Events drive dollars—and dollars make the world go round. In fact, a whopping 95% of business professionals say events are essential for nurturing and retaining their customers. Whether you’re hosting an intimate group training or a public launch announcement, your customer-facing events are keeping (and driving) revenue.
Not to mention, hosting customer events can also help to create a community for your brand, provide customers with valuable knowledge on your offering and drive referrals that help to expand your network.
So let’s dig into the types of events you can offer your customers.
1 Trainings & classes
If you’re in the business of SaaS like us, you are not shy to a product training or class offering. When you offer trainings or classes on new features or product updates it shows your customers that you want them to be successful on your platform and provides continued added value to their purchase.
Alternatively, you can host community classes for customers featuring key industry speakers or trending topics surrounding your product or service. This is a great way to build an in-community network and help to expand your brand to new audiences through existing customers.
🔥 tip: Show customers why you’re the master of your craft. Delegate your leadership team as speakers to lead community classes or product trainings and create reputable, familiar faces within your brand.
2 Lunch & learn workshops
Lunch & learns are something we are truly passionate about here at Swoogo. Although we mainly offer lunch & learns for our internal employees regarding new product updates or changes in our platform, they can easily be extended to customers.
Aim to host monthly, quarterly, or bi-yearly lunch & learns where you go can over the usability of your product, problem-solve, or discuss relevant or trending topics in your industry.
🔥 tip: Utilize lunch & learns as “office hours” or a place for your customers to gather and discuss product updates, troubleshoot and build industry connections.
3 Industry updates
Flex your expert industry muscles and host events surrounding major trends or updates in your industry. Aim to educate, rather than directly market your brand––no one wants to hear a drawn-out sales pitch––and watch the leads flow in.
For example, Hubspot hosts an annual user conference called Inbound where they offer sessions across all departments (Marketing, Sales, CS, etc.), providing access to transformative business trends and proactive conversations, while at the same time stubbly marketing their own brand.
🔥 tip: Launching a new product update? Host a one-off webinar discussing a relevant conversation in your industry and tie it back to your offering, stealthily of course.
4 Partner events
Join forces with your partners to help expand your network and open the flood gates for new registrations. Teaming up can create a stronger buzz across events and with double the promotion you’ve automatically doubled your reach. Sounds like a win, win to us.
🔥 tip: Tag team with your partners and broaden your outreach to target customers of like-minded companies and paralleled industries.
5 Incentive events
Host a sales competition for customers that rewards them with an exclusive trip (did someone say a 5-day European vacay?) or offers them with a unique experience they could not get on their own.
Typically, your top-performing customers will win these incentive trips so it’s a great time for them to network with other top-performing customers while also getting to spend time with your sales and leadership teams. This aids in the creation of an organic community, where people leave feeling even more connected to your company.
🔥 tip: If you are looking to engage with your partners, ask them to sponsor your trip and have a sales incentive tied back to selling a set dollar amount of their product (plus this gives you the opportunity to have more customers on the trip.)
6 Free vs. paid events
So what’s the benefit of a free event anyway? Well, free customer events actually still help with customer retention, while also reducing churn. You don’t need to spend a lot of dolla’ bills to see a positive return on investment. Hosting a free webinar or class will do the trick.
But hey—we didn’t say all of your events need to be free! Someone’s gotta eat. When you host events offering unparalleled product or industry knowledge it’s okay to throw on a price tag. People will pay for valuable conversations that offer key takeaways and actionable results, I mean take it from our friends at Hubspot.
🔥 tip: Choose an event management partner that offers unlimited events + registrations.
Wrap up
Hosting customer events that result in big rewards has never been easier. Whether they’re free or paid, big or small, webinars or in-person events, the opportunity to market your brand while still providing added value to new and existing customers is endless.
Pssst… Register to watch our latest webinar How to Drive Revenue Through Events, on-demand, and learn from industry experts on how to develop valuable content and measure your event success.