Every year your event rolls around, you have a team that puts together all the sponsorship offerings and reaches out to the organizations to participate. How involved is this process? Is it easy, efficient and tailored to the organization’s unique needs at your show? Or are you sending the same PDF to everyone?

According to a report by the Expo Group, 75% of exhibitors feel that exhibit manager and show organizers can be doing more to help them. One way to create a more meaningful relationship with your exhibitors is to use technology tools to drive efficiency and create additional value for them.

If you find yourself developing a new sponsor prospectus each year and sending it out to the same organizations, let me tell you, there’s a better way. Meet our Online Sponsorship Sales (OSS) tool.

What are Online Sponsorship Sales?

Online sponsorship sales (OSS) enable event professionals to manage their sponsorship process in a more seamless and thoughtful way.

In the A2Z Events online exhibitor portal that can be linked directly on your event website, sponsors can peruse the available sponsorships and purchase them. With OSS, you can provide details included for each sponsorship, change inventory amounts, feature images and digital content of what’s included.

You as the organizer will also have a catalog of all event sponsorship details. This catalog will show who you have as current and past sponsors along with the selections they make. This is great for pulling up someone’s past purchases to present as a starting point for this year. If a company enjoyed the selections they made last year and wish to purchase the same ones for this event, you can do so with ease – no more riffling through old papers or emails, everything is in one seamless platform!

By utilizing a digital platform, companies that want to purchase a sponsorship can see all options in one place and take advantage of filters to view what they care about . Think of your shopping experience as a consumer online, you can use filters to find exactly what you’re looking for; you can filter by item type, price, size, etc. OSS has the same type of filters to help companies narrow down the sponsorship they’re interested in, saving time from flipping through pages and pages of options.

How does OSS improve the experience for exhibitors and sponsors?

If you’ve used a printed sponsorship prospectus up until now, your sponsors need to fill out a form, send it to the event management team, wait for an invoice and then make a payment. This process not only takes time but also doesn’t let your sponsors see which options are no longer available until after they’ve taken the time to make a selection and send it off.

By using OSS, sponsors can see the available inventory of sponsorships and receive immediate payment confirmation once they’ve made their selection online. Not to mention they can do this from anywhere at any time!

OSS allows sponsors to have their own log in as well, a place where they can view and manage their current and past sponsorships for an event. This is great for an organization that wants to renew their sponsorship from the previous year. Sponsors also have the option of purchasing advertisements without being an exhibitor. This enables smaller organizations that don’t have the budget or bandwidth for a booth to have visibility at the event.

What Benefits Can I See as a Show Organizer?

Similar to the sponsor experience, OSS reduces the need for your team to route and manage a prospectus. No more engaging in back-and-forth with clients on which sponsorships are available. No more manually sending out invoices.

Once you’ve launched OSS and set up the exhibitor portal, organizations can self-serve to finalize their sponsorship at your event. This is particularly helpful for organization that offer similar sponsor packages each year; your team can easily make updates and share the newest version with clients.

With the OSS tool, you can develop and send a tailored package to a particular sponsor. If you have a premium sponsor looking to purchase multiple options, you can set this up on the website back end and send a personalized link to confirm their selections and pay for their sponsorship.

How the American Academy of Neurology Leverages OSS

The American Academy of Neurology (AAN) hosts their annual conference for 12,000 people and they utilize A2Z Events to manage their event. While AAN initially implemented A2Z to manage exhibitor contracts, they had a sponsorship sales process that was inefficient, lengthy and complex. The team decided to use the Online Sponsorships Sales tool to streamline the sponsorship process and generate additional revenue from their conference.

Using the A2Z Events platform, event organizers were able to open sponsorship sales at a specific day and time, which created a sense of urgency among organizations to lock their sponsorships in early. Sponsors could choose and purchase their sponsorship without having to wait on the AAN team to confirm which options were available. The entire process, which previously required multiple manual steps for show managers, was now automated and freed up time for them to focus on their programs.

According to AAN’s industry sales specialist, “OSS transformed an antiquated system, which pushed paper back and forth between sponsors and our team…Having this system in place allows us to spend more time on creating new and innovative sponsorships and connecting with our sponsors.”

If you’re still using a PDF sponsor prospectus, there’s a better way. Having the OSS tool in your event technology stack can enable your team to focus on developing meaningful relationships with your sponsors and exhibitors and spend less time on routing and managing paperwork.

If you’re looking to streamline your sponsorship process and drive additional event revenue, reach out to your Account Manager or Request a Demo from our team.

The post How Event Tech Can Improve the Sponsorship Sales Process appeared first on Personify.

Modern event sponsorship strategies are a dime a dozen. Each one is based off a learning from a different time and place. The strategy might be based on a previous experience or a past position. It may be a combination of strategies that take the most efficient and effective parts, combining them together for the best solution.

When developing your event sponsorship strategy, it’s important to keep in mind that you do not want to leave revenue on the table. This goes without saying but there are two ways to maximize your net revenue: increase your sponsorship revenue and reduce event expenses.

There are many ways to achieve this goal. However, a few strategies hold true over time and are consistent from one organization to another to increase your sponsorship revenue now and in the future.

1. Understanding and Value

One of the most effective ways to drive sponsorship revenue is to increase the value that you’re providing to exhibitors. To do so, it’s crucial to understand why they are exhibiting at your event in the first place. All too often, we assume the goals are to showcase their products and gain further leads. While is almost certainly the case, there may be an additional value they are seeking from your event, and it can be used to create a customized sponsorship package for that organization. Creating a solution tailored to a client’s need helps you deepen a relationship with your exhibitor by demonstrating that you listen, you care and you want to help them grow their business at your event. When they grow, you grow.

Show organizers can sometimes feel the need to be the most creative person in the world. Coming up with original sponsorships is not easy nor is it always necessary to expend such brain power. A conversation with your exhibitor can often be the catalyst that is needed to spark the sponsorship idea. Save yourself the brain energy and have an open dialogue with your exhibitors.

2. Transparent Cost Cutting

While custom sponsorships have the benefits we discuss above, they can be costly for the show organizer. Consider if the goal of your sponsorship program is to be profitable or increase revenue? They are not one and the same.

An association may answer this question differently than a for-profit organization. The profit margin for your event may need to be 20% while for others, it needs it to be 50% or higher. Determine that margin and the leeway you have with it before coming up with the custom options. Once you have a standard percentage, it’s easy to put together a package knowing the costs and coming up with the price. This cuts down on back and forth time internally, which affects the time that you can spend on working with other exhibitors or managing the overall event. Develop a streamlined processes that is based off set standards to make your team more efficient and reduce complexity.

That being said, transparency does not mean that you must show all of your cards to an exhibitor. Commit to increasing transparency on your internal team and be clear how much can and should be shared with the client.

3. Time savings

While increasing revenue and efficiency is important, you and your team’s time is a crucial resource that must be managed wisely. Create a sponsorship strategy that encourages autonomy and a self-serve approach to your event sponsorships, which means that you do not have to actively sell them. Your team will still need to provide communication about the offering and value of the sponsorship but you post these directly to your online sponsorship directory and let the magic of self-serve sales happen.

Utilize your event technology to develop a suite of sponsorship options and use an ecommerce online contract to alleviate the amount of back and forth required. We all know fulfillment will eat into time but why waste your time on items that can be easily marketed through digital campaigns and sold self-serve from your event tech? That was a rhetorical question, of course.

Conclusion

Focus on the what your exhibitors truly want from your event to develop a compelling and valuable sponsorship program. Focusing on your exhibitors’ needs will be the most effective time you spend on your event. It will not only increase your sponsorship revenue but help you identify opportunities to bring on new exhibitors as well.

This double-edged sponsorship strategy will help your event grow from multiple angles including exhibitors, sponsorships, attendees and possibly new verticals. And remember that—when they grow, your event grows.

The post Leaving Money on the Table: How To Improve Your Sponsorship Strategy appeared first on Personify.