Meeting News - February 15, 2010 - (Page 8)

Meetings Spotlight Raising Engagement, Marketing Use The Wolters Kluwer Corporate Legal Services events team in the past year added value to the division’s sales and marketing initiatives by building events designed for greater engagement with attendees and working with the sales staff to identify potential new customers. The events team, led by senior events manager Phyl Monroe, also is integrating marketing aspects into the event much earlier in the planning cycle. Monroe, who resides in the marketing department and operates in a shared services environment, annually manages about 25 seminars and four trade shows, three of which have attached events, and three customer advisory board meetings. She also plans one large annual customer event at a nontraditional venue, such as the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. Global information services and publishing company Wolters Kluwer has about 20,000 employees in 35 countries. In conjunction with designing events for the company’s Corporate Legal Services Group, she also handles all vendor negotiations, logistics and site selection with some outsourcing for hotel negotiations and a third party to assist with high-end customer events. Wolters Kluwer’s five business units, including corporate, retain coordinators to organize smaller meetings, with high-level negotiations and marketing initiatives handled by senior event managers, who also implement registration technology and consistent marketing approaches. Monroe, who has been at the 8 MeetingNews February 15, 2010 By Seth Harris sharris@meetingnews.com tunity to shake hands and make the customers feel special and important.” While some event-marketing integration tactics are new, they are an extension of a larger Wolters Kluwer strategy that began several years ago when the Corporate Legal Services marketing group built a proprietary database to house attendee contact, registration and invitation lists. That information is then loaded into Wolters Kluwer’s customer relationship management software. “Every time we come back from a seminar, we take those 100 attendees and load them into Salesforce,” she said. “Then, salespeople are sent a note to follow up with them.” At trade shows, where the company often has “crossover opportunities” with multiple business units represented, Monroe and other event managers share pre-show registration lists with the sales and marketing staffs to identify prospective clients. Monroe has had to apply that philosophy for events both big and small. In recent months, members of the Corporate Legal Services sales team came to Monroe to help design more intimate events with about 10 to 15 customers and their local sales representatives. One way of reaching this segment has been to pull lists from other legal community associations and inviting them to seminars previously reserved for current clients. “We try and keep the salespeople in touch and in front,” Monroe said. “That’s what I feel my job is. There is no point in having us if we aren’t adding value. The only way we can add value is to create these opportunities.” ❍ F e b r u a r y 2 5 , 2 0 1 0 Vo l u m e 3 4 , N u m b e r 2 Editorial David Meyer, Editor-In-Chief (646) 654-4431; dmeyer@meetingnews.com Chris Davis, Executive Managing Editor (646) 654-4437; cdavis@meetingnews.com Jay Boehmer, Senior Editor (646) 654-4434; jboehmer@meetingnews.com Michael B. Baker, Associate Editor (646) 654-4433; mbaker@meetingnews.com Seth Harris, Associate Editor (646) 654-5716; sharris@meetingnews.com 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003-9595 Editorial Fax: (646) 654-4428 company for four years, has begun constructing the marketing features of an event sooner in the planning process. The team at the creation of an event will envision where staff will be located, what the floor plan will be, which color schemes to used and Art Eric Wong, Art Director (646) 654-4439; Eric.K.Wong@nielsen.com Marketing Catherine Marchese, Marketing Manager (646) 654-5131; catherine.marchese@nielsen.com Production Noah Klein, Production Manager (646) 654-5179; Fax (646) 654-7318 noah.klein@nielsen.com Subscription Information: (847) 763-9050 Subscription Fax: (847) 763-9037 Single Copy Sales: (847) 763-9050 Custom Media Marilyn Moore, Editorial Director marilyn.moore@nielsen.com Alison Golub, Executive Editor Karen Gines, Executive Editor (Performance) Sarah Veit, Associate Editor Denniston Brown, Creative Director Michelle Tropiano, Art Director Jonathan Chan, Associate Art Director Tessa Sestina, Associate Art Director Wolters Kluwer’s Phyl Monroe the methods needed to optimize the sales team’s interaction with attendees in order to gain the highest return on investment. While developing event programs, Monroe aims to support the sales staff’s efforts to reach the right people and build the experience around those interactions. “Many of our programs are thought from inception about how it is going to be done” from a sales and marketing perspective, Monroe said. “When I design an event, I put a lot of thought into what is going to happen. I think about what happens when the attendees approach the door,” she said. “We think that process through and align it with the sales staff, so that the sales staff is getting the oppor- Information Marketing Shelly Patton, Audience Marketing Manager (646) 654-7258; shelly.patton@nielsen.com Reprints The YGS Group Barb Karmilowicz (800) 290-5460 x106 MN@theYGSgroup.com List Rentals For postal mailings: Julius Single (845) 731-2731 For e-mailings: Nicole Guarascio (845) 731-3828 Business Manager Leslie Musick President: Greg Farrar Senior Vice President, Human Resources: Michael Alicea Senior Vice President, Brand Media: Andrew Bilbao Senior Vice President, Finance: Sloane Googin Senior Vice President, Retail: David Loechner Senior Vice President, Building & Design: Joe Randall Senior Vice President, Central Services: Mary Kay Sustek Vice President, Manufacturing & Distribution: Jennifer Grego Vice President, Client Marketing: Sue Tremblay Vice President, Audience Marketing: Joanne Wheatley www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Meeting News - February 15, 2010

Meeting News - February 15, 2010
Contents
Newsmaker
Meetings Spotlight
Viewpoint
Meeting People
Construction Cites
Association Watch
Strategic Mtgs. Mgmt
Gaming Destinations
Island Incentives
Dateline: Hong Kong
South Regional
Travel Dashboard

Meeting News - February 15, 2010