I recently read a great blog by Lawrence Coburn the CEO of DoubleDutch about how events are the 'last mile' of the marketing industry.

For those of you without a telecoms background, he's basically comparing the marketing function to a telephone network. In both, the core of the system is exceptionally well developed and sophisticated (in telco, huge pipes connecting major cities to rapidly transfer data, and in marketing, the new automation systems like Marketo and advanced digital marketing analytics).

Meanwhile, out at the ends of the network, things still happen like they did 20 or 30 years ago - each house telephone is connected by a copper wire for the 'last mile', and in live events the level of data collection is far lower than in other forms of marketing, and we rely on 'gut feel' to judge the success of many events.

I thought this was a great analogy, and it really hit home when I discovered this statistic on Statista, that backed up the way my marketing budgets were allocated over 12 years of B2B marketing.

Events, tradeshows, meetings, conferences - call them what you will - are vitally important in the B2B industry. They still get the lion's share of marketing budgets despite the low level of data collection and analysis we apply to them. And I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that if we DID drive more data from them, or make them more effective for following up sales leads, or really integrate attendees' views on presentation content into our CRM systems, they would be allocated even MORE of our marketing budgets.

That's exactly why Glisser came into being. As a marketeer I wanted a better way to prove that a big chunk of my marketing budget was being used effectively. I wanted a simple way to gather data and engage audiences, using the smartphones everyone carries with them (and is addicated to using), and to plug this into my CRM. These are the insights that help us understand our customers, and link the things they say and do at events to their future actions.

Face-to-face events are hugely successful - as an industry our challenge is to prove just how much.