Your Attendee Experience Is Being Graded By Someone Who Never Filled Out Your Survey

[00:00:00] I've been in events since I was in daycare, and the daycare I went to? Inside Marriott's headquarters. And my guest today has been attending your events longer than you've been designing them. You know how everyone in our industry says we need to think like the attendees? Cool, I brought you one today. She sat through keynotes, walked and worked your expo floors, spoken in your sessions, and then went home and decided if it was all worth it.

[00:00:28] You've been planning experiences and she's been writing them off. It's Event About It with Christine Martin. Hey everybody, welcome to Event About It. I'm your host, Megan Martin. Our guest this week will tell you the events industry has been performing for the wrong audience.

[00:00:53] That every conference you've ever run has been silently graded by someone who's never even filled out the survey.

[00:01:01] That every speaker who's ever booked left with notes on your event team. She's a 30 plus year tax professional, a senior solutions consultant at Avalara, a road warrior with event and travel stories for days. And in this Mother's Day special for the first time on a podcast ever, the woman who raised me is the woman across from me. Welcome to the studio, Mom.

[00:01:28] Mom. Thanks for having me join your podcast. This is so exciting. I'm so glad to have you here. Very special Mother's Day edition. Never even really thought about doing this until recently. A little scared, I guess. Maybe a little bit. And we did crowdsource questions we're going to get into in the after show and those are even more terrifying. Oh, those are going to be fun. Okay. So before we get into some of the big stuff, I want to start here. So we mentioned in the opener about you started your career with Marriott.

[00:01:58] Yes. Went to the daycare center when it first opened. And ironically, I was on the cover of a Marriott report. You were. Sure. So tell us a little bit about that because I want to know how in the world did your daughter and my cousin, your niece, end up on the cover of a Marriott report? And mind you, Miley and I weren't even cousins at the time.

[00:02:21] Right. So crazy story. We would, you would come to work with me every day and we would walk in from the parking garage and you knew everybody along the way. And you were like, Hey, Scott. Hey, Mary. And I'm like, how do you know these people? Well, Scott happened to be like the maintenance guy and he would come out to work in the daycare and you just happened to know who he was. So all these people you knew, and I guess Miley too.

[00:02:49] And they were out there taking pictures and you two, because you knew the photographers too, they took pictures of you guys. And there you were. And I had absolutely no idea that you were going to be on the cover until you were on the cover. So if anyone from Marriott is listening, I've been dying to get my hands on a copy of this for years. I've been trying. So if Marriott, if you're listening, call me, I'll go through the archives of your new headquarters to find this 1990 report that I'm on the cover of.

[00:03:20] And you ended up playing a little matchmaker. So I ended up becoming in our family. I did. Yeah. Who knew that daycare would turn into expanding our family? Who knew? Who knew? All right. Well, let's get into a fun game. OK, so you've been auditing events for probably 25 plus years. The numbers are definitely going to come out. So this is audit the agenda. OK, so here's how it works.

[00:03:44] I'm going to read you two real conference choices and you tell me which one earns your return for next year. Oh, me coming back. Are you going to come back? OK, OK. We're trying to do a lot of accounting puns in here. OK, got it. Every option is a real planning meeting decision and they have to think about the audience when they do this. OK. All right. First up, a speaker green room with snacks, Wi-Fi and a quiet corner or an extra 30 minutes of paid speaking time. Oh, the quiet green room all day long.

[00:04:14] A pre-conference speaker dinner the night before or a private hotel room available. Sorry, a private hotel room arrival kit with snacks and a handwritten welcome note. Well, this is the introverted extrovert in me is I would take the private room and the welcome kit and the snacks. But I mean, if I think about it from another perspective that I need some visibility and I want some notoriety, then I'd probably do kind of a meet and greet piece.

[00:04:44] But I just I like the alone time sometimes. Don't. So you would go to maybe like a speaker reception the night before, but you don't want to sit for a whole dinner. I don't want to sit for a whole dinner now. OK, good. Good to know. All right. Next one, a conference shuttle from the airport at every flight time or $50 Uber credit you can use whenever you want. Again, this is that introverted extrovert in me.

[00:05:08] The Uber drive, which is, I mean, very typical of me because sometimes I put in that I just want quiet Uber rides or that I'm hearing impaired so they don't talk to me. Well, I sometimes do like taking the shuttles, but if my flight, let's just say it's on the top of the hour and my flight gets in at 15 after. I don't want to have to wait 45 minutes to get on the shuttle. I don't want to hang around. Once I get in, I'm ready to go.

[00:05:36] I don't want to wait to be picked up in a shuttle. And then especially if the shuttle has a whole bunch of people, then I have to do a whole bunch of small talk where I just want to mentally prepare myself for what I'm going to do. Yeah, I like it. All right. A celebrity keynote whose talk has nothing to do with your industry or an industry expert with tactical session, but maybe a slightly bad delivery. I would take the one that has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

[00:06:06] And I actually, I'll share something with you. We had a sales kickoff. Gosh, it was probably eight years ago. And we had a keynote speaker that literally spoke nothing about tax, nothing about software, nothing about accounting. But he was one of the best keynotes I have ever listened to. He was talking through like attitude and how your attitude changes everything and how you perform your job.

[00:06:32] What you think, how you proactively think, how it impacts your health. I mean, all of these things is what he was on stage. And he shared stories about his wife getting sick and how that impacted him and how the attitude of his wife helped her. I mean, it was all about attitude. Again, nothing about software, nothing about selling, but it was really just about your behavior. Yeah. I mean, your attitude follows. Oh, 100%. Everything. So. All right. Well, that's good to know.

[00:07:03] A printed show guide with the full agenda and exhibitor list or an event app you have to download to see anything? This is where I'm aging myself. I would take the printed one all day long because I'm on my phone all day for everything. But then I get this app and I forget I have the app and then I have 5,000 apps of the events that I've been to. So this is where I'm going old school that I just like the printed stuff and then I can throw it away afterwards. I just don't want to download any more apps. I'm ready for web-based apps to be more of a thing. Yes.

[00:07:32] I'm tired of downloading stuff. Agreed. Agreed. Like just give me a web-based, like click a link. If you gave me the option of web-based, I'd pick web-based over printed. Well, sustainability police are going to come after you for your love of the printed agenda. They totally will. All right. $300 in branded swag in your welcome bag or an extra 60 minutes of learning content? This is like a real budget decision that people fight with leadership on all the time. And whose swag? The event swag? Yeah. Event swag. Oh, I'd take the learning time.

[00:08:02] Yeah? Yeah. Or what if it was a welcome bag with branded swag from like the sponsors or people around? Maybe not the event, but maybe they got donated swag. I'd probably still take the learning time. Okay. An end of day two industry award ceremony that you have to attend or an earlier dismissal so you can catch a same-day flight home? Earlier dismissal. I mean, I don't know when we're going to figure out how to do these award ceremonies. They're all painful.

[00:08:32] Like, I don't know anybody who's doing them right. Unless it's like a standalone fundraising gala. Right. It's the only time it makes sense to me. So a lot of these shows that we go to have big concerts, right? And they say they don't do the concerts the first night because let's just admit that people just get hammered and don't show up the next day. But then you do it the last day and everybody's like, I'm just going to tap out and not go to the concert. So when do you do it? Do you do it in the middle and then risk not having people show up to the next day? I mean, that's a hard thing to navigate.

[00:09:01] Or maybe we just don't do concerts. Well, there's that too. You could just not do them. I mean, they are special and people do love them. It is a lot of times a draw for attendee acquisition. But is it the best attendee experience? Debatable. Yeah. Sometimes yes. All right. Last couple. Sponsor demos integrated into the breakout sessions or sponsor demos confined to the exhibit hall floor? Into this breakout session.

[00:09:29] And how do you keep it from being a total sales pitch? Oh, that is the magic right there. If you can figure out, that is probably one of my big pet peeves going to breakout sessions is I'm there to learn something, not get sold to. If I know that I'm going to get sold to, I'm just not going to that session. So, but I think being able to see what it is that somebody is talking about is super helpful. I just don't want to be sold to. So give me some content. Give me something that's relevant.

[00:09:58] Give me something that's going to educate me. But then also wet my whistle with a little bit of a demo. Don't make it. But here's the thing. Don't make it a live demo. Nothing good comes from live demos. Completely agree with that. We all know hotel and convention center Wi-Fi is completely unstable. Nothing good comes from that. What if the breakout session was labeled as like a multi-demo session? Like come learn about like five brand new tax products or content tech or whatever. Like it's intentionally like this is a demo session.

[00:10:27] If it's not just one company, I would totally go to that. If you had in there, don't make them competitors. Make them completely different platforms that still served me as within my role. Then I think that makes sense. I get five minutes or 10 minutes of each one. And then based on what I see, then I know which one I would want to go visit in the booth. I like that idea. That's a really good idea. I like that. We do those a lot in the industry, like virtually these like demo days where like competitors all do it.

[00:10:57] But I think there is room in person to do those. And then especially if they have a booth in the hall and you have an expo component to your show. You know, I'm really curious what kind of response you get from these demo days. I've certainly participated in these demo days, but I never get to hear the feedback. Like how many people did it bring to our virtual booth and how many opportunities? Because I know me and maybe it's just an ADD thing that I sit through these virtual things and then my phone dings or slack dings.

[00:11:25] And I look at that and I'm no longer paying attention. So the in-person thing, I love this idea of having short little snippets that I can learn something real quick and wet my whistle to go visit them. I like it. All right. Noted for all our planners listening. An opening cocktail reception with no structure or structured speed networking session with timed one-on-one conversations. I love the speed networking thing. It's kind of like speed dating, right?

[00:11:53] You get in there and you're like, hey, and somebody has to get their pitch down. Yeah. And you learn an awful lot about somebody on how quickly they can introduce themselves and really give you their elevator pitch. Yeah. How long do you want the meeting to be? Because I've been in some that are five, some that are 20. 20 is too long. I think five. Is that too short? Depends. You got to have your message down. I mean. No room for small talk. Just get to it.

[00:12:22] Five minutes, you have to get to it. I mean. 20 feels too long though. Like, hey, we're going to talk about the weather. You're going to ask me about Montana. And then we're going to spend five minutes talking about what we really came to talk about. Just get to it. All right. So five to 10 minutes is probably a sweet spot in there. And you know what? Maybe if it's a cocktail hour, maybe the closer you get to the end of the cocktail hour, then that five minutes happens a little bit more fluently because of some liquid courage. Also very true. All right. So if we're doing one-on-one appointments, it's five to 10 minutes. Yeah.

[00:12:52] Okay. All right. Last one. An expo hall booth with 30-minute demos scheduled. Follow-up emails are already locked in. So your salespeople have been prepped. Or an expo hall booth with espresso bar, comfortable chairs, and zero sales pressure. Oh. So this is such a fantastic question because for years I have been pitching mini demos.

[00:13:21] Like, hey, come to the booth at the top of the hour and learn this. Come to the booth at the bottom of the hour and learn this. Kind of like our own mini sessions in the booth. I haven't got anybody to buy off on it yet. I'm still working on that. But we do espresso bars. We do popcorn machines. We do massage. Like, we literally have an entire booth with three massage chairs, too. Um, so I, I, I don't know.

[00:13:47] I, I, I see the, the pull of bringing people in with the espresso machine, especially because it has our logo on the phone. Of course. But I haven't tested this mini demo session to see if it's actually worth it. So I'm going to go with the espresso machine for now. Okay. As much as it pains me because I really want to test out this option in a booth. Well, there's a lot of people that do education in their booth and it's definitely

[00:14:13] a driver, but I think for people who do do sessions in their booth, you have to actually publicize the schedule of who's going to speak and what you're speaking on. Too many times I've seen people have these amazing speakers. They're bringing in their executives. They're doing their demos at the top of the hour, but like no one shows up because no one knows they're doing it. We, we tried this last year at one event in the fall, but we didn't outwardly publish these things.

[00:14:38] We had some signage on our booth, but nobody paid attention to the signage. Right. But we also did, we called it when Jay's money, you know, Jay and Jay would actually start throwing money and giving out money during things. So people would. Real money. Not monobly. No, totally real money. Real money. He would give people and it would bring people in because people were like yelling like, Hey, give, Hey, here, here, here. And it would bring people to the booth and then you get them with your five minute pitch there. And tell people Jay's title.

[00:15:08] Like who was Jay? So Jay was our VP of sales. He then became the president of a company that I went to go work for. So, I mean, he's, he's a sales guy, man. He knew how to bring people into the booth. Cash. I mean, I did a booth one time where we had a cash machine and we let people go in and like actually try to get as much cash, you know, where it's flying everywhere. It's where cargo pans come in, right? Isn't there a commercial now with cargo pans? It's good thing you wear cargo pans. Or you just like hold, I saw some ladies like holding their shirt. So it would just like fly in their shirts.

[00:15:38] Like it's funny. All right. Well, there's a great activation. Win Jay's money or win your executive's money. I like that. Maybe it's like even a Jeopardy game, like a challenge and you have to like ask questions on whatever vertical you're in. You know, and I think it's because people got excited and they were like calling out answers and like yelling at him to get his money and people got interested. So they came to the booth. Well, yeah. If I'm walking by a booth and people are shouting. And you see money flying around. I'm good. Yeah, definitely. You're going to stop for a second.

[00:16:08] Oh, I love it. Okay. Well, that was audit the agenda. I like it. And here's what every event pro should sit with for just a second. My mom is the kind of attendee that your event has been trying to keep for a long time. And she told you exactly which column to pick and exactly what you should be doing to draw people into your booth. Okay. Well, now it's time for my favorite session. The event of the week.

[00:16:36] Because sometimes the only thing tighter than a load in schedule is our patients. This is your safe place. What absolutely drives you crazy about events? Oh, so I can give you a couple things. There have been some events where we rely on the event people to book our travel for us. And I have shown up at midnight in New York City and my hotel is for the wrong night and I have no hotel room. So I lost some faith in that one right away.

[00:17:04] Giving out swag that isn't appropriate for the venue. Give us an example. Oh, my gosh. We used to have customer events before COVID. We used to have customer events. We'd bring them in, tell them about some new things that we were offering, show them some new features in the software. And then we'd go do something fun, like we'd have a cooking show. But this one was in Arizona in the summertime at a baseball field. But the baseball field was closed in and we gave full-size umbrellas.

[00:17:34] For an inside baseball field? For an inside baseball event. And one, I was like, these are really expensive to ship. And we're in the middle of a desert. When do they need umbrellas? And they were like, oh, but we had an awful lot. And I was like, well. That's like just trying to get rid of inventory at that point. It's like we have these stupid umbrellas. Like we need to get rid of them. So just give them out at this event. Oh, it was so. I mean, again, pick your venue. Pick the right tchotchke to go with the venue and the event itself.

[00:18:04] The other thing that really bugs me about events is we kind of look at things and say, oh, well, this is what we did last year. We're going to do it again. And to me, I ask a whole bunch of questions like, why are we just increasing our opportunity count or our scan count? How many people are going to be there? Is the attendee list growing? If the attendee list isn't increasing by 10%, why do we think we're going to get 10% more scans? And you're still doing the same activation. Exactly.

[00:18:34] Exactly. And one of the other things is I'm not sure that everybody is looking at, does the activation give us the ROI? So people are coming to get an espresso. It doesn't mean they care anything about tax. They just need a little pick me up in the afternoon or they want to massage because they've been on their feet all day or they were at the concert last night. So I think there's this analysis. I mean, all of these things are data points. And I don't think we're doing enough analysis to say, did I get the return on this?

[00:19:04] Did I have the right activation? Should I do the activation again? You know, I think looking at those data points, not just rinse and repeat every single year. Well, this is the way we've always done it. Probably my least favorite phrase. This is the way we've always done it. Let's do it again. Yeah. We call them Sally events. Same as last year. Yeah. No, I'm just not a fan of those. You know, try something different. I mean, I think there was one year where somebody had brought in puppies. Oh, my God. I hate the puppies.

[00:19:32] I know you hate the puppies, but it was a new thing. And I was like, this is amazing because everybody loves puppies. It's true. And I think it was like one and done. I mean, if they had like goat yoga, that would be totally different. Then you'd find all kinds of people there. But I think just trying to find something new and not just the same old, same old. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a fan of the animals because I don't want to smell like a puppy or a goat for the rest of the day. I don't know what that's called. Like I get the mental health part of it and it's the break and you just, you know, want to decompress for a minute.

[00:20:03] Well, I mean, there's also some charity to it because you could adopt the puppies. I don't know how many like goes to an event. Can you imagine like, hey, I'm going to go to this event. Look at the dog I brought back. People do it all more than you think. It happens. Like there's a couple of rescues who have gotten rid of all of their puppies that are just before. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Yep. Okay. Well, those are some pretty good events. Definitely things we can work on in the industry for sure.

[00:20:31] And next up, it's time to event about it. You have so many stories and we reminisce on so many of your travel stories, but spill the tea for us on a memorable event moment. Cause you've had quite a few. There are so many events. I think probably the one that sticks out the most to me is we had, um, it was an event in Las Vegas.

[00:20:59] So somebody decided that it would be a really good idea to bring prostitutes into our party. And then we had somebody dressed up like a bush. Like a plant. Like a plant. Yeah. Literally. It was like this massive six foot tall plant. So we had hookers and bush. Oh my God. And I, I, I just really just shook my head at that. Like what, what are we doing here? Okay.

[00:21:27] I'm going to just completely bypass the prostitute situation. Cause that's just unacceptable on every front level. Like don't ever bring prostitutes to your work event. And actually I think the person that did that got into a little bit of trouble about that whole thing. I would hope they got into some trouble. It was kind of like booth babes, but next level booth babes. Yeah. Okay. I don't even know who bought them. That's very polite. I don't know if it was one of our people, if it was somebody else,

[00:21:53] but I just know like they, these ladies walked up and I work the door. Cause I just don't want to be mashed in with a whole bunch of people. And I was like, can I see your badge? And they were like, we don't have a badge. We're here for the party. And I'm like, girl, this is a private party. It's like one of these things does not belong. Like you are not dressed like anybody that's here for an accounting conference. Accountants don't dress like you. How are you getting here? Well, she was working. All right. And then there was the bush, which I don't quite understand the bush.

[00:22:21] So this was just a random attendee who decided to dress up like a bush. It wasn't part of the theme or like the Superbowl halftime shows were like part of the entertainment is dancing bushes. No, it was part of the theme, but I don't even remember what the theme was. It was just this booth that you were standing there talking to somebody. And then there was a bush next to you. And I literally don't remember the theme, which tells you an awful lot that I don't remember the theme except for this random bush.

[00:22:48] And I think I have a video that I had posted on social media of me with this bush. Like, what is going on here? Okay, well, we're going to find that. Yeah, we got to find it. I'll send it to you. Yeah. That's hilarious. I just don't remember why we had a bush and what the purpose of the bush was. Well, it could have just been roaming entertainment is what they call it a lot of times. But a bush? Again, maybe it was a garden party theme. Seems unlikely if it's Vegas, but I'm reaching here.

[00:23:17] I'm reaching to make sense of the bush. I don't know. Oh, okay. Well, that's all the time we have for today's episode of Event About It, where we connect events and marketing and prove that live experiences aren't just logistics. They're a growth channel. Please tell everyone where they can find you if they have more text questions or want to follow what you're doing. You can find me on LinkedIn, Christine Martin.

[00:23:43] I work at Avalara, so you can certainly follow us on Avalara through X on LinkedIn as well. And if this episode made you think differently about how events drive pipeline, brand, or growth, make sure you subscribe. That's how you'll catch what's coming next, including the Event About It After Show, where mom and I dig deeper into your questions you submitted for her. Tax 101 for event pros, road warrior best practices, and we're finally going to understand

[00:24:11] the question around, did my mom actually cancel Christmas one year? And if you've got an event or a story or a moment from the field that deserves to be unpacked, you can submit it at eventaboutitpodcast.com. Until next time, keep growing, keep laughing, and keep eventing about it.