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

Okay. Hopefully you guys can see this. I always hit the wrong button Slideshow. Okay, fun. We decided we would do a fun version of. We've been doing a few of these series lately on our main faster kind of content, if you will. Jason Lincoln just said 10 things that always work in SaaS marketing. McMatt on workshop Wednesday yesterday did like 10 things you learned along the way as a founder and like mistakes that you could avoid. So we thought it'd be fun since our team actually does go to some of the largest events in the world to talk about. I started with five, but we ended up at seven. Seven things that always work in SaaS events. And if at any time you have any questions, comments, inspiration, let us know in the chat or the Q and A. We'll try and keep this, you know, not one of our lengthy hour sponsor webinars. And hopefully it's. It's really the goal is to help you guys get inspired of, you know, whether you're doing Europa or annual later this year or your own events. This is really to help, you know, kind of jog creativity and inspiration just from some of the things we've seen at Post Aster and some of the largest events we've attended recently. So without further ado, I'll dive right into the tips. Actually, before I dive into the tips, maybe with further ado. Quick 30 second plug. We have a. This usually does not happen because our podcast is so full. We had a drop. So usually our podcast, as you guys know, is very coveted and sought after and very full in terms of sponsor ads. We did have a drop for May. So if any of you are thinking about getting on the Saster podcast, you have something you want to promote in this quarter next month. It's fairly turnkey. We literally just need 15 seconds of a script. We record it, we'll get you in for the May run. So yeah, just a quick spiel, 15 seconds on the fact that we have a drop in a sponsor for the podcast. So that means there is an opening. So if you've ever thought about sponsoring the Saster podcast, now is a great time because usually our availability is like months and months out around our events. Yeah, quick plug there. Okay, now with. Now without further ado, thanks all for joining and we're going to get into seven things that always work in events. I'll disclaimer this on. I've gone. Both myself and the Sasser team and Jason included in our speaker team, have gone to a lot of events in our lives as well as produced events like the Saster annual, like Saster Europa. I always think it's great to go to other people's events because they're always good, visceral reminders, I would say, of what to do, what not to do, what to improve, what to maybe steal and make your own really great for ideas. So I put some images here of some of the events I went to literally in the last month because we do go to a lot of events to draw inspiration for Zaster. We went to Shop Talk as a team. So that is a big retail and E commerce. So really not anything hugely to do with SaaS. There's a few SaaS, sponsors and speakers there, but really that is a large e commerce and tech conference that we go to. We know the organizers, we love to share, you know, with them and we, we swap stories and ideas all the time. So Shop Talk is one which you'll hear. We mentioned today. The middle photo, yes, ladies and gentlemen, is from the ERAS tour. I was honored to go to the Aeros store. I'll talk about some learnings there that you can steal from art, BFF Taylor Swift. The last image on the side is last week and actually I did go to Coachella, which is one of the largest music festivals in the world. I think it's second to Glasgow Festival. That happens in the uk. I've gone a couple years now, mainly as a learning. Also, this is how we sourced Duke Dumont for the big party last year at Annual. So, yeah, all this to say, like, these events are not. And these like learnings are not specific just to B2B and SaaS. They're across the board of what I've seen things that always work at any kind of event that you're doing, whether it's your own customer event, whether it's big, whether it's small, whether it's hugely at scale. Right. These are all conferences and events of different sizes. There are different things that always seem to work in events. No matter what it's for, what the content is. There's kind of things that always tend to work. So we're going to talk about those seven things today. One, this is maybe a bit more SaaS specific just based on the goal of it. And this is one that I actually stole from 10 things that always work in SaaS marketing. But for folks more specifically on this call, since you guys are all in B2B SaaS, we want to kind of tailor the tips, even though they're for any event. More so for you guys is to one, always invite, slash host your Customers and prospects at your events, they will do the selling for you. Now I know it's very varied right now based on the folks who are in the room on the webinar, who may be watching the live stream later of where you are in your event cycle and maybe your marketing budget. So you might say we're not doing any in person events this year. We're not doing our own events. We can only do small like get on a plane and go to a dinner. Guess what? Getting on a plane and going to dinner is still an event. It's just a small event. So first reminder and something that always, always works, that we always see is to invite your customers and your prospects both. They will do the selling for you. So one thing I've noticed between myself and Poia and the rest of the sales team is anytime we're talking to our sponsors and this rings true for the Europe event that's upcoming is a lot of folks talk to us about like how can I maximize traffic to my booth for leads, for scans, for new meetings, for prospects. What I don't hear a lot of people talking about is customers and I think it's such a mess. And I always that's why I made it number one. I always try to remind folks with this when I and fortunate to join a customer call or a sponsor call. This always works at events is hosting both your customers and your prospects. You'd be surprised how many sponsors tell me they do not measure the impact of in person meetings on site with their customers as part of their ROI of the event. And I think that is a huge miss and a big missed opportunity. Especially in 2023. You should absolutely be meeting your customers on site and you should absolutely be measuring that because guess what, your competitors are probably at faster or at shopdoc or whatever it is that you are also at. Like they are probably also there and they will probably pitch your customers hard. So if you're not counting these meetings, if you're not putting energy towards it, planning towards it, inviting your customers, guess what? Your competition is going to do that. Just that. So it isn't very important. So I made it number one to host both your customers and prospects and try and get them in the room together as much as you can. So I'll give some examples of this one. If you're already sponsoring a Saster event, which is highly likely based on the folks in this room, super easy thing to do is invite your customers and your prospects to the event. Okay, Like I know a lot of folks we have literally gone to some of our top sponsors for Europa, inviting them to invite their customers and prospects to the event. I know people are still doing this, but not everyone does this and I'm always surprised by this. Like I think this is such a gift to get your customers and prospects together, post them at the booth, do something informal. You can say, hey, we're getting everyone together at our booth, you know, in, in, in exchange for us getting you a ticket to Saster, you know, let's meet at the booth at whatever 10aM on day two. We're all going to have coffee together with our CEO with some fellow. You can meet some fellow customers, fellow new faces, prospects, you know, fellow CEOs, fellow revenue leaders, whatever it is, do something informal, meet with them at your booth, invite them there, get them there. I know sometimes really hard to wrangle your sales and marketing team to actually invite your customers and prospects, but the ROI is not to be missed. I do think this is something that people don't spend enough energy on or they don't think about it until the very last minute. So that's why I made it. Tip number one, it's something that always works, is get them together, make sure you invite them so that they can have this informal or more formal get together. Which to my next point is we know a lot of folks who do their own site event. Whether it's a customer dinner during, you know, after annual or Europa. We see folks do their own, you know, happy hours, dinners, breakfast runs, whatever it may be. It doesn't always have to be food related. It can be, you know, a, I've seen people do soul cycle classes. I see people do yoga classes. I've seen people do runs like I've seen people do activations for their customers and prospects specifically to mangle. It doesn't matter what it is, you can make it your own. You can put your own creative spin on this. But I guarantee you this will work. If you get your prospects and your customers together in a room doing it around an event like Saster does help, because then they're already there. You don't have to worry about like, okay, when is a good date to do this? How am I going to get people there? How am I going to drive engagement? Like that's already done. They're probably already coming to Saster or they're already attending. Like you don't have to worry about picking a place on a spot which honestly makes the logistics a lot easier. Hosting your site your own side event can be really great I've always seen these pay off. Why don't see payoff. And this is actually maybe something to avoid is I've seen sponsors co do their own like off site dinners, off site happy hours and then split the leads. They can try and get more lead gen. These never work. I've done them in the past as a marketer. I've seen some of our sponsors do them. They're always like, okay for roi. But let me tell you, when people share with us, when they have really great roi, it's when they do their own side event. So I would say even if you do your own dinner and it's just dinner in a private room for 10 people, or it's eight people and you just booked it on open table and it's you, your CEO, like three customers and three prospects, guess what? That'll probably be better than forking over more money to do a side event with somebody else because these are where you can have those conversations and connections more intimately than doing a big side event where you can't talk to everyone. Then you have to split the leads. You're not sure who you really talk to, they're not sure who you guys talk to, you're not sure who they talk to. It becomes really convoluted. So again that's, I've seen it done okay in the past, but I would say as much as you can go for a smaller event that is your own event and be sure to invite your customers and prospects. Listen, I know budgeting is really hard right now. In 2023, this could be an event could be as small as hosting a dinner. Go to where your customers are. Right? Nobody was going to dinner parties on Zooms. Everyone. I know we're on a zoom right now, but I know it's very, it's tedious, it's tiring at the end of the day. I know a lot of folks now who like do walking meetings if they or going to in person meetings or cafe meetings. Like our sales team has probably had more in person meetings this year than all the other years combined. So when they go to where your customers and prospects are, they'll always appreciate it because if you don't get again on the plane again as a reminder, your competition probably will. So always good to make reviews then I will say I we've had, we've written this up on sester.com recently. I had an experience where we, one of our software vendors was up for renewals that we use here at Zaster and I was like, man, I really would have loved for them to come to us where we are to have this meeting. This is a not small renewal, right. And it was on Zoom and it's fairly lackluster. So yeah, I will say it always helps to have that call in person. Right. Like again it doesn't need to be a fancy steak dinner. If you go back and watch the 10 things that always work in marketing. Jason shares bites Steak dinners aren't always the best choice but man, I would have loved to have that call face to face and ask my questions and get some FaceTime. And honestly, sometimes it's just good to have your Exec team get FaceTime with your customers a little bit, go a long way. So that always works. One thing and I'll explain why I put the Brex booth on here. This last example here is make your customers and prospects the hero. So there's a lot you can do and this always works. 10 out of 10. I put the breakfast here. On the outside it talks about how corporate cards and switch management loved by your team is their tagline. On the inside it actually had different quotes from actual customers, basically making their customers the hero of the booth on the inside. So like the outside was to draw you in, the inside had their customer quotes on the booth which I thought was pretty cool. I haven't seen a whole lot of that. I also haven't seen seen a whole lot of it. But when it, when I do see it, I know it always works. I have seen some sponsors in the last few years do things like when they have customers come and they have literally a customer kit. Like okay, when a customer comes, this is what we're going to give them. We're going to take a photo with them, put them up on social, make a TikTok, make a video, make an Instagram, whatever it is. Like when you make your customers the hero at an event, trust me, they will always remember it. Especially if you give them a little take home, they will always remember it. So but it can be anything, right? It doesn't have to be swag, be in your printed material. It could be in the video that's on your booth loop. It could be on your swag. Of course it could be on your booth, it could be something creative leading up to the event. But yeah, anyways, we've done this thing where on, on the saster side we do these what we call celebrities where like we kind of stylize all of our speakers and make them the heroes, if you will of our events as well as our sponsors. So, yeah, when you do that, people always remember it. And I've got so many photos of, you know, speakers in front of their celebrities or. Anyway, so one quick tip here on point number one, I'll try to go through the rest of these faster. It is okay to start small. So again, as small as a dinner for three people is fine. It's an event. It counts, right? Post a weekly webinar. We do these. You're on one right now. I can't tell you how much value we've gotten out of these weekly webinars and honestly surprised the quality of folks who come to these webinars. You guys have been fantastic. We've gotten CEOs, directors, like event marketers. Everyone comes to these webinars or at least watches the recording, you know, a mix of both. So it's okay to do these. The key there is to be consistent. And again, remember that the magic is getting your customers and your prospects together, which is why sometimes you'll see on these webinars, we'll bring, like, some of our current sponsors, and some of the people in the audience will be prospects. So some of that is in getting those folks together. And it's. I think it's never too soon to start this. So, again, I know 2023 is an interesting year and budgets can be tight, but, yeah, always, always works to get your customers and prospects together at events. Okay, number two thing, that always works in events. And I feel like when people don't do this, they always regret it. It always pays to start your prep early. And I put early in quotes because it's never too early. Right. But literally start today if it's for your own event, if it's for SAS Europa, even if it's for sas, for Annual, which is not till September, September will be here before you know it. So whatever it is that you're doing in your events, if it's webinars, like, flat out your calendar, webinars today, Plan out your calendar of customer revivals today. Plan out your customer events today. Like, plan what you're doing for Saster Europa or Annual today. Like, it is never too soon to start. And I'll give you a few key examples why. I'll give you a big example, because I know we're talking about events. I've not gone to the Met Gala. I wish, but I'm not in that world. But just for fun, there is a show on Netflix about it. You can look it up. I think many people know this for, like, celebrities that go to it. But I'll tell you, the Met Gala, it's, you know, the first week of Feb every year. That event has literally zero downtime. And neither does Saster Annual or Saster Europa. That is a year long cycle for many, many reasons. You know, Coachella doesn't have downtime either. A lot of these big productions do not have downtimes. They are the same time each year. They happen. Rain, storm, whatever it is. So a lot of these eventual notes do not have any downtime because the prep always changes. Like even if you're doing the same venue or same concept, you know, like the Met Gala or Coachella, which do not change locations, something always changes, right? The lineup changes, the artists change, who's coming to your event changes. Even if you're doing your own events for us are attending demographics change every year. Like they're. The overalls are pretty much the same. But you'd be surprised now, we're always surprised right now about how many CTOs and CFOs are coming to Europa. Like that's a new change for us that we're now trying to serve right? Of like, okay, our audience slightly changed, new venue. But anyways, all that to say it's never too early to start prep. And I'll give you a few concrete examples why. For those who are maybe not in the world of production in 2023, I will tell you firsthand, everything takes longer. The ordering times are longer, the shipping times are longer, there's more holidays, there's more. Like furlough, there's like more everything. Like everything takes longer in 2023, sometimes even double the amount of time it literally took to do the same item in 2022. Lead times are really long. There's like shipping issues, logistic issues, production supply line issues, whatever it might be, all of these things that are out of your control, right, that you cannot solve for, but you can plan for if you start the prep early. So that's why I included this number two saying like things that always work is to start your prep right now. Like if you start immediately, I'll give you some good examples which I put in here. Expensifies this. This is a booth that they built. I think it took them a year is what they told us. And this is literally a full blown turnkey booth that they take to different events. This took them a lot of time to like from maybe more than a year actually by the time it was proof of concept to actually build. And then there's actual build time and retrofitting that they had to do for Saster Annual. Right. So like even though this is a custom turnkey booth that they are taking from event to event, this is something where even with our team, I think we. Like nine months before Sasha Annual last year to bring the White Castle. And I remember getting on phone calls with their logistics team of how to retrofit a booth that was built turnkey for inside to be outside. And that took time in prep, right? That is literally phone calls with their logistics team. That is something where like their builders literally had to build that roof that you see on it now, because it didn't have a roof like that anyways. So that took a lot of retrofitting and planning and if they had started that too late, we just couldn't have done it. Right. So all this to say if you start early, it pays off because then you will have it in time for your event. There are certain things you cannot rush. So build times is one of them. Order times is one of them. That's why I put that example on there. Another example I'll give on the bottom half of images. The speakeasy that we did at Sastra Annual, that was actually a long time in the works from a concept of we've always wanted to do a speakeasy that was sort of hidden at Sasser Annual. And so that was a lot of planning. And we were like, okay, this is finally the year we can do the speakeasy. It was a lot of planning in terms of inception. Like we had literally started this planning in 20, like before SAS for annual 2021. So in the summer of 2021, we started planning the speakeasy for the September of 2022 Sasser annual, knowing we could not do it in the September of 2021 Sasser annual. So it was a long planning cycle for the speakeasy. We knew we wanted to do this. I'll give you another example. We were like, why is there a random telephone on this slide? So these telephones are actually Pantone spray painted to the Vonage who was our sponsor or ish. That is their color. Like that is something that you again cannot rush. You literally cannot rush paint. Trying here as an example. You can't rush paint drying. You cannot rush. You know, ups, shipping times, all these things take times. A lot of them you'll notice are out of your control. Sure, you can use different vendors which sometimes can get you there faster, but they're all going to have about the same lead time. So again, it's never too early to start your prep, especially if you're going to do something that you know, needs. That you know, needs to be ordered, or even sometimes where you're like, oh, it's just swag, like, I'll just order that a couple of weeks before. That's not the case anymore. I know people who have to. Or like, now you need to order your swag months out to make sure you get it in time for the event. So even if it's something that you think is small, I would start on it now because lead times are much longer. Okay, live streaming. This is a fun one that I pulled from a few different events that we've seen now and I've also done ourselves. So I know we all probably think on this call that virtual events are dead, but let me tell you guys, live streaming is thriving. Okay, I'll give you a few examples of this. And I think this is something we do not do enough of. And I think if you wait too long, it's going to be too late to capitalize on the live streaming audience. And I'll explain why. I know many of you on this call are not new to virtual, but are probably new to live streaming. I was not a live streaming expert before the year 2020. I, you know, obviously I know about Twitch. I've seen Twitch streams, I've seen YouTube streams. But I think, you know, Coachella started live streaming in, I want to say, 2018 or 17, they started live streaming. I think they started with like one week. I could be wrong, but like one weekend of the festival and they went to both weekends and now they put more effort into it. So yes, you know, listen, half a million people go to Coachella, but millions of people watch the live stream. And something I'll say that is, you know, cross events, right? Because this is. These are seven things that always work. Events thing number three, live streaming. Always, always, always works. It is an investment. I will tell you, like, we have really invested separate team for Europa Annual. I, you know, become an expert. I've trained the whole team on streaming for our speaker team. It is something you have to invest in and really learn and understand what works and what doesn't. Live stream. I would say we're much better at it now than we used to be. But you just gotta, you know, rip a band aid and start live streaming. I have this on the next slide. But also note that it is stressful sometimes and I think that's why people kind of avoid live streaming because it is a live event that is now being live streamed. So, like your amplification factor for something going wrong has now just doubled because it's alive, multiplied by a live. So I get that's really scary for a lot of you, but live streaming is the way to go. I've got a few examples on this, actually. So there's one example from Taster. We've gotten much better at our live streaming. The top singer that you guys see, this is Rosalia from Coachella. I put this in there because Coachella live streams and they, you know, they have their own production company. Rosalie actually brought her own supplemental production company to do her livestream because she was like, I want this live stream for myself. I invested in it for my fans, for my audience. I mean, her fans are her customers if you think about it that way. So she wanted to invest in it, she put in the money, and she literally had her own production team come and supplement the livestream that Coachella does. If you go back and watch the streams from the last few weekends or look hers up, you'll notice even clips from hers hers are much better than everyone else's livestream, like by tenfold, because she actually invested in it and cared about it. So this is one of those things where like, yes, listen, even if you have an event for, you know, 100 people or you've got a customer event, or we've got Sapphire Annual, you know, which is 12,000 people or faster OPA or faster APAC, which is on this slide, like, you'd be surprised how many more people will watch a live stream regardless of the time zone. I think that is something that still surprises me no matter what time of day it is. People will be watching the Saster live streams. They'll be up at like 3am watching workshop Wednesday. They'll be up at, you know, 7pm or 11pm watching Saster annual somewhere else. Like, it is crazy to me how many more people, customers, prospects, fans, attendees you can reach if you live stream. Not everyone is in the room. Sometimes we have literally seen up to five times the audience, if not more on the live stream than the people in the room. So just think about this as a giant megaphone. I stress each one of you or challenge each one of you to try live streaming for your next event. Do it now before it's too late to capitalize on this audience. It always, always works okay? And it doesn't have to be a big stage production. I've seen people live stream their podcast recordings. I've seen people live stream like we're doing right now, these style of webinars or meetings or customer roadmap meetings. I've seen people live stream literally like their QBRs, whatever it is. Like if you do it, people will come and it will amplify your reach. The other thing, I'll say if you missed it, the the last screenshot is from Taylor Swiftera store. She is notably not live streaming. I feel like if I had to take a guess, it's because she's going to record it and put it on like Netflix or whatever and sell it to them. But listen, if I were her, I would just charge the Swifties on a subscription for access to the live stream. She'd actually probably make more than she would from selling her tour footage to Netflix or Hulu or whoever the heck she's going to sell it to. That's just my two cents. I do think live streaming is way more worth it. And also you can, you know, monetize it as a lot of other people do. We do it all for free. A lot of people do it for free at the moment because you can monetize in other ways. But yeah, anyways, if you don't do it, that is a screenshot of somebody who livestreamed themselves Taylor Swift and got 50,000 views in like three days because she is not live streaming it. And so she's now missing out on that monetization. So anyways, even though she's great at all this, she's missing out on this live streaming. Some keys here because I know this is a newer one. For most of you we use Restream. I love it. It is a one stop shop. The moment we found it, it made our streaming lives easier. So if you still any hack and start streaming, use Restream. It's basically one platform. I'm using it literally right now. I'm staring at it on my other monitor. Use Restream. It's one platform. You push it once and then it goes to everywhere. YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, like LinkedIn, anything you want, one platform. It's great. Invest here if you can. Both on the back end and the front end. And what I mean by this is like we literally sent our entire team and speaker team mics. We've sent speakers mics, we've sent people lights. We've sent people virtual backgrounds. Like we've told people to get a headset if their audio sucks. We've told people to change backgrounds or change rooms. Literally nothing is off the table when you are streaming. Like it is a live production which we always remind people. And honestly when you tell people you are live Streaming, they are more susceptive and willing to actually put in the work if you tell them ahead of time, hey, we're going to be live streaming. Make sure your audio is crisp, make sure you've got lights on, make sure you've got a clear background. Take it seriously because it is a live event. It's not just a zoom. They will do it. And again, remember I explained this kind of math earlier. It's a live stream of a live event. So it does kind of multiply your factors that something could go wrong. Let me tell you, my streaming team literally blew a fuse box during Faster annual. It's fine. We just restarted the stream. It is okay. It's bound to happen. Literally it overheated because it was streaming all day and we just restarted the screen five minutes later. It was fine. No one was upset at us. We said on the YouTube, we'll be right back in five minutes. Then we're back in five minutes. It was five. So yeah. All right, tip number four, that always works in events. You can turn one event into one year of content. I don't see enough people doing this. I see a lot of people doing it, but not everyone. This is something that always works. You can capture the content at the event, not only of the content, but there's so many attendees at the event. There's so many speakers that you could interview. There's so many customers and prospects and revenue leaders and just great, amazing people at these events that you could interview and talk to for content, for inspiration, for tips. There's so much content you could generate. You could literally fill your content calendar from like a three or two day Sastra annual event or a bigger industry event for the rest of the year. I don't see a lot of people doing this. So I put some examples here. The top one is one of our sponsors, StoryBlock literally interviewed attendees at Saster Annual. They turned it into a blog post. They did it on social, they use it on their website. They're like still using this content. Like literally. That's what I mean. You could turn it into content for a year. There's a lot you could do. You can record. We've seen people record videos we've seen people do on site surveys where like, again, there's a lot of people. So, you know, if you get a marketer that comes, oh, what's your best marketing tip for, you know, whatever your industry is, security, cloud, whatever. Also the fact that your whole entire team is together, you could film what you guys are doing as a behind the scenes, whatever you're working on, what you're thinking about, your experiences. More of a vlog. I've seen people do that again. I've seen people we've live streamed. I haven't seen a sponsor do it yet. I'm waiting for the first one. Ready? Live streaming always works, as you guys know now. I've seen people literally record podcasts on site during our events. Listen, it all works like you can turn, you know, again, three days of jam packed content into a year of content, if you pre plan to plan early and do it right. And just keep in mind, right, there are literally thousands of people at something like Sasker, so they're all content creators, cross collaborate with them. This is where cross collaboration does work, right, for content, you know, trip out the content over the rest of the year. The bottom screenshot is an example from Avneo. They literally made their own video game that they're still using for Saster Europa. So it doesn't have to be, you know, necessarily just a video. Although video works great. You can get super creative with it and I've always seen that work in events. So all right, creating scarcity always works. So not to talk about too much about some of the, you know, just normal big events that we go to at scale we. Which is always helpful as you can see from these screenshots. These are more, you know, all right, people are in line to buy merch. Why are they in line to buy merch for hours? Because it's scarcity. Like you cannot get this online or not the same version of it online or whatever it is. And when you see people in person, creating scarcity also always works because it creates fomo. So it'll give you more of a faster example just to think about this because I don't see people do this enough of creating scarcity at their booth at our events. And I do think when people have done it, like Google Cloud and others, it always, always, always worked. So it's kind of a tip for that We've stolen from bigger events, but also wanted to put a more concrete example. We've literally seen that's after. So Google Cloud, the top photo is like the calm before the storm, if you will. Just their team, you know, their Google Cloud. Cool. All right, what is happening in the chaos of the bottom two photos? They literally did timed giveaways where if you watched a demo, as you can kind of see on their top photo there, if you watch a demo, you are entered to win a Pixel 3 that happens to be a Google Product, right? They're literally giving their own product away. So what they would do each day is they would, you know, have people scan their badge, watch the demo, and then they would time their giveaways. Not just like, oh, at the end of it, we're going to give away one pixel. No, no, no. They did like three pixels a day. And they gave people specific times. They're like, all right, the next giveaway for the next pixel is 1245. So, like, if you watch the demo between, you know, 10am 1245, come back at 1245, and we're going to literally live pick the card out of the thing and see who wins. And that is what the chaos of the bottom two photos are. This is how many people were like. I mean, this is not even a 360 shot, which I wish I had, but these are photos I took. Like, it was crazy to me how many people were literally like, from like the depths of the sponsor hall, just went to Google Cloud. You come to this giveaway each time. The day they had it, which I think was three times a day. Like, every time it was this crowded every time it was like so many people, like, having that FOMO when they saw like this giveaway and they were part of it, they were like, oh, how can I get in that? Which is what I mean by creating scarcity. Always, always, always works like this works like gangbusters for them. Yeah, you do this three times a day and literally it's fun when you do it in real time because it's like they would pull the business card out at a certain time when that person wasn't there. They didn't win. So it's not like, oh, I'm just going to give this random business card to be the winner at the end of the show. And no one really knows and there's no hoopla over it. They're kind of making also the prospects and the customers the hero by glamorizing this giveaway. Right? They knew they were going to do a giveaway anyway, but from the simple fact that they timed it, they announced that they made it a whole thing. Like, it turned into a much bigger success than I think they thought it was going to be. So that's what I mean by, you know, concrete example of where creating scarcity ad events always works. There are other things you can do. It does not need to be a time giveaway. It could be something like you're doing a limited edition of whatever your flag is, or even badge or limited edition, like, product feature. We've seen people do that around Sastry Annual. I've seen people do world tour things where, like, you know, they're doing both the annual and Europa. And so they do slightly different things that if you collect them all, then you get something better for being a customer or a prospect and meeting them at both events versus, like just one event. It's also a good reason for folks, you know, doing something like a world for idea. It's a good reason for folks to come back to you. So, like, even if they did see you at Europa, you want them to still talk to you. At best renewal, you know, that's like four months later. A lot could change in your product between now and then. So I've seen that work really well. The last one I've seen work really well are things like customer badges, right? G2 is a great partner of ours. They always give people customer badges. You know, fellow sponsors of like, oh, we're highly rated on G2 for compliance, or we're highly rated on G2 for, you know, sales enablement. People always love them. I always see them stick them on their booth. I don't think they always know what's coming. It's just something that G2 does for their customers. I've seen that work really well. So. And that is a scarcity play, right? Like, you've got to be on G2 and literally highly rated to get that badge that they then give you. So, yeah, scarcity always works a fun one. And then I'll go to the last one. So there is no such thing as too much lineage. Ironically, I made this one slide. But there is no such thing as too much signage. Quick example is we did the sign back in 2021. It was the first half re annual back. The sign went a little bit viral. Like, I didn't even think a something so simple as a welcome sign would go viral on Twitter, but it did. So anyways, there's such thing as too much signage. It could be something as easy as, like, a fun sign. Like this one is. It could be directionals. You can never have too many directionals. I can't tell you how many times in these events that I've gone to literally in the last month that I have gotten lost. And I have been to these events previously and it's the same venue and I've still gotten lost. Or I've gone to a venue I've gone before and it was a new artist and then I got lost. I'm like, I literally get lost all the time with These events, I don't know how I don't get lost. It's faster, but probably because we have a lot of signs. We always have too many directional signs. We always have tons of, like, people. People's way finding signs like, there's no such thing. I can tell you now it's too much. Even if you think it makes sense in your brain of how to get around the venue, it does not make sense to someone who's not stared at it. You know, for the last six to 12 months that you've been planning the event, they've just gotten there. Most, you know, a lot of our attendees are international. So, yeah, there's no such thing as too much signage. You can never have too much. So signage, directionals, printed agendas, whatever it is. We always do more and more and more of this because there's no such thing ever. It's too much signage and events. It always works. It always helps. And sometimes, you know, your signs could even go viral, as this one did. So. All right, last tip, which was kind of an inspiration from yesterday's workshop with Nick Mehta. He talked about this. As a CEO, I'll talk about it more from an events perspective, but honestly, I don't see enough people being themselves at their booths, at their exhibit stands, in their own events. You know, I see a lot of turnkey stuff in catalogs that I've seen. I've seen a lot of activations that are turnkey. And turnkey is great, and we do it too, and it works, but it doesn't work for everything. There comes a point in time where you need to inject some of whatever your brand's personality is into what you're doing in order to stand out from the other booths, exhibitors from other events that are going on. We've seen a lot of people do this really well at Saster, fortunately. So we've got a lot of great examples on the next slide. But if you do it, you will get more leads, have better conversations, and maybe even close some deals right then and there. We have seen people close deals on site when they have really cool branding or really cool activation or something that just draws people in that ties back to their brand or their product or whatever it is in a creative way. I don't just mean, like, put screenshots of your product on the booth. It's gotta be in a creative way. So some examples, right? It could be something as simple as the two brands on the right bandwidth at the top and then hook at the bottom, coordinated their team Uniforms, if you will. So that during the event, no matter if they were at their booth or walking around the show, you always knew like, okay, the people on highlighter is the hook team. The people with the shiny sparkly jackets is the bandwidth team. Like you always knew who they were. They kind of stood out. It was really fun. So anyways, and it works for their product and you know, it tied into both of what they were trying to promote. The Saleslock one, which I put in, is a great example of a photo booth they did at their Saster Europa. And this is something where like they wanted to showcase their ecosystem. And so they came up with this photo wall and they brought a bunch of props and like they basically had people take photos, I think to enter a giveaway. So that was one where it's like, okay, some of their fun, you know, personality as well as, you know, if it's a photo booth and those people are going to put that on their social, amplify your reach, kind of some free marketing there. But again, something fun that just showcase their personality. The bottom one is a video game that Cloudera did. They did one that was related to their product. You had to like grab as many subscriptions as you can. Literally what they're, you know, their product helps you manage your subscription. So that was again a fun one. Like literally all day people were doing this VR game and so good examples are like, you know, make sure it ties to your brand, to your product. You can do something like a mascot. We've got a mascot. YouTube brought their mascot. Like we've had Maxio brought their Moon Man. Like we've seen people do that. Now you could showcase it through activations or again, product giveaways. It doesn't always have to be swag, it doesn't always have to be uniform. It, it just has to be something that is unique and creative to you and your brand and something that you can tie back as a giveaway or as like a leave behind for attendees to remember your brand from everyone else that they saw and met at Faster. So that's always a fun one. I think that's the last slide. We might have made it here. Let's see. Yeah, that's the last one. So yes, in totality, hopefully this is super helpful for you guys to help brainstorm, you know, what you guys are doing at events. These are type of things we've always seen work at events, no matter their size and scale. Some of it was from sar, some of it's not from Faster. So hopefully that was helpful. For all of you guys, thanks for listening. If you guys have creative ideas you want to do at one of our upcoming events in particular or stuff you want to do at your events, like if you're like Amelia, we want to livestream our event. We're not sure where to start. Happy to send you guys the guide. Yeah, let us know. Like I know some of you on this call are doing some creative things with us at that. So thanks to all of you for doing that. Hopefully this is a fun one and got some of your creative juices going. And as you think of fun ideas and if you need help with them that are related to faster events or activations, just let us know. We always try and accommodate as many fun ideas as we can because we do know it helps folks kind of stand out in our event. So without further ado, then, that will end today's webinar. Thanks all for joining. Next week we'll be back at the same time live 9am Thursday. We are going to do a deep dive on SAS Europa. I know we did one a few weeks ago. We're going to do a refresh just for everyone who is a Sastra Europa sponsor. Also good to attend though if you're sponsoring annual because a lot of that translates. So yeah, next week will be a deep dive on Europa. If there's anything you want to see specifically that webinar, just email me, let me know. Or if you've got any questions about what I shared today, hit me up. My email is just aiastering.com and we will see you all.