How Automation & Analytics Transform Event Marketing Playbook with Kent Agramonte

Event marketing operations combines marketing automation, CRM data hygiene, and lead management systems to improve attendee engagement and exhibitor retention. This roundtable with Kent Agramonte explores how event companies implement pre-event workflows, automated lead capture, and post-event nurturing to increase margins, reduce customer acquisition costs, and prove event ROI in competitive trade show environments.
 

Kent Agramonte

He is a marketing consultant with close to two decades of experience in marketing and media planning, specializing in marketing automation and data analysis. He started his career at Naylor Association Solutions, a publishing company for trade associations, and currently works within the exhibits and events industry, serving clients including exhibit builders and trade associations.

Transcript

Kawal: Hi, I’m Kawal, co-founder at Digital DI Consultants, and I have Shiv Panchagiri, who’s a co-founder at Digital DI Consultants.
Kawal: So welcome everyone to the 2nd episode of our roundtable series, Option motion, and our first series, actually sparked some good conversation, and we’re really excited to keep that going.
Kawal: Today, we are diving into the event industry and everything that goes into making it running smoothly, from execution to, from strategy to execution.
Kawal: So we’ll explore the behind-the-scenes hurdle that marketers face and how teams are finding smart ways to overcome them while also highlighting the Stuff, what’s working well, what’s shifting and how teams are finding creative ways to stay ahead.
Kawal: A lot is going on in this space right now, whether you’re running behind the show or helping people behind the scenes.
Kawal: It’s exciting to be part of it.
Kawal: And we have Kent Agramonte joining us today.
Kawal: He’s the CEO at Marketing on Demand and has close to two decades of experience in marketing and media planning.
Kawal: Excited to have you, Kent, here with us, and would you like to introduce yourself?
Kent: Yeah, absolutely.
Kent: My name is Kent Agramonte.
Kent: I’m a marketing consultant specializing in market animation and data analysis.
Kent: I started my career at Naylor Association Solutions, which is a, you know, a publishing company for trade associations, and now I work within the exhibits and events industry.
Kawal: Wonderful.
Kawal: Hey, Kent, since we are focusing on the event, the events industry today, I would like to know how outdated and inaccurate contacts and company details are affecting the industry, as a as overall today.
Kent: Yeah, so absolutely.
Kent: So many of my clients that I currently work with are exhibit builders or trade associations, and it’s funny because last week I had just spoken to a client who was looking at implementing an improved CRM system, right?
Kent: They need to, they want to implement a CRM system so they can do a better job of following up with their former customers.
Kent: One of the issues that they’re facing is a lack of data consistency, right?
Kent: They don’t have standardized data.
Kent: And what data they do have is out of date, right?
Kent: You know, and, and, and similarly, I’ve been working with a trade association I volunteer for, and they’re also looking at getting key contacts of their member companies, right?
Kent: They don’t know who their finance contacts are.
Kent: They don’t know who the decision-making contacts are or sales contacts, and that’s because that association’s members are the companies, and so they need to get the actual contacts of those companies, right?
Kent: But since that data is not current, they have to rely on old or unfamiliar contacts to give them key information.
Kent: So, what you see is that these types of data lapses also affect the event producers as well, right?
Kent: So, for example, once the show is over, trade show organizers in our industry have to keep their data current.
Kent: , and it’s very likely that both attendees and exhibitor contacts change within a year.
Kent: That lack of data directly affects the bottom line, because now you have to replace those contacts while still trying to grow attendance.
Kent: So that’s what I like to know.
Kent: What I want to know is, based on your experience, you know, how small to mid-sized event companies can maintain their data hygiene?
Shiv: Well, that’s a good question, Kent.
Shiv: Well, there’s a famous saying, right?
Shiv: Garbage in and garbage out.
Shiv: This is true with CRM data hygiene as well.
Shiv: First and foremost, you need to understand what data you’re putting into your CRM.
Shiv: Are the contact details verified and accurate?
Shiv: Are you capturing the right company details?
Shiv: There are a few elements that you need to understand and follow.
Shiv: And, and, and some of them are.
Shiv: Well, it’s pretty tempting to capture as much data as possible.
Shiv: However, what’s important is to ensure what not to collect, right?
Shiv: You do not want to capture incomplete contact details or inaccurate company details.
Shiv: That’s one.
Shiv: Second, probably data standardization.
Shiv: It’s pretty.
Shiv: Essential, right?
Shiv: Now, let’s say you capture the company details and the company is based out of the United States, and you have a company field.
Shiv: You would want to maintain data standardization there.
Shiv: You would want to put only US or USA.
Shiv: You would not want to have companies which would have US or USA or United States of America or America, right?
Shiv: That’s one.
Shiv: The other one is regular checks.
Shiv: I keep saying this.
Shiv: It’s essential that you do regular data audit checks.
Shiv: In fact, a recent study says approximately 30% of the data goes bad for various obvious reasons, like people keep changing jobs, companies go out of business, there are merging and acquisitions.
Shiv: The other thing that’s important is you’ve got to keep validating the contact database on a regular basis.
Shiv: And, and the most important one is keep an eye on inactive contacts, right?
Shiv: What’s essential is the moment you find inactive contacts, either take action by removing them from your CRM database so that you can save a lot of money on your market, that could be MailChimp, that could be HubSpot, that could be Marketo, it could be anything.
Shiv: So these are some of the essential things that I feel it’s important that we need to take care of.
Shiv: So, Kent, sticking on to data hygiene, I have an important question for you is what do you think are, what are the differences that you have seen between companies that maintain data hygiene?
Shiv: And how does it affect their business positively when they do take care of the database?
Kent: So data hygiene affects margin, right?
Kent: So, on average, it costs about 5 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a customer.
Kent: And even if you were to increase just customer retention by only 5%, that actually increases your profits by at least 25%.
Kent: Some estimates have it higher, but I went on the low end there, right?
Kent: So, you know, based on this, you can see how important it is to prepare to maintain proper data hygiene, right?
Kent: You already have the customer’s information.
Kent: You don’t need to acquire new customers.
Kent: So not to, you know, not to mention the added benefits of knowing your customers’ demographics and user information, which speaks directly to the hygiene of data.
Kent: So if you’re going out and having to acquire new customers because the data, the hygiene of your current data has lapsed, you’re affecting your margin, and you could be affecting your profits, long term.
Kent: So, you know, I’ll put that to you, Kawal.
Kent: What is the significance of marketing operations in the events industry?
Kent: Have you implemented any automation in your event marketing processes?
Kent: What have you observed?
Kawal: Sure, so marketing is important and plays a huge role in many industries, and the event industry is one of them.
Kawal: So, especially because even has become more hybrid, they have become more data-driven, and there is like ROI focus, which was not there earlier.
Kawal: So it’s not just about execution anymore, it’s about creating those repeatable experiences, the scalable processes that drive attendee engagement and capture leads.
Kawal: And also have a follow-up, post-event follow-ups.
Kawal: So yes, we have implemented automation also in several parts of our event marketing processes, and I would like to highlight three of them.
Kawal: Number 1, pre-event workflows.
Kawal: So automated email sequences for email invites, reminders, and confirmation emails.
Kawal: So we have used dynamic segmentation to tailor messages based on the job role, industry, and past engagements.
Kawal: Number 2 would be lead capture and routing.
Kawal: So on the day of the event, lead data flows directly from the registration portals into our CRM, which is a customer relationship management tool, or, marketing automation platform like HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, and that triggers follow-up sequences automatically.
Kawal: So that helps the team to follow up on time.
Kawal: So we are not leading or losing time, and we are not losing on important leads at that point.
Kawal: Number 3, the third one would be post-event nurturing.
Kawal: So we have set up a behaviour-based workflow.
Kawal: So, attendees who engage with the event content get nurtured differently from those who just registered but did not attend.
Kawal: And I can say that I have seen 3 benefits out of this, that number 1 would be we have seen a major reduction in manual efforts, which lets the team focus more on the strategy than on the execution part, and the follow-up is faster and more personalized, which improves lead conversion.
Kawal: And number 3 is like the most important one, you’re getting the cleaner and the better attribution, right?
Kawal: So this helps prove the value of the event in the larger marketing mix because the event plays an important role in the marketing mix.
Kawal: So, overall, I would say automation has enabled us to scale our event marketing efforts without compromising on quality and personalization, something that would have been maybe harder to achieve manually.
Kawal: So marketing operations have played a major role in this.
Kawal: So, staying on operations but switching from marketing to data operations, Shiv, can you kind of give us an idea as to what the role of good data is in data operations?
Shiv: Right, so, it’s like a rising tide lifts all the boats, right?
Shiv: It’s the same with the data operations and the good data.
Shiv: A clean and as accurate, and updated CRM data is very critical for data operations.
Shiv: Without good data, all sophisticated tech stacks or strategies will fail.
Shiv: It’s so that it has many advantages when you have good data implemented in marketing operations, right?
Shiv: It significantly reduces cost.
Shiv: It increases customer retention.
Shiv: Now, think about this.
Shiv: CRM database facilitates positive customer experiences by providing you with the information that you need to meet your, meet and exceed your customers’ expectations.
Shiv: The next one is, is an important one.
Shiv: It’s an, it’s an alignment, right?
Shiv: We keep talking about sales, marketing, and customer service alignment.
Shiv: So with proper data, you have a proper handoff, a smoother handoff between the teams, that’s between sales, marketing, and customer service teams.
Shiv: And, and the last one that I feel is, is important is that it helps you in better segmentation.
Shiv: Today, we talk about effectively segmenting your database that would eventually help you to run campaigns which are tailor-made to your specific audience, and, and, and effectually gets you what you’re looking for from your marketing efforts and helps you, helps the company’s bottom line, that’s revenue.
Shiv: And so Kawal, that actually brings up an interesting question, right?
Shiv: How are you balancing creative execution and operational efficiency in event marketing initiatives, right?
Shiv: So you kind of talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you’ve encountered, and you’re balancing that with some timelines and resource limitations.
Kawal: Sure, so this is a bit of a challenge that we have seen in event marketing, whenever we work with, and we have experienced or wrestled with this kind of experience.
Kawal: And here’s how we have tried to balance the creativity and the operational efficiency in a way that it works, as most of the time and most of us have worked with it.
Kawal: So there are 6 key points that I would like to.
Kawal: highlight or would like to summarize in that way.
Kawal: Number one is to start with the shared ownership, ownership.
Kawal: So we get the creative and operations team aligned early.
Kawal: So then both sides co-own the vision, and it’s easier for them to strike a balance from the start.
Kawal: So when they are on the same path, they’re looking at the things from the same goal, which makes it easier for them to follow the same vision.
Kawal: So then they stay on the same path.
Kawal: Number 2 would be set creative bound, boundaries.
Kawal: So, I would say in a positive way, not setting boundaries in a way, that’s, that’s hampering the impact or effectiveness, right?
Kawal: So, quadrants actually help.
Kawal: So setting up those boundaries in terms of timeline, budget, or what realistically is possible so that the creative team can innovate within that structure and they’re not going against that.
Kawal: Number 3 is using the right tool to stay synced.
Kawal: So, we rely on project management tools to make sure that no one is working in silos and the team has visibility to the tasks, processes, and steps that are within the event campaigns.
Kawal: So, there are clearer timelines, roles, and visibility that help with last-minute scrambles.
Kawal: So that saves everyone from that.
Kawal: The fourth one would be prioritizing impact to perfection.
Kawal: So, when resources or time are tight, we ask ourselves.
Kawal: What is that one thing that will really resonate with our audiences, and then we try to double down on that.
Kawal: So that helps us a lot.
Kawal: And the last, not the least, is that we leave room for iteration because everything cannot be perfect.
Kawal: So when we are setting up everything, it’s not perfect just to be sent out of the gate.
Kawal: So we built in room for testing to learn.
Kawal: To improve even in the live event environment.
Kawal: So at the end of the day, I feel it’s not about choosing one or the other, it’s honouring both the sides, the operation and the creativity, and that trust, the communication and a bit of creative compromise is required for both sides.
Kawal: So that kind of helps us in managing this.
Kawal: So, this kind of, you know, I have, so I have a curiosity to know, how do you, how does your agency help the given industry today, Kent?
Kent: So a lot of the firms I work with, they understand the need for marketing, right, but they don’t understand its value.
Kent: And so what my company and my role are to get companies to think of marketing as more of a sales assistant and not just a brand-building component.
Kent: So I’ve worked; I come from private equity initially, and as private equity acquisitions become more commonplace, the emphasis is less on revenue metrics and more on margin.
Kent: So, for example, you have a $30 million company, but if it costs you $29.5 million to get $30 million in revenue, your margins need to be improved.
Kent: And that’s what I think, and you kind of addressed it earlier, Kawal, right?
Kent: That’s what I think proper marketing operations and automation can do.
Kent: Marketing automation tools help you launch more campaigns that have a higher ROI and where data can be and, and, and in addition to where data can be mined without having to increase headcount.
Kent: So, not only are you making your marketing through proper attribution and automation more efficient, it’s becoming more the margins are also going up because not only can you create more campaigns, you’re able to do it without having to increase any sort of headcount or marketing overhead.
Kawal: Right.
Kawal: OK.
Kawal: So I think that wraps up our second episode of Roundtable Ops in Motion.
Kawal: A huge thank you to you, Kent, and Shiv, for joining me and sharing your insight and experiences.
Kawal: Now, it’s clear that navigating the event space takes both strategic and operational vision.
Kawal: So, thank you both.
Shiv: Thank you.
Kent: Thanks,
Kawal: Take care.
Shiv: Bye.
Kent: Good.