Top 5 essential tools for running an event your company needs

Top 5 essential tools for running an event your company needs

Feb 8, 2022 | Business, Co-Sell Webinar, Event Industry, Marketing, Microsoft, Virtual Events

The world has gone online. How are you planning your events now? 

Since the global pandemic started, SaaS and cloud solution companies have experienced unprecedented growth. And it seems that they will continue doing so.

Unfortunately for us, the pandemic came to stay, and the future looks online.

This brings to the table whole new opportunities for businesses to grow, and it’s the perfect time to think about embarking on an adventure with your own online business.

This applies to online events. Online events are now one of the best options to promote your business, generate new leads, and create new connections.

Now ask yourself the following questions: When is the date for your next online event? Well, just considering that you’re into the online event game.

If you’re not, don’t panic. It’s not too late. We’re here to help you catch the wave on time. 

We created this blog post to vanish your worries and fears about planning and running online events. And we’ve come up with five essential tools for event management you and your company need.

 

Let’s start from the beginning: Follow-up and planning.

 

Before you dive deep into the whole planning and running of an event, one may think that the first thing you need is a plan. Do you agree with me?

Our mission is to make things easier for you.

Forget about complex Excel spreadsheets and having the information scattered all over your hard drive (or cloud service).

One thing we love about Airtable is its flexibility. You can create databases, tasks lists, schedules, all in one place.

Also, it gives you the option to create new interfaces and grid views for those who are more visually functional.

Collaboration is the name of the game for Airtable. You can connect with other collaborators and share your content. Everyone gets updated with the information.

Another great feature is the ability to integrate other services into Airtable. Now you can connect with Asana, Dropbox, Eventbrite, LinkedIn, Google Calendar & Gmail, Slack, and so many others.

You can sign-up for free for individuals or small teams by visiting their website.

 

You need to manage the ticket sales for registrations for your event.

Eventbrite is our favorite service for selling tickets for your events. 

It’s super user-friendly and has many features that you’ll find extremely useful when going through this step of your event management.

With Eventbrite, you can create the landing page for your event with a direct link to the streaming service you’re using. It has Zoom integrated by default, but you can specify the link to other services like Remo or Microsoft Teams.

You also don’t have to worry about considering making it a free or paid event. Eventbrite will give you both options to choose from.

Another great feature that will help you with your marketing strategy is creating discount codes for people to use when purchasing tickets.

 

Don’t forget about your presentation.

 

If you’re having an event, that means you have content to share, right? Beautiful.ia is a great option. 

Although it is paid, the amount of time you will save using Beautiful.ia will make it worth it.

Mainly because you can work with your entire team. Perfect for collaboration.

Beautiful.ia offers you tons of gorgeous and curated slides templates, so you don’t waste any time designing your slides from scratch. 

But you can go even further. It also offers you presentation templates! Just make a few tweaks and adjustments and get your presentation ready in no time.

 

Create beautiful visuals for your promotional content

 

This one is an easy one to recommend. Forget about spending crazy amounts of money on designing companies for your promotional content and visual creatives.

And yes, we’re talking about Canva. You can do fantastic work with your creatives using this incredible service.

And the best part? You can create a free account and start working. That’s it! However, it has some limitations.

If you want to have complete control of the creative process and access tons of resources, you can also get a paid subscription.

If you have a team or a group of friends who want to use Canva, you can pay their monthly subscription divided into members. Saving money is music to our ears.

 

Manage your email communications—and more!

 

We left the best for the end. 

The speakers are one of the most critical aspects of an event in general (it doesn’t matter if it’s in person or online). 

And if you have managed an event previously, online or not, you know it can turn into absolute madness.

If you have run an event in the past, you know how chaotic and time-consuming can be to manage the communications for your event.

You have to create a contact list database, organize them by sessions, create your emails one by one, follow up on their response, connect with your attendees, and the list goes on and on.

That indeed requires several platforms and services to carry one. And that translates into investing time learning how to use each one of these platforms.

 

Speaker Engage: The one solution to rule them all

 

Luckily for us, we have Speaker Engage. Speaker Engage is the all-in-one event automation platform. And it for sure must have its place in our top 5 essential tools for event management list.

But what exactly is a communications engine? Let’s take a look at some of the Speaker Engage’s features:

  • You can manage multiple events at the same time.
  • You can link the registration website to the events you’re creating.
  • You can create application forms for event speakers. And you can set up a database for your speakers with all their information!
  • You can create email templates for your communications.
  • You can add resources for your emails.
  • You can manage all of your speakers and send invitation emails within the platform.
  • You can automate and schedule emails and save time with your speaker curation.
  • And much more!

Speaker Engage is a real game-changer for speaker curation and email communications. The old Excel spreadsheet days are gone for good.

 

BONUS: The Ultimate Co-Sell Event Planning Toolkit

 

We couldn’t let you leave without a final surprise.

Although this is not a platform or a service, our Ultimate Co-Sell Event Planning Toolkit is, without a doubt, an essential tool for event management. 

It is good to have all of the tools you need for managing an event, right? But, what do you do next? What are the next steps, and how do you plan and run an event?

Well, we thought about it, and guess what? We’ve solved that problem for you. 

With all of our years of experience planning, running, and managing live events, we’ve come up with a solution that will get you on track for your events in no time, especially if you’re looking to plan your next Co-Sell event.

Not convinced yet? Let us list five reasons why you need this essential tool for event management and why it gives you a complete insight on every step of making a Co-Sell Webinar. 

With this toolkit, you’ll be able to: 

  • Set up your co-sell webinar plan.
  • Set up your co-sell webinar communications engine.
  • Set up your co-sell webinar registration platform.
  • Develop your co-sell webinar creatives and presentation
  • Publicize your Co-Sell Webinar.

Sounds good! Keep reading to find out how to get it at a very special price. 

 

Conclusion

 

Now that you have the Swiss army for essential tools for event management, no one can stop you.

First, you have a great tool to serve you as a communications engine. Time is money, and we know it. Speaker Engage is the best tool for two of the most time-consuming event management processes: email communications and speaker curation.

You can visit the Speaker Engage website and get more information about it. You can also request a demo and get a 30-day free trial.

Second, after all of our years of experience, we’ve learned one thing: frameworks work.

Frameworks make your life so much easier! They’re a step-by-step to success and perfect execution.

And we want you to go through all of this process flawlessly. That’s why we developed The Ultimate Co-Sell Event Planning Toolkit. So, you don’t have to go through the same mistakes people make when planning online events.

You can get the Toolkit now in Appsumo at a special price!

 

There’s a new opportunity to learn how to Co-Sell with Microsoft for you

 

We’re full of surprises this time!

We’re thrilled to announce that we have launched a new Udemy Course: The 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge!

Subscribe and learn how to plan & host your Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft directly from the experts! No prior webinar experience is required. You’ll learn the step-by-step process for setting your webinar from scratch.

The only requirement is that you must be looking for a great opportunity to promote and sell your cloud/SaaS solution through webinars, and preferably be a Microsoft partner. Click here for more information!

Your company can secure MDF funding from Fortune Brands—and here’s how!

Your company can secure MDF funding from Fortune Brands—and here’s how!

Feb 3, 2022 | Co-Sell Webinar, Event Industry, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Virtual Events

If you are a cloud solution provider or you own a SaaS company, you should be looking for new ways of growing your business, reaching new audiences and potential customers, and of course, generating more revenue. One of the best ways of doing that is by partnering with Fortune Brands and hosting Co-Sell events.

Perhaps you know what Co-Selling is, or maybe you know someone that has secured MDF funding in the past and managed to host a Co-Sell event with Fortune Brands. Co-Selling is the perfect opportunity to expand your audience, increase your network, generate leads, and increase profitability in your business. The bottom line here is: You SHOULD be Co-Selling by now. 

However, the truth is that not many companies know how to do it. In fact, most companies don’t know that there are funds available for them to carry on with all of their marketing activities. Many companies feel that it is overwhelming or don’t know they can secure MDF funding for these activities.

A tremendous amount of money is destined for marketing development.

And that’s not even it. Millions and millions of dollars destined to Co-Op go unused yearly after year. In fact, it’s estimated that the current annual budget for Market Development and Co-Op is around 70 billion dollars. That’s a tremendous amount of money, isn’t it? However, almost half of it is effectively used for its purpose. It means that nearly 35 billion dollars don’t meet their purpose and go wasted.

Although big companies are not bragging about their marketing boosts for co-selling, the truth is that most tech companies are not familiarized with marketing since it’s not a natural fit for them. 

In the end, MDF’s ultimate objective is lead generation. HyperScalers love co-selling. And they really are willing to engage in business cooperation with you. Therefore, funding most likely will be available. Hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure offer options for collaboration and funding.

What do you need to secure MDF funding for your Co-Sell event with Fortune Brands?

Although learning how to secure MDF funding isn’t rocket science, it isn’t the most straightforward process in the world. In order to do it, you have to comply with certain requirements first. Especially when you’re talking to Microsoft.

Microsoft offers CSP Partner Incentives Cooperative Marketing Funds. CSP partners earn Co-op as part of their incentive reward, and they can leverage co-op to fund demand generation, market development, and readiness activities. These funds are destined to increase the brands’ awareness and drive sales pipeline growth through marketing activities such as (guess what?) Co-Sell Webinars.

However, if things were that easy, everyone would be spending those Co-op Marketing Funds, and no money would go unused. Sometimes, guidelines and guides can be very tricky to understand or find. On some occasions, companies don’t even know where to start. For example, ask yourself the following question: Do I really know how much money my company needs to host a Co-Sell Webinar? Do you know the process for budgeting a Co-Sell Webinar? What are the best practices? Who do I contact for it?

We’ll stop the questioning there. We don’t want you to feel overwhelmed! On the contrary, we want to help you get through this process and come up victorious with a budget for your next Webinar and clarity on the process.

To start co-selling with Fortune Brands, you have to get your fundamentals right. And for every company, the process will be entirely different. Some of the companies that you can partner with to embark on your co-selling adventure are Hello Alice, Women In Cloud, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Amazon, Mercer Mackay, and many others.

Companies such as IBM, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have similar processes to engage with them in co-marketing strategies. The first thing you must do is to complete your business profile. It’s definitely a to-do because companies can’t go anywhere with you if they don’t know where you are in their Marketplaces.

Generally speaking, hyperscalers have a menu of services to help you go to market, and many of these tools are automated. It doesn’t matter if your company doesn’t have marketing staff or even a Junior marketing staff. They have resources available for you that we’ve invested at no cost, so you can create turnkey marketing activities and campaigns.

It all sounds fantastic, right? However, they will not tweak what you need for your business. That means that you, as a company, should have a systematic way of delivering value to the market, built on the technology that the companies have. Co-selling is just another component of partnering with Fortune Brands, and you can see it as the engine you’re creating for your demand.

You must complete all the steps and have all the deliverables that the company asks you for implementing your cloud-based solution. You need to know your offer, what your solution is all about, and where it is in the Marketplace. Don’t go into a conversation with them to simply have a conversation. You must have your business model ready, with all the basics. That way, when the company opens the door to you, you should be prepared to discuss business, not to go back to the drawing board. Start the conversation!

There’s one thing you have to take in mind before even considering co-selling with Fortune Brands. First, you need to have a solution (or solutions) published in their Marketplaces. That’s the very first step every company must take. You must have good content levels to describe your solution to create engagement with your company and solution. With that level of engagement, then you’ll start measuring consumption and performance. Once you’re a part of the engine, your solution is embedded in the Fortune Brand’s sales tools.

You have to promote your solution and business, create enterprise interest, showcase your experience, and that’s a responsibility on your part. That would give the hyperscalers an excellent insight to make your solution more attractive for customer choices when they’re faced with an opportunity to bring something new or a new customer to reach a market with new customers and value.

We know that it is a lot of information, and it may seem very overwhelming at first. But at Meylah, we’re here to help you sky-rocket your company with new ways of generating revenues and leads for your company. 

And the best way of helping you is by extending the invitation to our upcoming How to Plan and Secure Funding for Your Co-Sell Webinar with Fortune Brands, which will take place as a FREE event on February 8, 2022!

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

  • Understand a plan for a Co-Sell Webinar.
  • Estimate what you need for hosting your Co-Sell Webinar.
  • Create a budget plan for your webinar.
  • Prepare an investment request for the Co-Sell webinar.

You can take a look at all the information by referring to this link. We’re so excited to have you here with us!

There’s a new opportunity to learn how to Co-Sell with Microsoft for you

We’re thrilled to announce that we have launched a new Udemy Course: The 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge!

Subscribe and learn how to plan & host your Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft directly from the experts! No prior webinar experience is required. You’ll learn the step-by-step process for setting your webinar from scratch.

The only requirement is that you must be looking for a great opportunity to promote and sell your cloud/SaaS solution through webinars, and preferably be a Microsoft partner.

Click here for more information!

Cloud/SaaS Solutions Marketing and How To Make It Right

Cloud/SaaS Solutions Marketing and How To Make It Right

Dec 1, 2021 | Business, Co-Sell Webinar, Marketing, Microsoft, Virtual Events

Since the beginning of the pandemic, online businesses seem to be the new normal. Day after day, we’ve seen even more and more companies going online, which only means: more competition. However, the pandemic is not the only trigger for companies going online—especially SaaS businesses.

SaaS businesses can be anywhere in the world. They can provide services to anyone worldwide. Let’s take Speaker Engage or Airtable, for example. A company in Rome needs to plan and manage their next co-selling event, or a marketing team based in Lisbon needs to use a system to follow up.

Nevertheless, despite having the whole world at your disposal, sometimes it gets hard to get new clients and make your business grow, right? Perhaps, you’re facing one (or some) of the challenges that SaaS companies face:

  • Cloud/SaaS products are dynamic. They’re constantly changing and updating.
  • Since it is a niche market, you need to be accurate about who you’re selling to.
  • Sometimes, your clients may need your solution, but they don’t understand your terminology.
  • In a world full of competition, it’s hard to stand out.
  • B2B has short-term sales cycles, so it’s crucial to build a loyal database of customers.
  • And many others.

If that’s your case, then you’re not alone. Many B2B companies have the same challenges when it comes to getting new customers.

The best strategy is through Event & Education-Based Marketing.

But not just any kind of marketing. SaaS customers tend to be more logical than emotional when it comes to decision-making. That’s why marketing should be focused on another point of view: value.

Educational-based marketing is a tiny but valuable part of content marketing. People are always looking for content on the internet. Especially content that can help them grow or add some value to their lives or businesses.

Let’s put it this way. When people start to realize that your brand is giving them some kind of value, you begin to generate awareness towards your brand. Therefore, you’re already marketing your brand and services with little effort.

However, to generate awareness, you don’t necessarily have to focus on selling. In fact, you shouldn’t. Instead, you should focus on creating a story and a narrative for your brand. This will generate interest, and your brand will be on everyone’s radar.

Always remember, people, buy from other people, not from brands. That’s why it’s so important to generate trust. And people will actually trust your brand if you educate them, always keeping in mind that you’re doing it because you don’t want them to struggle. You’re actually helping them to avoid or overcome the obstacles you faced along the way.

Once you create your narrative and generate trust, it’s time to develop authority. Because let’s face it, if you have to go to the doctor, you’ll definitely feel calmer if they are well prepared and inspire confidence. The same happens with marketing. The more you share your knowledge with others, they’ll start looking at you as a reference on the matter. That way, your brand will be known as a reliable source, and you’ll get new potential clients for that.

By doing all of the above, you’ll also be qualifying your sales funnel. If more potential customers trust you and know how valuable your brand is, it will make becoming a customer much more manageable.

And of course, the best strategy to optimize your lead generation with content creation is through virtual events.

Virtual events: a valuable way to enable event-based marketing for your business

Virtual events are a resource that SaaS companies (and every company in general) have to showcase products and services to create more opportunities and connections.

Have you and your team ever considered making a webinar? If not, your should! Webinars are the ultimate marketing tool. Here are some reasons why you should start planning your next online event:

  • They are an excellent way of creating quality content for your audience.
  • It’s the perfect scenario to reach new boundaries and regions, which translates into new potential clients.
  • 60% of companies design their webinars to convert attendants into paying users.
  • Around 73% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers think they can get high-quality leads thanks to webinars.
  • About 54% of professionals watch webinars every week.
  • You can generate income just by people attending your webinar.
  • Between 2% and 5% of the attendants will buy from you.

This last fact may not sound like a lot. But it is. Depending on the success of your event’s marketing campaign, that 5% may translate itself into an exciting number of new customers. 

Just imagine that you sent 16.000 invitations for your event. If 5% of the people you invited to attend your event actually do it, you’ll have around 800 spectators. And if 5% of these spectators purchase your product or service, then you’ll have 40 new customers at a single event.

If you think that these numbers are great news, we have an exciting announcement for you. 

We’re excited to announce that the 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge will be available for all of you eager to learn how to finally partner with Microsoft and generate more leads and opportunities for your company.

Signing up is very easy! You can follow this link and register. You’ll get access to the course (including our fantastic Office Hours) for just $49,99.

We can’t wait to have you on board!