How To Get Sponsors For An Event?

Raising money to hold an event is hard work — let me share some tips on how to make the process easier…

Through the years, I have had to raise money for various causes and events. Most recently, I had to get sponsors for the Robotex International event held in 2018. And now I am helping the other Robotex events organised around the world put together their sponsorship prospectuses. Thus I know it first-hand how hard it can be for any event to attract a sufficient amount of backers. Meanwhile, there does not seem to be any good guides for the first-time event organisers on how to approach this question.

In my case, I had always used materials made by people who had previously been organising the same events. Sometimes changing some amounts in the proposals, based on my funding needs. And then bombarded a bunch of companies listed in some excel sheet given to me by the ex-project managers. Ending up with enough money to survive but not making anyone too happy.

This method works for sure. Especially when hosting an event in a hyped sector or for the children — everyone wants to be involved somehow. Yet, the ROI per email sent or calls made tends to be shit. 15% if you are lucky. Most likely less than 5%.

As per my experience, there are seven steps that need to be taken to get better results:

1. Figure out what (type of) companies do you want at the event.
2. Understand the desires and needs of your ideal partners.
3. Analyse what can you really offer to anyone.
4. Prepare a prospectus that will sell by itself.
5. Put together a list of all potential sponsors.
6. Start contacting them.
7. Do take care of them & keep them informed through the process.

More on my experience before describing the seven steps to get more sponsors

So when I took the task to get sponsors for Robotex International in 2018, then I decided to redo everything. As a disclaimer, changing your sponsorship prospectus when the event has been organised for many years might result in losing some long-term partners. But no need to worry, as you will be able to get new ones.

However, that was easier said than done, as there were no good materials on the topic when I wanted to increase our budget. Nor are event organisers too happy to share their insights/materials — most likely fearing that the newcomers would take away their money. Thus I ended up playing an executive of a company who was interested in maybe joining their event, so they would share their materials with me.

This way, I was able to get my hands on various events’ sponsorship prospectuses, including the ones for Disrupt by Techcrunch, Dreamforce by Salesforce, WebSummit and Atlassian Summit.

After studying them for a day or two, I started to put together our’s that ended up looking a lot like the one by Atlassian. Mostly because I enjoyed their simple design (opposite to the one by Dreamforce + I am not sure how anyone understands the one by WebSummit). Then I glanced at the prices for different levels from Robotex’ previous years, as well as the growth numbers for the event. Made some calculations and came up with what felt like good numbers to reach our funding goals. Thereupon, I also fixed the offerings (Read: removed the promises with too much overhead). And ready it was. Or so I thought.

Next up, we put together a new excel sheet with all the companies we thought could be interested in joining us. This included technology companies, banks, telcos, development houses, universities & other schools, government agencies and even food producers. Then we segmented them to local and international and started searching for e-mails (as well as local phone numbers and addresses) for relevant employees at those companies, such as marketing managers, HR managers, events teams and in some cases the management itself. A good tool for that is Clearbit’s Connect add-on for Gmail.

Once done, it was time to again bombard them. First e-mails sent manually, then deciding it was time to use Streak — CRM in your inbox. Eventually, I sent out over 3'000 e-mails, around 500–600 uniques plus the reminders. And finally, around 70 joined us. So a good 12% — not bad but could have been much better.

Oh, and I changed the numbers, as well as some of the offerings in the prospectus, as we were raising the money because I did not check the market readiness before hitting the send button at first…

But it does not have to be that hard for you!

This last experience taught me a lot. Only it would be a waste if not shared with all future event organisers. Therefore, after having enough time to analyse I will now share you some of my learnings, as well as other tips on how to approach this question with more ease.

0. Is your event unique enough?

There are thousands of conferences, exhibitions, festivals, meetups etc happening per year. Most of them, regrettably, are shit!

Not because they would not bring any value to anyone. Yet they are the same around the world, featuring nothing new and interesting. Which is okay, if they are meant for the local attendees who never go anywhere else. But then they should not try to jump over their shadow, marketing themselves as something awesome.

That is because the international audience, especially the companies looking to exhibit or sponsor ’em, can only attend so many events per year. And getting a bad taste might take away their interest to attend any events hosted in the region. Perhaps even making sure none of their friends would ever visit that event again. So it does not make sense to go after just about every company before you are sure that your event is worth it. And if it is not, then maybe cancel it before the start.

Let’s believe yours is better — so what next?

1. Figure out what (type of) companies do you want at the event.

Before getting into preparing the materials or inviting anyone to join your event, take a day to plan and understand which companies would you want to see at the event. Better yet, imagine your ideal exhibition plan or the number of sponsors listed at any materials. Take account of the interest that your audience will have. And just lay out the ideas.

For example, if hosting an event where talents will compete with their robots, while their family and friends join to see cool stuff then there is one type of companies that need to be exhibiting there. In our particular case, people would want to see cool robots and be able to play with stuff. They do not care about the companies selling various professional equipment nor some accounting firm pushing their services.

Meanwhile, if hosting an event where the executives of industry companies come to make deals, then they do not want to see kids running around. Instead, they would want to see the top wire manufacturers showcase their innovation, as well as law firms that offer M&A services.

So think about your audience, their interests and the ideal type of companies you want to feature.

2. Understand the desires and needs of your ideal partners.

Once it is clear what types of companies should be present, you will need to get a hang of their interests in joining any event. Because they do not grow money, nor have the time to be at any event. They join only those where they can get value for the money — the more, the better.

Of course, if you are running a charitable event you could think that anyone helping you just wants to do good. Which is half of the game, as on the other hand, any CSR activities are an opportunity for companies to work on their branding and market their values.

At the same time, joining an exhibition is not about marketing as a whole. It is marketing one particular area of the business. They might want to showcase themselves as potential employers (or investors) or they might want to do sales on the spot. Sometimes, it is just about releasing a new product and then their biggest interest is getting the media to cover that.

NB! If you think that companies join to hire talent or sell services then take it into account that those without the local presence might not be able to hire/sell in the country and therefore it does not make sense for them to join at all.

Whatever it is, every company has a reason why they will join any of the events. It is your job to figure out what is it this time.

3. Analyse what can you really offer to anyone.

Now you know who needs to be at the event and what is their goal while there. So the next step is to see how you can help them get their job done. For that, it is crucial to understand what are all the potential ways you could feature someone.

For example, you need to look at the size of the space you have at the exhibition hall to see how big areas could you offer the companies, as well as the amount of them that would fit there. Meanwhile, it is important to know the metrics of the event, including the number of people potentially joining and their average demographics. Also, it would help if you would know which journalists and publications will be present, plus what are they looking to cover while there. And finally, discuss with your marketing team to see which channels could the partners be featured in.

The potential sponsors will ask for all this information and will make their decisions based on different variables. Likewise, you do not want to promise something that cannot be delivered. Thus understand what you can offer before making the calls.

4. Prepare a prospectus that will sell by itself.

Awesome, you can finally prepare the materials now! Go get the pictures and the data of the last year's event. You will need that to show them that you know how to make it happen. Oh, there is nothing to show? Well, this makes things somewhat more difficult but not impossible.

First, make the calculations to see how much money will you need to succeed. Now remove all the unnecessary gibberish and disco balls. And see what is the bare minimum you will need to actually survive. Because you might get lucky and raise more than that but you cannot plan for this. So if you spend before you have the money then you will ultimately be screwed.

Second, envision the ideal amount of sponsors and exhibitors you will have at the event. Remember that if there are too many then you cannot make all of them feel valued while having just some would not be interesting enough for the visitors to show up.

Third, generate various sponsorship levels, knowing that the more they pay the less they would want to see on the same level. This means, there can only be one TOP/Diamond/Secret Rare. Then there could be two to three 2nd Tier/Platinum/Ultra Rare sponsors and five to ten 3rd Tier/Gold/Super Rare ones. Followed by ten to twenty 4th Tier/Silver/Rare and twenty to forty 5th Tier/Bronze/Uncommon ones. Ending with any number of “common” exhibitors. Meanwhile, the fewer sponsors you need, the less level should be made — no one wants to be the 6th level partner unless it is a truly awesome event.

Fourth, divide the money needed between the levels, ideally having every better one double or triple in value. Although, remember that more money = better treatment and more promises, so you cannot ask 100'000 for anything. Also, it makes sense to check other similar events in the region to see how they price different levels, as the numbers that companies are willing to pay differentiate a lot between countries. For example, in China, a company might pay 1 million but in Latvia, the maximum amount might only be 25'000.

NB! When looking for exhibitors, take it into account that companies coming from other regions also have to pay for the logistics of the stuff they want to show at the booth + every company has other hidden fees, such as wages they need to cover while their personnel is at the event. So that limits the amount they would be willing to pay you.

Fifth, divide the perks offered between the levels, ideally doubling or tripling the value of every better one. Giving a better location, more space, more tickets, more marketing, more more to the top sponsors. Perhaps adding some exclusive perks to the biggest spenders, such as a chance to brand an area, give out free stuff, let them share their whitepaper on your site etc.

Also, you can add some extra perks that companies can choose as an extra in case they want to give you more money.

Sixth, add the texts that let potential sponsors know the reasons why you are hosting the event, why are people joining it, who will be there, how you will help them etc. Remember that they do not care about you or the event unless they know the value they will get, as well as the bigger picture. So give it to them.

Seventh, add the design that shows how awesome the event was in previous years or at least gives them some emotions. At the same time, keep it simple and clear — you do not want the potential sponsors to turn you down because the materials were too colourful or intrusive.

Eighth, go test it with some of your biggest supporters. Have them tell you whether the prices and perks make sense, as well as how understandable the whole thing is. Make changes based on the feedback!

5. Put together a list of all potential sponsors.

By now, you know who you are looking for and what can you offer them. So next up, you need to make an excel sheet with company names, key people with their emails (and phones), office addresses and notes on the levels that you would want to offer them.

As mentioned before, Clearbit has a cool tool that can help you find some of the information. Also, LinkedIn has much of it there.

6. Start contacting them.

Finally, it is time to contact those companies. I will let you prepare your emails by yourselves, as well as let you decide whether and whom to call. However, some tips are the following:

• Use some kind of a CRM to keep track of the progress and make notes on different things agreed. Excel can also be used for that.
• Do send personalised e-mails. With the right name. People do not like SPAM and hate when they are bulk bcc'd.
• Do send follow-ups (or make calls) to make sure the information reaches them. People tend to automatically delete emails, sometimes accidentally.
• Do contact multiple people from the organisation, as different people are in charge of events in companies, while some people can be on a vacation or have stronger SPAM filters.
• Do contact people also via social media, not just via the e-mail.
• If contacting Europe based companies, make sure you know what GDPR is and figure out a way around it.

7. Do take care of them & keep them informed through the process.

The work is not done once the sponsor has been found. That is just the start, as now you need to deliver the promises. Meanwhile, if it is their first time joining your event then they might need some extra care and contact. So do take care of them and fulfil their every wish. This way they will come back next year and bring friends as well…

I hope this will help you put together more thought-out sponsorship materials, resulting in more sponsors and better events. Meanwhile, if you need any more help then do contact me!

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