500 congress passes for WCIT 2024 in three months
WCIT had a venue in Yerevan, a global programme and a fixed date in October. It did not have anyone selling tickets. Stamina built the sales operation and ran it until the doors opened.
A sales operation built from nothing in 90 days
WCIT asked Stamina to grow ticket sales and reach the audience most likely to buy, with congress passes priced at around $400. There was no internal sales team to build on, so the engagement started from an empty pipeline and a date that could not move.
- Two separate buying motions now exist where there was one undifferentiated audience, one for HR budget holders and one for individual professionals.
- Four channels ran at the same time, so the campaign never depended on a single route to the buyer.
- Every contact sat on one record, so nobody was emailed cold days after an SDR had already spoken to them.
- WCIT could log into the CRM at any time and listen to recorded calls, so nobody had to wait for a weekly report to know how sales were going.
- That access changed how the campaign was steered. When corporate buyers started converting faster than individuals, WCIT saw it and we moved calling time onto that segment the same week.
About WCIT 2024
In October 2024, Armenia hosted the World Congress on Information Technology at the Karen Demirchyan Complex in Yerevan, run by the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises together with DigiTec.
Delegates flew into Yerevan from different countries: software executives, founders, investors, and the government officials who write tech policy in their home markets. The sessions covered AI, digital transformation and cybersecurity, under the congress theme "The Power of Mind: AI Beyond Limits, Within Ethics".
Armenia's IT sector has been building for more than a decade, much of it invisible from outside because the work was done for clients in the US and Europe under someone else's brand. WCIT was a week when the industry got to speak for itself, on its own ground, to people who decide where the next engineering office opens. Congress attendance is what a host country has to show for winning the bid.
Three constraints on the ticket target
The goal was simple to state: sell more passes, to a more relevant audience, at around $400 each. Getting there ran into three problems.
No outbound function
The congress had a venue, a programme and international recognition. It had nobody whose job was to sell a seat. An event this size attracts inbound interest, but inbound on its own does not fill a hall.
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Two buyers, one product
The same pass had to work as a training budget line for an HR manager and as a personal investment for an individual professional. Same product, same price, different reason to say yes.
A date that could not move
Software sells all year. A congress sells until the doors open, and after that the pipeline is worth nothing. Every sequence had to be planned backwards from the event date.
Market analysis first, then four channels at once
Stamina started with market analysis and an ICP definition, then put a dedicated team behind it. With three months on the clock, the channels ran in parallel rather than in sequence.
ICP definition and market split
The market was divided in two and written for separately. The B2B side was mostly HR managers, who held a development budget and had a reason to buy several passes at once, since sending a team to a congress at home costs less than sending one person abroad. The B2C side was corporate employees and people looking for new opportunities, who cared less about the agenda and more about who would be in the room.
Cold calling
Six SDRs called an initial 15,000 contacts, then ran around 7,000 follow-ups across the same base. The second pass was planned from the start. A $400 personal purchase rarely closes on a first call, and an HR manager usually needs an internal budget conversation before committing seats, so the follow-up wave existed to catch the decision once it had been made.
Email campaigns
Fifteen campaigns went to an audience of 380,000, built from public databases, Stamina's internal database and WCIT's lists from previous editions. Past attendees were the strongest of the three, since they had already paid to attend once. Campaigns ran in waves, weighted towards reminders in the final weeks, and returned 25,000 clicks.
LinkedIn outreach
5,000 touches ran against both segments with separate messaging for each: team development and budget framing for HR managers, access and visibility framing for individuals. LinkedIn also warmed the calling list, since a contact who has already seen the congress in their feed answers the phone differently.
CRM and campaign management
Everything ran through one system. Web forms and a website chatbot fed lead capture, leads were routed automatically to the SDR team, and every channel was logged against a single record. WCIT had full access throughout, including call recordings and live analytics.
Have a deadline and no sales engine behind it?
If there is a date in your calendar and nobody working backwards from it, the pipeline will still be warm when the day arrives. Tell us the date. We will define who buys, run the channels that reach them, and keep the pipeline open to you from the first week.
