However, scheduling meetings and managing appointments is often much harder than it needs to be. With massive deals at stake, there are many challenges that could jeopardize meeting outcomes and hinder your long-term success. 

But don’t sound the alarm just yet: There are plenty of ways to overcome obstacles and take the pain out of meeting management. That said, none are as powerful as a robust and feature-rich appointment scheduling software.

In this guide, we’ll analyze all the different types of appointment scheduling apps and gauge their efficiency at an enterprise level. For each, we’ll discuss its impact on B2B marketing and sales processes and whether or not it’s right for an organization like yours. 

Intro to appointment scheduling software

We can’t stress enough how important customer meetings are to organizational growth. Consider the variety and volume of meeting types:

• Product demos.
• Expert meetings.
• Sales meetings.
• Executive meetings.
• Dinners. 
• Public relations (PR) and analyst relations (AR) meetings.
• Tracks and sessions.
• Roundtables.
• Booth tours.

And that’s only scratching the surface. Although each meeting type serves a different purpose, all are effectively suited to various points in the customer journey. Organizations that book appointments strategically throughout the buying process can nurture prospects down the sales funnel and closer to conversion. Oftentimes, meetings play an important role in accelerating an opportunity.

What does this mean? In short, customer engagements advance pipelines that lead to more revenue.

Why use an appointment scheduling tool?

Organizations are more global than ever before and, therefore, must factor more variables into the process. These include multiple time zones, calendars, target accounts, topics of interest, among several other considerations. Appointment scheduling software can reduce this burden and greatly simplify the effort — both for customers and your stakeholders (sales, executives, experts, PR/AR team, etc.).

As we’ll discuss, manual tools do still play an important part in scheduling meetings. However, they fall well short of the mark in terms of carrying the entire workflow from start to finish. It often takes several emails just to book one meeting. Worse yet, only 38% of emails are ever opened — which means your client communications may be lost into the void. 

By contrast, appointment scheduling apps are a much more effective alternative. A robust scheduling app empowers you to:

• Reduce burdensome administrative tasks that hinder your ability to maximize the number of B2B engagements for a marketing program or event.
• Minimize back-and-forth emails between sales, marketing, customers and other participants required to book a meeting.
• Avoid double booking stakeholders, no-shows, time-zone errors, conflicts and cancellations.
• Speed up the customer journey by allowing prospects to directly book meetings at their convenience.
• Collect data that can be used to facilitate quality meetings, improve processes, optimize budgets and maximize productivity.

Spreadsheets for appointment scheduling

Spreadsheets are the Swiss Army knife of the business world. You can use them for almost anything — and in fact, most organizations do. But what about scheduling meetings and managing appointments?

Although spreadsheets aren’t necessarily intended to be a scheduling tool, marketers have leveraged them as such for decades. For starters, they’re certainly a major step up from pen-and-paper processes. Marketing teams often use them to manage and plan all meetings — those booked by themselves, sales reps and others — in relation to a specific program or event.

Spreadsheets are also used to overcome the limitations of traditional calendaring software. Unlike some basic tools, a spreadsheet can be used as a master calendar for tracking and reporting meetings in relation to a trade show or conference. This is especially true for cloud-based solutions, as they can be edited online and in real time by multiple team members. 

However, spreadsheets aren’t without their drawbacks. They have many limitations of their own, each of which can have significant downstream consequences. For example:

• Human error: As a manual scheduling tool, spreadsheets are prone to mistakes. In fact, an estimated 90% of spreadsheets contain errors. This can lead to double-bookings, time-zone mishaps and miscommunications that could cost you significant business.
  
• Booking the wrong participants: This is especially detrimental when it involves executives, as there’s a high opportunity cost for their presence. Their time may be better spent elsewhere, such as in other meetings with high-value accounts.
  
• Lack of meeting data: Spreadsheets don’t integrate well with critical resources, such as customer relationship management (CRM) software. This makes it difficult to link them to more meaningful data, especially those related to opportunities and sales.
  
• Inefficiency: Manual processes are slow and often redundant, and make it hard to accommodate last-minute changes. This can greatly limit the number of meetings you book, thereby severely undercutting sales potential.
  
• Lack of automation: Spreadsheet-based appointment scheduling is too complex to support a high volume of meetings. Worse yet, it doesn’t allow you to book appointments based on topics of interest, availability, location or context. 

These complications run counter to your business priorities. Spreadsheets make managing and scheduling appointments a tedious, painstaking process, and worst of all, they can severely derail your growth opportunities.

Calendar apps for appointment scheduling

Calendar apps — Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and so on — are essential to keeping track of individual schedules and booking appointments. However, they’re ineffective when used for marketing and sales programs, especially without the help of a master calendar system. 

When used on their own, marketers and other stakeholders inevitably run into challenges. Basic calendar apps lack functionality and are still largely a manual process. Without any automation, the booking process is time-consuming and error-prone. 

Additionally, meeting managers may need to coordinate dozens (if not hundreds) of calendars at a time. Calendar-based appointment scheduling apps don’t make it easy to manage meetings at scale, which can result in double booking prospects and slow, drawn-out workflows.

Keep in mind that online scheduling is a two-way street. Whereas sales reps may be scheduling meetings with target prospects, customers may also book appointments on their own. It’s up to the marketing team to ensure inbound meeting requests are managed appropriately.

However, this experience is often cumbersome for inbound requestors. Although users have some line of sight into stakeholder availability, calendars aren’t mapped to specific topics, products and categories. Inevitably, a prospect may book a meeting, only to realize their scheduled appointment is with the wrong expert or executive relative to their needs. 

Furthermore, basic calendar apps require back-and-forth communication to manage changes. This not only further complicates the process, but also detracts from the customer experience. 

Free and/or B2C tools

Between rising inflation rates and soaring event costs, it’s no surprise that 75% of organizations are asking their marketing teams to “do more with less.” In turn, some enterprises may be tempted to cut back on expenses and rely on free-to-use scheduling apps. 

However, this approach would be sorely misguided. Free appointment scheduling software may be more cost-effective than one with a paid plan, but such a solution isn’t made to be used for enterprise-level applications. 

Free and low-cost appointment scheduling apps are more appropriate for small businesses and B2C organizations in niche industries. For example, Square Appointments and its basic feature set are ideal for salon owners, whereas Acuity Scheduling is best for workshops and classes. They do well in terms of scheduling 1-to-1 meetings, but fall short when it comes to the more complex enterprise-level use cases. Most don’t allow you to schedule different types of meetings, manage approvals or set capacity restrictions on meeting locations.

Enterprises operate at an incomparably larger scale and require tools that manage hundreds of meetings at a time. Moreover, each meeting must be tied to programs and events that focus on engaging customers and other external parties to grow business at a greater volume and velocity. 

Another downfall of low-cost B2C online scheduling platforms is that they’re inadequate for managing and automating complex workflows with valuable resources. For example, their limited capabilities may include automatic reminders, but none automate approvals for meeting requests or map appointments to topics of interest. 

Meeting schedulers for B2B sales and marketing teams

High-performance B2B sales and marketing teams need more than just Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar integration. Given the complexity of enterprise appointment scheduling, they require a more robust, advanced and streamlined solution. 

Let’s put the workflow into perspective. Consider the roles that internal and external participants play in scheduling customer engagements:

• Internal: Sales reps are responsible for leveraging their client relationships and market expertise to engage potential customers and book them into meetings or sessions.
  
• External: It’s likely that customers will request meetings as a result of your outbound marketing strategy. When they do, it’s vital you offer a seamless customer experience and make it easy for them to book appointments related to the topics and products of their choice. They may be looking for a specific meeting type, such as a product demo, so you should deploy a scheduling app that allows you to do so.

Clearly, this work is too cumbersome for any ordinary appointment scheduler to handle. Organizations require a more purpose-built platform, such as Jifflenow’s eCampaign software. 

eCampaign is a meeting scheduling automation solution that can support multiple meeting types simultaneously. Made specifically for high-performance B2B sales and marketing teams, it streamlines the appointment booking process from start to finish. 

Intelligent and customizable forms allow prospects to easily register for sessions or book appointments based on meeting type, topic, location and more. The platform also automates invitations and reminders, maximizing attendance and helping you make the most of every opportunity. Plus, with Salesforce, Marketo and other integrations, you can glean valuable insights from meeting data and trace outcomes back to individual demand-gen campaigns. 

Meeting scheduling automation for B2B events

Meetings go hand-in-hand with trade shows, conferences and exhibitions. With so many prospects in one place, events give your marketing team a chance to generate leads, advance pipeline and convert customers in a short period of time.

However, scheduling and managing appointments is even more important in this unique context. According to Gartner, the average B2B organization spends almost 22% of its total marketing budget on trade shows and conferences. As event costs rise, marketers are under constant pressure to justify expenses with a positive return on investment.

Of course, the best way to do that is by maximizing customer meetings, which can be an especially difficult challenge. Not only do marketers have to pre-schedule attendees to ensure their investments are worthwhile, but they must also account for walk-in appointments on the trade show floor. This can be a great way to offset costs in case pre-booked appointments are no-shows or cancellations, although they still require a fast and efficient scheduling process. Likewise, teams must also navigate the complexities of shared and private meeting rooms, booth tours, last-minute changes and other event-related nuances. 

Fortunately, that’s exactly what meeting scheduling automation software like Jifflenow’s eEvent platform provides. Enterprises can leverage eEvent’s configurable and scalable workflow tools to automate behind-the-scenes processes and simplify meeting management. 

For example, you can pre-schedule thousands of meetings mapped directly to topics, experts, locations, meeting types and more. Automate approvals, reminders and notifications to maximize attendance and engage more customers. Use the software’s centralized dashboard to manage workflows, including check-ins, briefings and follow-ups. 

More than a meeting tool, eEvent is your valuable source of meeting analytics. Its reports and dashboards help you easily track metrics, including:

• Number of meetings booked.
• Resource utilization rates.
• Most popular topics.
• Influenced revenue.
• Pipelines advanced.

Use these indicators to understand individual, meeting and event performance. Pull valuable insights from the data to drive continuous improvement, demonstrate ROI and secure your future marketing budget.

Optimize your scheduling today

Booking customer meetings is difficult enough as it is, let alone on an enterprise level. B2B companies require purpose-fit solutions made to simplify the process at the speed and scale expected of today’s competitive landscape.

Request a demo today to learn more about how Jifflenow can help you streamline scheduling and drive growth throughout your business. 

The post Exploring Appointment Scheduling Software: From Spreadsheets to Jifflenow appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

Jifflenow has shattered previous records with 39 customers utilizing its eEvent software to pre-schedule an astonishing 6,760 engagements at re:Invent 2023. This feat marks a significant milestone for Jifflenow, demonstrating the growing demand for meeting scheduling solutions among major exhibitors and organizers. One prominent exhibitor stands out, having pre-scheduled an impressive 1,662 engagements, showcasing the effectiveness of Jifflenow’s platform in facilitating meaningful B2B meetings of various types.

Not to be outdone, RSNA 2023, which opened this week with ten major customers attending the RSNA conference, has collectively pre-booked a staggering 6,916 engagements using Jifflenow’s platform, breaking all previous records for the event.

One major healthcare devices company stands at the forefront, leading the way with over 2,600 engagements pre-scheduled, thanks to Jifflenow’s new and innovative Multi-Level Topics feature. Furthermore, every Jifflenow customer attending RSNA 2023 has already secured over 100 engagements, underscoring the platform’s effectiveness in driving meaningful business outcomes and maximizing event ROI.

“We are pleased that Jifflenow is providing significant value to our customers at these events to help them achieve phenomenal results,” stated Hari Shetty, CEO and Founder of Jifflenow. The impressive pre-scheduled engagements at both conferences – re:Invent 2023 and RSNA 2023 exemplify Jifflenow’s commitment to enhancing the conference experience by streamlining B2B meetings and facilitating productive interactions for attendees. As these conferences continue throughout the week, excitement remains high, with Jifflenow poised to play a pivotal role in the success of both events.

Ready to get started? Request a demo today.

The post Jifflenow Sets New Records for B2B Meetings at AWS re:Invent and RSNA 2023 appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

Globally, the appointment scheduling software market is expected to more than double over the next decade, reaching a value of nearly $1 billion by 2032. According to Fact.MR research, this impressive growth rate can be attributed to the corporate sector. Enterprises of all industries are increasing their investment in online scheduling platforms, aiming to book more customer meetings and drive key business outcomes. 

The good news is that there’s an abundance of solutions on the market. However, few are made specifically for enterprise clients. In other words, many organizations are likely deploying scheduling software that isn’t fit for its purpose because most platforms are better suited for small business requirements. 

Of course, this raises an important question: Which is the best appointment scheduling app for your specific business needs? Luckily, you’re in the right place. 

Read on to learn more about the various options at your fingertips and how they compare to Jifflenow’s meeting scheduling automation software.

Why do high-performance teams and business executives need a best-in-class appointment scheduling app?

The short answer is simple: Customer meetings play a critical role in today’s fast-paced business landscape. 

These engagements happen at crucial points in the buying process. They give sales reps, experts and executives an important opportunity to have direct conversations with potential customers. Whether it be a sales presentation or a product demonstration, meetings are powerful tools that not only accelerate the sales cycle, but also advance your pipeline and drive key business outcomes. 

An effective appointment booking strategy can even stimulate short- and long-term business growth. Whereas prospect meetings allow you to acquire new customers, client meetings empower you to strengthen relationships and maximize customer lifetime value (CLV).

However, according to the RAIN Group, there’s a common misconception that buyers don’t want to hear from sales reps at all. Many believe that prospects come to a decision long before reaching out to a supplier. 

In reality, 82% of buyers accept meetings with sellers at various points in their customer journey, but especially early on in the process. Let’s consider the research:

• 71% want to meet with sales reps when looking for new ways to drive results and improve their business.
• 62% request meetings when they’re actively looking for a new solution. 
• 54% do so when they’re evaluating possible providers.

Clearly, customer and prospect meetings are welcome at all stages of the sales funnel — and in fact, just 2% of buyers don’t want to engage whatsoever. In other words, your target audience is more than willing to request and accept meetings and sessions.

Bottom line: It’s essential to book appointments, as they allow you to nurture prospects, close deals and retain clients. 

Types of meetings

Buyers want customized content throughout the sales and marketing process, and even more so when it comes to meetings. Therefore, organizations should offer a range of meeting types that cover a wide variety of topics, pain points and objectives. For example:

• Executive meetings.
• Product demos.
• Expert meetings.
• Sales meetings.
• Partner meetings.
• … and many more.

It’s one thing to offer these types of engagements, but booking them is a challenge all to itself. Enterprises need a scheduling app with the capability to simplify the process and map each meeting type to specific locations, experts and topics of interest.

Who’s responsible for appointment booking?

Sales, marketing and executive admin teams are responsible for facilitating and executing this critical process.

Let’s break down their roles in more detail:

• Sales: Responsible for leveraging their prospect relationships to book outbound meetings and identify target accounts. 
• Marketing: Facilitates an effective meeting environment and generates inbound meeting requests through promotional activities, such as webinar series or other marketing campaigns. 
• Executive admins: Must prepare executives, brief them on upcoming meetings and manage schedules on their behalf.

Once again, it’s vital for enterprises to deploy a scheduling app that makes it simple for all stakeholders to complete their role in the appointment booking process. This is especially important given that many organizations use demand-generation and field marketing programs to drive inbound and outbound meetings.

In both cases, countless variables in play further complicate scheduling. For example, this workflow involves:

• Navigating countless calendars.
• Booking across multiple time zones.
• Confirming inbound requests mapped to the right internal expert and topic of interest.
• Facilitating outbound requests.
• Sending appointment reminders.
• Confirming room availability.
• Managing check-ins.
• Briefing internal attendees about each engagement.
• Notifying stakeholders of last-minute changes.
• Analyzing meeting data.
• Mapping outcomes back to each meeting.

These complicated challenges are too much to handle if you’re reliant on only the basic capabilities. High-performing organizations need a robust scheduling app that can effectively navigate these moving parts and empower teams to schedule more meetings and sessions that generate tangible results. 

More than just the basic functionality of booking appointments, enterprises require software that can simplify and facilitate all three stages of the business meeting workflow:

1. Meeting scheduling: Whether it’s before and during a trade show or following a marketing campaign, teams must book appointments as effectively and efficiently as possible. This involves identifying the correct internal participants, coordinating numerous calendars, setting locations and confirming requests. Teams must also send appointment reminders to all participants to avoid no-shows, last-minute cancellations and other issues that could hinder performance.
   
2. Meeting management: Once meetings are set, organizations should ensure the venue is prepped and ready with all necessary technologies and other resources. Meeting managers must share briefing docs with all internal participants, identify roles and check in attendees when they arrive at the location. Immediately following the meeting, all relevant data should be shared and synced with marketing automation and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
   
3. Meeting analysis: Teams must analyze meeting data to enable continuous improvement. With a robust scheduling app, they can connect individual meetings back to influenced revenue, pipeline and other business objectives to understand performance on a more granular level. Moreover, event teams can measure resource utilization, allowing them to evaluate individual trade shows and determine the true ROI of their field marketing efforts. This is especially key given that rising event costs are compelling marketers to spend less and get more from their already limited budget. 

All things considered, appointment scheduling is much more complex at an enterprise level than for a small business. The best way to simplify and optimize this process is to deploy an automated and feature-rich scheduling app made specifically for high-performance organizations.

Compare and contrast: Jifflenow vs. 12 appointment scheduling apps

Unlike most appointment scheduling apps, Jifflenow’s eEvent and eCampaign platforms are designed with enterprise clients in mind. As such, they come with all the tools you need to book more meetings, advance your sales pipeline and achieve long-term business goals. 

That said, it’s still your job to do your homework and identify the very best scheduling app for your specific needs. So, we’ve compiled a list of the most popular appointment booking software providers on the market today. 

Let’s review each one individually. We’ll discuss their key features, best use cases and whether they fit enterprise scheduling.

1. Doodle

Doodle’s appointment booking software offers a customizable experience for individuals and teams. Users can create a dedicated booking page branded to their business that people can use to request appointments directly. 

Features and capabilities

Like any other scheduling tool, it provides calendar app integrations with most major providers, including Google Calendar, Outlook and more. It offers a variety of paid plan options, with each tier offering more advanced capabilities. For example, Doodle’s free plan allows users to create just one booking page, whereas its other plans allow more pages and unlimited appointments. 

One of the platform’s key features is its calendar sync function, which is designed to help teams avoid double booking meetings. Additionally, it enables users to create group polls to determine the optimal time slot for all participants. Remote workers can also access Doodle through its proprietary mobile app.

Use case

Although Doodle markets its product as a suitable platform for individuals, teams and enterprises, it’s clearly a system best fit for internal collaboration. In other words, it’s not made to help organizations — and more specifically, field marketing teams — maximize customer meetings. 

By contrast, Jifflenow’s eEvent software allows you to drive business growth at trade shows, conferences and other events. Its simple, comprehensive interface empowers marketers and sales teams to schedule, manage and analyze both in-person and virtual engagements. Accessible as a web app, mobile app and native Salesforce app, eEvent’s adaptable nature enables you to easily set up and manage meetings of all types. 

2. Qualified

Qualified’s scheduling app is offered as part of its Pipeline Cloud platform, a marketing automation tool for revenue teams. The main goal of this scheduling app is to help customers transform their website into an automated meeting scheduler, providing a direct pathway between buyers and sellers. 

Features

Qualified uses artificial intelligence to determine “VIP buyers.” When these prospects arrive on the site, a chatbot engages them in conversation and invites them to book a sales meeting or live demo. Calendar integration allows the user to see sales rep availability, allowing them to secure the slot of their choice. 

However, this appointment scheduler doesn’t allow users to send an automated reminder to participants, which increases the risk of no-shows and double bookings. Moreover, this means teams must rely on email reminders to notify attendees of updates or cancellations. As a manual process, this is also prone to human error. 

Use case

Qualified’s AI-driven meeting scheduler is an innovative asset, but ultimately isn’t fit for enterprise event scheduling complexities. Field marketers, sales reps and executive admins require more control over the workflow and must be able to map specific attendees to meeting types, locations, topics and more. 

Jifflenow’s meeting scheduling automation software does exactly that. Whether it be on a booking page or elsewhere, users can customize the platform to include whatever type of meeting is most relevant to their interests at any given event. More importantly, requesters can book appointments with the sales reps and experts most applicable to their topic or product of interest, ensuring nobody’s time is wasted on an irrelevant engagement. 

3. YouCanBook.Me

YouCanBook.Me offers a range of customizable online scheduling capabilities. It’s best known as the meeting scheduler that combines appointment booking with payment processing.

Features

The platform’s calendar integration allows users to easily synchronize availability, create a booking grid, and receive inbound requests. Users can share their booking page on social media or via email. 

YouCanBook.Me enables you to offer a variety of appointment types and customize the interface according to your brand. It also automates messaging for follow-ups and appointment reminders, saving time spent on repetitive tasks. The app integrates with most video conferencing solutions, including Zoom and Google Meet.

Use case

YouCanBook.Me is most appropriate for small- and mid-size organizations. Payment processing isn’t an applicable feature for enterprise clients, who are more likely to negotiate multi-million dollar deals. The software also isn’t recommended for companies with complex scheduling and reporting needs, as it offers less analytics relevant to meetings, revenue and pipeline generation. 

Jifflenow, however, makes it easy to track meeting metrics through comprehensive dashboards and on-demand reports. With Salesforce integration, users can even add crucial account and opportunity data to meeting requests, ensuring participants have all the contextual information they need to succeed. Analyze data and establish your meetings’ impact on influencing revenue, event ROI and other key performance indicators.

4. SuperSaaS

SuperSaaS is a flexible online appointment scheduling software made to fit the needs of almost any business. It offers a free plan for small business users, Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar integration and payment processing capabilities.

Features

As an automated solution, SuperSaaS helps companies simplify online scheduling. It’s highly customizable, allowing users to craft their own custom messages, notifications, intake forms, text fields and more. It supports a range of meeting types, including 1:1 engagements, group meetings and internal huddles. Users can send SMS confirmations, email reminders and follow-up messages from the same interface. 

Use case

SuperSaaS is designed as a one-size-fits-all solution with use cases ranging from health and wellness to education and public service. Despite casting a wide net, its platform ultimately misses many of an enterprise’s key requirements.

Take security, for instance. SuperSaaS offers some data security protections, such as basic encryption and access control, but enterprise clients often demand much more. That’s why Jifflenow implements an array of sophisticated cybersecurity measures, including firewall protection, anti-malware software, rigorous testing, multi-factor authentication and continuous monitoring. These safeguards, among many more, defend against threats that could jeopardize your company’s most valuable assets.

5. Timetap

Timetap’s automated appointment scheduler offers a level of flexibility you don’t often see in most online booking platforms. It allows you to easily manage and book appointments for multiple users across several locations, thereby saving time and reducing repetitive work. 

Features

One of Timetap’s more interesting capabilities is its automated waitlist tool. This feature allows you to create a waitlist and automatically send meeting requests when registrants cancel or a seat becomes available. The platform also offers a travel time calculator, which measures the commute between appointments held in different locations. Additionally, Timetap users can schedule appointments across multi-day programs, such as seminars and classes.

Use case

Timetap has many features that could be useful at the enterprise level, but is best suited for smaller use cases, such as education or retail applications. As an automation solution, Timetap certainly simplifies the meeting scheduling workflow, though not to the extent that event teams require.

Marketers and sales reps must accommodate walk-in attendees on the trade show floor. It’s essential that their scheduling app facilitates a seamless walk-in experience and enables team members to instantly identify the most optimal experts for their interests. 

Jifflenow offers this capability on an enterprise scale. Our agile platform can accommodate a high volume of inbound and outbound meetings. This is important for field marketers who may be booking hundreds of engagements throughout an event, including pre-scheduled, real-time and walk-in participants. 

6. Acuity Scheduling

Acuity Scheduling, a Squarespace scheduling platform, is primarily focused on helping users replace multiple administrative systems with a single cloud-based booking software. Its functionality goes beyond online scheduling and into accounting and client database management.

Features

Acuity Scheduling customers can book and reschedule appointments by browsing staff availability, which can be linked through social media or the company website. The platform automatically syncs calendars across multiple time zones, ensuring you can meet with international clients without running into issues. 

Acuity users also can send customized communications to clients and prospects that reflect their specific branding. This tool also allows you to send appointment reminders via email and text.

Use case

Altogether, Acuity is a user-friendly scheduling app that makes booking classes, workshops and group appointments a breeze. Its comprehensive feature set, which includes online payment integration, is perfect for teams that want to upsell customers on additional services. 

However, this particular app falls short of the mark for field marketing-driven scheduling. Events are massive investments, which is why marketers aim to pre-book as many attendees as possible before it kicks off. Acuity Scheduling doesn’t support this must-have feature, rendering it unfit for the field marketing workflow.

By contrast, eEvent allows you to seamlessly pre-program your upcoming trade shows and conferences. You can schedule strategic engagements well in advance through inbound meeting requests or outbound bookings. Not only does this help you maximize your sales opportunities, but it also enables you to ensure the right experts and executives are at the event.

7. Setmore

Setmore is a scheduling tool that assigns a unique subdomain for your business — a customizable website where clients can visit and book appointments. Moreover, you can tailor the booking page to your brand and collect online payments. 

Features

This scheduling app offers both a free plan and several paid plans to meet your individual needs. Design a custom booking page to display your services and real-time availability, complete with your logo, branding, reviews and more. Users can generate a QR code to place on marketing, merchandise and other resources, which links straight to your scheduling site. 

Use case

Setmore is a great option for small businesses and freelancers, such as those in the health and fitness industry. However, the platform does little to support enterprise requirements.

For instance, Setmore doesn’t allow customers to request meetings based on type. On the other hand, Jifflenow’s inbound request pages can be tailored to your specific engagement needs. Offer product demos, meet-the-expert sessions, executive meetings and more — all mapped to the locations, topics and stakeholders most relevant to the request. Deliver the most optimal meeting experience possible to nurture your prospects and seal the deal.

8. Square Appointments

Square Appointments is created by Square, a popular online payment processing company. Its primary purpose is to simplify and accelerate the appointment scheduling process, thus giving you time back to focus on other important business matters.

Features

Square Appointments helps clients book, cancel and reschedule appointments. It frees you from having to manage this process manually by offering customers user-friendly self-service capabilities. From a management perspective, you can view the history of your customers’ past visits to better understand trends and behaviors. Although a free plan is available, the platform’s paid plans provide more robust functionality for unlimited bookings, staff members and more.

Use case

This software’s features are undoubtedly best suited for small businesses, especially in the health and beauty industry. For example, salon owners can charge late cancellation and no-show fees for customers who miss their appointments. 

It’s a perfect solution for businesses hoping to manage clients, accept payments and control calendars in just one pane of glass. However, it’s not scalable to the degree enterprises expect. Alternatively, a platform like Jifflenow can handle hundreds or thousands of appointments simultaneously.

9. vCita

vCita Online Scheduling is a self-service application for scheduling and managing appointments. It’s integrated into the vCita business management suite, which includes CRM, billing, client management and email marketing tools.

Features

This scheduling app allows your customers to schedule appointments 24/7 from your website, Facebook page, email and more. Clients can choose the type of meeting they want, whether it be virtual, in person or over the phone. Calendars automatically adjust across time zones, helping you avoid no-shows and missed appointments.

Use case

vCita is primarily targeted toward accountants, consultants, coaches, counselors, fitness trainers, lawyers and small health care providers. Its tools may be helpful for professionals managing a limited number of bookings, but don’t translate to large-scale scheduling. 

Appointment booking is exceptionally complicated at the enterprise level. The workflow involves many steps and procedures that must be coordinated precisely. Simply put, teams can’t afford avoidable mistakes when multi-million dollar deals are on the line. That’s why Jifflenow breaks down the process into simplified pieces, empowering all stakeholders to fulfill their roles as seamlessly as possible. 

10. Appointy

Appointy’s online scheduling software is designed to cut down on administrative work, simplify workflow management and boost productivity. It markets itself toward a variety of industries, including health and wellness, education, government and professional services.

Features

Appointy allows you to book appointments and manage multiple participants and virtual calendars easily. It automates registrations, allowing you to focus on other value-driving activities key to your specific business initiative. 

Use case

The downside with Appointy’s scheduling app is that most plans — even paid versions — display ads on the interface. Only the most expensive premium plan removes all Appointy branding, giving you the freedom to fully customize the user experience.

The platform doesn’t offer any enterprise-grade scheduling capabilities, such as robust customer analytics or automatic meeting approvals. In contrast, Jifflenow streamlines all three stages of the meeting lifecycle, empowering teams to book, manage and analyze meetings in one centralized dashboard.

Access the power of meeting scheduling automation

Overcome the vast complexities of your meeting scheduling process and start booking more customer engagements with a solution that actually aligns with your specific business goals.

Jifflenow’s robust meeting scheduling automation platform doesn’t just simplify the workflow — it amplifies it. With our software, enterprises like yours can:

• Map inbound and outbound requests to specific meeting types, locations, experts and topics of interest.
  
• Accelerate the sales cycle with workflow automation from start to finish.
  
• Analyze meeting data for improved resource utilization, business performance and continuous improvement.
  
• Advance your goals, drive long-term growth and impact revenue.

Ready to get started? Request a demo today.

The post Ultimate Buyer’s Guide: Jifflenow vs. Other Appointment Scheduling Apps appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

At the end of 2022, Gartner surveyed 200 sales team leaders to discover their top priority in the coming year. Their answer: sales and marketing alignment. Why? Because organizations with aligned sales and marketing teams are three times more likely to exceed new customer acquisition targets. 

Unfortunately, bridging the gap between your departments isn’t that easy. It’s not an overnight process and requires buy-in from top to bottom. One way to get the ball rolling is to back up your effort with tangible facts and figures — or in other words, sales and marketing alignment statistics.

To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of the best B2B sales and marketing alignment stats. In this blog, we’ll break down the numbers that illustrate its biggest benefits, challenges and opportunities for success. 

The Benefits of Alignment

Sales and marketing alignment is a process of connecting the dots between your sales team and the marketing department. It’s an agreement between both sides to share goals, priorities, strategies, procedures and more. 

At its most basic, you can think of it as keeping everyone on the same page. In turn, you can ensure the entire organization works together rather than with competing interests that undercut the other.

Why does this matter? Here are some sales and marketing alignment stats that demonstrate its advantages:

• According to HubSpot’s 2023 report, 22.1% of sales professionals say the biggest benefit of alignment is it helps them close more deals. Furthermore, the same survey found that 20.3% of marketing and sales teams say increased win rates are the top advantage.
  
• Businesses with aligned sales and marketing teams are 67% more efficient at closing deals.
  
• Aberdeen reports that highly aligned organizations see a 32% year-over-year revenue growth compared to those that aren’t.
  
• According to Forrester, organizations that align their sales and marketing departments grow 19% faster and are 15% more profitable.
  
• Alignment has numerous advantages for B2B sales organizations. If sales reps and marketers work in synergy, they can save 30% on customer acquisition costs. They also have a 36% greater retention rate and boost lifetime value by at least 20%.

Sales and Marketing Misalignment: Challenges and Statistics

There’s no denying the data: Sales and marketing alignment is a clear pathway to success. However, as reported by HubSpot, just 23.1% of sales professionals say their organization is strongly aligned. 

This divide can be traced back to a number of factors, including:

• Poor lead quality: Only 9.1% of sales team members say the leads received from the marketing department were very high quality. This is often because teams have different definitions of “qualified lead,” among many other critical indicators.
  
• Disjointed strategies: According to LinkedIn’s Global B2B Marketing Benchmark report, 90% of sales and marketing professionals point to several disconnects across strategy, process, content and objectives. In other words, the vast majority struggle to agree on a wide variety of essential topics.
  
• Lack of communication: One-third of sales and marketing teams don’t hold regular meetings. This makes it difficult to foster cross-department collaboration and only further fractures the relationship between departments.
  
• Different metrics: 40% of survey respondents say sales and marketing goals are being measured by different metrics. Salesforce corroborates this data, reporting that just 52% of sales and marketing teams share common goals and metrics.

Sales and marketing misalignment can have a detrimental effect on your business. For example:

• 52.2% of sales professionals said the biggest impact of sales and marketing team misalignment is lost sales and revenue.
• Per a LinkedIn survey, 60% of global respondents believe that misalignment between sales and marketing could damage financial performance.
• An estimated $1 trillion dollars a year is lost due to a lack of sales and marketing coordination.

Effective Strategies for Achieving Alignment

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to help sales reps and marketers see eye to eye. Let’s examine some of the most useful tactics for strengthening their relationship:

• Goal alignment: Having at least one shared goal can help B2B marketers and salespeople work together toward the same objective. For instance, if both teams are focused on pipeline generation, you can implement strategies that allow them to work in harmony. Currently, 38.3% of sales leaders say alignment on goals and strategy is a top priority for their marketing department.
  
• Collaboration: 87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between their departments enables critical revenue growth. It’s often easiest to create a more collaborative environment once you’ve previously aligned on a shared goal and execution strategy, as this allows you to allocate roles and responsibilities to your team members.
  
• Account-based marketing (ABM): ABM strategies allow teams to concentrate on certain target accounts rather than a wider audience. According to research, 76% of B2B marketers say ABM-based approaches deliver a higher ROI than other marketing efforts. Moreover, high-performing marketers are 1.5x more likely than underperformers to collaborate with sales teams on ABM programs.
  
• Technology and automation: Organizations may use a mixed bag of platforms and solutions. If they’re incompatible with few integrations it can silo data and keep teams disconnected. Breaking down this barrier with highly integrated tools can ensure everyone has access to critical information. In fact, 96% of companies that report being well-aligned organizationally are also aligned on sales and marketing technology.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, organizations can strengthen alignment by emphasizing customer engagements, such as prospect meetings and sessions. Marketers can nurture B2B buyers at a pivotal point in their customer journey by booking sales representatives, executives, product experts, and other stakeholders into customer engagements. This accelerates the sales process, thereby fueling revenue growth and other business outcomes. 

Consider the numbers:

• 65.3% of salespeople say product demos were the most effective sales enablement content. 30.9% of sales leaders say establishing trust and rapport with prospects became more crucial between 2021 and 2022 — and engagements allow them to do exactly that.
  
• 53% of marketers consider webinars the most effective way to obtain high-quality leads. Furthermore, in-person events are seen as the best method for generating leads by 19% of B2B organizations, and they successfully convert leads for 25% of companies.
  
• 20% of B2B buyers prefer more in-person encounters in the future.
  

Clearly, sales and marketing teams agree that meetings and sessions matter. However, the booking process is much more complicated than you might expect.

Making the Case for Meeting Scheduling Automation

Whether you’re a sales rep or a marketer, the meeting scheduling workflow is exceptionally complex. You have to coordinate multiple calendars, time zones, topics and sessions simultaneously, which is impossible without the proper technology. 

Worse yet, you can’t afford to make avoidable mistakes when you have multi-million dollar deals on the line. Even a single error can have mighty repercussions — luckily, meeting scheduling automation is the easy solution.

Let’s look at the numbers:

• 68% of employees have too much work to handle daily, underscoring the need to relieve workers of mundane and manual tasks. Currently, at least 50% of organizations plan to do so with automation.
  
• Many sales and marketing teams rely on spreadsheets to manage scheduling, but 88% of spreadsheets contain errors.
  
• Scheduling is too complex for manual tools and basic apps. According to one study, 42.4% of meetings get rescheduled. That means almost half the time, B2B appointments will need to be rebooked and coordinated, further complicating the process.
  
• 78% of business leaders believe that automating tasks increases the productivity of all stakeholders. Another 31% believe it can help reduce labor costs. Organizations that have implemented automation report a cost reduction of 24%, which is up from 19% in 2019.
  
• Automation boosts sales productivity by 14.5% and brings down marketing costs by 12.2%
  .
• According to one study, a 30% to 45% revenue increase is highly possible with appointment scheduling software.

Simply put, the power of automation cannot be underestimated. This is especially true in the context of B2B appointment scheduling. 

With Jifflenow’s robust meeting scheduling automation platform, you can eliminate manual errors and streamline booking from start to finish. Enable inbound requests mapped to specific topics, engagement types and meeting locations to expedite the process and enhance the customer experience. 

Our solution allows you to offer multiple meeting types — also mapped to topics and internal experts — to eliminate back-and-forth communication for outbound scheduling efforts. Plus, you can improve collaboration and solidify sales and marketing alignment with a centralized hub for schedules, meeting information, and more.

Discover the Playbook for Sales and Marketing Alignment

Whether it be at trade shows and conferences or as a complement to your demand-gen campaigns, prospect meetings are key to optimizing the sales process. More importantly, they’re a crucial stepping stone sales and marketing teams need to maximize alignment. 

Looking for more information? Check out our latest eBook for more insights on how you can strengthen sales and marketing alignment in a B2B engagement strategy.

The post Sales and Marketing Alignment Statistics for 2023 and Beyond appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

Whether your organization’s goals is to meet prospects at a trade show or inviting them to a session, these opportunities come at critical stages in the customer journey. In turn, they may be the greatest chance you have of nurturing target accounts down the sales funnel and achieving business objectives.

However, appointment scheduling isn’t so simple and it is not a siloed activity. To achieve the best outcome, marketers must provide a simple and effective process and tools to enable the scheduling, managing and tracking of all face-to-face engagements with prospects and existing customers. In fact, if sales teams and marketers aren’t aligned, it can become exceptionally complicated. Luckily, there are plenty of ways organizations can close the gap and start aligning sales and marketing strategies for long-term success.

In this blog, we’ll walk you through the significance of sales and marketing alignment, how it boosts business performance and the tactics you can use to achieve it. 

The Importance of B2B Sales and Marketing Alignment

In brief, to align marketing with sales is to enable both departments to work seamlessly together, thereby increasing efficiency. 

Despite being two halves of the same coin, sales reps and marketers are an imperfect union. They often have different goals, metrics, technologies and strategies in place — some of which may be counterproductive to the other. This divide is what’s known as sales and marketing misalignment.

Simply put, misaligned sales and marketing teams are bad for business. In fact, according to HubSpot, more than half (52%) of sales professionals agree that they lead to lost sales and revenue. Altogether, it’s widely believed that sales and marketing misalignment costs companies worldwide a combined $1 trillion every year.

By contrast, aligning sales and marketing strategies can actually energize performance and optimize costs. For example, research shows that alignment can help B2B sales organizations reduce customer acquisition costs by 30% while simultaneously raising lifetime value by 20%. 

How Alignment Impacts the Scheduling Process

B2B event marketing is one of the most effective ways to accelerate the sales cycle, advance pipelines and stimulate long-term revenue growth. However, it’s also an increasingly costly endeavor. 

According to the annual ICE report, event costs are rising by as much as 83% in 2023. Not only has this taken a toll on event ROI, but it’s also pressuring marketers to maximize the value of their investments. Ultimately, it boils down to one objective: booking more customer meetings, thereby driving positive business outcomes. 

This is much easier said than done when you’re working with a misaligned sales and marketing team. Both departments play important roles in facilitating the scheduling process, which means they absolutely must stay on the same page. 

Of course, scheduling is only effective when team members agree on who they’re targeting. Sales reps and marketers may have different definitions of “qualified lead” and may not even agree on an ideal customer.

Even if they are aligned on target accounts, they may rely on an inadequate scheduling workflow with minimal collaboration and too few integrations. This not only hinders your ability to book meetings, but also makes it needlessly difficult to demonstrate success and calculate ROI. Which appointment led to revenue? From which marketing campaigns did that lead originate? Questions like these are almost impossible to answer when sales and marketing efforts aren’t aligned.

By contrast, sales and marketing alignment will unlock the potential of your event marketing program. When teams are in sync, they know exactly which attendees are of the greatest value. More importantly, they understand which engagement types will generate the most impact and maximize their chances of conversion. 

Tactics for Aligning Sales and Marketing

Aligning sales and marketing strategies can seem like a daunting task. Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can strengthen synergy throughout the appointment scheduling process:

• Share goals and metrics: Ultimately, teams must agree on at least one common goal to guide their sales and marketing strategy. In the case of B2B engagements, that might be to maximize as many high-quality meetings and sessions as possible throughout an event. Moreover, teams should share metrics to measure performance, such as win rate, number of meetings held or pipelines advanced.
  
• Define buyer personas: Clarify your ideal customer and buyer persona, then map where they are in relation to your sales funnel. Chances are your target accounts have multiple personas (i.e., influencers and decision makers), so create profiles of each stakeholder. This process will help sales reps and marketers understand who they’re scheduling, what they care about and how to help them.
  
• Establish roles and responsibilities: Ensure everyone knows what part they play in the appointment scheduling and/or event marketing process. For sales, that means reaching out to contacts and requesting outbound meetings. Marketers must focus on driving inbound requests, as discussed below.
  
• Use integrated marketing campaigns: A demand-gen marketing strategy can help the marketing department register prospects for sessions and pre-schedule attendees ahead of events.
  
• Create a feedback loop: After a roadshow, conference or webinar session, it’s best practice to debrief team members on their performance. Salespeople and marketers should be present to gather feedback, share insights and identify areas for improvement, thus strengthening efficiency.
  
• Align technologies: Integrated solutions that bridge the gap between customer relationship management (CRM) platforms and marketing automation tools allow all teams to leverage rich customer data throughout the sales and marketing process. Better yet, fill the holes in your tech stack with a robust scheduling tool that streamlines and simplifies appointment booking for sales teams, marketers and customers alike.

Strengthen Alignment With Meeting Scheduling Automation

Booking meetings and sessions may seem easy on the surface. In reality, there are many moving parts that need to be managed — both by the sales team and the marketing department. 

Generally, there are two workflows: the inbound and the outbound scheduling process. Whereas marketers are responsible for driving inbound requests from existing and potential customers, sales reps use their connections to book outbound sales call appointments, product demos and so on.

Both processes rely heavily on cohesion between one team and the other. Internal participants need to be prepped with the necessary context and information so they can perform well during the meeting and ensure it’s worth their time and effort. On the other hand, external stakeholders (i.e., target accounts) must be mapped to the product expert, executive and sales rep most relevant to their topic of interest. 

These variables are further complicated by a high volume of calendars, time zones, meeting types and topics. Without a robust and automated scheduling platform, it’s almost impossible for sales teams and marketers to manage the mayhem while staying on the same page.

Meeting Scheduling Automation

Traditionally, organizations use one of two methods for managing their scheduling workflow:

1. Ordinary spreadsheets.
2. Basic appointment scheduling apps.

The problem? Neither of these are fit for purpose. They’re insufficient for the needs of a modern enterprise, especially when it comes to B2B marketing campaigns and events. As manual tools, they generate costly, time-consuming inefficiencies and require constant back-and-forth communication. Worse yet, they’re riddled with mistakes — an estimated 88% of spreadsheets contain errors.

Avoidable mistakes like double bookings and miscommunications simply can’t happen when you’re on the verge of a multi-million dollar sale. Fortunately, Jifflenow found a way to eliminate them.

With the innovative capabilities of meeting scheduling automation software, organizations can streamline appointment booking and maximize their customer engagements. Solutions like Jifflenow’s eCampaign and eEvent platforms allow teams to reduce scheduling efforts at scale. 

For example, sales and marketing teams can:

• Accelerate inbound scheduling by enabling prospects to request appointments mapped to specific topics, engagement types and meeting locations.
  
• Eliminate unnecessary emailing in the outbound booking process by allowing sales reps to offer multiple meeting types (also mapped to topics and internal experts).
  
• Enhance collaboration by sharing meeting data in a centralized hub.
  
• Integrate CRM and marketing automation software, empowering teams to track and prove ROI.

Bottom line: No more scheduling headaches and missed opportunities. With Jifflenow at your side, you can take sales and marketing alignment to the next level.

Continue Your Sales and Marketing Transformation

For more insights on how Jifflenow can support your journey to sales and marketing alignment, check out our latest eBook: The Comprehensive Guide to Event Budgets and ROI Strategy.

The post Aligning Sales and Marketing Strategies: Tips for Customer Meeting Success at Events appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

Trade shows, conferences and exhibitions are where account-based marketing comes to life. They give marketers a chance to schedule potential customers into meetings and sessions, which allow salespeople to engage each prospect individually. Using their combined powers, they can drive the sales pipeline, generate revenue growth and maximize event ROI. 

However, sales and marketing teams have to work together efficiently for that to happen. Unfortunately, they don’t often see eye-to-eye on how to make the engagement process as seamless and efficient as possible. This disconnect is at least partly due to the complex process of live customer engagement and appointment scheduling, which in turn stands in the way of B2B sales, advancing pipeline, customer experience and so on.

So, it begs the question: How do you eliminate sales and marketing misalignment? 

In this brief guide, we’ll explore the value of alignment, why it’s so difficult to achieve, and 10 best practices you can use to align sales and marketing around a B2B customer engagement strategy.

Understanding the value of sales and marketing alignment

Organizations are like one big happy family. But, as with most families, relatives tend to butt heads with one another. There’s no better example of this than sales and marketing misalignment.

Indeed, sales representatives and marketing professionals are constantly at odds. Although they’re equally essential to their enterprise’s long-term success, they tend to play to their own tune rather than working in harmony. This can have significant consequences.

For instance, failure to align sales and marketing costs business worldwide more than $1 trillion annually, according to Harvard Business Review. In fact, it’s the number one reason revenue growth stagnates or declines. 

By contrast, the opposite is also true: When salespeople and marketing align, organizations perform better. Connecting the two can help:

• Increase sales pipeline by simplifying meeting scheduling with internal experts and executives for warm opportunities. 
• Increase win rate on B2B sales opportunities.
• Optimize conversion rate and accelerate the sales cycle by optimizing the customer journey.
• Help the sales team close deals by improving lead quality.
• Offer a better customer experience during meetings and sessions.
• Empower the marketing department to book more customer engagements.
• Maximize the ROI of your events and marketing programs.

Overall, alignment increases revenue because customer-facing teams can speak with one cohesive voice. It also increases efficiency, reducing wasted time and resources spent working against each other. Rather than operating in their own silos, alignment bridges the gap between the sales and marketing team and encourages them to collaboratively further business objectives.

Sales vs. marketing: Who’s winning the blame game?

The truth is that many organizations fail to achieve alignment. When it comes to placing blame, salespeople and marketers like to point fingers at each other. So, who’s really at fault?

Consider the following two facts:

1. Only 10-15% of sales leads make it to the bottom of the sales funnel and convert into deals. And, just 5% of sales reps say that leads acquired through their company’s marketing efforts are high quality.
2. Meanwhile, 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to the sales department. However, the sales team engages with only 27% of them. 

Clearly, both departments are equally responsible. But what’s going wrong? Where does sales and marketing misalign come from? Let’s take a closer look at the most common factors.

Firstly, goals are often misaligned. Even the definition of a qualified lead may differ between departments. This is because both are concentrating on opposite ends of the same spectrum, rather than working together to complement each other’s strengths. The marketing team handles brand awareness, lead generation and meeting scheduling, but that doesn’t always translate into conversion. The sales team may have a pipeline full of prospects, but they don’t always convert into customers. 

Secondly, sales and marketing leaders too often use different tools and technologies that don’t integrate well with one another, meaning their data is siloed and disconnected. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to truly qualify high-quality leads, book them into meetings and increase your odds of conversion. 

So, although both teams have distinct objectives, they’re equally focused on key elements that drive revenue, reach positive outcomes and build a stronger brand (such as B2B customer engagements). Focusing on this overlap is a key starting point for aligning sales and marketing and optimizing your B2B event strategy.

10 best practices to align sales and marketing around B2B engagements

Growth-focused marketing teams invest heavily in events and campaigns with a goal to increase customer engagements for creating and advancing pipeline. Bridging the gap with sales won’t happen overnight, but with the following best practices, you can greatly increase the return on marketing investments. 

1. Develop cohesive buyer personas

Sales reps and marketing leaders have to understand who they’re targeting on a granular level. The more deeply they understand the target audience the better. 

Outline a handful of buyer personas you’d expect to attend a trade show or conference, including influencers and key decision makers. This not only helps the marketing department develop the right messages and plan the right meetings and sessions with the most relevant prospects, but also empowers salespeople to identify the right opportunities to invite for the event. 

2. Map the customer journey

Understanding the buyer is one thing, but to know how they buy is entirely another. Creating a step-by-step map of the customer journey can be extremely helpful in achieving alignment. 

Connect the dots between where a prospect is in their individual journey and where they are in your sales funnel. This enables sales and marketing to decide which engagement type best suits their needs at that time. 

For instance, potential customers at the consideration phase may be looking to learn more about their options. Marketers can offer educational sessions or demo meetings for signup. Or, if they’re ready to make a decision, sales representatives can seal the deal by setting up an executive meeting.

3. Established shared goals

What are you hoping to accomplish at the event? What’s the ultimate goal? Are you increasing awareness for your products, educating attendees about new innovations or advancing sales pipeline that drives revenue?

Whatever the underlying objective, identify at least one common goal that both sales and marketing can work toward. You may even have multiple — either way, having a shared goal that directly impacts the company’s broader initiatives will set both teams on the right path. More importantly, it ensures your event marketing efforts align with your organization’s strategic priorities. 

Ideally, choose objectives that mutually benefit both departments so they can work together to achieve them.

4. Define your common metrics

Sales and marketing teams must also be speaking the same language in terms of how they measure performance. Based on your shared goal, identify metrics that link back to your big-picture definition of success. Some examples include:

1. Meeting attendance rate.
2. Deal conversion rate.
3. Lead-to-meeting ratio.
4. Meeting room utilization.
5. Demo stations used.

5. Align roles and responsibilities

It’s crucial that all team members know their responsibilities at a B2B event and how they contribute to its overall success. 

When it comes to engagement, the marketing team should be focused on facilitating meetings and sessions. From optimizing booth space to empowering sales reps, their job is to ensure that customer engagements are as impactful as possible. This includes pre-programming the event by offering multiple meeting types and sessions, and by booking meetings via inbound requests. 

For sales, outbound engagement is the name of the game. Their role is to reach out to potential customers, leverage existing relationships, schedule appointments and contextualize the meeting for internal participants, such as executives and subject matter experts.

6. Identify key accounts

Using their mutual expertise and historical knowledge of their target audience, sales and marketing should together decide which attendees are of the highest value. These key accounts are those that may have the best chance of conversion or represent the greatest impact on your broader objectives. Knowing this information in advance allows team members to target high-value prospects more effectively. 

7. Encourage collaboration 

It should be easy for marketers to share data with the sales department and vice versa. The best way to break down silos is to deploy technologies that integrate their tools together. 

For example, a robust meeting scheduling platform like Jifflenow’s eEvent software can seamlessly coexist with sales and marketing automation tools, including Salesforce or HubSpot. With shared data, teams can stay on the same page and easily funnel insights from one department to another. 

8. Automate the meeting scheduling workflow

Different time zones, hundreds of engagements, onsite and offsite meeting locations, internal participants and dozens of calendars — needless to say, the meeting scheduling process is complex. Traditional and basic tools don’t suffice. 

In contrast, a meeting scheduling automation platform can streamline the workflow and help you optimize bookings. It automates inbound approval processes, appointment reminders and notifications to avoid no-shows and conflicts. Better yet, it can map internal team members to specific engagement types, topics and locations — greatly reducing the administrative burden of manually connecting prospects to the most relevant sales reps. Attendees can simply choose an available time slot based on topics of interest and their requests will be automatically or manually confirmed based on predefined criteria. 

9. Create a feedback loop

It’s important for sales and marketing to meet before, during and after an event. These sessions allow you to identify key areas of focus, address challenges and decide on next steps. 

It helps to have a meeting scheduling tool that automatically collects engagement data and makes them accessible in real time via on-demand reports. Share these insights during the debriefing to establish areas of improvement.

10. Feed insights back into your strategy

Lastly, gather your collected feedback and funnel them into your event marketing program. Evaluate meeting data to understand performance at a deeper level and how your engagements track back to your overall objectives. Over time, these insights enable you to drive continuous improvement.

Continue your quest for sales and marketing alignment

Sales and marketing alignment is absolutely critical for B2B event success. It’s hard to achieve, but it’s a lot easier when you’re leveraging best practices — and even simpler with Jifflenow’s meeting scheduling automation platform. 

For more insights like these, checkout our library of resources designed for marketing and sales leaders.

The post Sales and Marketing Alignment Best Practices for Enhancing B2B Engagements appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

Simply put, they live in different worlds. Although they both aim to make the company successful, B2B sales reps and marketers typically play by their own rules, strategies and definitions of success. 

The result? Sales and marketing misalignment. When teams don’t work together, both departments bear the consequences. In fact, according to Harvard Business Review, this issue costs organizations an estimated $1 trillion every year.

The good news is that there are plenty of ways to unify your sales and marketing team to avoid misalignment altogether. Perhaps the best strategy at your disposal is to focus on the most impactful way both departments can influence revenue: maximizing live engagements via B2B meetings and sessions.

In this guide, we’ll explain how to align sales and marketing ROI around live engagements, whether at industry events or as a result of your inbound marketing campaigns. 

The importance of sales and marketing alignment

It’s an open secret that marketing and sales teams aren’t always in sync. According to a recent LinkedIn survey, 90% of sales and marketing professionals report misalignment in terms of strategy, process, culture and content. Worse yet, nearly all respondents believe this negatively affects the business and its customers. 

However, an aligned sales and marketing team generates the opposite result. When you empower both departments to work together, you can achieve the following benefits:

• Increased revenue: Alignment allows teams to work their best, thereby increasing sales effectiveness and energizing your marketing strategy. In fact, Forrester reports that companies with high levels of sales and marketing alignment experience 2.4x greater revenue growth and twice as much growth in profitability.
  
• Improved lead conversions: By aligning your sales and marketing effort, you can establish a well-defined process for lead generation, qualification and handoff. This ensures that prospects are properly nurtured and handed over to the sales team at the right time, maximizing conversion rates and reducing the risk of leads falling through the cracks.
  
• Enhanced customer experience: The same LinkedIn survey reveals that 90% of sales and marketing leaders agree alignment positively impacts the customer experience. By contrast,  sales and marketing misalignment can cause the two parties to send mixed messages, which confuses the target audience. 

However, realizing these advantages is easier said than done. About 96% of marketers and salespeople admit there are many challenges in achieving alignment. These issues include:

1. Marketing and sales teams don’t always report to the same executive.
2. They don’t measure success using the same KPIs. 
3. Their definitions of “target personas” and “qualified lead” may differ.
4. Sales and marketing goals may not be in sync. 
5. Siloed departments may rely on different tools. Moreover, insufficient integrations hinder data sharing and collaboration.

The most effective way to overcome these complications is by refocusing your organization around common goals. Because live engagements are key to the B2B customer journey, meetings and sessions are the logical answer. More likely than not, your teams are already working hard to maximize their prospect interactions throughout the sales process. 

For instance, demand gen marketing campaigns or events can help potential customers reach the point in their journey where they’re ready to meet directly with solution experts. Marketers can leverage this strategy to book inbound marketing qualified meetings (MQMs) and sessions in advance of conferences and trade shows or register the prospect for an upcoming live seminar. 

Meanwhile, the sales team must proactively reach out to prospects to set up outbound appointments. By pre-planning engagements, you can amplify sales effectiveness and make the most of your B2B event program. Of course, this strategy necessitates using a meeting scheduling automation tool (but more on that later).

7 customer engagement KPIs for sales and marketing alignment

Now that you have a sound strategy to align your sales and marketing team, let’s talk about ways to measure the ROI of this approach.

Gartner research, as reported by AdWeek, reveals that organizations that align cross-functional KPIs are almost three times more likely to exceed new customer acquisition targets than those that don’t. Moreover, they’re key to solidifying your alignment around meetings and sessions.

Let’s explore seven KPIs that’ll measure the effectiveness of your engagement strategy:

1. Deal conversion rate: There’s no escaping this metric, as it’s essential to gauge how many prospects become customers. This KPI helps assess sales productivity and the effectiveness of your meetings and sessions in driving revenue, allowing you to make adjustments over time.
   
2. Customer acquisition cost (CAC): When calculating CAC, ensure you’re factoring expenses related to customer engagement activities, such as trade show attendance, travel, meeting space and more. Tracking CAC provides insights into the efficiency and profitability of your aligned sales and marketing effort.
   
3. Pipeline contribution: It’s important to know which engagement types — executive sessions, demos, booth tours etc. — further your sales pipeline and those that don’t. This metric helps you understand how your meetings and sessions contribute to campaign goals, whether they be revenue growth, donations or anything else. This allows you to determine which events are most important to your campaigns and cut those that aren’t.
   
4. Pipeline acceleration: By evaluating the impact of your meetings and sessions on the sales cycle, you can identify areas of improvement that can streamline the sales process and optimize future engagements. In theory, the shorter the cycle, the more effective your strategy.
   
5. Lead-to-meeting ratio: This KPI assesses your ability to convert leads into scheduled meetings or sessions. It provides insights into the quality of leads generated and sales reps’ success in securing MQMs with prospects.
   
6. Engagement attendance rate: Attendees don’t always show up to the engagement. In fact, 10-15% of meetings are no-shows, which can cost up to 21% of annual revenue. Tracking attendance allows you to rectify complications in the scheduling process, such as time-zone errors or double bookings.
   
7. Event ROI: Measuring event marketing ROI is crucial. It involves evaluating the cost of participation, including booth fees, travel, and marketing expenses, against the resulting sales revenue or opportunity pipeline generated by your meetings and sessions.

Why sales and marketing teams need meeting scheduling automation

So, unifying sales reps and marketers around live engagements can do wonders in the way of organizational alignment. But, to truly bridge the gap between these two departments, you need to optimize the B2B scheduling workflow. 

Why? Because it’s complicated. You’re dealing with hundreds of sessions, countless calendars, multiple time zones and dozens of topics at a time. A lot can go wrong, which is why meeting scheduling automation software is the best way to simplify (and streamline) the process.

With Jifflenow’s robust platform, you can:

• Streamline scheduling by enabling inbound requests, directly from prospects and customers, mapped to specific topics, engagement types and meeting locations.
  
• Eliminate back-and-forth communication with sales reps for their outbound scheduling process by offering multiple meeting types that are also mapped to topics and internal experts.
  
• Improve collaboration between marketing and sales teams with a centralized hub for schedules, attendee information, meeting notes and more.
  
• Integrate CRM and marketing automation systems to break down data silos and track engagements back to revenue and other goals.
  
• Gather meeting data and other insights to maximize ROI and optimize future event strategies.

Looking for more insights? Read how a marketing leader at PacBio leveraged a meetings-driven event strategy to get sales and marketing mission focused on driving pipeline from an important event. Download the case study.

The post How to Align Sales and Marketing ROI: 7 KPIs for B2B Customer Engagement appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

So, it begs the question: What are your objectives?

Do you merely want to scan badges to capture leads? Or, do you want to grow your business? If the latter is your answer, it may be time to revisit your event costs.

As you evaluate your B2B event budget, it’s important to prioritize what actually drives revenue over the expenses that don’t. Let’s explore how costs are changing and what you can do to spend less and get more at your next B2B event.

Event costs on the rise

According to a report from CWT Meetings & Events, event costs were 25% higher in 2022 than they were in 2019. Worse yet, they’re expected to rise a further 7% this year. Other estimates say that B2B events may be up to 83% more expensive in 2023 compared to 2022.

Why? In truth, a number of factors are at play. First of all, organizations are up against decades-high inflation rates. With reduced purchasing power, marketers are struggling to stretch budgets and maximize event ROI. Meanwhile, in-person events are rebounding from the pandemic, with demand approaching pre-2020 levels. Venues and production companies are charging more for their spaces or services once again.

“Demand is unlikely to abate,” Beau Ballin, CWT’s global head of market development, told Skift Meetings. “To get the best value from long-awaited meetings and events and mitigate against rising costs, corporations will need to plan further in advance, budget carefully, and adopt a disciplined approach to managing meetings and events across the organization.”

How to generate higher returns from B2B events

So, B2B marketers will have to get creative when budgeting their future events. Fortunately, you don’t have to start from scratch. 

Here are four key steps that can help maximize your return on investment:

1. Evaluate your average budget

Consider the average event budget and where you’re spending your money. Here’s a breakdown of your typical costs in order of budget percentage:

Ideally, expenses should be tied to business objectives. That way, you know each line item is worth the investment because it’s actually contributing to your marketing goals. 

2. Identify revenue-driving expenses

Events are a great opportunity to meet directly with prospects and grow your business, which is why “driving pipeline” is the top metric marketers use to measure event success. 

Determine which costs contribute to pipeline and revenue and those that don’t. For instance, many organizations are trending away from large booth space in favor of meeting environments where they can engage 1:1 with attendees and close more deals. 

3. Optimize expenses to reach primary goals

Cut back on items that don’t aid your core objectives. Do you really need an extra large exhibit stand? You can cut that cost and invest a lot less for hotel meeting suites for executive meetings. Likewise, evaluate and cut events that don’t allow you to schedule B2B meetings with prospects, as they’re less essential to your primary business outcomes.

4. Maximize efficiency through automation

An automated platform can help you host an increased number of high-quality meetings, uplift meeting space utilization, improve attendance and make your marketing and sales teams more productive by eliminating manual processes. 

Most importantly, meeting scheduling automation allows you to book more engagements with fewer resources. In other words, you can generate a greater return for less cost.

Meeting Scheduling Automation

Without a robust scheduling platform, you risk leaving money on the table. Despite being just 3-6% of your event budget, meeting scheduling automation can produce the biggest impact.

Not only can a solution like Jifflenow help you optimize spend while advancing pipeline, influencing key decision makers and cutting back on other costs, but it can also improve your staff’s productivity. Without manual workflows or time-consuming processes, they’re able to work faster and more efficiently with core business objectives in mind.

Ready to do more with less? Get started by scheduling a demo today.

The post 4 Steps to Spend Less and Get More at B2B Events appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

Step 1: Define Your Campaign Goals

The first step in designing your outbound strategy is to define your goals. What is the natural path of progression for the prospect or customer post event? What marketing activities help move them further along the buyer’s journey? How can your outbound strategy help you achieve those goals? Some common post-event goals include:

1. Highlight your company’s thought leadership or research

Just because the event is over doesn’t mean the education stops. To make your event investment worthwhile, you want to ensure continuity in your marketing programs and campaigns. 

2. Nurture existing customer relationships

Because customer meetings are the heartbeat of an organization, if you did a good job at the event creating those opportunities for engagement, you will want to make sure you continue to cultivate the relationship. 

3. Book Expert Meetings or Sessions that complement programs and engagements attendees participated in at your event

Because the average B2B sales cycle takes several touchpoints to close a deal, you can’t think of the event as a one and done process. Instead, look for the next opportunity to engage your audience. 

4. Nurture contacts or accounts you didn’t get the chance to engage with at the event with webinars, sessions, or other content

Since it’s impossible to meet with every qualified company or account at the event, you’re leaving potential opportunities on the table if you don’t have a plan to engage those accounts post-event. 

Step 2: Segment Your Audience

The next step is to segment your audience so that you can funnel them to the right program or campaign. For the leads you engaged with at the event, you’ll want to separate them into qualified and non-qualified groups. For the qualified group, you’ll want to further segment them into the right stage of the buyer’s journey. Are they ready for sales or do they need further nurturing?

You will also need to segment your audience by the accounts you didn’t get to engage with at the event because the follow-up message will be different. You can use a different outbound marketing campaign to engage those qualified accounts that you may have missed.

Step 3: Create Valuable Content 

The core of any good outbound marketing strategy is valuable content that feels personalized. You need to create content that your target audience will find useful, informative, or entertaining. This content can take many forms, including traditional mediums like blog posts, videos, infographics, webinars, and e-books (similar to content you might use in an inbound campaign). Outside of these traditional mediums, you can also think about content in terms of live engagements or virtual events. This can be anything from webinars and information sessions to demos or even product specific education. 

Thinking about content in this way helps you consider the holistic buyer’s journey, and lets you bring together the right content to maximize engagement post-event and continue any momentum you have already created. 

Going back to your segmentation, you can create programs or content that help direct prospects or customers to the right place post event and add value to their journey. Consider mapping content to the buyer’s journey stage. For example:

Top of the Funnel

This is the very beginning of the prospect’s touchpoint with your company. He or she may not be problem aware or know of your company’s product or offering(s) at this stage. Contacts or accounts from the event that you didn’t meet may fall into this group. The type of content most appealing at this stage is designed to make the prospect more problem aware.

Awareness and Education

Prospects at this stage of the journey may have some awareness of your brand, product or service, but still require more education to create interest. Prospects from the event who may have been scanned at your booth, but didn’t invest time in an onsite meeting or demo may fall into this group. A webinar or information session may be appropriate content for this group and can serve as a great follow up while your company is still top of mind. 

Evaluation and Purchase

Prospects at this stage of the journey are well aware of your company’s products or services and are moving toward the decision stage. The segment from the event that participated in a live session or demo may fall into this category. At this time, any information that can further reinforce your offering(s) as the right choice will aid in the decision process. You will want to position content like case studies or perhaps expert sessions that dive deeper, beyond just the initial value. 

Loyalty

Existing customers are also an important segment that shouldn’t be ignored. Events offer a way to extend the relationship as well as evaluate if more value can be forged from the partnership. Content focused on customer education or new products may be a good fit for this group. Finding a way to show the customer hidden value (and education that showcases that) will also win bonus points.

Mapping content according to its stage in the buyer’s journey will help you position the right content for the right audience. 

Step 4: Leverage Your Existing Programs

You don’t necessarily need to create content from scratch if you can leverage your existing programs. Think about your evergreen campaigns and programs…perhaps it’s a recurring webinar, a customer education series, or an ongoing technical demo with your sales engineering team. 

In any case, if you are managing multiple types of engagements, programs or sessions, do yourself a favor and invest in a good automated scheduling platform designed to handle multiple campaigns at once. This will streamline all of your programs and reduce manual effort from coordinating availability, matching internal experts to engagement types, and much more. 

An advantage of a solution like this, is that you will be able to embed one form across multiple campaigns, allowing prospects and customers to self-select the program that makes the most sense for their journey. These embedded pages can be used across both your inbound and outbound campaigns, saving your team time and effort. 

Step 5: Implement Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great way to nurture leads and build relationships with potential customers and customers alike post-event. It also works in tandem as a good outbound channel to complement your post-event marketing campaigns. 

Create an email campaign that targets the different segments of your attendee event list. Then craft personalized messaging for each group with a strong CTA that maps to the right content for their stage of the journey. If you’ve mastered the tip in step 4 for a streamlined landing page with embedded form that can let people register for their selected engagement type, you can make the setup process for your campaigns much easier. It will also give prospects and customers the option to request and/or self-select the topics or sessions that interest them. 

Step 6: Measure Your Results and Optimize

Finally, it is essential to measure the success of your campaigns. Use analytics tools to track website traffic, pull marketing automation reports to get email open and click-through rates, and analyze your landing pages for registration rates. These data points can help you to determine what is working well and what could be improved. Use this information to refine your topics and programs and outreach efforts for your next big event. 

Designing and executing a killer outbound strategy to complement your events takes time and effort. However, it is an essential part of ensuring a positive ROI for your events. By defining your goals, identifying your target audience, creating valuable content, leveraging existing programs, implementing email marketing, and measuring your results, you can create a holistic strategy that engages attendees once the buzz of your event has worn off.

The post 6 Steps to Design and Execute a Killer Outbound Marketing Strategy to Complement Your Events appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.

What went wrong? More likely than not, you can blame poor meeting scheduling management.

Bad meetings happen, but a successful meeting doesn’t just organize itself. There’s a lot of work that goes into scheduling engagements at B2B events, which is why it’s key to simplify the process. 

Let’s explore the nuances of effective meeting management, including what it means, why it’s important and how you can use automation to book better meetings that energize ROI.

What is meeting management at B2B events?

Meeting management is the process of coordinating, scheduling and executing effective meetings that drive business growth, sales pipeline, customer engagements and other valuable B2B outcomes. It includes all stages of the workflow: before, during and after a trade show or conference. 

Why is this important to B2B sales? Because meetings are where relationships are fostered and deals get made. An effective meeting is one that brings together the right participants (your team members and prospects) for a specifically defined purpose or topic of interest (like nurturing or closing a deal). 

However, many businesses struggle when it comes to scheduling and managing quality meetings, especially at events. Exhibitions, trade shows and conferences have a high frequency of executive, expert and sales meetings, which are complicated to book efficiently. It’s estimated that U.S. organizations waste nearly $400 billion annually on bad meetings. Research also shows that:

• 44% of respondents said poorly organized meetings are a waste of time.
• 31% said that unnecessary attendees sidetracked their meetings.
• 26% report client relationships suffered due to inefficient processes.

So, what does effective meeting scheduling actually look like? 

The four P’s of meeting management

In simple terms, a productive meeting is a successful meeting. As a rule of thumb, managers should keep the following concepts in mind when scheduling B2B engagements:

1. Purpose: The first thing you should pin down is the meeting’s purpose. What is the objective? What is the topic of interest? Are you furthering your pipeline or are you closing the deal? With a clear goal, you can work toward actionable outcomes and stay on task.
   
2. People: Ensure you have the right participants in the room, both on your team and theirs. Do you have the right subject matter expert for the topic? The last thing you want is to schedule a meeting with attendees who don’t belong or can’t influence the purchase decision.
   
3. Product: A productive meeting has to generate results by the end of it. Think of “product” as the tool by which you’ll reach that outcome—the engagement type (such as an executive meeting, a booth tour or executive session) you’ll use to further your objective.
   
4. Process: Similar to a meeting agenda, your process should outline the structure of the engagement and how you’ll schedule more high-quality meetings throughout the event.

These points work in harmony to keep your B2B meetings on track while also leading to more positive business results.

5 steps in the meeting management process

Now that you’ve understood the importance of managing meetings, let’s look at how that process should work in practice.

1. Determine meeting attendees: Make sure that key decision-makers, subject matter experts (SMEs) or executives are in the meeting room. If one of their senior leaders is requesting the engagement, it’s best to include one of your own. Ensure that SMEs are mapped to the right topics and sessions so that their expertise is relevant to the task at hand.
   
2. Book a meeting room: Attendees have packed schedules and don’t want to wait around for a room to become available. Reserve space well in advance and ensure it has all the technological capabilities suited to the meeting type and format.
   
3. Document the meeting and transcribe notes into meeting minutes: Keep a record of what’s decided during the meeting, including action items and next steps. Share meeting notes with attendees so that everyone’s on the same page.
   
4. Schedule follow-ups if necessary: It’s estimated that just 2% of sales close after the first meeting, so it’s likely you’ll need to book future meetings to chase down leads and seal the deal. Establish a post-event engagement plan to convert the customer at a later point.
   
5. Review analytics and optimize future meetings: If you have robust meeting management software, you can capture key information during the meeting, such as meeting duration, potential deal size or room utilization. Analyzing these data points can help you book better meetings that produce positive results.

Streamline management and scheduling with meeting automation

Meeting managers too often struggle to book impactful meetings at B2B events. Why? The workflow is incredibly complex with many moving parts. Among its many components, here’s a non-exhaustive look at some of the most significant:

• Emailing attendees.
• Booking a room.
• Checking time zones.
• Syncing calendars.
• Sharing agendas.
• Confirming inbound requests.
• Checking availability.
• Changing locations.
• Rescheduling.
• Updating CRMs.

Most managers don’t realize there’s a better way to juggle these tasks than a spreadsheet or basic scheduling tool. Of course, we’re talking about meeting scheduling automation.

With an automated scheduling software like Jifflenow’s eEvent, you can streamline your meeting management process from start to finish. Jifflenow’s robust platform allows you to manage B2B meetings based on engagement type, topics of interest, resource alignment and more. 

Map topics to the right experts and executives and integrate scheduling with their internal calendars for finding their availability. Choose to automate or manually approve meetings based on your parameters, simplify rescheduling and integrate seamlessly with your CRM.

By automating the meeting management and scheduling workflow, you can book more meetings, drive pipeline and supercharge event ROI—all with one comprehensive tool. 
Want to learn more about eEvent? Book a demo to start better scheduling B2B meetings today.

The post A Guide to Meeting Management at B2B Events appeared first on Jifflenow Blog.