Event technology company Zuant has overhauled its lead capture platform, bringing the tools companies use to collect and follow up leads at events into one system.
Zuant says the update is designed to replace the separate lead retrieval tools and manual processes that companies often buy and set up show by show. Leads captured at trade shows, conferences or smaller events can go straight into a company’s CRM and marketing systems.
AI that reads handwritten notes and business cards
New features include AI that can read handwritten notes and business cards in several languages and fill in the right contact fields, and badge scanning that can record several people from the same company as one lead when they visit a stand together. Leads can also be sent automatically to the right salesperson based on region or product interest, and companies can compare lead data across all their events in one place.
Pete Gillett, CEO of Zuant, said: “Now you can scan a badge and you know immediately who they are – they could be a VIP customer who would be upset to be treated as a casual passerby.”
Budgets under pressure
Zuant points to Forrester research among more than 400 event decision-makers, which found that two-thirds of organisations have flat or falling event budgets, and nearly 70% are cutting the number of events they run. The same research found that 62% of organisations with closely integrated event technology were happy with how their events performed, compared with 37% of those without.
Gillett said: “If you’re spending a significant proportion of your marketing budget on events, you should be able to trace that investment through to pipeline and revenue.”
