Zuant 3D Virtual Exhibits Fuel 1,000 Percent Annual Growth

Lead generation can be difficult and costly. It’s also time-consuming, and there’s no limit to how much cash sales teams can burn through without result if lead generation is done wrong. 

Zuant was founded 20 years ago to assist large corporations with inbound marketing, attracting new customers, and adding leads to customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing automation systems. One of its specialties is lead generation at trade shows, where companies often spend thousands of dollars or more on expensive booths and use Zuant lead capture systems to help turn leads into prospects and ensure a good return on investment. 

In early 2020, the trade show side of Zuant’s business collapsed overnight with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but a serendipitous conversation with a client turned everything around two months later. “A major aircraft manufacturer called after canceling its trade show appearance in Paris and wanted to know if Zuant could help create a virtual exhibit,” says Pete Gillett, CEO at Zuant. “They wanted to capture their jetliners in 3D so salespeople could continue taking customers through new interiors, the new cockpit, and so on, now that trade shows were off the table indefinitely.” 

Zuant had no prior experience with this sort of thing but immediately set to work to find the best quality 3D provider, and soon aligned on Matterport and its comprehensive 3D ecosystem. Sales teams and customers alike would be able to tour their existing exhibition booths and demo centers inside and out in a fully immersive experience. “It was the next best thing to being there,” Gillett says. “And for us, it changed everything.”

Zuant 3D: A New Channel for the Future

Zuant took the trade shows to desktops and mobile devices and made them as real and vivid as possible, not just for its airline manufacturing client but as a new service it offers to all its clients. “Conferences started up again, but they were hybrid, and large exhibits were replaced with mostly poor digital experiences,” Gillett says. “Visitors filled out forms, clicked on links, and that was it. We knew that 3D virtual experiences would be much better, not only during the pandemic but afterward as a new channel for the future.”

That new channel is a system called Zuant 3D. It’s not just for trade show exhibitors but for any organization that wants to create an interactive 3D experience that anyone with an internet connection can access. 

First, Zuant uses Matterport Capture Services On-Demand to schedule a Matterport Capture Technician to digitize a client’s space—an exhibit, retail store, factory, museum, or anything else—and turn it into a 3D digital twin. Next, Zuant helps clients embed additional content into the digital twin using Mattertags that visitors can click on to launch videos or open text windows that include the same kind of information they might get if they were visiting in person. 

Then Zuant adds its own touches to the digital twin, depending on what the client wants. Retailers can capture their stores, including all the products and aisles, then Zuant 3D can surface information about each product and enhance the experience with chat capabilities if customers have questions. Here’s another possibility: after visitors log in and enter their contact details, a host—a real human being, not a bot—can greet them and ask if they would like to be guided through the experience or walk around on their own. 

“We want to provide options for clients and visitors alike,” Gillett says. “Visitors at an art gallery or museum might want to explore freely, but we also build guided tours, like digital brochures in 3D that we map out in advance using storyboards.”

Building on Matterport’s Immersive 3D Foundation

Zuant created what it calls the Black Box, and it includes two modules. The Experience module functions like a navigation panel overlaid on the Matterport digital twin. Visitors can use it to hyper jump from one place in the 3D tour to another, and organization reps can use it to plan guided journeys and to provide additional context at predetermined locations within the replica. 

The Dashboard module reports on visitor activity within the Matterport digital twin. It includes data points and charts about what visitors look at and interact with, how much time they spend at each location, what they seem to be most interested in, and other details. 

“It’s amazing how quickly we were able to develop this,” Gillett says. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the Matterport API and SDK.” 

Zuant 3D is not just for trade shows and shopping. There’s no limit to what organizations can do with the platform. Take Thermo Fisher Scientific, for instance. It’s a provisioner of scientific instruments, reagents, and consumables, with hundreds of labs, manufacturing sites, and test centers. With Zuant’s help, the company produces webinars including digital twins captured at a number of different locations and shares them internally.

Volvo is looking to use Zuant 3D to help teach mechanics and technicians how to install and repair marine engines in vessels ranging from fishing boats to super yachts. “Every one of those vessels is unique,” Gillett says. “Volvo has training centers all across Europe that trainees weren’t able to visit during the pandemic, but what Volvo will have online will have long-lasting value, not just for trainees but also for technicians worldwide and for the boat owners themselves.”

Turning Everyday Leads into Mega Leads

As exciting as all this is, Zuant is not first and foremost a 3D experience company. It’s main mission is and has always been generating the highest quality customer leads for its clients. 

Zuant 3D not only tracks what visitors are doing, what they’re looking at, and what they’re interested in, it also records all that data. If, for instance, a visitor is shopping in a virtual retail store and looking at an array of flat panel TV screens, Zuant knows if the customer clicked on one of the spec sheets, and it includes that data on the dashboard and in leads for the sales team assistants to view in real time.

“Not only are Zuant 3D experiences fully immersive for visitors, they also provide much more data for sales teams to follow up on,” Gillett says. “With Matterport digital twins and its SDK and API, we’re turning normal leads into mega leads that are much richer even compared to leads sales people can get from in-person visits, where there are distractions, noise, and multiple customers to pay attention to.”

Zuant integrates all this information with CRM and automation platforms like Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and HubSpot. The entire content stream can be finely tuned so that salespeople can follow up in a focused way. 

“We’ve enjoyed 1,000 percent growth since the start of the pandemic, and we’re still just getting started,” Gillett says. “This is a whole new sales channel that we’ve barely tapped into to benefit our customers.”

Zuant is a Matterport Platform Partner that leverages Matterport APIs and SDKs to build and commercialize their apps and integrations with Matterport’s market-leading spatial data platform. As a Platform Partner, they gain access to a range of commercial benefits, such as Matterport’s distribution network and enhanced support as well as co-marketing and co-selling programs to help them successfully monetize their applications. To learn more about the Platform Partner Program and apply to join, visit https://matterport.com/platform-partner-program.

ABOUT ZUANT

Zuant provides expert lead-capturing services for sales and marketing teams at trade shows and other events. Its newest product, Zuant 3D, creates virtual exhibition and retail spaces, captures rich customer data, and surfaces that data in CRM and marketing automation tools. 

https://www.zuant.com/

HEADQUARTERSNew York, United States

PRODUCTS Matterport Pro2 3D Camera, Matterport Capture Services On-Demand, Matterport API, Matterport SDK

RESULTS

• Igniting 1,000 percent growth thanks to new line of business for 3D virtual exhibits

• Enriching lead quality with analytics from digital twins, for more focused sales follow-ups to prospects

• Integrating with CRM and marketing automation platforms including Salesforce, Marketo, Eloqua, and HubSpot