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This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast drops you smack dab in the middle of the closed-door sessions where Jess Cook (Head of Marketing) and Joshua Perk (CEO) are working to turn their company, Vector, into B2B marketing’s next big thing.
In each episode, they tackle a real, strategic decision together—"Should we hire an agency?", "Should we push free trials or demos?", "What are we going to do with all the swag Josh bought?!"—dishing out pros, cons, knowns, unknowns, wins, challenges, and stories along the way.
Come for the big picture strategy and day-to-day tactics, stay for the jokes that make HR nervous.
[00:00:00] Jess: Hey, Josh. So you know how we're supposed to be hosting a dinner tomorrow with 17 prospects and customers at a five star restaurant in hopes of filling our entire next quarter's pipeline.
[00:00:09] Josh: Yeah, just like the one we've been planning for four months and paid like 15 K for.
[00:00:14] Jess: Mm-hmm. Yep. That one. So slight change of plans.
[00:00:17] It's happening in three hours.
[00:00:19] Josh: Lovely.
[00:00:26] Jess: So do you remember Josh when I texted you at Exit five Drive? We were all in different places and I was like. Hey, something happened and that dinner we were supposed to have tomorrow night is in three hours.
[00:00:40] Josh: Yeah. You're like SOS like everyone abandoned ship. We gotta go. I do remember that. Um, I also remember how much money we spent for the dinner and, uh, feeling pretty nervous, but before we get there, back as, uh, why were we even at this event?
[00:00:53] Why are we sponsoring stuff as an early stage company? Like, what the heck?
[00:00:58] Jess: What
[00:00:59] Josh: the heck? What the heck? [00:01:00]
[00:01:01] Jess: Yes. Uh, the backstory, yeah. Is it felt right for us as like a place to be able to start building relationships
[00:01:10] Josh: Yeah.
[00:01:10] Jess: And start being seen at these events.
[00:01:12] Josh: Yeah.
[00:01:13] Jess: So I think part of what makes a really successful brand is like when you go to these events and you see the people that, you know, you admire that from a specific brand, and you're like, oh, there's that person from that place, and there's that guy from that company, and like, oh, they're doing really cool things.
[00:01:27] And so I wanted us to go and like. Start conversations with marketers who had seen us doing what we're doing on LinkedIn and events. Felt like a really good place to do that.
[00:01:36] Josh: But you didn't ask me for like a 60 k inbound sponsorship, like how did you choose which events to go to?
[00:01:43] Jess: So yeah, we did not wanna do a big giant event.
[00:01:46] In my opinion, it feels like. The O. The only way I would ever wanna show up in Big Force at an event like that is if I had such an enormous, well-known global brand that it would feel wrong if [00:02:00] I wasn't there. Someone would notice if I wasn't there. Yeah. At this point, like it just feels. Like so much money Yeah.
[00:02:07] To spend on a booth.
[00:02:09] Josh: Yeah.
[00:02:10] Jess: Uh,
[00:02:11] Josh: and you also, I think you had like a friend or a colleague or someone that was like starting to see success in sort of smaller forum stuff, right?
[00:02:17] Jess: Yeah. So Natalie Taylor, who's head of marketing at Capsule is. An an incredible marketing leader. And a couple years back, she started doing these like dinners, um, where she would bring in prospects and customers and they would just have conversations about like, so, uh, capsule is a, a video, uh, editing software for enterprise companies.
[00:02:39] Basically, you can build your entire video. Design system inside of capsule and then it makes video editing really, really easy. 'cause all your, all your design stuff is in there and you just like throw your clips in and edit.
[00:02:50] Josh: Promo link in the promo. Yeah. They
[00:02:52] Jess: didn't even pay me for this, Natalie. Just kidding.
[00:02:54] I love Natalie. I'll talk about her company at all. That's awesome. Um. So [00:03:00] she invites like heads of creative, um, heads of design, um, you know, heads of video production, uh, to these dinners. And they just have conversations about like their challenges. And she had told me about like the success they were having with these dinners.
[00:03:15] And I, I didn't do anything with it immediately. I was like, that's really interesting. You know, for their size of company. Yeah. And I think that could, that's a really cool play.
[00:03:24] Yeah. And so
[00:03:25] Jess: when I came to Vector and started building the strategy, I was like, that would make sense here. Yeah. Like to go out and just get a handful of folks Yep.
[00:03:31] The right people in a room, sit down, have a great meal, talk about whatever we wanna talk about.
[00:03:36] Yep.
[00:03:36] Jess: And, um, so events were part of our strategy and we knew we didn't wanna go like huge inbound. So kind of our, our way in was to do like smaller events, maybe a dinner at a small event or like a. Sidecar event.
[00:03:50] Yeah. So, um, another one of the other kind of events we went all in on this year was a sidecar event with user gems at Inbound. Yeah. So we're at [00:04:00] Inbound. Yep. But we don't have a presence on the show floor. Yeah. But we're doing something kind of inbound adjacent to, if you will, right adjacent Yes.
[00:04:07] Josh: In. You and Trinity crushed that because my skepticism was like, okay, Jess, how are you gonna get people to leave the, the reason they're there?
[00:04:15] Yeah. And go spend in, in the case of user gem's event, like a full day at this side event
[00:04:21] Jess: away from inbound.
[00:04:22] Josh: Away from inbound, right? Yeah. And it's not, it wasn't like, like conveniently located, you had to jump in an Uber, right? Mm-hmm. To get across town. And I remember specifically at that event. I had some stuff going on with HubSpot that morning, and so I didn't show up until later and you know, I, I like get in my Uber and I like, I expect to kind of show up to this thing and it'd be like a half full room of, you know, whatever.
[00:04:41] It was packed. Yeah. I I think we got more one on a, one attention at this sort of side event Yeah. Than we did. Like trying to walk before Yeah. Of inbound. Yeah.
[00:04:49] Jess: I think the thing about that event that made it really great was everybody was already there.
[00:04:53] Josh: Yep.
[00:04:54] Jess: The events around the event at Inbound are actually like where it's at.
[00:04:58] Yeah. Everybody wants [00:05:00] invites to all the happy hours and all the things. And so, um, I think people were really excited to and honored to be invited to this. It was a small guest list.
[00:05:08] Josh: Yeah.
[00:05:08] Jess: And so it was, yeah, it was like a really tight group of 100 like GTM leaders that all the, you know, the majority of them kind of fit like our ICP.
[00:05:18] Josh: Yep.
[00:05:18] Jess: And it made sense for us to be there and it allowed us to kind of test this. Event thing out.
[00:05:23] Josh: Yeah.
[00:05:24] Jess: Um, checked all the boxes for us and we didn't, it wasn't a big lift for us, like user gems essentially did everything. Yep. Part of our sponsorship was, you know, uh, a short presentation and I, I got to moderate some round tables, but we got to be in the room, so Cool.
[00:05:39] Like that was really what we paid for. Yeah. So cool. So that was really like the first one we ever did, where it was like, let's just kind of test this out and see how it goes.
[00:05:45] Josh: Yeah.
[00:05:45] Jess: And it went great. It was just like wonderful to be. Uh, speaking to people and like so close to people and be able build those relationships.
[00:05:53] Yeah. That like you can't do on LinkedIn,
[00:05:55] Josh: but, but as all best laid plans often go awry, like you didn't [00:06:00] have the opportunity to like do this event, test it, see if you wanted do it. Yeah. And then make decision on other trade show season is always like kind of back to back uhhuh, so you had to take some risks and go find the other events you were gonna sponsor as well.
[00:06:12] Which brings us to the core one here, which is you. You saw the opportunity to sponsor, um, drive by Exit five? Yep. What was it about that particular audience or that like opportunity that was a yes for you?
[00:06:25] Jess: I went to drive last year. Mm-hmm. And I left there realizing they have something really magical in that event.
[00:06:31] Yeah. So it's a small event. It's 250 marketers.
[00:06:35] Mm-hmm.
[00:06:35] Jess: Um, they cap it, right? Yeah. So there's like kind of a feeling of like, I've gotta be there.
[00:06:41] Yeah.
[00:06:42] Jess: Um, last year was incredible. The speakers were amazing. There were breakout sessions that were actually one of the best parts of the event, which that's usually the opposite, right?
[00:06:52] Yeah. Um, usually the breakout sessions are kinda like, that's when you go, like, check your email. Yeah. But this was like. They did a really great job [00:07:00] of getting the right people together.
[00:07:01] Josh: Yep.
[00:07:01] Jess: It was fun. There was this energy it last year it was kind of like your LinkedIn feed coming to life.
[00:07:09] Josh: Yes.
[00:07:09] Jess: It was the first event like that, I think of its kind and so I remembered how great it was.
[00:07:14] Yeah. Last year and um. I got a hold of the sponsorship package for this year. Yeah. And I was like, it would be really cool if we could do something. Mm-hmm. Now we can't be probably like a title sponsor. Yep. Package is too big.
[00:07:28] Yep.
[00:07:28] Jess: But could we do some ancillary thing that, uh, would get our name out there a little bit more and allow us to like, again, continue to dip our toe into events?
[00:07:37] And so part of the, the, one of the packages they had was sponsor a dinner.
[00:07:41] Josh: Yep.
[00:07:41] Jess: Uh, choose, you know, between 15 and 20. Attendees to invite to your dinner.
[00:07:47] Josh: Okay.
[00:07:49] Jess: Um, and then kind of the rest of the time is like yours. Like you get to decide what you wanna do. During that time, they, the exit five team would do everything else.
[00:07:56] They secure the restaurant, they figure out the [00:08:00] menu, they figure out all the drinks. That's cool. They got like napkins printed for us and little coasters, uh, they sent out all the invitations, like really all we had to do was. Figure out who to invite. Yeah. And show up and put on a great dinner. That's cool.
[00:08:15] So yeah, it was, it was kind of a no brainer. The price felt Right. Yeah. For like what we could potentially get out of it.
[00:08:22] Josh: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Jess: And the hope was that we would get like three really strong opportunities out of this dinner.
[00:08:27] Josh: Yeah. So it sounds like they did a lot of heavy lifting on, you know, getting the dinner together, the menu, all that sort of stuff there.
[00:08:33] I do remember there was a couple things that you had to figure out. One was like, what was your preferred day? And I feel like we learned a couple things. Yeah. Outta like what days to pick. Um, and then who were we inviting? Like what was that process like?
[00:08:44] Jess: Oh yeah. So let's talk about the day. 'cause you're right, I kind of forgot about this.
[00:08:47] So. Drive is like two full days of like workshops and, um, uh, talks and, and breakout sessions. Yeah. The night before they have, uh, what do they [00:09:00] like a welcome reception. Yeah. And so. It's a Tuesday, a Wednesday and a Thursday.
[00:09:05] Mm-hmm.
[00:09:07] Jess: We could choose which night we wanted the dinner to be on.
[00:09:10] Yep.
[00:09:10] Jess: However, there was another sponsor doing the same package as us who happened to be a competitor.
[00:09:16] Josh: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:17] Jess: Um, who got their first right? Like they, they booked their sponsorship first. So they had first rights. Yep. So I was kind of waiting on them to like, choose the night. Um, it turned out that they chose. Tuesday night.
[00:09:31] Josh: First night. The
[00:09:32] Jess: first night. Yep. As their evening. And I was kind of bummed 'cause I was like, oh, that's kind of the night I wanted, but oh well, it's taken.
[00:09:38] Nothing I can do about it. Move on.
[00:09:39] Yeah.
[00:09:40] Jess: So we chose Thursday night. Yep. Uh, the, the last night of the conference that it would be great like to help people like unwind after everything's kind of done. Everyone leaves the next day.
[00:09:50] Yeah.
[00:09:51] Jess: And, um. That was kind of, you know, that decision was like done, set in stone.
[00:09:57] Yeah. Good to go. Thursday night's our night.
[00:09:59] Josh: Yeah. [00:10:00]
[00:10:00] Jess: Um, and we knew that going in
[00:10:02] Josh: and that's always the dilemma as a marketer. Right. When you're, when you're given these prospectus prospectuses perspective, Prospectis, like tech cite, I don't know, we'll Google it later. Uh, or chat, GBT 'cause. It's cannibalizing our inbound.
[00:10:16] Yes. Uh, just start to have like a therapeutic moment of just like, I'll chat GPT it. 'cause that's the new way that people search for things. Um, I feel like that's always the challenge, right? You're looking at these like pictures of showroom floors and you're trying to anticipate what the flow of traffic is gonna be and, oh, are people gonna be excited on day one or tired from travel?
[00:10:34] Are people gonna leave early? Like you're always just trying to figure out like what's the vibe going be? That's the optimal, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you at first were a little disappointed that we didn't get that like first night when everyone's. Excited I
[00:10:44] Jess: was, 'cause there is, there's a lot of energy going into drive and I was like, oh, I wanna capture that.
[00:10:48] That'd be amazing. Yeah. Um, but we didn't get that and that's okay. Like that wasn't meant to be. Yeah. As we'll find out in a bit. Yeah. Um, so Thursday night was our night and then, uh, to choose our attendees. [00:11:00] So, uh, Dan Murphy sent me, uh, at exit five, sent me the list of attendees, but it was anonymized.
[00:11:06] Yeah.
[00:11:06] Jess: So I could see title company, um, industry. And URL. Okay. Right. So I, I couldn't see much. It was essentially like I'm choosing based off of title and company.
[00:11:17] Yeah.
[00:11:18] Jess: Um, and company size. And, uh, so I had a little bit to go on. Yeah. But I might've passed that list to our. Rev ops lead. Sarah McNamara. Yeah. And I asked her to work a little magic on it.
[00:11:30] I was like, can you figure out who these people are? And also can you figure out if they run ads?
[00:11:36] Josh: Sneaky sneak
[00:11:37] Jess: Uhhuh.
[00:11:38] Josh: Have you, um, as a side note, there's a Facebook channel called like, are we dating the same person? Are you familiar with this? Yes. You feel like one of the people that would like fuck some shit up on that.
[00:11:47] Like you, you would be like, I'll find you and figure out who you are. And if we're dating the same person, I'm
[00:11:52] Jess: a really good internet sleuth.
[00:11:53] Josh: Yeah.
[00:11:53] Jess: Like, I'm the person who people are like, Hey, just started dating this guy. And I'm like, oh, I found him.
[00:11:59] Josh: You're like, he's got [00:12:00] three cats. Yeah, I, I see his mom get out, get out.
[00:12:02] Red
[00:12:03] Jess: flag after red flag Abor. That's me. You,
[00:12:06] Josh: you know his credit score? Yep. Mm-hmm.
[00:12:08] Jess: No, I'm really good at that. So I like, I'll run that out. Like if anyone needs
[00:12:13] Josh: just as a side service, slide
[00:12:14] Jess: into my dms, I'll help you out.
[00:12:17] Josh: Okay, so, so you got this list and you and Sarah being the sneaky sneaks that you are mm-hmm.
[00:12:22] Figured out some way to reverse engineer a company list into who the attendees were.
[00:12:25] Jess: She did. She's in, she's incredible. Like she did some clay magic, I'm sure. Yeah. And what she handed back to me was like. Name LinkedIn, URL, their tech stack.
[00:12:36] Josh: Wow.
[00:12:36] Jess: Yeah. And number of ads running on LinkedIn.
[00:12:40] Josh: That's insane.
[00:12:41] Jess: It was insane that it was great.
[00:12:42] And so, so you had all
[00:12:42] Josh: this data to figure out who you wanted to invite? Yes, exactly. What was the strategy from there? Picking them.
[00:12:46] Jess: So there was like, we need to find people who fit the ICP. Yeah. Right. Who are, uh, decision makers who, you know, could actually have some use for us. So I filtered all of the people out who had like lower than a certain threshold of ads [00:13:00] running.
[00:13:00] Yep. Because they're probably not right?
[00:13:02] Yeah.
[00:13:02] Jess: Um, I filtered out by company size because you know, a small company, they probably don't have the right team makeup that makes sense for a tool like ours. Yeah. So I just kind of filtered it down to where it felt like, okay, these are actually people I. At companies who could use Vector.
[00:13:20] Yep.
[00:13:21] Jess: And they're the people who can either make a decision or bring it directly to someone who can make a decision.
[00:13:27] Josh: Yeah.
[00:13:28] Jess: So it was kind of like, um, you know. Leads or heads of demand gen. Yeah. Or higher.
[00:13:34] Josh: Yeah.
[00:13:35] Jess: So heads of marketing, VPs of marketing.
[00:13:37] Josh: But then you did something on top of that that was concerning to me and I was wrong.
[00:13:42] You, you basically said like, well, how many seats did we have? 20?
[00:13:45] Yeah.
[00:13:45] Josh: And you basically said, I'm gonna fill half of them with customers.
[00:13:48] Yeah. And I was
[00:13:49] Josh: like, Jess, we already sold them. Something. Like, what's the point?
[00:13:52] Yeah.
[00:13:52] Josh: Like, I am trying to sponsor this to make more money. Yeah. Not, not, not, not,
[00:13:57] Jess: not, not make money.
[00:13:58] Not make money.
[00:13:59] Josh: Not not [00:14:00] make money.
[00:14:01] Jess: I'm not just trying to give away fancy fakes here.
[00:14:03] Josh: This, this is not. A nonprofit. Just,
[00:14:06] Jess: it's true. This was a Natalie Taylor, uh, piece of advice was bring along a handful of customers Yep. And seat people strategically. Mm-hmm. So that your customers can speak to your prospects.
[00:14:19] Cool.
[00:14:19] Jess: And so that felt really right. We are, we were gonna have a handful of customers Yeah. At the event anyway.
[00:14:25] Yeah.
[00:14:25] Jess: Um, so I think, yeah. We had, we had 20 seats in the restaurant. Yep. There were. Uh, three of us, three. Vic Victors,
[00:14:33] Josh: Victorians,
[00:14:34] Jess: Victorians,
[00:14:35] Josh: uh, vector Knots. Yeah.
[00:14:36] Jess: Yes. All of those.
[00:14:37] Josh: Yes.
[00:14:38] Jess: Three of us.
[00:14:38] So we had 17 seats. I think we ended up, um. Two people didn't show. Yeah. Which, whatever. Yeah. That happens. Yeah. Um, so we had 15 remaining. I think we probably had five or six customers.
[00:14:50] Josh: Yeah.
[00:14:50] Jess: In the room. Yeah. On the day.
[00:14:52] Josh: The results of you bringing those customers was, we didn't talk about Vector the entire night.
[00:14:57] Mm-hmm.
[00:14:57] Josh: Like, it like meeting us. The employees like did [00:15:00] not have to say a thing about what we do
[00:15:02] exactly.
[00:15:02] Josh: And we would walk around and hear. Our customers talking to prospects about Yeah, yeah. Here's what we're doing, here's how we're using them. And it was so much more authentic. Yeah. Than if we would've stood up and said, Hey, we wanna pitch you what we do.
[00:15:16] Jess: Yeah. And so much more powerful.
[00:15:18] Josh: Yeah.
[00:15:18] Jess: Um, that one, a customer would come a. To a dinner of ours, they must really like us. Yeah, yeah. And two, that they would actually talk about us in a way that like, it sounds like it's coming from us. It's like the right messages. Yeah. They're hitting all the points. Right, because they genuinely are aligned with what we're doing.
[00:15:36] Yeah. Which is pretty cool.
[00:15:37] Josh: Okay, so we pick the night, we pick the people. Rest is history. Right. The
[00:15:41] Jess: rest is history. It just happens. No hitches
[00:15:44] Josh: went off without an issue. It is
[00:15:45] Jess: perfect. So we get to drive. Yeah. Amazing. It's in Vermont.
[00:15:49] Josh: Yeah. Beautiful. In
[00:15:50] Jess: September. Yeah.
[00:15:51] Josh: Right before the leaves change. It's
[00:15:52] Jess: beautiful.
[00:15:53] Yeah. Yeah. Perfect weather. Yeah. So Tuesday was the welcome reception and the competitor dinner. Wednesday [00:16:00] was, uh, going to be a boat ride, so you could have upgraded your ticket to go on this boat. Ride on Lake Champlain. Yep, sunset Cruise. Drinks and dinner, it was like a big deal. Like Yeah. Tons of people were gonna be there.
[00:16:15] It was gonna be super fun. Yeah. And then Thursday was gonna be, be our dinner. So on Wednesday I am moderating a, a ses, a breakout session, which was also part of the sponsorship package. Yeah. We all got to moderate breakout sessions, which was really cool. Yeah. Because then people kind of knew who we were Yeah.
[00:16:29] By name and face. Yeah. And, uh, Dan Murphy kind of comes up to me and, and very, very serious and. Um, as I'm moderating says I need to speak with you. And so I had to like hand my phone that had all like my moderator questions on it to someone in my group and be like, can you moderate for me? Just some random for ju Just a minute.
[00:16:50] I'll be right back.
[00:16:51] Josh: I'll be back.
[00:16:52] Jess: Not knowing Yeah. What, like Yeah. What's happening. Yeah. And so, um. Dan brings me into like a little back [00:17:00] room where the whole exit five team is, and there's been a mix up and the boat is actually on Thursday night, there was a contract mistake.
[00:17:11] Josh: Oh no.
[00:17:12] Jess: Um, and so. Your dinner?
[00:17:16] Our dinner, yeah. Now has to be tonight in three hours. Yeah.
[00:17:20] Josh: This was what, like two, three o'clock? It was
[00:17:21] Jess: like 2 30, 3 o'clock in the afternoon? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:17:25] Josh: How did you feel,
[00:17:26] Jess: um, how did
[00:17:27] Josh: that make you feel?
[00:17:28] Jess: Momentary. Panic attack
[00:17:31] Josh: little, what do you call it? Af little minty. Be minty beam. Just
[00:17:33] Jess: a split second.
[00:17:34] Minty B.
[00:17:36] Josh: Yep.
[00:17:36] Jess: But I find in moments like that, where it's like literally you cannot control what is happening. Yeah. Like just find the next best step
[00:17:44] Josh: sprung into action.
[00:17:46] Jess: They sprung into action. Yeah. They were amazing. Yeah. So they had already secured a new restaurant. They had already figured out transportation.
[00:17:53] Josh: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:54] Jess: They really just needed to make sure like we were okay.
[00:17:57] Josh: They were so conscientious of how upset we would [00:18:00] be. Yeah. And frankly we weren't like, yeah. Like one, I don't think we had the time to, Nope. To be upset. We were just like, this is what it is, we're gonna make it work. But also like they were doing everything within their control to make it right.
[00:18:10] Yeah. Like we weren't frustrated whatsoever.
[00:18:12] Jess: No. It was just kinda like, this happens. I think that was like, and as marketers, I think we just. Roll with things like that a lot. Yeah, yeah. Like things happen all the time where like the launch date is now three days earlier. Yeah. Or now, you know, usually it's like later and now I have to figure out like how I'm gonna, you know, pull that off or whatever.
[00:18:30] Explain that to somebody. Yeah. You know, so like things like that happen to us all the time. It's. Especially with events 'cause they're live. Yep. And you just have to roll with it. So we just figured it out. Um, and they had already secured like another five star restaurant. The restaurant was amazing. Like, that was the other unknown was like, is the restaurant gonna be cool with this?
[00:18:49] Yeah. Like, yeah, they were great. Um, we had to do a little pH I think the only thing that was just kinda like, was like we had two separate tables instead of one.
[00:18:57] Josh: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Jess: But another Natalie Taylor piece [00:19:00] of advice was. Before dessert, have everyone get up and switch seats. Yeah. So that you can kind of mingle and talk to different people.
[00:19:07] I love that. And I even, I made a joke of it. Yeah. I was like, if you get sat next to a dud, like Josh, we're gonna move, so don't worry about it.
[00:19:14] Josh: I love that. Yeah. Really cool.
[00:19:15] Jess: Okay, so we've just gotten this news. Yeah, we now have to spring into action. We're like, yep, we're gonna do it tonight. Let's do it.
[00:19:21] They were like, great. Here's the restaurant, here's the time we've got transportation.
[00:19:26] Josh: Yep.
[00:19:26] Jess: Um, and so we all left the event, um, went back to the hotel 'cause all our swag was there, like all our notes. We had Exit five made like, um, you know, in the Devil Wears Prada where she's like at the Paris Fashion Week.
[00:19:40] Yeah. Anne Hathaway like taps her on the shoulder and she's like, this is the ambassador to like, whatever, Lichtenstein.
[00:19:44] Yes.
[00:19:45] Jess: Okay. So they had created like one of those things for us where it was like we knew everyone's face and names.
[00:19:50] Josh: Yes. Yep.
[00:19:50] Jess: Um,
[00:19:51] Josh: which was awesome. Was
[00:19:52] Jess: so helpful. Yeah. Because there, you know, we don't know everyone personally.
[00:19:55] Um, and so it was really great to be able to see Yeah. Their faces. Yeah. [00:20:00] Um, so. We had to like go back and like kinda Yeah. Like research that a little bit. Yeah.
[00:20:06] Josh: You, you pulled me out of my, my whatever. I was in a meeting or something. Yeah, you got us like all in an Uber. We drove back to our rooms. I think we had like five minutes to freshen up.
[00:20:15] Yeah. You said like, meet us in the lobby. Um, you pulled out this dock Right. Of, and we just went like face by face, here's who they are, here's where they work, all this sort of stuff. Yeah. I think I wrote my like, um. Toast. Yep. For the evening, like immediately that night we sprinted over to the restaurant, had to set up all the place mats, had to, like you said, figure out like the new layout of all this sort of stuff.
[00:20:34] Yep. Alex's dad. Yeah.
[00:20:37] Jess: Had
[00:20:38] Josh: father-in-law, father-in-law had made these like beautiful place cards. Uh, yeah. Like he had like done the calligraphy by hand of all the names. We had to like figure those out really quickly.
[00:20:46] Jess: Seating chart.
[00:20:47] Josh: It was wild. Yeah. How much you got done in hour. We just like,
[00:20:50] Jess: we just figured it out.
[00:20:51] And Alex too, like, she was just like, okay, this was what has to get done. So we get everything kind of set up. Um, we figure out like. [00:21:00] Meals and wine and like, do, how, how are we gonna do the menu? Like is this the menu? Is there another menu? Yeah. Like, we figured all that out, right? Yeah. We strategically placed our customers in the right, uh, seating arrangements.
[00:21:11] Um, we, you and I wanted to do a little theater at the beginning. Yeah. Uh, let, let, we'll talk about that when we get to like the actual dinner too. Yeah. Because that was really fun. So we had to like write that. Yeah. Maybe we should have done this a little more than like, you know, the week of this is a lesson for us.
[00:21:28] We wouldn't have felt so rushed if we would've done that, you know? Yeah, that's true. Two weeks true's
[00:21:32] Josh: true. But I feel like it's fitting for not only our personalities, but often a lot of marketers we're just like bad theater kids. Like we're just like, we're just, yeah. We'll get there. We'll out. We're gonna wing it a little We'll, we'll out a little bit.
[00:21:41] We'll it out. Yeah. There's
[00:21:41] Jess: something magical and winging it just a little bit. Yeah. Just
[00:21:43] Josh: a little spontaneity. Yeah.
[00:21:44] Jess: Continuity.
[00:21:45] Josh: Yeah.
[00:21:46] Jess: So, um, so yeah. So now we have, uh. All of our dinner guests are at like a spontaneously planned happy hour. Yeah. That exit five had to put together because
[00:21:56] Josh: some of them
[00:21:57] Jess: Yes.
[00:21:57] Some of them were there. Some of that you're right. Yeah. Some
[00:21:59] Josh: of them were. And that [00:22:00] was scary. So you and I leave, yeah.
[00:22:01] Jess: We leave Alex and Sarah to finish, like getting ready. Yep. At the, at the, uh, restaurant. You and I leave, we take an Uber to the happy hour so we can ride the shuttle back with our dinner guests.
[00:22:14] Yeah. And yeah, that was, I think my biggest fear was like. With this shift.
[00:22:20] Josh: Yeah.
[00:22:21] Jess: Are people actually gonna come? Yeah.
[00:22:22] Josh: And
[00:22:22] Jess: I didn't even think about it until that moment. Me neither. Like we were there and I was like,
[00:22:27] Josh: yeah.
[00:22:27] Jess: Ooh, there's a possibility. No one comes to us now.
[00:22:29] Josh: Yeah. And that was almost the reality.
[00:22:31] Like we pulled up to this like happy hour that they were all at. Our shuttle was there and the exit five team is there again working their butts off. Yeah. But there's this like. F this look on their face of just like, something's not going well. Uhhuh and, and Dan comes out and I think, um, Jess, their, their, um, their new hire that, that we know well as well is they come out and they're just like, there's only two people on the bus right now.
[00:22:54] And I'm like, what do you mean? There's only two people? And they're like, we're trying to find the other 15 people and where they're at. And I'm just like, oh [00:23:00] God, are we gonna go have a dinner with like four people at it? Yeah. But they found a good majority of them. Mm-hmm. There. Yep. And we shuttled back over.
[00:23:09] Yep. And then this was the other beautiful thing about Vermont. There wasn't too much else to do. No. So there weren't all these other side events and like, oh, I guess this thing got canceled, so I'll go do this instead. Yeah. Everyone. Everyone found their way to our event. Yes. Sands. Those like one or two people that you mentioned, which is an incredible show out.
[00:23:25] And
[00:23:25] Jess: I think those two people actually didn't even come to the conference. Yeah, that makes sense. So we had basically a hundred percent attendance. Yeah. Which was pretty incredible. It was. Um, so yeah, that was, uh, a momentary like. Yeah. Yeah. Like heart palpitations for me of like, oh, oh, here's the rub. Like, yeah, with this we can pull everything off, but if no one shows up, that's a problem.
[00:23:48] Josh: Yeah.
[00:23:48] Jess: But thankfully,
[00:23:49] Josh: we'll just have a 15,000 dinner by ourselves.
[00:23:51] Jess: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Cool.
[00:23:53] Josh: There's a lot of wine.
[00:23:55] Jess: We're dead. We're dead. We're speaking to you from the grave.
[00:23:58] Josh: We are a goose now. [00:24:00] Hello. Very on theme.
[00:24:02] Jess: Yes, exactly. So on brand, nothing
[00:24:04] Josh: less from Jess on theme on Brandand death.
[00:24:07] Jess: Yes, exactly.
[00:24:12] Dear marketer, your email subject lines are so good. Spam filters. Apologize for the inconvenience.
[00:24:19] Josh: I've actually seen this one, like the little thing pops up and it's just like, definitely not spam. You should open this one. Yeah.
[00:24:24] Jess: It's like they take the little velvet rope and they're like, this way, man.
[00:24:26] Yeah. You're on the list.
[00:24:27] Josh: Those are your emails.
[00:24:28] Jess: Yeah. They're yours,
[00:24:30] Josh: dear marketer. You don't just nurture leads through the funnel, your leads sprint through the funnel and bring their friends
[00:24:36] Jess: just holding hands.
[00:24:37] Josh: Just come on. Let's get through this funnel. The finish line? Yep. Gotta get in that pipeline.
[00:24:41] It's
[00:24:41] Jess: get real tight at the end here. We can do it though. Just,
[00:24:44] Josh: I'm like envisioning the little funnel they're getting through. That's cute. Yeah.
[00:24:47] Jess: These are like the best pictures in my mind. They're, they're so weird. Love it. So here we are at the restaurant. Yeah. We have a little bit of theater we wanna do to, to kick things off.
[00:24:57] Josh: Yeah. What
[00:24:58] Jess: did we do?
[00:24:58] Josh: So I, I [00:25:00] knew that we wanted to give like a little bit of like a welcome reception, just like a thank you for being there. We had a particular like relationship with Exit five that was special that we wanted to talk about. Just given the fact that I came from Drift, I work with Dan, I worked with Dave for a while, so just wanted to, to tell people about that, that story.
[00:25:15] Um, but. There were elements, obviously, of any sponsored event or dinner where you're like, we're doing this because we need customers, right? Yeah. Yeah. Like it's like it's the unspoken truth. And so you and I wanted to get in something that would acknowledge this sort of like cheesy piece of the sponsorship.
[00:25:32] Yeah. Which is like. We need to get some customers here. We need to get some sponsorship. Yeah. And again, you and I being the bad theater kids that we are, you know, planned this thing out where, you know, in the middle of my, my toast, you would like come up to me and whisper in my ear and be like, I remember you went, like, but the, we had already knew, right.
[00:25:50] That, that I was gonna be like, oh. And, and Jess wants me to acknowledge that there are some prospects, uh, in the audience. Tonight. Yeah. And then I, you know, I was like, but [00:26:00] anyways, like back to what I was saying, then you came up to my ear again and whispered in it and I'm like, oh, and just needs you to fill out the form so that she has attribution for this event.
[00:26:07] Yeah. And it was just one of those like acknowledging the awkward, like, yeah, we were doing this for a reason kind of thing, and everyone loved it. I got, yeah, I got a good laugh and like got
[00:26:14] Jess: a couple chuckles. Like, I think it, it like warmed up the room a little bit of like, okay, yeah, that is why we're here.
[00:26:19] And all like, yeah, yeah, that's out of the way. And
[00:26:22] Josh: it was basically the last. Thing that like, we like had to watermark with Vector on it. Yeah. Because after that we had some drinks at the bar and they sat us down and the conversation was just so natural because it wasn't salesy. Um, it was
[00:26:35] Jess: personal. It
[00:26:36] Josh: was personal.
[00:26:37] Jess: Um, I sat next to, uh, a prospect who, like the conversation we got into. Family. Yeah. Um, his wife's dad was a barber for like 35 years and owns, his wife now owns two barber shops. Like, I mean, we got into like really deep stuff. It was amazing. It was Oh, that's what was
[00:26:55] Josh: happening at your table? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:56] We were talking about that new documentary unknown number where that crazy mom. Oh. [00:27:00] Okay, well that's pretty fun. It got less deep at our table, but we were, we were spilling tea over there. But
[00:27:06] Jess: it was personal, right? Like it was still fun. It wasn't about Vector. It wasn't
[00:27:08] Josh: in fact, to the point where towards the end of the night you got up.
[00:27:13] Yeah. And you wanted to do the mixer thing where you said it's dessert time, get
[00:27:16] Jess: everyone to move around, not go for you. Not great. I basically was told to go away. I was like, we're having a great time. Leave us alone. Shut up, Jess. Like, I don't wanna go talk to the other table. These people are great. You know what?
[00:27:27] I was so glad to hear that. It was awesome. Like that meant, it wasn't like a weird force conversation where everyone's like, oh God, thank God no. Like, yes, let's do something else. No, like, let's change it up a little bit. Like, it was genuinely a really, really fun evening and, and a great, uh. A great opportunity for us.
[00:27:44] Yeah. Just to build,
[00:27:45] Josh: yeah.
[00:27:45] Jess: Relationships.
[00:27:46] Josh: And it meant that the follow up to it was also natural as well. Like there was a couple people at my table, um. That like we did wanna continue having conversations with Yes. And and I remember I got home in like the next week and when I kind of got the, the dust [00:28:00] settled, I reached out to some of these people, but I just shot LinkedIn messages.
[00:28:02] That was just like, thanks for coming to dinner. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. And then they would reply being like, thanks for having us, like. I like where you guys are building. Let's take a demo. Yeah. It was just so organic.
[00:28:12] Jess: Yeah, it was. It was amazing. I think we've gotten at least six or seven Yeah. Legitimate opportunities in the pipeline out of that.
[00:28:20] Josh: Yeah. Which dinner alone, if you think about that conversion rate of how many of our, our. 18 or 17 guests that showed up. And which percentage of those weren't already customers?
[00:28:29] Jess: Yeah.
[00:28:29] Josh: You are like almost all of 'em. Almost
[00:28:31] Jess: all of them. Yeah. Yeah. It, it was pretty incredible. Yeah. One, the, the like, one that I know we haven't heard from yet.
[00:28:37] Like, we're, we're in like, um, like a due diligence bake off with mm-hmm. Right now. Mm-hmm. So it's like. Were were on their radars. Yeah. They were the right people. Like it was so successful.
[00:28:48] Josh: Yeah.
[00:28:48] Jess: Um, and here was one thing that was amazing that ha, that would not have occurred. Had this whole mix up not happen was Oh, we got like brownie points for pulling that [00:29:00] off.
[00:29:00] Josh: Yes.
[00:29:01] Jess: And I think because it was such like a, we're doing this. Yeah. Like everybody was already in like a more like, alright, cool, whatever. Yeah. Like, you know, it didn't feel so formal. Like it was just kind of a, the vibe was very different because of that mix up and I think it really benefited us. That's a great
[00:29:18] Josh: point.
[00:29:18] I hadn't thought about that. Like everyone was so. Calm and relaxed and understanding and like even while we're waiting for a table to get ready, we just like all grabbed a bunch of drinks around the bar. Yeah. And it was very natural. And I do think, again, going back to this like incredible luxury that we particularly have, like we market to marketers and so there was almost some of this like awe of like, wow, great job guys.
[00:29:38] Yeah. Like, this is cool. You did it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:29:40] Jess: Nice work. Yeah, that's great. So maybe we should have like a boat mix up every time we do a dinner and be like, oh no guys, a boat. It's a different night.
[00:29:49] Josh: Actually, I would pay a premium for that. Uh, dg Dan will sponsor again next year. As long as you fuck it up.
[00:29:54] Jess: Yeah. Yeah. Give us the boat. Mix up package, please. The boat mix up. That's a new [00:30:00] sponsorship.
[00:30:00] Josh: Yeah, it's like a premium offering. Yeah. Yeah. You wanna impress people and show 'em how good you're at. Scrambling things. That's an extra 10 k
[00:30:08] Jess: worth it.
[00:30:09] Josh: Worth it. Paid off. Paid off.
[00:30:11] Jess: Absolutely.
[00:30:12] Josh: We called out a second ago that like it was, this happened in the midst of trade.
[00:30:16] Show season. And because of that, our sales team was planning on going to like pavilion like the following week or two. So this was only marketing. Yeah. And again, happy accident. But in retrospect, I kind of look back at that and I think it, it lended itself to why that event felt so good. Yeah, right. Like love our sales team.
[00:30:37] But there was something about. Not even having a potential of a conversation turning salesy. Yeah. That I think made our customers like enjoy the night more open up, more, like, give us more insight about what they're working on. So yeah, I don't know. I take for marketers take that as you will. Maybe we need more marketers and less salespeople.
[00:30:57] Well,
[00:30:57] Jess: I think part of the lesson is bring the [00:31:00] people who are gonna spur the right conversations.
[00:31:02] Josh: Love that. Yeah.
[00:31:02] Jess: Right. We got lucky because we're marketing to marketers. Yeah. So we bring the marketing team.
[00:31:07] Josh: Yeah.
[00:31:07] Jess: If you're, if you're marketing to IT people or developers, like bring someone from your development team.
[00:31:13] Bring someone from, yeah. Your IT team. Like spark the right conversations. I'm sure there will probably end up being a salesperson at one of these dinners sometimes, right?
[00:31:24] Josh: Boo.
[00:31:27] Jess: Love you guys.
[00:31:28] Josh: Nick's gonna listen to his podcast. As of his team. They're gonna be like, damn, we got thrown under the bus on this one.
[00:31:34] Jess: I thought they liked us.
[00:31:35] Josh: We do. We do mostly, yeah. Yeah.
[00:31:37] Jess: We love you guys. But yeah, I mean, I think that. That's kind of the point, right? Yeah. Is like bring the right people so that you can have those really deep personal conversations. Yeah.
[00:31:47] Josh: So, okay, we went through this crazy event. We got a lot out of it.
[00:31:50] How does it influence how you're thinking about just your events and your budgets and all that sort of stuff moving forward?
[00:31:56] Jess: Ooh, I got the event bug now. Yeah.
[00:31:57] Josh: I
[00:31:58] Jess: wanna do more.
[00:31:58] Josh: Yeah,
[00:31:59] Jess: I, I [00:32:00] think. They both, both of those events very different. Yeah. Did really, really well for us.
[00:32:05] Yeah.
[00:32:05] Jess: Um, in terms of generating pipeline and just like relationships for the future.
[00:32:09] Um, even co-marketing relationships like user gems and, and our team now are like, we're really tight. We've done other. Co-marketing things, done, some webinars, and we wanna do more of that. Right. So it's just spurring a lot of these really good relationships for the business. Yeah. Um, and so we wanna do more.
[00:32:26] So we've already, we've already signed to like sponsor Pavilion's big event next year. Yep. Um. We're absolutely going to do another something, whatever it is at Drive next year, because I think we've just seen, like, that's just such a great fit for us. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I'm sure other opportunities will come along and even if they're big events, uh, for us to be able to have some sort of smaller, more intimate kind of moment together with our, with our prospects and customers.
[00:32:53] Well,
[00:32:53] Josh: that's what it comes down to for me. Like the whole theme of what I learned here is like. It feels like the world is hungry for [00:33:00] authenticity. Yeah. Right. And like that's why these small form events work. That's why dinners work. Mm-hmm. That's why us scrambling worked. Right? Yeah. That's why having marketers there and not sellers for us worked.
[00:33:09] Yeah. I, I feel like it, it actually allowed us to be more authentic in how we approached it and we sold less. Yeah. But by selling less, we ironically sold more.
[00:33:20] Yeah.
[00:33:21] Josh: Yeah.
[00:33:21] Yeah,
[00:33:22] Jess: that was deep. Yeah,
[00:33:24] Josh: I have a couple of those moments every once in a while. You too. They're
[00:33:26] Jess: good.
[00:33:29] Josh: Jess, this was a great meeting, but I do have one question for you.
[00:33:31] Yeah. What's up? Um, when do you think we can do one of those, like big sponsored, like inbound boosts or like a hundred grand? Like I, I do like the 20 by 60, like big logo kind of thing.
[00:33:41] Jess: Were you not here? We just talked about. Light years.
[00:33:45] Josh: I, yeah, I guess the, okay. Well this meeting was a good meeting. It was
[00:33:50] Jess: good.
[00:33:50] Josh: This meeting could have been a podcast.
[00:33:52] Jess: It was. It
[00:33:52] Josh: was.
[00:33:53] Jess: This meeting could have been a podcast as a vector. Production Vector lets you build ad audiences from real people [00:34:00] that visit your site, click your ads and research your competitors. Imagine seeing exactly who will see your ads by name before you spend a dime.
[00:34:08] It's a great time to be alive. Marketers go give it a whirl at vector.co. See you next time.