If 2026 is your year to add a field marketing strategy to the mix, listen up.
We’re going to learn some great tips on getting started with field
marketing in today’s episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning in to Closing Time, the show for Go to Market Leaders.
I’m Val Riley, head of marketing for Unbounce, Insightly, and LeadsRx.
Today I’m joined by Jon Kazarian.
He is CEO of Accelevents, an event management software platform.
Jon, thanks for joining us today.
Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
So first let’s set the stage a little bit and talk about how the event
marketing space is evolving and maybe some trends you’re seeing
in the last few years.
Yeah, definitely.
So one of the biggest trends we’re seeing is the increased spend on events
as a portion proportion of, of marketing budgets.
Historically, that was in the 25% range.
We’re starting
to see that crawl up into the, the 35, even 40% range for a lot of organizations.
And that’s split between owned events, things like product launches
and customer events.
You have marketing events that I know we’re going to be chatting about
and then third party events.
So participating in a trade show or some other industry event.
And what do you attribute that increase to?
Yeah.
So I think there’s a couple of factors there.
One of which is that there’s a lot more people
working from home today, and people are looking for ways
to, to connect, to get together face to face.
It’s really this movement
towards the connection economy instead of just the attention economy.
The other element is that
traditional digital marketing channels, they’re just so saturated right now.
I mean, we’re on a podcast.
I don’t want to knock on, on podcasts, but obviously there’s a lot of them out
there, right?
And everybody has learned every mechanism for for SEO, for generating content
online for, you know, social selling on LinkedIn, whatever that might be.
But the thing that you just,
you can’t fake is connecting face to face.
And what we’re doing, what we’re seeing from our customers
is that focus on creating those experiences for, for,
for potential buyers, for customers, bringing them together and often
in more niche, more intimate experiences,. Field marketing events.
That could be a dinner or we just, you know,
we just hosted an event that Topgolf on the back of an industry event,
those different opportunities to bring people together,
and really create a lasting experience
that they’re going to remember a lot longer than an ad impression.
Yeah, that’s a good point.
I mean, there’s always going to be the big
ones, right, the CES’s of the world or the huge AWS shows.
But I am seeing just as a marketer in the martech space,
a lot more like micro events or smaller scale events where there is that intimacy,
like you’re saying, and really, cultivating that face to face engagement.
Absolutely.
And one of the other elements is that you have people today where, like,
they don’t have a counterpart within the organization,
and for them to have somebody else
to, to bounce ideas off of, to almost commiserate with,
they’re not going to find that within their company.
They have to find that elsewhere.
And there’s not that many environments that exist for that to happen.
And if you as a brand, as a company, can bring people together
who are going through the same challenges and struggles
and looking for the same information and learnings and they can share
and grow together, you become the epicenter of that.
And I think the companies that are succeeding today
are building a brand around that, around helping their customers not just be,
you know, through their product, but but through their community.
That’s a great point.
Being this old practitioner in an organization is always been lonely.
But I think when you add in the layer of working from home,
that person probably feels that much more isolated.
So events might be a really nice way to scratch that itch.
So good point. Yeah.
And the other thing that we’re seeing is
that you’ve got these remote companies where they’re using third party events
as a way to get their teams, their remote teams together,
so they might bring more people than they ordinarily would, because it’s like
killing two birds with one stone.
You’re turning a marketing opportunity into an offsite.
Yeah. Great point.
Dual purpose.
And and someone else is putting the agenda together.
And you just get to fly everybody in and have some good team bonding.
That’s a great point.
So let’s talk about leads that we generate from examples like you just stated,
you know, digital marketing or a podcast or a content piece
versus leads that we are generating from an event
because it feels like they’re a lot further down the funnel in general.
I’d argue that.
Everybody online says that.
What is it?
3% or 5% of potential buyers are in market at any given point in time.
When you’re at an event at a tradeshow hosting your own event.
Well, sure, if you’re hosting your own event,
the people that are coming, either
customers or prospects that are heavily in the consideration set.
But if you’re doing something like a field
marketing event at a dinner or attending a third party event,
or hosting a side event on the back of a third party event,
those folks often are not as far down
the buying cycle, but the opportunity with that is you’re creating that impression
that doesn’t fade after they scroll, you know, another inch down the page.
You’re having an engagement.
You’re looking in your you’re having a conversation
that they’re going to remember nine months from now when they might be in market.
And that’s where we think
a lot of the power comes from.
So it’s not just, you know, that somebody
is necessarily a better quality lead because you met them at the event.
Plenty of people go to a third party event.
They capture a bunch of leads.
And frankly, that’s, you know, it just turns into spam
and other people’s inboxes.
It gets you unsubscribe, which is worse.
than than just an ad. Yeah.
And definitely impression retention. I think is a great way to describe that.
Exactly.
So let’s say you’re speaking to a mid-market company a lot of listeners
to Closing Time are in that space, and they don’t have any sort of event
marketing budget in place or field marketing or hosted or sponsored.
What tips would you give them to get started?
Like what’s a good first way to get into an event?
And I’m specifically speaking of an event that that you’re owning,
that you’re hosting.
So I would start well,. I think you’ve got two angles to start.
One is starting with with digital.
So starting to build your audience by providing content,
via webinar or more structured virtual event.
I do think we’ve seen a movement
towards online as the best mechanism for distributing content.
If people are going to travel, if they’re going to,
if they’re going to meet in person,
they’re not looking for content as much as they used to,
because there’s enough other ways to get that.
They’re looking for connection, right.
The connection economy.
And when it comes to getting started, there,
I think the best way to start is not by yourself.
It’s by finding partners who you can cross-sell with.
Maybe it’s agencies that that, that, deploy your product.
Maybe it’s partners that you integrate with get together with them,
share the costs. We do this.
We did, 11 events last year.
I think we’ve done 9 or 10 so far this year.
And for most of them, we don’t host them by ourselves.
We host them with 2 to 4 different partners and share the cost.
And when it comes to a dinner, will generally target getting somewhere
between like 25 to 30 to, prospects in the room.
And we’re not the only ones doing the invites that our partners are doing
that as well.
And all in, to host a dinner obviously depends on the city,
but you’re looking at somewhere around eight grand,
and then you split that up with the other partners that you’re co-hosting with.
So the cost could be a couple of grand.
Obviously, you have to, you know, travel to and from the city and,
cover the hotel.
But by and large, your cost per head,
even with travel, should come in somewhere between 300 to $450.
I really like that idea of starting small
and working with partners, because it really does de-risk it a bit.
I’m thinking of myself as an attendee.
You’re just if you’re working with partners,
you’re giving me more reasons to consider attending.
Like maybe I use one of those platforms and maybe I possibly need
one of those other platforms and another one I’ve heard of and
or vendor I’ve heard of, but maybe haven’t really considered yet.
So when you’re partnering like that, you’re you’re increasing the chances
that prospects are going to show up
because there’s just more for them to learn and be exposed to.
Yeah.
And if they’re an existing customer one of your partners
in that partner recommend you, it’s, you know, it’s it’s it’s the trust.
It’s the
you have some conviction that those two companies are,
well integrated because they’re willing to host dinners together.
There’s, there’s just a lot more trust that comes out of that.
The other thing I’ll say is, when it comes to doing those dinners,
it’s not just about putting people in the room together.
It does need to be facilitated.
You have to go into it with an agenda.
One of the things that we do is we print out a little slip of paper
to actually and put it at every, every plate within the dinner.
One question is a personal question, and one is an industry related question.
And we have everybody in the room
go around and answer, take 30s per question, answer that.
And it gets everybody talking and it just warms up the room.
It’s not like you’re siloed to the three people that are sitting around you.
Now the introvert inside of me, my heart is singing to hear that
because it can be challenging to make small talk.
So you really are giving people at least a jumping off point.
So when you finish that around the room now you’ve given
folks conversation topics to keep the conversation going.
we actually facilitate the conversation even beyond that.
So we do a little bit of
sort of cocktail style in the beginning for 20, 30 minutes.
We almost always run along during the dinner portion,
but then we’ll have other talking points that usually originate
from some of those questions or some of the answers to those questions,
but it’s really just it’s too easy
for people to drift into conversations that aren’t about why we’re all together.
People love to talk about their kids.
We were, you know, doing that a second ago.
It’s, but that’s not why they’re at the dinner.
So you’re saying okay we shoot for 28, 30 people.
We’re co-hosting with other firms.
Let’s say we get, you know, a good number of RSVP yeses.
How what’s the attrition rate?
How? Like on the day of the event, what can I
what can you realistically expect as a show rate? Yeah.
So generally speaking, we see about 90% show rate for the dinners.
The only time we saw less than that was a snowstorm in New York.
So, you know, school cancellations, pretty reasonable.
But then there’s other events that will do sidecar events
in the back of an industry event.
And the attrition rate is much higher there.
So we just did an event, at Topgolf in Vegas on the back of Imax,
which is the largest event industry event we had.
We used our platform mix events for registration and approvals.
We had about 275 applicants.
We approved about 215.
We only had about 100 show up.
And that’s because on the back of those other events,
people are getting invited to so many different things.
The other thing is, and this was on us or on
where Topgolf is located, it wasn’t walkable.
So you also have to think about what are the barriers for somebody
to attend when you’re doing a third party event on the back of an industry event?
that’s a great point, because you have to factor in the Uber
at the expense of the Uber and getting an Uber and some of those big conferences.
That’s that can be a challenge when there’s, you know,
60 or 80,000 people in town.
So that type of an event.
You’ve, I’ve heard it referred to as a sidecar event.
So in that case you’re not taking on all the risk right.
You’re, you’re adding on to an existing conference or event.
You’re looking for a spot in the agenda where maybe there’s a gap and,
and you can find a location that’s nearby and sort of hijack the traffic.
So tell me, like what?
What are the qual?
What qualities do you look for that would make a sidecar event successful?
Yeah.
So usually they take place in the evening.
We’re seeing more and more people do
morning ones because it’s you’re competing with less other events at that time.
But it depends on your ICP and your audience.
And like if you know that one of the elements of the event
is a big party the night before, don’t do a morning event the next day after.
As for what makes it successful, it’s really about finding third party events
that your ICP is at, or a high enough concentration of your ICP is at.
So again, we’re in the events industry.
Imax, which is the big event industry event,
is a perfect event for us to do that at, Dreamforce.
On the other hand, yes, there’s a lot of event people there,
but they probably make up less than 1% of the total attendee base.
So it’s a lot harder to filter through
and find the right folks to get to our third party event.
So that’d be one that we wouldn’t do a third party event at.
So you mentioned Topgolf.
I imagine things that are going to woo people away from that conference
agenda or away from their break time has to be pretty appealing.
A wine tasting or something like you just feel out the type of event
and the type of prospect that you’re after and try to fit something with that.
That personality type, the the buyer persona.
Exactly.
But I would avoid trying to pull them out of the main event.
You’re not you’re not going to get them to leave in the middle of the day.
Especially if it’s like if it’s an industry association event
and there’s like continuing education credit,
they don’t even have the option to leave.
So you have to be mindful of those things.
The other thing is a lot of the events have sanctioned events in the evening.
So you got to work around those gaps as well.
But a lot of a lot of events don’t provide dinner.
So that’s a great opportunity because you’re filling a gap.
You’re saving people money.
So you’re giving them, you know, a good reason to come and join
your event as well.
And yes, find something that’s interesting to your ICP
that also makes sense given the location.
So like, I was at an event in Austin and there was a couple of groups
that did barbecue tasting.
Right.
And it’s kind of like a local fun thing to do.
And, you know, while you’re in that city, why not?
Right.
Because you’re going to get home
and everyone’s going to say did you try the barbecue.
And if you say, well I just ate hotel food
the whole time, it’s not going to be that cool.
So I like that idea very much.
Or you know,
if you’re in the San Francisco Bay area and, you know, with wine country right
there, that could be an interesting way to catch people’s attention.
Yeah.
when inbound was in Boston, we would rent out boats
in Boston Harbor and take people through for for boat cruises.
But we kept in the afternoon after most of the content was done
and then sort of leading into sunset.
So like Boston is a very nautical city.
We leaned into that.
That sounds great.
Yeah.
Just kind of working off of a theme
of, of the area and, and taking it to the next level.
So, on the sidecar events, can we talk a little bit about costs?
Because it does seem like that’s a great way for a company to get started.
But what might be a cost per head there?
So for Topgolf,
we ended up paying. I think it was $52 per.
$52 per, attendee.
And then we paid for the different golf days, and those were a couple
hundred, couple hundred bucks each.
You definitely want to plan for attrition. There.
And then keep in mind the other things that we talked about about, you know, what
the drop off could be depending on the location, time, etc.
but if you’re not doing a dinner, it’s going to be it’s going to be cheaper,
especially if you’re not paying for transport.
Something like the boats that we did in Boston Harbor,
we happened to have shout out to Andrew, somebody on the sales team
who had a membership with a boat club, and we were able to use that.
Hopefully he got some tax write off on that and it cost us next to nothing.
We bought some, you know, rosé and cups and and took folks out. And
it doesn’t have to be expensive.
It’s just about getting started.
Okay.
So the message there is work your connections.
I also just think about some of the numbers you threw out there.
And when I think about what we pay Google for our CPL.
You know, 50 or $100 to pay for a golf and, and refreshments
doesn’t really seem too out of bounds at all. Yes.
But if you’re paying $50 per cpl,
they’re probably getting on a phone and going through a demo.
Somebody gets on a boat with us. That doesn’t mean they’re getting on a demo.
It builds brand awareness.
It puts them,
you know, on our sort of roadmap.
But it’s not pipeline. Yeah.
I love how you think $50 is a demo for us, because it is by far not better.
Thank you for that.
Depends on how competitive your space is.
I will tell you the CRM space is hyper competitive, but,
but yeah, but again we were talking about like future funnel, right?
Like that’s the idea.
Yeah, absolutely.
And building brand, that’s the other thing.
When it comes to events, it’s
not just about looking at it from a CPL perspective.
It’s it’s it’s building brand.
I think one of the things that worked well for us at this industry event is
we made a ton of noise about the Topgolf event that we were hosting,
and the number of people that we had registered attended
also helped to just get the word out about our brand and had people coming by
and asking about it.
So the other thing is, when you’re doing one of those events,
make as much noise as you can.
And we do these dinners.
Everybody on our team who’s at the dinner
writes a summary of what they learned and post that on LinkedIn.
And we share some of the photos.
We hire a photographer for about 300 bucks.
Again, split that cost with our other partners.
We share the photos with everybody who is there.
They post, they tag.
We don’t ask them to, they just do it because it was a good experience for them.
And it’s not something they often have access to
because nobody else is bringing that community together.
We’re always looking for social content too.
So that’s a fantastic idea.
Add a photographer and encourage social posting, I love it.
Let me add one thing to that.
I suggest only a photographer and not a videographer,
People won’t open up as much. Yeah,
Really good point.
So tell me a little bit about Accelevents events.
Your firm provides event management software.
How does your software help companies with an event strategy?
So we’re the software to facilitate everything from event landing pages
and registration to the batch printing and check in experience,
mobile app for attendees, even virtual events.
And we bring that all under one roof so our customers will use us
for their largest, user conference is, 30, 40,000 person
user conferences to small 20, 30 person dinners and field marketing events.
So, kind of runs the gamut, but it allows you to bring everything in one house,
integrate it with your marketing automation platform or CRM
so that all of that event activity flows back to your your sales
and marketing team. Awesome.
Jon, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us today.
Where can folks find you, Accelevents, just to learn more about event
marketing in general.
Yeah.
Accelevents.com, A-C-C-E-L events, dot com.
I’m also very active on LinkedIn.
So, shoot me a connection request.
It’s Jon Kazarian on LinkedIn. Yep.
I recommend Jon as a follow.
That’s how we, found him.
And really enjoy your content.
Well, thanks so much for all you for joining us today.
Remember, you can get this episode of. Closing Time delivered right to your inbox
if you click the link in the show notes, and we’ll see you next week.
