When you transfer data between your event management software and your contact database, data is lost. The contact match rate is the percentage of registrations that match existing contact records in your database – the amount that is successful transferred. One way to improve the attendee experience is improving contact match rates. In addition to boosting attendance, the improved data hygiene gives you a better sense of your attendee personas, their interests, and engagement trends – which is one of the many benefits of having robust data analysis tools. Higher contact match rates help you:
- Enhance engagement
- Develop personalized content
- Refine email outreach and marketing
- Improve the quality of the event
When you send out invitations to customers, members, or prospects, you have to retrieve contact emails from your contact database. But when the registrations begin to come in, the information goes into your event management software, not your contact database. Now you have a list of registrants in one tool and your managed contact records in another, leaving an incomplete profile in each tool. To integrate your first-party data with your contact record, you might use a data management platform or export information to a tool like Excel. In between transferring data from your event management software to your contact database, you won’t always find a match in the contact database.
Pepperdine University nearly tripled its contact match rate by using event management software built on the same platform as its CRM
Reducing how much data you lose in this process is the key to improving your contact match rate. If your event management software is on the same platform as your contact database, there is no need for data to be transferred: registrations are written directly to the primary contact record. This has enormous benefits. For example, Pepperdine University nearly tripled its contact match rate by using event management software built on the same platform as its CRM, resulting in increased attendance, deeper engagement, and higher revenue. Event management software that is integrated with the contact database improves the match rate too, but eliminating the need for an integration altogether is the most effective way to increase the contact match rate.
By marrying your event management software to your contact database, your match rate will increase – supporting you throughout the entire event lifecycle.
Check out our guide for a deeper dive into the benefits of managing events with software native to your CRM.