How to Turn Customer Events Into Revenue Drivers, with Gretchen Eischen

Speaker A: When we were going through the budgeting process at the end of the year and I presented, this is what I'm going to spend, he said, I don't want to spend that much money on an event. And I said, you're thinking about it, uh, incorrectly. This is not that we're spending this money on an event. We are investing in our community and in the community's growth.

Speaker B: Hi, and welcome back to SaaS Half Full, the only show serving B2B SaaS marketers. I'm Lindsey Groper, EVP at Ah Pan Blast, and I will be both your host and bartender. Today I had a great conversation with Gretchen Eichen, who is the CMO of Avetta. And Gretchen and I have known each other for a few years now. We met at an Empowered CXO event several years ago, but I finally got her on the show. She is coming off the heels of their customer summit and she made the case to double their event budget for that summit this year. So we walk through how she made the case for that. Some of the goods, the bad, the uglies, lessons learned of owned events. So if you care to grab a drink and join me as I speak with Gretchen about all things owned events. Gretchen, welcome to SAS Half Full.

Speaker A: Hi, Lindsay. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker B: I am excited to have you on. I feel like we have been trying to do this for quite some time. Timing wasn't right, topics weren't right, but we finally figured it out. I told you before I hit record that I've had awesome guests the last few months, but we're talking a lot about AI. You had a LinkedIn post. I, uh, think it was literally just last week from the time that we're recording, talking about your, uh, in person event. And it just stopped me in my tracks. I thought, you know what? I want to talk more about connecting in person instead of marketing to bots. I want to talk about how we got to get our buyers together. Um, so thankfully you agreed and wanted to come on and chat. Um, Gretchen and I have known each other for a handful of years now. We met through the Empowered CMO retreat, uh, which is an awesome event every year that has a really great in person and virtual community. Um, but before we dive into talking about good, bad uglies of owned events, Gretchen, I do want to give our listeners a bit of understanding of who you are. To start us off, are you joining me for a drink today?

Speaker A: I am. Of course I am. And indeed I am. Uh, I feel like I should have an affiliate marketing Link for this because I talk about it all the time. I'm having an a ah, drink a Paloma. So it's alcohol free but boy is it delicious and refreshing.

Speaker B: Um, cheers to you. Cheers. I love it. I have a. I don't know if it's the same, must be the same brand. Do they. I have a friend that drinks the AF IPAs so yeah, they do this. Yeah, so that's the same, same brand. Um, I am not going af. Um, I am drinking ah, a vodka soda. I found, found this like key lime flavored, um, like seltzer water that I absolutely love, that's perfect for summer. Um, so I have a Tito's and uh, some seltzer.

Speaker A: Sounds delicious. I do sometimes add alcohol to these

Speaker B: but

Speaker A: I do love Opio, love the

Speaker B: taste of a Paloma. Okay Gretchen, well give us a little background on you. Currently you're the CMO of Avetta, but walk us a bit through your journey. Were you always a marketer? And um, then we also want to know just why Avetta exists and a little bit more about the company.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'd love to share. Thanks for asking. So, indeed I am currently CMO at Avetta. I have been here for just about two years. I started my career in B2B technology at a company called Ariba way back in 2004. I was brought on board as a French speaking project manager to help companies lead through sourcing projects in the procurement space. Had just an absolute light bulb moment. Imagine this, a light bulb moment of excitement about the procurement industry and really understanding how businesses do business together. And it was really interesting to me. Um, just coming from a, you know, a background in studying language, learning about business was truly uh, impactful and exciting for me. I had an awesome experience in my 18 years at ARIBA. Had a number of different customer facing roles. Operations management, project management, customer success, account relationship management and leadership. Ultimately ended up in marketing. When we got a new CMO who came into the business after we were acquired by. Her name is Alicia Tillman. She's currently the CMO at Delta. And um, became my mentor. Brought me into the marketing organization where I had my second giant light bulb moment of my career where marketing and strategic marketing and the opportunity to really leverage a brand, a message and an experience to grow revenue just absolutely clicked for me right away. And I knew from then on I was going to be a marketer for life. Um, so that was over 10 years ago now. Had the opportunity at Ariba and ultimately at Field Glass as well under the SAP umbrella to lead a number of different marketing functions. Ultimately led the entire marketing organization for both Ariva and Fieldglass. Left because I wanted to have the opportunity to own my full strategy as some changes were taking place in SAP and those functions were being incorporated into the broader SAP marketing environment. So I wanted to own my own strategy, went to a company called icertus for a few years, led marketing as chief marketing officer there, uh, and then ultimately made my way over to Avetta. So I've had the chance to work in you know, large multinational public companies, smaller startup environments that were growing super fast as, as unicorns. And now working at Avetta where we're sort of mid sized, PE backed. What an awesome ride.

Speaker B: What an awesome ride. And as a B2B tech CMO, what a just stress free role that you have chosen for yourself.

Speaker A: Indeed. But you know I get so much energy from it and I, I really do love it. I feel really blessed to be like in a role that I just find a lot of excitement and energy from every day.

Speaker B: That's awesome. And tell us a little bit about Avetta now. If you're on this call and you're like, I've never heard of Avetta, that's not super surprising only because Avetta serves a very different and distinct audience. So tell us about.

Speaker A: Yes, well I like to say that Avetta is the best company that you've never heard of and honestly that was part of the reason that I wanted to come to this organization and take this role. Um, so at Avetta we are helping businesses and suppliers get ready to work. And effectively what this means is that you know, we work with customers that are in highly labor intensive industries. Think construction, distribution, manufacturing, chemicals, energy, anybody that's going to bring a really large onsite workforce into their environment and the work that they're going to be doing is likely very high risk. Avetta uh, uh, is a two sided business so we're working with those clients but we're also working with the uh, 260,000 or so contractors and suppliers that are part of our community today. These are folks that are electricians, plumbers, contractors doing that really high risk work on site. And Avetta brings them all together to make sure that our platform collects the right level of information to ensure that all of that work is done safely, that the suppliers have the right level of insurance and qualification and sustainability, uh, focus, business and cyber risk focus within their businesses to ensure that the clients can reduce as much risk as possible and the suppliers can deliver really high quality work on time. And everyone progresses forward together. So it's a really interesting business. Uh, mostly because again, we do have this opportunity to deliver both audiences. You know, the hiring clients and maybe safety leadership or procurement, but also the suppliers themselves who are looking to complete tasks and work, but also really want to grow their companies. Um, and we are really bringing both of those audiences together on our platform and in our community right now.

Speaker B: That's awesome. And um, before I hit record, you had said there's this sort of misconception that most B2B SaaS or B, uh, two B, uh, software companies sell to technologists.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Folks that are very tech forward, that really care a lot about AI and the AI, uh, positioning of your company and. But there's a whole host of B2B software companies and technology companies that do not sell technologists. We represent a bunch of them and we love them. I uh, mean we have sold to R and D leaders at ah, life sciences companies. We've literally sold into like the coal and mining industry clients. And so for those of you that are listening that maybe sell into non technology leaders or those that are savvy, like we sell into marketers. Right. We're all like pretty tech savvy. Um, but this is definitely the episode for you and even if you do, there's going to be some really good takeaways on, on this owned, uh, event strategy. Um, you have had a pretty packed first half of the year, Gretchen, in that you went through a rebrand repositioning at the beginning of the year and then quickly had the opportunity, um, that you spearheaded to turn around and like literally physically bring that to life in a place that is bringing your customers together, um, and really show that in the real world. So talk us through sort of that rebrand and then I want to get into the details of the Avetta summit that you just wrapped last week.

Speaker A: Sure. So I joked earlier that, you know, Avetta is the best company that you've never heard of. And honestly, when I joined the company about two years ago, it was not an organization that had been on my radar. Even though honestly, um, having worked in the procurement industry previously, a lot of the value proposition that Avetta offers is very relevant to procurement contacts. Avetta has gone through a storied history of acquisition and they did a rebrand I think in 2009 if I'm not m mistaken, uh, taking four different businesses that had been acquired and renaming them all as, as Avetta. And when I joined the organization two years ago, it was really apparent that there had not been adequate focus on really ensuring that a consistent message, a consistent look and feel was representing the brand. The brand itself had honestly been ignored. And what this led to is If I asked 10 different people at Avetta, uh, what they did or what Avetta does, you would get 10 distinct answers. And same thing for our customers. They were not able to articulate the value that Avetta, uh, actually they could articulate very well the trust and the partnership and the affinity that they had for the Avetta people. But when asked to describe what we did and what we delivered, it was really difficult for them to do so. And I would also just point out that, uh, we had nine different beautiful visual systems existing across our company. So you would go into meetings and, you know, stacked across your packed business day where you'd have meeting after meeting, you were on with internal folks, you would see nine different PowerPoint presentations throughout the day. As a marketer was horrifying. But honestly, we decided last year that we were going to, um, we were going to go forth and we were going to create a consistent message. There is a really powerful value prop here and it's a great company and we wanted it to shine. So we went through an awesome process of interviewing our customers, our stakeholders internally. Um, we looked across our competitive set. We really brought everyone together to net down who is it that we want to be and what do we want to stand for. And what we came up with was indeed this concept of ready to work. You know, we believe that it really represents again, the goal that our entire audience has. We know that it's easy to articulate for our team members and it allows us to really showcase and reflect our audience. And I really believe that the best marketing is simple and it just reflects the audience that you're trying to serve. We know that clients want to have strong and safe operations. They have to mitigate risk every day. We know that suppliers want to get work done efficiently and quickly and at the highest level of quality. Avetta, um, brings all of them together. We bring intelligence and the expertise to guide the community to be grounded in shared success and be ready to work. And it was a really fun experience to have the chance earlier this year to announce the brand internally, to bring everyone along on the journey of the message to, you know, bring it to our sales, uh, team and commercial team at SKO in January where we hosted like a swag pop up shop so they got the chance to know, pick and select their new materials and, um, and you know, water bottles and socks and all of that. Fun stuff that every salesperson really wants. And we did have the chance to really take it across the globe as well in bringing it to life for our employee base. The chance to then make it happen for our customers came at our event, a summit series that we kicked off in May.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you get through this massive rebrand repositioning. Get through sko. Everyone's like, great job. Love it, Gretchen. Well done. Probably want to take a break now, take a little breath. And you say, well, uh, except we got to start focusing on our own event. And, oh, by the way, in order to pull it off, I want to double our budget. M. Which you said made a few people nervous.

Speaker A: So talk us through the business case

Speaker B: that you made for the budget that ultimately got people over the line to say yes.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. It's really interesting. I actually have a very strong memory of the conversation that I had with our CRO about my desire to ramp up our budget. Last year, um, AVETTA hosted, at its time, the largest user conference that we'd ever had. We had about 270 folks on site. That was up from 100 the year before, so really strong growth. I was very proud of the event that we led last year, but it was a very standard user conference. Right. And there were some really shining moments of our awards dinner where we were able to, um. I think we had 350 award nominations last year, and we had, you know, 50 different winners that we presented throughout the conference. It was a really celebratory and great event. And when we walked away from it, I remember talking to my CRO and saying, like, I want to rethink this entire thing. And he was like, tell me why? And I said, because I. I just. I know that what we're focused on here isn't truly focused on the audience. Everything that we are talking about is about us. None of this is about our audience. And he kind of looked and he. He shook his head, and he was like, okay. When I, um. And then I remember when we were going through the budgeting process at the end of the year, and I presented, this is what I'm going to spend, he said, I don't want to spend that much money on an event. And I said, you're thinking about it incorrectly. This is not that we're spending this money on an event. We are investing in our community and in the community's growth. And I will tell you that I believe that we can get this event to 350 people next year. I think we can, uh, we can extend it and grow it even further than we did this past year. But we're going to do it with the right folks. The people that are going to be in the room are going to have the biggest impact for being here, and we're going to think about doing it differently. We're going to create an experience that really brings the community that we are building to life. And so he was like, okay, okay, he, he agreed on the bet. Um, I definitely think that our experience in launching the brand and the trust that we were able to build across the board and the executive leadership team in delivering strong work that really resonated, secured me the space of not a lot of challenge on the budget decision we made. Woo. When we went forth and, like, presented the event plan, I don't think anyone really understood the vision of what we were putting together. I think everyone was a bit overwhelmed hearing, like, oh, there's all these bells and whistles that we're doing. I don't think anyone truly understood it until they arrived on site. But I will tell you that now, next year they're asking me not just, how do we do it bigger, how do we do more of them?

Speaker B: And you're like, okay, okay, pump the brakes.

Speaker A: Like, I'm ready.

Speaker B: Um, so when you took a look at the traditional playbook that had been run, and maybe it was about a traditional playbook, maybe it was yours that you had had repeated, what was the first thing that you knew you had to cut that maybe felt a little risky, but you knew was necessary?

Speaker A: We had to take the parade of executives off of the stage.

Speaker B: Okay, what before and then what did that look like this year?

Speaker A: So last year and, and in previous years, and I'm sure at, honestly, any user conference that anyone in this audience has, has been to, you know, the pressure as a marketing leader who's going to be putting the messaging together of what gets put on your stage and, you know, the tap dance that you have to do of what is the ego of the executive and do how much time are they going to need to be present on the stage versus, you know, what does the audience actually care about and want to hear? And where we end up tending is usually nonetheless caving to the internal pressure of the audience that we have to deal with every day. That is the execs. And we create this, you know, long list of parade of execs who want to talk about their thing, and it's the talking head parade. So I wanted to take that and throw it on its head. I wanted to make sure that instead the audience was hearing a reflection of themselves. So rather than taking a, you know, cross country style awards dinner where you've got a big room of people and everybody claps after every single award, and we instead decided that we would bring the amazing award winners from last year and have them speak. They became the folks who actually articulated, um, you know, the challenge that they were facing, how they were progressing towards addressing the challenge, what they were doing in partnership with either their clients or suppliers, how they were making progress on the commitments to readiness that they had internally. They became the stars of the show. We also leveraged, um, you know, the introduction and announcement of our new awards for this year on our main stage, where then we could have interviews with, with, uh, folks that were winning to understand more about what they are focused on, what their challenges are, etc. So we just really flipped the script in terms of what we were talking about. And, and we also. Well, this will be different than most folks where usually when, when a B2B marketing leader is putting together a content frame, a lot of it is product forward in the past hours had not been. We had talked a lot about ourselves and a lot about our service, but we had not done a lot of product demo. So we did that. The piece that was about Aventa this year was leading with product innovation and technology.

Speaker B: Okay. Um, something that you also mentioned was that you allowed for live customer feedback with a product team. Yes, when that stood out to me. Um, and now granted, I haven't attended a lot of user conferences. How did you prepare the product team for that? Um, I'm sure it was received very well from the customers because they. Right, you. God, it's like you, you want that so bad. Any vendor that I have, I would love to actually just sit down and get all my questions answered. But how did you prepare the product team for that level of like, unfiltered feedback and questioning?

Speaker A: Yeah, great question. What we constructed in order to make this experience come to life was this concept of a connection center. So if you think about a traditional show floor, you'll typically have sponsor booths and uh, maybe vendor booths around the perimeter of the space, and you'll have seating and food, et cetera, in the middle. We constructed a similar sort of show floor, but we flipped the script in terms of who was around the room. So we did have partners who bring thought leadership and technology and service to bear, but we actually had our clients around the room. Those folks who are hiring for qualified suppliers who are looking for work, we set them up as booths. So it was almost like a job fair. Right. They could actually talk about their needs from a program perspective. Suppliers were able to come and pitch their competitive advantage and talk about their qualifications. We could be making direct connections.

Speaker B: Absolutely.

Speaker A: Interspersed amongst this, we also then had new feature sneak peek sessions and they were, you know, demo booth areas where our product team could actually demonstrate and show the features that we talked about on our main stage. But people could play with them right away. They could have the chance to interact with the solution, share feedback right then and there. Our marketing team was on site as well to catch supplier, uh, testimonials directly. So now as we're preparing to launch these features that we effectively did some beta testing for on site, we also have really strong testimonials from folks that were using it firsthand. We prepped with the product team. They were amazing partners in this. We actually came up with that idea of doing the new feature sneak peeks just I think three weeks before the event. Um, but they were all in. We also had a central hub where, you know, essentially any of our clients or suppliers in the community could come and it was fully staffed by Avetta folks. So they could do a demo of anything in the solution right then and there. They could also help a supplier to get in and update their profile. Um, you know, really take advantage of what they have already subscribed to as part of the Avetta platform. We could show them exactly what to do or how to do anything that they needed right then and there. So it was very hands on and very interactive. Um, and again the community just absolutely raved about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, what I'm picking up from this is it was this conference was a bit more like choose your own adventure so you could lean into the areas that matter to you versus you having to sit through sessions or keynotes or demos or whatever the case is that, that maybe you're not interested in or maybe you're not ready for, depending on, you know, how long you've been a customer, where you are in your journey. So I like that this was sort of, you can spend your time in a way that's going to be maximized for you individually instead of shoving everybody down the same path.

Speaker A: Yes. So we really took care to make sure that the agenda itself was planned with the, the maximum amount of time available for networking, interaction and learning within this connection center versus, as you're saying, sitting in a theater seat. We did, however, also have tracks for content so that when they did break to go to connection, uh, to uh, breakout Sessions, uh, you had a track that was for a supplier, a track that was for procurement, a track that was for health and safety, so they could really focus on learning that was most relevant to them, but then come back and share those learnings together as a community. A lot of what we put together from a supplier perspective was very showing our suppliers what they can do within their profile to be seen and more visible in the Avetta community so that they can continue to grow their business. People would go directly from that session straight to the back to the connection center, up to the hub to update their profile, then march over and talk with the client and, and be able to say, you should look at my profile. I'm ready to work for you. And it was just very organic in the way that the experience then unfolded because again, we were really able to make sure that each of the audiences were getting what they needed at the event.

Speaker B: Um, I want to go back to budget a little bit because sometimes bigger budget means, uh, louder and more significant pressure to prove and show roi. Talk to us about expectation setting for doubling the budget doesn't necessarily mean whatever your outcomes are going to double as well. But just talk to us a little bit about, um, I guess what, what type of metrics did you intentionally ignore and just say we're not even. That's, that's not the point. And which ones did you lean into to show overall success to stakeholders?

Speaker A: Yeah, I love this question because, um, you know, I have like a typical answer that I think that one would give in this scenario of, you know, we, we weren't looking at the traditional register. You know, obviously marketers, if they're savvy today, are not looking at registration count and, you know, the vanity metrics of who's registered or who's even in attendance. They're looking at pipeline. They're looking at the influence of pipeline. They're looking at the build of pipeline. In our business, this had not been utilized as a sales event in the past. It had really been seen as a marketing event.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: And my job in this was convincing my peers within the, uh, go to market team. No, no, no, no. This is a sales event. We're going to show you direct selling happening in this connection Center. Every time a supplier went up to meet with a client and made that connection, that's revenue for us. So we showed them exactly how it comes, happens organically, but also grows immediately. And because we also took care with the content to ensure that the procurement or safety leaders were sitting in breakout sessions that were relevant to how to grow their business. We had the chance to really show them, uh, to show my sales peers. Here's how you actually leverage this experience to grow.

Speaker B: Gretchen, this has been awesome. Is there anything that we haven't tackled that you want to make sure that we cover today?

Speaker A: I guess I would just share honestly that like the power of partnership in um, building out an event like this is so incredibly important. You know, not only was I able to lean on just some amazing friendships that I have with people who are in the event management and event strategy space to help brainstorm this and uh, and really think through the experience, but we had an amazing event agency that we worked with. They're called, uh, kci. They were phenomenal in helping to make sure that this vision got executed. And I just would encourage you not to think that you have to do it alone. There's so many amazing moments being created in person today, so many more to come. I really feel like in an age of AI, the power of creativity is really getting lit up in community right now and in in person events. So leveraging folks who are seeing the best of what's out there is a great way to make sure that you can bring your audience the best of what works for them.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. And you, you've mentioned community quite a bit. Um, the power of connecting. You and I connected through a community, the empowered community. And um, before we hit record, um, and I'm bringing this up so you're going to tell us about it, is that you had that you're thinking about starting your own group for CMOs. We mentioned a very difficult job, um, specifically female CMOs. To add another layer to that and that you are thinking about launching your own community for female CMOs. Tell us about that.

Speaker A: Yeah, so it's not so much that I'm launching my own community. What I am offering is the uh, for the community of CMOs that exist, the opportunity to participate in a CMO circle and think about this as really like a very curated cohort of CMOs that are getting together in small groups to spend 12 sessions together. I really do credit the empowered community with giving me confidence to believe that I could go for my dream of being a cmo. You probably know the saying that you know, the, you are the average of the five people that you spend the most amount of your time with. And I think that you should curate that. You know, I believe that you have to surround yourself with people who know more than you do, who think differently and have different experiences. But that doesn't just happen organically. I want to create these curated cohorts of women who can come together, hold each other up, boost each other forward, but also really attack the challenges that exist for CMOs today. So each of the 12 sessions is going to cover a different conversation. It could be how to speak cfo, it could be, you know, tackling together how to manage demand and, uh, progress pipeline in an ultra personalized world. But essentially I'm bringing together small groups of CMOs to build community together, build that tight knitness that I think we always organically have had come out of Empowered, where you get to meet a person who really understands you and your needs. Sometimes you just need a group that you can tap into to say, I've got a big problem, I can't solve it alone. Who can help me? And not every CMO is out there making those connections all the time. This is a chance to do so. So if someone is interested in joining one of these curated circles, please let me know. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Okay, awesome. Um, really appreciate that. And I feel like you're going to have quite a few takers. Russian. Thank you so much. I end, uh, every episode the same way. I ask our question or ask our guests the same question, which is do you have a signature or favorite toast to send us out with?

Speaker A: Ooh, that, uh, is a great question. So I, I, uh, had the opportunity earlier in my career to spend, uh, about a year and a half living in, uh, in Prague. And I will tell you I'm not going to give the Prague, uh, toast. But what I will send you out with is this the only check that I recall from my team or for my time there, which is. Which means watch out, the subway doors are about to close.

Speaker B: Thanks again to Gretchen for joining me on Sass Half Full. Hopefully you took a thing or two away as you are planning your next customer or owned event. Loved hearing from her. Glad to finally get her on the show. We always appreciate the listen. And until next time, bottoms up.