MaryGrace Stephenson

Dash by Datadog

Introduction:

Dash by Datadog is an annual B2B SaaS user conference. Dash emerged as a leading example of how meticulous planning, innovative marketing strategies, and a relentless commitment to user connection can yield remarkable results. As the driving force behind Dash’s digital marketing and branding endeavors, I was part of a 5-person team responsible for spearheading the inaugural conference. This case study highlights the strategic journey from Dash’s conceptual conference to an annual industry juggernaut that continues to break boundaries.

Project Background:

Over the course of 2018, 2019, and 2020- Dash by Datadog grew from a concept to a thriving technology conference. The conference was hosted in New York City over the course of 2 days and featured keynote speakers, plenary sessions, one-on-one sales meetings, a sponsor hall, networking opportunities, and several supporting ABM and sales enablement events.

Managing a program of this size required me to work cross-departmentally alongside various teams within the organization to collaboratively develop custom content and set brand guidelines to engage with our audience and drive registration numbers. This role allowed me to build a fully integrated campaign that resulted in over 1,500 attendees in its inaugural year.

Challenges:

In 2018, our biggest challenge was creating brand awareness and credibility for the inaugural conference. We needed to establish name recognition for the event and elicit excitement by promising enticing learning and networking opportunities that we then had to fulfill.

In 2019, we needed to collect and address pain points from the inaugural conference. Through attendee surveys and sponsor post-mortems, we identified areas of focus:

• Attract more decision-makers and C-suite attendees
• Globalize the event by featuring international speakers and targeting international attendees.
• Create a more enjoyable and seamless onsite experience

In 2020, we repeated the same post-mortem process and identified that the challenges for that year would be to scale the conference larger by targeting higher profile sponsorships, speakers, and securing more networking opportunities with business leaders.

Strategic Approach:

• Event Recruitment
  • Y1 Goal: 1,000 Attendees
  • Y1 Actual: 1,500 Attendees
  • Y2 Actual: 1,800 Attendees
  • Y3 Actual: 2,000+ Attendees

• Event Marketing
  • Curated event landing page content that evolved as details and agendas were unveiled.
  • Crafted 50+ speaker bios and plenary/talk announcements to features on the website and highlight in recruitment materials / social posts.
  • Launched targeted email marketing campaigns to announce event registration deadlines and speaker highlights using custom UTMs and discount codes. The code redemption rate was over 25% and UTMs in targeted emails were the biggest source of inbound registrations.
  • Leveraged social media with scheduled HootSuite posts across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
  • Orchestrated innovative direct mail and door-to-door marketing campaigns to drive event registration for key accounts identified by our enterprise sales team.
• Event Sponsorship
  • Created a template sponsorship prospectus that was curated for each sponsor outreach.
  • In Y1, I helped manage the sponsorship experience for 15 corporate sponsors.
  • In Y2, I successfully sourced 25 sponsors including Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB, and Atlassian.
• Event branding
  • Worked alongside a dedicated Dash creative team to create event brand guidelines and enhance them YoY. Drove digital branding for the event landing page, social posts, marketing emails, targeted ads, and other web assets Owned creation of all onsite event signage for 3 keynote stages, 7+ workshop rooms, sales meetings, and a sponsor hall including directional markers, maps, agendas, banners, hand-outs, ad more. My branding efforts were praised in Y2 for helping to improve the onsite guest experience by making directions clear and easy to find. Managed direct mailboxes, collateral, and printouts to reinforce the event’s branding
• Results and Impact:
• The culmination of these efforts was nothing short of astounding. Dash by Datadog blossomed from a mere vision to a globally recognized event with staggering attendance figures:
• Year 1:
  • 1,500 AttendeesSupported the launch of 3 groundbreaking products: Watchdog, App Analytics, and Logging without LimitsFeatured speakers from Nasa, DraftKings, Airbnb, and Meetup.comDrove over 3 million dollars in sales in the following fiscal year.Full event recap here
• Year 2:
  • 1,800 Attendees
  • Supported the launch of 5 new products including Metrics without Limits, Tracing without Limits, and Network Performance Monitoring.
  • Featured 10 additional sponsors, branded touchless check-in, and speakers from Betterment and Trek10.
  • Drove over 5 million dollars in sales in the following fiscal year.
  • Full event recap here
• Year 3:
  • Over 2,000 Virtual Attendees
  • Supported over 7 product launches.
  • Showcased the conference’s first branded event app.
  • Full event recap here

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