Hey,

Welcome to the fam to our 300 new subscribers. We hope you enjoy it here.

First, our next Bold Session, the AI Factor, with Jeremiah Owyang sharing the future of AI and Events and Chase Curtis giving you a 30-minute masterclass on prompting, has reached 500 registrants in a few days.

I’ve never seen these conversion rates since the pandemic.

I am so grateful for your trust, and I can’t wait to see you on July 13. 

Special thanks to Bizzabo for making the planning and production of these events so smooth. 

OK, let’s get down to business.

The Event Industry is In Unicorn Mode

Unicorn: A privately held company valued at over $1B

Just a few months ago:

Cvent $4.6B

Tarsus $940M

Then Hyve for $579M, Fern, PRA, FieldDrive.

Events like Money 20/20 bring in $100M in revenue.

What’s so exciting about the event industry?

Why is private equity all over events trying to close multiple deals?

Julius' take

The event industry is growing. Despite what is happening in tech and other industries, events are growing. Yes, with hit-and-miss. Yes, some verticals are more than others. Yes, in some countries more, in others less. But it is growing. Buying now means almost certain growth for 2024 and beyond. 

The growth is compounding. The pandemic and post-pandemic have created a pretty unique environment:

→ Virtual event companies spent billions of dollars to generate interest in events. 

→ Marketing teams experienced the power of events.

→ The market shifted to in-person.

→ Marketing teams are now exploring in-person events. Webbiquity (thanks Rich Rodriguez for the stat) states that 57% of B2B marketers signal events as their top channel in 2023.

This unprecedented surge has two effects:

• Push to exhibit at in-person events. With AI, PPC costs going up and a generally tired online marketing ecosystem, events are booming—especially trade-driven events.

• All-in-one platforms thrive. Companies across the event spectrum benefit significantly from the budget invested by virtual companies to convert new clients to in-person and virtual.

Few barriers to entry. Two examples:

Questex launched The Hospitality Show in 6 months. Almost 4,000 paying attendees showed up in Vegas in June. 

How did Questex do it?

I spent an hour talking to its visionary CEO, Paul Miller, ex-UBM - event OG. He has invested for years in data infrastructures and can now leverage intelligence to roll out monumental efforts like these quickly.

This example also shows how easy gaining market share in the event industry is.

I spoke to one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs in events (more soon), and they mentioned how they could launch new events in specific verticals and eliminate competition within 12 months.

How? Product obsession and event design. 

They stressed how lazy most events are and how little it takes to deploy an event 10x better than the competition.

I agree.

Another example:

For the past six months, I've worked on an event launch. A business influencer with a large audience starting its first hybrid event for the community.

100Ks of sponsorship, thousands registered swiftly. With zero event history.

Ten years ago, it would have been impossible.

These are some of the elements that make this moment in the event industry special. It’s an inverse virtual event bubble, this time in-person.

We are following four acquisition deals at Boldpush. I am aware of four more, closing very soon.

Our clients, eventtech companies, event agencies, and large events all reported growth.

The time is now.

Linkedin Events Analysis

I ran an experiment promoting virtual events on LinkedIn for the past few months. I also spent some time with the LinkedIn team discussing events.

The results:

→ Use a clear image

→ Use LinkedIn Live if possible. 

→ Integrate with Streamyard, Zoom, Restream or custom RTMP

→ Use company pages to post events instead of posting them from individual accounts.

→ Use the 1,000 invites wisely.

→ Invite to RSVP typical conversion for a random blast is 15%. It goes up with more specific invites.

→ Substantially higher if the event is a LinkedIn Live

→ Get more speakers who can use 1,000 invites; the more who use 1,000 invites, the better.

→ Use registration providers with LinkedIn integration to boost the visibility of the LinkedIn Event Page.

Here is a nice graph summing it up for you.

I can't wait to see you at the AI Factor.

Share it with your colleagues, a ton of value there.

Until next week

Julius