Ekos is a Charlotte-based, B2B SaaS startup that caters to the craft beverage market. They create business management software for craft breweries, wineries, cideries, and other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Ekos has a strong foothold in the craft brewery market and is expanding their presence into the wine industry-—a market that is heavily relationship driven. Ekos previously had a dedicated resource to help plan events, but without that support, they looked to Zinnia for help with planning prospect events to bring wineries onboard to their platform. They wanted to ensure that their events remained high quality without the dedicated internal resources to devote to full-time event planning. We sat down with Rob Byrd, Director of Revenue Marketing, to hear about their event strategy and their experience partnering with Zinnia.
Ekos ran three client events with Zinnia across the country - in Oregon, North Carolina, and Sacramento - with the objective of lead generation and relationship building. These events have enabled Ekos to show up for the wineries in a way that resonates with them - locally, and focused on building community. As a result, they’ve built new relationships and have won several deals!
“That’s one of the pieces of feedback that we got out of the event: ‘We’re happy to work with you [Ekos] because we know you’re putting in effort to be out here in the field with us, getting to know our community and industry rather than flying in to have a sales meeting and leaving.’”
“We have had a number of events throughout the country, inviting prospect wineries along with existing customers to get them to interact with each other, and have actually won quite a few deals originating out of those conversations. Zinnia has helped us with all of the details of making an event impressive and professional,” said Rob Byrd, Director of Revenue Marketing, “allowing me to not have to worry about that side of the event and really only focusing on generating leads.”
With Zinnia's expert event planning and 15+ years of experience in the industry, Zinnia was able to help with everything from working with the venues, to managing food and beverage, to aligning entertainment options, to special touches like giveaways and branded florals. This enabled Ekos to focus on building relationships rather than worrying about event logistics.
As an added bonus on the backend, Zinnia centralized all vendor payments for Ekos, so they had one less thing to worry about. “I really appreciate that Zinnia is able to cover our costs up front and bill us on the backend rather than having to go through every expense, one by one,” Rob shared. “It saves us time to settle up at the end.”
This isn’t the end for Ekos! Zinnia is planning three additional events for their existing craft brewery clients in the upcoming months as a means to help nurture those relationships.
Want help offloading client events? Need help with logistics across multiple cities? Let Zinnia wow your customers, so you can focus on prospecting. Book today.
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