There is nothing fancy about event sales automation to be honest - it's all about having some common sense first and using technology as an enabler, second.

True that technology makes your life easier, but you can achieve similar results without it.

With this blog I want to stimulate your creative cells and give you specific tips and templates to think about how you the marketer OR the sales exec will find efficiencies in your day to day job.

What is event sales automation?

See this as a copy-and-paste exercise on steroids. ;-)

Nowadays, it has become a constant struggle to catch up with the market and increase productivity to help execute the aggressive growth plans B2B and more specifically companies have. Needless to say marketers very often find themselves doing the same work over and over without having any time to actually execute new and fun marketing ideas.

In anyone's to-do list, work will constantly be postponed or piled up because budget couldn’t be extended to hire more staff, the tasks at hand are time-consuming and it is becoming harder to come up with fresh new ideas to plan and execute.

There are many resources at the marketer's fingertips to grow productivity without much budgetary requirement and leverage tools in the market to make way for new initiatives to come to fruition.

After making a list of the tasks that are most time-consuming in a marketing department, these are the best sites we've come across to help get the work done. These sites have experts working in every field possible, from design to content and finance. We’ve made a list of the top 4 sites that will surely help increase your marketing productivity and reduce your headache.

It is fair to say that LinkedIn Groups have lost steam and have become a junkyard of spam and can hardly be distinguished from the already crowded feed.

BUT there is one group that is run properly, vetted well and always has a very good source of discussions for event professionals worldwide The Event Planning and Event Management Group.

A recent discussion on the LinkedIn group got some momentum and I thought it would be worth sharing here.

An event prof user asked the question:
I’m just starting to design our exhibition stands for next year and wondered if anyone had any good tips or tricks for attracting people to your stand?

Since it is a question we are constantly asked and part and parcel of our day to day work, I wanted to share how we approach this question and objective.

How do you promote your B2B event through video? I am talking about doing things beyond the usual boring panning of lanyards at the registration area, lots of people going through the doors, shaking hands, speakers on stage and packed rooms.

My intention here is to offer some different perspectives and specific ideas that you can implement immediately.

By the way, think about posting these videos on your website, twitter, social media, email messages with it and more importantly on LinkedIn!

Before you watch the videos please:

1. They are intended as inspiration.
2. Watch them with an open mind.
3. Take into account that American audiences dare to take more risks in terms of pushing the boundaries.
4. Yeeahhh yeahhh yeahhh, I know your audience is a bit different. Just watch them and hopefully from the whole list there is some inspiration.

In our latest edition of B2B Inbound Marketing Stories, we spoke with Kelvin Newman, founder of BrightonSEO, the UK's largest SEO conference and MD of Rough Agenda, one of the new breed of B2B events companies shaking up the conference scene. In the interview, Kelvin reveals the secret sauce behind selling out his event in just 60 seconds and shares some pointers on how larger, traditional events businesses can incorporate a start up mentality to steer them to revenue success.

Watch the full interview, or pick up the key highlights below...

I know that in the events industry we are encouraged to take advantage of all marketing tools at our disposal, and try new things to drive registrations and build awareness of our events. But it’s important to realise that not all channels hold the same value. To me PPC (pay per click) marketing is the perfect example of this – and I would go as far as saying that using PPC to promote your event can be a complete waste of money if you do not approach it right.

So we’ve talked about how media publishers can drive revenues through monetising website visitors, and their extensive databases – and now we move onto the hugely profitable channel of events.

If you haven’t dabbled in the events arena previously, now is the time to formulate a strategy. But how should you kick off this new revenue driving endeavour?

We’ve dissected the various types of events you may want to make your own, and factored in the pros and cons for media publishers specifically.

For all terms and purposes I am referring to advertisers as sponsors.

This blog is a part of a media publishing series ‘Revenue generating tips for media publishers’.

Getting someone's attention and agreement to meet you or speak to you on the phone is a very difficult and challenging part of our busy day to day business lives.

But it is even more difficult and frustrating finding an actual suitable time for both of you to engage and not losing their attention in the email back and forth that usually ensues.

I speak to a lot of people in a given week and managing the diaries can easily get out of hand.

So I did my research and here are the five top meeting schedule tools that could really make a difference to your business. They made a difference to mine.

Last update: July 2016

As we all know the conference and events industry is constantly changing and we're now in a thriving market with the usual well established players, a new breed of specialised, niche event companies, media publishers and B2B companies doing their own events who are revolutionising the industry with fresh initiatives and sometimes daring tactics.