How Mary Kay Organized an Engaging Virtual Event for Their Sales and Marketing Teams

About Mary Kay’s Event

Almost exactly one year after the world shut down due to COVID, Mary Kay hosted their 2021 Global Sales and Marketing Conference, Seeing HER Future, on the Cadence platform. This event boasted over 200 attendees from all over the world, coming together virtually to learn about Mary Kay’s strategy in the new “phygital” world. Mary Kay uses the term “phygital” to explain the hybrid nature of the world moving forward; the combination of digital and physical experiences, in what they coin the “new normal.”

Romina Kunstadter, founder of The Prism, an experiential firm that helps deliver engaging digital and live events, worked with Mary Kay to put on this global conference. Romina and The Prism specialize in helping companies identify and meet their brand goals with highly tailored industry guidance.

Challenge

Every other mainstream event platform is text heavy and feel so flat. Cadence really allows us to create a beautiful on-brand experiences that feel like an art gallery versus a conference website.

Romina Kunstadter

Founder, The Prism

Mary Kay wanted to host a uniquely engaging event that would work seamlessly in many different countries at the same time.

✅ Wow Factor

Mary Kay’s team appreciates that everyone has been stuck in non-stop virtual events since the beginning of the pandemic, and it’s started to wear on people. That’s why they wanted to host an event with wow factor to ensure that everyone stayed engaged and felt connected across the globe.

✅ Aesthetically Pleasing

In the interest of keep everyone consistently engaged, Romina started looking for platforms that were imagery heavy rather than text heavy. She said, “people are motivated by things that look pretty… So I started by looking at … who had a platform that looked beautiful.”

✅ Accessible

With so many people across the globe looking to be hooked into this event, and with their own levels of comfort with virtual life, Mary Kay wanted to ensure that the event was easy and user-friendly to avoid any major day-of confusion for their teams.

✅ Offers Hands-On Customer Support

With so many big asks, Mary Kay and Romina wanted to be sure they would never be left in the dark, scrambling to pull something together all on their own. Cadence’s premium white-glove Customer Success team met their criteria for involved event support that would bring them exactly where they wanted to go.

 The Cadence team thinks about customer service really differently. If I have an issue, they’re right there and are always willing to problem solve and innovate.

Romina Kunstadter

Founder, The Prism

Solution

Mary Kay leaned heavily into the platform’s imagery so that it all felt very in sync with the brand. The focus on the platform’s appearance heightened engagement from attendees without taking the focus off of the event’s content and purpose.

Mary Kay used the following features for Seeing HER Future:

1. Home to immediately engage attendees with highly branded, aesthetically pleasing imagery.

From the moment attendees entered the event, they were greeted with gorgeous custom branded imagery.

2. Schedule to pace the event’s flow to ensure nothing ever felt too rushed or boring.

Is there entertainment during the coffee breaks? That’s what you need to do, because we’ve been sitting in front of our computers all day, and if you’re just going to go case study to case study to case study, you’re going to lose me.

Romina Kunstadter

Founder, The Prism

Seeing HER Future’s Schedule told a story through imagery, so that attendees felt excited for each approaching session.

3. Speakers to inspire their attendees before sessions.

Speakers had their time to shine through their curated profiles, highlighting all of their important information, like biography and ways to connect, while staying on theme for a gorgeous synchronous event flow.

4. Speaker Rehearsals to ensure that speakers understood the platform’s tech and were comfortable with the material they were going to cover so sessions flowed effortlessly.

5. Web and email Notifications to keep attendees constantly up to date on the event’s progression.

Constantly changing [notifications], letting them know who won the prize for the competition we had, or … here’s a new material that’s been added to the collections page.

Romina Kunstadter

Founder, The Prism

Attendees never missed a beat with customized notifications from the event team.

6. Live Feed to encourage attendees to connect with each other and bridge the gap across countries.

Audience members expressed themselves in the Live Feed, making connections and supporting each other no matter where they were.

7. Collections to allow the audience to review key insights after each session, and even after the event had ended.

Throughout the event, and even afterwards, attendees had the ability to access key information presented in each of the sessions so they never had to work hard to track down important materials.

8. Surveys to gather honest feedback after the event to inform future strategies.

Mary Kay values team member feedback, which is why they took the time to ask their attendees to share their honest thoughts on the event and its flow.

9. Photobooth to allow attendees to connect and bond with each other in a unique virtual setting.

Results

Everyone was expecting a regular meeting experience, but when they saw Cadence for the first time they all thought ‘Wow, this is a big deal. It’s is gorgeous and amazing.

Romina Kunstadter

Founder, The Prism

Mary Kay’s event went off without a hitch. Speakers were well prepared for their sessions, networking was seamless and accessible, and the Live Feed was chock full of participation from attendees.

From a production standpoint, Romina was thrilled with the accessibility of the platform. Aside from the highly involved customer support, Romina was able to easily navigate the platform on her own.

As a producer, Cadence is insanely intuitive and easy to put together. It’s just incredible to be able to see all my events at one time.

Romina Kunstadter

Founder, The Prism

Event Statistics

• ✅ Attendance – Almost 300 unique day-of users and 98% attendance rate
• ✅ Engagement – more than 100 Live Feed posts and 2,000 likes from users
• ✅ Networking – More than 5,000 connections made between attendees
• ✅ Participation – 450+ opens and saves of Collections and event materials

What attendees said was their favorite part of the event in the survey:

1. “I absolutely loved everything and the content was incredible. However, if I have to choose my favorite thing, I would definitely choose the platform since it was my best experience ever at a digital event.”
2. “The message feature was a great way for everyone to interact who normally wouldn’t get to if it were in-person.”
3. “The ease of the platform and how it allowed everyone to connect and share dialog throughout each session.”
4. “The event platform and app was really well structured and very informative with also the part of connection which made it even more attractive.”
5. “I think the platform was great, it was easy to navigate, understand and worked perfectly.”
6. “This has been one of the best virtual conferences I have attended, congratulations!!!”
7. “Platform was amazing! LOVED the experience, the photos, the exchange, the rating, the chat, the option to vote for the better questions and liking comments were amazing.”

Interested to see how Cadence could work for your upcoming events? Schedule a free consultation. We’ll recommend the best solution based on your goals—even it’s not Cadence.