If you have ever attended a ‘Demo Day’ online event hosted by the American Society of Association Executives, you were probably there to shop for your association’s next big technology purchase. For ASAE, Demo Days provides both a major new benefit for their members as well as a major source of non-dues revenue, because vendors have a strong willingness to pay for the opportunity to take part.
Due to Demo Days’ success, more and more associations are pursuing similar online vendor showcases – carving out a time and place to help support their members with their own respective purchasing decisions.
Inevitably, there are hurdles to overcome and stakeholders to convince when launching anything new, so we interviewed ASAE’s Reggie Henry, CAE, who is the visionary behind their monthly Demo Days series, to understand how he sold his vision to get the buy-in needed to make it happen.
Q: This is an idea that you have had for a long time. What barriers did you come up against internally before getting the buy in?
Reggie: This isn’t the first time I’ve run into a barrier when trying to do something new and different. The typical barriers were there – like, “how are we going to do a program and not charge attendees money? How are we going to do that and how are we going to ensure that our industry partners are going to have a good experience so that we can charge them?” And keep in mind this idea came about during the COVID era where there really wasn’t a whole lot of different ways we could provide value for industry partners because their business model was built on “being there”. The business model was built on being face to face. So it was something that was new and different and untested, and sometimes you just gotta go with your gut.
Q: How did you convince the very first sponsors to do this? And after the first successful one, how do you continue to communicate the value to new sponsors?
Reggie: I think anybody who’s doing this has to have a conversation with their sponsor community to know what their expectations are. So part of what I did was ask our industry partners:
“What does success look like when you participate with us in any other normal situation?”
So for example, when you come to our technology conference, what are your expectations and what is success? And they said, “well, you know, if I leave there with 25 or 30 solid leads, I’ve had a really good conference.”…
And I said, “So what does a solid lead mean?”
“Well, somebody that I can do a demo in front of and demonstrate the different benefits of my product.”
We’re probably averaging for the various Demo Days presenters having 200-300 people [attending each Demo Day]. I think it just hadn’t been done before. And so this new model is not only easier for the vendors because they don’t have to be in some particular place, but also because of the amount of people we can get virtually.
Q: So how have you communicated this to members?
Reggie: Well, you know, something happens when you make something free, right? People tend to show up. But I also think it has to be valuable. It really does. So in some of our vendor showcases, oftentimes at the beginning we will have some kind of an education session. It might not be a full-fledged one, but it’s typically [a discussion of:] How should you be thinking about selection criteria for choosing between these particular vendors? And we also tend to do a wrap-up at the end of most of these demo days where we talk about: “here’s what I will relate to the others. Here’s what I heard. Did you hear something different? And here’s some things for discussion that we need to talk about.”
One thing that’s very top of mind for me:
Most organizations have an annual meeting once a year. It’s not like people just buy stuff once a year, right? People buy stuff when they need. So there’s always somebody in the market to get whatever thing’s being demoed.
The fact that we had this artificial situation set up where people only learned about them a lot that one time during the year is just that – it’s artificial. So we have never done a demo day where I was anywhere near fearful of not having enough people show up.
Q: Can you talk about the frequency that you do these and why it’s that frequency?
Reggie: So we do these [about once a month]. And I think we started off doing them quarterly, but the reaction from our members has been so strong with these that I started to walk down every possible technology tool that they could possibly use.
Q: What has been the financial benefit? You don’t have to give numbers of course, but talk to us about that.
Reggie: You know I’m not giving you the numbers 🙂
Let me just say that Demo Days is one of, if not the most successful, non-dues revenue initiative we have outside of advertising.
Q: Have you found that it cannibalizes other opportunities?
Reggie: Oh, no no. I hate when associations go down that path. “Well, this might hurt the exhibiting at our annual meetings.” No, it will not. It has not. It never will. It’s a different deal altogether.
I could do a demo day on AMS systems once a quarter and I guarantee I’ll have about the same amount of attendance every time we do it. People don’t buy things based on when we tell them. People buy stuff based on when they need it. And that could be any time. So I’m not even concerned about that. But the answer is no, we haven’t seen any.
Q: Reggie, what would you say to someone who’s considering doing a vendor showcase. Where should they begin?
Reggie: One, don’t try to duplicate the experience that you have at your annual meeting. That’s not what this is. Keep it really simple and keep it really pure. It’s not 40 min of a vendor extolling their virtues and then 5 minutes of demo. It’s 25 min of demoing a product and then some Q&A at the end. That’s what makes this successful. It’s called Demo Days, or called Vendor Showcase, so let people see the product that you’re selling. That way they can make a decision about whether or not to buy the product.
Are you looking to launch your own Demo Day Series? Here are some next steps to consider:
- Read ASAE’s full case study and the original article on how Demo Days became a successful digital initiative.
- Check out information on our vendor showcase module to learn how Matchbox supports you in offering vendor showcases just like ASAE’s Demo Days.
- Ready to get started? You can reach out directly through our contact form below, and during our first call we can chat through specifics of your vendor and member community and run the numbers through our ROI calculator to see if this would be a great new source of non-dues revenue for your organization.
