Viva Las Vegas!

This year’s ITC Vegas promises an experience like no other with a keynote real-life astronaut, an incomparable speaker list, celebrity attendees, and a closing party with none other than Boyz II Men. Conferences certainly are bigger in America!

Attended by insurance carriers, brokers, Insurtechs, independent agents and tech providers, the event is the single largest gathering of Insurance innovators.

This year the staple event will be hosted in Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from October 15-17.

One of the attendees in 2024 will be Cytora, an AI-powered platform that enables commercial insurers to create digital workflows by digitising, evaluating and routing risks.

For Cytora and other delegates, ITC Vegas represents a monumental opportunity to connect with clients, share ideas and stand out from the competition.

Daria Kepa Green is the vice president of marketing at Cytora and has engineered the company’s approach to this year’s event. “We typically attend one big conference a year and for us that is usually ITC Vegas because it has such an incredible attendance of industry professionals.” she says.

“Our approach to conferences is quite unorthodox. Early on, we decided that we were not taking stands, booths or creating marketing materials – because we are not trying to have a mass approach to the market.”

As a digital first platform, Cytora aims to enable commercial insurers to become digital-first, accelerating the transition to digital risk flows to grow the impact of the industry overall.

Niche focussed

Green explains that when it comes to events, Cytora uses a very targeted approach due to its niche target audience.

“Simply our target audience is commercial insurers which is really a blessing. In the industry, marketers can often struggle to narrow down their target audiences but we can be really niche.” she says.

“When it comes to the complex language used for commercial insurance, we can utilise that which helps customers see that we know their pain points and have the knowledge it takes.”

She explains that having a specific target audience simplifies the event planning process, especially for an event as large as ITC Vegas.

“We go every year because of the scale of it and our current focus of growth is the US, so it makes more sense to us.” she explains.

The US insurance market is one of the largest in the world, with insurance premiums written exceeding $1.4trn, each year, according to a 2022 Statista report.

“When we chose to do a conference, we are very particular about what we want to talk about and what track we want to follow.”

“We are trying to meet people that are in the roles most aligned with Cytora – that means it is likely they will have an objective that could be met by a Cytora product. It is equal amount selling as it is market research.” she says.

Increasing visibility

ITC Vegas is attended by over 9,000 attendees each year, so trying to stand out in a sea of brands, people and voices is a huge challenge marketers have to overcome.

For Cytora that ‘special sauce’ is thought leadership. In a recent B2B Thought Leadership Study commissioned by Edelman and LinkedIn, some 88% of senior executives stated that thought leadership enhances the credibility of a business.

“When we engage in events, our people are our biggest asset and marketing tool, so we try and get our team on panels and give them a platform to share their thought leadership.” Green explains.

“My biggest resource is the team I have around me which means I leverage to speak on panels and podcasts about their authentic experiences.

“For us we want to focus on our unique perspective, our unique product and how interesting our offering is, and I believe that our marketing should reflect that.”

Cytora’s podcast Making Risk Flow is a key platform that Green employs to promote the platforms unique thought leadership.

“The podcast is the cornerstone of our marketing strategy and if we didn’t have such great people, we wouldn’t have that.” Green says.

“Our COO, Juan De Castro hosts the podcast and due to his extensive knowledge and industry experience he is very aware of all the challenges and strategies being deployed in market, which has really helped in the development of the risk flow community.”

Community focussed

Over the last six years ITC Vegas has been attended by over 30,000 people from 65+ countries and continues to expand.

The sheer scale of the event engulfs the entertainment capital of the world, which, for marketers, is both a frightening reality and a huge opportunity if successful.

Green says the marketing mix that Cytora uses to promote its attendance before, during and after ITC Vegas is very targeted and constructed with contributions from the c-suite, sales and marketing teams.

“When promoting our presence, we typically use a blend of LinkedIn, the community we are building, and our personal relationships.” she says.

In recent years the popularity of community marketing has boomed due to a desire for greater personalisation and more open channels of communication with brands.

Over the next two years, 68.5% of marketers are planning to prioritise community-building, according to a 2023 Tint report. Cytora is no exception.

“Building a community is a new project for us. A while back we created the ‘making risk flow’ podcast which was a hit. That led to us meeting and talking to a similar group of people which made us realise that we needed a community.

“So, we are currently creating the risk flow community, which we are building with a mix of invite only events and our newsletter.”

Measuring success

It is accepted thinking among marketers that face-to face interactions are a crucial driver of business success for leads, relationships and increased brand awareness.

Green says that for Cytora the value of ITC Vegas comes from the people and accounts they meet, the opportunities presented and the number of meaningful follow ups they have.

Green accepts that Cytora’s event KPI’s may be a little unorthodox, however.

“For me it’s not about marketing qualified leads, because I find you can go down a rabbit hole and start to optimise for that just to hit your targets.

“MQL’s create too much effort on the marketing side of things, which elongates the sale cycle and in the insurance industry, the sales cycle is already long enough, so making it longer is something I wanted to avoid,” she says.

“We attend to showcase our knowledge and to build relationships not to develop the sales pipeline.

“At Cytora, being unorthodox with our marketing and making personal connections to understand where the market is at, is the core of our strategy.”