Welcome to Event Marketers Live, a fast-paced series where we shake off the jargon and get real with the humans behind the scenes of our favorite B2B events and experiences.

In this episode, Kelly chatted with Bethany Murphy, Senior Director of Events at 6sense.

Bethany Murphy is a Certified Meeting Professional with a background in both corporate and non-profit events. Bethany has an impressive career portfolio with events experience at companies like Akamai Technologies, Drift, and now, 6sense.

Bethany elaborated on fundamental do’s and don’ts in event marketing, navigating live and virtual events, and how to manage cross-functional events.

Keep reading for a snapshot of her insightful takes, and catch it all on the full episode below.

Here are the top three takeaways from this episode ⤵️

Takeaway 1: Upcycle your in-person event content for virtual experiences

Executing a top-notch hybrid event is no easy feat. Despite many misconceptions, planning for hybrid involves a lot more than just live streaming the content to a remote audience. It requires serious investments in AV, event staffing, project management, and so much more.

Bethany and her team had many heated discussions heading into 2022 about the future of Drift events and how to balance in-person versus digital.

The solution? An intimate in-person experience in Miami plus a larger digital event a month later. The in-person FLASH event was limited to 300 attendees and packed a punch of education, networking, and exciting entertainment.

For the virtual event, Drift planned a 50/50 split of repurposed content from the live event plus live sessions to keep the format interactive and engaging. They streamed keynotes to get more bang for their buck while adding in interactive workshops, live entertainment, etc., to re-create some of the magic of the in-person experience.

This dual approach allowed Drift to leverage the reach of digital and the intimacy and excitement of in-person.

Engagement is the name of the game for digital events, and differentiation was an important element for Drift. How could they entice folks to engage and also reward them with something fun and unique?

Enter: NFTs. An innovative company that’s always ahead of the tech curve, Drift wanted to embed this same approach into their virtual FLASH event. The team worked with Goldcast to spin up a leaderboard and point scoring system for different activities that people took within the event—think asking a question, answering a poll, etc.

Once folks racked up enough points, they unlocked the first ever Drift NFT. ⚡️

The experience created a ton of buzz during the event and helped the team boost engagement during FLASH. Pretty nifty!

As any event marketer knows, data is essential to communicating the effectiveness and impact of events.

Bethany partnered with the marketing operations team at Drift to launch “campaign effectiveness dashboards,” which became the #1 source of truth for measuring success.

The dashboards include key metrics pulled from multiple platforms like total event registrations, attendees, a breakdown of customers versus prospects, and deeper contact data like job title, industry, etc.

Post-event, Bethany was able to provide the sales team with more insight into where folks were in the buying process and how event-driven campaigns were impacting pipeline and revenue.

Having dedicated campaign dashboards not only helps teams track and measure impact, it also helps bridge the gap between sales and marketing. The additional context around events and engagement can arm sales with relevant info for timely follow ups.

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Thanks so much for joining us, Bethany! That’s all for now, but we’ll see you soon for another episode of Event Marketers Live.