The event
The Corporate IT Forum – Annual Conference and Awards Dinner
2003, 2004, 2005

The brief
The Corporate IT Forum is a membership organisation for the heads of IT within FTSE 100 companies and other major organisations.

Each year they host an annual conference and awards dinner for members and guests. The functions are positioned as ‘must attend’ learning and networking events for leading corporate IT professionals, where they can:

• Focus on relevant and topical examples of large-scale, corporate best practice
• Network and learn from the experience of others in a supplier-free environment
• Debate and refine strategic thinking and road-test new ideas
• Capitalise on intelligent feedback and the pooling of collective knowledge

The challenges

• Competing with other events in a crowded IT market place
• Attracting speakers from the world’s most respected companies
• Delivering a high-quality networking event for senior delegates
• Generating income and sales leads from non-member participants

The highlights

• Speaker sourcing Working with the client’s members and other respected organisations, we have researched current IT topics and secured top IT speakers from organisations including

• Marketing We used best-practice direct marketing techniques to generate high levels of response. We created generic conference brochures but wrote a series of different sales letters with different sales messages to match the special interests and industry sector issues of recipients.
  
  Mailings were phased over a twelve-week period. We ensured that copywriting for letters, brochures and adverts was benefits-led and compelling.
  
  We also made extensive use of telemarketing to secure delegate bookings. Following mailing campaigns, our telemarketing teams targeted key decision makers in both member and non-member companies. We devised a sophisticated selling approach to encourage group bookings and ticket-sharing options. We also used email marketing and PR to further lift response.
  
• Networking We maximised networking at the events by having delegates provide an interest profile before the even. Then we provided a dating agency-style managed networking service. During formal lunches and dinners, we ensured delegates with common interests sat together. We also moved delegates between courses to further enhance the networking.
  
• Format We streamed conference days and ran certain sessions concurrently so that those with particular interests, eg innovation, strategy or investment, could take a course most relevant to their business needs.

The outcome
Successes included sell out events with 200+ delegates, superb delegate evaluation feedback and high quality sales leads from prospect member companies.