About Zylo's SaaSMe conference

With SaaS now mission critical to business operations and, as a result, one of an organization’s largest expenses, gaining complete visibility into your SaaS portfolio - the applications that are driving most value and where costs can be saved - is understandably a top priority for all companies.

But given that a company uses a whopping 291 SaaS applications on average, this is also clearly more easily declared than done. 

So as the leader in SaaS Management, Zylo introduced SaaSMe - the first industry conference fully dedicated to assisting IT, SAM, finance, and procurement leaders unlock value and drive responsible growth through smarter SaaS management. The multi-day virtual conference, now in its third year, continues to provide prospects and customers with an unprecedented level of expertise on achieving better SaaS efficiency and savings. 

The challenge

The virtue of a virtual user conference lies in the wealth of information shared by  attendees - details about their pain points and goals shared during registration or sessions, for instance. This is invaluable intel for all teams in the company. 

But unfortunately for Zylo, before they turned to Zuddl, the goldmine of attendee data they could collect during SaaSMe ‘22 was both at their fingertips, and yet frustratingly out of reach. 

“Our prior platform’s Salesforce integration was very cumbersome, very manual, very time-consuming and very difficult” states Brad Brown, Senior Director, Marketing and Sales Operations at Zylo.

It made the entire process more complicated and fragmented, so much so that it was difficult for Zylo to put the conference data to use in a timely and effective way and actually benefit from it.

[.customer-stories-objectives-wrapper][.cs-36px]Event goals[.cs-36px][.customer-stories-objectives-inner][.customer-stories-objective][.cs-objectives-icon][.cs-objectives-icon][.cs-p2]Leverage clean, real-time event data to drive new pipeline[.cs-p2][.customer-stories-objective][.customer-stories-objective][.cs-objectives-icon][.cs-objectives-icon][.cs-p2]Equip Sales with attendee/account-level insight for hyper- targeted outreach[.cs-p2][.customer-stories-objective][.customer-stories-objective][.cs-objectives-icon][.cs-objectives-icon][.cs-p2]Speed up conference video production time so that videos can be used for Sales follow-ups[.cs-p2][.customer-stories-objective][.customer-stories-objectives-inner][.customer-stories-objectives-wrapper]

Key outcomes

After switching to Zuddl, Team Zylo was able to quickly and easily access SaaSMe 2023 data enabled by Zuddl’s Salesforce integration. With this data firmly in hand, and aided by the virtual platform’s suite of tools, Team Zylo was able to move faster, act smarter and work better-aligned. 

Improved data visibility and information sharing enabled nimble actions on high-priority opportunities, more effective prospect selling, and better customer problem-solving, leading to increased deal closures and pipeline growth for the company.

Here’s how Zylo spun SaasMe 2023 event data into gold.

(1) Integrated data powered strategic decisions + smarter, faster actions

Quick. Seamless. Comprehensive. Three words that describe Zuddl’s powerful Salesforce integration and turned Zylo into instant fans.

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“The integration, not just the strength of it, but the intentionality and functionality was exceptional,” Brad states. “It really enabled us to focus the bulk of our time and energy as it related to this event in upleveling our practice because we didn't have to spend a lot of time aggregating and compiling the data.” 

This was critical in optimizing results both before and after the event. 

• Higher quality before-event registrations: The team could see in real-time which channels were performing “all the way down to registrations driven by AEs and BDRs” explains Brad. All this information captured on a single dashboard meant that it was a simple matter to identify where there were open opportunities, and refocus energy and effort in bringing prospects to the table, or should we say event.

• Highly targeted after-event follow-ups: The more data that’s easily available, and the more digestible it is, the faster it can be put into action - and that’s exactly what Zylo did. The team was able to create a really dynamic assignment flow based on event data such as the type of sessions attended by a prospect or their engagement activity, which was tied to individual account data in Salesforce.

“We were able to get the right information into the hands of the right salesperson, highlight what their messaging should look like and have them take action within a day” Brad explains. “By the time I sat down to dinner on Day 1 of SaaSMe, we already had our Salesforce data built and shared, cadences loaded, and everything was ready to go for our team to take action the very next day."

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(2) Insightful, personalized follow-up for customers +  prospects via session scoring

Zylo didn't let the fact that they had 1000+ registrations at SaaSMe get in the way of understanding the pain points and goals of each prospect or customer at the conference and connecting with them post-event at an individual level. What seems like a mammoth join-the-dots task was made simple through the team’s intelligent use of event engagement scoring layered with Salesforce data.

For prospects:

• Using Zylo's value pillars, the team carefully scored each session based on which pillar it was directionally focused on.

• Zylo then analyzed each prospect’s attendance at sessions and engagement activity within each session. Scoring made it simple to see which pillar of SaaS management held the prospect's primary interest or concern.

• The Sales team, with this focused formula in place, could create exceptionally individualized follow-ups e.g. for a prospect attending sessions around SaaS security, follow up messaging and content would be security-focused. This way, Zylo would be so relevant to the areas of SaaS management the prospect was interested in or concerned about that they would be near impossible to ignore.

• Additionally, as sellers had access to a prospect’s event session-level data such as questions they asked or their answers to a Poll, follow-up could be powered by the deepest understanding of the prospect, setting a new standard for personalized engagement.

For customers:

• As Day 2 of SaaSMe 2023 was exclusively for Zylo customers, Brad’s team effectively ‘quarantined’ them for Day 1, and put them into a flow where follow-up would occur only after Day 2. Additionally, only Customer Success executives were assigned follow-up with customers.

• The team looked at the sessions and synopses of Day 2  and matched them to Zylo service offerings. 

• Then, by analyzing a customer’s session attendance on Day 2 against their Salesforce account data, it was possible to gauge their interest in additional service offerings and whether they were already subscribed to them.

• A CS executive could be alerted to a customer’s activity, and armed with this insight could reach out to ask if they had any additional questions about the service they could answer.

In this manner, whether you were a prospect or a Zylo customer, the team ensured that each attendee felt seen, heard, and cared for by providing thoughtful, helpful, and considerate support and advice tailored to their specific needs.

Furthermore, thanks to the Salesforce integration, Team Zylo would be able to use this data to compare with other events down the road and to enrich their understanding of an individual’s entire customer journey, which Brad describes as greatly empowering.

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(3) Branded event videos took follow-up emails to the next level

Sending a relevant session recording post-event reminds prospects of their reasons for attending, what they learned, and what they can apply at work. It's a powerful tool for sellers to move the needle forward. 

But it can take up to a week for video producers to create video recordings and highlights - by which time the window of opportunity for sales looks more like a rapidly closing door.

“You only have just a brief moment in time to capture momentum especially in this day and age”, points out Brad. “If you take weeks or days to engage, that moment is gone - your prospect has moved on.”

Using Studio, Zuddl’s built-in video production tool, Events & Field Marketing Lead Nicole Tawney’s team was able to create SaaSMe 2023 branded video highlights within hours and in-house. The tool did all the heavy-lifting.

‍“It was a much easier experience for us after we found that we could go in and use the [Zuddl] Studio to record multiple sessions at the same time. And then that the videos were already synced correctly and be able to be edited with the platform” says Nicole. 

With faster event video production, Sales could reach out to prospects with recordings pertinent to pain points/goals (based on Salesforce + event data), while the event was top of mind.

“We would have lost that opportunity to follow up with content to give them more information and ability to action on the challenges they face in real-time without Studio” says Brad.

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To sum up

Events generate a wealth of attendee data, but often this data goes ignored because it needs to be orchestrated and shared in a way that makes it easy for sales and customer success teams to use.

But Zuddl’s Salesforce integration, platform tools, and stellar customer support was exactly the backbone system that Zylo needed to get a more complete picture of prospect and customer engagement and sentiment, determine how to follow-up, and translate insight and strategy into revenue opportunities.

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