Senior marketers at Red Hat hailed Sibos 2023 as a triumph on Thursday (22 September) after the fintech smashed its pre-event target of meetings with potential buyers.
The group says the presence of IT buyers from large enterprise-level banks, coupled with its strategy to pre-arrange meetings in Toronto, allowed it to exceed its initial meetings goal by around 50 per cent.
Speaking to Financial Promoter, Paul Dunay, global director of financial services marketing at Red Hat, said the number of meetings does not include the ad hoc discussions with visitors who casually stopped by the stand during the four-day event.
“After the event, we take those conversations and convey them to the account teams. We try to use a ‘smart meeting’ format, so the account teams have a “next best action, “by whom”, and “by when”.
“We have a person in the stand dedicated to capturing that information after each meeting. We have run many large events before, and this is the type of approach we have evolved over the past few years.”
Dunay referenced the comments made, on stage, earlier in the conference by Eric Fulwiler, chief executive officer of Rival.
“Thinking and acting like a media company is important. We tend to think like a media company first and use thought leadership as a way to get our brand out there. We learned this in Gary Vaynerchuk first book, Crush It.”
Red Hat also hosts a series of global, proprietary events to reach its target market including workshops, webinars and roundtables.
“We want to be known for our approach to events and how it differs from other people,” Dunay added.