The year has absolutely flown by, not to mention this past quarter. In Q4 alone, our event management team executed 23 events—a record for us! 

This quarter we had the opportunity to work with 31 marvelous speakers including:

• Ashley Kramer, CMO & CSO, GitLab

• Brian Long, CEO & Co-Founder, Attentive

• Carolyn Locke, Senior Vice President, Principle of Employee Benefits, Newfront

• Colin Jones, Chief Revenue Officer, Wiz

• Dave Gerhardt, Founder, Exit Five

• JB Reed, Managing Director & Partner, Boston Consulting Group

• Lauren Krahenbuhl, Director of Sales & Partnerships, Wellness Coach

• Leela Srinivasan, Chief Marketing Officer, Checkout.com

• Meron Colbeci, Chief Product Officer, Checkout.com

• Sam Blond, Partner, Founders Fund

• Sarah Patterson, Chief Marketing Officer, Samsara

• Shaunt Voskanian, Chief Revenue Officer, Figma

• Yamini Rangan, CEO, HubSpot

October started off strong with Agora’s RTE 2022, a three-day event in San Francisco at the City View Metreon, and a conference more than two years in the making (we started planning before the pandemic). It was so rewarding to see the event come to life. The cred team worked with a “blank space” venue in terms of the event’s physical layout, then brought sponsor booths, furniture, and various branding materials to life. The following week, we put on Wellness Coach’s “Are You Utilizing Your Wellness Funds?” webinar, which fostered an engaging conversation on how to execute a successful HR program rollout. 

November was busy for the team, as it saw the launch of SaaStr Weekly Workshops. These webinars allow the SaaStr team to bring in different SaaS leaders for discussions around the latest in B2B technology—an extension of the quality content you see at all SaaStr events, but on a recurring weekly basis. For these bite-size broadcasts (relative to the monster Annual event at least), the cred team manages speaker outreach and content coordination.

A highlight of not only the quarter, but the year, was being onsite for Slush in Helsinki, Finland. Our team attended the event with long-time client Lightspeed Venture Partners, who had partners speaking at the conference as well as hosting various functions during the event. It was incredible to be onsite surrounded by contagious startup energy. You can read more in our recap here. 

Lastly, we closed out the year with SaaStr Scale, a one-day virtual event that we’ve been hard at work on for the past several months. For Scale, we managed 25 speakers and their content as well as backend webinar set up and day-of panel moderation.

Our team enjoyed working alongside clients to plan and execute 60+ events this year across a range of contexts—from formal business dinners held for industries like Web3 and gaming, to smaller virtual workshops and webinars, to our bread-and-butter large conference-style events. We’ve been onsite in the San Francisco Bay Area, NYC, Chicago, Vegas, Canada, and took on Europe a few times as well.  The experiences we’ve curated for clients and attendees alike is something we are really proud of—whether it’s been managing RSVPs, sourcing venues, vendor management, website creation, and anything in between. 

Our key takeaways: What to expect in the future of events

• Sustainability as a priority, especially in Europe. If you’re going to do sponsored swag, make it worthwhile and not just something attendees will throw away the next day. Instead of gifting branded stress balls and hats, have attendees remember your brand because you offered them an experience. We’ve seen coffee or fruit juice bars do well, and gamification with a quick giveaway game or VR experience. Think of how you can narrow in on your booth’s ROI.

• Keep the holidays in mind when estimating guest count. Sicknesses, COVID fears, and travel plans make it tough to lock people in for an event in December or early January. We saw larger day-of and week-of dropoff numbers heading into this month. 

• Shorter content. Keep your audience engaged with a half day (or less) event and sessions that are 20 mins or less. It’s easy to forget that the audience has regular jobs on top of attending your event so make it clear you see them. This is especially crucial if your event is virtual. Attendees don’t want to be stuck in their chairs for long these days. Involve them in Q&A, polling, and examples when possible to keep your sessions dynamic. 

• Don’t forget the vegan and vegetarian options on your next event’s menu! We’re seeing more and more dietary restrictions from attendees’ RSVPs. 

• Content is still at the heart of every event. Make sure yours is timely, relevant, and statistic-driven. Something that will never get old? Providing key tangible takeaways after each segment. 

As always, the diversity of our speaker lineups remains a top priority (you can check out our Share the Mic blog on the topic here!) This quarter, 55% of our speakers managed were women. We’re proud to continue the push for equality on the stage in all forms.

And just like that, we’re looking ahead to  2023. Our team has gained a lot of new skills and experiences this calendar year which has led to tremendous growth in our offerings.  We have big plans for Q1 and more international events  are on the horizon. We’ll be sure to fill you in soon!

Want to come along for the ride? We’d love to help! Email us at events@credpr.com.

This blog post was written by Charlotte Heckard & Kathryn Kemp.