Success story: GDS Virtual Summits
Virtual B2B network events with incredible ROI!
GDS is one of the world’s leading providers of Virtual Executive Events. MeetMatch supports them for most of their events, including the GDS Summits. MeetMatch’s virtual networking solutions have supported over 100 Summits to date and counting. GDS is a leading organiser of high-level B2B events, supported with extensive research and technology.
Winner Best Networking Technology
Awarded to GDS Group for their exclusive use of MeetMatch
Overview
Who is GDS?
GDS is a leading organiser of high-level B2B events, supported with extensive research and technology. They received the award for Best Digital Event Production Company at the 2021 Digital Event Awards.
As with all event organisers, Covid-19 brought about quite a challenge. However, GDS succeeded in turning this into an advantage, going digital very fast, which resulted in a growth of 30% in revenues in year 1 post-Covid. This must have been one of the only players in the event space doing so… In short, GDS succeeds in leveraging innovation to come to exquisite business results.
The Summits
One of the key building blocks to this success were the GDS Summits. These Summits bring together top-level purchaser and provider communities to find solutions to real-world business challenges. The events are maticulously prepared to provide optimum assistance and intelligence to the participants, to provide optimal ROI to all involved.
GDS holds about 60 Summits per year in
the following domains
Marketing
Energy
Finance
Health
Supply Chain
Retail
Sales
Digital
Innovation
Data
Human Resources
Manufacturing
Customer Experience
Security
Marketing
Energy
Finance
Health
Supply Chain
Retail
Sales
Digital
Innovation
Data
Human Resources
Manufacturing
Customer Experience
Security
The challenges
The vision of GDS was to bring the top businesses in the world together in a buyer-seller approach
Time efficient
High-level attendees are very time conscious. Everything has to be very fluid and efficient.
This was solved using ultimate business matchmaking from MeetMatch. A truely cutting edge virtual networking solution.
How to attract executives?
This was solved using a very attractive event format with a variation between highly interactive, virtual presentations and highly-curated 1-to-1 meetings.
Approach: Event preparation
Unparalleled buyer
data profiles
MeetMatch’s virtual networking solution provided the capability to build very rich profiles for every participant, each field depending on the event, event role and many more parameters. E.g. buyers entered the projects they work on, the budgets, the related challenges, etc.
Exquisite analytics
capabilities
Based on these rich profiles, the MeetMatch’s virtual networking solution AI did a full analysis and proposes meetings. These meeting recommendations were then reviewed by GDS staff and proposed to the participants. Participants could further indicate their wishes.
End-to-end tracking
& Optimisation
During the whole event cycle, many critical success factors were tracked and the process was constantly finetuned to come to an optimal ROI for all the people involved.
This information was fed back to the AI, as such ever strengthening it’s currently 14-year experience in advanced business matchmaking.
During the event
Highly interactive &
immersive experience
Participants could interact in many ways and the event experience could be immediately adapted in response. This resulted in very high engagement levels.
Automatic meeting
generation
MeetMatch’s virtual networking app automatically scheduled all the meetings, taking into account all recommendations, wishes and e.g. how many meetings the sellers purchased. This effectively removed all the overhead for all participants.
Calendar synch
The latest status of the meetings was constantly synced with the personal calendar of the participants, if they so desire. In this way, this became fully integrated with their day-to-day work flow.
Real-time updates
During the event, many success parameters were constantly followed up and the complete event experience was updated in real-time if necessary, from schedule over profile views to menu items and views.
After the event
Post-event portal
After the event, participants got a detailed and personalized event report that included the recordings, list of attendees, meetings they had, results and much more.
Follow-up meetings
Throughout the event, full feedback was gathered. Based on this, extra follow-up meetings were set up if applicable.
Testimonial
MeetMatch has really helped us accelerate the value that we provide all our attendees in this digital first world. Data has never meant more to meaningful and powerful connections, and this is the platform that has allowed us to excel in this area. Time ROI for our attendees is the end result, and they couldn’t be happier.
Harlan DavisVP Product & Innovation at GDS
MeetMatch has helped propel GDS to a new level by supporting our fully immersive digital summits. The level of User Experience delivered to both our Sponsors and Delegates has been complimented with excellent support, with feedback calling the platform “intuitive and easy to use”.
Tom Herrod Director of GDS Summits
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Conclusion
MeetMatch has helped GDS to transition into the new way of networking which is VIRTUAL!
We continue working and supporting GDS with the most advanced virtual networking solution to help them further grow as a leader in the virtual event sector. We believe that the accelerations have only just begun and that the key success factor to the GDS Summits is continuous innovation of our intelligent virtual event solution.
MeetMatch’s key contributions to these GDS Summits:
• End-to-end integrated solution
• Outstanding data handling
• Most advanced business matchmaking AI
• Real-time event platform with continuous interactivity points
• Trackable data handling and measurable outcomes
• Ultra-fast support
Results
- These Summits won the international Brilliance award for best new product of 2020 and the Stevie awards for Best Virtual Event Technology.
- Since the start of Covid, GDS has grown 70% YoY based on the success of these Summits.
- Through carefull preparation, the system manages to reach a matchmaking success rate of over 80%. In other words, more than 4 out of 5 planned meetings result in a follow-up meeting!
- Many attendees indicate that these Summits are the most effective events they ever participated in.
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