Overview

The Events Industry Council (EIC)—a premier leader in the business events industry representing 103,500 individuals across the globe—was hit particularly hard by the COVID pandemic and faced revenue challenges even as the industry recovered.

To turn around their revenue struggles, EIC turned to Rob Haas, founder of Sphere Data Solutions Group, a professional services firm that provides consulting for first-party data, revenue acceleration, marketing technology platforms, and digital transformation. When Rob took on EIC as a client, he recognized that the organization was relying on outdated legacy data to target new prospects.

EIC had been using the Apollo sales platform. By integrating Bombora Intent data into Apollo, Rob was able to significantly improve audience targeting and achieve a 50% email open rate and a 15% click-through rate—doubling and tripling performance success.

Challenge: identifying individuals interested in becoming Certified Meeting Professionals

In the wake of the pandemic, EIC had gone from a business events industry staple to an organization struggling to stay afloat. A lack of incoming data was hampering the organization’s efforts to effectively target new applicants for its Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) program—the only certification of its kind in the industry.

Solution: integrating Bombora Intent data into the Apollo sales platform

Rob Haas had worked with Bombora prior to his work with EIC. By integrating nine Bombora Intent topics directly into the organization’s Apollo platform, he gave EIC critical insight into individual target organizations—making it possible to identify and target high-value prospects with a demonstrated interest in specific topics relevant to the business events industry.

Results: enhanced email performance and improved sales

The B2B Intent data integrated through Bombora’s Company Surge^® solution—an exclusive property set comprised of 18,000+ Intent topics sourced from more than 5,000 highly trafficked B2B content destinations—enabled EIC to return yearly revenue to pre-COVID levels.

Using nine Intent data topics to target high-value prospects, the organization saw vast improvements in email and programmatic advertising performance metrics—and a significant bump in monthly applications.

What’s next

Bombora Intent data has sparked a significant transformation in EIC’s marketing strategy. Rob foresees a future in which additional Bombora data—specifically its digital audience data, which is powered by over 560 B2B audience attributes—will drive even more targeting effectiveness for the organization.