Managing marketing events takes a lot of time, effort, and money. And if you’re an enterprise decision-maker, you’re under pressure to find a scalable solution that prioritizes optimized digital and content experiences that engage audiences and gather valuable customer insights.
Research In Action has released the Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023. It is designed to help enterprise decision-makers like you find the right marketing event management technology to ensure you achieve your business goals.
And we’re delighted to announce that SpotMe has been named a Market Leader.
Read on to discover our take on what’s trending in marketing event management, why we believe SpotMe has been named a Market Leader, and how to benefit from the report.
About the New Research In Action Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023
“Research in Action GmbH is a leading independent information and communications technology research and consulting company. It provides both forward-looking as well as practical advice to enterprise as well as vendor clients.” – Research In Action Vendor Selection MatrixTM Report
Each year, Research In Action gains insights into the strategy, investments, and challenges of technology innovation by carrying out research with 10,000+ enterprise IT and business decision-makers. In this way, it provides others with direct, valuable information about how buyers make decisions in the business world.
For the Vendor Selection Matrix™, Research In Action uses mainly surveys where 63% of the evaluation is based on the responses from enterprise IT or business decision-makers and 37% on the analyst’s perception after a series of in-depth interviews with software or services vendors and their customers.
For this particular report – Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023 – Research In Action interviewed 1,500 business managers responsible for budgets in global enterprises. They then selected the top 15 vendors out of 100+ who achieved the best scores from the buyers, one of which is SpotMe.
They then selected the top 15 vendors out of 100+ who achieved the best scores from the buyers, one of which is SpotMe.
Our take on marketing event management trends
Marketing Event Management (MEM) has changed drastically over the past few years, with business leaders suddenly having to manage customer events differently – from lead generation events to trade shows and conferences.
But now in-person events are back and buyers are looking for one/a select few marketing event management software solutions to meet their needs for the mixed event formats they run every year – in-person, virtual, hybrid, webinars, and on-demand.
According to Research In Action, that means looking for solutions to streamline planning, scheduling, and organization, including the following:
- Event registration
- Event marketing
- Professional event support services
- Analytics and reporting
- Meeting management
Here are 4 other marketing event management trends mentioned in the Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023 and what we think about them:
#1 Virtual is here to stay in the marketing event management world
As one of the few remaining sources of first-party data, marketing events are one of the best ways to gain customer insights. But this is only possible if you run virtual events on a virtual event platform, run hybrid events on a hybrid event platform, or have digital elements like a mobile event app at your in-person events.
By collecting a range of event metrics through your marketing event management platform, you can gather the data you need to drive your next best action and build better customer relationships.
But that’s not the only reason virtual events are here to stay. Event participants want to have the choice of how they attend, especially with regard to cost and event sustainability. Plus, by having digital elements at your events, you instantly make them more accessible and inclusive. Take live event captioning, for example. It’s a great way to boost reach and customer engagement at your virtual events.
#2 Event engagement = event and marketing success
For event marketers, proving event success to the executive team can be challenging. But using a variety of tools to interact with your attendees and collecting event engagement metrics is a great way to see if your event was a success.
Some marketing event management platforms have interactive features such as activity feeds, Q&A, polls, breakout rooms, networking, gamification, quizzes, and word clouds. And they even help you track how many people attended a session, which content they interacted with, and whether they networked with others, for example.
By investing in an event platform that specializes in engagement, you can capture valuable customer insights that help you understand their behavior, needs, and preferences. That way you can target your future content and marketing efforts to specific audiences and bring a higher event ROI. And that’s what your executive team wants to see.
#3 CRM and martech integrations are crucial
It’s all well and good to gather customer data through marketing events, but keeping track is not always easy. That’s why business leaders are looking for marketing event management platforms that seamlessly integrate with CRMs and MAPs.
With deep native integrations with software such as Veeva CRM, Marketo, Rainfocus, Salesforce, and Hubspot, you can get real-time data into your CDPs (customer data platforms). Having a single source of truth when it comes to event data is gold for event marketers.
#4 On-demand events create long-term engagement
Event marketers are starting to realize the value of creating Netflix-like content hubs and repurposing event material, like live streams, for future campaigns and content.
In the life sciences industry, event professionals are looking for a gated content hub that connect to their event platforms so they can provide a constant stream of educational content for their HCPs on demand.
By turning all your event content into on-demand videos in just a few clicks and storing it in a centralized hub, you can boost long-term engagement with your brand. Especially if the content hub has replay and interactive features that make the video feel like it’s live.
What the Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management says about SpotMe
In the Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023, Research In Action gave SpotMe the highest rating (‘Strong’) in all 4 categories of ‘Vendor Offering by Functional Category’.
Here’s what each category means:
- Event management: Key tools for event planning, execution, and follow-up. For example, registration, badges, speaker/sponsor management, content management.
- Audience engagement: Interactive features such as Q&A, chat, breakout rooms, networking, 1:1 meetings.
- Event marketing: Event promotion tools and engagement data collection to drive the next best actions.
- Support services: Real-time support and professional services for event organizers, speakers, and attendees.
“Its end-to-end event marketing and management platform captures, analyzes, and provides insights around the complete attendee journey; measuring the three most important metrics of success: attendance rate, drop-off rate, and call to actions.” – Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report
Moreover, in the report, SpotMe ranks extremely high with regard to market presence, growth rate, and customer traction.
Here’s what each category means:
- Market presence: A combination of the market share and perceived Mindshare.
- Growth rate: The anticipated growth rate for this year. (Medium is average for this market).
- Customer traction: A combination of the vendor’s customer retention rate and the Research In Action Recommendation Index.
“The product roadmap prioritizes engagement, deep CRM integrations, and enterprise-grade security and privacy. With a client base including 10 of the top 20 life science companies, all the Big 4 Professional Services organizations and hundreds of tech, FSI and manufacturing companies, SpotMe is well placed to grow its success further.” – Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report
For more information about how we score against our competitors, see the official Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023.
Why we think SpotMe has been named a Market Leader by Research in Action in the Marketing Event Management Matrix 2023
“To be recognized as a Market Leader by Research In Action emphasizes the value that we bring to our enterprise clients,” says Olivier Aubert, Business Development and Partnerships Director at SpotMe. “The team is dedicated to helping companies in high-touch industries to create better customer relationships by engaging audiences and gathering valuable data insights through deep CRM integrations with an end-to-end event platform for any event format – virtual, hybrid, or in-person. And we think that Research In Action’s recognition means buyers have recognized our commitment and expertise.”
Events engagement is now the key to event and marketing success. “[Events] are a part of an overall customer engagement strategy, so marketers want to collect metrics of personal and account engagement over a full calendar of events, possibly within a mix of other engagement channels.” – the Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report
Events are no longer just a nice-to-have for businesses. That’s why we provide countless ways to engage audiences with our fully customizable event technology.
“Here at SpotMe, engagement is fundamental,” says David Pires, VP Marketing at SpotMe. “Nowadays, attendees want more digital engagement. They want to feel unique thanks to targeted content and to have a choice about how they engage with a brand. This is what helps builds customer loyalty. And to do this, event marketers need to provide different types of interactive content, whether it’s personalized agendas or an on-demand content hub.”
We feel that our wide range of engagement features and event marketing tools is one of the reasons Research In Action named us a Market Leader. But in the report, SpotMe also scored very high in the support services and event management categories.
Here’s what Wojciech Krawiec, VP Product at SpotMe has to say about that: “At SpotMe, we listen to our enterprise customers’ needs. We know the immense pressure they are under to scale events globally. And we know this takes a lot of time and effort when it comes to event management and production. That’s why we offer reliable professional services alongside our event technology to allow our clients to deliver great events while we do the behind-the-scenes work.”
In short, here are the five things we believe helped us be named a Market Leader:
- Strong end-to-end event management tools for any event format
- Numerous digital-first engagement functions
- Efficient and automated event marketing features
- Exceptional support services
- Deep native integrations with CRMs/MAPs
How to use the Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report to your advantage
The Vendor Selection Matrix™ Report – Marketing Event Management: The Top Global Vendors 2023 is a useful guide for buyers looking to make an informed decision about which marketing event management technology to purchase according to their requirements. It provides insights into key trends and lists the top vendors in the market in 2023.
Here’s how we suggest benefitting from the report:
- Define your marketing/business objectives
- Look at the report to find the vendors that you believe will help you to best achieve your goals
- Select a handful of vendors
- Send an event management RFP template to those vendors to fully understand what they offer
- Choose the marketing event management platform that’s right for you
To see how SpotMe could help you run engaging events that promote long-lasting customer relationships and help you hit your marketing goals, book a demo today.
A big thank-you to
- The entire SpotMe team for their hard work and dedication
- Our innovative customers who see the value we bring to their events and business
