Widen Streamlines Event Management Process

In December 2017, Widen, a digital asset management company, partnered with Splash, an event marketing software provider, to better manage its event needs, engage customers and maximize its presence within its customers’ organizations.

Prior to partnering with Splash, Widen tried out a few different technologies, but none of them were well-suited for the objectives the company sought to fulfill. When it came to events, Widen used web development resources to create, design and edit landing pages. However, this was time consuming and inefficient, restricting the company from further building out its program.

“We were looking for a provider that could support the entire event management process from the website, to registration and managing attendees,” said Mariah Haag, Event Manager at Widen, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. Haag explained how Widen was seeking something functional, user-friendly and easily customizable. Widen was also looking for a platform that could consistently make product updates, assist in company strategy and integrate with Salesforce, so all customer data could be kept in one place and easily referred to for proving event ROI.

The Solution

Once forming a partnership with Splash, Widen was able to achieve its event management goals. All event-related collateral, including assets, landing pages, guest management, customer data and attendee information, was housed in one place. 

In addition, all event data was integrated with Widen’s marketing stack. The company was positioned to measure the success of its events by analyzing the number of registrants versus attendees, as well as attendee engagement level, satisfaction level and likelihood of going to another Widen event through the implementation of post-event surveys.

Like Widen hoped, Splash’s website builder provided the company with a simple, straightforward user experience.

According to Jake Athey, VP of Marketing and Customer Experience at Widen,the time the company’s web designer now spends creating event websites has been substantially reduced, allowing the team to focus on the total website experience. 

“With any new software, there’s always a learning curve, but overall, using Splash has been pretty easy,” said Haag. “Even though I’m not a designer, I’m still able to do a lot of the work with minimal web design help compared to previous years.”

The Results

Widen was positioned to execute, scale and manage their event program more effectively after implementing an event software. Specifically, for Widen’s seventh-annual Summit, a three-day conference that took place from October 8-10, 2018, Splash technology proved to aid in Widen’s success by running the entire website and registration process, allowing all attendees to interact with the platform when purchasing tickets.

“This year’s Widen Summit was a step above with the simplicity of the design, the venue and presentation quality,” said Danielle Templeton, Creative Technologist at Widen. “The attendees were more engaged and committed to get the most out of the event because they had paid to be there.”

Widen saw notable changes in event attendance with a 6% decrease in the number of cancellations and “no shows” at the 2018 Widen Summit compared to 2017. Additionally, the company experienced a 19% decrease in the number of cancellations and “no shows” at all regional Widen Workshops compared to 2017. Ticket sales totaled more than $89,000, and after the 2018 Widen Summit, 19 new opportunities totaled almost $150,000 generated from existing customers. 

Next year, Widen hopes to use the Splash ROI dashboard to improve its metrics and extract data that is focused on future opportunities to improve impact on the company’s revenue.

“Since [Splash] is relatively easy to set up and use, having the platform saves me time, so that I can focus on other areas of event planning that make the experience great for our attendees and more directly tie into our specific goals,” Haag said.