In this episode of Event Experience by Bizzabo, host Rachel Moore interviews Rachel Stephan, Snöballer-in-Chief at Snöball Event Marketing about referral marketing, the importance of peer-to-peer sharing, and the metrics that matter in event marketing. Stephan also shares her personal journey as an immigrant and her adoption of various channels for sharing event content.
Rachel Stephan has been on her career journey since 2001, when she started in advertising and moved into the heart of event marketing. As Snöballer-in-Chief for Snöball Event Marketing, she delves into all the ways to create a buzz and get the right attendees to events.
Here’s what you’ll hear about in this conversation:
[00:00:09] Rachel Moore: Welcome to Event Experience by Bizzabo, the podcast where we bring the best and brightest event experience leaders together to share stories, tips, and lessons learned from creating some of the world's biggest events. I'm Rachel Moore, your podcast host.
[00:00:24] Word of mouth is, and always has been, a powerful marketing tactic. One could say, it's like a snowball gathering size and speed. We thought the best thing to do would be to welcome Snöballer in Chief at Snöball Event Marketing, Rachel Stephan, to the pod to share her expertise about how events can be amplified through referral marketing.
[00:00:45] Rachel shares the metrics that matter, tactics that turn the tide, and channels that can change the course of your event experience. [00:01:00]
[00:01:03] Today's guest takes us into the specific focus of event marketing. And with over 20 years of experience behind her, we're in for a discussion full of her expertise in that area. With skills in art and creative direction, she has built an empire helping event marketers turn their word of mouth into a veritable snowstorm. Hint, hint.
[00:01:23] Rachel Moore: She is the Snöballer in Chief at Snöball Event Marketing. I'm inviting and welcoming none other than Rachel Stephan to the Bizzabo podcast event experience. Welcome to the pod.
[00:01:34] Rachel Stephan: Well, thank you, Rachel. This is exciting. I'm happy to be here. And then my God, after this intro, I feel my head is like this big.
[00:01:40] Rachel Moore: Good, good. That is what we're aiming for because it's as big as the snowball that your company creates. Oh my gosh. Now I'm just going to be seeing you as like a snowman walking around and just like everybody.
[00:01:52] Rachel Stephan: Oh, I should be wearing like a toque and a scarf or something, you know.
[00:01:57] Rachel Moore: And you know, it's autumn. It's not snowing [00:02:00] yet, but you make it snow all year.
[00:02:02] Rachel Stephan: We make it snow all year. It was funny as I was gonna say, we should have recorded this. Well, we should have done this in the winter. And I can be outside in the snow somewhere.
[00:02:13] Rachel Moore: Oh my gosh. You'd be like a weather person. That would be hilarious where you're like, it's snowing and it's just snow for you.
[00:02:19] Rachel Stephan: Here's the forecast. The forecast. You're going to get a lot of people coming to your events. If you do this.
[00:02:25] Rachel Moore: I love it. Well, let's segue into some get to know you questions, Rachel.
[00:02:29] Rachel Moore: For those days when you have to be on the ground at an event all day, what are your go to shoes to wear? Mm
[00:02:36] Rachel Stephan: Running shoes always. Adidas.
[00:02:38] Rachel Stephan: Yes. For me, it's more comfort over looks. So I always opt for comfort. Especially when it's a long day and you're walking and usually convention centers, especially Vegas, a lot of walking.
[00:02:51] Rachel Stephan: So you, you, better be in comfortable shoes.
[00:02:54] Rachel Moore: So many steps, so many miles. That is so true.
[00:02:57] Rachel Stephan: Oh yeah. I make up for my whole year of [00:03:00] steps.
[00:03:00] Rachel Moore: Exactly. Oh my gosh. I know later I'll be like, wow, I mean, you've got people who go to Disney world and then you've got people who do events. And like about the same amount of steps you do every day. That's right.
[00:03:12] Rachel Moore: Is there anything that you're listening to, watching, or reading these days that you can't put down and it doesn't have to be related to work?
[00:03:19] Rachel Stephan: You know, books, I have a hard time starting and finishing them. And it happens once in a while, but there's one that I picked up last week. And it's sort of personal, in a way. I don't know if it's a long story, but I'll make it short. I'll try.
[00:03:31] Rachel Stephan: It's a friend of ours, sister, who wrote this book, her only book. And she passed away a couple of months ago. And I know the family. And they are Chilean immigrants that came to Canada and started from zero. They came as refugees. And you're hearing the story of, it's all about portraying what immigrants coming and integrating with the country, and how they started from zero with nothing to what they became.
[00:03:57] Rachel Stephan: And one, I loved it because I know them. [00:04:00] Two is like, I can relate to certain things because I am an immigrant. I did come to Canada from Lebanon. And I came, I didn't say I come from nothing, but at least as a journey myself as a person. And it's funny, I can send you the picture after that.
[00:04:13] Rachel Stephan: I did find in Lebanon when I was there, the picture of my first apartment that I ever got in Montreal, where I first started. It was a one room, where I had a bed on the floor. I had one coffee mug, one spoon, one fork, and one knife.
[00:04:28] Rachel Stephan: And I was super happy and proud because I was paying for it. It was mine. It was where I started. And I don't know if you can see here. I'm in a beautiful home, backyard, pool, Snöball, the whole thing. And thank God, I'm grateful for every day. But it's just like the journey of what you go through. And then where the sky's the limit in a way, but you can also, you can make your own fortune in a way, and accomplish something.
[00:04:56] Rachel Stephan: So it meant something to me that way. So I finished it yesterday. So it's really, really exciting. The other one is also an app. I finally decided to download it. It's called Headway. And it's because I can't finish books. I don't, I can't concentrate enough to stay on a long book. And I started with the Audible books.
[00:05:16] Rachel Stephan: This one is even giving you the summary of the book. So instead of scrolling in their app, their ad, they got me. It's like, instead of scrolling, give yourself like 10, 15 minutes a day where you pick a book of interest and then, you know, listen to it and it gives you like a nutshell that breaks down all the chapters, the main points of the book 15 minutes a day.
[00:05:37] Rachel Stephan: It's like, okay, I can do this. So then when I was up and enjoying it, actually.
[00:05:41] Rachel Moore: What's that, real quick, what's the title of the book that you read about the immigration?
[00:05:45] Rachel Stephan: Yes, it's a, it's a French book. I can send you there. She translated, they translated quite a bit and became a hit actually. And now, I mean, she was a professor in university and now they have a prize or like a bursary in her name for [00:06:00] anybody who coming as an immigrant to support their education and all that.
[00:06:03] Rachel Stephan: And she did not know French when she first came here, not a word of French. And she became a sociologist teaching French and sociology and wrote her book and became a hit. Across, the country,
[00:06:13] Rachel Moore: Between that story and your story, those are so compelling. Thank you for sharing that. Amazing to share. And yeah, we want to make sure, um, our audience has links to that in the show notes. Wow.
[00:06:22] Rachel Moore: Well, I'll move on to couple last questions. Is there a particular social post or a piece of media or even a hot take about events that you found interesting lately?
[00:06:31] Rachel Stephan: Well, last week I saw a post by, um, a friend, Catherine Fraxion, from Money 2020. And you know, anything that they post where their campaigns are so top notch in terms of marketing and messaging and how they portray it and everything. And there was this specific post and I'll share it with you. Also included in the show note.
[00:06:49] Rachel Stephan: It was about showing who's going to be there, but they did it in a way, as that, you know, almost like a CVS receipt. So it's like the list of people is longer than [00:07:00] your CVS receipts. And it shows the name of the people who chose the companies, companies, companies, and then you have you and one of the things and it continues, continues.
[00:07:09] Rachel Stephan: And at the end, you know, the total of how many people are coming, which kind of mimics the total of your bill and the barcode. And my suggestion was based on my comment on that post, like, okay, imagine if that barcode at the bottom was something that you can scan or the user, when they can scan it and go straight to the registration.
[00:07:26] Rachel Moore: Yeah.
[00:07:27] Rachel Stephan: From the ads, it's like, oh, that's interesting.
[00:07:30] Rachel Stephan: But, I mean, that's something it's, I'm always looking out for things that, you know, sometimes small things that you could do that will stand out, not your typical marketing kind of campaigns.
[00:07:40] Rachel Stephan: The other ones for the events. I'm curious. I'll let you know after I guess the whole Inbound experience how that's going to play out. Because that's an interesting one to see, how they deliver that and the whole experience how it's it's all about.
[00:07:54] Rachel Stephan: But I do love something about what they're doing is that there's a whole community. Around the Inbound [00:08:00] of, you know, how to prepare it and like a, like a form, you know. People are starting to ask and talk to each other and it's really active. Because events are always trying to create communities and it's not always evident that it picks up this one for some reason, it feels like a lot of engagement there.
[00:08:18] Rachel Stephan: So, you know, watching out for it to see what's different.
[00:08:21] Rachel Moore: Well, I'll be watching. I'll be watching everyone's social. Maybe I'll get there next year. As I make my decisions for where to register stuff, especially hearing the peer to peer marketing of people, my peers in my circles tell me how it was, but that's how that all works, right? Well, we're already kind of carrying on into it. I'll toss this over to you. Can you tell us a bit more about your role as the Snöballer-in-Chief at Snöball Event Marketing? And also, I'd love to know how you landed on the name Snöball.
[00:08:48] Rachel Stephan: Oh, that's a funny one. And it's always very like, you know, when you do, when you least expect it, really. I've been in marketing for very many years. And I started with an event marketing agency in 2001 [00:09:00] marketing events, conferences, and all the bits and everything related to marketing. And it was a service based company and I wanted eventually, you know, you know, the event industry has a lot of ups and downs during the year.
[00:09:12] Rachel Stephan: You get busy in the spring, and the summer is slower and then higher in the, in the fall. I wanted something to kind of level up and kind of continue from there. So I wanted to create a product, a technology of some sort that will also help do that.
[00:09:25] Rachel Stephan: And then the idea was like, okay, when we're doing these marketings for these events, we notice a trend of some sort where, people and the host companies, host organizers, and people who are involved in the event, the planning, we're also involved in helping spreading the word and tapping into their networks and the people that they know, they have cloud, they have influence.
[00:09:44] Rachel Stephan: So you see a difference there. It's like, okay, how can we scale this? How can we track this? And how, what can we do with it? So that's the idea. I started there. The name itself, you know, because I kept talking about this idea and the agency, you know, we never had a [00:10:00] name for it. Like, oh, the project, the project, the project.
[00:10:02] Rachel Stephan: And at the time, my developer at the time, David, was talking about it one summer, and I was like, you know, the project, the project, like the project, project is French. And it's like, well, you know, let's call it Snöball. And then he continued talking and I said, stop, stop, stop, stop right there. This is it.
[00:10:21] Rachel Stephan: This is the name. This is what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to create a snowball effect with word of mouth. And then it's, it's stuck there. And it's like, it's been amazing, I have so much fun with it. I mean, it explains itself, you know. I've been talking about it. And then the person in front said, and it snowballs from there. It's like, yes, you got it. That's exactly it.
[00:10:40] Rachel Moore: Mm-Hmm.
[00:10:42] Rachel Stephan: No, it's fun. It's fun.
[00:10:44] Rachel Moore: It's so fun. Um, and it really does, like, I was thinking of as I was drafting up, like, I'm like, how do I introduce you? And, I know we worked it in, which is great. 'Cause I was like, you're literally making it snow all year round and you know, and the fact that it accumulates.
[00:10:57] Rachel Moore: And as somebody, you live in Canada and I live [00:11:00] in Denver. We know when snow accumulates, it takes everything over. And, and so that's very much how event marketing is and how snowball event marketing works. So I'm excited that we're talking about this today too, because, oh my gosh, it's all in the Zeitgeist about the events industry trying to make sure people not only know about your event, but want to go, right? And want to register.
[00:11:21] Rachel Moore: So we are going to talk about that today, since this is what you do. This is your bread and butter, as it were. But, we all want to make sure people not only know about our events, but make them feel like they cannot miss out from attending it. So can you define, cause I think this all correlates to peer to peer marketing.
[00:11:39] Rachel Moore: Can you define peer to peer marketing for our audience and why it's so crucial, especially today in that environment? We just described why peer to peer marketing is really important for event marketers to be aware of and utilize.
[00:11:50] Rachel Stephan: Yeah, totally. So peer to peer marketing or word of mouth or whatever you want to call it. It's really at the core base of it, is people. [00:12:00] How can you get people to be your promoters? So, you know, obviously every event they're doing their own marketing, they're doing the promotion, you know, it's coming from the brand voice.
[00:12:09] Rachel Stephan: The idea of peer to peer is having other people say that your event is good. Or showcase the fact that they are going or presenting or sponsoring and all that. So that's in a way you're putting the megaphone in the hands of your people for them to also share their experience of your event. Because people trust people. People trust their friends and colleagues. There's that important social proof factor too because when we market events, we look at also, like, you know, what are some of the main things people look at when they're going for the event?
[00:12:45] Rachel Stephan: Obviously, you know, everybody's like, oh, they're going for education. They're going for the networking. But they also, well, networking is about the people, like who else is going to be there. If you're not showcasing that, if you're not enabling people to talk about your event, then they won't know who's going.
[00:12:59] Rachel Stephan: Because, [00:13:00] yeah, you can have the greatest speaker roster, greatest program, at the end of the day, it's what happens in the hallways. Is the people that you're going to meet there that are important for you. And it's important to also, because it, peer to peer marketing, allows you to expand your reach, your amplification beyond your core base of audience.
[00:13:20] Rachel Stephan: You know, we market an event. We're always a client. Give us that list of people. This is where we're targeting or emailing, you know, we're all going to the same people. This is one way, it's like, why stop there? It's not a dead end, you know. For me, it's like, yes, they got the people to register, but there's more like them.
[00:13:38] Rachel Stephan: And how can we get to like them? Like that. It's through the people themselves. So that's why it's very important.
[00:13:45] Rachel Moore: And you know, marketer to marketer, cause you and I both work in marketing. I think it can be really easy to automatically say, well, that's like social media, of course, of course it is. But this spans into multiple channels though, does it not? Because it's like, yes, you can, you can obviously [00:14:00] share on social and any brand out there.
[00:14:02] Rachel Moore: You of course want people to share that money interaction or engagement you have on a post that you put out there when people share it. Cause now it's on, it's going out on their own feed to their own audience that you may not have followed your page. But there's also email, email lists and newsletters.
[00:14:18] Rachel Moore: Even like messaging. And stuff like that, right. I mean, I assume this goes beyond just strictly social sharing, correct?
[00:14:25] Rachel Stephan: Are you like reading my mind now? It's crazy. Oh,
[00:14:30] Rachel Moore: I can, I will count myself lucky because there's a, uh, you have so much to share here. This is great.
[00:14:35] Rachel Stephan: Yes. So exactly that. They, you know, there's something that we say is like, Oh, it's the social sharing, it's just sharing period. Because, you know, we recently published a report on, I think the first ever in our industry, the peer to peer marketing reports, based on data and analyzing a lot of the events that we worked on in 2023.
[00:14:55] Rachel Stephan: And it was surprising to see exactly that. So we kind of looked at, you know, what are the channels that people [00:15:00] are sharing it to? Because in essence, we give them options. Because not everybody's going to be sharing on LinkedIn. We give them 13 social channel options. Because you can have Slack, you can have Teams, you can have WhatsApp, you can have Messenger, you can have SMS, LinkedIn, WeChat.
[00:15:19] Rachel Stephan: All those are part of what they have. Depending on the industry. Depending on your geographical location, that changes totally. So this data changes completely from one event to another one. And when we looked at the data, they compiled that on average, the direct messaging one, and email was one of them, the direct messaging one was more than LinkedIn. 36% of the sharing was happening on direct messaging.
[00:15:45] Rachel Stephan: After that, LinkedIn is at 28%. And then the email is 17. And then the other rest of the social channel is about 15. So that tells you a little bit, you know, all that. There was one instance that was interesting too, because I always [00:16:00] recommend it because some clients would want to do something like, for example, let's limit which ones we put. Like, no, let's give them the option. Because you will be surprised sometimes by what you can find.
[00:16:08] Rachel Stephan: And funny enough is one client in particular, they found, I think, one or two channels that they weren't considering in their marketing. So they shifted their whole marketing strategy to include that new channel that they found that people are communicating and using mostly between each other. It's like, that's intel that you like, it's, it's amazing to have.
[00:16:30] Rachel Stephan: So it goes beyond like, okay, let's give them something to share, but let's see also what are we, you know, seeing in terms of behaviors and trends in how people, our people, our community, our audience are communicating with each other, engaging, what's triggering them to do that, all that stuff.
[00:16:46] Rachel Moore: See, you were just reading my mind. Cause I was going to ask you about that. Like I would assume that, that kind of insight, we all can make assumptions and even do research and, and have data driven, you know. Uh, pivots that we do where it's like, well, we [00:17:00] know, or guess very accurately that this is where our target audience is, you know, consuming content and sharing content stuff.
[00:17:07] Rachel Moore: But then you actually see it in play. And you see, like, particularly when you're talking about kind of a, a microcosm of an event and how and where they're sharing that. Oh my gosh, well, they're sharing it in like Slack groups and they're sharing it. And they have an email list that they're doing.
[00:17:21] Rachel Moore: And, and who knew that? And, um, or Discord or things like that. And such valuable information for, like you said, then to take that data and be like, well, we know more now about people that are, you know, not only our target audience, but then who they're following and stuff and where those trends are going. That seems like super valuable data.
[00:17:38] Rachel Moore: I wanted to make sure we talked about that too. And just highlight the fact, this is not just about social media. And this will get into my next question too, because there might be a lot of assumptions that event marketers or just generally marketers have about peer to peer sharing and peer to peer reputation, word of mouth.
[00:17:56] Rachel Moore: Do you think that today's event profs. And, or [00:18:00] their events are incorporating enough peer to peer in their marketing, or do you feel like they're kind of just scratching the surface? I would like, kind of love to hear what, where would you rate them as far as how generally people, how well they're using peer to peer marketing?
[00:18:13] Rachel Stephan: I think there's a lot of acknowledgement of it right now, way more than it before. So you see it more, you hear it more happening. Now, the level of utilizing it and implementing it kind of varies from, you know, beginner, let's do the basics. Two, let's take it all the way a step further where it becomes more like an influencer marketing. Because you start maybe with the peer to peer referrals, you identify your top promoters.
[00:18:40] Rachel Stephan: And from there you can move on to do some targeted one on one campaigns with your most influential promoters, for example. So that is, you know, it varies from the level of comfort and knowledge of what they could do. And also the time, because sometimes they might set up something, [00:19:00] but they're not putting all the effort in it because they haven't seen yet, maybe the value of what it could bring.
[00:19:06] Rachel Stephan: So if you don't really nurture it, it's almost like putting a Google ad, for example, and just put the ad and forget it, set it and forget it. If it's not performing, you know, it's not the issue of Google. It's also like you have to look at what you copy you did, what visual you did, the targeting that you did.
[00:19:22] Rachel Stephan: You have to switch up a few things. You have to play around with it. And in the peer to peer marketing, you have to look at the same thing. And also for that, you have to implement at some point to see if it means them boosting, there are some incentives. You have to gamify it. You have to, uh, reward your promoters in a way, because. And every group is motivated by something completely different.
[00:19:44] Rachel Stephan: Your speakers might be motivated by something else than your sponsors and your partners. Then the attendees, you know, some of them are motivated by monetary stuff. Some other ones by experiences, other ones by privileges. I mean, look at the election. We're not going to get into the election part of it, [00:20:00] but.
[00:20:00] Rachel Stephan: I was surprised to see and happy to see that they have dedicated the whole section, regardless of who they are, I'm not talking about that, I'm talking from a marketing point of view, the creators, that they put like a front row seat for the creators, for them, these are the peer people, so they are going to share and create their content from there.
[00:20:18] Rachel Stephan: When you talk about peer to peer, we're talking pre-event, trying to get them there. But what if one of the incentives or some of the things you do, you bring it onsite as well. And you dedicate an exclusive area or something for these people that are common people. You're not hiring them. They're not paying them.
[00:20:34] Rachel Stephan: You're just giving them privileged access, VIP access to go sit there and then continue onsite to continue talking about your events. You know, and it goes from there. So all this, when you look at it holistically and all that, what could be done with peer to peer marketing, is not just about asking them to just share our posts on social media or anywhere they share. Hey, I'm going to this event. There's way more to that.
[00:20:56] Rachel Moore: You brought up gamification just now, too. I think that's something [00:21:00] we just had, we recently had a webinar. I even think of a podcast episode about gamification. That sometimes feels like that's a bit of a nebulous topic too, for event marketability. Okay, yeah. We keep hearing, we have to gamify our event. How do we do that?
[00:21:12] Rachel Moore: But you can do that right with, like you said, with peer to peer sharing and the, that marketing where it's like, Hey, you could put out like, and I, It's so important that you mentioned that too. Certainly, you can just roll out like an organic, like, hey, everybody share that you're speaking at this event, or that you're attending this event, just do so share that, that that's what you're doing.
[00:21:30] Rachel Moore: But if you're like, okay, we want to see a little bit more activity. Maybe we need to like, yeah, whoever has the top shares or metric or whatever, which we'll get into metrics in a moment. But you can set that bar to say, maybe we give something away. Maybe when, once you get to the event, you get a special, you know, experience that nobody else will get.
[00:21:50] Rachel Moore: Um, but just those things that are in your power to pull those levers, right. And just amplify it a little bit more over here and get that. But you really are, I mean, there's so much [00:22:00] potential. Like you said, it's not just about saying, Hey, I just want you to share this and that's it, but you can incorporate other aspects of that event and the event marketing, like gamification, into that peer to peer marketing approach. Which I think is super, super valuable.
[00:22:13] Rachel Stephan: What I've also done is that, it doesn't have to be like one prize for the whole campaign. You could do it in multiple intervals. And it could be for the top referrer could be even just for sharing some clients offer them, you know, share and you'll get this, or you'll enter into a job or something.
[00:22:30] Rachel Stephan: So it's really about being creative and also discussing and seeing like, what can we do and then curating different experiences or different prizes that will appeal to that particular audience.
[00:23:22] Rachel Stephan: It's really key to understand what drives each one of them. And then you monitor the results after that. It's like, okay, was there a spike in the engagement in the referrals? Then it's working. So let's continue with that. Or let's adjust or add something else, for example, as we go closer to the event.
[00:23:39] Rachel Moore: Well, let's talk about those metrics. So you're obviously looking at peer to peer marketing, we all can default to thinking that social, but like you said, it's also like where, you know, where it's getting shared, how often it's getting shared. I'll stop here and let you talk.
[00:23:52] Rachel Moore: What are the metrics when it comes to peer to peer marketing that you as snowball, you know, Snöball Event Marketing, but also the event profs could be mindful of [00:24:00] like, what are you looking at? Like to say, Hey, this is a successful peer to peer marketing approach.
[00:24:04] Rachel Stephan: Yeah. So there's a few things that we look at. Essentially, there's the amplification option of it, like the version of it that you want to see, you want to get your message multiplied, and reach as much as audience as possible of the right audience.
[00:24:19] Rachel Stephan: Because if I'm sharing it, I'm in events, I share it to or to my LinkedIn. For example, my whole connection is all about events. So it's really targeted. You already have a pre targeted audience that you have through peer to peer. The amplification is really about, you know, the visibility that you got from the reach of that post. You get to also like, we encourage them to mobilize pretty much everybody.
[00:24:41] Rachel Stephan: So not just their speakers, not just their sponsors, their attendees, because most of the volume of people going are the attendees. So then you have to do that. So from there, we would need to know we outreach to them to ask them to promote it. So we have to track the engagement on those email campaigns that we're sending them to [00:25:00] do that.
[00:25:00] Rachel Stephan: So what is the open rate, the click rate. Do they open it, do they share it, what's the percentage that actually engage in that? So on average, like I said, in that report on the open rate, you will see about 58% open rate. That's extremely high for email marketing because they already bought from you. They're involved, you know, they, they are engaging in your events. So that's a great, great one.
[00:25:24] Rachel Stephan: And the other one, they click, if they actually click to check out, to share, is 28% on the click rate. That's also very high. Then we need to see, okay, from those referrals, like, you know, you shared it to your LinkedIn.
[00:25:37] Rachel Stephan: I clicked on your post, that click, like how many people did we manage to like the traffic that we generate from those referral links that we also track, to tell you how many people we sent to your event to check it. Then out of the ones that they went to set is to check your site, how many actually registered. These are the conversions from the referrals.
[00:25:58] Rachel Stephan: So those the way we [00:26:00] count them, somebody has to follow directly the link that we have to, that they got from the referring person, all the way to the checkout to get that thank you page. That's when we count them. We're not going to count ones that, you know, influence us to register.
[00:26:16] Rachel Stephan: We don't count the referral traffic as ones that we sent you as referrals. It's actually that they bought the ticket. That's when we count it. In some cases though, what happens is that if the ticket price is very high, they're not going to buy it immediately.
[00:26:30] Rachel Stephan: Same as you have on Google ads. They click on it, yes, then you get the click rate there, but maybe they came in maybe a week later because they have to go get approval, talk to their boss, plan their stuff and go register. When they go to register, they don't go back, click on that ad or on that referral link. They went straight to the event and now they know about it. So that doesn't get counted on our side anyways, for that part.
[00:26:51] Rachel Stephan: The other one is like you have to, what we track is like, it allows you to identify your top promoters, who are the ones that are referring the [00:27:00] most. It tells you if they shared it, where they shared it, they might have shared it to multiple channels, how many people they referred, and who they referred.
[00:27:09] Rachel Stephan: So we can see exactly, well, Rachel came because of Rachel, because of her post on LinkedIn, we know that. So we know that the client knows that they are able to identify those. From there, it allows you to do the gamification and contest and incentivizing because at least you can attribute who is getting what done.
[00:27:28] Rachel Stephan: And the other one that I was talking about earlier is the metrics around which social or which channel are they distributing your content or sharing it with their colleagues. That I find it fascinating to see. So because that tells you a lot about the engagement on which channel you could or should or maybe you are already working with.
[00:27:48] Rachel Moore: I feel like that's awesome because now we are in good shape. Like what metrics are you tracking and how they matter. But as with all things marketing, it's always so interesting [00:28:00] how blurred lines between a particular type of marketing and how it contributes to, and is impacted by other marketing types.
[00:28:07] Rachel Moore: So we already talked about gamification, but now we've incorporated influencer marketing. So now you can actually identify, for your event, who are the influencers.
[00:28:16] Rachel Stephan: You don't know, you don't know who they are. Sometimes you think of some ones and then you look at it, because it's for us, you know, when we look at the snowball effect, it shows you right, a little big cluster of one person with, you know, a lot of different referrals. It's like, who is this person?
[00:28:29] Rachel Stephan: And the client's like, we don't know, they're like, wow, reach out to them. The other interesting part of it, when it gets also year to year, what I found fascinating is that when we're working with clients multiple years, so let's say they have a sponsor, there was a case of a new client. One sponsor got to have 120 people that registered because of them.
[00:28:50] Rachel Stephan: And we knew there was an email that they sent to the client base or potential one. So 120 people. So we're looking at the analytics, their dashboard for the next year. I was [00:29:00] expecting that same exhibitor to be there. He wasn't. It's like, wait a second. There's a disconnect there. So that intel of this campaign should have been also shared with the sales team who are working with the sponsors and exhibitors.
[00:29:12] Rachel Stephan: Like this exhibitor is very engaged. They got us a lot of people. Let's look at what we can offer them, do something with them, reward them, treat them a little bit nicely or whatever it is to make sure that they come next year, because they're obviously great advocates. It goes way beyond what you just see there.
[00:29:32] Rachel Stephan: It kind of trickles down to sales and trade show and your speakers and like all that stuff. It tells you a lot of things there.
[00:29:42] Rachel Moore: Absolutely. Well, it feels like too, like we were just talking about marketing impacts other marketing, but then this data that you're getting from this effort, impacts not just the events team or the marketing team, but also sales ops, you know.
[00:29:55] Rachel Moore: And everything where, you know, you can help make those decisions next [00:30:00] year to say, well, we want to, maybe we want to increase our, you know, our registration rate or our registration goal. But you better darn well, make sure you got that same influence or that one entity, whether it's a vendor or a speaker or just an attendee, where you're like, let's make sure they come back because they really helped move the needle for us on those numbers.
[00:30:18] Rachel Moore: And as we all know, you know, events are just such an important part of the pipeline and marketing, sales funnel, uh, qualifying leads, and then ultimately revenue for that business. So all of this is super important data to be having. And it must be fascinating to be able to see that in real time too, to be like, Ooh. From a people perspective too, you can be like, Ooh, that person's really moving the needle for us. And I like that you mentioned sometimes it's the person you least expect. That happens all the time, right?
[00:30:47] Rachel Stephan: Exactly. And, and one other thing too, is like, you know, it's not one person usually like from the company you mentioned, like about sales and everything, but from the same company, I've also seen some stats. From the same company, they [00:31:00] have, let's say, four or five staff members who are going to that show because they're the ones in the exhibit.
[00:31:05] Rachel Stephan: But each one of them acted as a promoter, so they're getting their clients and their leads and people to come say, Hey, meet us, we're going to be there. And when we look at their performance, each one of them got a really good number of people that they referred to the event. So you add it all up, they were higher than that one exhibited about 120, but it was multiple ones.
[00:31:28] Rachel Stephan: So that brings me also to another point, like, you know, you have your staff, you have your employee advocacy is also really important. Because in most cases, especially the ones in touch with the end user, that person that they want them to come to the event.
[00:31:43] Rachel Stephan: So they also play a role. They have a face, they have a brand themselves within your brand, but it's a person that can also play a role in advocating and amplifying the message and letting it come from different angles, different voices, and then you'll see the results of it. [00:32:00]
[00:32:00] Rachel Stephan: Because if you compare a little bit, you know, conversion rates between what you do in different marketing channels, the average that we collected from our report is 31. 7% click to conversion. Like somebody who actually registered. That is also very high and cost efficient, you know. We can break it down into so many things, you know, where we're telling you exactly how much a client spends on their Google ads versus what they spend on it with us.
[00:32:28] Rachel Stephan: And the cost for acquisition for each of those was just minimal compared to what they spend on Google ads. And that's, you're getting traffic and pre qualified people, like I said, because they're referring people who they know might be interested or similar to them.
[00:32:43] Rachel Moore: Yeah. Super important. Thank you for bringing that up too. It's not just about the external people that you want to join the event. You know, you can always put your registration page up. You can always, okay. Kick off the peer to peer marketing. So, you know, as people find the event, learn about it through your outbound marketing that they're going to be like, Oh, [00:33:00] great, let me go sign up.
[00:33:01] Rachel Moore: Start internally though. I love that you point that out. And I firmly believe this too. It's so often, not tapped enough as a resource to say, let's turn our employees into our referrers. They know the most about the company, you know, and especially if they are going to be either at it or working it, but also guess what?
[00:33:19] Rachel Moore: They probably kind of want to help drive attendance too, because they know that leads to revenue for the company, which means their jobs are secure, and then the company's profitable. They have a little incentive too, to help incentivize people to attend the event too. So I thank you for bringing that up because I think sometimes people forget.
[00:33:35] Rachel Stephan: You never think about it. But then when you think about it, it's like, okay, that's common sense. Absolutely. Yes, let's do that. It's not a big lift. It's not a big effort. It's just utilizing what you already have. That's what I love about this strategy to begin with.
[00:33:48] Rachel Moore: Well, let, let me ask you this. Um, we're getting a little bit close to the end of time with our standard questions, but I wanted to ask, do you have any predictions for things like what the future holds for referral or peer to peer marketing? [00:34:00] Like anything that you think is kind of on the frontier, predictions, expectations?
[00:34:06] Rachel Stephan: I wish I had a crystal ball.
[00:34:08] Rachel Moore: Don't we all?
[00:34:10] Rachel Moore: Oh my gosh. Oh, okay. I'm going to make sure you have this clip later so that you can, that you can use that in your marketing. Cause that was amazing.
[00:34:22] Rachel Stephan: I do. Yeah, I, I, I don't know what you mean. Prediction, I don't know. You can't go with anything right now without mentioning AI. With a hint or a base of A H I, I like to call it, you know, it's not artificial intelligence, human intelligence.
[00:34:40] Rachel Stephan: So mixing both, I think, you know, to facilitate or, you know, leverage AI in terms of personalizing more a little bit, the peer to peer campaigns. And in terms of content, or recommendations or identifying maybe the people that they would want to refer to or invite based on interest [00:35:00] that they've known from the past, you know. AI has to play a role definitely in it.
[00:35:04] Rachel Stephan: And we're already working on something that's going to be released on, uh, you'll hear about it. But you know, yes, AI is one of the areas. And I think also expanding a little bit more on, uh, the whole gamification and contesting element of it, that elaborate a little bit more.
[00:35:22] Rachel Stephan: And then the last one would be, no, it's not new. It's not a trend, the whole influencer, but for our industry, you know, peer to peer is the starting point.
[00:35:35] Rachel Stephan: And it's also how far you go with it. So there's some education, some learning that needs to be done or to prove that this strategy, this marketing channel, which is the people, is a way to promote and multiply yourself.
[00:35:51] Rachel Stephan: Cause we were talking about it earlier. It's like, how can you multiply yourself? Because you're one person, same thing for marketing events. Well, this is one way to do it. You know, you multiply it by, by [00:36:00] having everybody with you. So to also promote with you, but you know, there's different levels to do it.
[00:36:04] Rachel Stephan: And then getting more comfortable and more knowledge into implementing it and leveraging it to get the word out. At the end of the day, your event is your biggest influencer.
[00:36:13] Rachel Stephan: Because, you know, it could be false advertising if you're getting all these people coming to your event and then, they're disappointed, or you're not delivering on what you're promising or what, you know. I referred to go to this restaurant, it's amazing. And you go to the restaurant. It was not a great experience, not great food.
[00:36:28] Rachel Stephan: Your reputation or my, my name is like be named. It was like, man, I referred her to that restaurant and it wasn't great.
[00:36:35] Rachel Stephan: So that trust is going to be broken all around. So I think it comes back down to the event, what you deliver there, the experience you do there, make it memorable, make it something that they want to refer their friends to, and they want to come back to, it boils down to that.
[00:36:53] Rachel Moore: I want to ask a quick follow up on that before we get to the advice question. We are dealing with and we've seen it a lot [00:37:00] lately being talked about with events, last minute decisions. People are deciding so late in the registration ramp that they are going to attend and I can speak to this anecdotally.
[00:37:11] Rachel Moore: I decided to attend a conference in D. C. I registered 1 week before it, less than a week before it. Which was so great for my budget, and I mean, that's our sarcastic tone there. But that's a reality. People are, whether it's virtual or in person, they are registering later and later. Is there any, any advice you have there, whether it's from peer to peer marketing or other, what's your take on that? Like how peer to peer marketing could maybe help with that?
[00:37:34] Rachel Stephan: Yes, it might. It might help. But let me ask you the question. What made you decide at the last minute?
[00:37:39] Rachel Moore: It basically came down to budget. But I had to decide between that and another conference. I'm like, what am I going to get the most out of this one? And I decided I was going to get the most out of that one. And I needed to go to it.
[00:37:49] Rachel Stephan: Why that one? Was it the, was it the content or what made you want to go to that one?
[00:37:53] Rachel Moore: It was the content. So just, just to be transparent, it was a podcast conference. So I wanted to learn more about podcasting and get better at my [00:38:00] craft.
[00:38:00] Rachel Stephan: The Podcast Movement?
[00:38:02] Rachel Moore: It was Podcast Movement. I was going to go to a different conference. It was a bit more of a broader overall marketing conference.
[00:38:08] Rachel Moore: There's a few of those, so you can try to guess which one is, but it's fine. But I'd ultimately decided, I'm like, for right now, my need was to really zero in on podcasting. And so I went, that's what finally ultimately decided me.
[00:38:20] Rachel Stephan: Okay, so for you this is the content specifically, but it's also like identifying the conference that met your needs. So maybe on the, uh, marketing side of the event, the event needs to be, do a better job in explaining exactly what you get out of each one of them. And how are you different from your competition?
[00:38:34] Rachel Stephan: Maybe you'd have to kind of explain that. From a peer to peer one, I mean, I also decided at the last minute to go to Inbound. But for me, the decision that got me to Inbound one, it was on my bucket list that I always wanted to go with. The second one was mostly seeing all the ones or the people that I wanted to meet with. Or I know are going.
[00:38:54] Rachel Stephan: So if I didn't know that, well, I waited to allow two minutes until it closed. And then I managed to get [00:39:00] tickets finally, so it's that. So if I say peer to peer influences people to go into that, like, you know, we go back to what I mentioned earlier is like, you know, one of the reasons people go is because he, who else is going not just because, you know, so and so is speaking or so and so is going to be there selling me a product. Is more who are the people I'll get to meet with.
[00:39:18] Rachel Stephan: So if you make that available or and transparent or visible early on and then the more you see people going, because I see it for example, like okay, so and so is going yeah, it was one person. Then I see a second one going. It's like, oh wow. Third one, it's like fourth like, oh my I have to move I have to do something.
[00:39:36] Rachel Stephan: So making that visible whether it's on the website making them talk, enabling them to talk about the fact that they're going, will help elevate or pressure that, you know, person to go commit and register.
[00:39:51] Rachel Stephan: It is still a trend. We do see it, you know, effectively campaigns, you know, 8 to 10 weeks before the event. That's where you see the spike [00:40:00] of the referrals come in. But, you know, you have to start it early on and build up the momentum leading up to it. But it is a trend, unfortunately.
[00:40:08] Rachel Moore: It sure is. Yeah.
[00:40:09] Rachel Moore: One last final, easiest question of all, where can our listeners find and follow you and Snöball online?
[00:40:15] Rachel Stephan: I focus on LinkedIn. I live on LinkedIn. So for me, I opened LinkedIn before I opened my inbox in the morning. So find me on LinkedIn, Rachel Stephan, feel free to connect with me, follow me, and happy to, uh, to connect or answer any questions after. If it triggered or sparked something, this whole conversation, happy to chat.
[00:40:44] Rachel Moore: We can all skill up with Rachel's advice about pausing too long for the sake of perfection.
[00:40:50] Rachel Stephan: Just do it, I just do it. Don't sit on it too much. You have to do it. You have to get it out and do it. I waited too long. I kind of tend to overanalyze and end out. [00:41:00] And I wait for perfection and the right timing and this and that and, and so the, the times where I said yes and figure it out after and just do it.
[00:41:08] Rachel Stephan: It was the most rewarding thing that I did. So, you know, if you're thinking about it, you're not sure about it, start small, start somewhere. Just start. The important thing is to start.
[00:41:18] Rachel Moore: Thanks again to Rachel Stephan for joining us on Event Experience, and thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, we'd love to hear it. Connect with us on social and subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you're listening.
[00:41:32] Rachel Moore: Also, don't forget to share the show with your colleagues and friends. You can find transcripts of each episode and key takeaways on bizzabo.com/podcast. On behalf of the team, thank you. We'll gather again soon for a new episode of Event Experience.
