International
“The pillars of content, networking, business and
experience are in everything that we do.”
But creating that level of integration and
standardisation has been no easy task, and
it’s one that has required an epic migration of
the global products onto Salesforce and the
automated email marketing service, Pardot.
“What that gives you is greater insight
into what customers are doing, what they’re
interested in and what they’re buying,”
continues Reid. “If we run a campaign from
one of our American shows and they email
their visitors saying, ‘I’ve got a show in
Europe’, then when people then land on the
European website you know that they’ve
come from the American data set.
“When all that data is held separately you
don’t know that a particular person from the
California electricity authority, for example,
has gone to 10 of your events globally. Now
we know that we can market to them in a
different way.”
Tom Fisher, marketing director –
energy, adds that standardisation is of
huge importance even when sending out
something like a post-show survey.
“If on one post-event survey it says, ‘on
a scale of one to 10 how happy were you
with the show?’ and on another you’ve said,
‘would you rate yourself as being very happy,
happy etc.’ it’s the same question asked two
different ways, but the answers won’t fit
together,” he explains. “It’s common sense
to most people, but you need to work on
standardising what you’re asking people.”
Another reason to make it easy to compare
and contrast events across a portfolio is in
looking for ways to improve.
“Clarion puts a lot of emphasis on the
Net Promoter Score,” says Reid. “We look at
lots of benchmarking metrics, but the Net
Promoter Score is a key one for us. We’re
always looking to improve. The industry
average for Net Promoter Score is minus 17,
but we’re looking to make sure that we’re
positive on every event that Clarion does,
not just in Clarion Energy but across all the
shows we do, and that we buy.
“The benefit of having a portfolio is that
some people are waiting 12 months to try out
the second edition of their idea to see if they
can improve it, but every single month we can
be refining different ideas.”
Reid and Fisher are keen to point out that,
while many of the systems used are becoming
standardised, the events themselves have
retained their own look, feel, identity and
relationship with their market.
“Each market is different, but they’re all
about bringing buyers and sellers together
and making sure that they do business,” says
Reid. “One of the things we do to help make
that happen is having great content at the
show, and then networking and matchmaking
around the event. Those pillars of content,
networking, business and experience are in
everything that we do.
While the months following the acquisition
were all about evolving the global portfolio,
the coming year will see that effort coming to
fruition.
“2018 was all about bringing the Power
& Energy brand together,” concludes Reid.
“2019 will be when we start to see results.”
EN
March — 15