ALKAMI TECHNOLOGY

Alkami Technology is a premier provider of cloud-based digital banking solutions for U.S. financial institutions, empowering them to grow, adapt, and build vibrant digital communities. They help clients transform their organizations through retail and commercial banking, digital account opening, and data and marketing solutions. 

Their annual flagship conference, Alkami Co:lab, brings together forward-thinking financial institutions, top fintech providers, and industry analysts for a multi-day event filled with networking and innovation. “Co:lab is that convergence of collaboration and innovation, all coming together to build networks and bridge relationships,” explains Jennifer Cortez, Alkami’s Vice President of Demand Generation. She notes Alkami’s events are also a top-producing pipeline and lead generation channel for the company.

Jennifer explains Alkami’s goal of evolving their attendee base to bring in bigger business opportunities. “Historically, it’s been a customer conference, but we think it’s more than that - it can be the biggest selling event for us in the year,” she shares. “For us, it’s about really trying to grow attendance for those new prospective customers.” 

To achieve these goals, they first needed to create a more cohesive and personalized communication experience. This required better data tracking and eliminating cumbersome manual processes, particularly for speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors. Spreadsheets and email required constant updating and left the door open for mistakes, so they needed to automate processes for these various groups. Jennifer and Nancy wanted more visibility into which sponsors were speaking to certain clients to better identify add-on sales opportunities. 

APPROACH

Powering an innovative technology experience at Alkami Co:lab

Alkami has used Cvent to power Co:lab, along with their larger events program, for years. They rely on Cvent Registration, the Cvent Supplier Network, OnArrival, LeadCapture, Appointments, Attendee Hub, Speaker Resource Center, Exhibitor Management, and other tools. “The Cvent platform has played a critical role in elevating Alkami Co:lab year after year, leaving attendees with one of the best annual conference experiences they have in financial services,” says Jennifer. “My proudest moment in my professional career is what we did with Co:lab this past year, as it was the biggest conference we’ve taken on as a marketing department and an events and brand team.”

Alkami recently integrated Cvent Passkey into the registration process, meaning attendees can now book their room during registration. With custom booking sites, Passkey offers guests a simple, branded experience for self-managing bookings and shoulder night requests. Alkami can map Passkey back to the hotel to sync all reservations automatically, creating a unified process. Dashboards provide consistent communication between the hotel and Alkami so they always have clear insights into pickup and attrition rates. 

Alkami has seen incredible growth in registration rates as they’ve grown over the last few years. In fact, the most recent Co:lab reached their goal within 30 days of launch, meaning Nancy’s team had to quickly source overflow properties. They used the Cvent Supplier Network (CSN) to do so as it offers a huge network of over 300,000 venues. Her team easily sourced and centralized RFP data, tracking rate information to help increase cost efficiencies. CSN can also automate communication with NSO/GSO contacts in order to aggregate the most competitive rates and optimize sourcing activity. With automated analytics and reporting, Nancy’s team is able to maximize savings for the business. 

Reinforcing the Alkami brand at every event touchpoint with Attendee Hub

It’s vital to ensure the Alkami Co:lab branding is carried through every touchpoint of the event, from pre-event marketing to post-event surveys. Alkami therefore relies on the Cvent Attendee Hub as a centralized hub for in-person and virtual attendees alike to access personalized resources and critical information throughout the event lifecycle. “In Attendee Hub, they can manage easy agenda building, see highlights from the show, and easily connect and network with everyone at the conference,” Nancy explains. 

They also used the embedded Appointments tool within the app for client-facing Alkamists to schedule small group meetings with customers and prospects, as well as enabling prospects to request meetings with sponsors and exhibitors. “That was one of the huge successes for us, using Appointments in our exhibit hall to give our exhibitors and sponsors the tool they needed to meet with the right people – and for our clients and prospective clients the opportunity to meet with exactly who they wanted to meet with,” Nancy elaborates. 

With Appointments, stakeholders can create, accept, or reject appointment requests easily right in Attendee Hub. They can also define appointment details like location and include notes for more detailed meetings. Nancy’s team can also outline and manage appointment parameters, set up web and in-app push notifications to automatically trigger when an appointment is canceled or modified, and manage visibility, permissions, and scheduling rules. This creates a seamless experience for attendees while providing the needed control for Alkami’s event managers.  

Improving the Co:lab event experience with the right technology

By leveraging event tech designed to modernize and automate outdated processes, Alkami has eliminated cumbersome manual solutions for speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors in favor of using Cvent’s Speaker Resource Center and Exhibitor Management tools. The Speaker Resource Center centralizes all speaker activities within a single portal, allowing speakers to self-serve and complete tasks like updating bios and uploading assets. Automated task reminders eliminate manual communications, saving valuable time by empowering speakers to oversee their own requirements. Similarly, Exhibitor Management ensures all exhibitors can manage tasks, access reports, and oversee requirements in the centralized Exhibitor Portal. Stakeholders can access floor plans with their booths, see booth allotments, register staff, upload documentation, and manage appointments as admins. Automated reminders ensure exhibitors stay on target with deadlines and deliverables. Importantly, they can access comprehensive on-demand reports to easily track lead generation to better prove event ROI.

They’re also able to harness data from attendance tracking through session scanning for real-time updates, which they can provide to internal stakeholders, sales teams, and presenters to show event progress. Being able to have insights into attendance patterns via the OnArrival app means Alkami can better tailor their content each year. “The data we collect helps us curate that agenda for next year, so it really just makes us get better at our marketing strategy at future events,” shares Jennifer.

Empowering lead generation at Alkami Co:lab

They also used Cvent’s LeadCapture solution to enable sponsors and exhibitors to capture high quality leads while giving Alkami’s Client Sales team visibility into add-on sales opportunities. “LeadCapture is what fuels the biggest add-on sales pipeline from a marketing channel,” notes Jennifer. Sponsors and sales teams can easily scan, qualify, and rate leads for more accurate follow up. “We saw big success in offering one complimentary LeadCapture for exhibitors and sponsors to encourage them to truly show ROI for themselves, with the option to purchase additional licenses,” notes Nancy. Detailed reporting gives them an accurate, up-to-date view of all leads in an instant. “We were able to pull data from that and see the interactions our exhibitors were having, which is going to enable us to promote our event even more next year with those data points,” she adds.

Alkami then pushes their leads and attendee data into Salesforce via an API integration. This integration automatically syncs contact lists and updates, eliminating manual uploads. They can also sync contact updates and activities, as well as automate task and opportunity creation within Salesforce, making it easier for their team. This integration lets Alkami track overall marketing engagement and campaign performance for better data-driven decision making when strategizing their overall events program. “Having all of that information seamlessly integrated and available in one source of truth allows us to better market the event for the future, providing more personalized experiences when we market to the Co:lab audience,” says Jennifer. “Making sure all of that technology interacts well together is really important for that attendee journey, and that all comes back to having the tech stack and Martech solutions that we have.”

The deeply integrated nature of Cvent’s many solutions has been a key factor in Co:lab’s success. “Having all of those Cvent tools in one place to help market that conference and grow it allows us to get that data quicker and really get to those ROI metrics,” says Jennifer. “I don’t have to go to a million places when it comes to attendance metrics, tracking attrition, understanding engagement, and so on so we can more fully understand where we have had influence on certain prospects or customers engaged in different aspects of our event.” 

A future of collaboration and innovation at Alkami

Jennifer and Nancy share that the success of Co:lab – and their larger events program – is due in no small part to their relationship with Cvent. “It takes a certain team with certain specializations to put on a really good event, and I think our partnership with Cvent is what allows us to do that – helping us create one of the best possible events in our space,” Jennifer says. Nancy adds that their team’s relationship with Cvent is built on a shared interest in Alkami’s success. “We really appreciate our Cvent relationship, not just for our big annual event but all year long - and we appreciate knowing they care to know who we are and not just sell us a product,” she notes.

In reflecting on the incredible success they’ve seen with Co:lab, Jennifer insists the collaborative approach their teams take across every aspect of the event is a true testament to the strength of the partnership they’ve built between event management and marketing. “We really came together to put on the best event that I think we’ve ever had as a company – and one of the best events in the industry,” she says. “For me, that was a big highlight and we can’t wait to do more of that in the future.”