Just when you thought 67 registrants and over 50 attendees was the best it could get....here's comes another one.

Get Engaged partner, Corporate Network Services had 97 registrants and 71 attendees for a Vista/Office/Exchange "Sneak Peak" event managed through Microsoft Partner Events

Executing beautifully, the CNS team leveraged the Microsoft Mid-Atlantic team and MS like we were going out of style and added some fantastic creative touches. Here's some of what Karen Kalantzis and the team did.

1. Smart Targeting: CNS took advantage of the focused list of customers from the Mid-Atlantic Klondike model to generate approximately 20% additional attendees (on top of their house list)
   
   
2. Multi-touch marketing: CNS showed up with 2 people for every single Shark Tank Blitz. In addition, CNS printed 1000 flyers and did an 800 piece DM drop, promoted the event in their corporate newsletter, and did a few email blasts. On top of that, they dedicated an inside sales resource to market the event
   
   
3. Integrated Area best practices. The Mid-Atlantic team hosts a bi-weekly call for all partners conducting their own events to share ideas on demand gen and presentation effectiveness. CNS attended every one of these calls and pulled in a few ideas, including:
   • make sure you have name tags for your guests (this helped since there were a few events going on at the same venue)
   • at registration, have customer fill out a note card with "what I expect from this event" on one side and "my biggest IT headache is..." on the other side
   • offer an incentive (raffle participation) for filling out the eval forms
     
4. Took advantage of MPE. CNS used MPE to help plan and book the venue, allowing CNS to focus on the demand gen.
   
   
5. Utilized MSAM presenter. CNS took advantage of the MSAM Tee-up Presenter offering and had a Microsoft expert presenter come to do his presentation. They didn't even need to worry about the demo or the deck. They just got people to attend.
   
   
6. Thought 'out of the box'. Ok, it's cliche, but CNS took the "sneak peek" idea and ran with it. They rented out a vintage movie theater, used a "red carpet" theme on all of their invites, and even had "Corporate Network Services Presents: A Sneak Peak at Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007" on the movie theater's marquee!
   
   

So what's next?

• CNS is teed up for a follow-on event in mid-February (to ride the wave of the DC Vista/Office launch on Jan. 30th)
• They are refining their marketing messages to align to the customers needs using the responses from their event to the question of "my biggest IT headache is..." [a brilliant move, if you ask me]
• The next event is going to have a lot of pens (people never have one when they need it)

I was riding the high from BEI (hey that rhymes) and now CNS gives the Mid-Atlantic team another reason for gratitude during the Thanksgiving holiday!

Great job, Karen and CNS team and thanks to ALL of the Microsoft folks who helped make it happen!