Events

Corey HainesCommunityCreated by Corey Haines

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Business and productivity
MIT
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From the author

When the user wants to plan, run, sponsor, speak at, or get pipeline from events — webinars, conferences, trade shows, meetups, dinners, workshops, virtual summits, or user conferences. Also use when the user mentions 'event marketing,' 'field marketing,' 'run a webinar,' 'webinar funnel,' 'show-up rate,' 'should we sponsor,' 'sponsor a conference,' 'trade show booth,' 'booth strategy,' 'event ROI,' 'badge scans,' 'event follow-up,' 'speaking slot,' 'CFP,' 'conference talk,' 'host a dinner,' 'user conference,' or 'virtual summit.' Covers all four roles: hosting, sponsoring/exhibiting, speaking, and attending. For product launch moments, see launch. For the partnership side of joint webinars, see co-marketing. For ongoing community programs, see community-marketing. For podcast appearances, see public-relations. For the email sequences themselves, see emails.

— the description by Corey Haines

AutoGineer summary

Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author

This skill provides a strategic approach to event marketing, moving beyond simple attendance to focus on measurable business outcomes. It covers the full lifecycle of event participation, including hosting, sponsoring, speaking, and attending. The methodology emphasizes that the event itself is only a small part of the process, with the majority of value created in the preparation and follow-up phases. It offers guidance on portfolio selection, audience targeting, and content creation to ensure events serve as high-leverage assets for pipeline generation and brand authority.

What it does

Defines roles for hosting, sponsoring, speaking, and attending events.
Provides a framework for selecting high-ROI events based on portfolio strategy.
Outlines the 20/80 rule for event success, prioritizing pre-event planning and post-event follow-up.
Offers specific tactics for booking meetings and managing attendee engagement.
Guides the capture of durable content assets from event sessions.
Establishes metrics for evaluating event success beyond vanity numbers.

When to use it

When planning a webinar, trade show, conference, or executive dinner.
When evaluating whether to sponsor or exhibit at an industry event.
When preparing to speak at a conference to maximize authority and lead generation.
When trying to improve the ROI and follow-up process of existing event programs.
When deciding between in-person and digital event formats for specific ICP segments.

Advantages

Focuses on measurable pipeline outcomes rather than vanity metrics.
Provides a structured approach to event selection to avoid wasted budget.
Ensures consistent follow-up discipline to prevent lead decay.
Turns ephemeral event moments into durable content assets.
Helps align event strategy with broader business goals and ICP needs.

Usage examples

“We are considering sponsoring a major industry conference. How should we evaluate if it is worth the investment?”: The agent will guide you through the sponsorship ROI framework, helping you assess the event's ecosystem, your specific goals (pipeline vs. brand), and the necessary pre-event preparation to ensure a positive return.
“I need to plan a series of executive dinners for our top 20 accounts. What is the best way to structure this?”: The agent will provide a plan for hosting small, curated gatherings, focusing on the 'no-pitch' format, guest selection, and the follow-up process required to turn these interactions into qualified pipeline.
“How can I make sure our webinar series actually generates leads instead of just views?”: The agent will help you refine your webinar funnel, focusing on topic selection that targets your ICP, pre-event promotion, and a structured follow-up sequence to convert attendees.
“We are speaking at a conference next month. How do I make sure the talk helps our sales team?”: The agent will assist in designing a talk that addresses audience pain points while positioning your company as the solution, ensuring the recording serves as a long-term asset for sales enablement.

Install

Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://autogineer.com/agent-skills/coreyhaines31/events/download
Unzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:
```
mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip events.zip -d .agents/skills
```

Documentation by Corey Haines

Event Marketing

You are an expert in event-driven marketing — using webinars, conferences, dinners, and talks to create pipeline, authority, and compounding content. Your job is to make events produce measurable business outcomes, not just attendance.

Before Starting

Check for product marketing context first: If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.

Then establish, in one batch:

Which role? Hosting your own event, sponsoring/exhibiting at someone else's, speaking, or attending?
What outcome? Pipeline/meetings, authority/brand, community, or content production? (Pick a primary — events that try to do everything measure nothing.)
Who must be in the room? The ICP segment, and roughly how many of them exist at this event.
Budget and team — money, and who can actually work the event.

Pick Your Role

You are…	Core motion	Depth
Hosting	Own the audience end to end — webinar, workshop, dinner, meetup, summit, user conference	This file + webinar-funnel.md for the flagship format
Sponsoring / exhibiting	Buy access to someone else's audience — evaluate, negotiate, work the floor, follow up	sponsorship-roi.md
Speaking	Trade expertise for stage time — get booked, design the talk, compound the recording	speaking.md
Attending	No booth, no stage — engineer meetings anyway	Section below

Mixed roles are normal (sponsor + speak, attend + host a dinner). Plan each role's motion separately; they share the follow-up system.

Which Events to Invest In (Portfolio First)

Before roles and tactics: events are the most expensive, riskiest, hardest-to-measure channel — the leverage is in selection, not execution. Never write off "events" from one bad conference; each event is its own ecosystem (judging all events on one conference is like judging all paid media on a single Google Ads test). Full framework, the three event types, and cost benchmarks in event-portfolio-strategy.md.

Is in-person even necessary? It earns its cost mainly for high-trust, high-ACV motions: enterprise/multi-stakeholder deals, regulated buyers (health/finance/gov), heavy customization, conservative industries, and 6+ month cycles. If your ICP isn't there, spend on digital first.
The 80/20 of selection. A handful of events generate most event pipeline. Find them, double down (speaking slots, side events, more people, better placement), and cut the tail.
Bigger isn't better. Mega-conferences mean more noise, higher cost, and audience dilution (students, press, vendors, tourists). Niche/regional events (50–200 attendees) often deliver more qualified leads per dollar.
Three types, three risk profiles: Owned (max control/max risk — roadshows, summits, user conferences), Trade shows (someone else's arena — 120 days of prep beats the 4 days on the floor), Community (compound interest — small regular gatherings that spawn more, measured by the "Saturday Test").

The Universal Arc: 20% Event, 80% Before-and-After

The event itself is the smallest part of event marketing. Every format follows the same arc, and most failures are arc failures, not event failures:

Before (where pipeline is actually made)

Build the target list: who's attending that matches your ICP? (Attendee lists, speaker lists, "who's going" posts, past-year attendees.)
Book meetings before you arrive. A meeting booked two weeks out is worth ten hopeful hallway collisions. Outreach angle: specific, low-friction, time-boxed ("15 min at the coffee bar Tuesday").
Announce your presence where your audience already is (email list, social, communities) with a reason to find you — not "we'll be at booth 402" but what they get.

During

Optimize for qualified conversations, not raw contacts. One real conversation with an ICP buyer beats fifty badge scans.
Capture context, not just contact: after each conversation, record what they said, what they care about, and the agreed next step. The follow-up writes itself from this; without it, follow-up is generic and dies.
Create content while there (see Content Arc below) — the event is a recording studio you already paid for.

After (where pipeline is won or lost)

The 24–48 hour window. Follow up while the conversation is still warm, referencing what was actually discussed. Every day of delay roughly halves response rates (directional, not a law — but the decay is real and fast).
Tier the follow-up: hot conversations get a personal note + concrete next step; warm get a relevant asset tied to their stated problem; scans-with-no-conversation get one light touch or nothing — don't burn your domain on people who don't remember you.
Route to systems: CRM with event source tagging (→ revops), nurture for the not-nows (→ emails).

Hosting: Choose the Format for the Job

Format	Best for	Effort	Notes
Webinar	Lead gen + education at scale	Low-mid	The flagship repeatable format — full funnel in webinar-funnel.md
Workshop	Product-qualified leads, activation	Mid	Hands-on beats presentation for conversion; smaller and deeper than a webinar
Dinner / small gathering	Exec relationships, ABM accounts	Mid	8–14 seats, no pitch, curated guest mix — the highest meetings-per-dollar format in B2B
Meetup series	Local community, recurring presence	Mid	Consistency beats production value; hand hosting duties to community members over time (→ community-marketing)
Virtual summit	List building via partner audiences	High	Multi-speaker = built-in distribution; every speaker promotes (→ co-marketing for the partner mechanics)
User conference	Retention, expansion, category authority	Very high	Don't attempt before you have a community that would attend without being begged

Two hosting rules that outrank format choice:

The topic is the targeting. "State of [category] 2026" attracts your ICP; "All about [your product]" attracts existing customers only. Pick topics your buyer would attend even if they'd never buy.
Recurring beats one-off. A monthly webinar or quarterly dinner compounds — audiences, promotion muscle, and content libraries build. A single big event evaporates.

Attending (No Booth, No Stage)

The zero-budget motion, and often the best ROI in the building:

Target list first — 15–30 named people you want to meet, built from the attendee/speaker list and social chatter.
Pre-book — outreach 1–3 weeks ahead; the ask is 15 minutes, anchored to a specific time and place.
The side-event play — host a dinner or breakfast adjacent to the conference for 8–12 target accounts. You get host status without sponsor pricing; often out-generates a booth at a tenth of the cost (see sponsorship-roi.md).
Work sessions strategically — go where your targets are speaking, ask a real question, follow up on it.
Same 24–48h follow-up discipline as every other role.

The Content Arc: Every Event Is a Content Engine

Events produce your highest-proof content — capture it deliberately:

Record everything you're allowed to record. Talks, webinars, panels. The recording is the durable asset; the live audience is just its first viewer.
Transcripts compound in AI answers. Published recordings and show notes get crawled and cited by AI assistants — the same logic as podcast guesting (→ public-relations podcast prep) and the YouTube text layer (→ ai-seo). Say the quotable lines cleanly: your company name next to your category, numbers out loud.
Slice the recording: clips (→ video), a recap post per session (→ content-strategy), pull-quotes for social (→ social), proof points for sales (→ sales-enablement).
Photograph/collect social proof: testimonials captured at the event are the most natural you'll ever get.

Measurement: Pipeline, Not Applause

Metric tier	Examples	Verdict
Vanity	Registrations, badge scans, foot traffic, impressions	Track, never optimize for, never report as success
Real	Qualified conversations, meetings booked, opportunities created, pipeline influenced	The actual scoreboard
Decisive	Cost per qualified meeting, cost per opportunity, closed-won influenced	What decides whether you do it again

Compare cost-per-qualified-meeting against your other channels (ads, outbound) — that's the go/no-go math, worked through in sponsorship-roi.md.
Events are multi-touch by nature: use source tagging + self-reported attribution ("heard us at X") and influence windows, and never claim last-click credit for a deal the event merely touched (→ attribution).
Judge a recurring event program on a 2–3 event trend, not one instance — the first run of anything underperforms its steady state.

Common Mistakes

Sponsoring for "brand awareness" with no conversation target. If nobody owns a meetings number, the booth is décor.
The follow-up gap. Leads captured, then first touch two weeks later from a generic sequence. The event was fine; the follow-up killed it.
Optimizing show-up rate after picking a topic nobody wants. Reminder cadence can't save weak demand — fix topic and promise first.
One-off thinking. Budget for the third instance before running the first.
Doing the event, skipping the recording. Full production effort, zero durable assets.
Counting badge scans as leads. A scan is a person who walked slowly. Qualify before it enters the pipeline.
Writing off "events" after one bad conference. Each event is its own ecosystem — judge them individually, not as a single channel.
Chasing the biggest conferences. Size correlates with noise and audience dilution, not ROI — niche and regional events often win on cost-per-qualified-meeting.

launch — the event is a launch moment (announcement, Product Hunt, go-live)
co-marketing — joint webinars and partner summits: partnership mechanics live there, event execution here
community-marketing — ongoing community programs; events can seed or serve one
public-relations — podcast guesting and press at events
lead-magnets — gated replays and event content as magnets
emails / sms — the reminder and follow-up sequences themselves
cold-email — pre-event meeting-booking outreach
revops — routing, scoring, and source-tagging event leads
attribution — measuring multi-touch event influence honestly

Files

ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer873 B
LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer1.0 KiB
SKILL.md11.9 KiB
evals/evals.json10.9 KiB
references/event-portfolio-strategy.md7.8 KiB
references/speaking.md5.2 KiB
references/sponsorship-roi.md6.1 KiB
references/webinar-funnel.md8.0 KiB

references/event-portfolio-strategy.md

Event Portfolio Strategy — Which Events, Why, and the Economics

The layer that sits above role and tactics. Events are the most expensive, riskiest, hardest-to-measure channel you can run — so the leverage is in selection and portfolio design, not execution. The single most common failure is treating "events" as one channel: attend two bad conferences, get few leads, and write the whole channel off — the same mistake as running Google Ads once, seeing poor results, and concluding all paid media is broken. Each event is its own ecosystem. Judge them individually.

Is in-person even necessary? (segment fit first)

Digital scales efficiently; in-person builds trust that digital can't. In-person earns its cost mainly for high-trust, high-consideration motions. Prioritize events when your ICP looks like:

Enterprise / multi-stakeholder — high ACV, several people must build trust before a big commitment
Regulated buyers — healthcare, finance, government have strict vendor-evaluation norms
High-touch / heavy customization — significant integration or configuration work
Conservative industries — manufacturing, utilities still run on traditional relationship-building
Long cycles — 6+ month sales cycles get disproportionate acceleration from face time

Reality check: a cybersecurity company found $500k+ ACV deals almost never closed without at least one in-person meeting — the trust to switch security vendors couldn't be built over Zoom. If your ICP is not in these buckets, spend on digital first and treat events as a small experiment.

The 80/20 of event selection

A small number of events generate the majority of event-attributed pipeline (one B2B SaaS program found 3 conferences drove ~70% of it). The job is to find those and concentrate:

Increase presence at the winners — secure speaking slots, host larger side events, send more of the right people, buy better placement
Cut or minimize the long tail of low-yield events
Re-rank yearly; the 20% shifts as your ICP and market move

Bigger isn't better (size ↔ ROI is often inverse)

Major conferences look can't-miss and frequently deliver the worst returns:

Big events = more noise — higher cost on everything (booth, hotels, travel), more competing vendors, attendees spread thin across tracks, endless competing side events
Audience dilution — you're paying to reach a crowd padded with students, investors, press, other vendors, consultants, and industry tourists; your ICP is a thin slice, so effective cost-per-qualified-lead balloons
Small-event advantage — a 50-person niche meetup can out-produce a 5,000-person conference; highest ROI is often regional events of 100–200 where you can reach every qualified prospect in the room

The three event types (three risk profiles)

1. Owned events — maximum control, maximum risk

You control everything from content to coffee breaks, and you carry all the risk. Range: exec dinners → roadshows → summits → user conferences.

User conferences turn customers into a community and a product into a movement (Dreamforce). Don't attempt before you have an audience that would come unbegged.
Regional roadshows take the message to scattered markets — one company generated more pipeline from a 6-city roadshow than its annual conference, at a third of the cost.
Industry summits build thought leadership by tackling category problems, not product pitches — they pull in partners and influencers who amplify.
Workshops / certifications tie the event directly to customer success and can pay for themselves via fees.
Three success factors: ruthless audience focus (a clear "who," even at the expense of broader appeal), a value proposition attendees can't get elsewhere, and strategic timing (align to buyer budget/bandwidth — one company moved its conference Q4→Q1 and lifted attendance 40%).
Model case — Drift HYPERGROWTH: killed badges and sponsor booths, chose storytelling over product pitches, felt like TED not a software show → 3x pipeline acceleration for attendees, starting at 1,000 people year one.

2. Trade shows & conferences — someone else's arena

Less control, less risk — you rent instant access to an audience but work inside their format. Success is 120 days of prep, not the 4 days on the floor.

Pre-show (starts ~120 days out): mine the attendee list for stories, not just names (recent funding, press, job posts) → hooks far better than "want a demo?"; book ~70% of meeting slots before anyone flies out ("saw you opened a Singapore office — we helped 3 companies with APAC expansion last quarter, coffee at the show?")
On the floor: turn the booth into a story-collection hub — senior staff at the edges (not behind a counter), no physical barriers, customer success stories on screens, and bring real customers to tell their story. (One security company ran a live "Security Operations Center" that sparked real technical sales conversations.)
The hidden game — satellite events: morning coffee meetups and curated private dinners routinely out-generate the booth
Post-show (where most teams fail): tier leads and reference specific conversation details — hot → same-day, warm → personalized within 48h, general → nurture within a week; turn booth conversations into content (video testimonials, FAQ → blog/email)

3. Community events — the compound interest of event marketing

Small, regular investments that grow exponentially — often started on a tiny budget (monthly meetups for ~$500 of pizza and beer).

Regular rhythm beats flash — same format, same venue, every month builds momentum; chasing a bigger/flashier event each time burns teams out
Never pitch — facilitate. A "Tech Leaders Dinner" grew 8 → 40+ CTOs because it solved their real problems; the product came up naturally
Turn customers into advocates — support customer-run user groups but let them stay independent; they become a reference network prospects trust because they're not on your payroll
The multiplier effect — arm your most engaged attendees with playbooks, speaker connections, and seed funding to launch their own city events (one meetup spawned 12 across 3 countries)
Metrics that fit — monthly active members, conversation depth, community-initiated events, relationship velocity, member→customer conversion. The gut check is the "Saturday Test": would people show up on a Saturday morning? If yes, you built something real.
Payoff — prospects who attended 3+ community events showed an 85% higher close rate and 40% shorter cycle; they understood the value in context before ever buying

Economics — real cost benchmarks

Budget the full investment (money and time/opportunity cost) against pipeline, not just the sticker price.

Line item	Typical range
Conference ticket	$1,500–3,000 / person (major shows)
Booth space (10×10, top-tier)	$15,000–40,000
Flights	$300–1,000 / person
Hotel	$300–400 / night / person
Booth staff	3–4 people minimum at any significant show
Private dinner (15–20 ppl)	$150–200 / person
Breakfast meetup	$30–50 / person
Happy hour	$50 / person
Private meeting room	$500–1,500 / day

Rule of thumb: a significant show needs to generate ~5–10 solid opportunities to justify sending a team. For the sponsor-specific go/no-go math and cost-per-qualified-meeting comparison against other channels, see sponsorship-roi.md.

Distilled from Corey Haines's Founding Marketing (chapter: "Events create memorable experiences with potential customers"). Benchmarks are directional and pre-inflation-adjust as needed; re-verify current show pricing.

Requirements and compatibility

Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta

“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.

Security

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Attribution and licence

Created by

Corey Haines

Publisher

Corey Haines (Community)

Source

coreyhaines31/marketingskills · skills/events · commit 96798cf

Licence

MIT License (redistribution allowed)

LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)

Synced

2026-11-09

AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by Corey Haines or Corey Haines.

Download ZIP

The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download events.zip