Introducing: Sessionboard’s Event Marketer In Residence (EMIR) Program

We are taking the next step in our commitment to keeping our customers at the forefront with our new Event Marketer In Residence Program

The EMIR program brings an experienced event marketer (and one of our Event Content Pros to Watch) into our company to work closely with our team. By integrating an industry expert into our daily operations, we aim to gain deeper insights, foster innovation, and enhance our platform to better serve our users.

It’s another way to give our customer a seat at the table. 

The Event Marketer In Residence will collaborate with various departments, ensuring our business aligns with the real-world needs of event marketers. They will participate in brainstorming sessions, provide feedback on new features, and help test and refine our solutions. This hands-on approach ensures our product development is grounded in practical experience. They will also share their expertise and ideas with you as they help us build out our own event marketing strategy.

Today, we want to introduce you to our first Event Marketing Exec In Residence, Bryan Funk. 

Welcome Bryan Funk

Bryan's Background

For 15 years, events have been a cornerstone and key growth lever across Bryan’s career. Most recently, as the VP of Marketing of Virtuous, he and his team leveraged events as part of the GTM strategy to: 

• Drive 700%+ revenue growth over 4 years 
• Scale a flagship brand event to drive nearly $2 million in pipeline annually 
• Create a webinar program to reach over 10,000 ICP 
• Fuel a multi-channel content strategy to nurture a flourishing community
• Grow a net new category, and establish innovative frameworks to help customers thrive 

Curating our Sessions Summer Webinar Series

Bryan is coming alongside Sessionboard to build our events programming, starting with a live weekly webinar show: Sessions. Every Thursday at 12 pm EST, Sessions will feature live conversations with event marketing professionals with three primary goals: 

• Share the leading, innovative strategies modern events teams are leveraging
• Build a community of event marketing professionals 
• Solve the greatest challenges facing event marketing teams 

To kickoff, we are launching a three monthly series:

July: Event to Revenue Series 

Events can have a significant impact on revenue, and they typically absorb a large percentage of marketing’s budget. This series will showcase how to ensure that event marketing teams meaningfully integrate with the broader GTM strategy, drive revenue, and can showcase healthy ROI. 

Bryan will share the tactics he’s used including how to:

• Align content, programming, and speakers to solving your customers pain points
• Activate your speaker network to drive registrations
• Enable sales and customer success to buy into your event 

Most importantly, we’ll dive into why the end of your event is just the beginning of the sales cycle. 

August: Speaker Training Series 

Speakers are your marketing team’s greatest asset: before, during, and after the event. How are modern event teams creating innovative experiences to equip and train speakers to deliver the highest quality content? 

Join the event teams from Google, Salesforce, GitHub to dive into their unique approach to Speaker Training every Thursday in August. 

September: Event Content Management Series

By delivering world-class content through your speaker network, your event content is the key to producing demand - and revenue - all year long. We’ll feature leading event content experts to share conversations on how they: 

• Determine content and programming for their event 
• Utilize technology to manage content and speakers to scale impact 
• Syndicate content post-event to drive demand all year long 

We sat down with Bryan as we kicked off to ask a few questions: 

Why are you excited about this opportunity over the next 6 months:

Chris and the Sessionboard team are at the forefront of the next big innovation in event marketing: unlocking the power of your speaker network,” Bryan shared. “Speaker CRM is a time saving machine giving unprecedented visibility into speaker engagement, streamlining how event teams activate speaker networks, and scaling content marketing efforts to drive demand and revenue long after the event ends. I’m thrilled to take 15+ years of event experience into the future with Sessionboard.

What are you hoping to accomplish?

I am excited to build the foundation for a best in class event marketing program for the Sessionboard team. That will start with our ongoing weekly webinar series and as our community grows, scale into larger virtual and hybrid activations to help event marketers access:

• A knowledge base of strategic approaches they can implement at their own events 
• Innovative leaders in event marketing 
• Leading tools and products to scale their efforts 

What are you hoping the event marketing world will get out of your work?

I believe that we are all better when we work together. We are all in this industry for a reason: a shared passion and belief in the transformative power of events and community. For the events marketing world, this program will be a gathering place to share ideas and innovations, a forum to build community and connection with our peers, and a collaborative mindshare to build better events, together. 

Are you ready for more? 

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Subscribe to our weekly live Sessions today. When you subscribe, you’ll be the first to know the weeks programming and you will: 

• Be invited to our weekly live Sessions
• Receive a monthly newsletter summarizing the key learnings from each event marketing pro
• Access all the recordings on-demand 
• Join a growing community of event content pros 

About Sessionboard

Sessionboard’s deliberate and sole focus on continuous innovation of the speaker and content management process has created a best-in-class platform that saves organizers hundreds of hours per event, helps aggregate and optimize their speaker network, provides speakers with a streamlined and modern experience, and empowers marketing teams to optimize their content strategy year-round.