Revenue, Retention, and Results: The Power of Event-Led Growth with Splash's Camille Arnold

Camille Arnold [00:00:00]:

Spoiler alert: events can dramatically reduce a sales cycle for a company.

And also, by the way, events can be a mechanism for you to get to know your customers on a much deeper level. The companies that are using it today are growing faster. And they're seeing really incredible outcomes when it comes to customer retention and expansion that other companies that are not using event-led growth are not seeing.

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 [00:00:39]:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu [00:00:40]:

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 on this wide, wide world of events? My name is Alyssa and I am joined by my fellow co-hosts, Felicia and Rachel. And we are here altogether for this week's episode of Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. Now, many of you are aware that Splash was acquired by Cvent at the end of last year. And along with that, came a really great new player on to our team and this week's very special guest, Camille Arnold. Welcome to the podcast, Camille.

Camille Arnold [00:01:23]:

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Alyssa Peltier [00:01:26]:

We are super psyched to have you on the podcast. Especially because not only are you a critical member of the Splash marketing team, but you're also a fellow host of a podcast that supports the Splash brand called Checked In With Splash. Is that right, Camille? Did I say it right?

Camille Arnold [00:01:41]:

I am, yes. Yeah, I host the Checked In Show. And so, I feel like this is super kismet that I get to be a guest on your show and blend our worlds here, since we're one team now. One team, one dream.

Alyssa Peltier [00:01:53]:

I love this. Okay. So let's give our listeners just a little bit more background about yourself, your career, how you got to the place where you are today, which is under Cvent. But obviously, by way of Splash. So let us know a little bit more about yourself.

Camille Arnold [00:02:05]:

Yeah. So I joined the Splash team in August of 2018. And it's funny, I've been asked how I found myself in the world of marketing and events. And I have tried to pivot my career a couple of times and I just always get sucked back into the world of experiential marketing and event production. And I do love it. I think you have to be a little kooky to thrive in this world.

And I am a self-proclaimed kookster. But I started my career off in the music industry and through that experience, got into event production really by connecting brands with talent that I was working with at the time. And then, for a few years, ran my own creative agency. Before everyone and their mother had their own creative agency, I ran a creative agency and people were like, "What does that even mean? What is a creative agency?" And I was like, "I work with talent and artists and brands. And I create amazing experiences through events and digital experiences as well."

And that was really fun until I burned myself out. I was pretty early on in my career and I realized I wanted to go in-house and learn from really seasoned business operators. I felt really confident in terms of creating exceptional experiences for my target audience. But what I was missing was really being able to say that I was a data-driven marketer. And so, I knew I needed to, like I said, join a team and learn from other people who were walking that walk already.

And so, I found my way to Splash in 2018 and I was in a number of different roles, right hand to the CEO at first, learned everything about the business. And then, I joined the marketing team in early 2021 in a communications manager role. And then, there was a gap. No one was really owning and driving the event strategy, as funny as that sounds for an event tech company. And I said, "Hi, it's me. I'm the solution here and I want to do this." So I created our event strategy. Really holistically partnering with other revenue leaders, developing our own event-led growth strategy. And then, the acquisition happened in late 2024.

Now, I get to be part of the Cvent ecosystem, which is so exciting. Because obviously, what you have been building with Cvent, all of the amazing customers that you have is just a really exciting ride to be on now. And to continue to grow Splash under the Cvent umbrella and have new teammates and counterparts. And it's just been an amazing experience. So that is a little bit about how I got to Splash and how I now have found myself part of the Cvent Nation.

Felicia Asiedu [00:05:04]:

I love that. I love listening to your story because you have the similar zigzag to what I often talk about in my career where it's like I did music production. And then, suddenly I was doing something else and I was a marketer. And then, I went... I love the zigzag and a lot of event professionals and marketers could probably relate to that. But what I also liked hearing you say is that you got to build that event strategy from the ground up, which I think is quite a privilege actually. And you mentioned event-led growth. A lot of people would be like, "Huh? What is that?" So what is that?

Camille Arnold [00:05:34]:

Let's talk about it. Yeah. So event-led growth is a strategic go-to-market motion where events are the primary channel for customer acquisition, retention, and expansion. And if you're newer to this term, that's cool. That's okay. Welcome. The Splash team recently conducted a survey of 1,000 US-based marketers just to learn about how they're leveraging events in their marketing strategies and what impact they're having on their business.

And the stats that we're seeing in terms of the companies using an event-led growth strategy are astonishing. So I'm just going to share a few quick ones just to drive home that this is, one, a legitimate go-to-market motion. And two, that the companies that are using it today are growing faster. They have stronger brand awareness. And reach and they're seeing really incredible outcomes when it comes to customer retention and expansion that other companies that are not using event-led growth are not seeing.

So 94% of marketers say that events help their team generate a steady flow of revenue. 79% are hitting their revenue goals every single quarter. In this market, in this economy that's freaking crazy. And three in four marketers say that events are their most effective marketing channel. So I think what I would just say is if you're new to the concept of ELG, dig in here.

If you are a marketer, a planner... Heck, even if you're not, but you play some other role for your company and you don't know if your company is practicing event-led growth today, find out why. And share these stats with the stakeholders at your company to just make a case for why you should be investing more in events as a real marketing channel.

Alyssa Peltier [00:07:40]:

My previous job was for a smaller, family-owned and operated company. We did a lot of events and by doing a lot of events, I mean, I did pop-up stands at trade shows. We did a lot of community activation events. We did a customer golf appreciation event. A lot of just grassroots efforts. I wasn't necessarily quantifying that impact. So just because I did it, does that mean I was practicing ELG or event-led growth?

Camille Arnold [00:08:07]:

It's a really great question. It's one of my favorite questions to get; and I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But no, just doing events does not mean that you are practicing event-led growth. And I would say, the key differentiators are, first, primarily aligning your business objectives with your event strategy objectives. So what are your goals as a business? Are you trying to get new customers on board or are you trying to increase brand awareness?

If you're struggling to close new business, why? Are you getting people interested and then sales is just not able to land the plane or are you getting a lot of new business but losing it? Do you have a churn problem? So I think the first thing is really aligning your event goals to your business goals. The next step is really you have to have some sort of handle on attribution. So I'm not the one that's going to be the one to lead an attribution revolution for my company, no matter what company I work at. But you can ask your revenue operations leaders, your finance leaders who would own how things are getting attributed.

So when I'm talking about attribution, I'm talking about like, "How do we weigh and measure the impact of everything that's going in your buyer's journey?" So how valuable is it for someone to attend an event? What weight does that hold in helping them decide to become a customer versus reading an ebook or requesting a demo, if you're a SaaS company? You have to have some handle on attribution your company does and you have to be able to make sure that events can be attributed to revenue.

And then, the third major requirement, I would say, is you need to understand the technology requirements. So I started with mapping two business objectives, right? You have to be able to set clear goals for your events that align to business objectives. You have to have some handle on attribution. And then, you need technology platforms that allow you to simplify your processes, amplify your brand, and measure your results. And once you can get a handle on those three things, then you can build your event strategy, and then you're practicing event-led growth. There's a lot more that can go into it. But I would say, at a high level, those are the big three.

Alyssa Peltier [00:10:45]:

It's not just about doing the do, right? A lot of times, we get caught up, especially in the planning practice around just getting it done. But there's a lot more awareness, and I keep fixating myself on the word you're cognizant. You're cognizant of what you're doing. This thing has a business purpose and a business application. And all of that is established before the event even takes place. It's not a cleanup effort after. Whereas in my previous role, it was collect the business cards and do the thing and then, "Oh, what do we do with them?" It's always kind of after the fact as opposed to a very conscientious movement.

Rachel Andrews [00:11:18]:

A lot of planners struggle with the beginning part of that statement. Early on it was like, "Okay. We want to do product seminars. Why do we want to do them? Oh, we want to get our product out there." "Okay. Cool." That was it. That was the conversation and I think a lot of planners are like, "Okay. I'm just an executor. I'm going to get it done." I talked to so many people, planners, marketers in the industry that their business goals are attendee growth, NPS score from their surveys, attendee satisfaction, and session surveys. That's it. And they are not thinking about what account value is in the room that you're inviting. What is the actual purpose of the event? The beginning part of the business goals is so important. Candidly, I think I could do a better job at some of these or some of our events.

Alyssa Peltier [00:12:11]:

Well, and conversely, there's bad attendees in the room. It can't just be an attendance count, right? We are measuring things on a quantitative scale oftentimes, right? As opposed to the qualitative scale and the qualitativeness needs to be determined by some other factor before the event takes place.

Rachel Andrews [00:12:27]:

You're dealing with execs being like, "Just get in. Shove people in the room. Just get them there. Numbers, numbers, numbers," and it's like, "Hold on. Why don't you take a look at what those goals are first and the numbers and who you're getting in the room?" The target strategy, also, is super important in this and then it can flow into this. There's obviously a ton of work in attribution and a ton of work in setting up systems in MarTech. It can seem really daunting is all I'm trying to say is. But if you get that first step right, I think it can get a little bit easier on the other two steps.

Felicia Asiedu [00:13:00]:

Yeah. I was going to say, I did a session ages ago about basically dating your attendees. I need to court you a little bit first. I need to understand a bit more about you. I need to figure out what do you like, what do you dislike. Make sure that when I do take you on that eventual date, I'm informed enough that I didn't take you to McDonald's when in fact you should have gone to the Ritz, that kind of thing.

And so, that's where the partnership between whoever's planning the event and the marketing team, sometimes it's one and the same. I get that. Sometimes they're vastly different. But there needs to be this alignment where, "How have you courted these attendees?" And that event, oftentimes, I'll say, "Look, we have our own Connect Europe." I want to court my attendees so much that by the time we get to Connect Europe, we're like, "Oh, thank God I'm seeing you. I'm so glad that you are here. I'm so glad that you invited me." Not that that's the first time I ever asked you, "Hey, just come to my event." I now have to overpitch the event. I now have to work doubly hard when you get there to prove the fact that you weren't wasting your time when you got there. So it does need to be thought about all the way through the year that we're going to meet later. It's a real partnership that has to happen.

Camille Arnold [00:14:11]:

Yeah. And you said something, Felicia, just now that is really one of the foundations of why event-led growth is such an effective go-to-market motion today. One, event attendee behaviors are vastly different today than they were pre-pandemic. We've been seeing this shift, I would say both gradually and all at once, where people are incredibly discerning with their time and their resources.

So why should they take time out of their day to engage with you and your brand at any event that you're hosting, virtual or in-person? Their time is so very precious. That's one kind of component here. The other thing is that buying behavior is also vastly different. For the most part, people want a very self-serve, autonomous, "I'm going to figure it out on my own," buying experience. Except for when it comes to peer recommendations, right? You ask your friends, you ask your peers, "What do you think about this thing?" Whether you're buying a pair of jeans or shoes or a new makeup product or you're buying technology, you're going to ask people that you trust for their opinion on something.

Rachel Andrews [00:15:38]:

Let me ask you something for maybe more junior event planners. How do you figure that out? How do you figure out what your ICP or ideal customer profile, what their buying cycle is? Are you talking to the sales teams? Are you talking to the customers directly? Are you surveying them? How can an event marketer get that sentiment for their vertical or their industry?

Camille Arnold [00:15:58] :

I think there's a few ways you can go about it. One is there's luckily a lot of research out there, right? So you can look to research firms that are publishing data for your industry to understand how buyers in your industry, what they're looking for, what they're wanting.

I'll just say one quick note on that. Just from I think 2019 to today, we went from around or just under 17 touch points in the SaaS industry. 17 touch points in the buying journey to over 30. Some say over 40, right? It depends on the source that you're looking at. That's insane, okay? That's basically double the touch points. So that means one of the reasons why investing more in events is really smart. To Felicia's point, you have to date your buyer a lot longer these days. So that's one way is figure out what industry research you can get your hands on and study that.

The second thing that you can do, which is really leaning more internally at your company is you said it, Rachel, talk to your sales team. Look at that data. You can figure out, "Are sales cycles getting longer, shorter? What are the levers that we can pull to shorten that if we are seeing they're getting longer?" Spoiler alert: events is one of those things that can dramatically reduce a sales cycle for a company.

And I would say on the customer front, if your company doesn't already have some sort of voice of customer program in place, that's something that you should advocate for. And also, by the way, events can be a mechanism for you to accomplish that, for you to get to know your customers on a much deeper level. And going back to the point that I made about how people are, where they're going to get recommendations for their needs to be met, right? Where are your customers learning? What platforms, what websites, what communities are they a part of?

Again, back to Felicia's point, it's like we need to get to know our people, our prospects, and our customers as intimately as possible without being creepy. And what that leads to is really rich first party data that we can then action on. And again, that's why events are so powerful is because we can't just rely on collecting cookies from all the website browsing, because cookies went away. So how are you going to get that rich first party data?

Well, again, not to be a broken record, but events. We need to be really intentional though. We shouldn't just be doing events just for the sake of doing them. What are your goals? Do you need to learn more about your target audience? Do you need to help sales reduce their sales cycle? Do you need to help customer success with their retention and expansion priorities?

When you can align with the revenue leaders at your organization and just ask them point-blank like, "What are your biggest priorities this year? What are your biggest challenges?" And I think it's maybe even harder if your company has been investing in events. In some cases, if your company is just starting to get into leveraging events as a marketing channel, it might be easier for you in some ways.

Felicia Asiedu [00:19:30]:

Well, that's why I said it's a privilege. Like when you said, "I saw a gap. I built up..." I was thinking, "You are very lucky." Because to come into an organization of any size that is already doing, "This is what we've already done. This is where we're going. This is why we go," and you're like, "Hey, let's introduce this methodology." And they're like, "Sit down. This is what we do. All I need you to do is book the restaurant," and you're like, "What? I'm trying to be strategic for you here."

Camille Arnold [00:19:56]:

Well, especially if you're not really properly measuring the results of your event programs and/or if you historically haven't seen great performance from your events, right? How do you get the buy-in internally to invest more or make a strategical pivot? It is so important to zoom out and make sure that you and everyone in your organization understands the big picture. Why are we doing these different kinds of events and what are the outcomes that we're looking for in the business that are measurable? That we can point to and say, "Oh, that's why we did this. Here are the results. Let's learn from these results. And do more of what's working and stop doing what's not working for us."

Alyssa Peltier [00:20:45]:

I think there's a timeliness about this conversation too right now. Camille, I know you were dancing around that and gave some of the statistics that are proof points. But in this macroeconomic climate that we're in right now, why ELG? Why is this of utmost importance? I also think there is a little bit of a return to connection, return to face-to-face. Not to overuse the word connection, but face-to-face connectivity-

Felicia Asiedu [00:21:09] :

Return on relationship.

Rachel Andrews [00:21:11] :

Yeah. I don't even know how to track ROR to save my life, but I know that I like ROR.

Alyssa Peltier [00:21:16]:

I care about it.

Rachel Andrews [00:21:18]:

Literally, every event we've ever planned in my whole history of planning events, the number one feedback is, "You know, it was really great, but I wish I had more time to talk to my people."

Alyssa Peltier [00:21:28]:

Well, part of that's what Camille is saying is we're peer review-driven at this point. So all of this community fostering and community engagement is going to support that, right? In a business environment, but also in a personal development, a personal career, profession. All of those things are supported by us enriching our community and live events are the best way to do that. They are the most enriching way to do that.

Felicia Asiedu [00:21:50]:

I'm thinking about this trend of smaller meetings as well. So many things triggered that. Like, Camille, earlier you were talking about, ask them, ask your customers, ask your prospects. But the best environment to ask people is probably in those smaller settings where you're kind of like, "Okay. What do you think? What do you think?" And Rachel, that's probably where you're getting that. The meat of those conversations isn't happening in the big auditorium, it's probably happening around a smaller table, a lunch, or something like that. So I think that's what's driving that.

Camille Arnold [00:22:18]:

100%. Listen, there is a time and a place and a purpose for your large, scale flagship events. Absolutely, 100% believe in that. Really getting your community rallying around a mission, an idea, a solution that your brand can be attached to, that is so valuable for your largest events. I think the best way to create really deep-rooted, long-lasting relationships with your target audience though, is in the smaller, repeatable events.

Not just one. It's not like one dinner, one lunch, one webinar, one virtual wine tasting, whatever. But lots of little experiences. I mean, think about just your personal friendships, right? If you meet someone one time, you might have an amazing experience with them that one time. But if you don't see them again for a year or two years, how deep is that relationship really going to go? Not that far.

But if you can see your friends repeatedly, you meet them for coffee, go see a concert. You make these core memories over time with your friends by spending time with them consistently. And that's the same thing that you want to try and recreate between your brand and your target audience. So that's why these smaller events which are usually easier to replicate, repeat, and scale across markets, geos, different audience segments. That's why you're going to get so much more out of them.

And you start small and you scale up and you work your way to that big, flagship brand moment. For those who are not convinced and you're like, "No, you start with the big summit and then you scale down." Again, going back to the touch points in the buyer journey, how are you engaging your audience, your buyers 365 days a year, right?

Rachel Andrews [00:24:29]:

In Felicia's analogy, that'd be like proposing to them before you've even taken them on a date.

Camille Arnold [00:24:34]:

Exactly.

Felicia Asiedu [00:24:35]:

That's exactly what I said during the talk.

Camille Arnold [00:24:36]:

All of us have the attention spans of a goldfish these days. So how do you get someone to be engaged with you consistently enough that they do want to spend money or convince their company to spend money, get on a flight potentially, and go to your 3-day conference or summit or whatever it is?

Rachel Andrews [00:25:01]:

You hire Lady Gaga to perform and guaranteed-

Felicia Asiedu [00:25:06]:

Pretty much.

Rachel Andrews [00:25:07]:

I think what you're saying, Camille, is like the investment of something so large is such a gamble without having this trickle down, trickle up approach to getting customer loyalty. To even have a customer program of that size, you need to have those smaller programs to build up.

Felicia Asiedu [00:25:24]:

Yeah. And you know, what's really funny? We can use ourselves as an example. Because as you were saying it, I was like, "We did a Cvent Accelerate event in Singapore." And it was like the first time we've done it there and their registration went through the roof and it turned into a large scale event. It definitely wasn't intended to be small. It was like 500 reg or something, which is crazy given that it's taken us years to build that for things like Connect Europe and whatnot.

But they came with a bit of a brand weight. They came with a bit of a tried and tested model in other markets. All of the learnings from Connect and from other accelerates is probably what gave them the gumption to just be like, "Boom. Here we are." But I think what I'm really learning from what you're talking about is being very intentional about it. It's not, "Hey, we did it and we got lucky," or, "That was good. Let's do that again." It's much more the why's, the taking the time. So I think, Alyssa, you had asked earlier, "Why event-led growth?" And I think that's answering that question. You got lucky. Sorry everyone who did Singapore Accelerate. But we definitely didn't have the ELG in our minds is what I'm saying. It was much more, "Let's try test. Let's try test-"

Alyssa Peltier [00:26:36]:

It breaks down that notion of test and learn, right? It's test, but know what you're testing. You have to have some hypothesis that you're attempting to achieve in that environment. It's a conscientiousness. It's a methodology about knowing what it is that you're trying to achieve. It might fail. But at least, you know how you need to iterate, to improve, to get better, as opposed to just taking the budget entirely and scrapping something. Or maybe, it's wildly a success, but you know how to tout that story as a positive one, how it's tied to revenue, how it's tied to growth.

Rachel Andrews [00:27:08]:

Can I ask one quick question about attribution? So this is something that keeps me up at night and I'm not an attribution specialist. I'm not in the data scientist side of marketing. But a lot of planners when I talk about ROI or how we're doing attribution here at Cvent, a lot of them are like, "Can you give me the percentages that I'm supposed to weight events for attribution?" And I don't think anybody knows that answer. I think we have a time decay model where if it was a certain time period ago, it gets weighted less and less the further out you go. But I think you got to work on that with your finance teams and your other teams within marketing. Does anyone have an exact science? Because I know that you give certain percentages to events versus webinars versus form fills versus whatever. But do we know? Is this a question mark in our industry?

Camille Arnold [00:28:06]:

Unfortunately. There's for sure no one size fits all approach or solution to attribution. I've personally talked to hundreds of marketers about this topic. I swear to you, it is... I think the number one topic that comes up when I talk to marketers, because it's tied to like, "Well, how are you measuring your results? How are you proving the impact of your events?" And it always goes back to we've got the attribution conundrum, okay? And so, I'm so sorry. No one has 100% figured this out to the point where they can say, "This is the right way to do it." It's going to depend on a lot of different factors.

Alyssa Peltier [00:28:54]:

Well, here's the reality. This extends beyond just events. It's a marketing conundrum, right? Because it is all very subjective. I'm going to say, "This is how much a form fill is worth." But how do you give weight or how do you determine the weight of those individual things? And also, the time component recency towards the closing of a deal or the creation of pipeline. So all of that creates for quite a complex, especially in B2B marketing.

Felicia Asiedu [00:29:16]:

Our marketing operations team are probably rolling their eyes right now, "Were you not listening when we gave you all of the understanding of this?" So we just need a podcast again with them on, because they will break this down for us in a way that we won't be able to comprehend.

Rachel Andrews [00:29:29]:

But that might be for our company what works, but maybe not for other companies.

Camille Arnold [00:29:33]:

That is 100% my point, Rachel. What works for one company, no guarantee that it's going to work for someone else. Different companies have broadly different models, right? Some are doing multi-touch attribution. Some are not. Some are just doing first touch or last touch and looking at the most recent impactful moments versus what got a lead or a contact into your database or into your funnel.

Alyssa Peltier [00:30:00]:

It is just a model. So I think the most important part is whatever that model is, be consistent with it so that you can at least have comparative metrics. I'm always going to measure this in a certain way. All of my events are going to operate this way and that's how I can at least attempt to measure impact consistently.

Camille Arnold [00:30:18]:

And listen, some companies are not attributing any revenue to events. So let's start with table stakes there. Your events need to be part of your attribution model.

Alyssa Peltier [00:30:41]:

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 [00:30:43]:

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu [00:30:52]:

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

Rachel Andrews [00:31:00]:

Got a great story or an event to share? We want to hear from you. Find us on LinkedIn, send us a DM, or drop us a note at greatevents@cvent.com.

Felicia Asiedu [00:31:10]:

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 [00:31:19]:

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