Global DIY Summit

About the Global DIY Summit

The Global DIY Summit is the world’s major event where retailers and manufacturers from the home improvement and garden centre industry have the opportunity for an exchange of views of current and future developments within the global market. This congress is being jointly hosted by the two leading European DIY professional organisations, EDRA (European DIY-Retail Association) and fediyma (European Federation of DIY Manufacturers), and the first global representation of interest of DIY trade, ghin (Global Home Improvement Network).

Inaki Maillard, General Manager for the Global DIY Summit states it is the “most important calendar event for the home improvement industry and attracts around 1,100 attendees annually – most of which are executive managers. The magic of the event is that it is held in different cities around the world, giving a truly global reach.”

The Need for Cvent

Before using Cvent, there were multiple pain points Inaki and his team faced. “Registration was always a challenge, you’d send a registration form, it would be faxed back, scanned and typed up manually. Also, following up on invoicing and payments was cumbersome because we had to use spreadsheets, which had different versions and eventually ended up being a complete mess.

”The Global DIY Summit decided to adopt Cvent to address these challenges and have now been using Cvent for almost nine years, gradually expanding their use of products as their event grows and they continue to modernise. “We started with the basics, just the registration system. This made it far easier to handle the registration process as attendees automatically received a confirmation email, the invoice etc.”

He also stated, “our event used to be as small as 400 delegates, but as we hit the 1,000 mark it became more complicated, so we started using Onsite Solutions – Cvent OnArrival and LeadCapture. We have around 70% of attendees checking in on the first day which used to cause queues, but with OnArrival, it’s so fast, it’s so easy, and has increased our attendee engagement and reduced our queue time significantly.

Benefits of Cvent

"Equally so, the post-event reporting has helped with cost management, “we host a gala dinner, and before Cvent we were trying to guess how many people attended to plan our catering, but now we are confident that around 75% of the people registering for the event, go to the gala dinner and that’s thanks to OnArrival. Cvent and the services they provide are helping me to make better decisions and save costs.” This also carries over to sessions, allowing Inaki and his team to see which sessions are most popular with live and accurate analytics.

Before the event, Inaki and his staff received a workshop on how to use the Cvent onsite equipment (badge printers, OnArrival app), and he stated, “I was very impressed with how easy my staff found the Cvent solutions. They realised how much time the new equipment was saving them, and we will definitely use Cvent again”.

Inaki is in the process of gradually introducing LeadCapture into the summit. He used it for the first time in 2019 and it enabled the exhibitors and attendees to connect with retailers and suppliers, make connections and enable easy follow up after the event. This also aided exhibitors in proving and calculating their ROI from the event.

Increase Efficiencies & The Future

The rollout of these solutions has allowed Inaki to spend more time being strategic - marketing the event, finding the best speakers for the audience, partnerships and working on the value of their sponsorship deals, “all-important items which haven’t been prioritised in the past, but will help the event continue to grow”.

Inaki would recommend Cvent because “the platform will take care of all the services before your event, during, and after – because it’s not only about getting people to your event, but it’s also to give your customers the best experience. Cvent is giving you all of this”. The support provided also impressed, with Inaki feeling its “not just a customer relationship, they really care about you and if you need additional support, you can get it from Cvent.

”With regards to The Global DIY Summits future plans with Cvent, Inaki said, “I’m planning to try the Cvent Mobile Event app which is something that I haven’t tried, but I if I consider my experience with other Cvent solutions, I think it’s going to be a pleasant one.”

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