MeetMax 1X1 investor conference software has a new feature to maximize 1X1s at an event (please e mail corporateaccess@twst.com for details). Extracting maximum commercial impact from investor conferences is likely to intensify as a business priority. Reinforcing this trend is the increasing competition for buy side commissions. One survey this week anticipates a 17% drop year on year for 2011 in buy side commissions (http://www.integrity-research.com/cms/2011/03/14/csa-use-grows-on-buy-side/).

MeetMax investor 1×1 conference software is a cloud application but has actually been on the market since 2003 and has now been used for 1500+ investor conferences.  Key benefits include:

1. Efficiency: centralizing data eliminates cutting and pasting and generates a new level of productivity

2. More 1×1 meetings: corporate access pays the bills at investor conferences and MeetMax will let you create more meetings.

3. Improve attendance: better looking forms, targeted outreach to investors, follow up programs to non respondents.

4. Greater Control: MeetMax summary level reports are generated at a click of a mouse and provide instant key metrics on attendance level and other key conference data sets.

CA Chevreux’s survey 2010 European Corporate Survey on corporate access emphasizes the importance of one on one meetings for the buy side. The survey revealed that for most investors “an investment decision is four times more likely to be made following a meeting with a CEO or CFO than after a meeting with a Head of Investor Relations, due to management’s in-depth knowledge of strategy and decision-making power”. MeetMax has argued for some time that a key measure of success of an investor conference is the average number of one on ones per management team. This metric is certainly comparable in importance to overall level of investor attendance.

Managing data is mission critical in financial services. Data is the lifeblood of the financial services industry. A recent blog on 2011 IT Service trends argues that “firms that know how data is used, where it is sourced, and how it moves will have an edge on their competition in responding to opportunities”. Meeting data is the single most unstructured data set of a sell side firm. MeetMax investor conference software prioritizes preserving the details of one on one meetings (who, when, where). Many times MeetMax has been asked for a quick report of which investors a particular management team met with at a specific investor conference. We launched MeetMax CAM, our reporting and scheduling application, to meet this market need.

What is the dollar value of a 1X1 meeting? A new survey on the value of corporate access by investment bank CA Chevreux is the subject of a Financial Times article (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9e22138-048e-11e0-a99c-00144feabdc0.html#axzz18BmfMudy). The survey of asset managers emphasizes the high value on corporate access placed by institutional investors. The Wall Street Transcript (MeetMax) did some analysis earlier this year to generate a theoretical dollar price for a 1X1 meeting. Please email us for more on this topic.

MeetMax was launched in 2003. At that time the one on one allocation process at investor conferences was managed in spreadsheets. Now most sell side firms understand the limitations of spreadsheets for such a commercially critical process as meeting allocation. Maximizing the number of individual meetings as well as the flexibility to accommodate changes quickly reveal the limitations of spreadsheets. To be specific: 1. Spreadsheets often lead to errors with the basic copy and paste function leading to data transfer error. MeetMax centralizes all the data so that it can be easily manipulated. 2. “Spreadsheet jungle” syndrome can occur as the volume of individual one on one starts to increase and changes need to be made. MeetMax one on one scheduler has many features but of course no double booking is possible. 3. Spreadsheets typically lack a dashboard. Dashboards present a quick overview of key information. MeetMax enables you at a glance to see key details such as who has signed up but not yet requested one on ones, what is the most requested company, number of investors, number of meeting requests and many more.

I stopped in to Apella, event space at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, in New York City, to meet Susan Sutler who has been a MeetMax event registration and 1×1 meeting client and who is now the conference services manager at Apella.  Susan offered me a tour, and told me some about the type of meetings and events they are hosting at Apella.  It is such an interesting space and so well-thought out that I wanted to share it.   The facility has two large configurable presentation rooms and a number of smaller breakout rooms.  The modern design is beautiful and complements the setting overlooking the East River.  One of the breakout rooms has an entire wall of whiteboards, in addition to state of the art electronics, making it perfect for scientific meetings.   If you would like to learn more about Apella, www.apella.com.

There is a central problem with the Event Calendar of many 3rd party roadshow management systems.   They tend to be accessible only by people with a username and password -  and this either limits their availability and usefulness, or it makes them very expensive.

MeetMax designed its calendar to be easy and  free to share across a sell side intranet.   Or even to share with select Clients – without the need to login.

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I was browsing through LinkedIn Answers today and came across a question from one of my contacts, Dan Ake,  “What is your biggest issue regarding conference sales?”  There were a number of answers posted, but one really stood out:

“My experience as a conference exhibitor is that the attendees have much more opportunity to network and make connections than do the exhibitors, and for a small fraction of the cost of being an exhibitor. If the purpose is to make new connections, being an attendee is the most cost effective approach.” (Glenn Jenkinson)

Why this particular answer?  Because it’s clear that the organizers at the conferences where Mr. Jenkinson has been exhibiting are missing an opportunity to create value for their exhibitors AND their attendees:  Pre-scheduled 1×1 meetings.

How much more valuable would the conference be, if Mr. Jenkinson arrived on-site knowing that he had 5, 10, 15 pre-scheduled meetings set up with interested attendees?  He would still have to deal with the folks who are just coming by his booth for the freebies, but at the end of the event he would have had meaningful face-to-face meetings with some number of qualified sales prospects and/or business partners.

We all know that attendees and exhibitors both find face to face interaction on the tradeshow floor to be important in the process of finding vendors, evaluating vendors and making the purchase decision.   With pre-scheduled 1×1 meetings, both attendees and exhibitors can be assured that they will have meaningful interactions as a result of attending the conference.

Want to know more about how you can incorporate 1×1 meetings into your next conference?  Send us an email: meetings@twst.com

We asked a group of successful corporate meeting planners to share with us their insights into what makes an effective website for marketing an event.   We took away 7 great tips that we’ve been sharing with you over the last couple of weeks.  Today, we come to lucky number 7!

7. PROVIDE VALUE-ADDED CONTENT

After your event concludes, keep registered attendees engaged by providing content for download. This content might be copies of slides or handouts or podcasts/webcasts of the presentations themselves.  Some content you may want to password protect, so that only registered, and paying, attendees can access.  Other content you may want to make available to anyone who finds your site.   One of our clients, Odyssey Media produces a annual 4 day networking conference/retreat for women and they follow up the event by posting photographs of the event on the website.  This online photo diary reminds the attendees of how much they enjoyed the event, and inspires new potential attendees to seek an invite to the event the following year.

I am off to Boston for the CanaccordGenuity Growth Conference – their website is a terrific example of a well structured and complete event website.  Check it out!