Checked In with Splash
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Checked In with Splash
Event-Led Growth Strategies with Jonathan Gandolf and Kate Hammitt
In this episode, Splash's Chief Marketing Officer, Kate Hammitt, joins Jonathan Gandolf, Founder and CEO of The Juice, on his podcast The Content Cocktail Hour.
Tune in to hear them discuss how to:
- Use event-led growth as a repeatable and scalable go-to-market strategy
- Create an event strategy that aligns with every stage of the buyer's journey
- Effectively use virtual and in-person events to build relationships and trust
- Set success metrics and measure ROI across different event types
- Engage buyers and customers year-round to drive business growth
...and more.
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Connect with Kate on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateslonaker/
Connect with Jonathan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-gandolf/
Learn more about Splash: https://www.splashthat.com
Learn more about The Juice: https://www.thejuicehq.com/
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Follow The Content Cocktail Hour: https://app.thejuicehq.com/brands/thejuicehq
This is Checked In with Splash.
Camille Arnold:Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Checked In. In this episode, we're sharing a conversation between Splash CMO, ate Hammett, and the Juice founder and CEO, jonathan Gandolf. Kate recently joined Jonathan on his show, the Content Cocktail Hour, and their chat was so potent we knew we had to share it with our listeners here. Together, kate and Jonathan explore event-led growth as a repeatable and scalable go-to-market motion, how to effectively measure event ROI and how to ensure you're engaging your buyers and customers 365 days a year in a way that leads to tangible revenue growth. Let's go ahead and get checked in with Kate and Jonathan.
Jonathan Gandolf:Welcome everybody. I am thrilled to be joined by Kate Hammitt, CMO at Splash today. Kate, thank you so much for joining us.
Jonathan Gandolf:Hey, Jonathan.
Jonathan Gandolf:Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yes, we've crossed paths a few times with the Splash team on the event circuit, so I'm excited to dig in today. I was lamenting about our spring event season coming to an end here recently, but I'm guessing event season is just a year-round activity for your team.
Kate Hammitt:It's pretty seasonal in the sense that there are high times and low times, but I feel like events are on the brain for us all year round and I feel like once we're I mean not even when we're done with an event we're thinking about the next one and feel like our customers are in the same type of rotation. So, yeah, it's events 365.
Jonathan Gandolf:I love it. Well, we will dig into everything. Event-led growth today. I'm really excited for this conversation. I feel like we have one of the experts in the event field in this conversation today, so I'm excited. I've got the pen ready. I'm going to be taking some notes, but before we dig into the meat of the conversation, kate, I'd love to hear in your own words a little bit about your background, your path to Splash and what you view your role as at Splash nowadays. Awesome Thanks.
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, I've had a great career with events being the common thread throughout. My whole experience in the working world Started as a paralegal, actually coming out of University of Virginia, and started work for the US Golf Association. I know zero about golf but I was excited. I was a college athlete so I felt like it was going to be a soft landing for me to stay in the sports realm and sports marketing sounded really cool and so I was working on the US Open and the Women's Open and Senior Open and all the things that kind of go into events really from the operational side, and then started helping the person in hospitality sell some tents and get exposure in that area of the business and I thought this is cool less contract reading and started to slowly migrate over, got to a sports marketing agency that was again in golf. It was my dirty secret to be a non-golfer in the golf world. A lot of the perks were certainly lost on me, but started to get more into marketing in that space. More events.
Kate Hammitt:Found my way to Cvent, got hired as one of the first marketers and was able to work at Cvent for 9 years from pre-revenue to IPO, which was an incredible experience, especially since in marketing at that time. It was I'm going to date myself but like the dawn of social media, the dawn of digital advertising, we went from being very sales-led into more the website era. So it was a really formative time to be at an event company and I was running all of the field events as well as doing a ton of other marketing functions over there. As I grew my career, left Cvent, after 9 years, went into healthcare and so I had a stint in healthcare, which was very interesting.
Kate Hammitt:Being head of marketing was in healthcare for a number of years and then decided I really missed the ICP that I felt most at home with. And that was surprise, surprise Marketers marketing got an offer from Splash and came back to the event industry, so really excited to be back and be with my people. So my career advice is always if you're going to take a job as a marketer, make sure you would want to have dinner with your ICP, because you're basically going to be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with them. So that really guided my job hunting process before I found Splash and found my home here, and it's been. The rest is history.
Jonathan Gandolf:I love that perspective of make sure you want to have dinner with your ICP. One of my sayings breaking bread, I think, is the best marketing strategy, and I think that's a very literal interpretation of what you just said. And I love the winding career path. I spent a brief stay in the healthcare space as well and realized that's probably not the right space for me personally long term, but learned a lot, yeah, so very fascinating. I appreciate that kind of walkthrough of your background. Well, this is the Content Cocktail Hour, kate. We always ask all of our guests what are you enjoying drinking nowadays?
Kate Hammitt:Definitely a bubbly connoisseur. So I would say that lemon sorbet bubbly seltzer is the drink of choice on a daily basis. But when this podcast airs it'll probably be deep summertime, so I'm a big spicy margarita fan if we're going to have something that's not just a everyday beverage.
Jonathan Gandolf:I like it. I'm drinking grapefruit seltzer as we speak and a big spicy margarita fan as well. So let's dig into the spicy topics of the conversation today. Event-led growth. I feel like that is something a lot of people are talking about. Probably not as many people executing on. A lot of people thinking about it. Maybe let's just start there. How do you define event-led growth and how are you executing it at Splash?
Kate Hammitt:I think the common misconception about events is that you do one event and all these results happen. That's not how it works. That's not how it works, believe it or not. There's a lot that goes into event-led growth but, to pull way back, we think of it as really a go-to-market motion. So we have inbound-led, we have outbound-led, we have partner-led, ecosystem-led, community-led and then product-led as well, obviously. And event led has kind of found its way into the go to market motion and you can have multiple motions at play and you know content really underpins all of this, of course.
Kate Hammitt:But the go to market motion for events is really about using the events channel in a programmatic way that is driving repeatable outcomes in revenue and expansion. Of course, engagement and education are also a part of that and you want to make sure that you're having. Sometimes those are key outcomes of event-led growth. But the really important key piece is is it growing your revenue? Is it expanding your business? And then all of those other sort of leading indicators that come along as well. So that's how I would define event-led growth truly as a go-to-market motion.
Jonathan Gandolf:It's something we've leaned into in a big way at the Juice.
Jonathan Gandolf:I mean we're a pretty lean team but honestly, what's been working well for us from an events perspective is I tell people all the time it is for us at our stage inherently, what we're doing are things that don't scale, that aren't super repeatable, but they stand out.
Jonathan Gandolf:The fact that you're almost repeatedly doing things that aren't repeatable, if that makes any sense at all but it's become a big. In the back half of last year, events drove about 60% of our pipeline, so it's something we believe in a really big way and I've been impressed by what I've seen Splash executing as well. How do you think about the balance of virtual versus in-person? I feel like everybody, during COVID we built up this really strong muscle of virtual events and execution, and almost to the point of exhaustion, and then feels like the pendulum swung and in-person events are really big now. But even the execution of in-person events, from booth sponsorship to activation around the event, is changing a little bit. How do you either treat those as part of the same program or those two different streams that should be treated independently?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, I think the best way to approach that event mix is to think of it like kind of a microcosm of the marketing mix. How do virtual events and IRL in-person events really go hand in hand in terms of meeting your goals, augmenting your strategy? So the way we think about it at Splash is really we use virtual events in two community and then use that as a top of funnel exercise, and then we use it with customers as well. Obviously, from a virtual perspective, we want them to feel like power users of our platform. We want them to be empowered to do all the use cases that they need to on Splash so it's usually virtual, for those two use cases is really strong, and then for middle of funnel or bottom of funnel and for customers as well.
Kate Hammitt:We think more about where are we meeting our buyer? Where are we meeting people who are serious about evaluating Splash? Where is human touch really necessary? Where are we providing networking, providing community, bringing even the community geographically together? We do a lot of networking events and not talking about Splash, but we call them.
Kate Hammitt:It's our Magic Spark series and we hop around to different cities and bring together groups of event marketers and watch the sparks fly, essentially because you get all these like minds in a room, the creativity, the data-driven approaches. It's really cool to see what happens when everybody's together. So where are we providing value there? That in-person really justifies everybody's time and energy. So we try to think about it in that funnel framework and then we also try to think about it in a value framework. Where, from an opportunity perspective, does it make the most sense to ask someone to spend time with you? And making sure that we're going to capitalize on that ourselves and make sure that we show up with the right type of people who can make the most from that experience and, even more so, provide that value for the prospect, for the customer, and make sure that their trip there and their time away from their family and friends is worth it.
Jonathan Gandolf:It's a high bar. There's some very literal pressure to cross when it is all about, yeah, somebody's away from their home, away from their routine, making sure that's a positive experience. It's a very real expectation. I'm curious from the CMO seat how do you measure events? And I know that's like a broad, unfair question, but what is the core success metric? Because you're like you guys are at Forrester B2B Summit. What makes that a successful event for you versus an unsuccessful event for you? Is there one metric? Is it a blend of metrics? How do you measure the ROI on event investments?
Kate Hammitt:Great question, something we talk about so much with customers amongst ourselves in our thought leadership. Because I'm a former paralegal, I'm going to give you a lawyer answer. It depends, no, but seriously I think about it differently at different points in the funnel and example at Forrester. So what we're looking to do is have a lot of meetings with customers and with prospects. That's sort of our leading indicator that we would look at just coming out of Forrester. Rarely are we able to do a ton of demos or get people in a certain stage in the funnel from a net new meeting at Forrester. But we're looking for that traction. Did we meet our buyer where they are and did we get the revenue in the room? I think that's broadly the way we look at it and so that's a great example.
Kate Hammitt:When I look at a larger activation, perhaps like a virtual event, maybe we're doing a product launch I'm not only looking for those sort of revenue metrics and down funnel metrics but also looking at like what's our share of voice? Did we get any media pickup? Satisfaction from the event is also hard to capture with the Forrester example, but with a virtual event, how did we provide ROI for the attendee? Was there value in our content and did that meet the mark? You promote your event. You get time with somebody. Did it meet expectation? Did it exceed expectation? We were always going for those 10 out of 10 survey results. Where can we be better and getting that feedback? No-transcript, say, roi being really important for external and then internal. How are you thinking about or measuring the return on emotion? And that might be an employee NPS score, but that's always something that kind of plays into the equation as well and it's a great use case for events in terms of internal, bringing employees together.
Jonathan Gandolf:ROE. That's really fascinating. I might be stealing that one. Maybe our next episode will be all internal events, because I feel like that could be its own whole episode conversation. It is.
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, there's an art and science to events in general. And when you think about how it could be sliced and diced throughout the funnel, where the changes are from an external event to an internal event, the high touch, the content, I mean, there's so much to dig into. That's what makes events so cool.
Jonathan Gandolf:Yeah, love that. Okay, so Splash is very, I would say, pretty far along this sophistication scale in your own event-led growth kind of motion. What would you say to somebody that's trying to get their organization to think more about event-led growth or just trying to start getting their team to invest in events? How would you kind of guide somebody getting started with event-led growth? What are the first initial steps they should be taking?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, yeah, I think key things are trying to figure out what your strategy is for an event channel, and a lot of times marketers, like a CEO, would come in and say like I think we should do an event or I think we should activate here. Wouldn't it be cool if the cool part about events is, like, everybody's been to events. We've all thrown events, whether it's trying to get your friends to dinner or a birthday party or a wedding, what have you? We all have this human experience there. So a lot of times it's a hey, there's a great idea, let's do an event. And I think, making sure that the approach has the same rigor that you would do for another marketing channel. So, if you're wanting to approach digital marketing for your strategy, if you're wanting to approach digital marketing for your strategy, you would develop a strategy first, you would assess skill sets for deploying that strategy and you would say, okay, we have these areas of the funnel that we're trying to bolster and work on. How can digital advertising help us here? And the same has to be true for events. If you feel like you want to get more top of funnel, you want more hand raisers, you want to have an under Bringing in more demos? Are you doing top of funnel work that is thought leadership based? Are you doing top of funnel work that is more product led? And how do those two kind of come together? So that's just an example of how to think about this strategy.
Kate Hammitt:We do a lot of consults with our customers and, over time, just everybody's trying to iterate on what's my strategy, how am I deploying this and making sure that they're staying top of mind with buyers or customers?
Kate Hammitt:A lot of our work is with customer marketers who are trying to generate more engagement, educate on the product, yield more monthly active users or more stickiness within their product, reduce churn, all of those things. So it's coming from those metrics and saying this is what we want to impact, this is how we want the outcomes to be, and then backing into the strategy from there. I think a very common mistake is the excitement over an event. And then you do that one event and you kind of look around and say, well, was it good KPIs, and that you're able to track that back in order to make it experiences in person, that there's always that lift of well, it was fantastic, and we saw this person and they talked about Splash and they saw our denim jackets and said it looked cool. That's always great, and that can be a part of the narrative too, but approaching it this way gives you the data to back it up, which is really what it comes down to.
Jonathan Gandolf:I think that's also great advice, for It'll tell you whether or not to reinvest. A lot of these events that you're sponsoring or that you're throwing become annual. You think at the moment you're like, oh yeah, I'll remember this event, but if you're not tracking it and that the opportunity rolls around again in 8 months to figure out if you're going to go invest in that event, if you don't have a good source of truth or a good record keeping of was that a good event last year, you're going to end up making an anecdotal driven decision again and I've learned from making that mistake in the past of oh, it was a great event, we talked to a lot of good people and not really having that record keeping system, and then the event rolls back around. You're like I don't really know if we should invest in that event or not because we haven't had that rigor that you mentioned. I think that's really great advice.
Jonathan Gandolf:I'm going to maybe step out of just the event-led growth conversation although we might end up back in it, depending on how you answer this question, but I'm always reading what are the top things on a CMO's mind kind of the CMO trends reports, if you will, but maybe from a broader lens. What is top of your CMO mind? As we are, I guess we're starting we're in the midst of 2024 now but whether it's the macro environment or kind of just all the shifts happening in marketing and AI right now, what's just kind of top of your priority list or what are you thinking through from the CMO seat right now?
Kate Hammitt:Yeah, there's a lot to think about these days, certainly in the technology sector and macro environment. I mean, I think we're still all in a how to make sure that we are in an efficient growth mode and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Splash has always sort of been in efficient growth mode, so making sure that we are conservatively making decisions and data-driven decisions to produce growth. So it's just during down markets it gets even more of a focus. So that's still certainly on my mind is where can I make the buyer journey more efficient? How can I help buyers who are basically researching independently? They don't want to have a sales-led motion for 100% of their journey. They're 83% of the way done, whatever the latest data says. What's going to be helping our buyer understand the market, make a great decision for their use case, Because there's a lot to really sift through in terms of platforms and providers.
Kate Hammitt:I mean, Mar tech in general is just absolutely massive and I have the same struggles how do I create that business case? How do I move things through our own evaluation? So that's the great part about working with marketers. I understand it from my own experience. Other things that are top of mind are how is AI going to impact our website, our traffic, our content. How does it need to shapeshift for that change? And what's ahead? A little bit of a black box. I mean. Seo has always been somewhat of a black box, but more so now than ever before. So that's definitely something that's top of mind as well.
Jonathan Gandolf:There's a lot. Yeah, it is interesting. It feels like it's changing faster than ever, but there's also just more unknowns I think faster than ever about where it's going to go and when. So thanks for that peek inside the mind of a CMO. I really appreciate it. We always ask all of our guests what is one unpopular opinion you have as it pertains to B2B or content marketing.
Kate Hammitt:I would say so. Anytime I get in a conversation about events with other business folks, it always goes to the trade show booth. I'm in marketing communities and CMO communities and I'm like how are we back here talking about just the booth? It's kind of like getting trapped in 2005 and not being able to get out. So I guess my unpopular opinion, which I'm trying to popularize, is that I think the large tentpole events are amazing and those 2 or 3 days out of the year that might impact your pipeline in a large way are fantastic. But with today's buyer, what are you doing the other 362 days to meet them where they are, provide education, provide entertainment and get that relationship going or continuing. Get that relationship going or continuing. So my unpopular opinion is go beyond the booth, don't focus so much on the booth and think about a broader strategy and a broader programmatic effort to meet your buyer.
Jonathan Gandolf:Go beyond the booth. I like it. We can help you popularize that. We'll start it here and we'll be promoting that. So I like that perspective I mentioned at the Juice. Events have driven about 60% of our pipeline over the last 12 months and we only had, I think, like two booths. At all the events we've gone to We've done things outside of the booth. For us, again, it's more of an efficiency decision. A lot of times we can activate around an event a little bit more efficiently than we can by sponsoring and having a booth. So I like it. We're in it together. We can take that to the masses.
Kate Hammitt:I like it. Yeah, take whatever works for your audience too. I love evangelizing with good partners, so I appreciate it.
Jonathan Gandolf:Okay, if people want to learn more from you or about Splash, what is the best way to do that?
Kate Hammitt:About Splash.
Jonathan Gandolf:Meet us on SplashThat. com, and I'm on LinkedIn, so link up with me and let's chat more Cool. Well, Kate, we appreciate you joining us so much today. Really enjoyed the conversation. We'll have LinkedIn profiles links to Splash in the show notes, so be sure to check those out. Listeners, watchers, thank you for joining us Until next time. We'll see you soon. Thank you, thanks, jonathan.
Camille Arnold: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.