Heather Schneider, CMP, DES

Manager, Event Operations – Tyler Technologies, Inc.

Heather Schneider, CMP, DES, is the event operations manager for Tyler Technologies, Inc. She is currently working on implementing a strategic meetings management program which includes an overhaul of their event contract template and streamlining processes with the legal department to reduce time to contract. She is also working on planning the company’s sales incentive trip for 2024 while maintaining a support system for the 700+ trade shows that Tyler Technologies attends annually. Heather was recently accepted into the Certified Meeting Manager (CMM) program and begins her classes in December.

Heather enjoys camping in the Maine woods with her husband and chocolate lab, and recently finished building a 26’ tipi in their back yard.

Tricia Daniels

President, Event Marketing Partners

As the president of Event Marketing Partners, Tricia manages her team of talented event marketing professionals to deliver extraordinary, seamless programs to EMP’s clients, as well as their attendees, customers, and prospects. With over 30 years of event and hospitality experience, including her time with the Walt Disney Company, Tricia is well-versed in all of the components that must be orchestrated to deliver programs designed to meet client’s unique business goals and business objectives. Over her past 12+ years at EMP, Tricia’s talents have served as a key factor in EMP’s exponential growth by providing event marketing solutions to clients, primarily in the technology sector, from Fortune 50 firms to new and emerging startups. Embracing EMP’s philosophy to view clients as partners – listening and understanding their needs – resulted in Tricia spearheading their global expansion, including establishing their first overseas office in London in 2017.

Live Nation Special Events has 150+ unique venues nationwide! As the world’s largest live entertainment company, Live Nation offers unique event spaces, state-of-the-art production, branding capabilities, and full-service production. Let their national sales team serve as a single point of contact for hosting experiential events, conferences, product launches, road shows and more at Live Nation’s portfolio of venues.

To learn more, reach out and say hello to Live Nation’s CEMA Members including Deirdre McCready, Executive Vice President of Sales & Special Events; Barbara Bouman, Vice President of National Sales; Tina Marie Honor, National Account Manager; and Carley Gauthier, National Director of Marketing.

Michael Dominguez Presents State of the Industry Report at CEMA Summit

What does it mean to be “Decisively Indecisive?” In his signature Summit industry trend forecast, Associated Luxury Hotels International (ALHI) CEO Michael Dominguez, answered that question, sharing insights into the expected changes for the remainder of 2022, current state of the economy and expectations for ’22 and ’23, inflationary challenges and impacts, as well as new geo-political dynamics that will drive short and long-term changes in our industry.

It’s impossible to capture all the wisdom Michael delivered in one post. Here are a couple of “nuggets” he shared:

• Don’t make “definitive” a long-term strategy – there are too many variables and too much complexity
• The good news is that the hospitality industry is on track for strong recovery by 2024. The bad news, inflation will be with us for a while, and we are technically in a recession even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Watch Now (Start at 1:26:00)

Morning Keynote: Rebuilding an Engaged Workforce through Conscious Leadership

Holistic leadership strategist Ginny Clarke laid out a bare truth about leadership: as much as employers might want things the way they were, it’s a new day, and event leaders have an opportunity to start fresh with employees by tapping into qualities that drive true engagement.

Ginny detailed the foundational elements for event execs that support employee loyalty, including transparency, trust and consistency. As leaders, we need to make priorities and expectations clear – and talk about them openly. We must earn trust and demonstrate that we care. We have to show up for our people – stay close, have one-on-ones, ask them how they’re doing.

She also explained our responsibility for building leadership competencies. Beyond pedigree, domain expertise, and relationships, we need to think about skills, knowledge and ability, mental, physical and emotional – the how you do the job. Two key leadership competencies are decision making/decisiveness and effective communication.

Ginny emphasized the need for conscious leaders – who are self-aware, self-reflective and possess intuitive understanding that allows them to connect more consciously with their teams.

Watch Now (START AT 0:0:13)

Industry Forum: The Future Role of the Event Marketer

In our Tuesday Industry Forum at CEMA Summit, The Future Role of the Event Marketer, our expert panel of seasoned event execs looked at this new dynamic through the lens of the evolving role of the event professional, and explored how it is demanding new skills, responsibilities, and perspectives…and creating new opportunities. Session speakers included Julie Lynch, F5; Colleen Bisconti, IBM; Marsha Maxwell, Miro; Ben Nazario, MC2; and Mary Fehrnstrom, Workday.

The discussion revealed several important new dynamics that are influencing the trajectory in the industry:

The “Great Resignation” or what some are now calling the “Great Reshuffle” is being driven by a new “COVID clarity” through which event professionals are re-evaluating their career choices and organizations are re-evaluating their business and operational models. The silver lining in this shift is that people are re-engaging and deciding what they want to do, where they want to be and how they want to show up in life and at work.

An important new skillset event professionals need to develop is to become community managers – bringing people together in compelling and relevant ways. People are demanding more value for the time they spend attending events, so we need to shift attendance focus from volume to ensuring the right people are attending.

Creative agencies and suppliers are becoming more strategic partners – offering more guidance, counsel, and documentation to help EMs communicate resource realities to their stakeholders and manage their expectations. Conversations about resource constraints, supply chain issues, pricing, and other factors should happen early in the planning and budgeting process.

Watch Now  (START AT 0:44:30)

Event Marketing Study: ‘Now Is the Time to Regain Your Footing’

A breakout session at CEMA Summit shared topline takeaways from a recent study among event marketers on the next iteration of events. Convene Magazine Editor-in-Chief Michelle Russell takes a deeper dive into the results.

This year will be marked by learning through trial and error, the speakers told the audience at a breakout session at the JW Marriott in Nashville at CEMA Summit ‘22, held July 31–Aug. 2. After all the upheaval brought on by the pandemic and with in-person events on the rebound yet not the same as pre-pandemic, the speakers — Pauline Giust, senior manager of meetings and events at Cvent, and Alyssa Peltier, senior manager of the product marketing industry solutions group at Cvent Consulting — didn’t need to convince the corporate event marketing professionals in the room of that reality.

But their session, “Research Exposed: CMO Council Explores the Future of the Event Industry,” had data to support their statement about 2022 being the year of experimentation. Here’s a closer look at CMO Council’s study, “NextGen Events: Optimized for Outcomes,” produced in collaboration with Cvent and based on a survey of 150 global marketing leaders and in-depth interviews with executives from Equifax, GE Healthcare, HCL Software, and GfK.

Formats and types of events are under greater consideration. The CMO Council defines “NextGen” events as spanning different formats (virtual/webinar, in-person, and hybrids), as well as types (e.g., conferences, trade shows, road shows, customer groups). NextGen events are tied to business outcomes among customers: brand awareness, lead generation, retention, and loyalty. “The sudden cancellation of in-person events and a massive swing to virtual ones left event planners scrambling,” the report says. “Now is the time to regain your footing.”

Marketers haven’t yet mastered virtual. Sixty-four percent of marketing leaders say they’re only moderately or not at all effective at executing virtual events that deliver value to the organization.

Each channel should be used to deliver on different objectives. While three out of five marketing leaders say restarting in-person/hybrid events is very important, one out of five say virtual events continue to deliver tremendous reach. Virtual events are more about brand reach; in-person events are about nurturing customer relationships that result in higher conversion rates.

“There was a kind of reset button.” Sixty-five percent say their learnings over the past two years will result in a holistic view of events — virtual, in-person, and hybrid — that are better aligned with marketing outcomes. In addition, due in part to workforces moving to a virtual environment and collaborating more with different teams, 45 percent said that cross-departmental teams will be better aligned. “Because we’re all virtual now, communication has gotten so much better,” Sonia Sahney, CMO of MI and CT at GE Healthcare, said in the report. “I can let global colleagues, different businesses, and regional teams know I’m doing an event on a specific date and see if anyone else is doing something similar. There was a kind of reset button, in terms of how much more we share.”

Why is hybrid so hard? Only around one-third of marketers rate their ability to execute hybrid events as effective or very effective — the worst effectiveness rating among the four major event types (in-person, webinars, virtual, hybrid). “A hybrid event is double the cost, double the resources, because you’re essentially doing what you did in 2019 and adding a virtual presence like you did in 2020,” Sahney said. “At least in my marketing budget for next year, I’ve allocated close to 1.8x for hybrid events.”

Aside from the costs, there’s the risk of virtual registration cannibalizing in-person registration. Said GfK Global CMO Gonzalo Garcia Villanueva: “You know who you want in person so you invite them only to the live event. You know who’s probably not going to travel so you invite them to the digital one. For those who haven’t engaged with your communications, you offer digital at the last minute. That was a massive learning.”

How will in-person/hybrid events compare with pre-pandemic in-person events? Three out of five said they will be smaller in size. On the upside, 47 percent said they will have deeper engagement; two out of five said they will have better content, packaging, and delivery and offer richer attendee profiling and ROI measurement; nearly one-third expect them to be held more frequently; one-quarter expect them to result in increased reach and awareness; more than one out of five anticipate higher customer conversion rates; and 13 percent believe they will provide greater visibility for sponsors.

Greater experimentation. More than seven out of 10 marketers said they are experimenting with new event formats — for example, smaller, more specialized in-person events that are infused with digital components.

Download the CMO Council study

Listen to the full audio recording of the session on the CEMA website here.

InVision Shares Tips to Re-imagine Event Sponsorships

As the event world continues to evolve, learn how to “Re-Imagine event sponsorships by taking a collaborative, campaign-based approach” in this whitepaper from Phil Stanley, Senior Strategist, InVision Communications.

Some highlights about the keys to successful sponsorships:

• Weave sponsors into a cohesive, overarching story
• Take ownership of how sponsors and exhibitors show up at events
• Leverage new content delivery opportunities and guidelines
• Drive meaningful moments of interaction – 1:1 and 1:few
• Derive insights from customer data to optimize messaging for smaller, more focused audiences
• Build a discovery process for messaging and activation that involves the sponsor, sponsorship sales, and the event team working collaboratively

Read more: Re-Imagining Event Sponsorships – Taking a strategic, campaign-based approach  – CEMA Online