Product Events Marketing Automation 101 - Step by Step Guide

Maybe you've noticed that events are one of the best ways to connect with potential customers and show off your products. Whether it’s in-person, a virtual webinar, or at a trade show, they offer great marketing opportunities.

Trying to organize an event like that can be tricky though. Managing, promoting, and tracking them is a lot of work.

With product events marketing automation, you’ll stay organized and get more bang for your buck. You can let automation handle the boring, repetitive tasks, freeing up your time and boosting your productivity.

Let’s dive into how automation works and how it can help you engage your audience and—most importantly—bring in those high-quality leads.

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What is product events marketing automation?

Let’s start with the basics. Think of automation as your personal assistant—it handles all those boring tasks, like sending reminder emails and tracking registrations, so you don’t have to.

When you’re not worried about these types of tasks, you can focus more on the more important things, like making sales.

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A step-by-step guide to automating event marketing

Now that you’re up to speed with the basics, here’s a step-by-step guide to help you use automation in your next event.

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Step 1: Define measurable event goals and KPIs

You should have defined goals, objectives, and KPIs before considering the automation for your event. Without clear goals, it’s hard to know if your event will hit the mark.

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Align event objectives with broader marketing goals

Your event isn’t happening in isolation. Consider how it fits into your larger marketing strategy. Are you aiming for lead generation? Product awareness? Customer retention? Identifying these goals will help guide your marketing efforts and automation strategies.

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Set KPIs to track success

Once your objectives are in place, set KPIs to measure how well your event meets these goals. Common event KPIs include:

• Registration numbers
• Attendee engagement
• Lead-to-conversion ratio, and
• Post-event ROI

When you define KPIs upfront, you’ll have clear benchmarks to measure performance. With automation, you can track everything in real time, no sweat.

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Step 2: Select your automation admin

Product events marketing automation involves a lot of work. You need to create workflows, maintain lists, and handle a lot of data.

Having a go-to person to handle all these tasks is a must if you want things to go smoothly. You want someone who's comfortable with the tech side of automation.

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Step 3: Automate event promotion and registration

Now that your goals are set, it’s time to start promoting your event. Product events marketing automation is especially helpful for getting registrations for the event.

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Automate event promotion through email marketing

You may be stunned at how effective email marketing can be for promoting events. But writing all those emails? Super tedious. Automation can help you here.

You can use automated email campaigns to send invitations, reminders, and everything in between.

Here’s an example of how you can fine-tune automated email responses.

Let’s say one of your email recipients opened your email but didn’t register for your event. You can let automation software, like Mailchimp, send a personalized email to them. The automated workflow will get the job done without needing your constant input.

You can set these workflows up once and you’re done!

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Sync event registration platforms with CRM

Another great automation move? Syncing your event registration with your CRM so everything stays up to date. It ensures that every time someone registers, their information is automatically captured as a lead. This seamless process will ensure your team follows up with leads at the right time.

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Re-engage with leads

No matter how compelling your invitation is, not everyone you invite will respond immediately. You can set up automated workflows to follow up with people who didn’t take any action.

You can use automation software to automatically resend emails to those who haven’t registered after the first email or only got partway through the registration process.

When you re-engage with these contacts, you increase the chance of turning them into attendees.

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Step 4: Automate pre-event engagement

Getting people to register for your event is only part of the battle. Once they’ve signed up, you need to keep them engaged. It’ll lead to better attendance and a more invested audience.

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Create automated email sequences and reminders

A great way to customize your pre-event email communication is to categorize your audience based on factors like:

• Past event attendance
• VIP status
• First-time registrants

You can include pre-event updates, special access information, or helpful content related to the event topic. Tools like Mailchimp and Hubspot can help you automate these workflows.

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Use social media scheduling tools

Want to promote your event on social media? Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule your posts ahead of time. These tools will help you pre-schedule updates across platforms to keep event promotion steady and consistent. And you’ll achieve all this without the need to post everything manually.

This will keep your audience interested as the event date gets closer.

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Enhance engagement with polls or surveys

Interactive elements, like polls and surveys, are great for engaging your audience as they wait for your event. You can automate sending surveys and quizzes to different segments of your audience. The feedback you get can help you adjust your event accordingly.

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Step 5: Manage event operations with automation (during the event)

You can use automation during the event itself as well. Tools like Zapier can help you streamline operations so you can focus on delivering a memorable event.

Here are some examples of how automation can help you actively manage your event:

• You can automate things like check-ins, scanning badges, and monitoring engagement with event management tools, like Eventbrite.
• Things like QR code check-ins can automate much of your grunt work while giving you valuable data on attendance.
• If you're hosting an event with booths or speaking sessions, you can automate lead capture with badge scanning and lead forms. You can even use tools like HubSpot that sync straight to your CRM. This way, no leads fall through the cracks.

Most event management software can integrate with your CRM. Doing this can automatically update your lead database in real time. This can help you track attendee behaviors, interests, and engagement during your event.

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Step 6: Automate post-event follow-up and lead nurturing

Post-event follow-up is one of the most critical stages in event marketing and automation tools make it so much easier.

You can create automated emails to the people who were at your event with personalized messages. You can even send follow-up emails to those who didn’t attend the event.

For example, an email to those who didn’t attend could include recordings or other resources from the event that they might find valuable. This could be enough to make them interested in attending the next one so they don’t miss out.

For those who came to the event, you can send Thank-You emails with anything additional that you think they could benefit from, such as recordings of the event.

All of this can be done with automation tools to save you time.

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Sort and rank your leads based on their engagement

You know that not everyone who attends your event is a strong lead. You can use automation to score your leads based on their level of engagement.

Here’s how this might look in a real event.

• You can set up an automated system that ranks potential leads based on the number of sessions they attend at your event.
• Of course, someone who attends every session is more interested and is a high-quality lead than someone who drops off after a session or two.
• Automated lead scoring will help your sales team prioritize who to follow up with first.

Personalized offers for lead nurturing

Once you’ve identified strong leads, you can use automation to send personalized content or offers to them. For example, you might offer discounts or exclusive access to products for your warmer leads.

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Step 7: Reporting and analytics – Automating event success measurement

Finally, the key to improving future events is analyzing the success of your current one. Automation helps pull together data from various platforms so you can get a complete view of your event’s performance.

It saves you the hassle of gathering data from email tools, CRMs, and event platforms manually. With automation, you can generate reports that provide a complete picture of your event performance in one place.

Tools like Zapier and Eventbrite can also help you track and analyze key metrics such as:

• Registration-to-attendance conversion rates
• Lead-to-customer ratios
• Pipeline acceleration
• Revenue generated from the event

Automating these reports lets you spot trends and make data-driven decisions for your future events.

One of the most valuable aspects of automation is its ability to provide insights you can act on.

Looking at reports lets you see what worked and what didn’t. Automation tools can even provide recommendations for future event optimizations based on the data.

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Best tools for product events marketing automation

Now that you know how to automate your event marketing, the next thing to determine is what tools to use. There are so many options out there which can feel daunting.

You want an automation tool that makes your life easier, not harder.

Here are some of the best product events marketing automation tools in 2024.

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HubSpot

HubSpot is one of the most widely used all-in-one marketing platforms, and for good reason. It has many automation features, such as email marketing, integration with your CRM, and event management.

You can set up promotions for events, create follow-up emails, and keep track of your event’s performance.

It’s easy to use which means you may not need to spend a ton of time training your team on how to use it.

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Top features

• Combines CRM, email marketing, and event management in a single tool.
• Helps automate event invitations, follow-ups, and reminders.
• Offers detailed analytics on attendee engagement and lead tracking.
• Minimal training required to navigate and implement automation processes.

Mailchimp

If you’re going to use email marketing to promote your event, then Mailchimp is a must-have tool. It’s useful in automating email communication from reminder emails to post-event follow-ups.

It also connects with a host of other event registration tools, like Eventbrite. This makes it easy to manage all the data from your event.

Regardless of whether you are managing leads or just updating your audience, Mailchimp’s automation can make the entire process more efficient.

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Top features

• Automates the entire email communication process, from reminders to post-event follow-ups.
• Seamlessly connects with event platforms for smooth data transfer.
• Allows personalized email campaigns based on attendee behavior and registration status.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is an event management platform exclusively designed to automate tasks like promotion, registration, and check-in.

Its automation features let you send invites, confirmations, and reminders. This tool seamlessly connects with other applications, such as Mailchimp and HubSpot, so you can easily transfer your data.

Eventbrite is the best for in-person or hybrid events since it offers ticketing options and easy check-ins for people attending.

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Top features

• Specialized platform for automating event promotion, registration, and check-ins.
• Ideal for in-person and hybrid events, with support for ticket sales and attendee check-ins via QR codes.
• Connects with CRM systems and marketing platforms like Mailchimp for easy data management.

Zapier

Zapier is a tool that lets you set up automated processes or ‘Zaps’ between two or more applications.

For instance, you can use a Zap to create a registration for Eventbrite and add the registrants to the Mailchimp email list. Super convenient, right?

You can also use it to send a message to your team in Slack when a lead form is completed.

Zapier allows you to integrate any apps you use and automate workflows between them, even if the apps don’t offer integrations.

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Top features

• Automates processes between different applications, allowing seamless data flow.
• Set up specific actions, such as syncing registrants from Eventbrite to a Mailchimp list.
• Works with a variety of apps, enabling integrations between tools that don’t natively connect.

Buffer

Buffer is a tool that allows you to schedule your social media posts in advance so that you can easily promote your event. It’s easy to use and lets you schedule posts for various social networks, like Twitter or Facebook, create content calendars, and track interaction data.

You can create automated workflows that make the entire process easier to manage.

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Top features

• Automates social media posts across platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
• Allows easy planning and tracking of event-related social content.
• Monitors engagement and interaction rates across social platforms to gauge audience interest.

Conclusion

Product events marketing automation can be a game changer. By using automation tools, you can streamline everything from event promotion to registration, attendee engagement, and post-event follow-ups.

It saves you time and energy so you can focus on the more important things to make the event a success.

Tools like HubSpot, Zapier, Mailchimp, and Eventbrite simplify tasks that would otherwise eat up your day. They free up your time for building connections, creating a memorable experience, and converting leads.

Start small, automate key tasks, and you’ll soon see a big impact on your productivity and results.

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FAQs

1. What are the top event marketing automation tools I can use for managing events?

Some event marketing automation tools you can use include HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Zapier, which have the necessary features for event promotion, registration, and follow-up. These platforms will help you with the essentials of the process, like sending out reminders and gathering attendee information. You can even integrate them with your CRM to make automation even easier to implement.

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2. How can I improve automated event lead nurturing after an event?

You can improve automated event lead nurturing by using personalized email sequences based on attendee behavior. For example, people who showed high engagement can receive product demos, while those who missed the event can receive summary content. Automation tools like ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp help customize outreach and boost conversions.

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3. What are the key steps in event marketing workflow automation?

The key steps include:

• Promoting the event via email marketing
• Registering people who show interest in attending
• Integrating details of the event with your CRM
• Following up with your audience after the event - even with the people who didn’t register or attend.

4. How does product events marketing automation benefit lead generation?

Product events marketing automation helps capture and organize lead data efficiently. Automating registration forms, tracking attendee engagement, and triggering personalized follow-ups ensures that you interact with leads quickly.

This can improve conversion rates and help you maximize the ROI of your event marketing efforts.

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