Delegate acquisition is not a term commonly used within the events industry, with only a handful of companies being able to deliver this level of service. Essentially, this consists of ensuring that the senior professionals that clients want in attendance are at their event. At METCO Global, we are specialists in overcoming any attendance challenges and maintain an unfaltering ability to deliver what others can’t.
There are some known challenges that professionals within the events industry face. One common problem is being able to achieve open communication channels with desired delegates. C’Suite delegates are difficult to engage with from the start and this is not made any less challenging by the additional obstacles that modern technology brings. Nothing is as simple as just sending an invite by email or calling your target attendees. Now with such high security on large company IT infrastructures, often external mail is filtered straight out and never reaches the recipient. In today’s professional climate, we communicate increasingly through email and the likelihood of an unknown email being read by a C’Suite professional is low. With more than 281 billion emails sent last year, a significant number of those would be deleted due to the frequency and high volume that are received.
If your email was to reach the correct inbox, what makes you think they would read it? The saturation of the events market in certain industries means that the delegates on your attendance list will also be on other companies’. Therefore, this group of people will be regularly contacted with the end goal of getting them to attend an event. With the number of companies now organising events within the same vertical, it is inevitable that these delegates will be filtering these contacts out. Whereas some companies have opted for an outsourced telemarketing approach, At METCO, we work very differently. We are experts in relationship building, this is why our clients choose to work with us. As trusted professionals within the events industry, we have developed relationships with many C’Suite delegates and are able to approach them differently in order to pique their interest, resulting in their attendance at our clients’ event.
Whilst working with clients, there can be a challenge created by their unrealistic expectations regarding who they want at their event. Understandably, senior industry specialists are in high demand, therefore their time is valuable. From this perspective, for them to attend an event, it would need to be worth their time. This poses the challenge of giving the delegates a genuine reason to attend. At METCO Global, we are able to see the bigger picture and can present this to delegates in such a way that they would not want to miss it.
There are a range of challenges that manifest themselves during the event planning and execution. This will be the same regardless of the company or vertical they are operating in. The difference comes with how you overcome those challenges and the lengths your partner company go to, to ensure that the client’s event is a success.