Why would you spend 100% on events and get 100% returns, when you could spend 50% and get 200% returns? Just check these examples:
By running partner events, Kate Hammit, CMO at Splash, and her team were able to drive 3x more pipeline, a 45% increase in product usage by attendees, a 78% attendance rate, a 200% increase in total revenue from event programs, and a 10% increase in win rate from attendees.
Through a partner event-led GTM, Gainsight gained in their Q1 in 2023, 400 attendees, $20M in influenced ARR, and 300 AQLs and 40 SQLs.
Eric Sangerma, Head of Marketing and Partnerships at Simplesat, hosted their CS Unleashed webinar with Vitally.io and achieved 600+ registrants, 240+ new MQLs, and 8 immediate demo requests.
“Events are much better done with partners than on your own. You have twice a big budget. You have twice as many guests and you do less work.”—Halyna Divakova, Partner Marketing Manager at TravelPerk
And we’re here to help you make the most out of your co-marketing event strategy. Here’s what this article has for you:
A deck to explain the step-by-step process of how to use Reveal for events.
The benefits of co-marketed events
Why Reveal is a great platform to get your motion started
How to execute your co-marketed events in Reveal
The benefit of co-marketed events
Whether you’re planning a VIP dinner, or sponsoring an event, community meetup, virtual experience, or any other event, make sure you’re meeting your customers right where they are, and nurturing them with the right content—don’t just be another noisy signal.
Partner events can help you cut through the noise that inbound and outbound are making.
By joining forces with a partner, you can deliver real value to your audience, amplifying the impact and effectiveness of your events.
Here’s how you can benefit from co-marketed events:
Expanded reach: Partnering with another organization allows you to tap into their audience, expanding your reach beyond your own network. This can attract new attendees who may not have otherwise discovered your event.
Shared resources: Co-marketing events enable you to pool resources with your partner, reducing costs and workload for both parties. This can include sharing event promotion efforts, venue expenses, and staffing requirements.
Diverse perspectives: Collaborating with another organization brings diverse perspectives and expertise to the event, enriching the content and appeal to attendees. Plus, different viewpoints can lead to more dynamic discussions and engagement during the event.
Increased credibility: Partnering with a reputable organization can enhance your event’s credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of attendees. The association with a trusted partner can instill confidence and attract a larger audience.
Enhanced promotion: Co-marketing events benefit from the combined promotional efforts of both partners, leading to greater visibility and awareness. Leveraging each other’s marketing channels and networks can generate more buzz and excitement around the event.
Networking opportunities: Co-marketed events provide attendees with a broader network to connect with, fostering valuable networking opportunities. Participants can meet individuals from both organizations, expanding their professional contacts.
Overall, co-marketing events offer a powerful strategy for maximizing resources, reaching a wider audience, and delivering greater value to attendees through collaboration and partnerships.
"As a small Marketing team, the more we can have insights into where to focus our efforts to make the most impact, that’s really key for us."—Adam Gould, Strategic Partnerships and Enterprise Business, Ninjacat
Why Reveal for co-marketed events?
Reveal is the perfect platform to help you identify new leads and collaborate with partners to grow your pipeline.
Whether you want to leverage nearbound data for events or co-content creation, lead nurturing (or any other co-marketing initiative), Reveal helps you to join forces with the partners who surround buyers to increase conversion rates and decrease acquisition costs.
“Reveal grew organically within my company, eventually bringing multiple teams onboard—Marketing and Sales along with Partnerships.”—Jake Makler, VP of Partnerships and Corporate Strategy, Quantum Metric
By leveraging Reveal for your co-marketed events you can:
Find the best partners or communities to reach your segments: local markets, target accounts, new industries, and more. And use ecosystem insights to better define your ICP.
Add partner overlap to your nearbound ABM list to invite the most impactful contacts. With Reveal your ABM list filters your list of accounts based on nearbound data like technographic data, account overlap, deal influencers, win rate, deal size, open opportunities, etc.
Assess event relevancy by comparing the attendees to your CRM in one click. And identify which CSM, AE, or AM is a better fit for attending that event according to the number of companies labeled as open opportunities, leads, or customers that are attending the event.
Let’s dive into how to action your co-marketed events in Reveal!
How to execute co-marketed events in Reveal
In case you need a quick step-by-step guide here’s a deck you can leverage.
Or if you prefer you can book a meeting with the Reveal team, who will guide you through some co-marketing event use cases (in tandem with Reveal) that you haven’t even thought of yet.
Step #1: Identify the right partner
In this step, you have to leverage that low-hanging fruit—the partners of your partners who share your ICP.
Through account mapping, you can easily spot the best partner to work with and prioritize the ones who have common opportunities.
Ask yourself this question: who has the highest overlap of prospects and customers/contacts? And to find the answer, here’s what you have to do:
Go to Analytics in your Reveal account
Click the purple plus sign and add these columns:
My Customers vs. Partner’s Prospects
Market Overlap, and
Persona overlap
Use these 3 data points and "My prospects and opps" against "Partner’s customers" to identify the best partner.
Step #2: Create and assign invitation lists
You have your ideal partner, now you have to identify who are the people who will get the most out of your event, or the ones who are the best fit for your co-marketing event.
Keep in mind that your invitation list needs to go further than company size, location, and job title, you should also include nearbound data like technographic data, account overlap, deal influencers, win rate, deal size, open opportunities, etc.
There are two ways you can create your event list, just keep in mind that this step needs to be done by each of your partners.
Option A:
Open Account Mapping with your selected partner
Choose "My Customers vs [Partner’s] prospects" and/or "My Customers not in [Partner’s] CRM". (Optional: Apply additional filters based on ICP/target relevant to my partner).
Each company’s CSM/AM teams invite their customers to the event. To have better promo results, draft an email template for your team so they can invite their respective accounts.
Pro-tip: The value prop should be positioned to customers rather than to prospects.
Option B:
Create a target list for your partner from your CRM, and filter the target list in a report view.
Then filter on Reveal data "Is a customer of [Partner]" and share that list with your partner.
If relevant, repeat the above with "Common Opportunities" and/or "Common Customers" and connect your dedicated account team in each company to decide on joint action, messaging, and what kind of VIP treatment to give to this target list.
Step #3: Run the actual event
Once you have your invite list and the partners who will help you run your co-marketing event, it’s time to run your event.
The content you’re sharing in your event should be valuable and actionable. You must have your audience’s pain points and environment in mind.
Dig deeper and find out about which topics they are talking about, what types of questions they are asking others, which communities they are part of, and who they follow.
Develop hyper-targeted content, decide on the channels you’re going to be leveraging, timing, and creative elements you need to roll out your event. Make sure you engage with your Marketing and Sales teams for an effective campaign distribution.
Both parties can contribute to resources, content, and/or budget to make the event that much better.
Step #4: Post-event follow-up
The final step is to turn attendees into revenue. Measure the influence your campaign has created on prospective customers, along with the sales KPIs and strategies.
“By properly leveraging events you can generate true high-qualified and targeted leads for your marketing automation and your sales team to follow up with.” –Justin Zimmerman, Virtual Event Producer, Partner Playbooks
The best way to follow up with your events is:
Uploading attendees list with "Offline Account Mapping" on Reveal to make it accessible to sellers for both companies.
Prepare specific messaging, sequence, or talk track focused on your better-together story.
Final tips
Pull lists from a multisource approach: leverage Reveal, LinkedIn, and your CRM, and work together with your Sales team and partners so they can nominate candidates to attend your events.
Stay consistent: Once you identify which part of the funnel you’d like to influence with events, set a quarterly meeting with your GTM teams to align on themes, goals, and expectations.
Scale your nearbound events: Use Reveal’s directory to quickly identify new partners that might be worth doing events with based on account overlap data.
Empower your sellers: Enable your Sales team how to use Reveal’s Get Intro button in your Salesforce or HubSpot CRM to ask for intel, influence, or introductions from the partners on leads coming from events.
Case Study: How Reachdesk does co-marketed events
Sam Collins, Partnership Manager at Reachdesk shared how he’s bringing partners into company events.
“The speed at which Reveal helps me identify mutual customers and figure out the best person to work with internally has been the biggest asset.”—Sam Collins
First Sam determined he wanted to be the most helpful person on the team. He looked for gaps to fill and realized events were a sweet spot.
Reachdesk didn’t have an events person, which meant it was an incredible way to both support his Marketing team and drive collaboration with partners.
Sam shared that when he finds a great event opportunity, he pitches it to his marketers like this,
“I will drive it if you will support it.”
And of course, Marketing is excited because it’s a win-win-win.
Example: Reachdesk and Apollo
Coming into his new role in partnerships, Sam learned that Reachdesk and Apollo planned to do an event together. He saw this as the perfect opportunity to show his marketers that he could help them maximize their revenue potential.
The result of the event? A closed-won deal.
Here’s how they did it:
Both teams decided on the topic and purpose of the event.
Sam used account mapping data in Reveal to determine which mutual and target customers to invite to the event.
Reachdesk and Apollo delegated tasks according to each partner’s strengths.
Both teams built an event plan to help their sellers make the most of the event.
Both teams created cadences to follow up with customers and prospects after the event.
Sam explained that the open opportunity closed because of the trust the Reachdesk team was able to establish at the event while affiliated with a larger partner like 6Sense.
Sam worked with his marketing team to create an event playbook to pitch internal teams and partners.
In the event playbook, they include information like:
Event overview
Reachdesk event strategy overview
Swag (or other value-add at the event)
Promotional plan
Follow up plan
Sales team material
Goals for the event
Takeaway: Look for areas where you and your company’s partners can fill gaps for your internal departments. Help them achieve their goals and they’ll have a hard time not loving you.
Read the full story here.
Don’t play the solo game
“Occasionally, there might be some things that you can do solo, but that must be the exception, not the rule. If you involve the right partners in your marketing strategy, everything you do will become cheaper, you’ll increase your reach and conversion.”–Isaac Morehouse, CMO at Reveal and nearbound.com
Co-marketing events offer a dynamic strategy for maximizing impact and efficiency in your marketing efforts.
Partnering with other organizations amplifies reach, shares resources, and brings diverse perspectives to the table, ultimately delivering greater value to attendees.
By leveraging platforms like Reveal, you can identify ideal partners, streamline event execution, and turn event attendees into revenue.
If you want to learn how to run co-marketing events powered by Reveal, book a meeting with the Reveal team and they will guide you through this journey.
