The Challenge
Consolidating the Event Tech Stack
The Piano marketing team had been using several leading event tech solutions to power its events.
Piano’s Senior Growth Marketing Manager, Alexis Fillon, explained that Piano needed a better way forward and that it was time to find a single platform that could handle every type of event in one place.
“We had been really focused on virtual events, but as we started planning our first in-person event after the pandemic, we thought it was the right time to look for a new solution,” he said.
Rather than cobble together several point solutions to run the conference, the Piano team was looking for a comprehensive event management solution to help them create a successful conference without needing to rely on many different tools.
The Solution
Powering an Inaugural In-person Conference with Bizzabo
As the Piano team started planning its inaugural customer conference, Piano Academy Live, it needed to consolidate its event tech stack to streamline its event strategy. Plus, Piano’s marketing team is on the smaller side, so they need to make smart investments in technology to cover more ground and accomplish more.
“We wanted a solution that could serve the modern needs of in-person and virtual event experiences,” Fillon said. “We felt that we could find a single platform that could do everything at once, and that’s exactly what we found in Bizzabo.”
After researching the platform on Google and user review platforms, the Piano team booked a demo of Bizzabo, liked what they saw, and the rest — as they say — is history.
The Results
Accelerating Piano’s Event Strategy with Bizzabo
According to Fillon, the Piano team is confident it made the right decision to invest in Bizzabo, and the team looks forward to using the Event Experience OS to put on more events in the future.
“Bizzabo simplifies event management from an operations standpoint,” he said. During the company’s inaugural annual conference, there “were no hiccups with overall event organization, registration, pre-event communications, or post-event communications. The event was a big success from the feedback we got from our own customers and internally.”
Fillon expects to experience more success and positive feedback with Piano’s next gathering later this year.
“Our upcoming conference is in November 2023 in Paris,” he said. “We already hit our goals for registrations; of course, Bizzabo has something to do with that, thanks to their website builder. Even our CMO was moving sessions around and adding speakers because it’s so easy for us to work with this tool.”
Using Bizzabo’s OS, the Piano team has found a powerful event management solution it can rely on to achieve ideal event outcomes. With that in mind, here are some of the many ways Piano has benefited from its decision to use Bizzabo for event orchestration.
A Flexible, Easy-to-use Platform
Fillon was impressed by Bizzabo’s user-friendly, feature-rich design.
Fillon was also excited by Bizzabo’s website builder, which enables teams to create event websites without writing any code — or, if so inclined, build their own event websites and bring widgets in.
“You’re not stuck with one option; there are several paths you can follow,” he said. “This extra flexibility is much appreciated.”
Thanks to Bizzabo, the Piano team can repurpose event sessions easily, posting video-on-demand (VoD) content without manually building pages and populating them with recordings and assets.
A Turnkey Experience with the Bizzabox
To optimize the event experience, Piano invested in the Bizzabox, the turnkey event check-in solution designed to streamline the check-in process and optimize each attendee’s initial impression.
Localization
Piano has many Japanese customers. As such, the team was delighted to learn about Bizzabo’s localization capabilities, which enabled them to translate the event website’s text into Japanese without heavy lifting.
“Our Japanese customers are used to having everything in their native language, and we wanted to accommodate that,” Fillon said. “Bizzabo’s localization worked and was easy to use.”
Top-shelf Support
Whenever the Piano team considers a new software solution, they are “pretty picky when it comes to privacy, vendor selection, and security,” Fillon said. Their interactions with Bizzabo gave them peace of mind.
Robust Integrations
The Piano team has been pleased by how easy it is to connect Bizzabo to other mission-critical tools in the company’s tech stack, including Salesforce and Slack.
“We can ensure our registrants are automatically syncing with Salesforce,” Fillon said. “We can also receive instant notifications in Slack when someone registers.”
Private-label Mobile App
The Piano team took advantage of Bizzabo’s private-label mobile event app, which helped attendees maximize their event experience.
“It’s great to have attendees download a Piano-branded event app,” Fillon said.
The event team can send push notifications to attendees using the app, letting them know essential event updates, such as when sessions change. Fillon also appreciated having the ability to apply different targeting filters so that notifications only went out to relevant attendees.
“The app’s setup is effortless and customizable,” he said. “Even if you’re not a tech expert, you can use Bizzabo’s mobile app builder.”
The Future
Running More Events on Bizzabo
Looking ahead, Fillon and his team are confident they’ve found a lasting solution for event management. Currently, they’re looking at scaling their footprint and putting on more events — which Fillon said is “a major channel of our marketing strategy.”
Thanks to Piano’s positive experience with planning and executing 2022’s in-person event, the team has moved its virtual events to Bizzabo, too.
“We’ve switched off Zoom and are now using Bizzabo extensively for virtual events, including webinars,” Fillon said. “I’ve been spending a lot of time these days learning about the virtual side of Bizzabo event management, and I find it pretty cool; it has everything we need.”
So, if someone is looking for a new events management solution — like the 67.4% of organizers we surveyed who said that they switched or intend to switch event software vendors in the next year — what would Fillon say about Bizzabo?
