Be Your Sponsors’ Hero With This Free Fulfilment Template
It’s easy to get excited about the chase when it comes to sponsorship sales – researching new prospects, persisting until you reach the decision maker, negotiating until you finally close the deal – these are the exciting steps for any sales person.
However, it is only one half of building up a long-term sponsorship portfolio.
The other, equally crucial element, is that of fulfilment.
Often, the sales person or account manager is not actually the one fulfilling their promises, so its important you trust the operations team – or whoever is charged with making things happen at the event – to tick all the boxes for your clients.
To help with the handover and ensure no balls are dropped when it comes to delighting your sponsors after the hard won deal is closed, we present you with a simple template to download, fill out, and take to your next event.
Below is a quick explanation of the template, how to fill out it out and why each section is important.
- Sponsor name to be used onsite
Yes, this seems quite self-explanatory! However, be extra careful with spelling, capitalisation, and other presentational aspects of their name, as this should be the undisputed and consistent name used on all materials after they sign their contract.
You’d be surprised how often the sponsor name can be changed, bastardised and disputed!
For example, should it include Ltd or Plc after the name? Is it the company, group or product name to be used? Is the first letter capitalised or not?
These are really important questions that the sponsor will have spent a lot of time and money thinking about, so ensure you get them right, every time.
- Logos & media
Ideally, you should make sure you gather all marketing and media materials related to the sponsor in one folder, and make sure it is accessible by the whole event team[1], so they are using the official materials and not grabbing old or low-quality images from the web.
At a minimum you should have high quality, resizable (think .eps) copies of the company logo, and depending on their sponsorship type you might also need headshots of speakers, speaker bios, company bios, contact details, product photos and alternative logos for different coloured backgrounds.
- Stand number
Similar to the importance of getting the sponsors name correct, their stand number might be included in every piece of marketing before and during the event. Make sure you get this right!
- Onsite contact person’s details
Not knowing who to contact if (or when) an issue arises onsite is an easily avoidable cause of stress and trouble.
Get the full details of at least one senior decision maker from the sponsoring company who will be onsite for the whole event – email and mobile at a minimum – so there’s no confusion about who to contact should a last-minute decision need to be made.
- Account manager’s details
Equally important, be sure the sponsor’s account manager is easily reachable throughout the event, in case there are contractual disputes that no one else can answer – or perhaps they want to shake their hand for an event well done! Either way, know how to reach them.
- Sponsorship type / level
When onsite, you’re likely to be getting pulled in a hundred different directions at once. To effectively prioritise, it will be helpful to know if the urgent requests are coming from the £100k Headline Sponsor or a last-minute £1k advertiser.
They’re obviously different degrees of importance to your event, so you had better focus on getting the Headline Sponsor’s issue dealt with first before moving on to the next.
- Key sponsor objectives
This will help get the whole team aligned with the sponsor’s core objectives, otherwise it’s easy to spend time and energy trying to help your event partners, but expending it in the wrong places!
Examples of sponsor objectives might be:
- Build brand awareness
- Gain 3 mentions in industry press
- Meet with 5 industry influencers
- Top 5 customer targets
This is a really important piece of information to have in your fulfilment checklist.
By getting down the specific names of which conference attendees they want to meet, you can help make it happen. If they then meet all 5 out of 5 of their top targets at the event, chances are you’re going to be high on their list of worthwhile come next year.
It’s super easy to export this data with Eventbrite – if you’re unfamiliar with the process, you can learn more here.
Here’s one additional tip…once you have the names of who they want to meet, you can put some kind of subtle identifying mark on the delegate’s badge, and when they come to collect it, you’ll be able to quickly single out the in-demand decision makers and guide them to your sponsors.
If a sponsor can’t or won’t give you specific names, then try to at least note down the demographics of their target customer group so you can still take part in some proactive matchmaking for them.
- Pre-event opportunities
A lot of sponsorships begin way before the event does. Breakdown any of your obligations prior to the event taking place, from adding their logo and company description to your event site, to tweeting about their involvement.
10. Branding opportunities
Here’s the place to break down their contractual branding opportunities, so you don’t miss any.
If their logo should be attached to the dais while they’re speaking, make sure it’s on there. If they should have a banner at the Day 2 11.15am networking break, make sure it’s up!
11. Speaking opportunities
Again, this is the place to break down your contractual commitments regarding any speaking opportunities.
If the Chairman is introducing them, make sure the Chairman has a copy of the speaker’s bio; or if they are chairing a panel, make sure they have copies of each panellist’s bio.
Check the session timings are correct; and tick the box if you’ve received their presentation and checked that it isn’t a brand-killing, audience-turning sales pitch. If it is, push back, for their sake as well as yours!
12. Guest passes
Most sponsorship packages will include a list of people they can invite for free, including other members of their team, and VIP guests they want to meet at the event. Make sure this is completed a few days before the event takes place, and that it is reflected in the final delegate list for registrations.
To avoid any mistakes or duplicate lists, Eventbrite make the whole process seamless. To learn how to easily add guest passes to your delegate list, check out our guide here.
13. Social mentions
This may not be necessary (depending on their contract), but it’s good form to thank your event’s supporters officially through your social media channels.
Given how busy you’ll be on the day, try to schedule these in advance, so you don’t forget (or misspell their name) in the hustle and bustle of the event.
For more tips of managing social media onsite, check out this post here.
14. Onsite media capture
The majority of sponsors wont have the time or resources to properly capture their time at the event, which is a shame for them and you.
Anticipate this, and make sure you instruct your photographer to get a couple of high quality pictures of all your sponsors and their activities (bonus point if they’re meeting with one of their top priority customer targets when the photo is taken!)
For tips on hiring an event photographer, check out this post here.
You should also try and capture a VoxPop (a short video interview) with your sponsor’s decision maker, as this could turn into a nice post-event quote, and if you send them the clip after the event, it serves as a strong reminder about their positive mindset towards the event.
For tips on capturing great event videos, check out this post here.
15. Go the extra mile / delight
Is there any inventory that went unsold which you can offer to your top sponsors? Can you extend your proactive matchmaking efforts from their Top 5 to Top 10 customer targets?
Use this as a prompt for the team to get creative. How can you go beyond expectations and delight your sponsors by doing something special?
[1] Use a service like Dropbox, Box or Google Drive.