At Appen (APX: ASX), a Data for AI solutions provider, the enterprise business unit’s sales team is spread across the globe (Americas, EMEA, APAC) and is comprised of two sales leaders, 15 account executives, and 10 SDRs. The team is responsible for selling services and technology in multiple industries to provide solutions for many use cases. To achieve revenue goals, Appen needed a global event strategy that could reach in-market decision makers and generate top of funnel leads for nurturing.

Solution

1. An event program playbook was created that outlined expectations and standard operating procedures for event identification & activation, marketing asset creation, event team roles, lead management and follow-up SLAs, speaking engagements, event promotions, marketing operations, feedback loops and ROI measurement.

2. A percentage of the event budget was allocated to each territory based on their portion of the business unit’s annual revenue goals.

3. A list of events was identified from historical campaigns, team recommendations, customer conversations, industry and use case research, and target account prospecting. The list was shortlisted based on agreed upon criteria and past campaign result data.

4. An annual plan that contained quarterly activations was presented and approved by stakeholders.

5. Monthly and quarterly ROI meetings were scheduled with stakeholders and executives. Also, post event meetings were scheduled to ensure feedback loops to distribute competitive information and market insight were established.

Results

30+ event sponsorships across seven countries, five speaking sessions, and three executive dinners were executed globally across 4 verticals. $8,000,000 in pipeline was generated from 47 opportunities, resulting in $1,8000,000 in revenue, this represented a 3.5X ROI on event program spend in 2022.

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