When Will Events Be Back??

Hey, everybody. I wanted to chat for just a minute about events. A lot of folks ask us, what do you think is going to happen with events? Real world events, not digital events or virtual events, which we can talk about later. We just had 17,000 to the first Saster virtual event ever. The Saster Summit was great, but it was different. But people want to know in B2B in SAS and cloud, what's going to happen with events. And I didn't even fully realize why until really last week, until we started talking to more of the sponsors for sastrannual, I didn't actually realize that for many of them, especially for the sophisticated ones, the ones that have been doing B2B marketing for a long time, they get 40% of their pipeline in customers from events. And those are events of all different shapes and sizes, from steak dinners, from Dreamforce, from Saster annual to regional events to vertical events to horizontal events. But the good marketers that know how to do events, that, that know how to do field almost universally, they heard again and again we get 40% of our customers from events and we're struggling to figure this out. Now. Many of them are moving a lot of that budget to digital or making cuts or otherwise. But, wow, that's a lot of pipeline. So we're sort of in the thick of things at Saastr. We have well over 20,000 people a year that come to our global events. And we had to reschedule the SAASTR Annual a week before it happened this year. It was heartbreaking. And we think about this every day. I read everything, every tweet, every article. I follow Art Basel, I follow Coachella, I follow, of course, Dreamforce. I follow everything. And yesterday Dreamforce was rescheduled. We knew that was in the works as early as March, almost the week after, we had to reschedule Dreamforce. But Dreamforce 2020 is off. And let's chat about why for a minute and then let's chat about when they come back. And just so you know, a big event like a Dreamforce or even a Saster Annual, it takes us 13 months to plan Saster Annual. So beyond all the other Covid issues and health and safety and all the rest, a Dreamforce takes a year, SAS Annual takes a year. A web summit takes a year. And we could chat more later about why, but believe me, it is incredibly complicated. From a logistics perspective, we can spin up a smaller event. The first SAST Europa was just one day. It was in a hotel in Paris. We still had 1600. We spin that up and we could spin that up in 60 days. But once you cross a multi day event for more than a couple thousand, three or four thousand people, let alone 12, 15,000 people like Saster or a hundred thousand like Dreamforce, it takes a year. It takes a year to get it right. From permitting to permissions. So bigger events, it's going to be tough because just like we're wondering how long it will take to reopen restaurants and reopen offices, reopening large scale events will not be overnight either due to the mammoth lead times. At least six months. At least six months to plan a large scale B2B event. So if we got the green light tomorrow, it would be late into Q3. Late into Q3, folks. So steel yourself in that if you want leads. But let's assume we reach a moment in time where we want to start doing more bigger events. And to be clear, before we even talk about it, I, I know there's a lot of events scheduled in Q3. HubSpot's inbound. Lots of folks are still doing. I would love to go to Coachella. We have tickets. I do not believe any event in Q3 is going to happen. I believe they're all waiting, they're hoping, but we were well aware of everything. And I'll talk more. Why I do not believe there will be any significant B2B event in 2020 at all. And anyone that hasn't rescheduled or postponed, they're just hoping. But they're all already planning. They are already working on plan B. They're just waiting and hoping for something that it's almost impossible to have an event in Q3 in the world. And Q4 is. It's close to impossible. So when will we get back? Let me sort of summarize the five things that we'll take and then I'll tell you my answer based on what we know today. The first one's obvious is in order to plan something that takes four to six months, best case. Can we. Are we even allowed. So it's stating the obvious. There isn't a state in the country or any country in the world I'm aware of, there may be some country in the world where you can have any gathering today. And when they come back, there's no reason to assume they won't come back the same way. Although it was very compressed, it was very fast. They went away first bigger events and then like in Santa Clara county where Sastra Annual was, then the county banned events over a thousand so we couldn't do The Sastra Annual. Then it shrunk, I think to 500 and then 50 and then 10 and then nobody. It's been nobody for a while. And it's going to probably come back the same way with a few exceptions, at least for B2B. We're going to start off small, then ease our way back to bigger events. So we don't even have the green light yet. And even when the green light comes back, it may be barely green, it may be yellow. And so we haven't even started that six month planning period. So first we have to wait until we're allowed to do bigger events. Two, they have to be safe. Even if we're loud, even if Florida says tomorrow everyone can do an event and we'll talk about Disney World in a minute. I don't know if it's safe. We're not sure. These are complicated issues. So not only does it have to be actually safe, which is the most important, but two people have to be comfortable that it's safe. And I just threw up a Twitter poll answered by about 600 folks. If Disney World opens in June, which is the latest talk, would you feel comfortable going? Less than 20% said they'd be comfortable. Less than 20%. 19%. So you can't put on an event if only 19%, even if it is safe, you can't put on an event where only 19% of your customers, your prospects are comfortable coming. That's, that's gotta approach 90%. I think for a real world, an IRL event to work, we're not there yet either. The third issue which people forget about for big events is there's a lot of travel at Saster Annual. A little bit over 50% of folks come from other countries and 90% come from outside of California, including other countries. So yeah, maybe. Even if it's okay to have an event for 500 or 1000, can anybody even travel? Will they be comfortable traveling? How will travel work? When will travel get back to normal? When will folks want to get on a plane? When will companies even approve travel for business events? When we go back to work. And we may all go back to work starting next week. In many cases it will not be like it was before. Offices will be more sparsely populated. People will work from home for longer and travel. It's hard to imagine that elective travel will be approved overnight. So first of all, travel until travel is truly open, it's hard to have a big event of any scale. And then two other issues which we saw at Saster Annuals here, you have to have speaker comfort. And many of our I'll tell you, going up to the very end of the sester annual and Covid seemed much tamer. At the time, there were only a handful of cases in the US There had been no fatalities. It was a different time, even though we had some extreme health and safety measures already. But attendees were comfortable, but speakers quickly were not. Speakers quickly even frankly, they had different entrance, their exposure vectors were much lower. Many of our speakers just were not comfortable. And it's going to be hard to put on a great event until speakers are comfortable. And then finally, and I know this should seem obvious, even if it's a go, even if it's safe, even if travel's okay, and even if your speakers are cool coming, they will. For those that have sponsors, sponsor comfort will be complicated. Sponsors will be uncomfortable forcing AES and SDRs to man booths until it's safe, until everyone's comfortable. So sponsors could be if you need sponsors for your event or if they're an important part, it's possible that's the last piece that comes back to being comfortable. And again, even and lastly, even if the sponsors are comfortable coming, if people can't travel, if events are more local and your attendance is lower, your event may not be in the beginning what it was previously, what it was through Q1 of this year. So what are we thinking? And I know a lot of folks were surprised when Dreamforce was rescheduled or canceled, whatever it was this week. People were shocked on Twitter. They couldn't believe it. But we knew at Sasser, we knew it had already started almost the week after we had to reschedule. We knew they were already negotiating with hotels and the city and the venue. We knew there was no way there could be a Dream Force. There's no way people could travel from all these countries. It was a zero percent chance. But people don't get this. So from can we is it safe? Attendee comfort level, travel speaker comfort level, sponsor comfort level and scale. Is there enough scale? I don't see any significant B2B event happening this year. We don't. A few may pull it off somehow. Maybe HubSpot will do it, maybe there'll be some other vendor events, but I doubt it. I don't think anyone will have a B2B event this year, and I think folks know it. On the other hand, if you look at Florida, there is a lot of talk of trying to reopen the Orlando theme parks, including Disney World in June. With social distancing with restricted policies. And if you look on the web, Disney's already preparing for that. They already have contactless hotel check in and other contact list options already going up. Already have. You don't have to use your thumbprint to get in with the season pass. Already they have technology deployed so you can check into Disney World hotels without talking to anybody and go straight to your room. So B2C in many ways blazes the path for B2B. It has for years. B2C is often several years ahead. So maybe if everyone goes to Disney World in June and people go to Coachella in October and it happens, which I feel is unlikely, but it could happen, that may, just like the beaches are, everyone may get more comfortable more quickly. But even if it happens at Disney World, we still have this six month planning. So even if we go to Disney World in June and even if people get comfortable in July and August, which seems awfully fast, but it could happen. If you look at the beaches, we'll need another six months to pull it off. So really, January of next year seems the earliest we're going to have any B2B events. And, and if you need that pipeline, if you need those leads, start thinking about other things, start thinking about more ads, start thinking about more digital events. They're different, they're not the same. It is not the same networking. But what we did learn from Sastra Summit is you can get a lot more leads from digital vetting if you do it right, whether they're as good or as qualified. Time will tell. But I will tell you one trick. The sponsors that participated in the Sastra Summit, all of them got over 4,000 registrants each for their session. There's no way, if you did a session like that at a physical event, you would get 4,000 people to sign up. Many vendors, you know, who go to Dreamforce and get a session because there's a lot of Dreamforce, sometimes there's like five people that jump. Now if it's a, if it's an eight figure deal, it's worth it. But if you do digital just right, it's not the same. The networking, the relationships, it is not the same no matter what anybody says. But maybe, maybe if you do it right, there's more lead gen there than you think. But otherwise I wouldn't plan on anything to queue on. No matter what people are telling you folks, good luck and we'll talk to you soon.