Checked In with Splash
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Checked In with Splash
Leveraging Events to Drive Business Growth with Joe Matar and Kate Hammitt
In this Zero to Twenty episode replay, Splash's Chief Marketing Officer, Kate Hammitt, sits down with host Joe Matar to discuss event-led growth as a go-to-market strategy.
Tune in to hear them share:
- What event-led growth is and why it works
- The evolving B2B buying journey and the critical role events play
- Strategies for using events to drive growth across every stage of your sales funnel
- Practical advice for aligning your revenue team around events
- How to maximize the value of your events and fuel your larger content strategy
- Tips for measuring event success using leading and lagging indicators
...and more.
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This is Checked In with Splash. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Checked In. I'm your host, camille Whitestone. Today's episode is a special one. You'll hear Splash's CMO, kate Hammett, sit down with Zero to s podcast host, joe Motter, as they delve into event-led growth as a powerful go-to-market strategy. Together, they break down the concept into event-led growth as a powerful go-to-market strategy. Together they break down the concept of event-led growth, examine the evolving buyer's journey and discuss strategies for using events to drive growth across every stage of the sales funnel. Their conversation also covers the critical aspects of measuring event ROI, aligning sales and marketing teams for revenue success and, of course, crafting impactful content with your target audience in mind, and so much more. Let's go ahead and get checked in with Kate and Joe.
Joe Matar:I am so excited for today's conversation, today's topic, on event-led growth. As many of you know, as many of my listeners know, this is a topic that's near and dear to me. I spent the last seven years working for an event management company but probably more importantly and more relevant to today's conversation, as the head of marketing of Brazen, I leveraged the heck out of events of all different types, all different formats, to help drive growth at Brazen. So, really excited for today's topic and more excited for today's guest, Kate. And I know, Late, that this is a topic that's near and dear to you as well. So why don't we kick things off? Why don't I turn it over to you? I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background experience and I think that would be a great't we kick things off, why don't I turn it over to you? I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background experience and I think that would be a great way to kick things off, Kate, welcome.
Kate Hammitt:Awesome. Thanks, Joe. I'm so excited to be here and talk about one of my favorite subjects. So, lifelong marketer, I started actually in sports marketing at the US Golf Association doing events. So my events thread runs deep and right back to my first job doing event logistics and planning and hospitality sales for the US Open, the Women's Open, Senior Open, all that fun stuff. And it kind of got the bug there and started to work in startups and ultimately found my way to SAS in about 2005,.
Kate Hammitt:Was working for an event management technology company running their events. They were pre-revenue at the time and so I've been in this space before. I was with that organization through their first IPO and we did in terms of segments, it was SMB, it was mid-market, it was enterprise. In terms of segments, it was SMB, it was mid-market, it was enterprise. Having a growth rate of that, we had a 40% CAGR over five years, which was just incredible growth. Incredible time to be in marketing as well, like dawn of social media, digital advertising, kind of the shift from sales-led into the website era. So it was an interesting time in marketing as well.
Kate Hammitt:And then, from there, loved SAS, loved MarTech, wanted to cut my teeth in a different industry, so I got hired to be the head of marketing at a healthcare company and so I was working there. They were about $6 million in revenue lifestyle business and that was a really interesting challenge. This ICP of physicians and patients so it's B2B and B2C, a blend of services, a blend of technology. So I was with them for five years and grew that company to over 100 million. So that's sort of been my sweet spot is this zero to 100 million and went to another organization that was back into full SaaS. I wanted to just kind of focus in on the technology component. We were acquired at the end of 2020. And so that was in the reputation space, reputation management, technology, and so we covered a lot of industries and all segment sizes again. So, yeah, now I'm back to marketing to marketers, which is the ultimate sweet spot for folks like us being able to hang out with marketers and just eat, breathe, sleep everything that marketers do, and I'm happy I'm here at Splash.
Joe Matar:Well, you're doing some great stuff at Splash and, yeah, I just love that. Throughout your entire career you've really pulled that thread through of like leveraging events. And the other great part and what I'm so excited about having you on the podcast today, kate is you also do have that experience in that, like zero to 20, zero to 100. I think a lot of our listeners are trying to figure out like what they should be prioritizing to help their early stage startups grow, and events and event-led growth is a great way to do that and it's also interesting.
Joe Matar:I'm not sure if you've experienced this throughout your career, but I feel like, starting about 10 years ago, the pendulum really swung towards high investments in digital advertising and in paid advertising specifically, and I almost think it was great from the perspective of measurement and you could really see what your investments were doing. But my experience was that we kind of missed out on some of that human engagement and human interaction, and that's something that I know is a big part of events. But maybe this is my way of transitioning into. Before we get into the specifics about event-led growth, could we talk a little bit about the modern buyer journey. What does that modern buyer's journey look like, and then we'll jump into how that applies to event-led growth.
Kate Hammitt:It's really interesting. There's been a lot of studies about events and their impact. I mean, event-led growth in general is not something new. In many ways, there have been organizations who have been programmatically doing events for a really long time. But I think that you hit on something really important the lean into digital, the pandemic, the measurement. I feel like marketers became obsessed with demand gen and channels that we could ultimately calculate clear ROI from and got away.
Kate Hammitt:There was a time that brand and branding was a bad thing and it was don't waste your money, lean away, lean into demand gen, and I think we've kind of stabilized these extremes and realized that both things can be true, that you certainly need demand gen to have your business be growing, but brand and the human aspect of events is so critical to make that interpersonal connection and make sure that that relationship is strong and that, ultimately, people are still buying from people. And I think, the more advanced we get in from a digital perspective, where are you really meeting the buyer authentically, where they are, as opposed to putting a bot towards it or expecting a great connection after even a very powerful piece of content. I mean, don't get me wrong, I feel like content is still king in many ways, but it takes more than that. And the noise of the buyer journey today, I mean just in our own noisy personal lives. Again, we're still human. So where are you cutting through that noise and where are you making sure that your brand message starts to really hook in?
Kate Hammitt:And there was an interesting study recently that I read from the Event Marketing Institute that was saying 75% of consumers have a better opinion about a brand after an event and 98% feel more inclined to purchase a brand after attending an event, which makes sense, I mean, I think from a consumer research too. It also shares that experiential purchases are more powerful and have enduring happiness for the consumer than a digital purchase. So it all makes sense when you think of the human aspect of it. But I think you raise a good point. Marketers really lean to. You know, we always want to measure and prove our value and I think we realize that we kind of over indexed on that.
Joe Matar:Yeah, absolutely. And the last point I'll make on this is that a lot of times, when the pendulum swung so far to the what could we measure Unfortunately, you are only measuring the very end of the buyer's journey but there was like so much more that was happening before that or so much more you could be doing to influence what was going to happen right. Then we just like, based on all of the research that you just shared, there is something really impactful from a, from a persuasion and an influence perspective, that could be happening if you invested in some of these things which we're going to talk about here today in our market with our customers.
Kate Hammitt:Just the change in how the buyer has been purchasing and what's important to a buyer. And now, when I look at what our buyers are doing and trying to stay close to that and understanding where they've been or what they trust they're doing the independent research, we know that now they're self-educating and it's the nonlinear journey that marketers need to harness and somehow make all consistent and all powerful at any given entry point. And then the trust in peers and communities. So what's happening in dark, social and behind communities and all of these different areas where you and I are exchanging recommendations and tech stacks and lessons learned that we cannot track and aren't aware of. And then the customization expectations and that buyer wanting to be anonymous until they decide that they don't, and then immediately they expect a personalized, customized buyer's journey that's highly valuable to them.
Kate Hammitt:And I think the modern marketing teams are trying to understand how to catch that buyer in this nonlinear journey and make sure that what they can control of that journey and what's left of it is super powerful. So that's where events I I think have been really impactful and there's nothing kind of more personalized than that one-to-one interaction or a very highly targeted webinar. So it's an interesting, interesting changes that we have been through from a marketing perspective. I'm not sure if anybody anticipated us being right here after the pandemic trying to manage this multi-format event mix of in-person, hybrid and then virtual, and how this can all come together and what's appropriate for your buyer wherever they are in their journey.
Joe Matar:And that's what you're going to help us all figure out here today, like what that mix could look like, what's working, what's not. So let's jump into, I guess, my first event related question. I mean, could you just kind of set the stage how do you define events versus, how do you define event led growth? And I know you've already started to drop certain examples of events and but, yeah, help our audience think about, like, when you're thinking about events, or your team's thinking about events, or when you're working with your clients about an event strategy, what are some of the components that make up that strategy?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah. So to define event-led growth, I put it in the same bucket as inbound growth, outbound product-led growth, ecosystem-led growth, partner-led growth. We all have these go-to-market motions that come together in a mix that's appropriate for our organization and as marketers we're, of course, testing what works when Some folks are leaning out of outbound and leaning into PLG, as an example. So event led growth is a part of that go to market motion. It's a category within that broader go to market motion and I think the common misconception about events is that you can do an event and the revenue and expansion will follow.
Kate Hammitt:Well, again, going back to the modern buyer and the noise that we have today and just all the opportunities that are grasping for our attention, we obviously need a more programmatic way to get in front of the buyer and make sure that that touch point is super impactful.
Kate Hammitt:So a lot of the research that we read today is it takes about 20 to 30 touch points for a B2B purchase to get to close one, and along the way there are events that are typically a part of that.
Kate Hammitt:Journey. Channel is where I think we need to really focus and optimize, not just doing a single event or one event per quarter. But how are you getting your buyer into a marketing mix that's allowing them to have those human connections and those critical event touch points and then that that's supplemented by other content sales interactions and bringing them through that awareness to purchase, but in such a way that you're really providing value and giving trust and putting them in a program of events that's allowing them to research on their own and better understand the market, better understand their role in their organization and be better at what they do. And then ultimately, as they get to that point of buying intent, then you can really start the other elements of a sales journey and kind of do that baton pass. But an event-led growth program is really a series of events that kind of brings a buyer through that journey is really a series of events that kind of brings a buyer through that journey.
Joe Matar:Yeah, it'd be interesting. I don't know if you have any data on this. If not, I feel like there's an opportunity here. I've heard the buyer, the typical buyer, the average buyer, does engage with brands 30 times. I think you mentioned 20 to 30 touch points before they're ready to. I don't know if it's ready to talk to sales or whatever it is. There's just there's a lot of touch points, but I would also argue that not all touch points are created equal, right, like the LinkedIn ad versus the touch point of inviting your prospects to a community event or a dinner or even a webinar. The level of I love the word that you use trust, right, the level of trust that is built through these event motions has got to be so much deeper, so much more impactful and, in many ways, probably reduces the number of absolute touch points that you need in order to get that buyer in the mode of being ready to talk to sales or to purchase a product.
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, a lot of times I think about it. We don't typically do attribution this way, but the time based attribution, the LinkedIn ad seconds, but when you're at an event, when an attendee has given up 45, at least 45 minutes of their schedule and opportunity cost for their own work to be engaged in an event, and so that's a really powerful lever. So, depending on where they are in your bow tie, your funnel, your flywheel, it is fostering that authentic connection, that engagement, and that obviously can result in acquisition and retention. And we do see, for a lot of customers, the sales cycle accelerating after pivotal event moments that attendees versus non-attendees are accelerating much faster and getting more pipeline velocity.
Joe Matar:Oh, I love that. I wish there was a way to measure as opposed to touch points which you can pull that data in most CRMs, like a HubSpot or Salesforce, to look at all of the interaction points during that buyer's journey. But I love what you're talking about with a time-based metric. How much time have they spent with you? The event or the white paper that they read are so much different than, like you said, the one-second LinkedIn ad that they saw, which again has its value and can move the needle, but it's on such a different level when it is calculated based on this time metric. I love that.
Kate Hammitt:Getting already into the attribution conundrum for your listeners here so it is a clean way to think about it, in some ways just time-based, because it really weights what the attendee is giving up too.
Joe Matar:I'm going to jump ahead here just because we're talking about metrics and attribution and we've already started to kind of brush the surface. But you also mentioned earlier like it sounds like events can be used in this event led growth motion to help with a number of areas across the GTM teams. Right, like I think. As a marketer, as a salesperson, it's really easy to think first and foremost about how events are going to help build pipeline or new logos. But I'm guessing events can be used more broadly. So could you kind of talk about maybe some of the specifics of how you're seeing your customers or how you at Splash have leveraged events to help influence and move the needle across all of the things that are important to GTM teams and organizations?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, and there's a place for events across the whole funnel. So I'll start at top of funnel, across the whole funnel. So I'll start at top of funnel. So you have a large audience size at this point and then low expectations, certainly of the buyer. But you want to start to establish your thought leadership, you want to educate on the problem that you're solving, and so this is where a mix of virtual and in person events can can be helpful, where you can get that audience size. So in a IRL, in real life perspective, top of funnel you might be doing an activation at a trade show, or top of funnel you might be educating on the problem through a webinar, and so at Splash we do all Tofu webinars so I can get that massive audience side, so I can spread our thought leadership. So we're not talking about Splash, we're talking about how to optimize event marketers in their roles and make them better at their job. That obviously spreads our brand and brings people into our ecosystem in some way, because they begin to trust Splash as a resource, and that's our goal. Top of funnel, middle of funnel, you can start to invest more here in in-person opportunities because you're making your buyer better. So that's where your targeted events, your community events, we do a really fun middle of funnel activation called Magic Spark. So throughout the geographies that we cover usually North America and EMEA we do events where we bring together the community of event marketers and, just as it's named watch the sparks fly. We don't talk about splash, but it's an exchange of ideas, it's networking, it's enriching each other's professional lives with great moments and then that also helps us move the buyer to be more interested in the product or just continue to consider Splash in thought leadership.
Kate Hammitt:When you get to bottom of funnel I think that's where the real relationships are to be made. The buyer is out of consideration. They're in decision and purchase stage. You're looking to establish that connection, that partnership, and bring things across the finish line, of course to close one business.
Kate Hammitt:And then when we think about customers, we really want to invest in our customers. We want them to come away with engagement, connection, all of those opportunities to be a power user on our platform and our measurement there is really around how they're using the product, what they're getting out of the product, product engagement, and a lot of times we're doing both virtual or in-person workshops there or kind of establishing community connection. So it depends on where you see the gaps in your funnel. A lot of times we talk to customers about what their strategy is and where they want to see improvement and making sure that their event programs support those areas where they might be weaker top of funnel or they might need more bottom of funnel support and that's a really good way to start to focus the strategy and showcase that events can to accelerate business or support the sales team when they're trying to establish partnership and move something into close one. So that's usually how I kind of walk people through a traditional funnel with events as they're one of their go-to, go-to market motions.
Joe Matar:That's literally the framework right there. That is absolutely perfect. I love that you gave examples of how events have to imagine if some of these core issues that these event marketers are trying to solve, who are not current customers, and if you've got current customers engaging with that group, I'm guessing inevitably Splash would be recommended as a solution to solving those challenges. And then they're hearing from not directly from Splash, but from a quote, unquote more trusted back to that word a more trusted source.
Kate Hammitt:Exactly, yeah, your customers, your happy customers, are going to be your best salespeople, for sure, and we also want our customers to gain the knowledge from the community. So current customers do come. What we usually try to do using our like waitlist functionality is kind of curate the right audience, because if you've got a lot of enterprise event marketers and a few just one SMB person, sometimes that can be a little bit of a mismatch. The SMB person is having different challenges than the enterprise marketers that might be more flush with budget and some of our customers do some really, really cool activations that require some substantial budget dollars. That is just kind of a mismatch. Or we're thinking about how can we line up specific industries. Some work really well together, but if you've got a bunch of B2B, fintech and retail folks, they throw different activations. Sometimes they can learn from each other, but we try to really curate the group and so that can be always a mix of prospects and customers, but we try to make sure that we can learn and spark ideas from everybody who's in the room.
Joe Matar:Another thing I was thinking about too. Can you confirm that it sounds like from top of the funnel to bottom of the funnel it kind of goes events that are one to many, one to some or some to some and then one to one. Is that kind of like how you think about that mix as well?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, definitely one to one, one to few, getting the buying committee together, using that as an expansion motion as well. A lot of times in enterprise organizations we have people from different departments who are doing the same thing. They're throwing events, but in different ways, and they're all kind of hacking it together. So how do we kind of democratize events across that organization? So that's an example of kind of the one to few. We make sure that all those kind of functional event folks are getting together within one organization and using the tools that they have in an appropriate way. That lifts the brand and also gives them the data that they need to show that events are working.
Joe Matar:Definitely. Now how about from the perspective of getting buy-in across GTM teams? Certainly, splash works with event marketers. They're bought into events, but those event marketers, it sounds like, need to get participation from sales, from customer success, from customers. What sort of advice do you all provide to these event marketers for how they can include the rest of the teams that are so critical to making these events successful?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, so there are a couple of key pieces to this. I think a big part of our go-to-market strategy is making sure that, from a technology perspective, we have democratized the data around events and that the sales team is just as engaged with the marketing team on who's in the room and how we're going to treat the buyer through the journey that they're on. So we have an integration with Slack, so our RSVPs are surface to sales, they know who's coming, who's not coming, and a lot of the coordination that I think historically in events used to occur by the sales team going to the marketer or the marketer chasing down the sales team is like eliminated through technology. And then it's putting both the salesperson and the marketing person on the same playing field as team revenue members, and so I think that has made a big difference, makes a big difference for us, because I've been at organizations that have and also do not have those types of tools, and that allows for everybody to self-serve and everybody to realize that our common shared goal of bookings is going to be determined through how we collaborate together against all of our different touch points Times when I've had sales and marketing alignment issues.
Kate Hammitt:It's interesting to show like the journey of a lead, just bringing up like, okay, close one business, who touched it. Showing the BDR calls, showing how many times the AE had been tracking them down or not, how many marketing campaigns had to hit this account, and showing everybody's work. Showcasing those like 20 to 30 touch points Sometimes it feels like 80. Sometimes it is 80, showcasing those like 20 to 30 touch points. Sometimes it feels like 80.
Kate Hammitt:Sometimes, it is 80, especially for those longer deals where you see, oh, wow, it was that trade show where we piqued their interest at that happy hour and then they got into our webinar program and then they were hitting our email nurture. Meanwhile the BDR is doing their work and the AE is also hustling against their top target list. So being able to showcase that has helped me kind of align teams that might be experiencing a little bit of us in them. And then the third thing is just that alignment at the top At Splash I feel like we are in lockstep with our sales leadership. So it feels like a really strong revenue team because we view our goals as the same. They are the same goals and marketing isn't necessarily like throwing leads over the fence, saying, okay, we got someone to open an email or someone came to an event.
Kate Hammitt:We personally at Splash, goal ourselves on stage two deals that hit demo an event. We personally at Splash goal ourselves on stage two deals that hit demo. So coming out of the demo, that's where we feel like we're then in more in support mode for sales, giving them the enablement tools to be successful, to showcase Splash through that education journey for the buyer, that last mile. But it's really important, I think, to be kind of arm in arm there and, especially with events, not having the marketing folks feel like they're alone on an island, kind of warming up leads, and that they'll just talk to them until sales is ready. We have salespeople at our events and they're engaged in all of the promotion activities and working hand in hand.
Joe Matar:So I love that. If I were to summarize what you've said, it's we're all one team. Yeah, we have our specializations and marketing or sales or rev ops or customer success, but we're all one team working towards the same goal, which is revenue. And that revenue comes from a couple of different areas, but the teams that can get that sort of alignment, in my experience, are the teams that have the most success. But yeah, I think you put that perfectly, kate, Talk to me a little bit about what's happening before events, what's happening after events. If you're going from top of the funnel to middle of the funnel, is it just like event to event or I'm guessing not what's happening in between?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, I mean the short answer is anything and everything given today's buyer, in many cases, at least from the data that I'm seeing Realistically, though, one thing that I didn't share as much with this event journey. But as you go through top of funnel to bottom of funnel and you're enabling the buyer through events and you're creating content for those events, it becomes our hub of information and ways that we capture content, are able to push those out through other channels, are able to personalize or customize that content for new industries, and so we see it also as a content generation engine. So what's happening in between stages, depending on segment, depending on industry, is a more bespoke content journey as well, geared towards the pain points that that buyer might be experiencing. A lot of times I see event marketers. They're kind of falling into one of four categories. They need help simplifying the process. The event burdens are just so deep that they have no time for strategy or even elevated content and they're just like going through the motions and they've got a lot of bottlenecks. So that's where we look to like simplify the process. So we have a lot of content around how to do that, both with Splash and without, just as a savvy event marketer.
Kate Hammitt:Then it's amplifying the brand.
Kate Hammitt:So how do you create a cohesive brand journey in this chaotic digital world and what can you do to and why is that important and helping kind of create the case around that?
Kate Hammitt:So there's that brand and design component that's really important to a lot of prospects and customers.
Kate Hammitt:And then it's a measurement issue in event marketing. It is actually wild to me, after being in events and then coming back to this industry in 2022, not enough had changed related to measuring ROI and understanding not just the vanity metrics of like how many people have RSVP'd and how many attendees you had, but what's the down funnel impact of that event and what can you start to have play out in your pipeline formulas so you can better understand how this marketing channel events is going to influence your pipeline. So there's that measurement component and then finally, like growing the business, and that's pretty broad. Obviously, we're all trying to grow the business In some ways. I see this as being able to scale your event program, being able to continue doing what works, and that's sort of a combination of those other buckets of issues that I mentioned. And then also how you can create an event channel that adds to revenue and expansion and making sure that you are consistently doing that in such a way that you are breaking through the noise and getting impactful touch points, like we talked about.
Joe Matar:Definitely. And you mentioned the term vanity metrics.
Joe Matar:I think the goal to really making this work is to turn vanity metrics into leading indicators right If you're an event marketer, if you're a marketer that's working on trying to get your events to be working, if you can show that RSVPs more RSVPs over some period of time is, let's just say, correlated even if you can't show it specifically through the funnel, but is correlated with increase in pipeline and increase in revenue that's a really positive signal that, hey, these events are working and maybe we should be investing more time into them. So then those RSVP numbers don't become vanity. We're not just doing it for the sake of getting more RSVPs. You actually now have confidence that the more RSVPs that you get are actually going to move the needle on the thing you care about most. Well said, yeah, exactly.
Joe Matar:We've talked about event strategy. We've talked about some of the things that are happening in between events. We've talked a little bit about measurement. How about? How do you consult with your clients around how events are really driven a lot by content? Are you talking to your customers or how do you at Splash think about the content that's helping to activate the event?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, that's where we spend most of our time and obviously we have the tools to and the luxury to do that, but that's where I think all event marketers need to be spending their time. And that content journey begins at the first event promotion and making sure that you've been thoughtful about the value that you're going to be providing, what's the appropriate value at that time for that particular person, and then how are you going to carry that through and make it worth their while so you can get a repeat and I think there's a lot of value in somebody coming to your thought leadership programs and signing up for your content and being listening to obviously like your, your message and your education, and so that's how we think about it is spending most of our time in creating valuable content, an impactful experience, and making sure that that like lives on in different formats after the event.
Joe Matar:Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. One last question, keith. I feel like I'd be doing our listeners a disservice if I didn't ask you about how Splash's technology is helping to bring a lot of these components together to make event-led growth. And you tell me but like easier, faster, better. Tell us a little bit more about Splash and how it's activating these events.
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, I'd love to category that splashes in. Is has been historically called event management and what we do is event marketing. So splash was really born from a need to amplify the brand with incredible design at every touch point, and so we've been tailor-made. Actually for this moment right now, where there's this non-linear buyer's journey and they're coming in from all different angles how do you create a cohesive experience for your brand and doing that at scale within your organization? Very hard to do. Usually it's on the marketer to do so.
Kate Hammitt:That's where we started, and Splash has grown in such a way with the event marketer in mind to help simplify the process, set it and forget it in integration.
Kate Hammitt:So your CRM is always the single source of truth.
Kate Hammitt:You're not bugging your marketing operations team to help you with metrics.
Kate Hammitt:You can do a lot of the design and everything that you need to do for an event with no code. So the premise of Splash is to give an event marketer independence in owning their own program, from building and creation through the measurement at the end of the day, so they can ultimately come to the rest of the marketing team and stand arm in arm with the other channels, sharing the ROI that has been developed through the event channel, what they've influenced, what they've been able to generate, net new and ultimately be able to have that conversation and continue to do what works. So if you don't have event marketers that understand how they're performing and what that looks like against the rest of the organization, it's really hard for them to optimize their programs or know that they need to be optimized. So the Splash platform allows for that kind of those four pillars that I went through of areas where we simplify the process, amplify the brand, help you measure and ultimately grow the business and scale that performing marketing channel. That's our bread and butter.
Joe Matar:And just for our listeners. That's actually the first time I've heard that value proposition. I just actually love how well it tied to all of the different pillars that we talked about today, which are, in my estimation, the biggest challenges that event marketers are facing, and it sounds like you all have been very my estimation the biggest challenges that event marketers are facing, and it sounds like you all have been very thoughtful about what the biggest challenges are and solving for those biggest challenges.
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, I've lived this for my entire career and been in field marketing before they called it field marketing. So for me, coming back to an organization like Splash, at first I was like, well, what's different about this tool? And as I got into the details and kind of understood where we were bright and shiny and differentiated against the rest of our competition, I was intrigued because it was really a pain point that I deeply felt throughout my career. So it's really fun now to be able to focus on what's important, be able to focus on strategy. I feel like a smarter marketer, a better marketer when you're not just dealing in menus and venues and logistics.
Joe Matar:Well, put Kate Well. This has been an absolutely powerful, impactful, amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time, kate, for your expertise, sharing your advice on how to make event marketers more impactful for their organizations. If folks listening want to get in contact with you or Splash, how can they do?
Kate Hammitt:that, so I'm on LinkedIn Always. Please connect. I love hearing from folks. More marketers the better, and if you are interested in connecting with Splash for thought leadership or more, we're at SplashThatcom.
Joe Matar:Perfect. Thank you again, Kate. Have a great day.
Kate Hammitt:Thanks, joe, this was awesome. Appreciate you. Appreciate you. Bye.
Joe Matar:Thanks for listening. My hope is that you are a slightly better marketer than the one you were before the episode and, if you are, please make sure to leave us a five-star review. Every review matters. Thanks, and I hope to see you soon.
Camille White-Stern:All right, folks. That's it for today. If you enjoyed today's episode or are a fan of the podcast in general, please let us know. Support this show by subscribing on your preferred podcast platform and, while you're at it, leave us a rating. We so appreciate feedback we receive about the show. So if you ever want to get in touch, you can email us at podcast at splash thatcom or, better yet, join our Slack community where you can message me directly. Last but certainly not least, if you're a marketer using events to help your business grow and want to learn how Splash's platform can take your events to the next level, like we have for MongoDB, UCLA, Okta, Zendesk, visit our website at www. splashthat. com. Until next time, take care.