using data to improve b2b event performance

Using data and insights to identify opportunities for growthJohn Barnes, Chief Digital Officer, Incisive MediaDecember 2016

http://www.incisivemedia.com/

Strictly Private & Confidential2 @johnmnbarnesDecember 2016

Setting the scene…The competitor landscape within events is now more populated than ever, so to

ensure our events are being prioritised by our target audience or with prospective sponsors we have had to rely on data and analytics more than ever before to ensure

our events standout and remain the very best in the industry


Data drives engagement, loyalty and ROIData has transformed digital marketing, and marketers who understand its core principles can substantially improve processes in key areas, such as customer engagement, loyalty and ROI. Having access to data doesn’t automatically create better marketing, but companies can gain a competitive edge through complex analytics and identifying which data signals will drive perfomance.

@johnmnbarnesDecember 2016

Strictly Private & Confidential4

We are most interested in the following data signals



Where do data signals come from?



Creating segments of known users

We use Cxense, a data management and content personalisation solution for publishers, to consolidate many of our data challenges.

Specifically to: • Aggregate and analyse user behaviour across our sites • Index and semantically analyse our content• Segment users based on their behaviour and/or demographics


Then we use these segments to identify ‘lookalike’ users, and also target them

This extends reach of campaign and because lookalike is identified using data profile of known users we have a high success rate as they are highly likely to be the ‘right’ targetIf they respond via email they convert into ‘known’ segmented users

This technique identified an added approx 10,000 ‘Highly engaged and interested’ hotter prospects to the target list for the Risk USA event


The results speak for themselves • Rule based targeting using audience segments• Achieved 3x performance Vs regular display campaign


Online display, retargeting and audience extensionUsing our user segments, lookalike users and cookied/hashed previous event attendees, we target ads to them on both our own sites, as well as the wider web through audience extension using real time bidding and programmatic advertising

We use Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP) to do this, and serve different creatives to different subsets of the user group

We also seek out new users, using the lookalike profiles to match similar content environments such as FT, Economist, Bloomberg, as well as Affinity sites (those sites we know our users visit) to build ‘audience extensions’ into our event campaigns

It is low cost and generally performs well as we only buy the people we want in real time.

We extend this technique onto other publishers emails buy buying inventory available as it is offered in real-time (when emails are opened) and matching the email ID, with our database MD5#


Dynamic creatives and user targetingDynamic or data driven creatives use data to dynamically create ads in realtime that change based on the audiences viewing them and the contexts of data and the environments in which they appear.

Template driven, they build the ad on the fly, dynamically changing copy, images, colours and calls to action

This opitmises the ad to the user, and means we now don’t make ads for events, but assemble a library of copy, images, and calls to action

This means we can match speakers with users, offers with companies, prices with attendance history and multi variate test In realtime to get best performing ad


Using data to optimise emails and improve responseWe use analytics to see who is reading articles on our main news websites and how frequently they are engaging with our content and what type of content they are engaging with.

This data combined with user segments is used to increase the effectiveness of our event marketing emails, to ensure we are producing content which is more relevant to the user.

Typically content led emails using this approach are 3x more opened, than typical event emails e.g. ‘book your place by Friday’.


Using Data to inform social marketing strategyWe tweet and promote across social channels organically as most event organisers do!

However, we also extensively use data collected from Hootsuite, a “Social Media Management System”, that helps us keep track of, and manage our many social network channels

It enables us to monitor what people are saying about our events and helps us to respond instantly, either through manual or automated posts.

This ensures we are picking up everything, ie everytime someone mentions a regulation or a topic that we are covering, so that we can interpret and alter our other campaigns to make them more effective.


Rethinking social campaigns based on data2015Last year our organic activity for Risk USA was limited.Paid activity used historical targeting with no data insights or key prospects lists.Quality of branded content and appealing imagery was limited.Paid & organic activity only focused on LinkedIn and Twitter

2016This year we kick started regular organic campaigns across FB/TW/LI with: Speaker announcements, Agenda topics, Workshop themes, Early bird discounts, Venue, event’s & ticket info, Twitter polls, questions on topics, …and much more…Paid activity was based on data insight of past attendees lists, lookalikes as well as prospects lists.We stopped sending text only tweets and posts based on performance researchPaid & organic activity tested on all 3 platforms, FB/TW/LI.


Examples of redesigned activity


2016 Social media results

Twitter (paid & organic)60k impressions on the day of the event.1.5k impressions a day during campaign time.4% more traffic than last year (only 1 brief one-week campaign this year, vs 4 last year).49% less advertising £ spent vs last year.Facebook (paid & organic)64% more traffic than last year. Only 1 paid campaign for early bird, lasting 10 days.LinkedIn (paid & organic)32% more traffic than last year.80% less advertising £ spend.2 short lived paid campaigns, versus 6 of last year.

OverallThe advertising cost this year versus last year is 157% lower, whilst the traffic achieved by comparison is 31% higher.



The future, the events dashboard!Over the 18 months we have invested significant time and resources into our events dashboard.The dashboard combines financial data with customer insight from delegates and sponsors to identify challenges threats and opportunities to an events portfolio.Ultimately, the tool can be used to determine pricing power for delegate tickets and sponsorship packages to ensure revenue growth.

The dashboard also allows you to filter, segment and split data by geographic region, brand, event type (delegate or sponsor driven), size of event

We have only recently completed the dashboard, so we haven’t seen the full benefit of it yet, but we see it very much as the future of events analytics both for management and operational staff who are looking to review their event’s performance.


Thank You [email protected]

twitter.com/johnmnbarnes

linkedin.com/in/johnmnbarnes

slideshare.net/JohnMNBarnes

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


using data to improve b2b event performance

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