ISSUE 1
MOBILE LEAD CAPTURE | ANYTIME, ANYWHERE
H OW TO S AV E T H E L I F E O F A TRADESHOW SALES LEAD
Z U A N T. C O M
C L I E N T S P OT L I G H T ADP
NEW TECH Z U A N T VA U LT
ZUANT LOVES CITYMAPPER
W H AT D O E S F A C I A L R E C O G N I T I O N T E C H MEAN FOR MARKETING?
H OW TO S AV E T H E L I F E O F A TRADESHOW SALES LEAD
ISSUE 1
Z U A N T. C O M
Since the dawn of marketing, tradeshow and other in-person events have been the largest items in the B2B marketing budget, often exceeding more than 50 percent of the total budget. And yet, have you ever seen an ROI report on tradeshow activity proving this huge investment is paying off? If they exist they are as rare as Beluga caviar. Sadly, most event managers focus on creating great looking booths and coming home with a load of leads at the end of the show. There’s no regard for quality. It’s all about volume because unfortunately, quantity (vs quality) is how their organization measures their success. Those tasked with this job, have no interest or time for lead follow-up or ROI; they’ve already moved on to producing the next show. Ironically there is a marked resurgence today in tradeshows and events. Why? Because in our digital, always on(line) world of maximum productivity and efficiency (i.e. email and web meetings), tradeshows are one of the only channels to connect with customers and prospects face to face. On the flipside, from a booth visitor’s point of view, the opportunity to evaluate a wide range of potential suppliers in one location is priceless. Clearly tradeshows are a win-win scenario. Despite their resurgence, however, tradeshows can result in a bottomless pit of wasted marketing dollars. Too often potential sales leads are left to die a slow death on the showroom floor. If you are like me, perhaps you’ve experienced the same treatment at a show that you find when visiting a company’s website. You leave a request for information and get no response. The same is often true when you visit an exhibitor’s booth and although you might have a meaningful conversation with one of the company representatives, your actual request for follow-up never happens. Given the tremendous potential of tradeshows to produce high quality sales leads, let’s highlight what a day in the life of a tradeshow sales lead should look like to deliver ROI. It starts with preparing a year in advance for
ISSUE 1
a major show. CRM segmentation into the following four key target group should be your first order of the day: CUSTOMERS Major targets for significant growth opportunities CUSTOMERS Routine ‘keep in contact’ but not in the buying cycle segment PROSPECTS Major targets PROSPECTS Known, ‘keep in contact’ but not in the buying cycle segment The beauty of modern data capture systems is that all this data is pre-loaded on lead retrieval devices for an event. This enables the booth staff to know exactly who they’re talking with and who the sales executive is so that they can make an introduction in the booth. This data enables you to deliver four unique pre-event campaigns for each category. For instance, armed with these insights you can book interesting restaurants around the tradeshow city to host more intimate dinners for major target customers and prospects, while those in ‘keep in contact’ mode can receive an invitation to visit the exclusive bar and restaurant area within the booth itself at a large show. Technology plays an important role here as well. The cost of NFC (near field communication) chip plastic cards allows you to produce very upmarket VIP cards for release to all customers and prospects for ongoing use. They can then be scanned into events so that the individual can build up loyalty points and you get the tracking information to see who is the most active for follow-up purposes. Naturally your digital marketing team will create an email/newsletter program to introduce products and other news surrounding your presence at the event. Once again, this links back into the CRM data sets preloaded on the lead retrieval devices, so that you can actually see who has been the most active clicking through and reading items about your products or services.
Z U A N T. C O M
ISSUE 1
Z U A N T. C O M
WHY THE SHOW ISNT OVER WHEN IT ENDS Actually, the show is only the start of the real sales activity. Good, detailed lead capture is absolute key to ROI. From our experience, a typical breakdown of leads captured at a show usually fits into one of the following categories: 5% are immediate, “sales ready” hot leads for sales follow-up. 20% are fully qualified, but the timing is just too early, so still go to sales for them to keep in contact as warm leads. 40% are fully qualified, but are long range ‘nurture’ leads to be managed internally. Most clients get excited about the 5 percent who need to be converted quickly; the problem is that they are being picked up right at the last stages of a prospect’s buying cycle, and other competitors maybe involved at this stage, which diminishes the opportunity. As in other parts of B2B sales and marketing, the magic is found in the 20 percent warm leads; the guys who are fully qualified on your lead capture app, and need unpressurized, high quality follow-up to close the deals. The rub here is that most sales people are too busy to manage this process, so our successful clients issue these leads to their inside sales team or external call center as well, to ensure good quality contact until the close of the sale. This may take a year of two, so updated CRM reports at least on a monthly basis are the final, vital ingredient to show true ROI data ‘by sales executive’ and ‘by show’. As you can see, in terms of time investment, full exploitation of a show may well be a year before and two years afterwards, something that marketers must fully understand and embrace. The experience of event marketing becomes a continual quality monitoring and improvement process, especially if you have many events and shows to support. And that individual sales lead goes from being warmed up pre-show, to presented to in the booth, to nurtured until ‘sales ready’ and then bounced out to sales to close the sale and generate that topline revenue for your organization – This is quite a long journey, requiring modern marketing automation to successfully manage and prove ROI over time.
ISSUE 1
Z U A N T. C O M
W H AT D O E S F A C I A L R E C O G N I T I O N TECH MEAN FOR MARKETING
Panos Moutafis, Ph.D. is Co-Founder and President of Zenus Inc., which specializes in facial recognition systems for multiple applications. A computer scientist by trade, he is well-known for his work ethic, diligence, and persistence. Zuant CEO, Peter Gillet, caught up with him over breakfast in Houston recently, keen to discover if facial recognition technology could become mainstream, or sit on the fringes like many other great ideas such as RFID and iBeacons. FACIAL RECOGNITION: FACT OR FAD? PETER: Panos, first, is facial recognition technology in its heyday? PANOS: This is more than a cool technology that people will start using ‘sometime in the future’. Facial recognition adds clear value such as improved security and better user experience along with unmatched analytics and insights. It is already used to tag photos on social media, unlock and pay with cell phones, and go through border security. Since people are getting accustomed to the technology, facial recognition is becoming an expected service rather than a nice to have feature. 2018 is the year innovative events are embracing facial recognition! PETER: And this goes beyond what most people imagine? PANOS: Couple it with adjacent technologies such as emotion recognition or human posture recognition and the possibilities are limitless. You gain full control. Every powerful technology comes with great responsibility though. Respecting people’s privacy and handling metadata in a transparent and prudent manner is vital. Every party who has access to this type of information must be thoroughly vetted, 100% trustworthy and held accountable to the highest standards.
EVENT MARKETING: LET’S GET PERSONAL PETER: Let’s talk about events. How does this technology work here? PANOS: The use of physical tokens and privileged information have become integral parts of an event lifetime. They are used to check in people, restrict access, personalize the experience, measure attendance, extract analytics, and perform lead retrieval. Facial recognition belongs in the third form of authentication along with other biometric approaches. It is a software, which can identify a person from a database of faces without requiring a physical token or the user to provide any privileged information. Technological advancements have increased accuracy and drastically reduced. Therefore, we are seeing increased adoption in other industries (e.g., airports, social media, and cell phones). PETER: Well, take us from the start of the process; I always chuckle to myself when I check into to a high tech event for a mega-company and I wait in line for someone to tick off a spreadsheet or hand write my badge! PANOS: The attendees are not always good at following instructions displayed on the terminal. They often cannot find their ticket; it takes them a while to retrieve the QR code on their phone, or they simply need time to type in their email address. Facial recognition addresses the root cause of the problem by eradicating the need for user actions. Depending on your preference, you may want to implement a self-service or a hosted check-in mode. In either case, the premise is the same. When an attendee approaches the check-in station they will be instantly identified without them having to take any action. Simple. The best part is that you do not need to purchase expensive hardware because any device with a camera works.
This includes virtually all laptops, tablets, and smartphones. In addition to making the check-in process more efficient and thus reducing costs, face recognition has been proven to increase user engagement and attendee satisfaction. It is an excellent way to promote the innovative nature of your brand and impress attendees. PETER: And I guess ID checking is enhanced? PANOS: Even though checking the ID of the attendees entering the venue is a step in the right direction, most of the existing implementations have limitations. Attendees are asked to present their ID and an untrained host is taking a quick look before giving it back. This is not enough. Doing a proper ID check, on the other hand, is time-consuming. One would have to check the issue and expiration dates, scan the code and make sure it matches the ID unique number, check whether the picture matches the person presenting the document, and so forth. There is a faster and more secure way to perform this task properly. In particular, attendees can be requested to take a picture of their ID along with a selfie when they register online. A facial recognition algorithm will ensure that it is a real picture (liveness/spoof detection) and that the two faces match; other computer vision algorithms will perform the rest of the checks in real-time. We see this approach being used widely in other applications such as the banking and hospitality industries (e.g., Airbnb). PETER: Could this be used for Session Tracking as well? PANOS: Event hosts spend a significant amount of time recruiting speakers, curating the content of their shows, and organizing sessions that cover different aspects of the event theme. In addition, conferences with a deep educational focus often assign credits and accreditation to participants who attend specific sessions. Face recognition is a good fit for this because it requires minimal setup and extracts analytics in a non-intrusive manner. Depending on different technical factors, session tracking with face recognition can be as simple as putting a tablet or cell phone on a stand near the entrance of each room. The camera will automatically capture the video stream and send it to the cloud for processing. There is no need for special hardware and expensive installation costs. PETER: We’ve experimented with heatmaps for different clients using RFID technology in the past - could this be done more cost-effectively now? PANOS: Face recognition can be a great way to compute and draw heatmaps. Tracking the number of faces visible by the camera across the different event locations is straightforward. It does not require special hardware and
it is easy to install and configure. Depending on the level of investment, the information can be as high level as how many people on average stood and passed by a certain point of interest or as fine-grained as extracting insights by group type and knowing each attendee’s journey. PETER: How about other applications out on the show floor? PANOS: One can use screens (equipped with a camera) around the venue that identifies attendees and display personalized information ranging from where food is being served to what next session they should attend. Likewise, the information desk personnel could be equipped with similar capabilities. Being able to identify a person while they are walking towards the desk allows them to personally greet them and anticipate their needs. Along the same lines, one could combine face recognition with chatbots to offer the most efficient and personalized customer service. There is a myriad of interactive applications that could be developed. It is up to your imagination. CALLING ALL MARKETING QUALIFIED LEADS PETER: And my favorite subject of course: Lead Retrieval! How does face recognition factor here? PANOS: As you know, the current situation is that exhibitors have to manually scan each person’s badge and enter all the relevant information into a lead retrieval application to summarize the discussion. With face recognition, it is possible to automatically keep track of how many and which people visited the booth. The lead generation and conversion statistics are vital in the sales process. In addition, this technology allows you to keep track of how long attendees stayed at the booth and how they were feeling. Analyzing their sentiments combined with the information collected before/during the show enables lead management like never before. At the end of each day, the exhibitors will receive a full report. The leads will be automatically scored by their likelihood to make a purchase decision so that the team can focus on the best targets and following up promptly. Face recognition combined with audiovisual sentiment analysis will have a dramatic impact on leads retrieval. PETER: I know that some people will think that Facial Recognition is creepy and they feel uncomfortable about it? PANOS: That is true, but real-world deployments by Zenus and our partners show that the majority of attendees are willing to use facial recognition. That is, the first
time an event planner introduces the option they can expect 50-60% of the people to upload their photo. We see attendees talking to their friends and colleagues about how fast and easy the check-in process was, so we expect the opt-in rate to grow for repeat events. The great thing about facial recognition is that not everyone must opt-in. Instead, it works in conjunction with name search and barcode scanning. The same check-in station can simultaneously allow attendees to use any of these three ways to get their badge. If you have enrolled in face recognition you will simply go through faster! It is worth noting that a participation rate of 20-40% is enough to make a difference to the on-site registration process. Speeding up the process for this portion of the registered attendees can address bottlenecks. PETER: What about collecting the images is that hard? PANOS: There are plenty of online registration companies that already allow attendees to upload their headshot or take a selfie. Most devices such as laptops, tablets, and cell phones have a front-facing camera. If necessary, one could opt to use their social media profile picture. It really isn’t as hard as people might think. PETER: OK, let’s talk money - it still sounds expensive? PANOS: Some technologies are expensive, especially the ones that require specialized hardware, customizations, and on-site support. However, software-based applications tend to be more affordable. Luckily, face recognition falls into this category. Unless the event planner has excessive requirements, the associated investment is just a few cents per attendee expected to register.
C L I E N T S P OT L I G H T ADP Since the dawn of marketing, tradeshow and other in-person events have been the largest items in the B2B marketing budget, often exceeding more than 50 percent of the total budget. And yet, have you ever seen an ROI report on tradeshow activity proving this huge investment is paying off? If they exist they are as rare as Beluga caviar. Sadly, most event managers focus on creating great looking booths and coming home with a load of leads at the end of the show. There’s no regard for quality. It’s all about volume because unfortunately, quantity (vs quality) is how their organization measures their success. Those tasked with this job, have no interest or time for lead follow-up or ROI; they’ve already moved on to producing the next show. Ironically there is a marked resurgence today in tradeshows and events. Why? Because in our digital, always on(line) world of maximum productivity and efficiency (i.e. email and web meetings), tradeshows are one of
the only channels to connect with customers and prospects face to face. On the flipside, from a booth visitor’s point of view, the opportunity to evaluate a wide range of potential suppliers in one location is priceless. Clearly tradeshows are a win-win scenario. Despite their resurgence, however, tradeshows can result in a bottomless pit of wasted marketing dollars. Too often potential sales leads are left to die a slow death on the showroom floor. If you are like me, perhaps you’ve experienced the same treatment at a show that you find when visiting a company’s website. You leave a request for information and get no response. The same is often true when you visit an exhibitor’s booth and although you might have a meaningful conversation with one of the company representatives, your actual request for follow-up never happens. Given the tremendous potential of tradeshows to produce high quality sales leads, let’s highlight what a day in the life of a tradeshow sales lead.
NEW TECH Z U A N T VA U LT In a world focused on security and privacy issues, Zuant Vault provides precise control and management of contact data to meet the most stringent regulations such as GDPR. Zuant CEO, Peter Gillett, warns, “While most industry coverage of data issues in a GDPR world focuses on in-house systems, managing contact data on mobile devices poses a huge risk because it is stored on individual devices. Zuant Vault deals with this risk head-on.� SIMPLE 1X OPT-IN
ENHANCED DATA INTEGRITY
The cloud-based administrator management system guarantees 100% compliance by ensuring companies market only to those who have granted permission.
Zuant Vault is a secure datastore that lives in the cloud. Each account has a database in the Vault, and each database contains the entire history of every change made to every contact record. Every detail of every data load is also recorded, so that the entire history of the interactions between the company and its prospects and customers is properly maintained.
Two years in development, Zuant Vault is designed for ease of use, and allows sales teams to obtain consent from the individual one time only via a smooth opt-in process. Their consent is stored in Zuant Vault and transfers to all devices automatically, so that the process never needs to be repeated for that individual.
Zuant Vault eliminates duplicate contacts being created, which greatly improves data integrity. Sometimes circumstances such as iPads used offline at a tradeshow can create duplicate contacts at the point of data-capture. Now, when information flows into Zuant Vault, each contact will be de-duped automatically. This process is essential to GDPR compliance rules, because it ensures that previously captured consent settings are correctly interpreted when further interaction with a contact takes place.
Illustration 1: Whenever a new contact is being captured, the system automatically displays a consent capture dialog.
Illustration 2: Contacts detected as duplicates are merged upon being uploaded to Zuant Vault.
FLAWLESS SECURITY Controlled access to contact information is also vitally important. GDPR stipulates that contacts have the right to be erased from a system. Zuant will ensure that the details of any contact will not be revealed unless Zuant is able to guarantee that the relevant consent is in place. This is of particular importance given that Zuant can operate offline and on occasion may not be able to refer to the cloud-based Vault for the latest situation regarding consent for the contact in question.
Zuant can perform various actions with regard to individuals, such as sending emails, pushing data to third party systems, and storing data. The value of having data stored in Zuant Vault is assurance that the individual has consented before an action takes place.
www.zuant.com + 1 866 616 4958 704 Los Angeles
New Yor k
London