Learning from your digital analytics team with Jared Ruppert

Jared Ruppert [00:00:00]:

The best question is to ask the person what their goal is, because on the event planning team, they have data and insights and things I never would've known about. Where, if I just assumed there were registrations and didn't ask them about the context of their goals, I'd never have that insight, I'd never have those data points to leverage. I'd say, get the story from your stakeholders when you're talking across departments, and they can let you know what data points might exist that you don't know about.

I'd encourage you guys to just really talk to each other and understand what are you guys trying to do.

Alyssa Peltier [00:00:26]:

Great events create great brands. But pulling off an event that engages, excites and connects audiences, well, that takes a village, and we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews [00:00:38]:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu [00:00:39]:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier [00:00:41]:

And you are listening to Great Events, the podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Hello, everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa and I will be your host for this week's episode of Great Events, podcast by Cvent. This week I am delighted to introduce our listeners to another fellow Cventer, we love to bring our fellow Cventer onto the podcast here, but someone with a quite different background, I would say, than what we're used to, not necessarily a traditional meetings and events person, if you will.

So, without further ado, I will be introducing you all to Jared Ruppert, Director of Digital Analytics and Optimization at Cvent. I'm going to refer to him as our data nerd for this week's episode. 

Alyssa Peltier [00:01:31]:

We're just going to nerd out on the data talk, everyone's favorite topic. Jared, welcome to the podcast.

Jared Ruppert [00:01:36]:

Thank you. Thank you, happy to be here.

Alyssa Peltier [00:01:38]:

We're going to dive right in. I just really want to talk to you about your career, your career journey, what it means to be in events at Cvent, but also with a data-minded background. Let's talk a little bit about your career. What's your story, and what's driven you to Cvent and to this industry at large?

Jared Ruppert [00:01:55]:

Sure. I actually started as a graphic designer at an agency, and I was doing-

Alyssa Peltier [00:01:58]:

Hey, I didn't know this. We're finding this out right now. I am too.

Jared Ruppert [00:02:03]:

I do have some creativity in this nerd brain, so.

Jared Ruppert [00:02:09]:

There are dozens of us. I started with the graphic design, led into some email marketing design, and led into more web and digital. I had a lot of clients who they demanded results, and I found that I loved proving the results of a creative project, so really enjoyed the aspect of doing something or proving that it worked or even proving that it didn't work.

That ended up getting me into more of an analyst role and more of this optimization role at the agency. I joined Cvent as a digital analyst, and I was more involved in all things digital, web and marketing, all the marketing channels. One of those was our event program, partnering with event planners to help them with their event insights, understanding which channels work, et cetera, stuff like that. That's the quick spiel.

Jared Ruppert [00:02:45]:

One of those was our event program, partnering with event planners to help them with their event insights, understanding which channels work, et cetera, stuff like that. That's the quick spiel.

Alyssa Peltier [00:02:55]:

When you joined, what were some of the areas where the meetings and events team was struggling, and where would you classify them on that journey today?

Jared Ruppert [00:03:05]:

It's been really cool. I've been here for six years. When I first joined, we were under the same marketing team, but we didn't really work together all that much. I think throughout the years we found that the more that we tracked and analyzed our event programs and made sure that it was represented in our marketing reports and made sure that that channel was truly represented accurately as a driving force of leads and results, the more that we found that we need to have some data behind it to understand what's happening, why it's happening, and what areas are working and what's not.

So, over the years, this demand of data in the event program just naturally fell into place. But it wasn't there naturally, I would say five or six years ago.

Alyssa Peltier [00:03:42]:

Nice. Was there a driving force behind that? What was the catalyst for that?

Jared Ruppert [00:03:47]:

I'd say our tier one event, our biggest event of the year has a lot of eyes on it. We do a lot of different channels. There's emails, there's social, there's all these things going on. The event planners came and said, "Hey, we need to know what's happening, what's working, how are we going to get to our goals." So, we started meeting more regularly, and the more that we met, the more data we exposed them to, and said, "Hey, we can actually tell you which posts drove better registrations, or which audiences."

We found that they really enjoyed that data, so the more that we met, the more that that data... It's a black hole. You can just keep going with data. 

Jared Ruppert [00:04:20]:

You'll see, it's never ending. But I found that they really enjoyed that and bringing that to their stakeholders so they could represent their entire strategy for their event.

Alyssa Peltier [00:04:27]:

So it sounds like, because your background is more digitally focused, there's an interesting intersection with meetings and events where you're enriching meeting and event data, or data that's coming out of that channel with digital data. Conversely, are you finding that you are getting up to speed on the meetings and events data too as a result of that exchange?

Jared Ruppert [00:04:50]:

Absolutely. You can call me a nerd for this one. One of my favorite parts is all these new data points that I never knew existed. I'm used to my digital channels and I know them well enough now, but now I'm exposed to badging and checking in appointments and all these data points that I now know of that are helping me understand the industry a little bit better.

I would say I brought to them some of my stuff from my industry and they brought to me what's relevant to them. That context and understanding their strategy and which data points matter for their goals has really helped us blend into a really functional, cross-team collaboration, I think.

Alyssa Peltier [00:05:21]:

Oh, I love that. You mentioned this already and I didn't want to brush over it. So, you aren't on the meeting and events team. I think that's important to stress. Where do you sit within Cvent's marketing organization? Can you paint the picture of that? Because oftentimes on our podcast, we only talk about, really, the meetings and events viewpoint, but we are a pretty diverse marketing organization.

Can you give us a little overview of, not just meetings and events, the marketing organization and where you sit within that?

Jared Ruppert [00:05:47]:

Totally. I live within this hub that's all things digital, analytics, web UX, that's my immediate team, SEO. That's a little digital agency within the organization that works with all the different teams. We work with our copywriters and our demand gen and product marketers, so we're sitting centrally and working with different teams on whatever their needs are.

So, it just feel naturally to us that the event planning team would get involved here too, and we curate our analytics to their needs. That's how that fell into place.

Alyssa Peltier [00:06:14]:

Interesting. So more of a, I would say, agency type model or shared services type function, if you will.

Jared Ruppert [00:06:20]:

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. I think that's well said.

Alyssa Peltier [00:06:24]:

Perfect.

Let's shift gears a little bit to talk more specifically about the event metrics and program goals, program strategy. What are some areas that the meetings and events team is focused on today, that they need your help, with this data background? That's not necessarily a core competency of meetings and events, however, constantly trying to jockey for resources, prove budgeting, there's a lot of opportunity to tell better stories with data.

Alyssa Peltier [00:06:50]:

What are some areas where you're helping to support them in their goals, as they go into oftentimes 2025 planning right now, with data?

Jared Ruppert [00:06:58]:

I want to bring us back briefly to where this started. 2020, the events were all virtual, so it just made sense. It wasn't as complex. It was more of what channels, what tactics are driving registrations and attendance to our virtual events? Very clear, right? But this has since evolved over the last few years. To your point, it's such a effective channel, but an expensive channel.

It's important for us to support the event client team to help them prove their ROE, is what we've been calling it, return on events, so help them understand, getting the justifications of their stakeholders, and making sure they can speak the right language. 

Jared Ruppert [00:07:31]:

There's no reason that a sales exec needs to know about email subject lines, but they might want to know about which regions are registering or the lead quality or the lead flow of those attendees. I found that over time, as this event planning team has been working across departments, it's been more critical to ensure that they're proving their results, that they understand what got them there, and understand the impact of those events after.

Alyssa Peltier [00:07:57]:

I think that's awesome. What about data visualization and reporting evolution? I think there's certainly an emphasis on that right now. I'm seeing that with a lot of our enterprise clients. Large corporations are just... The Excel sheet's not going to cut it anymore. It's just not the way that the C-suite wants to interpret data. That's not the stories that they need told to them.

Is that type of work that you're involved in as well, Jared?

Jared Ruppert [00:08:23]:

Yeah, absolutely. I get to finally tap into my graphic designer roots from back in the day. I get to [inaudible 00:08:18][1]  a little visualization, a little artistic. I found that there's some complex data points in here, and I found that storytelling is so critical for any stakeholder trying to tell their data story to anyone else, especially the further they're removed from the function or even the data. Having that visualized is so critical.

A spreadsheet is sore on the eyes, you never want to have a PowerPoint with a bunch of numbers on it. But it's important to understand what you're trying to get at, have that so-what built into your slides, why am I showing them this, and making sure that when you look at it, you get it really quickly, that it's very visually appealing. And then think of it as chapters. What's the story of that? You want to bring them in, help them understand what the pain point is, what you did, and what the results are.

I'd say the two points of visualization is the actual graph, for sure, but then also the story of it. What is that? What do you get into? What do you want to do? And what's your ask at the end? Are you looking for more resources? Are you looking for buying on an investment? That type of thing, I think, is super critical.

Alyssa Peltier [00:09:20]:

Is that helpful in that communication with you, Jared, as more of a consultative approach to start with the end goal in mind so that you can surface up the right insights? Because the reality is, there's too much data. We don't even know how to organize the data anymore. So, I think what you're saying is really interesting to say as a business partner for the meetings and events team, should you be looking to outsource this type of support from an analytical role?

I think you having that understanding, hey, this is the story I need to tell, less so here's the data that I have, now go figure it out, might be a best practice or recommended approach. Is that a fair assessment?

Jared Ruppert [00:09:55]:

I would say that's fair. It's super critical, I think, for the event planning team to give that context. What is their strategy? What's their end goal? What are they trying to get to? And then I'd say the analyst role is to back into that and say, how do you get there, what's supporting it, and helping them tell that story. But I would say, absolutely, that that's a critical piece. Yeah.

Alyssa Peltier [00:10:12]:

Are there any of those that you see that our team particularly prioritizing? Is it registrations? Or is it the total program management, here's how we're budgeting for all of our events? Or is it about optimization of your invitees and trying to drive registrations? Or is it all over the map? Is there anywhere where we're really focused in on lately?

Jared Ruppert [00:10:33]:

I break it into three parts. I'm just going to [inaudible 00:10:26]. I talked about our single event, the tier one event. That's where you're really focused on so many different tactics, subject lines, campaign copy. It's so granular. But that's not for everyone, that might just be for the event planning team and your fellow digital marketers or whoever you're working with.

Then we might take a step back and analyze the event program. That might be a different role, where maybe someone like Rachel wants to know which event types are getting the best attendance rates, what channels are driving those. That's a different conversation, different data points there.

The most critical one, in my opinion is, again backing up even further in the marketing conversation. I often represent the website forms and how's that working, how's that tactic working? And making sure that the event program is just right there as another line item of, hey, what's the impact of this program? What's the quality? What's the revenue?

I'd say those conversations change drastically depending on who you're working with.

Alyssa Peltier [00:11:23]:

Let's talk about unsiloing data, because I think that's one area of opportunity that we all have. Our systems are oftentimes disparate, many times disconnected. Is there any areas of opportunity that you see, Jared, in terms of getting more digital alignment with what has been more of a traditional analog channel, which is meetings and events?

How can we start to break down these barriers of where we sit physically, but that our stories need to be a little bit more cross system, if you will?

Jared Ruppert [00:11:58]:

Totally, yeah. I would say it's critical to decide on a single source of truth. And I love Cvent, but it's not our single source of data truth, actually. We take our Cvent data and push it into an enterprise analytics system that we then have our market automation platform plugged into and our digital marketing platform plugged into.

Having that one single source of truth gets everyone aligned on the numbers. And then you can also really layer in that data on top of each other. Now that you have maybe your marketing automation data or your sales force data or something like that, where it's layering into your event program, you get these other insights. So, there's a benefit there too, of layering in different cuts from different data sources that really get you great insights.

Alyssa Peltier [00:12:36]:

That's so, so valuable. Because I think everybody's like, you need a single source, you need a single source. Which is true, you need a single source of truth per channel, but those all need to be consolidated at a certain point so that you can look at different systems' data under one single view. I think that is really the takeaway in the systems conversation.

Jared Ruppert [00:12:55]:

Yeah, I'd say... Do you remember we were talking about making sure that you're representing the marketing conversation? Your event platform will never be that hub of that system. That needs to go somewhere else, where then all of those systems are going into one system when you're talking about the whole marketing program.

I would say if you're looking at just your event program, you can probably exist within your event program analytics. But once you start moving outside the org, talking about lead quality or impact or revenue, you got to get into one system.

Alyssa Peltier [00:13:19]:

Yeah, and it connects your event program to the broader strategy. It no longer is just isolated in its own thing and you're no longer having a conversation around registrations. The registrations are rolling up to some greater, bigger growth value to your marketing organization, which I think is huge.

Jared Ruppert [00:13:37]:

Yeah, it is also really cool to see then... Then you can see maybe your pocket of attendees, what are they doing on my website or what resources are they engaging in? It's neat to take that cut from your event program and put that lens on different areas of marketing, like, hey, what else are they doing? It's something you wouldn't get in the analog base, they leave and that's it.

Alyssa Peltier [00:13:55]:

And you're able to compare different channels, say, this is how our content marketing is performing compared to our event marketing. And right, wrong, or indifferent, we at least have a apples-to-apples comparative of all of the channels that we're functioning. I think that's fantastic. A really good insight there, Jared.

All right. We're coming up on time, like to keep these short and sweet these days. Is there any top takeaways or big aha moments for you, Jared, that you want to leave our group with?

Jared Ruppert [00:14:24]:

Yeah. Whenever I'm working across teams, I've found that the best question is to ask the person what their goal is. Because on the event planning team, they have data and insights and things that I never would've known about. Where if I just assumed there were registrations and didn't ask them about the context of their goals, I'd never have that insight, I'd never have those data points to leverage. I'd say, get the story from your stakeholders when you're talking across departments and they can let you know what data points that might exist that you don't know about.

I'd encourage you guys to just really talk to each other and understand what are you guys trying to do.

Alyssa Peltier [00:14:54]:

Yeah, I think there's a lot of assumptions that are made on both sides, like Jared's a digital guy and he just cares about the digital stuff. But if you have that open, honest conversation, you can break down some of those assumptive behaviors and actually get a better outcome in mind.

Jared Ruppert [00:15:06]:

Totally agree.

Alyssa Peltier [00:15:07]:

Jared, I really enjoyed this conversation. I think we're left with some really good, needy conversation. I know that there was also a Cvent CONNECT session that took place just a month or so ago at Cvent CONNECT related to this topic. So, if you want to get your hands in on this data analytics and optimization conversation a little bit more granularly than we had today, feel free to check that out on demand available at cvent.com. Also, I believe there might be an upcoming webinar, Jared, so I'll just put that out there as well, that we're going to continue this conversation on data and working more closely with the analytics and meetings and events team. With that, we'll see you next week.

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews [00:15:59]:

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Felicia Asiedu [00:16:08]:

Stay connected with us on social media for behind-the-scenes content, updates and some extra doses of inspiration.

Rachel Andrews [00:16:15]:

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Felicia Asiedu [00:16:24]:

Big thanks to our amazing listeners, our guest speakers, and the incredible team behind the scenes. Remember, every great event begins with great people.

Alyssa Peltier [00:16:34]:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.