Dear Santa, Our wish this year is for a world of better, paperless events… That is how we started our Christmas letter this year, and like everything we do here at Guidebook, we started it early to increase the chances of success. When we sat down in August and began planning our visit to IBTM World in Barcelona, we created a very special campaign to make sure Guidebook, and many others, were on Santa’s ‘Nice List’. Our wish was to help give the present of better events, and less stress, to event organisers everywhere - and to do this we had to find companies in need. So we compiled a list of those attending IBTM, and promised to donate ‎€10 to Make-A-Wish UK for each company that came and spoke with us during the event. For the 3 days at IBTM, we managed to arrange a total of 51 meetings, and 22 of these were with companies from our wish-list. This allowed us to educate attendees on the benefits of paperless events and mobile technology, and increase the success of our attendance as an exhibitor. Our achievement was based on the core principles of pre-event promotion strategy that we have readily shared with over 30,000 people in the last 5 years. These people are Guidebook users that have successfully deployed a guide on our platform, and our strategies help to maximise the effectiveness of their mobile presence, and for them to see real ROI. What did we do?

1. Planned early.
2. Gathered all necessary content and information as soon as possible.
3. Launched the marketing campaign in plenty of time before the event. This included social media and reaching out to potential prospects directly,
4. Clearly communicated our aims and what we hoped to achieve. Which was not only to benefit their company, but also help fulfill a small child’s wish.

We were particularly pleased with ourselves for this idea, as we managed to hit the proverbial two birds with one stone. Dozens of companies, including Oracle, Galderma, and Experian - met with us to learn how they could make their own wishes for better, paperless events come true  - and at the very same moment help put a smile on a child’s face. Santa – we are proud to donate €220 to the Make-A-Wish foundation. Next, we aim to save some trees, a lot of event organisers time, and the sanity of attendees everywhere. Hopefully all of our clients have a very merry Christmas, and we can’t wait to welcome some new companies and help them on the road to digital transformation in 2016. Have a mince pie on us! Signed, Guidebook