Streamlining Sponsorship Management: Marketforce Live's Success with FFAIR
Marketforce Live is a global leader in B2B marketing solutions and events. With over 30 years of expertise, they take pride in producing cutting-edge conferences spanning across Insurance, Banking & Payments, Utilities, Energy, Transport, and Logistics.
Delivering unforgettable experiences and surpassing client objectives are ingrained in their organisational goals, which is why they sought a sponsorship management solution that could improve the event experience not only for their customers, but also for their team.
Joe O’Connor, Senior Operations and Technology Manager at Marketforce Live, shares his experience:
“MarketForce Live has been rapidly expanding its conference portfolio and now hosts over 16 global conferences a year. Consequently, we have increased the number of sponsors we manage and with it, the number of deliverables our team handles. Unlike FFAIR’s trade show customers, we don’t have hundreds of exhibitors however, the complexity of our tiered sponsorship packages is extensive and with our business growth, it was quickly becoming a challenge for the team.
Previously we used Google Sheets to create a workbook for each sponsor, containing information pertinent to their package. Although Google Sheets is a powerful tool, it has its limitations in terms of event sponsorship management. It was a highly manual process and administratively heavy task, and for sponsors, it wasn’t engaging and was visually a bit of an eyesore!
FFAIR was recommended to us by word of mouth as a potential solution to help us improve our sponsorship process. We spoke to the FFAIR team who were not only very responsive, but could understand the challenge we faced. During our second demo with our managing director and the wider team, Adam had proactively identified how Marketforce could utilise FFAIR’s functionality which helped us envision how our event team and our sponsors would specifically benefit from using the platform.
The game-changer for us is how FFAIR reduces some of our most labour-intensive tasks. For example, we can upload all our sponsors, including details regarding their packages, and then ensure they can only see information dependent on their sponsorship type. This requires only one day set up three months in advance of the event to build the FFAIR portal with the specifics of the packages. This approach is much more efficient, allowing us to work further in advance and as a result, saw us doing less and less sponsorship management as the event approaches. Sponsors have a better experience with all the information presented clearly, reducing the number of queries the Operations team receives and dramatically reducing the amount of admin time.
Our sponsors are tiered from bronze to headline, and the packages we offer are hugely varied and can include anything from stand space to private lunches, VIP meetings, and speaking sessions. FFAIR has been able to handle this information seamlessly.
It’s the best of both worlds: internally, FFAIR reduces the amount of admin and improves efficiencies, while simultaneously enhancing the sponsor experience.
We have received positive feedback from our sponsors who appreciate how clear and straightforward the FFAIR platform is. The simple steps have made our sponsors much more methodical in getting everything done at once. In previous years, there was a lot of chasing required, but now I’m seeing more and more of our sponsors complete information within 48 hours of gaining access to the FFAIR portal, including uploading speaker photos, bios, and company information.
In terms of the volume of sponsors, we’ve almost doubled the number of sponsors for our flagship conference (60+ sponsorship with their own unique sponsorship packages) without needing to increase members of the team to handle delivery. We’ve been able to maintain the same number of internal resourcing while sponsorship continues to grow, giving us more longevity and scalability without the need to hire additional resources.”
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Fed up of using spreadsheets to manage sponsors? Want an easier solution? Schedule a demo and see how FFAIR can support your future sponsorship growth.