Organizing events (part 1)
Events are one of the best ways to monetize a B2B audience.
Sponsors love them and are willing to pay A LOT for events.
Media operators can earn a lot of money from them.
This is the first part in a two-part series on how to organize events.
Mostly metrics CFO dinners
CJ Gustafson is the founder of Mostly metrics, a newsletter for finance professionals.
A year ago, he launched a dinner series for CFOs.
CFOs love the chance to connect with other CFOs. Sponsors love the ability to meet CFOs in person. (They love it so much that they are competing for the limited sponsorship slots.) For CJ and Mostly metrics, it’s great revenue.
(Image source: Jordan Gauthier)
Dine & Deliver
Dine & Deliver is a dinner series for newsletter operators. It’s organized by Ryan Sager and Jesse Watkins from Who Sponsors Stuff and moderated by Dan Oshinsky from Inbox Collective.
Ryan, Jesse, and Dan bring newsletter operators together for guided group discussions over dinner. The event series is funded by a long-term sponsor.
In addition, they host The Newsletter Conference. (I’ve been there. It’s great!)
Matt McGarry
Matt McGarry is the founder of Newsletter Operator, a publication covering the newsletter industry.
He’s been using his audience to launch many events. He has hosted a social event in New York City, a workshop and live podcast, and a large conference. He is soon going to host Audience Camp, a retreat for media founders.
I joined his first event in NYC. It felt awesome to meet so many great media people.
How do events make money?
B2B media companies usually monetize events through sponsorships. That’s especially true for smaller events such as dinners.
For example, CJ’s CFO dinners are free to attend for CFOs. Vendors can only get in by sponsoring. Usually, CJ gets 25 CFOs into a room and 3–4 sponsors.
For larger conferences, it’s usually a combination of sponsorships and ticket sales.
Because smaller events are easier to get started with, the rest of this article will focus on dinners and social events.
What’s the revenue potential?
Dinners can make tens of thousands of dollars per event.
Most B2B media companies that I’ve talked to charge 4–5 figures per sponsor. They often bring in multiple sponsors per event. Then you end up with 5 figures in profit.
How do I get sponsors?
I’ve previously written about how to use audience data to find sponsors.
That said, everyone I talk to says: “Sponsors love events.”
Nobody seems to have trouble selling event sponsorships. They just tell their existing sponsors that they’re getting into events. Then they have more advertiser demand than they can fulfill.
CJ told me: “The most valuable thing to advertisers is to get a lead in a room in person.” CFOs are hard to reach. Meeting in person also builds trust.
CJ told me that any sponsor would pick a dinner with the right 30 people over reaching 65k people through the newsletter. To control the demand, advertisers now need to sponsor the newsletter and the podcast to be able to sponsor CJ’s events.
How can I get started?
I’d recommend starting with dinners and social events.
They take less effort to organize than large conferences.
It helps to have support. Matt McGarry hired Ahrif Sarumi as his Head of Events. CJ gets help from his wife and Matthew Mozzocchi.
Let’s dive into the details!
What should my events look like?
Dinners and social events are all about networking and meeting new people.
Bring great people together and give them the opportunity to connect. That means lots of time to have conversations. Create a great environment for that.
Because it’s all about connecting, you don’t need talks or presentations.
That said, if you want, you can be creative. For example, Dine & Deliver dinners are large group discussions moderated by Dan Oshinsky. That sounds fun!
How do I get attendees?
I’ve been told many times that getting attendees is the hardest part of running events.
Let’s tackle that first!
Focus on quality over quantity
CJ told me: “The most important thing is the quality of the other people there.”
CFOs want to talk to other CFOs, not junior accountants.
The same is true for CJ’s sponsors. They want to reach CFOs.
For small sponsored events to be successful, bring top executives together. Don’t let anyone else in. This is the most important part.
Tactics
1. Use your connections
Reach out to all your connections that are in the area of your event.
LinkedIn connections. Past podcast guests. Clients. You name it.
When you have a connection with someone, it’s easier to get them to join.
CJ told me this gets him about 10 attendees per event.
2. Reach out to relevant audience members
Look at your audience data. Find all your newsletter subscribers that live nearby and have the right job titles. Reach out with personalized invites.
Ad: If you don’t have this data or want more, check out Megahit. It’s a software tool I’ve built to find your subscribers’ names, locations, job titles, and companies. Then you can invite them to your events.
As a B2B media company, your audience is your moat. These people are your fans. They will trust you to put on an event worth their time. Use these relationships!
CJ usually first pulls a list of CFOs from Megahit and reaches out to them. If he still has spots left a week before an event, he’ll also reach out to some VPs of Finance.
Matt McGarry also mentioned on his podcast that he used audience data to send targeted invites:
We did a little pop-up event in New York City. And so I have a question [in my audience survey]: ‘What city do you live closest to?’ Sent an email to that segment. Filled up the event.
It’s really helpful. That’s not a small thing, but we were worried about filling that event and that email did it, and we couldn’t have done it without that survey.
The more exclusive the people you want to invite, the more I’d recommend personalized 1-on-1 messages over mass email blasts.
3. Include an application form in your newsletter
Ryan Sager told me Dine & Deliver gets most of their attendees this way.
They have an application form to attend a Dine & Deliver event. The form asks people for their names, their locations, and which companies they work at. Both Dan Oshinsky and Who Sponsors Stuff send it out via their newsletters. They’ve had 2,000 people apply so far.
When they host an event, they send out targeted invites to people who applied.
As always, you will want to make sure you keep the quality bar for attendees high. You will receive applications from people who don’t meet these expectations. If you’d rather not send hard rejections, you can tell applicants that they’re on the waitlist and that you’ll reach out when there’s a chance for them to join.
4. Cold outreach
This is simple. Find interesting people in the city where you host the event. Reach out.
This also gives you the chance to introduce them to your media brand.
LinkedIn is a good place to find these people.
5. Recommendations from past attendees
Ryan Sager told me this works well for Dine & Deliver.
Get past attendees to recommend new folks who should join an event.
6. Keep a list of people who are interested
Let’s say you reach out to someone. They say they’d love to attend but can’t make it.
In that case, CJ will put the person on a special list. The next time he hosts an event in the same city, he’ll reach out to them again.
7. Use a visual guest list to make sure people show up
When I joined Matt McGarry’s NYC event, I thought this was genius.
Ahrif Sarumi came up with it to make sure people would actually show up.
I’ll cover this strategy in the second part of this article series. Subscribe below to receive it straight to your inbox.
How should I reach out?
Executives are busy. I’d recommend reaching out via both email and LinkedIn. Maybe wait a few days in between. If you don’t hear back, follow up.
The more exclusive the people you want to invite, the more I’d recommend personalized 1-on-1 messages over mass email blasts.
CJ told me LinkedIn InMails are responsible for 75% of his attendees.
What else?
In two weeks, I’ll publish the second part of this two-part article series.
It will cover everything else you need to know to host great events. For example, how to pick a city, how to pick a venue, and how to provide a great experience.
Subscribe to Audience Doctor to receive it.
Ad: Invite your subscribers to events
Over the last two years, I’ve built Megahit, a data tool for B2B media companies.
Megahit finds your subscribers’ names, job titles, companies, locations, LinkedIn profiles, and more. All from their email addresses. (It even works for Gmails!)
Then it helps you segment your list and invite the right subscribers to your events. That is, those subscribers who meet your quality standards and live nearby.
Check out Megahit! I’d love to give you a demo.
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