to. Also, if you check it in the wrong space, the brain date team will be like, your brain date's over there, and then they'll point you in the right direction. So it's okay if you go to the wrong area the first day. And you get the hang of it. We try to break it up based on size so that people kind of got the gist of it. But, you know, rooms are only so big, so we had to break it up into two. Okay, we talked about braid dates. Oh yeah, shipping. So yeah, real quick, real quick on shipping. And then I think the last thing's the app and then final question. So sorry, this is an hour if you're watching back the recording. Swag guidelines, as you've noticed, you know, things are indoor/outdoors. Things like, you know, portable chargers are always a hit. T-shirts, if you do them creatively, are always a hit. Again, I wouldn't— I think something we've noticed folks are doing, and then we're doing this too, is like, we're trying to like balance our order. And so if you're like, I'm not sure how much I should really order, you can always just ask us. We can make a recommendation of how much to order. I wouldn't plan to give swag to like every single person because, you know, a lot of the sponsors have swag. We try not to be too wasteful, right? At these kinds of events. So again, keep in mind things like, you know, if you wanna bring games, whatever, just let us know. It is open air. So, right, you— last year we saw folks do things like, you know, sunglasses, portable chargers. I think somebody did beach balls. I wanna say we did umbrellas, but then it didn't rain. So again, anything kind of that plays up to that is a great way to do your swag. I'll call out some things that are not allowed, which we touched on, and they are here. But again, anything that's food-related has to be secured through the venue. That's just, you know, a health— that's just a health permitting thing. Sound and portable speakers are not allowed because not everyone would do sound and portable speakers. Well, much like annual, balloons are not allowed. You can imagine because it is partially open air, they don't want the balloons to like fly and get stuck in the roof and then they have to go get a cherry picker and get the balloon down. So don't bring balloons. Um, glitter, confetti, anything like that, that is gonna cause a huge mess. It's not allowed. I'll call this out too. Drones are not allowed. Um, you do have to have a special permit for it. A tobacco box, which you probably don't have. Like, we just got ours. So Saster has one and I will share our drone footage with you. But please don't bring your own drone. Not even a small like Pixie. Like, I've not— definitely not a DJI. So don't bring your drone. On that point of like DJIs, I know a lot of you have these like I do and like GoPros. These are fine. Like if you wanna come film your own thing or if you're bringing a crew, again, just let us know so that we can get them registered. I know some folks last year brought their own, like, you know, videography and like social media crew, that's all fine. It's just we don't want them with drones because you need a permit for it for Tobago Docks, and I don't want to get yelled at. So, um, I'm happy to share Sasquatch footage with you if that's what you want. I don't care. Um, happy to do that if it helps your B-roll. But yeah, please don't bring your own drone to Europa or to Annual. It's, uh, it's even worse Annual because we're in the flight path. So yeah, definitely, uh, you have to have Yeah, we have a permit for it, but you probably don't and don't need one because it's a lot of work. All right. Other than that, ship your stuff to the advance warehouse. Please don't ship anything to Tobacco Docks. There are so many points of entry. This is maybe one con if you're a sponsor of both events and like you're used to shipping things just to San Mateo because they're really nice and we'll just take all the— they'll take all the deliveries and we'll give them to Amelia and they'll be like, you suss out who this goes to. Tobacco Docks doesn't do that. They have a lot of entry points and like a lot of delivery drop-offs. They also have like their own coworking space in there. So if it's not for them, they will legitimately turn it away. I don't ship to them. Just so you guys know, it's not like we have like a little inn and you're like, I'm going to ship it to Amelia Salster at Tobacco Docks. I don't ship there, so don't try that. Just ship to GSM. All the instructions are in the sponsor portal. Just calling out that hopefully you don't have to go through customs because if you do, I think the deadline's the 25th of May, which is upcoming. If you're shipping it from in-country, which is like what we're doing, the deadline to get it to the warehouse is the 29th. So then they'll then, you know, bring it to Europa. So yeah, that's the deadline. Also be mindful if you are doing something that is an international delivery, customs is really weird about things like water bottles, which is like a common swag item because it has touched food, right? So yeah, just be mindful of that if you are shipping anything from overseas. Less prevalent if you're doing it from in-country, doesn't have to go through customs. And so it's fine. But if you are shipping anything that is, you know, out of country or from like a home office, if you will, or like a home warehouse, keep that in mind. Yeah, don't ship directly there. I don't even ship directly there. I don't mess with that. So cool. There's a mobile app. So if you guys want to download the SAS for Events app, it is live. The freight rates aren't in there yet, but that will be in the next app update. But you can do things like, you know, pick your sessions, which I do recommend you do now, you know, get a lay of the land, all that kind of things. It'll also have like your, um, if you use the app and you sign in, very handy for the day of, it will give you a QR code so that when you come to registration, you just like scan your QR code and then it'll pull up your badge so that we don't have to be like, who are you? Uh, really helps there. Okay. Um, Brian, anything I missed in the last couple minutes and then we'll do questions.

I have no idea how you could have missed anything. That was so comprehensive. It's too dense though.

I'm like, but it was an hour. It's a lot.

But, but So here's, here's, I think, the big thing. One is that for all our sponsor friends on this call, we will make sure that you get this deck. That's an important thing. So we will get this to you. You can dive through. Second is that we're, we're your friends. We're here to help. So message us. We will help you. There's the events@sasdrink.com. You can also just message your rep. Any of us.

Yeah.

We'll help you. We got you. And then lastly, don't suffer in silence. Meaning like if even if you think it's a dumb question, there's no such thing. Just reach out. Like we're here to help. That's the big thing.

Yeah. I think that's a great out. That's a great call out. There's no such thing. I do apologize that this was so long, but hopefully that's why it's called the Ultimate Guide. Hopefully it's super helpful. Yeah. Whether you've, you know, activated it faster or this is your maybe first time doing your ROPA. I know some of our sponsors, this is their first time doing your ROPA. So hopefully it's helpful on the call outs of like, you know, Europa versus annual. I think just final reminders from me, if you take anything else away from this, and I see a related question in the chat. In terms of booths, I know everyone has submitted their booth graphics. Proofs are getting generated today and tomorrow with the, with the team that does it. So our fabricator. So as soon as I have those in my inbox, which I'm hoping is overnight tonight, you will have it in your inbox for approvals. So thanks for being patient on that. It is a new vendor we're using this year versus last year because it's a little higher quality. So it just takes a little bit more time to deliver that higher quality. So thanks for being patient, but you haven't missed anything there. You know, just be mindful of all of our tips and tricks for, you know, staffing your booth, booking their travel, making sure people can still be an attendee of the event. I think that's really important. Really, I know a lot of you are like, why would I do customer passes when the whole point of this event is to get new business? I get it. Do it.

Do it.

I know.

Trust us. Do it. Do the customer passes.

It just helps with retention, you know. I know it doesn't maybe personally help your metrics, but it will help your CS team and your CEO and your CRO. Like they'll be happy if you invite some customers.

Live, live beyond attribution, folks. Just know NRR matters. Do the customer passes. You'll thank us later, I promise.

Yeah. Yeah, do the customer passes. Yeah, I can't stress that enough. I know, I, I get, I know some people are averse to it a little bit 'cause you're like, ah, it doesn't help my metrics. I'm like, you know, the whole point of going to SaaS is to activate new people, but you will, you know, it's, there's so many SaaS articles on customer retention.

So also bringing your customers on site helps them talk to the customers you wanna talk to, right? And like champion you. So again, do customer passes. That's, that's a good idea.

You.

Um, okay, I'm brian@sasterco.com.

He is brian@sasterco. You could email, um, events@sasterinc. A lot of you already have my email. I'll go back to the slide that has— hold on— my number on it. Um, this is my— this is my number that works internationally, so I'll call that out. So, um, It is, you know, I will say actually this is pro tip. What slide did I put it on? Oh, it's on this slide. Hold on, I'll reshare. This is a pro tip. So I travel a lot for Zaster and, you know, my carrier personally sucks. So I, a long time ago for Zaster, just got a Google Voice number that I pay for. That thing works everywhere, guys. So it is, that's the number that is here. It goes directly to my phone number, so I get it as like a