Finding the Right Partners for Retail Events

How to Secure an Event Sponsor: 3 Key Strategies Securing a sponsor for your event is a crucial part of ensuring its success, as sponsorships provide the financial support and resources needed to elevate the experience. Here are three key strategies to help you attract and secure an event sponsor: 1. Identify and Align with the Right Sponsor Before reaching out to potential sponsors, it’s important to identify companies or brands whose values, goals, and target audience align with your event. Research potential sponsors to understand their market positioning and how sponsoring your event can help them meet their marketing or business objectives. By offering a sponsorship package that speaks directly to their needs—such as increasing brand visibility, engaging with a specific demographic, or launching a new product—you will significantly improve your chances of securing their support. 2. Create Tailored Sponsorship Packages One size does not fit all when it comes to event sponsorship. Craft sponsorship packages that cater to different levels of investment, offering a range of benefits from logo placements to exclusive branding opportunities. Include options like event tickets, speaking opportunities, social media promotions, and other perks that can help the sponsor connect with the audience. Make sure to demonstrate the potential return on investment (ROI) in each package, providing clear metrics such as estimated attendance, audience demographics, and previous event success. 3. Leverage Networking and Build Relationships Networking plays a key role in securing event sponsors. Attend industry events, conferences, and networking functions to connect with potential sponsors, or consider reaching out directly to decision-makers at companies. A personal, relationship-based approach can make a significant difference in gaining their trust and interest. Follow up with consistent communication, keeping sponsors updated on event progress and engaging them in the promotional process. Building a strong, long-term relationship can lead to future partnerships and increased sponsorship opportunities for future events. By focusing on these three strategies—targeting the right sponsors, offering customized packages, and building lasting relationships—you’ll be well on your way to securing valuable sponsorships for your event.

Industry marketing is the new partnership frontier. Partner marketers—how well do you know your industry teams, both on GTM and on the marketing side? At Stripe we have PMMs and GTM leads aligned to an industry, creating a kind of "industry pod" that works cross-functionally. This means we're constantly working to refine and and amplify our industry stories, making it clear how Stripe drives value for customers in various industries. Here's where partners come in: - Align on strengths: Different partners have different industry strengths. Some are focused on one vertical, others have excellent proof points in another. Find out which partners are strong in which industries, and how they prove out that strength. Build your better together for industry story. - Publish your proof points: Align on customer stories around specific industries that highlight how you and your partner solve for the customer in that industry. Create assets like customer case studies that sales teams can use to support deals in your joint industries. Head to the link below to see an example—our recent industry case study with Klarna, showing how Klarna + Stripe support enterprise customers in industries from retail and ticketing to automotive and creator economy. - Map accounts: Put Crossbeam to work. Align on accounts in specific industries, connect your AEs, understand their use cases, align on value props, get to know the real opportunities in each industry. - Enable the sales team: Running an industry sales enablement session? Bring in a partner strong in that industry to share what they've learned through their sales conversations, how they support that industry, and report on joint opportunities and messaging. - Partner at events: Does your company go to industry events? Find the partners that map to that industry and show up together, whether it's at the booth or at an ancillary event where you're able to jointly drive sourced pipeline. Think industry happy hours, executive dinners, etc. How are you working with your industry teams? https://lnkd.in/gfu-djPr

Steal our event playbook to drive a 7x ROI on events. Events are a critical part of our GTM at Brij. Why? They cut through the noise, and are an efficient way to see and build credibility with multiple stakeholders in your business. If I were to guess, National Retail Federation will dramatically outpace that average. What works so well? 1. Preparation is critical We’re starting outreach weeks if not months before the events. We’re pulling lists and scraping LinkedIn to see who is speaking and who is attending. Outreach comes from every channel, email & LinkedIn…but especially LinkedIn. 2. Connect with Partners We’re pinging all of our partners to understand who is attending, who is hosting, and how we can collaborate. Partners are such a rich part of this ecosystem and building those relationships is critically important to our success. 3. Host something around the event This time, it was a coffee. Sometimes we do dinners. Other times we’re being a bit more creative. Hosting an event allows you to extend an invite to prospects where you can “give”… instead of just effectively asking to let them sell to you. I can’t stress enough how important it is to lead with giving. 4. Schedule check ins with customers Events are just as important to meet with and strengthen relationships with existing customers. This is a great opportunity to find out what is next for them, get any feedback, and 5. Take detailed notes You are meeting hundreds of people in such a short period of time. It’s easy for conversations to slip you mind. I’m taking detailed notes of every conversation in my apple notes - and pairing it with a selfie that I take with someone. 6. Rigorous follow up This is absolutely key. All of those amazing conversations are meaningless without follow up. And don’t stop at just one ping - people are busy catching up on their jobs. Follow up immediately…and then follow up again. The TLDR: - Prepare  - Outreach - Host - Follow up This has been such a successful playbook for us. A few highlights from NRF: Catching up with friends, founders, customers, partners & investors: Rachel ten Brink, Grace Gould, Michael Ludwig, Nate Rosen, Nancy Gurd, Jess Cervellon, Shane Pittson, Michael True, Andy Cloyd, Zena A., Laura Colagrande, Conner Sherline, Neal Goyal, Aman Advani Megan Blissick Theresa Cowing Meredith Glansberg, Gina Lombardo, Arturo Rodriguez, Rishabh Jain, Sarah Nesheim, Jeff Magill PS - check out the behind the scenes snap 📷 of our every own Sarah Davidson being interviewed. Being honored for the RETHINK Retail award & celebrating alongside some incredible individuals in the industry — special shout outs to Melissa Minkow, David Polinchock, Melissa Tatoris, Nancy Rhodes, Laura Meyer, Dianna Antlocer #NRF #Events