Frontline Placement Technologies

Problem

Frontline Placement Technologies Marketing Manager Jon Pavoni faced a "logistical nightmare" when planning the 10 to 15 user group meetings the company hosts each year. To both communicate with and register customers and prospects, Pavoni relied on direct mail pieces and email. Unfortunately, this approach proved to be more time-consuming and inefficient than expected. The registration process, in particular, required substantial work for both Pavoni and attendees.

Specifically, an email invitation was sent with a Microsoft Word document attached, which the invitee would print out, fill in and then fax back to Pavoni, who then manually entered the data from these forms into Excel and sent a confirmation email back to each registrant. Not only was this process tedious for Pavoni, but without compelling communication to market the event, and lacking a quick and easy registration process, Pavoni's method was not drawing in enough attendees.

Frontline Placement Technologies wanted a smoother, sleeker registration process with a professional look and feel. What's more, the company desperately needed to overhaul its email communications and marketing campaigns to get people interested in registering for its events in the first place.

"Cvent has allowed us to take our event marketing to the next level."

Jon Pavoni, Frontline Marketing Manager

Solution

Frontline attended a Cvent lunch seminar to learn about the company's online registration and email marketing capabilities and subsequently made a decision to license Cvent's event management solution.

Using Cvent, the Frontline team has been able to easily create customized online registration pages to automate and seamlessly manage the entire event registration process. The team also deployed Cvent's powerful email communication suite to better market Frontline events.

"Cvent has allowed us to take our event marketing to the next level," raves Pavoni. With Cvent, Frontline can easily customize emails by including maps, documents, pictures and driving directions, and also send automatic follow-up reminders. With "fantastic custom branding," the Frontline marketing team keeps the company's messages fresh by easily creating new marketing campaigns each year.

Furthermore, by automating event registration and marketing, Pavoni and his team have boosted staff productivity and have more time to devote to strategic marketing efforts. With administrative jobs crossed off the "to-do" list and peace of mind that these tasks are running smoothly, the team has the opportunity to dive into other key marketing initiatives, like search engine marketing.

Beyond the features and benefits of Cvent's product, Pavoni notes that "it's the level of service" that keeps him and his company coming back. "I completed the free web training and found the software to be very intuitive, but it's comforting to know that I can call on the Cvent Customer Care team whenever I need to, and they'll be able to answer my toughest questions."

Results

Thanks to Cvent, Frontline Placement Technologies has increased its number of user group meetings from 10 to 50 per year and ramped up meeting attendance by more than 200%. Pavoni is sure this is largely due to the fact that "Cvent makes it easier for us to market our events and for attendees to register."

This increased attendance has played a large role in boosting business, particularly among school district clients, whom Frontline helps to automate the process of substitute teacher placement and absence management. In fact, the company's initial work with around 500 school district clients has exploded and new goals are in place to reach about 2,000 school district clients within the year.

Frontline is forward-looking, always evolving and refining its processes, and Cvent's solutions play a vital role in executing new initiatives. In fact, Frontline Placement Technologies is looking to hold new "lunch-and-learns," for which it will select venues using the Cvent Supplier Network (CSN) – a complimentary tool that allows meeting and event planners to search detailed profiles of more than 200,000 venues around the world, send electronic Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and compare bids from suppliers with side-by-side reports. By using CSN, Frontline will garner better details and more effectively manage the entire site selection process. Through the "lunch-and-learn" initiative alone, Frontline hopes to convert 350–400 additional school districts to clients.