The document discusses strategies for overcoming obstacles to building event attendance at TechEd conferences. It outlines potential challenges like cost, getting permission to attend, and time away from the office. It then discusses goals of getting over 6,000 attendees and breaking even financially. Various engagement strategies are presented, including leveraging data on attendees, providing valuable content before and during the event, and enhancing the in-person experience. The results showed beating attendance targets and higher customer satisfaction scores. Overall lessons on successful strategies around data, content, and experience are shared.

1. 9/30/2011
If you help them,
they will come
Overcoming obstacles to build
event attendance
Kelly Soligon
@ksoligon
Julie Rezek
@JulieRezek
1

2. 9/30/2011
The Brief: What is TechEd?
Fast Facts
The TechEd Ecosystem
Partners
Content
Events syndication
Learn
Connect Share
Custome
rs/
Community
Partner my
Portal
Demand
generation
Transaction
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3. 9/30/2011
Potential Challenges
Cost
Permission from the boss
Time out of office
Economy
For Microsoft: self-funding
event
The Audience
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4. 9/30/2011
.“I came to learn about the
In Their Own Words Cloud. We are switching to
Office 365 and I need to
learn about it”
“Being at Tech·Ed gives us access to the IT Pro—Emory University”
complete community of our users. At
“All the experts are here in one place—I Tech·Ed we learn inside information that
go from room to room to room and get helps us plan how to advance our
my questions answered—all in one products for the next releases” Partner ”
place”
IT Pro Telco--Egypt
“Microsoft really knows how to
engage with the partner
community both informing
about product roadmaps as well
as helping you go to market ” .“I am here to learn more
CEO—Infragistics .“It’s the networking—the
about what I use today and
people I meet. Having great
about what I could use
partners in the Microsoft
tomorrow”
ecosystem is key. Second,
Web developer—Financial
we generate a ton of
“With 14 offices globally Services”
business by coming to
trying to share the RIGHT
Tech·Ed”
piece of information fast is
Partner”
critical—SharePoint 2010 is
the answer and that is why I
am here”
IT Pro—Manufacturing
Milwaukee
Goals
6,137 paid
attendees
Customer
satisfaction score
of 150
Break even
Insights
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5. 9/30/2011
Permission
Networking
Taking It Home
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6. 9/30/2011
Engagement
Strategies
Data
Content
Experience
Data
Three great things we did using data:
Geo-targeting
Engagement Index Model helped to get the
right people there
Leveraged alumni
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7. 9/30/2011
Contact Strategy Map
Content
Three great things
we did using
content:
 Convince your boss
messaging
 Content broadcast
in real time
 Shared content
through influencers
Experience
Three great things to
enhance the
experience:
Alumni lounge
myTechEd
networking site and
app
Sharing of content
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8. 9/30/2011
Results
Beat target by three
Sat score went up
Positive channel penetration
Social: key driver
Lessons learned
23
Questions?
8