Kathleen Booth Shares What Drives Her Event Participation

In Episode 5 of Sips with purple cork, Kathleen Booth, Tradeswell’s SVP of Marketing sits down with Kelly Robb to discuss the return of IRL conferences and trade shows and why the bar for events, whether in-real-life or virtual, is higher than ever before. She shares why activations, or activities that don’t involve selling, produce far better results than standard pitches and demos, and why the traditional webinar that used to drive so many leads appears to be dead. Finally, you will get Kathleen’s expert take on the best time and day to host a virtual event - - this one might surprise you. The conversation will inspire every marketer to think beyond the online pitch and plan an activity that’s engaging and different.

About Kathleen Booth and Tradeswell

Tradeswell is the operating system for real-time commerce. The company is on a mission to empower growth by making e-commerce actions more informed, more coordinated, and more profitable. They accomplish this through a quantitative trading platform that uses real-time algorithms and AI-powered insights to reveal and execute the optimal actions for growth. Tradeswell puts the power of data science in the hands of even the most non-technical users, empowering everyone to make decisions backed by data.

As the SVP of Marketing at Tradeswell, Kathleen Booth works closely with the founding team to achieve their vision and blaze a trail as the leader in the real-time commerce category. Prior to joining Tradeswell, she led marketing at several VC-backed B2B SaaS businesses in the ecommerce and cybersecurity spaces, and was the founder and CEO of a digital marketing agency where she advised hundreds of companies on go-to-market and digital marketing strategies. Outside of work, Kathleen is the host of the long running Inbound Success Podcast, which features interviews with top performing marketers, and was named one of the Top 50 B2B Marketing Influencers of 2021 by TopRank.

Here are some highlights of the conversation:

What is your take on in person versus hybrid vs. virtual events?

“I just got back from Shoptalk 2022, a retail conference. Depending on who you talk to there were 10-12,000 people there, which was great. I think a lot of people were excited to be back in person, seeing each other and having in-person experiences. 

We had a booth and an activation at our booth. We did free professional headshots. Coming out of Covid, everybody needs one. I know I don't look anything like what I looked like two years ago. So that was great. It was our easy 'yes'. People came to the booth to get their headshot. They chatted with members of our sales team - - no hard pitches - - just relationship-building. 

The same approach is true for virtual events. It's all about the experience. If we were just pitching at Shoptalk, it wouldn’t have been as successful. But because we had an activation that was different, people came and found value and, as a result, it was a success.”

How do you differentiate with virtual events?

“The classic webinar —I can’t even remember the last time I went to one. I have zero interest in sitting on Zoom and having someone talk at me, so I'm very selective about the virtual events I attend. The ones that I have gone to are either a very small curated group discussion or, if it's a business topic, something that I'm really desperate to learn about. 

I love purple cork events. We've done a couple of them. If someone invited me to an event that purple card was organizing, I would go because they're fun. It's the experience of trying new wines, meeting people and having good conversations. So, it's more about meeting people and networking than it is about getting pitched.

So, it sounds like you’re saying the classic webinar is dead? Where are you focused?

“Never say never but across-the-board what I'm seeing and hearing is that people just aren’t showing up for Webinars. It's a lot of work and it's pretty thankless if no one comes. 

Instead, I'm focused on building an alliance program, building a community and obviously we have a lead generation program. 

We are a small start up and we will travel and we will host things, but we can't be everywhere so doing virtual events is a great way to extend our reach and allow us to touch a lot more people than we otherwise would and to maintain contact with them. For example, we'll do a roadshow for a channel strategy and invite partners to a virtual wine tasting after the initial touchpoint, which is a great way to keep the relationship going.” 

How do you get people that have registered to show up for the event?

“My experience has been that it does not work as well if it is the work marketing to drive leads to the event. I work with the whole team to come up with an invitation list and then I generally create the invitation or at least the wording for it and I asked the people on my team or the sales team or, in many cases, the CEO or the founder, to personally send out the invitation to the person who they have the relationship with. This drives a very strong response.”

To hear the full conversation, watch the video here.

Looking to go beyond the ordinary and start producing events that drive results? Reach out to purple cork today to plan an experience that your guests will love.