Best Practices for Money20/20 Business Newcomers

Since its second edition in 2017, our company has attended every Money20/20 conference in Europe annually.?

If you are a company thinking of attending Money20/20 or going for the first time, we want to share what we learned during our time there. Here are our Money20/20 Europe Best Practices. They shall help you make the most out of the conference as a sponsor with your own booth or kiosk.

1. Adjust Your Goals and Expectations to the Format?

Before setting foot in the RAI, lay down clear business goals that you can accomplish throughout the event. Your company goals will likely fit the SMART formula in one way or another. Thus they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.?

As a first-timer at Money20/20, “measurable” and “achievable” might be tricky to assess. In our experience, traffic to booths or kiosks fluctuates depending on the location and design of the booths, the scheduling of networking events compared to keynotes, and so on. Thus, the first M20/20 will likely defy your expectations in one or the other direction.

Also, keep in mind that Money20/20 presents itself as an event with a dual nature: On the one hand, it’s a conference for talk and debate among fintech, banking and digital services experts. On the other hand, it’s a business get-together, where providers and clients meet and network. Those two directions don’t always mix well and you should keep that in mind when you draft your company’s agenda. Sometimes everyone attends the podium discussion with Steve Wozniak rather than participating in the tombola you announced for the same time.?

2. Track Your Progress

To measure the success of your marketing and sales at Money20/20 you need to produce tangible marketing materials that can be tracked digitally. You should collect contact data for your sales team to follow up on. So get your hands on business cards or LinkedIn handles of potential customers.?

That’s best achieved by providing an incentive: A unique business opportunity, a prize game, a special discount on your product, etc. But getting the card or the LinkedIn contact presents just a first step: You have to make some notes about what was the customer interested in, whether a follow up is wanted, etc. In the best case, you also put the data into a CRM tool (like Hubspot) to monitor the status of your sales team’s follow-up activities.?

Another good marketing tool is QR codes that lead to product- or service-related landing pages. You can print them on info material such as flyers and folders or embed them in videos and presentations. Thus, you can take the number of code scannings as an indication of your presentation’s success. (Make sure to track every advertizing material separately via UTM attributes unique per source, so you can pin down what materials exactly did motivate customers to click. Use analytics tools like Google Analytics there).

3. Make an Appearance

Speaking of motivation: It’s not easy to grab potential clients’ attention in a colorful environment like the Money20/20. As the conference is all about finance and technology, one might think that a somber presentation focussed on hard, plain facts alone will suit the atmosphere best.??

Avoid this error.?

Money20/20 doesn’t shy away from injecting a splash of color into their conference. They often design everything around a visual theme – typically one that’s a bit detached from banking, payment or investment. Over the years, we have visited a superhero-themed city, a carnivalesque circus and a mad scientist’s fintech lab.?

Consequently, if you want attention, you better dare to grab it! You don’t have to stick an employee in a green, full-body furball costume (we’ve seen it happen). But try to find a colorful theme to center your company presence around –?even if you are just occupying a small stand or kiosk.?

That’s why our co-founders chose to go with popping orange shirts as conference dress (at least during conference hours).??

4. Start Prep Early

Over the 5 years of attending Money20/20, we formed the habit to start planning, designing (and in some cases fabrication of) our booths a little earlier each year. And with good cause: if you want your advertising materials and your booth to shine, you have to spend the time to polish them.?

Printing flyers and give-aways might only take a few weeks (always calculate with an extra week, just in case). But when you settle for a custom booth design, you should plan with a few months of work, from design to finding a stand construction company and so on. Also, have a plan for how you get giveaways and the like from the place of delivery to the conference.?

5. Maintain A Good Line to the Organizers?

As part of the preparation, make sure to clear up any questions with the Money20/20 organizers. If you run a booth at the conference, you will get an official contact person. Make sure to ask them any questions that come up in time. They will also communicate submission deadlines for booth designs, logos for the Money20/20 homepage etc.?

The good thing is: It works the other way round, too. Money20/20 typically hands out promotion material like banners and event ticket discount codes, which you can use in your own advertising for the event.?

6. Connect on all Channels

When trying to get the word of your products and services out, you will want to fire on all channels.?

Before the conference, that means getting everything ready for your Social Media campaigns. The Money20/20 social media team shares good, conference-related content which can boost attention.

But what’s even more important: Make your presence known during the main event. If you run a startup, consider speaking at a pitch event at the conference. Disregarding the size and the maturity level of your company you could also shoot for the big stage. For example, you could participate in discussion panels or hold a talk on current fintech developments –?as long as it doesn’t purely aim at advertising your business.?

Aside from that, every business owner should get familiar with the Money20/20 connection app. With it, you can book appointments with potential customers or find companies with a portfolio fitting your business vision. Money20/20 provides specific networking areas to hold such meetings. Use the connection app before the event, too, as it allows you to invite contacts in advance to a meeting at your booth.?

In addition, Money20/20 hosts so-called industry parties – networking events combined with dining at specific restaurants or halls reserved for congress attendees. Often, the big companies at M20/20 hold similar events, but you typically need an invitation for them.?

Finally, open yourself up to circumstance: We acquired one of our strongest leads at a talk over the water dispenser.?

7. It’s Not Done, When It’s Over

Don’t pack in too early on the last conference day. Sometimes you might be approached by a wave of business partners last minute, who saved their visit for later. Of course, you should always take your travel distance into account. But if you have the opportunities, stay as long as you can.

And once you are safe at home, the second big chunk of work awaits. We don’t refer to following up on potential leads here alone: Your first conference visit presents a point of orientation for future presentations of your business. Make sure to hold lessons-learned meetings and discuss what worked and consult your metrics. Chances are that you will utilize some of the materials from this conference in the next one (maybe with a few changes here and there).???

We hope this gave you some impulses on what to keep in mind when visiting Money20/20 for the first time. We will be this year, too, showcasing our flagship payment and e-wallet software framework CoreWallet. Come to our booth (Kiosk C8) and we have a chat, if you like.

We wish you much success at Money20/20 2022. Don't let it be your last one.?