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Face-to-Face in an AI World: CAIS on Event-Led Growth · Sales Pipeline Radio

• 0:15
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 0:15
  Welcome back to Cvent CONNECT.
• 0:16
  Excited to be joining you live from the Convention Center here outside
• 0:20
  of the Stars at Night Ballroom.
• 0:21
  Excited to have with us here, Andrew DePaul.
• 0:23
  He's the SVP of Digital Marketing for CAIS.
• 0:26
  Thanks so much for joining us, man.
• 0:27
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 0:28
  Matt Heinz: How's the event been so far?
• 0:29
  Andrew DePaul: It's been great.
• 0:30
  You know, this is my third time here.
• 0:32
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 0:33
  Andrew DePaul: So, it has been fascinating.
• 0:35
  You know, there's some old friends that you meet up.
• 0:37
  Matt Heinz: Sure.
• 0:37
  Andrew DePaul: I was just telling your team that I walked into the ballroom
• 0:40
  on Monday in shorts and a t-shirt, and Carissa saw me and she's like,
• 0:44
  "I have 50 things for you to do."
• 0:45
  Matt Heinz: Oh.
• 0:45
  Andrew DePaul: And one of 'em is this podcast.
• 0:46
  Matt Heinz: Yes.
• 0:47
  Andrew DePaul: So I'm really excited.
• 0:48
  And it was like, good timing, perfect timing.
• 0:49
  So it's been great.
• 0:50
  Matt Heinz: You don't say no to Carissa.
• 0:51
  Andrew DePaul: You can't say no to her.
• 0:52
  So it's been fabulous, you know.
• 0:55
  Downstairs today meeting a lot of vendors.
• 0:56
  Sitting in on some of the flash sessions.
• 0:58
  I love the roadmap session.
• 1:00
  I have like 50 ideas coming out of this, of what we're gonna do.
• 1:03
  Matt Heinz: It's interesting like, because you're a marketer, right?
• 1:05
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 1:05
  Matt Heinz: Like I'm coming in the marketing space to, to go to an event
• 1:07
  that is not really, that is emerging as a marketing event, but is really
• 1:10
  more of a travel industry event.
• 1:12
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 1:12
  Matt Heinz: And to sort of feel the energy in the room among event planners,
• 1:15
  event producers, you know, the venue, evangelists down on the trade show floor.
• 1:20
  I mean, it, it didn't feel like the pandemic was that long ago.
• 1:23
  And yet the events are back.
• 1:25
  Andrew DePaul: They're back.
• 1:26
  They're back.
• 1:26
  For us especially.
• 1:27
  During the pandemic when I started a CAIS, it was all virtual.
• 1:30
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 1:30
  Andrew DePaul: So it was webinars and then we started to tiptoe back into
• 1:34
  this space and we've just seen such tremendous growth over the years.
• 1:38
  And it's great to see, you know, the event planners get to kick back
• 1:41
  here and relax a little bit and not have to stress about an event.
• 1:44
  Matt Heinz: Oh, these people can party.
• 1:44
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 1:46
  They're ready to go.
• 1:47
  They're ready to go.
• 1:47
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 1:47
  Alright, so I wanna talk about what you guys are doing to
• 1:49
  have built your event program.
• 1:50
  I wanna talk about your flagship CAIS Summit.
• 1:52
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 1:52
  Matt Heinz: But first, like, who is CAIS?
• 1:54
  What is CAIS and who are your customers?
• 1:55
  Andrew DePaul: So we are a two-sided marketplace.
• 1:58
  So we sit between financial advisors and asset managers.
• 2:02
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 2:02
  Andrew DePaul: And we deal in anything that is not a stock
• 2:05
  or a bond, so alternatives.
• 2:06
  So we are dealing with about 2,000 wealth management firms.
• 2:10
  Matt Heinz: Wow.
• 2:10
  Andrew DePaul: And that is 50,000 plus advisors.
• 2:13
  And those advisors have $6.5 trillion in client assets.
• 2:17
  So there's a lot of money in this space, and we're trying to capitalize on it.
• 2:21
  We are working with alternative asset managers and bank issuers to help
• 2:25
  streamline and scale their efficiency.
• 2:27
  So we're trying to be that one-stop-shop for advisors.
• 2:30
  It deals with pre-trade, trade and post-trade parts of the life cycle.
• 2:34
  So we're there for them to come on, look at some products that these asset
• 2:38
  managers have, help them with the trade process, and then help them look at
• 2:41
  their holdings and everything after.
• 2:42
  We also really dive into the education of alts.
• 2:45
  It's a newer space to some people.
• 2:47
  You know, even when we have these financial advisors at our events, some
• 2:50
  of them are like, this is very detailed and this is a difficult space, and so
• 2:54
  we dove into that education part of it.
• 2:56
  We have a tool called CAIS IQ, which helps manage this.
• 2:59
  We are just like on the ground promoting alts, promoting the democratization
• 3:03
  of alts, really trying to amplify it.
• 3:06
  So we've been around since 2009.
• 3:08
  We kind of operate like a startup, but not really anymore.
• 3:11
  This is a, you know, all steam ahead.
• 3:14
  We've seen so much tremendous growth through just the platform
• 3:17
  and through our event space.
• 3:18
  Matt Heinz: So diverse go-to market program, lots of stuff going on
• 3:21
  the marketing side, sales side.
• 3:22
  Talk about how events fit into that go-to market program.
• 3:25
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah, I mean, we started with Cvent four years ago with a single
• 3:28
  event; an internal offsite event.
• 3:31
  And it was a success.
• 3:33
  And then we stepped into our flagship event, the CAIS Summit in Beverly Hills.
• 3:37
  Matt Heinz: Nice.
• 3:37
  Andrew DePaul: It was another success and it's just ramped up from that.
• 3:40
  So three years of that, we've had about 2,500 advisors and attendees total at
• 3:46
  those events over those three years.
• 3:47
  Then we started doing more regional events.
• 3:49
  So we've been growing that space.
• 3:51
  We did about 15 last year.
• 3:54
  Matt Heinz: Wow.
• 3:54
  Andrew DePaul: And then we've just seen tremendous growth there and we
• 3:58
  are just full steam ahead with, you know, using Cvent to get in front of
• 4:01
  the advisors and also get the asset managers on the ground with them.
• 4:04
  And it has that angle of education that I talked about.
• 4:07
  It's not just this product push of like, "Hey, buy this".
• 4:11
  They're coming in, they're talking about the changes in private equity,
• 4:14
  sports and entertainment investing into that is now an emerging market.
• 4:17
  Matt Heinz: Interesting.
• 4:17
  So one of the risks sometimes you run, like, especially I think in your
• 4:19
  industry is, you know, events can be seen as a commodity, sometimes
• 4:22
  you run the risk of that content feeling the same in a lot of context?
• 4:25
  How do you keep it unique and fresh?
• 4:26
  How do you sort of keep the content strategy before, during, and after the
• 4:29
  events, you know, unique and relevant?
• 4:31
  Andrew DePaul: We are really focusing on what's happening now.
• 4:34
  Last year at our CAIS Summit, we dove into politics a little bit
• 4:37
  more, you know, it was an election cycle, and talking about that.
• 4:40
  This year, you know, we'll be focusing a lot on sports and entertainment.
• 4:43
  So it's really finding out, and we use data all the time to find
• 4:47
  out what people are interested in.
• 4:48
  We are talking to our advisors or we're talking to our sponsors and our
• 4:51
  asset managers about what's happening.
• 4:54
  And we're surveying them.
• 4:55
  We're just having the discussions when we set up our sponsorship
• 4:58
  calls, which are really important.
• 5:00
  We're really talking to 'them about "What do you guys wanna talk about?
• 5:02
  What's happening in the market?" And that's how we tailor our agenda.
• 5:05
  So it's trying to have something new and exciting every year.
• 5:08
  And some of it can be, you know, rinse and repeat.
• 5:10
  We know what works.
• 5:11
  Matt Heinz: Sure, sure, sure.
• 5:12
  Andrew DePaul: But that's a lot of the background stuff.
• 5:13
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 5:13
  And it's, we need to have those playbooks.
• 5:15
  You need to have the things that are all in
• 5:16
  - Andrew DePaul: Exactly.
• 5:16
  Matt Heinz: But I think one of the things that you mentioned earlier is that your
• 5:18
  programs are highly measurable, right?
• 5:19
  It's not only highly measuring the ROI, but making sure that
• 5:22
  there isn't a deterioration of the effectiveness of those programs.
• 5:26
  Can you unpack "highly measurable" and sort of how that gives
• 5:28
  you an edge with your event.
• 5:30
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 5:30
  So we are looking at every single step in activity that an advisor takes.
• 5:34
  We're looking at from did they open a registration email?
• 5:37
  To did they badge into a session?
• 5:39
  And we're taking those badge ins and we're doing anything from returning
• 5:43
  that back to the sponsor saying, "Hey, here's who attended" to
• 5:46
  providing the person with CE credit.
• 5:47
  'Cause these advisors, they need that credit with the national
• 5:50
  institutions to make sure that they can keep their licenses and then we're
• 5:53
  just really diving into that data.
• 5:55
  We are taking all of that and folding it back into dashboards.
• 5:58
  We are putting them into post-event campaigns and we're really driving
• 6:02
  them and just hammering home the success of the event, and giving them
• 6:07
  the information that they requested.
• 6:08
  Matt Heinz: Awesome.
• 6:09
  Excited to have Andrew DePaul joining us here as the SVP of
• 6:12
  Digital Marketing at CAIS here on the show floor at Cvent CONNECT.
• 6:15
  We talked a little about measurability, let's talk about integration.
• 6:18
  Now, you talk a lot about how fully integrated your events are.
• 6:20
  What does that mean, and why is that important?
• 6:22
  Andrew DePaul: There's kind of the two parts of the integration.
• 6:24
  There's the, it's become a part of the discussion when we talk to sales.
• 6:27
  I mean, it is the number one thing we're talking about.
• 6:31
  We're getting on the sales calls internally.
• 6:33
  The first thing we're leading is here's how many people are coming to
• 6:35
  the event this week and everything, so it's integrated into the conversation.
• 6:39
  Our sales folks, when they're on the ground, it's integrated
• 6:42
  into their conversation.
• 6:43
  It's like, "Hey, why don't you come out, we're having an event in Chicago
• 6:45
  this week. Stop by and come and see these great speakers and learn this
• 6:49
  great information." And then there's the technical integration, right?
• 6:51
  This, the boring stuff that I have to do there is the Salesforce
• 6:55
  integrations; all the data.
• 6:57
  Making sure every single touch point is marked and captured as we go through.
• 7:01
  Matt Heinz: You can call it boring if you want.
• 7:02
  I think if that generates the results, that sounds sexy to me.
• 7:05
  Andrew DePaul: It's boring to some people because it's just ones and
• 7:07
  zeros, but, it really gets the job done.
• 7:09
  A perfect example this week, a colleague of mine asked me, "Hey,
• 7:13
  can you give me every single person from this specific firm that attended
• 7:16
  events since 2020? 2022", excuse me.
• 7:19
  You know that if I would've been like, oh, we didn't, you know,
• 7:22
  really track that really well, or we lost that, or it's in an Excel
• 7:26
  somewhere, I wouldn't be able to do it.
• 7:27
  I did it in a couple seconds this morning when I was drinking coffee
• 7:30
  and sent her the report, and it's just because we have the data on hand.
• 7:33
  We know how to find it, we know where it is, and it's been integrated and it's
• 7:35
  just, you know, part of my day to day,
• 7:37
  Matt Heinz: I mean, having the data is only one part of the solution, right?
• 7:40
  Like having the tools to be able to leverage it and activate is another thing.
• 7:43
  Like when we talk about having sort of a strategy process, playbook
• 7:45
  for doing events well, you know, the hidden sort of secret weapon
• 7:49
  oftentimes is the platform behind it.
• 7:50
  Talk about the role of technology and enabling this growing
• 7:54
  integrated strategy of yours?
• 7:55
  Andrew DePaul: We are you doing a lot with Tableau and just marrying
• 7:59
  all these points of data up.
• 8:00
  I see it really moving though into AI.
• 8:04
  I think that's gonna be the future of how we take that data and what we do with it.
• 8:09
  I wish I knew where that was gonna go.
• 8:11
  Matt Heinz: Right.
• 8:12
  So do I.
• 8:13
  Andrew DePaul: I think it'd be make a lot more money than I do now if
• 8:14
  I did that, but, I don't know yet.
• 8:16
  And I think, you know, as an organization, we're being AI focused
• 8:19
  and trying to lead with that.
• 8:20
  Matt Heinz: Yeah.
• 8:21
  Andrew DePaul: And we're trying to find ways and, you know, hearing all the
• 8:23
  great stuff this week about how Cvent is gonna be pulling AI in with Cvent
• 8:27
  IQ to enable that and just have that actually built into the system where I
• 8:31
  don't have to take files out and drop 'em into ChatGPT and do the analysis there.
• 8:35
  I can probably do it in the system.
• 8:37
  I think it's just going to, you know, ramp this up, you know, 10 times.
• 8:40
  Matt Heinz: I agree.
• 8:41
  You gave some great examples of sort of how well your events are integrated.
• 8:45
  That is not a trivial thing.
• 8:46
  A lot of organizations really struggle with getting every department to lean in
• 8:50
  and have a coordinated approach with some consensus around the why and the how.
• 8:54
  Was that a journey for you?
• 8:56
  Andrew DePaul: Yes.
• 8:56
  Matt Heinz: I think a lot of people hear that and think, oh,
• 8:58
  it's just asking them to do it.
• 8:59
  No, it is not.
• 9:00
  Talk a little bit about that journey.
• 9:01
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it was selling it.
• 9:05
  And I think it really did take that first CAIS Summit to get everybody on the
• 9:10
  ground to go, this is the way forward.
• 9:13
  And that first one was hard.
• 9:15
  It was just, you know, being in the trenches, I think is
• 9:17
  the word I'm looking for.
• 9:17
  Matt Heinz: It doesn't happen automatically.
• 9:18
  Andrew DePaul: It was difficult.
• 9:19
  And now, you know, this one, this year we're outpacing our registration rate.
• 9:23
  Matt Heinz: Nice.
• 9:24
  Andrew DePaul: And we have seen an uptick because all the tracking we can do.
• 9:27
  I can now see the people that I invited, if they registered, versus the people
• 9:32
  sales invited if they registered.
• 9:33
  And we're seeing the sales outpace the people I invite.
• 9:36
  And I invite way more because I'm sending out these blast emails, and
• 9:39
  we're just seeing that outpace, and we're seeing the adoption, and we're
• 9:42
  seeing, you know, our sales folks asking us, "When is the invite gonna be ready?
• 9:47
  I really need it.
• 9:47
  I really wanna send it.
• 9:49
  And we love it." It puts pressure on us as the marketing team to get that
• 9:52
  stuff done, and we have just seen it capitalize, and the proof was that first
• 9:56
  event, and we couldn't have proved it without Cvent, 'cause Cvent gave us
• 9:59
  the data and the enablement to do it.
• 10:01
  Matt Heinz: So on a platform of having a strong, measurable, highly
• 10:04
  integrated event platform, like one way to apply rocket fuel to that is
• 10:08
  activating your partner ecosystem.
• 10:10
  Talk a little about how partners are involved in your
• 10:12
  event strategy now as well?
• 10:13
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 10:13
  So they have helped us sponsor these events, so we have different sponsorship
• 10:17
  tiers that come in at different values and they get different enablement for
• 10:21
  their events and where they're placed at.
• 10:24
  I remember we were sitting in the event staff room, and one of the
• 10:28
  lead Asset Managers came in and just said, "I'm in next year."
• 10:32
  Matt Heinz: Nice.
• 10:33
  Andrew DePaul: It just, he's, he was sold.
• 10:34
  Matt Heinz: That's awesome.
• 10:34
  Andrew DePaul: And it was just, we had our first one right when we wrapped up;
• 10:37
  the one we were at and without the data that we have, we've created this beautiful
• 10:41
  dashboard that can basically show an individual firm and then the transactions
• 10:47
  that people have made in their product.
• 10:49
  So it's not just a generalization of, "Hey, you know, the average investor has
• 10:52
  made X amount of transactions", we can say they've transacted in your stuff.
• 10:56
  And then we can also show them how they've engaged with the exhibitor
• 10:59
  hub, who they are, what they did.
• 11:02
  And it's just been great and it's just great data and sometimes I'm shocked
• 11:06
  because it's so readily accessible to me.
• 11:08
  People are amazed when we give them this report that shows them all
• 11:12
  this breakdown of what people did.
• 11:14
  It's like I look at it every day and so it makes my job kind of
• 11:16
  easy where I can show them these great reports and all this data.
• 11:19
  And the sponsors love it, and we're trying to, this year, to dabble into a little bit
• 11:24
  more lead capture scanning we're thinking.
• 11:26
  Giving people just the ability to track their own leads and maybe have their
• 11:30
  own targeted outreach after the event.
• 11:33
  Matt Heinz: What does planning look like to make all of this happen?
• 11:35
  You know, what's the cadence of doing that?
• 11:37
  How often does that happen?
• 11:38
  And then what happens when rubber meets the road and the great well-laid
• 11:41
  plan starts to sort of adjust.
• 11:43
  Andrew DePaul: We get about two months after Summit's over before we
• 11:47
  start talking about the next Summit.
• 11:49
  And I'm sure it's the same way with CONNECT, you get this little bit of
• 11:52
  a break and then now with the added regional events, it kind of is nonstop.
• 11:56
  It's really the regional events.
• 11:58
  The first couple are difficult.
• 11:59
  And then they start to kind of do themselves.
• 12:02
  And then when there's an error, you know, luckily we have such a great integrated
• 12:07
  team that if something happens, we all kind of put our heads together.
• 12:10
  Our CMO has been amazing with having us, you know, making this the focal point.
• 12:14
  Our CEO has said this is a primary goal for the organization.
• 12:18
  So everybody knows that like, hey, there's an issue with Summit.
• 12:21
  Whatever that issue is, it's all hands on deck to fix.
• 12:24
  Matt Heinz: Got it.
• 12:24
  Talking a lot about best practices, the things you guys are doing well along
• 12:27
  the path to achieve those best practices that are always cautionary tales, the
• 12:30
  things that didn't always go well.
• 12:32
  What are like one or two cautionary tales for folks that are sort of
• 12:34
  earlier in the progression of this journey that you might caution and
• 12:37
  make sure, like, don't try that.
• 12:38
  Andrew DePaul: I have the perfect one.
• 12:39
  My first year here, Carissa pulled me in to do a talk on stage.
• 12:43
  So I had talked about our first year and I had looked at the email system in Cvent
• 12:49
  and thought, I don't want to use this.
• 12:50
  We use HubSpot to do our marketing outreach.
• 12:53
  I'm gonna do all the email deployment through that.
• 12:56
  And it just didn't work.
• 12:58
  And I had noticed deliverability issues.
• 13:00
  I had noticed, open rates were tanking.
• 13:02
  We were having advisors all over the place saying, "I'm not getting
• 13:05
  the emails." So the biggest pivot I made was the second year.
• 13:07
  I was like, we're doing everything in Cvent.
• 13:09
  We're adopting it from the start . We're doing all the invitation emails, we're
• 13:12
  organizing people in the [register] paths, we're doing the real basic best
• 13:16
  practice stuff that I should have done.
• 13:18
  I should have been smarter and kind of read the instructions versus
• 13:20
  trying to figure it on my own.
• 13:21
  And it was a total 180.
• 13:25
  I mean, it was the, probably the biggest success story that we had was just doing
• 13:29
  that, of just seeing registration numbers pour in versus bounce rates pour in.
• 13:34
  It was just a huge success for us.
• 13:35
  So I would tell anybody, just lean into what you have.
• 13:38
  Especially for an event like ours, that's invitation only, we're not
• 13:42
  publicizing who can come and we're really targeting our network.
• 13:46
  Matt Heinz: Just got a couple more minutes here with Andrew DePaul from CAIS.
• 13:49
  And I think, you know, for folks like yourself that have a pretty advanced
• 13:52
  approach to event led growth and event strategy, it can be intimidating
• 13:55
  to hear these kind of conversations for folks that aren't there.
• 13:57
  Kind of talk about the journey and the steps to get there.
• 14:00
  That this isn't something you just turn on and it's happening right away.
• 14:02
  And you've been, I mean, you've been at CAIS for a while, and it continues to
• 14:05
  evolve, but this has been progressive.
• 14:07
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah.
• 14:07
  And I, and I got lucky.
• 14:08
  So I got lucky where I was here when we got Cvent.
• 14:11
  I didn't inherit Cvent.
• 14:13
  I didn't inherit some other system.
• 14:15
  And I would say if you're lucky enough to start from scratch, work
• 14:18
  directly with the team, figure it out.
• 14:20
  If you weren't lucky enough and you maybe inherited something that's a little bit
• 14:23
  more messy, it's gonna be a lot harder.
• 14:25
  It's got a lot of uphill battle.
• 14:27
  I think keeping it simple is always the best approach.
• 14:30
  I've always had that of, you know, find the integrations, do the out
• 14:34
  of the box stuff, start small.
• 14:36
  Don't try to do something too advanced.
• 14:38
  And, you know, get the basics right before you start to do more advanced techniques.
• 14:44
  Matt Heinz: So we started this conversation with a comment.
• 14:46
  It's about just like, events are back.
• 14:48
  I mean, just the volume of people that are here and the energy
• 14:50
  in the room is just palpable.
• 14:52
  There's also a higher bar for events, right?
• 14:54
  I mean, we still see people sort of saying like, "Ah, I can just get this online, or
• 14:57
  I can get the on demand pass, or I can get some of the value of this elsewhere." I
• 15:00
  don't necessarily buy into that in a lot of functions, but I think that that bar
• 15:03
  is continuing; gonna continue to rise.
• 15:05
  Why will events continue to be critical for companies like CAIS
• 15:09
  to drive your go-to-market success?
• 15:11
  Andrew DePaul: It was touched on a little bit yesterday during the keynote, and I
• 15:15
  think with the increasing amount of AI, as great as AI can be, I forget the stat;
• 15:22
  it was something like 90% of content online will be AI generated by 2028.
• 15:27
  These face-to-face interactions, you can't replace that.
• 15:30
  So I think having, you know, getting our sales folk on the ground directly with
• 15:36
  advisors, getting them to walk over to an Asset Manager that they didn't know had a
• 15:41
  certain product, or they didn't know had a certain tactic, and introducing these two
• 15:44
  people together is just gonna be crucial.
• 15:46
  And it's gonna be harder to find that as time goes.
• 15:50
  And I think people are looking more for that face-to-face
• 15:53
  interaction for things like that.
• 15:55
  Especially when they're doing their research and digging into products.
• 15:58
  Matt Heinz: Well, I find myself as we leverage AI more and more, and as
• 16:01
  things become more sort of digital, more saturated, you know, if, if you
• 16:04
  think you could replace doing this with a lot of digital strategies and a
• 16:07
  lot of AI, I find myself increasingly saying, boy, hope my competitors do that.
• 16:11
  Because it'll give me an advantage to continue to go out and leverage
• 16:13
  human element and not just do an event, great events, but have a real
• 16:16
  event led growth integrated strategy like you guys have built a CAIS.
• 16:18
  So congrats.
• 16:19
  Andrew DePaul: Thank you.
• 16:19
  Matt Heinz: Thanks very much for being here.
• 16:20
  Appreciate it.
• 16:21
  Andrew DePaul: Yeah, thank you.
• 16:21
  I really appreciate it.
• 16:22
  Matt Heinz: All right.
• 16:22
  Take care.
• 16:22
  Andrew DePaul: Thank you.