Self-Service Event-Landingpage Generator for Reps and MSL
Challenge
Sales teams and medical science liaison managers need to organize and manage both physical and virtual events efficiently. To do this, they need a flexible platform to quickly and easily create invitations that visually represent the brand and are regulatorily compliant. Crucially, the platform must also functionally capture and distribute data correctly.
The goal was to develop a portal that would allow creating landing pages for all types of events quickly and without unnecessary administrative effort. The main challenges were speed, ease of use and the flexibility to meet complex requirements for different types of events without compromising the user experience.
Solution
The resulting solution focused on key features such as accessibility, ease of use, integration, flexibility and compliance.
Quick and easy access
Members of the sales force can easily access the portal in their browser. This ensures that it works seamlessly on any device – desktop, tablet or smartphone. The login is integrated with the company-wide login.
Users can access the event creation tools quickly and easily.
Efficient creation process
Every event that has been created in advance in the CRM - Veeva in this case - is available for further editing in the event portal. The employee only has to fill in a few additional fields, notably the description of the event and the agenda. Optionally, one or more PDF files can be made available for download.
In the second step, the landing page is published with one click. This also generates the appropriately parameterized links to the landing page for the various target channels.
The platform makes it easy to add additional brands or change existing ones in order to react quickly to changing business requirements.
Simple registration and approval
Mandatory fields in the registration form ensure that all necessary data is entered for tracking purposes. Registered persons will see a branded confirmation page after registration.
An overview of collected registrations is available in directly in the system; all registrations can be downloaded as an Excel table at any time. At the same time, all registrations are sent to the CRM.
Important features
Flexibility and versatility
The system supports a wide range of events, from local face-to-face events to virtual and hybrid events. It supports both events with registration and open events without prior registration.
Optional fields such as the 15-digit training number can be displayed to meet specific requirements of different event types. This gives the sales department more control over the registration process.
Integration
The system is linked to the internal event management system and the CRM – in this case Veeva CRM Events Management. An event created in the internal event management system is available shortly afterwards in the platform for creating the landing page.
Once the landing page has been created, the information about the event and the URL of the landing page are transmitted to the marketing automation – in this case Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
Participants are sent to the CRM once a day. Rep and MSL can see in the account view or timeline which customers have registered for the event.
Delegation
A selection list function makes it possible to select additional colleagues for each event. These are displayed on the event page so that participants can easily contact them.
Additionally, management of the landing page and registrations can be delegated to colleagues or a back office team. The connection of external service providers for the management of the event is also supported.
Distributing documents and information
Sales staff can attach all relevant documents, like event agendas or product information, to the registration page. This way, participating healthcare professionals (HCPs) have all the necessary information in one place.
Multiple language support
Registration pages can be created in one or more languages. For small and medium-sized events, a German-language invitation is the right choice; for events for an international audience – or in multilingual countries such as Switzerland or Belgium – at least two languages are required.
Event visibility only for HCPs
Many registration pages for events contain information that may only be provided to members of the medical professions or the medical trade. In this case, the event is marked as “private” when it is created. Access to the event landing page is then only possible after DocCheck login.
Automatic registration confirmation
A key feature of our solution is the automatic registration confirmation. Registration for an event protected by login is confirmed immediately. The confirmation page after sending the registration form contains the confirmation of participation and the download of the event data so that it can be entered directly in your own calendar. This information is also sent to registered persons as a branded e-mail.
This is different in the case of a “public” event. Here, the registration is initially only received. The event manager or creator of the event is informed and can confirm or reject participants by clicking “Yes” or “No” in an email. This function is also available in the system itself, under “Registration overview”. After confirmation, a confirmation of participation is immediately sent by e-mail.
With our self-service event management platform, reps and MSLs create compliant events in minutes. Due to comprehensive integration into their CRM/CLM and subsequent automation flows, even several thousand events per year are no longer a pipe dream.
Approval and compliance
Sales reps can create invitations, but the final publication only takes place after approval. This ensures that all event invitations meet brand or regulatory standards before they are sent out.
After the end of the event, invitation pages and downloads will no longer be available.
Performance insights
Once an event invitation is live, sales has instant access to insights on how your invitation is performing. Metrics such as registration numbers or page views can be easily tracked.
After the event has ended, an email with an NPS survey is sent to all participants four working days later. The question is “Would you recommend a future event like <name of event> to your colleagues?”. The resulting data is correlated by brand and business unit in a dashboard. Values are only displayed if more than 5 events in one area have received a sufficient number of ratings. This ensures that requirements regarding the non-assignability of employees by the employee council and data protection officer are met.
Integration of virtual booths
For virtual events, the sales force can link the event to a virtual booth and choose from various templates. The virtual booth shows important event details and improves the attendee experience in the virtual space.
Virtual trade fair stands are provided for a product or indication in a content management system included in the solution. Events can use these virtual trade fair stands.
IT security
The solution is based on an actively maintained enterprise open source solution. Due to the connection to the company's SSO, CRM and marketing automation – and in order to solve regulatory pitfalls such as GDPR as easily as possible – the solution is hosted in the customer's IT environment. The system was certified in advance by the customer's IT security department. Operational security is ensured by a bundle of measures, including multi-level monitoring and a web application firewall (WAF).
Results
Over 2,000 events that have been organized via the platform in the last two years speak for themselves. These were events with between 5 and 250 participants.
The portal has significantly reduced the time and effort required by brand teams, reps and MSLs to create event invitations. They can create a fully brand compliant invitation page in less than 6 minutes. The platform's ease of use and flexibility ensure that it can cover a wide range of events, from small local meetings to large hybrid events.
Conclusion
This self-service event management portal has given Reps and MSLs a user-friendly tool to manage their events independently. The solution not only saves time, but also ensures that each event is correctly branded, compliant and easy to promote across digital and non-digital channels. By simplifying the process and integrating with the existing system, a scalable solution has been created that can easily adapt to changing event management requirements.
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Christian Rütgers // Technical Consultant
With almost three decades of expertise in sales automation and digital marketing, Christian has devised and successfully implemented a wide range of innovative projects. He knows how to solve difficult problems and develops solutions that are occasionally unconventional, but always the right fit.