---
title: "AI Made Outreach Worthless. Events Are What's Left"
episode: 120
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "Alex Reynolds"
guest_title: "Co-Founder & CEO"
date_published: 2026-09-17
date_modified: 2026-09-21
duration: 00:49:59
word_count: 8613
topics: ["demand-generation", "outbound-sales", "ai-in-gtm", "gtm-strategy", "revenue-operations"]
canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/alex-reynolds-vendelux-events-are-whats-left/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# AI Made Outreach Worthless. Events Are What's Left

_Alex Reynolds on the $10 million booth with thirty reps on their phones, why 3x event ROI is a terrible bar, badge scans as a vanity metric, half of all tickets selling in the last two weeks, and proof of humanity in the age of AI avatars_

**Episode 120 · The LeanScale Podcast**  
Alex Reynolds, Co-Founder & CEO (Vendelux) · Hosted by Anthony Enrico  
Published September 17, 2026 · Updated September 21, 2026 · 00:49:59  
Canonical: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/alex-reynolds-vendelux-events-are-whats-left/

**Topics:** Demand Generation · Outbound & Sales Development · AI in GTM · GTM Strategy · Revenue Operations


## Executive summary

Alex Reynolds is co-founder and CEO of Vendelux, the event intelligence platform that tracks more than 250,000 B2B events and has influenced north of $5 billion in event spend. Anthony Enrico opens by asking the only question a CFO cares about: across all that data, what is the most common way companies waste money on events? The answer is four words — they show up and hope for the best. You would never build a product and hope users appear, but companies attend because they always have, expect the room to come to them, and find out too late that most of an event's success is decided before anyone walks in.

The visible version is the major-sponsor booth: a two, five or ten million dollar activation with 20 to 30 reps standing on their phones, wondering why they flew to Vegas and left live deals behind. Because events are analog and happen once a year, the mistake repeats and nobody knows until everyone is on site. Alex's fix starts with buyer density — what share of attendees are your buyers or customers. At roughly 10% or more, floor presence works. At three or four percent, skip the booth, take a suite off-site, and turn the motion from inbound to outbound. Then map your people to the room: an executive for a senior audience, and the rep with ten active deals and three to four million in convertible pipeline over the one who is merely good at events.

On measurement he is blunt. Event marketers and CMOs put their bar at 3x ROI, which he calls ridiculously low; the teams he rates set 18x or 20x, measured against closed-won revenue rather than pipeline, by deploying fewer dollars more intelligently. A thousand badge scans is a vanity metric. Real impact takes six to eighteen months to appear, while most teams stop looking after three or four. And the uncredited half of the return is retention: Vendelux's data shows customers touched several times at events are significantly more likely to renew and to upsell, with the first three touches mattering most and ten to twelve a year roughly ideal.

Planning stays guesswork because the data arrives late. Half of attendees buy tickets in the final two weeks and 75% in the final month; pre-COVID that half-of-all-tickets window was a full month, so it has been cut in half. Even the showrunner does not know who is coming. Vendelux's answer is a confirmed-plus-predictive data set about "humans on the move" overlaid on the customer's CRM, so teams can act inside that eleventh hour. It shows up in outreach: anchored to a shared in-person moment, Vendelux's own cold outreach converts to a booked meeting at one to two percent, against as many as 1,500 emails for a single response when there is no city in common.

Underneath the tactics is the trust argument. AI let everyone send millions of emails, response and conversion rates are falling, and buyers have stopped opening their inboxes at all — they ask Claude or an agent to summarize. Alex sees more success from calling right now, and customers arriving frantic because pipeline goals rose while the outbound channel fell. As avatars get convincing, proof of humanity — knowing the person selling you something expensive is who they claim to be — is something only an in-person moment supplies. Practically: master all three phases, budget for it (events have gone from 25-30% of marketing spend to 35-40%, driving 50-60% of pipeline), and map the tentpoles before filling gaps with roadshows and local activations.


## Key takeaways

1. **The default event motion is "show up and hope for the best"** — Asked what he sees most often across 250,000 tracked events, Alex's answer is that companies show up and hope. You would never build a product and hope users appear, but companies attend events because they have always attended, or because they think they have to be in the room, and expect everything to come to them.
   _Why it matters:_ The vast majority of event success is determined before you walk in the room, so the work — and the budget scrutiny — belongs in the weeks before the show, not on the floor.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Founders, Revenue Executives

2. **The $10 million booth with 20-30 reps on their phones** — Major sponsors spend two, five, even $10 million on a headline activation. Alex has walked the floor and seen 20 to 30 reps standing there on their phones, wondering why they flew to Vegas and left live deals behind. Because events are analog and happen once a year, the same mistake repeats and nobody knows it is a problem until everyone is already on site.
   _Why it matters:_ A bad event is visible from the aisle. The annual cadence means a wrong call costs you a full year before you get another attempt.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Sales Leaders, Founders

3. **Buyer density decides the format: 10% means a booth, 3-4% means a suite** — Step one is knowing how many people will attend and what percentage of them are your buyers or current customers. At roughly 10% or more it is a target-rich environment and show presence matters, because interested buyers will walk the floor past you. At three or four percent, a big booth is the wrong spend — take a targeted approach, put a suite off-site and bring people to you.
   _Why it matters:_ Buyer density flips the motion from inbound to outbound. Events range from 100 people to 150,000 at CES, so the absolute headcount tells you nothing on its own.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, RevOps Leaders, Founders

4. **Send the rep with the pipeline, not the rep who is good at events** — Map your own stakeholders to the audience that will be there: a senior room full of executives does not respond to a squad of SDRs. With CRM data you can go further — send Timmy rather than Tommy, because even though Tommy is amazing at events, his pipeline will not be in the room, while Timmy has 10 active deals and three to four million in potential pipeline that could convert if he goes.
   _Why it matters:_ Staffing an event is a portfolio decision made against CRM data, not a reward or a personality call.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, RevOps Leaders, Revenue Executives

5. **3x ROI is a terrible bar — the best teams set 18-20x** — Event marketers and CMOs tell Alex their bar is 3x ROI, which he calls ridiculously low and at best a get-in-the-door number. Some tracked events sit far into the negative and teams still return, claiming brand value. The companies he thinks do this well say their bar is 18x or 20x, and they control both sides of the equation: fewer dollars deployed more intelligently, and more impact.
   _Why it matters:_ Anthony confirms the denominator explicitly: these multiples are against closed-won booked revenue, not a pipeline return.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders

6. **Badge scans are a vanity metric and the real window is 6 to 18 months** — Teams calculate ROI from booth leads — a thousand badges scanned is a great vanity metric that says nothing about the business. Alex's data shows it takes anywhere from six to 18 months to see an event's true impact, but most teams have moved on to the next thing after three or four months.
   _Why it matters:_ The questions that matter are how many deals were generated, how many closed, how many in-flight deals were touched, what attribution those closes carry, and which current customers were influenced.
   _For:_ RevOps Leaders, Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives

7. **Retention is the half of event ROI nobody gets credit for** — Vendelux's data shows customers touched multiple times at events — a big trade show or a VIP dinner — are significantly more likely to renew and to upsell. There are diminishing marginal returns: the first three touch points matter more than the ones after, and anything in the 10 to 12 range is roughly ideal. Marketers usually get zero credit because the attribution is much harder to tie.
   _Why it matters:_ Anthony admits he was not even counting it, despite having attended events specifically because 60% of LeanScale's customers would be there — which he calls a sign of the systemic problem with event measurement.
   _For:_ Customer Success, Marketing Leaders, RevOps Leaders

8. **In-person sells because the opportunity cost primes both sides** — Whether it is a new sale or a renewal, Alex argues it is an emotional sale. Both people have left their families and deliberately decided to go, and that shared opportunity cost makes people more primed and open to building relationships. They share more, trust builds faster, and you learn things — procurement timelines, pressure on a renewal — that the same person would not volunteer on a video call.
   _Why it matters:_ Anthony's version of the same math: with three kids and a fourth on the way, he is down to about six events a year and treats each as a serious, efficient commitment.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives, Customer Success

9. **Half of all tickets are bought in the final two weeks** — 50% of event attendees buy tickets in the last two weeks and 75% in the last month. Pre-COVID, 50% were sold in the last month, so that window has been cut in half. The people running attendee acquisition are often terrified a month out because even the showrunner does not know who will be in the room.
   _Why it matters:_ Nobody can hand you a reliable attendee list three or six months ahead. The advantage belongs to teams with a strong enough feedback loop to act on eleventh-hour data — if ten buyers worth $20 million will be in San Diego next week, you get on a flight.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Sales Leaders, RevOps Leaders

10. **Event-anchored outreach converts at 1-2%; unanchored outreach can take 1,500 emails** — Vendelux books meetings for customers as part of the platform. When the outreach is built around creating an in-person moment, its hit rate from cold outreach to a secured meeting is one to two percent. Without that shared-city touch point, it can take 1,500 emails just to get a response. Knowing where someone will be creates FOMO and real time pressure.
   _Why it matters:_ Alex's counter to the false-positive fear: when a prospect says they are not attending, the smart customers ask for a virtual meeting instead and get one. Nobody accepts a bad ad click as a reason to stop running ads, but teams still treat a wrong event prediction as a failure.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, Founders

11. **Prep is the job: a game plan, distinctive activations, and the event schedule** — The best teams run a three-day event as multiple activations, each with a stated goal. A CMO who will be invited to 20 different dinners needs something that stands out — at Cannes Lions that meant helicopter rides to Saint-Tropez and chateau parties — and a different activation resonates with the core buyer. Combining customers and prospects in one room works because a customer saying it beats the best seller saying it.
   _Why it matters:_ No dinner and no lunch should be left to chance, teams need to divide and conquer with the right people in each room, and the event schedule is part of the plan: an expensive activation opposite the Chainsmokers or Elton John goes from millions in pipeline to zero.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Sales Leaders, Founders

12. **AI made outbound email cheap, so buyers stopped reading it** — AI gives individuals superpowers, which means everyone can suddenly send hundreds of thousands of emails and cadences. The flip side is that in-demand buyers have overloaded inboxes, and Alex knows many who no longer go into the inbox at all — they ask Claude or an agent to summarize and tell them what matters. Response rates and conversion rates from outbound are falling.
   _Why it matters:_ Alex is currently seeing more success from calling than from email, because people still pick up and you cannot run automated outbound calls at scale yet. Customers arrive frantic: pipeline goals have not changed or have increased, while the outbound channel is shrinking.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives

13. **Proof of humanity is the thing only in-person can buy** — AI can already create convincing avatars. Alex tells Anthony he trusts that the person on the call is who he says he is, but they have never met — and on a video call that is unverifiable. It does not matter in conversation; it matters enormously when you are buying an expensive solution and do not want to be scammed or sold a false bill of goods.
   _Why it matters:_ The in-person moment is what defines trust and relationship, and it becomes more valuable as AI improves. The definition of an event stretches accordingly: a roadshow, or people travelling to your city, counts if you activate it well.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders

14. **Master all three phases or get nothing from that buyer** — Pre-event, at-event and post-event all have to work; failing any one of them means zero value from that buyer. At an event in Toronto, Alex saw people fail phase one by never reaching out and hoping to find him at a booth or in the app, others book a meeting and then fail phase two by not showing up or not preparing, and the worst case — everything right, his full attention, and then no follow-up.
   _Why it matters:_ AI helps most at the bookends, running the playbook when teams are too busy to remember, and an AI note-taker helps during the show, because diligent notes across hundreds of conversations are what make the post-event follow-through possible.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, RevOps Leaders

15. **Events now take 35-40% of marketing budget and drive 50-60% of pipeline** — Historically 25% to 30% of marketing budgets went to events; in the last year or so Alex sees that rising to 35-40%, and he considers 40% a good number — of marketing spend alone, before costs like sales T&E, so the fully baked number is higher. He sees teams at that level getting 50% to 60% of pipeline from events. ACV is the qualifier: below $20,000 it is generally harder to drive value from events, and above 20K the higher the better.
   _Why it matters:_ For the mix, map the tentpole events first, then fill the gaps with roadshows and local activations — a self-hosted dinner has no FOMO or time pressure and competes with everything else in the city, while a 20,000-to-50,000-person show pulls a unique combination of people into one place.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders


## Frameworks

### Show Up and Hope for the Best (02:08)

**Definition:** The default event motion: attend because you have always attended or because you think you have to be in the room, and expect the value to come to you.

Alex's product analogy is that you would never build a product and hope users show up. The consequence is that companies cannot answer the CFO's post-event question — how did we do? — because the vast majority of event success is determined before anyone walks in.

### The Buyer-Density Rule (10% vs 3-4%) (08:01)

**Definition:** Size the format to the share of attendees who are your buyers or customers: at roughly 10% or more, show presence is worth it; at three or four percent, skip the booth and run a targeted suite off-site.

Step one is total attendance and what percentage of it is relevant to you — events run from 100 people to 150,000 at CES. High buyer density makes the floor an inbound motion; low density turns the event into an outbound motion where you bring people to you.

### Map Your Stakeholders to the Room (Timmy, Not Tommy) (09:11)

**Definition:** Match the seniority and the specific people you send to the audience that will be there, using CRM data to pick reps by the pipeline that will be in the room rather than by event skill.

Sending SDRs into a very senior environment does not resonate; send an executive. And send Timmy, who has 10 active deals and $3-4 million of potential pipeline attending, over Tommy, who is amazing at events but has no pipeline there.

### The 18x Bar (10:48)

**Definition:** Replacing the common 3x event ROI target with an 18x or 20x bar, measured against closed-won booked revenue rather than pipeline.

Alex calls 3x ridiculously low — a get-in-the-door number — and notes some tracked events are far into the negative while teams keep returning on a brand-value argument. The best teams control both sides: deploy fewer dollars more intelligently and see more impact.

### The 6-to-18-Month Impact Window (12:09)

**Definition:** Measuring an event over the six-to-eighteen-month period in which its true impact actually lands, instead of on booth leads scanned during the show.

A thousand badge scans is a vanity metric. The real measures are deals generated, deals closed, in-flight deals touched, the attribution those closes carry, and current customers influenced — but most teams move on after three or four months.

### Humans on the Move (19:18)

**Definition:** Vendelux's data thesis: build the most robust data set of where people and companies are going to be, combining confirmed attendee data with a predictive engine, then overlay a customer's CRM on top of it.

The predictive layer reasons from history — you attended three of the last four years, so you will probably return even if you have not bought a ticket. Alex describes assembling it as messy, dirty, rolling-around-in-the-mud work, and the payoff is fast, informed decisions about where to go and who to send even when the data only firms up at the eleventh hour.

### The Event Game Plan (26:18)

**Definition:** Treating a multi-day event as a set of activations, each with a stated goal and a defined audience, staffed by the right internal people and scheduled around the event's own agenda.

Different activations for the executive buyer and the core buyer, distinctive enough to win against the 20 other dinners that buyer was invited to, mixing customers with prospects so the customer makes the case, and no dinner or lunch left to chance — with the event schedule checked so you are not competing with the headline act.

### The Three Phases: Pre-Event, At-Event, Post-Event (40:16)

**Definition:** Every buyer relationship at an event has to survive three phases — reaching out and booking before the show, showing up prepared during it, and following up after. Failing any one produces zero value from that buyer.

Alex watched all three failure modes at one Toronto event: people who never reached out and hoped to find him at the booth, people who booked and then no-showed or came unprepared, and people who did everything right and then never followed up. AI helps most with the pre- and post-event phases; an AI note-taker helps during.

### Proof of Humanity (38:45)

**Definition:** As AI avatars become convincing, being physically in a room is the only way to verify that the person you are buying from is who they say they are — making in-person the channel that carries trust.

Alex points out that he and Anthony have never met, so for all he knows the person on the video call is someone else entirely. That is irrelevant to a conversation and decisive to an expensive purchase. He also stretches the definition of an event: a roadshow, or people travelling to your city, counts if you activate it well.

### Tentpoles First, Then Fill the Gaps (47:42)

**Definition:** Map the big tentpole events that matter to your market first, then work down and fill the remaining calendar with roadshows and local activations.

Self-hosted local events reach an audience in that city but carry no FOMO or time pressure and compete with every other dinner that night. Activating around a 20,000-to-50,000-person event gives you a unique combination of people in a new city. But there are only so many relevant tentpoles, so relying on them alone leaves gaps — and you never run a small dinner in New York the week your tentpole is in San Francisco.


## Quotes

_Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._

> "The reality is that the vast majority of event success is determined before you even walk in the room."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (02:33)

> "You're spending two, five, even $10 million for that activation, and I've walked the floor and you see 20, 30 sales reps who are all on their phone or they're sitting off doing something on their own, and you look at that and you know just by looking at that booth that it's a waste of money."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (03:07)

> "Generally when I talk to event marketers and CMOs, their bar of what they're looking for is 3x ROI. I think that's ridiculously low."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (10:48)

> "I've seen companies that I think do this really well that say, no, our bar's not 3x, it's 18x or it's 20x, and you can control both sides of that equation."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (11:33)

> "They might scan a thousand badges, but that's a great vanity metric. But what does it actually mean for your business?"
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (12:00)

> "In general, we see that it takes anywhere from six to 18 months to see the true impact from an event. But most people don't track events that far out. After three or four months, they've kind of moved on to the next thing."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (12:09)

> "Our data shows that if you have current customers and you see them at an event, they're more likely to renew and they're more likely to upsell, but often marketers get zero credit for that because it's much more difficult to tie the actual attribution to."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (12:40)

> "50% of event attendees buy tickets in the last two weeks, which is kind of wild to think about, right?"
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (18:22)

> "If I told you that next week, 10 of your buyers worth $20 million were going to be in San Diego, what would you do?"
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (20:06)

> "I do think some people are sending a lot of outreach right now that they're better off not sending anything at all."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (21:31)

> "When we do outreach based off of trying to create an in-person moment, our hit rate from cold outreach to an actual meeting that we secure is one to 2%."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (22:23)

> "When we do more virtual events and there isn't that, hey, we're both going to be in the same city touch point, then it might take 1500 emails just to get a response."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (22:42)

> "Just making sure that no dinner, no lunch is left up to chance."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (27:34)

> "All these decisions, these multimillion dollar decisions were being made based on politics and gut, not data and insights."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (32:41)

> "I know a lot of people who are not even going into their inbox anymore. They're telling Claude, or their agent, to summarize their email and let them know what they need."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (36:01)

> "A lot of people are coming to us frantic saying our pipeline goals have not changed, if anything they've increased, and our outbound channel is decreasing."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (37:24)

> "This sort of proof of humanity, or this trust to know that you are, in fact, who you say you are, becomes just even more difficult as AI and all the solutions that it powers gets better."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (39:20)

> "The in-person moment is what defines that trust and that relationship, and that is only going to become more and more valuable as AI gets better."
>
> — Alex Reynolds, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (39:58)

> "It's not an easy decision to make, and I have 100% made those decisions on gut and have been burned."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (48:46)

> "I'm 100% seeing the trend go towards more events, less cold outreach, less digital, and doing it the old-fashioned way, getting in front of people, meeting people, but then staying relentless with the pre-event prep, showing up right during the event, and then the follow-up."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 120 (49:03)


## Practical advice by role

### Marketing Leaders

- Start every event decision with buyer density: total attendance, and what share of it is your buyers or current customers.
- At roughly 10% buyer density, invest in show presence; at three or four percent, drop the big booth and run a suite off-site.
- Raise the ROI bar from 3x toward 18-20x, and measure it against closed-won booked revenue rather than pipeline.
- Stop reporting badge scans; report deals generated, deals closed, in-flight deals touched, and customers influenced over a 6-to-18-month window.
- Build the renewal and upsell impact of customer touches into the event business case, since it is normally uncredited.
- Run each multi-day event as a set of activations with stated goals, distinctive enough to beat the 20 other dinners your buyer was invited to.
- Check the event's own agenda before scheduling an activation — competing with the headline act turns a seven-figure investment into zero.
- Benchmark the mix against 35-40% of marketing budget going to events and 50-60% of pipeline coming from them.
- Map the tentpole events first, then fill calendar gaps with roadshows and local activations.

### Sales Leaders

- Choose attendees from CRM data: send the rep whose active deals will be in the room, not the rep who is best at events.
- Match seniority to the audience — a senior room needs an executive, not a squad of SDRs.
- Anchor outreach to a shared in-person moment; it is relevant, low-risk, and converts far better than generic personalization signals.
- When a prospect says they are not attending, immediately offer a virtual meeting — the signal still earned you the conversation.
- Treat pre-event, at-event and post-event as three separate gates; failing any one of them wastes the whole trip.
- Use an AI note-taker in person so hundreds of conversations survive into the post-event follow-through.
- Be ready to move on eleventh-hour data: half of attendees buy tickets in the final two weeks.

### RevOps Leaders

- Extend event attribution windows to 18 months; a three-to-four-month window structurally under-credits events.
- Instrument the customer side of events — renewal and upsell lift from event touches — not just net-new leads.
- Overlay external attendee data onto the CRM so 'where to go and who to send' becomes a modelled decision rather than a political one.
- Track touch frequency with diminishing returns in mind: the first three touches matter most, 10-12 a year is roughly ideal.
- Give the team a fast enough feedback loop to act on attendee data that only firms up in the final two weeks.

### Founders

- If your ACV is under $20,000, expect events to be harder to justify; above that, the higher the ACV the better events work.
- Assume outbound email keeps degrading — buyers are delegating their inboxes to AI — and rebalance toward calling and in-person.
- Treat in-person meetings as proof of humanity: as avatars improve, being in the room is what makes an expensive purchase feel safe.
- Expand what counts as an event — a roadshow or buyers travelling to your city qualifies if you activate it properly.
- Bring customers and prospects into the same room; a customer's endorsement outperforms the best seller's pitch.


## AI takeaways

**Thesis:** AI collapsed the cost of outreach to near zero, which destroyed its value: everyone can send millions of emails, in-demand buyers have stopped reading their inboxes and delegate them to agents, and response and conversion rates are falling. What AI cannot manufacture is proof that you are a real person, so the in-person moment becomes the channel that carries trust — and AI's best role in events is running the pre- and post-event playbook and capturing what was said in the room.

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**Agent & automation ideas**

- An agent that overlays external attendee data onto the CRM and ranks upcoming events by the open pipeline and renewal value that will be in the room.
- A rep-assignment agent that recommends who to send to each event based on active deals, deal size and account ownership rather than availability.
- A pre-event outreach agent that drafts event-anchored messages to buyers predicted to attend and automatically offers a virtual meeting when someone says they are not going.
- An event note-taker that segments one long in-person transcript into individual conversations and maps each to the right contact and opportunity.
- A post-event follow-through agent that turns captured notes into next steps, CRM updates and attributed activity within 24 hours of the show.
- An event ROI agent that keeps an 18-month attribution window open per event and reports deals generated, deals touched, closed-won revenue and customer renewal impact.


## Operations takeaways

### Revenue operations

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### Pipeline & marketing ops

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### Customer operations

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## Metrics mentioned

| Value | Metric | Context |
| --- | --- | --- |
| More than 250,000 | B2B events tracked by Vendelux | Anthony's introduction of the platform and the data set the conversation is built on. |
| North of $5 billion | Event spend influenced by Vendelux | Cited in the intro and again as the basis for the question about how companies waste event money. |
| $2 million, $5 million, even $10 million | Major sponsor activation cost | What a huge booth in the middle of the floor costs — the spend Alex says he can tell is wasted just by looking at it. |
| 20 to 30 sales reps | Reps idle at a wasted booth | What Alex has seen standing at a major sponsor's booth on their phones, wondering why they flew to Vegas and left live deals behind. |
| 30,000 | Events happening every year | Alex's figure for the annual event universe, before counting the smaller events teams could access. |
| 300 events a year, 500 sellers | Ramp's event footprint | Alex's example of why who-goes-where becomes a math equation of permutations and combinations rather than a judgment call. |
| 30% to 40% | Conversion lift from LeanScale's Market Map | Anthony's figure for tiering the customer and prospect base by propensity to buy, which also reduces time in stage. |
| 100 people to 150,000 (CES) | Event size range | Why raw attendance tells you nothing until you know what share of it is your buyers. |
| At least 10% of attendees are potential buyers | Target-rich buyer density | The threshold at which show presence is worth it, because interested buyers will walk the floor past you. |
| 3% to 4% of the audience | Low buyer density | When a big booth stops making sense and the play becomes a suite off-site, converting the motion from inbound to outbound. |
| 10 active deals, $3-4 million of potential pipeline | The pipeline that decides who you send | What Timmy has in the room and Tommy does not, which is why Alex sends Timmy despite Tommy being amazing at events. |
| The last eight years | Years of attending on autopilot | Alex's caricature of the default decision — we have gone the last eight years, who knows how we did, we like going to Vegas — followed by the CFO asking how it went. |
| 3x | Typical event ROI bar | What event marketers and CMOs tell Alex they are looking for; he calls it ridiculously low and at best a get-in-the-door number. |
| 18x or 20x | Best-in-class event ROI bar | The bar set by the companies Alex thinks do this well, measured against closed-won booked revenue rather than pipeline. |
| A thousand badges | Badge scans as a vanity metric | The booth-lead number teams calculate ROI from, which Alex says says nothing about what it means for the business. |
| 6 to 18 months | Time to see an event's true impact | Alex's window for real event impact, against the three or four months after which most teams have moved on to the next thing. |
| First 3 touch points matter most; 10 to 12 is ideal | Customer touches at events | Customers touched multiple times at events — trade shows or VIP dinners — are significantly more likely to renew, with diminishing marginal returns after the first few. |
| 60% of customers | LeanScale's customer presence at an event | Anthony's reason for attending events historically — to spend time with customers — which he says is a huge piece left out of the value equation. |
| About six events a year | Anthony's own event volume | With three kids and a fourth due in November, he is highly selective and treats each event as a serious commitment. |
| 50% of event attendees | Tickets bought in the final two weeks | Alex's data on when attendees actually buy, which is why nobody can produce a reliable attendee list months out. |
| 75% | Tickets bought in the final month | The companion figure to the two-week number, and why attendee-acquisition teams are often terrified a month before the show. |
| 50% of tickets sold in the last month | Pre-COVID ticket-buying window | The earlier baseline; that window has since been cut in half to the last two weeks. |
| 10 buyers worth $20 million, in San Diego next week | The eleventh-hour decision example | Alex's illustration of why late data is still valuable if you have a strong enough feedback loop — the answer is that you get on a flight. |
| 1% to 2% from cold outreach to a secured meeting | Hit rate on event-anchored cold outreach | Vendelux's own rate when the outreach is built around creating an in-person moment. |
| Up to 1,500 emails to get a response | Outreach without an in-person hook | The contrast Alex calls astronomical, when there is no 'we'll both be in the same city' touch point. |
| 20 different dinners | Competing invitations for an executive buyer | Why a CMO activation cannot just be a dinner — it has to be distinctive enough that the invite stands out. |
| Working together 10 years later | Alex's co-founder relationship | They met at an event during a blizzard where only a handful of the expected hundreds showed up — one from Maine, one from Boston. |
| Thousands of people matched | Swift Intro's reach | The one-on-one professional introductions Swift Intro facilitated off the LinkedIn connection graph before the API shut down. |
| $100 million ARR data business | Platform Solutions at Shutterstock | What Alex and his colleague built, doing seven- and eight-figure deals with large enterprises. |
| $20,000 | ACV threshold for events | Below $20K it is generally harder to drive value from events; above 20K, the higher the ACV the better. |
| 25% to 30% | Historic share of marketing budget on events | The long-running benchmark Alex has seen across customers. |
| 35% to 40% | Current share of marketing budget on events | Where it has moved in the last year or so; Alex considers 40% a good number, and that is marketing spend alone, before costs like sales T&E. |
| 50% to 60% | Share of pipeline coming from events | What Alex sees at companies putting roughly 40% of marketing budget into events. |
| 20,000 to 50,000 people | Tentpole event attendance | The scale of a big event like Dreamforce, which pulls a unique combination of people into one city and creates the FOMO a self-hosted dinner lacks. |


## Entities mentioned

- **Vendelux** (company) — Alex's company, the event intelligence platform he co-founded and leads as CEO. Introduced as tracking more than 250,000 B2B events and influencing north of $5 billion in event spend; combines confirmed attendee data with a predictive engine, overlays customer CRM data on top, and books meetings for customers around in-person moments. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/vendelux/
- **Shutterstock** (company) — Where Alex built Platform Solutions, the API partnerships unit he describes as a $100 million ARR data business that closed seven- and eight-figure deals — several of them won because the team met the right person at the right event, and lost when they attended the wrong one. The experience that led directly to Vendelux. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/shutterstock/
- **Swift Intro** (company) — Alex's earlier company, which used the LinkedIn connection graph to introduce professionals with many second-degree connections in common. It matched thousands of people and was gaining traction when LinkedIn shut down its API, killing the company — his lesson about building a data business on robust data sources. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/swift-intro/
- **LeanScale** (company) — Anthony's firm. He describes LeanScale's Market Map project — tiering the customer and prospect base by propensity to buy, which he says can lift conversion rates 30-40% — and admits he is working the same event problem himself, looking for the shows where CROs and heads of RevOps will be, having made those calls on gut and been burned. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/leanscale/
- **Alex Reynolds** (person, guest) —  · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/alex-reynolds/
- **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/anthony-enrico/
- **Claude** (tool, AI Assistant) — Named twice: as a way to connect your CRM and research which events exist when you are doing this manually, and as the reason outbound email is degrading — Alex knows many buyers who no longer open their inbox and instead ask Claude or an agent to summarize it and tell them what they need.
- **LinkedIn** (tool, Social Platform) — The connection graph Alex's earlier company Swift Intro was built on, matching people with many second-degree connections in common; LinkedIn's API shutdown removed his number-one data source overnight and killed the company. Also named by Anthony as one of the digital outreach channels now saturated post-AI.
- **Granola** (tool, Meeting Notes) — Cited by both as the now-invisible default on virtual calls — you assume something is recording in the background even when you do not see a bot — and as the model for how in-person recording will normalize.
- **Fireflies** (tool, AI Note Taker) — Named alongside Fathom and Gong as the note-takers that once felt intrusive on a call and are now expected — the adoption curve Alex expects in-person capture to follow.
- **Fathom** (tool, Call Recorder / Notetaker) — Named alongside Fireflies and Gong in the note-taker adoption curve that made call recording an unremarkable default.
- **Gong** (tool, Revenue Intelligence) — Named alongside Fireflies and Fathom as a recorder whose presence on a call used to prompt a 'what are you doing?' reaction and is now assumed.
- **Ramp** (tool, Spend Management) — Cited as the example of event operations at scale: Ramp attends 300 events every year with 500 sellers, which makes the permutations of who goes where a math equation rather than a judgment call.


## FAQ

**Q: What is the most common way companies waste money on events?**

A: According to Alex Reynolds, co-founder and CEO of the event intelligence platform Vendelux, companies show up and hope for the best. They attend because they have always attended, or because they believe they have to be in the room, and then expect value to come to them. His analogy is that you would never build a product and simply hope users show up. The visible version is the major sponsor's booth: a two, five or ten million dollar activation with 20 to 30 sales reps standing around on their phones. Because events are analog and happen once a year, the same mistakes repeat and nobody discovers the problem until everyone is already on site. The vast majority of event success, he argues, is determined before anyone walks in the room.

**Q: What is a good ROI benchmark for B2B events?**

A: Alex Reynolds says the bar most event marketers and CMOs describe to him is 3x ROI, which he considers ridiculously low — at best a get-in-the-door number. When teams actually track results, some events sit far into the negative and companies still return on a brand-value argument. The companies he considers best at this set their bar at 18x or 20x, and they get there by controlling both sides of the equation: deploying fewer dollars in a smarter way while generating more impact. Importantly, these multiples are measured against closed-won booked revenue, not a pipeline return.

**Q: Why are badge scans a bad way to measure event ROI?**

A: Badge scans measure activity at a booth, not business outcomes. Alex Reynolds points out that a team can scan a thousand badges and have no idea what it means for the company. His data shows it takes six to 18 months to see an event's true impact, while most teams stop tracking after three or four months and move on to the next event. The questions worth answering are how many deals the event generated, how many of those closed, how many in-process deals were touched, what attribution those closes carry, and which current customers were influenced. Measured that way, the same event can look very different from how it looked on the show floor.

**Q: Do events actually improve customer retention?**

A: Yes, according to Vendelux's data. Alex Reynolds says customers who are touched multiple times at events — whether a large trade show or a VIP dinner — are significantly more likely to renew and more likely to upsell than customers who are not. There are diminishing marginal returns: the first three touch points matter more than later ones, and anything in the 10 to 12 range across a year is roughly ideal. The catch is credit. Because the attribution is much harder to tie than a net-new lead, marketers usually get zero credit for the renewal and expansion impact of the events they run.

**Q: When do people actually buy event tickets?**

A: Very late, and it is getting later. Alex Reynolds says 50% of event attendees buy their tickets in the final two weeks before an event, and 75% buy in the final month. Pre-COVID, the 50% mark was a full month out, so that window has been cut in half. This is why teams cannot get a reliable attendee list three or six months ahead — the showrunner does not know either, and the people responsible for attendee acquisition are often terrified a month before the doors open. The practical consequence is that the advantage goes to companies that can act on late-arriving data, not to the ones who plan earliest.

**Q: How much of a marketing budget should go to events?**

A: Alex Reynolds says historically 25% to 30% of marketing budgets have gone to events, and in the last year or so he has seen that rise to 35% or 40%. He considers 40% a good number, and notes that this is marketing spend alone — costs such as travel and entertainment for the sales team sit elsewhere, so the fully baked figure is higher. At companies operating around that level, he sees 50% to 60% of pipeline coming from events. Average contract value is the main qualifier: below $20,000 it is generally harder to drive value from events, and above $20,000 the higher the ACV, the better events tend to work.

**Q: Should you host your own events or sponsor big industry events?**

A: Alex Reynolds recommends a mix, mapped in a specific order. Self-hosted small events — a dinner in your own city, for example — reach an audience that is already local, but they carry no FOMO or time pressure and compete with everything else happening that night, professional and personal. Activating around a large tentpole event with 20,000 to 50,000 attendees gives you a unique combination of people who have all travelled to a new city. But there are only so many relevant tentpoles, so relying on them alone leaves gaps in the calendar. His recommendation is to map the tentpole events first, then work down and fill the gaps with roadshows and local activations — and never run a small dinner in New York during the week your tentpole event is in San Francisco.

**Q: What is "proof of humanity" and why does it matter as AI improves?**

A: Proof of humanity is Alex Reynolds' term for verifying that the person you are dealing with is genuinely who they claim to be. AI can already generate convincing avatars, and on a video call there is no way to confirm the other party is real — he makes the point to Anthony Enrico mid-interview, noting they have never met in person. That is irrelevant to a conversation and decisive when someone is buying an expensive solution and does not want to be scammed or sold a false bill of goods. As AI and the tools it powers improve, in-person becomes the only channel that supplies that verification, which is why Alex argues the in-person moment defines trust and only grows more valuable over time. He also stretches the definition of an event to include roadshows or buyers travelling to your city, provided you activate the moment well.

**Q: What are the three phases of a successful event?**

A: Pre-event, at-event and post-event. Alex Reynolds says you have to master all three, because failing any one of them produces no value from that buyer. At an event in Toronto he watched every failure mode: people who never reached out beforehand and hoped to find him at a booth or in the event app, so the meeting never happened; people who booked a meeting and then failed the second phase by not showing up or arriving unprepared; and the worst case, people who did everything right, had his full attention and interest, and then never followed up. AI helps most at the bookends — running the playbook when teams are too busy before and after a show — while an AI note-taker during the event preserves the hundreds of conversations that make the follow-through possible.


## Timeline

- **00:00** — Cold open and intro
- **01:46** — The most common way companies waste money on events
- **03:53** — Why events are the final frontier of outbound
- **08:01** — The 10% rule — booth presence vs. a suite off-site
- **10:48** — 3x is a terrible bar. The best teams hit 18-20x
- **12:00** — Badge scans are a vanity metric — the 6-to-18 month window
- **13:43** — Events and retention: the renewal impact nobody gets credit for
- **18:22** — Half of all tickets sell in the last two weeks
- **26:18** — What good prep looks like: the game plan and the activation calendar
- **31:38** — Shutterstock, eight-figure deals, and the event that closed them
- **34:49** — What AI actually did to outbound
- **38:45** — Proof of humanity in the age of AI avatars
- **40:16** — The three phases: pre-event, at-event, post-event
- **45:10** — How much of your marketing budget belongs in events
- **46:03** — Host your own or ride the tent-poles?
- **48:10** — Wrap


## Related episodes

- **Ep. 114: Outbound Isn't Dying. Yours Is.** (Joey Gilkey (TitanX)) — The other side of Alex's argument: Joey says outbound still works but the measurement is wrong, where Alex says the channel itself has degraded and the budget should move to in-person.
- **Ep. 24: AI Is Breaking Sales — Here's How to Fix It** (Mustafa Saeed (Luella)) — The mechanics behind the overloaded inbox Alex describes — AI made mass sending consequence-free, and the deliverability and brand damage that follows. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/mustafa-saeed-ai-breaking-sales/
- **Ep. 53: AI vs. Human Connection: The Future of Sales & Marketing** (Khurram Kalimi (VinnCorp)) — The same trust thesis without the event data: authenticity and a referral-led network as the defence against automated outreach. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/khurram-kalimi-ai-human-connection/
- **Ep. 88: Why AI Won't Close Your Biggest Deals** (Michael Kiernan (Nextdoor)) — The inverse relationship between deal size and how much AI belongs in the motion — the enterprise version of Alex's proof-of-humanity argument. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/michael-kiernan-nextdoor-ai-wont-close-deals/
- **Ep. 34: Pipeline Is a Vanity Metric** (Guy Rubin (Ebsta)) — The same complaint about counting the wrong number, applied to pipeline instead of badge scans, and the case for measuring closed revenue. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/guy-rubin-ebsta-benchmark-report/
- **Ep. 1: Why Is Multi-Touch Attribution So Hard? And Is Anyone Actually Doing It?** (Bernardo Alves (LeanScale)) — Why the event black box exists: capturing touches is easy, assigning credit across a 6-to-18-month window is a science, an art and a political fight. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/bernardo-alves-multi-touch-attribution/
- **Ep. 110: Why You Can't Automate Reddit** (Shawn Tenam and Lila Rest (Clearbox)) — Another channel that works precisely because it resists automation — the human effort is the moat, which is Alex's case for in-person.


## Full transcript

_Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._  
_Transcript only, as a separate file: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/alex-reynolds-vendelux-events-are-whats-left/transcript.md_

### 00:00 — Cold open and intro

**[0:00]** The in-person moment is what defines that trust and that relationship and that is only

**[0:06]** going to become more and more valuable as AI gets better.

**[0:11]** My guest today is Alex Reynolds, co-founder and CEO of Vendalux, the event intelligence

**[0:18]** platform that now tracks more than 250,000 B2B events and has influenced north of $5 billion

**[0:26]** in event spend.

**[0:27]** What are maybe some of the most egregious things you've seen at events where people,

**[0:32]** you know, they're just completely burning their money?

**[0:36]** I've walked the floor and you see 20, 30 sales reps who are all on their phone or they're

**[0:41]** sitting off doing something, you know, on their own.

**[0:44]** You look at that and you know just by looking at that booth that it's a waste of money.

**[0:49]** They know because they're sitting there saying, why did I fly to Vegas, leave my family, leave

**[0:54]** all the deals that I'm currently working on to be in that room when you're in the moment.

**[0:59]** But if you're not taking diligent notes, then you really mess up on that post event follow

**[1:05]** through.

**[1:06]** So I think AI just really helps across that cycle to make sure that you're maximizing

**[1:11]** those in-person human moments when you're there at the show.

**[1:15]** I love it.

**[1:16]** So I don't think events are at risk either of being taken over by AI in any way or being

**[1:25]** made irrelevant.

**[1:26]** I think what's interesting is maybe there have been some forces that have made it maybe

**[1:33]** like easier to work remotely and do things like that.

**[1:35]** But I think when it comes to connecting with your buyers, I see it just getting more and

**[1:40]** more important over time.

### 01:46 — The most common way companies waste money on events

**[1:46]** Alex, you're sitting on data from 250,000 events, $5 billion of influence spend.

**[2:01]** When you look across all of it, what is the most common way you watch companies waste

**[2:06]** money on events?

**[2:08]** They show up and they hope for the best.

**[2:13]** If you think about building a product, you would never just build a product and hope

**[2:18]** that users show up.

**[2:21]** But when it comes to events, so often companies, they go because they've always gone or they

**[2:25]** go because they think they have to be in the room and they show up and expect that everything

**[2:31]** is going to come to them.

**[2:33]** The reality is that the vast majority of event success is determined before you even walk

**[2:39]** in the room.

**[2:42]** I think a lot of people just assume, "Hey, we got to be there for branding or if I show

**[2:47]** up, they'll come."

**[2:50]** What are maybe some of the most egregious things you've seen at events where people,

**[2:55]** you know, they're just completely burning their money?

**[3:01]** Some of these major sponsors, if you have the huge booth in the middle of the floor,

**[3:07]** you're spending two, five, even $10 million for that activation and I've walked the floor

**[3:14]** and you see 20, 30 sales reps who are all on their phone or they're sitting off doing

**[3:19]** something on their own and you look at that and you know just by looking at that booth

**[3:23]** that it's a waste of money.

**[3:25]** They know because they're sitting there saying, "Why did I fly to Vegas, leave my family,

**[3:31]** leave all the deals that I'm currently working on to be in that room?"

**[3:35]** But because events are so analog, because they happen once a year, these companies just

**[3:41]** continue to make these mistakes because they believe that they're making the right decision

**[3:46]** and they oftentimes don't know until they have everybody on site that it was a major

**[3:52]** problem.

### 03:53 — Why events are the final frontier of outbound

**[3:53]** Yeah, and I do think, so post COVID, post AI, there's been so much noise on Outbound

**[4:04]** via email, LinkedIn, any other digital outreach that you can have that I do think events is

**[4:10]** opening up this kind of like back to basics, but final frontier of Outbound and people

**[4:16]** are really craving some type of in-person connection and building trust that way and

**[4:21]** I think there's even opportunities.

**[4:23]** Yes, of course, you have the big shows, the big marquee ones for your industry, whatever

**[4:28]** that is.

**[4:29]** There's also a lot of micro events, smaller events, mid-market events that if you really

**[4:34]** get this dialed in and optimized can be super valuable.

**[4:38]** A hundred percent.

**[4:39]** The best companies that I see are taking advantage of that as often as possible.

**[4:45]** So whether it's a dinner or a VIP activation, I've seen helicopter rides, like something

**[4:50]** that's going to entice people and then combine both your existing customers with prospects,

**[4:58]** have them talk to each other and as you can be the best seller in the world, tell somebody

**[5:03]** how amazing your product is, but that's not nearly as valuable as having a customer who

**[5:08]** loves you come in and say, "You have to use this product because here's all the value

**[5:13]** that I got."

**[5:14]** Yeah.

**[5:15]** Well, walk me through what good looks like, so if you're a company, you're thinking about

**[5:22]** doing events, you're getting it in your strategy, or you're already doing some events, how do

**[5:27]** you approach it to where you make sure you're getting the most ROI on those events possible

**[5:32]** and how do you get them really dialed in?

**[5:34]** Yeah, I think it's all about being where your buyers and your customers are going to be,

**[5:41]** which is easier said than done, but essentially, there's 30,000 events that happen every single

**[5:47]** year.

**[5:48]** There's also all of those potential smaller events that people could have access to.

**[5:53]** And so understanding where everyone in your CRM is going to be can be challenging, but

**[6:00]** if you can map that out, then you can understand exactly where you need to be as a company.

**[6:06]** So where are you deploying your chips?

**[6:08]** You can't go to a million events a year, there's going to be limitations.

**[6:13]** And so how do you allocate those dollars and those people?

**[6:17]** So someone like Ramp, for example, they go to 300 events every year, they have 500 sellers,

**[6:24]** and so what are the different permutations and combinations of who goes where and where

**[6:29]** you're actually deploying your dollars is really somewhat of a math equation and depends

**[6:35]** on where those actual companies and people are going to be.

**[6:38]** That's the missing ingredient that you need in order to make smarter decisions about where

**[6:43]** to go and who to send.

**[6:46]** Yeah, one of the things we do at LeanScale for our customers, it's a project we call

**[6:50]** Market Map, where we tier the customer base or the prospect base and everyone who's in

**[6:57]** the market and then tier them by the highest propensity to buy.

**[7:00]** So the people, hey, no brainer, they should be buying and using your product.

**[7:05]** And that exercise alone can increase conversion rate by 30% to 40% because now you're targeting

**[7:12]** people who actually have a strong need, of course, reduces time and stage as well, which

**[7:18]** all those little incremental changes can pound over time.

**[7:22]** When you're looking at an event strategy, what's the math equation that you're looking

**[7:28]** at or what are the metrics that you're looking at or process that you follow to make sure

**[7:34]** you have the right mix of events and the right volume of events and you are actually budgeting

**[7:41]** appropriately for those events because you could pick the right ones, but if you don't

**[7:46]** send enough people, you don't have the right brand presence, then you might as well not

**[7:49]** gone.

**[7:50]** Yeah, it's a really challenging problem to solve and if you get it wrong, you have to

**[7:56]** wait a whole year for that event to come around again.

### 08:01 — The 10% rule — booth presence vs. a suite off-site

**[8:01]** So I think generally some events are 100 people, some events are 150,000 people like CES.

**[8:09]** And so understanding how many total people are going to be there, what percentage of

**[8:14]** those people are your buyers or your current customers is kind of step one.

**[8:19]** And then you can back into what kind of a presence do you want to have if it's a target

**[8:24]** rich environment, so for the majority of the people on the floor, or let's say at least

**[8:28]** 10% are potential buyers, then your show presence is really important because you will have

**[8:36]** people walking the floor who are going to be interested potential buyers for you.

**[8:40]** If you have a much smaller audience, so let's say only three or four percent of the audience

**[8:46]** is going to be relevant for you, then it's much more about taking a targeted approach.

**[8:51]** You might not even need a big booth presence, it might be more about having a suite off-site

**[8:56]** and you're bringing people to you and it's more of an outbound versus an inbound type

**[9:01]** of motion.

**[9:02]** So really understanding the percentage of buyers and what that looks like is key and

**[9:07]** then mapping those people to your own stakeholders.

**[9:11]** So of course, if it's a very senior environment and you're sending a bunch of SDRs, that's

**[9:17]** probably not going to resonate in the same way versus sending an executive and so making

**[9:23]** sure that you map the right stakeholders from your side to the audience that's going to

**[9:28]** be there.

**[9:29]** Of course, if you're looking at CRM data, you could understand I want to send Timmy,

**[9:33]** not Tommy because even though Tommy is amazing at events, his pipeline is not going to be

**[9:38]** there whereas Timmy has 10 active deals and call it $3 million, $4 million of potential

**[9:44]** pipeline that could convert if he goes to the event.

**[9:48]** So I think in general, the more data that you have at your fingertips to be able to

**[9:52]** make these more informed decisions versus again, most companies are saying, okay, it's

**[9:56]** our industry event, we've gone the last eight years, who knows how we did but we really

**[10:04]** like going to Vegas and so we may as well just go back and then they're surprised when

**[10:10]** your CFO asks you after the event, how do we do when nobody knows?

**[10:15]** And what's a good benchmark?

**[10:16]** So if I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to go to an event, let's say it's a good one, that

**[10:21]** 10% range, I think that's a good benchmark at the threshold people should have in their

**[10:25]** head like, hey, 10% potentially marketed by your product.

**[10:29]** Let's say it's a good one, 10% of the people there are potential customers.

**[10:34]** What type of ROI should I be expecting from an event?

**[10:38]** Like what is good look like, what does great look like and what type of performance is

**[10:44]** like, hey, maybe you shouldn't go to this one next year.

### 10:48 — 3x is a terrible bar. The best teams hit 18-20x

**[10:48]** So generally when I talk to event marketers and CMOs, their bar of what they're looking

**[10:54]** for is 3x ROI, I think that's ridiculously low.

**[10:59]** So that's maybe a nice get in the door value.

**[11:03]** When I look at plans that marketers have had and they brought in and they try to track

**[11:08]** the actual ROI that they're seeing, some of these events on the low end are very far in

**[11:13]** the negative and yet they still go back sometimes.

**[11:16]** So even though on paper with the model that they have, they're saying that this was negative

**[11:21]** ROI, they're still going back and maybe they're claiming there's brand value or whatever else.

**[11:27]** But on the other end of the spectrum, I mean, I've seen companies that I think do this really

**[11:33]** well that say, no, our bar's not 3x, it's 18x or it's 20x and you can control both sides

**[11:40]** of that equation.

**[11:41]** You can say, we're going to deploy less dollars overall, but we're going to do it in a smarter

**[11:45]** way and we're also going to see more impact.

**[11:49]** The other component of this is the timing.

**[11:51]** So I see a lot of marketers or teams in general, they're looking at ROI based off of the leads

**[11:57]** that they generate from their booth.

### 12:00 — Badge scans are a vanity metric — the 6-to-18 month window

**[12:00]** And so they might scan a thousand badges, but that's a great vanity metric.

**[12:06]** But what does it actually mean for your business?

**[12:09]** In general, we see that it takes anywhere from six to 18 months to see the true impact

**[12:14]** from an event.

**[12:15]** But most people don't track events that far out.

**[12:18]** After three or four months, they've kind of moved on to the next thing.

**[12:22]** And so really being able to say, okay, how many deals do we generate?

**[12:27]** How many of those actually closed, how many deals were in process that we were able to

**[12:31]** touch?

**[12:32]** What kind of attribution do we have as those close?

**[12:35]** And then also, what current customers are we impacting?

**[12:40]** Our data shows that if you have current customers and you see them at an event, they're more

**[12:45]** likely to renew and they're more likely to upsell, but often marketers get zero credit

**[12:50]** for that because it's much more difficult to tie the actual attribution to.

**[12:54]** Yeah, I think that's a pretty big disparity, the teams that are expecting 3X, 18X.

**[13:00]** And I do want to, when you're using those numbers, you're saying return on investment

**[13:05]** compared to closed one booked revenue, right?

**[13:09]** Not a pipeline return.

**[13:11]** Revenue.

**[13:12]** Yeah.

**[13:13]** No.

**[13:14]** And I think you bring up a good point, I literally wasn't even thinking about it, which probably

**[13:17]** is a sign of the systemic problem of events.

**[13:20]** We in the past have gone to events mainly for customers.

**[13:25]** So we know, hey, 60% of our customers are going to be there.

**[13:28]** So we're going to go, we're going to show up, we're going to spend time with them.

**[13:32]** And I think that is a huge piece that's left out of the value equation.

**[13:37]** I'm sure it may be tracking upsells, expansions, maybe references as possible.

### 13:43 — Events and retention: the renewal impact nobody gets credit for

**[13:43]** Do you also take a look at just retention in general as well?

**[13:48]** Yeah.

**[13:49]** Yeah.

**[13:50]** We see the customers who are touched multiple times at events, and that could be a big trade

**[13:56]** show or it could be a VIP dinner, are significantly more likely to renew than ones who are not.

**[14:03]** There's of course diminishing marginal returns.

**[14:05]** So the first three touch points are more important than later down the line.

**[14:11]** But generally, anything in the 10 to 12 range is kind of ideal.

**[14:17]** And it makes sense, right?

**[14:18]** I mean, at the end of the day, whether it's a new sale or it's retention, I mean, they're

**[14:23]** buying a product, but they're really, it's an emotional sale.

**[14:28]** And I think that when you're in the room with somebody, and especially if you're at an event,

**[14:34]** you both have left your families, you've deliberately decided to go on this quest.

**[14:41]** And there's a big opportunity cost for that.

**[14:43]** And so people are just more primed and open to building new relationships.

**[14:48]** And so they're willing to share more information.

**[14:51]** You're able to build trust more quickly.

**[14:53]** You're able to understand, what is that procurement cycle or like, are you seeing pressure on

**[14:59]** the renewal in a way that if you ask that on a video call like this, someone might just

**[15:04]** not give you the same level of insight.

**[15:07]** And so those types of moments are just so valuable when you think about like building

**[15:12]** long-term value with customers.

**[15:14]** Yeah, I agree.

**[15:16]** And I'm younger in my career, I'd go to any event, whatever.

**[15:20]** And if the company wanted to fly me out, then I was game for it.

**[15:24]** Now, I have three kids, another one on the way in November.

**[15:27]** I am very selective.

**[15:29]** Congrats.

**[15:30]** Thank you.

**[15:31]** Thank you very much.

**[15:32]** But I'm very selective about the events I go to, and when I go to them, I'm serious

**[15:38]** about them, and I'm there to make it as efficient and meaningful as possible.

**[15:44]** And then get back home because I have a lot of responsibilities at home.

**[15:48]** But yes, it definitely does put me in that head space where, hey, this is a big deal.

**[15:54]** Now I'm only going to, let's call it six events a year or so.

**[16:00]** Yeah.

**[16:01]** So those will, oh, I was just going to say, so those are pretty big deal and I only have

**[16:07]** a few of them that I'm spending time in.

**[16:09]** Right.

**[16:10]** And so imagine you, one of those six events, if you go and you walk in the room and the

**[16:14]** first thing you say is, you know, what am I doing here?

**[16:16]** Right?

**[16:17]** Not only give you suffered the opportunity cost of being away from your family, missing

**[16:21]** how many bedtime routines and all of that.

**[16:26]** And instead you're in this, in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in a room without the

**[16:31]** people, right?

**[16:32]** Like that, I think every, everyone who's been to an event has felt that moment of walking

**[16:36]** in and just saying, you know, what am I doing here?

**[16:40]** And it's not easy to fix, right?

**[16:41]** So the pain is high when you do it wrong, the rewards are incredibly fruitful when you

**[16:48]** do it right.

**[16:49]** And kind of that high risk, high reward aspect of it makes for very diverse outcomes.

**[16:55]** No, 100%.

**[16:58]** Well, walk me through, there's a big problem with the black box of data and even having

**[17:05]** visibility into the full impact of an event and I, everything you're saying, I have literally

**[17:11]** been in those meetings where like, Oh, it's a branding thing.

**[17:13]** Oh, we got to be there because our customers are there.

**[17:15]** Oh, we have to be there to show up against our competitors.

**[17:17]** People are going to take this as a weird sign.

**[17:19]** If we're not going, I think all that is, is garbage.

**[17:22]** I think you need to have a really concrete ROI, uh, but very difficult to calculate.

**[17:28]** So what is the solution to going through a lot of unstructured, messy data, and then

**[17:37]** making sense of it so you can make a decision on that event next time?

**[17:42]** Well, uh, if you want to do this manually, then there's not a lot of options out there,

**[17:48]** right?

**[17:49]** I mean, I think with something like Claude, it helps to be able to connect your CRM, uh,

**[17:54]** to understand and look at the events that are out there.

**[17:56]** But the, the piece of information that is incredibly difficult to find, it's not public

**[18:01]** with data is, you know, the attendees of these events, right?

**[18:05]** So you can, you can do research and find events that are out there.

**[18:09]** Maybe some of the sponsor information is, is public, uh, speakers are public so that

**[18:14]** the information disappears over time.

**[18:16]** Uh, but really understanding who the attendees are going to be at an event is difficult.

### 18:22 — Half of all tickets sell in the last two weeks

**[18:22]** And part of the problem is, uh, 50% of event attendees buy tickets in the last two weeks,

**[18:29]** which is kind of wild to think about, right?

**[18:31]** So imagine that you're the event that is wild.

**[18:33]** I didn't know that.

**[18:34]** That's insane.

**[18:35]** Yeah.

**[18:36]** And 75% buy in the last month.

**[18:38]** So we, we partner with a lot of these events and, uh, the, the folks who are in charge

**[18:44]** of attendee acquisition, right?

**[18:46]** The delegates, if you talk to them a month before the event, oftentimes they're terrified,

**[18:51]** uh, right?

**[18:52]** Because, you know, of course everybody wants to know three, six months in advance who's

**[18:57]** going to be at the show, but the showrunner doesn't even know because so many of the tickets

**[19:01]** are sold at the 11th hour and it's only getting worse pre-COVID, you know, 50% of tickets

**[19:07]** were sold in the last month.

**[19:09]** Uh, so that's shrunk, you know, uh, it's been cut in half.

**[19:14]** And so as a result, it's really hard to make these data driven, uh, decisions.

**[19:18]** And so what we've done early on is really to build out the most robust data set about

**[19:26]** humans on the move, right?

**[19:27]** Where are these people and companies are going to be, uh, we have a lot of confirmed data

**[19:32]** coming in, but we also have a predictive engine that will look at, you know, okay, Anthony,

**[19:37]** you've been to an event three of the last four years, there's probably a good chance

**[19:41]** that you're going to go back, even if you haven't bought a ticket yet.

**[19:44]** And so we're, we're combining all of these different disparate data sources.

**[19:49]** It's messy.

**[19:50]** It's dirty.

**[19:51]** It's, you know, rolling around in the mud.

**[19:52]** But when you have that and then you overlay a company's CRM data on top of that, you can

**[19:59]** make very fast and informed decisions about where to go and who to send.

**[20:06]** And so, you know, for example, if I told you that next week, you know, 10 of your buyers

**[20:12]** worth $20 million, we're going to be, uh, you know, in San Diego, uh, what would you

**[20:19]** do?

**[20:20]** Yeah.

**[20:21]** It's a no brainer.

**[20:22]** You get on a flight.

**[20:24]** Right.

**[20:25]** So, so the, so kind of because the data is so valuable, even if it comes in at the 11th

**[20:30]** hour, you are capable of making fast decisions.

**[20:33]** If you have a strong feedback loop, which can literally change the outcome of your entire

**[20:38]** year, uh, as a rep or, you know, as, as a founder, uh, you know, if you're able to act

**[20:43]** on that, but most people can't because they don't have access to that information.

**[20:47]** Yeah.

**[20:48]** And I'm even thinking, I'm thinking out loud, correct me if this thought process is wrong,

**[20:52]** but even if you weren't going to go to an event, um, I've, I've played the game plenty

**[20:57]** of times where, Hey, I'm just going to go as an attendee, but really I'm lining up lunches,

**[21:02]** coffees, whatever, uh, knowing people are going to be out there.

**[21:05]** And then I think it's a pretty harmless outreach to just say, Hey, I'm going to be at this

**[21:09]** event.

**[21:10]** You know, are you going to be in town for it?

**[21:12]** So if you had showing me like, okay, you've been three times, probably going to go again.

**[21:18]** Yeah.

**[21:19]** Send an outreach Anthony.

**[21:20]** That's likely.

**[21:21]** And if not, it's not as negative as other forms of outreach.

**[21:26]** Like this is an actual relevant outreach that you could send to this person that wouldn't

**[21:31]** count negative against your brand, because I do think some people are sending a lot of

**[21:35]** outreach right now that they're better off not sending anything at all.

**[21:40]** Yeah.

**[21:41]** I mean, some of the, some of the signals that people are using to try to, you know, personalize

**[21:47]** the emails are just awful, at least the ones that I get, I mean, someone, I got an email

**[21:52]** a couple of weeks ago, somebody saying, it's so great that we're in the same state and

**[21:56]** I'm in New York city and they're in Buffalo, uh, you know, which may as well be on the other

**[22:00]** side of the planet.

**[22:02]** So, uh, you know, or, oh, I see you went to, you know, this high school or something like

**[22:06]** that.

**[22:07]** It just, it doesn't, it falls flat.

**[22:10]** And we, I mean, as part of our platform, we help book meetings for our customers.

**[22:15]** And so we are doing outreach, uh, via different channels to help create that, you know, unique

**[22:21]** moment in person.

**[22:23]** And so we can see that, uh, you know, when we do outreach based off of trying to create

**[22:29]** an in-person moment, uh, our hit rate from, you know, cold outreach to an actual meeting

**[22:36]** that we secure is one to 2%, uh, which is, you know, pretty high, uh, my understanding

**[22:42]** versus when we do more virtual events and there isn't that, you know, Hey, we're both

**[22:47]** going to be in the same city touch point, then, you know, it might take 1500 emails

**[22:52]** just to get a response.

**[22:54]** So the, the disparity there is pretty astronomical, uh, and just knowing where somebody is going

**[23:00]** to be creates that FOMO and that time pressure where you're saying, Hey, you know, our, our

**[23:06]** only opportunity to meet in person is going to be at this event next week.

**[23:10]** And if we don't take advantage of that, then we may never happen again.

**[23:14]** And there's something kind of like magical and serendipitous about that that I think really

**[23:19]** resonates with people, uh, you know, kind of in their core.

**[23:22]** Yeah. I think so too. And, and that's where it's also low risk. So if you send it, nobody

**[23:29]** responds. I don't think anyone would take offense to it where I would take offense if

**[23:32]** somebody was like, Oh, I saw you went to this high school and I have a third cousin who

**[23:36]** went there. You want to book a meeting? No. Um, yeah, I'm offended. You even sent this.

**[23:43]** Now I'm like, I like you less than before. Yeah. I do think so. It's interesting point

**[23:48]** because I think I talked to a lot of marketers who are really scared about that false, uh,

**[23:54]** false positive, right? Where they're like, we have predicted data. And so a lot of customers

**[24:01]** will say, Oh, I reached out to this person and they said, they're not going to be at

**[24:03]** the event. And I was like, okay, cool. What did you do next? And they say, some of them,

**[24:08]** the smart ones are say, Oh, then I asked if they wanted to have a virtual meeting and

**[24:12]** they said, yes. I'm like, okay, so what are we talking about here? You got a meeting with

**[24:16]** your prospect, uh, using this, you know, this signal. And, and so, yeah, to your point,

**[24:21]** I think some people are so concerned about, you know, well, what if, what if they're not

**[24:25]** going, or what if I reach out and it doesn't land and with the wrong signal, I think that

**[24:31]** is, is a valid concern. But if it's about an event, I mean, you're, you're trying to

**[24:38]** meet with somebody in person. Like that's a very natural human motion that we've been

**[24:42]** doing for thousands of years. So I don't know. It's, it's, it's just interesting, the psychology

**[24:48]** or I guess said another way you would never, if somebody was running an ad campaign and

**[24:54]** they have a, you know, someone clicks on that and it's not someone who's in their ICP, like

**[24:59]** that's generally accepted, right? People are going to click on your ads, even if they're

**[25:02]** not an ICP and you factor that into your math equation as a demand generation, uh, you know,

**[25:09]** professional demand, demand generation marketer. And yet with events or with outreach, you

**[25:14]** know, if somebody has a reaction saying they're not going to be there, it seems like there's,

**[25:19]** there's just not as much sophistication around that motion, at least not yet.

**[25:23]** Yeah. Well, I think it's, I think you could dial in your messaging and make it feel really

**[25:28]** organic and natural. Um, and to where, like you said, even if they aren't going, it can

**[25:34]** tee up another interaction with them. Um, what are some other things that teams are

**[25:42]** doing? Cause you mentioned everything happens in the prep. Everything happens before the

**[25:47]** event even starts. So we talked a lot about, okay, let's make sure you're going to the

**[25:52]** right ones. Let's see the ones that have an ROI from previous events you've gone to use

**[25:58]** the platform to do that. Let's get predictive about where your buyers are and see what events

**[26:02]** they're likely to be going to and throw those new ones on. Okay. Once you have selected

**[26:08]** the list of events that you're ready to go tackle, what are the best teams doing to prep

**[26:15]** and execute really well for an event?

### 26:18 — What good prep looks like: the game plan and the activation calendar

**[26:18]** Yeah. So I think it's, it's sort of like, what is your game plan for the event? And

**[26:23]** what do I mean by that? Uh, the best teams, if it's a three day event, they are running

**[26:28]** multiple activations with a stated goal, uh, you know, throughout, throughout that event.

**[26:34]** So they might do, uh, like our executive buyer is a CMO, right? And so we might do, you know,

**[26:41]** you might have a CMO activation that's going to be, it can't just be a dinner, right? It

**[26:45]** has to be something that's enticing. They're going to have that, they're going to be invited

**[26:48]** to 20 different dinners. So how do you do something that's unique that stands out that

**[26:54]** when they, when they see that invite come in, they say, Oh, I need to be at this. And

**[26:58]** so, I mean, literally at Cannes Lion, you know, the advertising event in the South of

**[27:03]** France, I mean, people were doing helicopter rides to, to Saint Tropez. And, and so, you

**[27:08]** know, and Chateau parties. And I mean, it gets kind of crazy that's on one end of the

**[27:13]** spectrum, but just doing, doing something that will be unique, uh, or even an opportunity

**[27:19]** to learn. And then for maybe your, your core buyer, is there something, a different type

**[27:24]** of activation that will resonate with them. We already talked about kind of combining

**[27:29]** the customers and prospects. I think it's something that, that works really well. And

**[27:34]** just making sure that, you know, you're not, no dinner, no lunch is left up to chance.

**[27:40]** And so how are you taking advantage of every single one of those motions and then dividing

**[27:45]** and conquering, you know, amongst your teams, you have the right people in the room for

**[27:50]** CMO dinner. That's going to be your, you know, your CEO or your CMO for, you know, maybe

**[27:56]** the, your, your core buyer. Maybe it's a different audience. And then, you know, and then being

**[28:02]** very conscious too, of what the, what the, the schedule is for the event. So I've heard

**[28:10]** horror stories of people creating an amazing activation, spending a ton of money on it.

**[28:15]** And nobody shows up. Why does nobody show up? Because they happen to pick the time when,

**[28:21]** you know, the chain smokers or Elton John was performing. And so all of a sudden you

**[28:26]** went from something that could have been generating, you know, millions of dollars in pipeline

**[28:29]** to zero just because you, you chose the wrong day. So it really is, you know, the execution

**[28:36]** aspect of this is so important and just, and it can go wrong in so many different ways.

**[28:43]** Oh my gosh. I'm sure there are lots of horror stories with that. So yes, absolutely. Well,

**[28:51]** I think that's really helpful because I, a lot of people spend a lot of money on these

**[28:54]** events. A lot of time there's opportunity cost to it as well. So getting those things

**[29:00]** dialed in is super important. I I'd love to maybe hear a little bit about your story about

**[29:07]** what got you inspired to build tech for this problem. And I don't know if it goes back

**[29:14]** to some of your time at Shutterstock and I know you have entrepreneurship in your blood

**[29:20]** as well. So I would just love to hear how you ended up doing this. What inspired you

**[29:25]** to be doing what you're doing today? Yeah. So from like a very early age, kind of like

**[29:31]** in-person moments have, have really kind of defined my life. I mean, my, I moved around

**[29:38]** a lot as a, as a kid in the Northeast. And so I found that I was constantly kind of bringing

**[29:45]** different groups of people together and, you know, old friend group and new friend group

**[29:49]** and seeing kind of the, you know, the advantages of, of what that could look like. And so bringing

**[29:56]** people together has been, has been core. I met my co-founder at an event during a Blizzard.

**[30:03]** So there were supposed to be hundreds of people at the show and only a handful of people showed

**[30:07]** up. He's from Maine. I'm from Boston. So we, you know, we were two of the only crazy people

**[30:13]** to actually show up, but that built a bond for us. And, you know, it's something that

**[30:19]** we, you know, working together 10 years later. I met my wife at an Apple store. We just sat

**[30:24]** down next to each other in the Marina in San Francisco and started talking. So like these

**[30:29]** like serendipitous moments have just really played out and been so influential for me.

**[30:36]** And you know, this, this business is the second time that I've tried to build a business in

**[30:41]** sort of this like in-person space. Before this, I built a company called Swift intro.

**[30:48]** And we, what we did is we looked at the LinkedIn connection graph to understand, okay, if Anthony,

**[30:55]** if you and I are not connected personally, but we have a lot of second degree connections

**[31:00]** in common, then we might, we should probably meet. And so we helped thousands of people

**[31:07]** do these kind of one-on-one professional, you know, date kind of things. And, and it

**[31:15]** was gaining a ton of traction. There was a lot of buzz and then LinkedIn shut down their

**[31:18]** API. And so overnight, we just lost access to our number one source of data and ended

**[31:26]** up killing the company. So that was a good lesson in understanding, okay, you know, building

**[31:32]** a data business, you need to make sure that you have a robust, robust data sources.

### 31:38 — Shutterstock, eight-figure deals, and the event that closed them

**[31:38]** But then at Shutterstock set, my co-founder, not co-founder, Stefan and I, we built a hundred

**[31:44]** million ARR data business together. And for us, we were doing, you know, 78, eight figure

**[31:50]** deals with massive, massive companies. And we just found that, you know, not surprisingly,

**[31:55]** when you meet those people in person, it really goes a long way to, you know, driving outcomes.

**[32:01]** And so we found that events, when we went to the right events, it was magic. I mean,

**[32:06]** we'd meet all the right people and like literally we close, you know, seven and eight figure

**[32:10]** deals because we met the right person at an event. On the flip side, though, if we went

**[32:15]** to a bad event, or even if we went to a great event, but didn't get FaceTime with the right

**[32:20]** people, then it was a huge waste of time and money. And so we kind of looked at each other

**[32:24]** and said like, this is this amazing untapped channel. But, you know, if we mess it up,

**[32:30]** then we have to again, wait a whole year to try and do it again. And so we just knew that

**[32:35]** there had to be a more data driven way to make this happen and just saw that like all

**[32:41]** these decisions, these multimillion dollar decisions were being made based on politics

**[32:46]** and gut, not data and insights. And so we knew there had to be a better way.

**[32:51]** Well, I'm, I'm really excited that you've done what you've done, because I agree. And

**[32:56]** I think it's better for, it's better for everybody. It's better for the attendees of these events

**[33:00]** as well, because when you show up to an event, as a participant, you want to have relevant

**[33:07]** vendors there, you want to have relevant meetings with people that you're actually going to

**[33:10]** do business with, you don't want to be lost in a sea of random companies that don't really

**[33:15]** connect with you. So I think, like, increasing that propensity for people to get connected

**[33:20]** and have meaningful conversations, it's good for everyone.

**[33:25]** We almost, we, we kind of see three groups in this, in this ecosystem, right? There's

**[33:31]** the big brands who are sponsoring and exhibiting at the shows, there are the events themselves,

**[33:37]** and then there are the attendees. And to your point, like, everybody wants the same thing.

**[33:42]** All three of those parties want the event to be amazing. They want the right people

**[33:46]** to meet and, you know, generate all this value. And, and that could be for sales, but it could

**[33:51]** also be for learning and development. It could be for, you know, partnerships, M&A could be

**[33:57]** for recruiting. Like there's all kinds of reasons why people want to meet other people

**[34:02]** in person professionally, right? We're not talking about dating, but professionally.

**[34:07]** That's what the Apple store is for. So we'll save an Apple store for that genre.

**[34:12]** Exactly. And so the problem is that these different parties are, there's just not data

**[34:17]** availability and data sharing amongst them for, for many reasons, for privacy reasons,

**[34:23]** for security reasons. And so, you know, we're trying to sit in the middle of that ecosystem

**[34:28]** to help all of those parties, you know, make to make them all a win together, essentially,

**[34:34]** because when the event is amazing, everybody wins. The big brands that are there are happy.

**[34:40]** The event is happy. The attendees are happy. And so, you know, it's not a zero sum problem.

**[34:44]** It's, you know, collectively we can all win together.

### 34:49 — What AI actually did to outbound

**[34:49]** I think it's a really exciting time for events because I think the relevance of events are

**[34:55]** really heightening, especially with the impact AI is having on Outbound. I think it's really

**[35:02]** producing diminishing returns on the Outbound side. You have to be very creative and have

**[35:06]** enticing offers on Outbound for it to be effective. I think a lot of companies are lacking that

**[35:11]** creativity. So I would love your opinion on what you've seen AI do to Outbound, what you

**[35:16]** think is going to happen as people get their hands on more and more of these tools. And

**[35:21]** then how do you think AI is going to impact the events world as well?

**[35:25]** Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think in general, AI is incredible. And so it's allowing us

**[35:34]** to give me a superpowers and that's great as an individual. But what that means is that

**[35:41]** everybody is able to just all of a sudden send, you know, hundreds of thousands, if

**[35:45]** not millions of emails and cadences. And so on the flip side, if you're somebody who's

**[35:54]** in demand, if you're a big buyer, your inbox is just overloaded with email. I mean, I know

**[36:01]** a lot of people who are not even going into their inbox anymore. They're telling Claude,

**[36:07]** you know, or their agent to summarize their email and let them know what they need. And

**[36:12]** so, you know, it's becoming more and more challenging to actually break through and

**[36:18]** reach these target buyers. You know, you could have the best subject line and the best offer

**[36:26]** in the world. But if somebody is just never going to go into their inbox, then they're

**[36:31]** going to miss that every time. And so we're seeing this with, you know, response rates

**[36:37]** decreasing, conversion rates decreasing from outbound. And so it still works certainly,

**[36:42]** but at least from our perspective, we're seeing a lot more success with calling than we are

**[36:49]** with email outbound just because people are still picking up the phone and, you know,

**[36:55]** you can't do a ton of automated outbound calls, at least not right now. So in general, it

**[37:04]** seems like the outbound email channel is degrading. And then I think people are looking for other

**[37:11]** opportunities to really break through the noise and be able to, you know, find those

**[37:18]** buyers. So again, calling seems to be a good answer, but I think events in general, a lot

**[37:24]** of people are coming to us frantic saying, you know, our pipeline goals have not changed

**[37:29]** if anything they've increased and our outbound channel is decreasing. So we need to fix and

**[37:35]** we need to fix fast and events are one of those opportunities.

**[37:42]** I love it. Well, I don't think events are at risk either of being taken over by AI in

**[37:52]** any way or being made irrelevant. I think what's interesting is maybe there have been

**[37:59]** some forces that have made it maybe like easier to work remotely and do things like that.

**[38:03]** But I think when it comes to connecting with your buyers, I see it just getting more and

**[38:07]** more important over time to find a way to meet people in person because I don't think

**[38:13]** there's anything else that's going to be as meaningful or as enticing for somebody to

**[38:19]** connect with. So I think as people are evaluating their pipeline Gen strategies, I mean, a good

**[38:28]** portion has to be going to an event, the event strategy. Do you have any guidance on and

**[38:33]** I'm sure it may change per company, but any guidance for how much you should allocate

**[38:39]** in terms of overall marketing spend on events versus other channels?

### 38:45 — Proof of humanity in the age of AI avatars

**[38:45]** Yeah, well, just on the trust point quickly. I mean, I think it's only going to get worse

**[38:51]** in the sense that we're already starting to see AI be able to create avatars and things

**[38:59]** like that. And they're pretty good. And so I trust that this is you, Anthony, but I mean,

**[39:04]** we've never met. And so for all I know, you're somebody completely different somewhere else.

**[39:10]** And that doesn't necessarily matter in this conversation. But if I'm buying an expensive

**[39:16]** solution from you, then it matters a lot. I don't want to get scammed. I don't want to

**[39:20]** buy a false bill of goods. And so this sort of proof of humanity or this trust to know

**[39:28]** that you are, in fact, who you say you are becomes just even more difficult as AI and

**[39:35]** all the solutions that it powers gets better. And so meeting in person, whether that's at

**[39:39]** a big event or, you know, I mean, you could expand the definition of what an event is.

**[39:46]** You doing a roadshow could be an event, right? I think the important thing, people coming

**[39:52]** and traveling to your city, if you are able to activate that in a good way, it could be

**[39:58]** considered an event. And so I think really the in-person moment is what defines that

**[40:05]** trust and that relationship. And that is only going to become more and more valuable as

**[40:10]** AI gets better.

**[40:14]** I completely agree.

### 40:16 — The three phases: pre-event, at-event, post-event

**[40:16]** Yeah, I mean, when it comes to success at events, you know, it's really important to

**[40:25]** master all three phases, right? There's everything you have to do pre-event, there's things you

**[40:29]** have to do at the event, and there's things you have to do post-event. And so and if you

**[40:34]** mess up any of them, then you get no value from that particular buyer. So for example,

**[40:41]** I was at an event in Toronto last week, and I was there to build partnerships and meet

**[40:49]** buyers and meet our customers, but there were also people who saw that I was going to be

**[40:53]** there and they wanted to meet with me. And it was really interesting. I mean, there were

**[40:56]** some people who they failed step one pre-event because they didn't reach out before the event.

**[41:03]** And so they hope to find me at the booth or they hope to find me in the app. And oftentimes,

**[41:08]** you know, we never were able to connect because of that. Some people reached out ahead of

**[41:12]** time, they booked a meeting. So that's a check. But then they failed in step two, where, you

**[41:18]** know, they either they never came to the meeting itself or didn't come prepared or anything

**[41:25]** like that. And then the worst for them at least would be failing in step three, right? You

**[41:31]** do everything right before the event. You have an amazing meeting, you have my attention,

**[41:36]** I'm interested, and then there's no follow-up. And, you know, I mean, I can't tell you how

**[41:41]** often we see failure in one of those three phases. So I think AI really helps a lot with

**[41:47]** the pre-event and the post-event phase, right? It allows you to run your playbooks and kind

**[41:54]** of, you know, do everything in a perfect way as opposed to needing to rely on, you know,

**[42:00]** events and timing because we're busy. We're busy before and after events and we just forget

**[42:05]** to do these things. And then during the event, I think something like an AI note-taker will

**[42:10]** help a lot because again, you have so many conversations at an event, you meet hundreds

**[42:14]** of people potentially. It feels great when you're in the moment, but if you're not taking

**[42:19]** diligent notes, then you really mess up on that post-event follow-through. So I think

**[42:24]** AI just really helps across that cycle to make sure that you're maximizing those in-person

**[42:31]** human moments when you're there at the show.

**[42:34]** I have a question on that because I value in-person time so much like internally with

**[42:40]** the team too, but I have gotten so spoiled with transcripts on virtual calls. And I mean,

**[42:49]** we'll just set up a meeting like, "Hey, let's talk about this thing we want to build and

**[42:53]** then let's just talk at each other for about an hour and then just take that transcript

**[42:56]** there on a cloud and it'll build it."

**[42:59]** So what's your recommendation for getting the recording in-person? Do you use like a

**[43:04]** device to open up your laptop? How do you capture this?

**[43:09]** I just use an app on my phone. And so I've seen some of those devices that, you know,

**[43:16]** I think could be interesting. But in general, the phone is pretty powerful when it comes

**[43:23]** to the note taking. I think some of it is if it's not a dedicated app for an event specifically,

**[43:30]** then you just have one long transcript. And so trying to actually map who you're talking

**[43:37]** to and what that looks like has been challenging. But somebody smart out there might come up

**[43:45]** with a solution.

**[43:46]** No, I just think it's like, it's kind of, there was a point in time where people didn't

**[43:52]** want recorders on the virtual calls. And then it just became like, "Okay, obviously every

**[43:55]** call I'm on, I'm just assuming it's recording, even if I don't see something." Somebody's

**[43:58]** using granola or whatever in the background. And then I think culturally in-person, I think

**[44:04]** we're going to see like, yeah, I'm just going to assume anytime I'm talking to anybody,

**[44:09]** it's getting recorded because there's too much value happening in a conversation that

**[44:14]** you can't avoid putting in a transcript so you could do something with it later.

**[44:18]** Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's going to go through the same adoption curve as we

**[44:23]** saw with the note takers. I mean, yeah, you used to see fireflies or fathom or any of these

**[44:28]** show up in a gong and you're kind of like, "What are you doing?" And now if you don't

**[44:33]** see that, yeah, to your point, it's running granola or something else in the background.

**[44:39]** No, 100%. Well, I'm excited for that time too. And then the other thing would be really

**[44:47]** good for guidance for people listening, percent of budget on events. I'm assuming we're seeing

**[44:54]** it increase because we're seeing an increase of effect or at least a decrease of impact

**[44:59]** on other channels. But any rough guidance or anything that would determine whether they

**[45:07]** need more or less events than other companies?

### 45:10 — How much of your marketing budget belongs in events

**[45:10]** Yeah, so ACV is definitely going to be a big component. If you're anything below $20,000

**[45:18]** and then it can generally be harder to drive as much value from events, anything above

**[45:23]** 20K, the higher the better. But in general, we see historically 25% to 30% of marketing

**[45:32]** budgets have gone towards events. And in the last year or so, we're seeing that go up to

**[45:38]** 35%, 40%. So to me, 40% is a good number and that's just of marketing spend. Then you have

**[45:47]** a lot of the costs sitting things like T&E for the sales team. So I think the fully baked

**[45:52]** number is probably even higher than that, but we're seeing things like 40% of the budget

**[45:59]** and then 50%, 60% of pipeline coming from events.

### 46:03 — Host your own or ride the tent-poles?

**[46:03]** And then do you see any difference between, hey, we should host our own events, we should

**[46:08]** do our own maybe micro events, pop-up events, we should host our own big event versus using

**[46:14]** other events, any difference in ROI or split of spend between those two categories?

**[46:20]** It really, I mean, not to take the cop out, it depends, but I think it's a mix. If you

**[46:29]** run your own small events and you do them independently, then you're able to take advantage

**[46:37]** of an audience that's in that city. But there's no, again, there's no FOMO or time pressure

**[46:44]** to come to that event. So let's just say it's a dinner. If you're running a dinner in New

**[46:50]** York City, there's a lot of competing dinners on any given night, including having dinner

**[46:55]** with your three soon to be four kids. So it's not just professional, it's also personal.

**[47:03]** The benefit of doing an activation around a big event like Dreamforce or something like

**[47:09]** that is that you have 20,000 to 50,000 people who are all coming to a new city. And so the

**[47:18]** combination of people that you could have in that room is unique. And so again, there

**[47:24]** is that FOMO. There's also a lot of competing priorities there too, but it's a little bit

**[47:29]** different. But there's only so many big events that are going to be relevant for you at any

**[47:38]** given time. And so if you only rely on the big events, then there's going to be lots

**[47:42]** of gaps in the schedule. So generally what I recommend is map out the big tent pull events.

**[47:47]** Those are going to be your key events. Obviously, you're not going to want to run a small dinner

**[47:53]** in New York if your major tentpole event is happening in San Francisco on that same week.

**[47:59]** And so mapping out the tentpoles and then working down and filling in the gaps with

**[48:04]** things like roadshow events and local activations is the way to go.

### 48:10 — Wrap

**[48:10]** I love it. Well, especially everything you've built is helping people not only make these

**[48:17]** decisions but also get the most ROI out of every event they go to. I think it's a very,

**[48:24]** very complex problem to solve for. I've been on the other end of trying to calculate the

**[48:31]** ROI, figure out which events we should go to. I am doing that right now at LeanScale.

**[48:36]** I have the same pain. Hey, we're looking for events where CROs and heads of RevOps are

**[48:41]** going to be. Which one should we go to? When we go, how should we show up? And it's not

**[48:46]** an easy decision to make and I have 100% made those decisions on gut and have been burned.

**[48:54]** So anytime I can avoid making a decision that just wastes my time, waste a lot of resources,

**[49:03]** I think it's worthwhile. And I'm 100% seeing the trend go towards more events, less cold

**[49:10]** outreach, less digital and doing it the old-fashioned way, getting in front of people, meeting people,

**[49:17]** but then staying relentless with the pre-event prep, showing up right during the event and

**[49:23]** then the follow-up. I agree with you. So many people miss out on one or more of those major

**[49:29]** components of an event and I really appreciate the story. So thanks for everything that you

**[49:34]** brought today, Alex, and walking us through and you're an absolute expert in the event

**[49:38]** space and I love what you built and what you're doing and I'm really excited to see what you

**[49:44]** all do next and for our audience to hear about this and hopefully get their events fully

**[49:50]** dialed in. I love it. This was fun. Thanks for having me.


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_LeanScale Knowledge Hub. Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast (https://www.leanscale.team)._