The Future of B2B Events - with Patrick Smith, CMO at Cvent

**Ray Rike** (0:00)
Hello, I'm Ray Rike, Founder and CEO of BenchMarket, and your host of the Metrics at Measure Up podcast. We talked to a wide variety of the top B2B SaaS and Cloud thought leaders, CEOs, executives, investors, and people just like you to discuss the metrics and benchmarks they use to make metrics informed and benchmark validated decisions. Now, on to today's show.
Welcome to today's episode of the Metrics That Measure Up podcast. Today, I am joined by Patrick Smith, the Chief Marketing Officer at Cvent. We'll be covering four primary topics with Patrick today. First, virtual events versus in-person events. Is this really a binary topic?
Second, vendor-created events versus industry events, the pros and cons of each, measuring the return on investment of events, and then talk a little bit about the future of event technology. So Patrick, can you take a moment to give a brief background overview of your journey becoming a guest on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast?

**Patrick Smith** (1:14)
Sure. I'm really honored to be here. I'm Patrick Smith. I lead marketing at Cvent. We have a team of over 300 marketers that work every single day to build our brand and to drive demand for our sales teams.
I've been in the industry for a while, about 20-some years. I started off in the supply chain space, made my way into marketing. So I've been a CMO at Cvent for about seven years, and prior to that, was CMO of another big enterprise software company called Dell Tech. We love events. I've always loved events as a CMO, and that's why I'm here at Cvent, because we really do pride ourselves on helping the world run better events.

**Ray Rike** (1:49)
And I think you're located right outside of my favorite airport in the United States, Dulles Airport. I think the toll road and go right by Tyson's Corner.

**Patrick Smith** (1:57)
I am, actually. It's very easy to get to Dulles. I used to go to National a lot when I lived in DC, but Dulles is right down the road.

**Ray Rike** (2:03)
So convenient. Well, Patrick, with not only 300 marketers, but 22,000 customers worldwide, you have a pretty unique perspective on the first topic I want to talk about, and that's the trend in corporate events.
Everyone, because of COVID, went virtual, right? And we know some of the companies that exploded. Hoppin is a great example, right? And now everyone's saying, no, no, virtual is kind of yesterday's news. It's all about in-person events. What do you think about this debate? Is it really a continued debate?

**Patrick Smith** (2:34)
I don't think it's a continued debate for a lot of our customers. I think they understand what virtual can offer and they understand what in-person can offer. So I don't think it's an either or at all. It really depends on what format is most useful depending on your goals. We found that in-person is really where the depth of engagement happens. It's the shaking hands, it's the having an in-person meeting, having a drink with someone, and that's great. But virtual gives you the breadth of engagement. I mean, you started seeing organizations like higher-ed companies or higher-ed organizations doing, instead of having everyone fly in for a weekend, for their MBA weekend, they're doing a virtual event so then they can reach people that they never would have seen in person in Europe and very far away. So it's really the depth of engagement and breadth of engagement that you have to think about. The key is having tech though to really encourage, capture, compile and leverage engagement at whether it's an in-person event or a virtual event. And that's where the magic happens from a marketing perspective.

**Ray Rike** (3:37)
Yeah, let me ask this because I've got a perspective on this and we run a lot of events here at Benchmarket. And I agree, I don't think it's a debate. I think it's depending on what your goals are, but I think it's also the opportunity to have an integrated approach. Because even if you have that big event, I'll use Sasster because most of our audience are B2B SaaS companies.
It's really nice to have virtual capabilities that every month or every quarter, to be able to reengage with your little micro community that you met at Sasster. I think doing a little bit of both keeps those relationships fresh. Do you agree with that?

**Patrick Smith** (4:12)
Completely. And actually, that's really one of the reasons we're into the webinar space at Cvent, is we think that virtual events and webinars can be that glue between that big in-person event that you might do one or two times a year. We often here in the industry, I want to create a community around my events. I don't want to say goodbye. And that's really where virtual can fit.