Yext For Events Arrives to Transform the Way Businesses Connect to Customers

Sudipto Ghosh

August 10, 2018

Yext’s Summer ’18 Release Includes Revolutionary Yext for Events Product, Enhancements to Knowledge Assistant Conversational UI, and More

Yext, the leader in Digital Knowledge Management (DKM), has announced that Yext for Events, Yext’s new solution that allows businesses to manage and publish event information on their own digital properties and across the web, has exited beta and is now available to Yext customers and partners for general access. The Summer ’18 Release also includes several new features of the Yext platform available for early access with immediate effect. Yext had recently added Amazon Alexa to the Yext Knowledge Network.

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Yext for Events Brings That Investment the Last Mile to Consumer Discovery, Decision, and Action

Currently, leading brands use Yext Knowledge Engine™ to manage their digital knowledge in order to boost brand engagement, drive foot traffic, and increase sales. The Summer ’18 Release includes the following features, now available for early access:

11 New Knowledge Assistant Skills

The Knowledge Assistant — Yext’s conversational user interface — can now nudge Yext customers to make updates to their information, so consumers and services like Google, Alexa, Bing, Facebook, and more always have the most current data. In addition, Yext customers can now ask the Knowledge Assistant, “Show me reviews that I haven’t responded to” or “How many phone calls have I received from Google?” to engage with customers and learn about their performance as easily as texting a friend.

Publisher Suggestions on Facebook

Businesses can now view suggestions that Facebook users make to their Facebook location Pages inside the Yext dashboard and can choose to accept or reject those suggestions.

Google User Photos

Businesses can now monitor photos that Google Maps users post from their stores or locations, directly inside the Yext dashboard. They can also see analytics, like photo views, and can set up notifications for any time new content is posted by a customer.

Yext for Events Give Businesses a Powerful Tool to Control Event Information

At the time of this announcement, Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext, said, “As AI transforms the way we search for everything from nearby businesses to things to do, businesses are discovering the growing variety of types of digital knowledge their customers are looking for online. Events are one of the fastest-growing areas of investment for businesses today, and Yext for Events brings that investment the last mile to consumer discovery, decision, and action.”

Marc continued, “Businesses of all types use events to engage prospective customers and deepen their connections to their communities, but event information can be extremely time-consuming and difficult to manage across teams, on a business’s own website, and across the many services that consumers use to find things to do.”

Marc added, “We created Yext for Events to give businesses a powerful tool to control event information, and to deliver it to consumers across platforms. Yext for Events is a first-of-its-kind central source of truth for digital knowledge about events.”

How Yext For Events Works on Facebook and Eventbrite Platforms

Yext for Events allows businesses to create, update, publish, and measure events across the digital ecosystem. Yext provides a central source of truth for businesses to manage key details like event start and end times, locations, and descriptions, and create Event Pages, add them to the business’s website, and publish events broadly to event discovery sites like Facebook and Eventful, as well as event ticketing platforms like Eventbrite.

One of the first businesses to employ Yext for Events in beta was Ben & Jerry’s, which used Yext for Events to manage and publish event information for Free Cone Day. Using Yext for Events, Ben & Jerry’s was able to create 200 events and 800 events listings for Free Cone Day across 8 services, including Facebook, Eventbrite, Eventful, and Locanto, simply by uploading the event data into the Yext Knowledge Manager. One staff member accomplished in two hours what Yext estimates would have taken store managers collectively more than 200 hours to do manually.

“It was a way for us to actually scale individual shop events across our scoop shop system. So instead of having shops do it manually or individually on their end, we had one place to set up and then execute and push out,” says Jay Kasparian, Associate Brand Manager – Scoop Shops. “It’s become much easier to manage.”

In addition to allowing businesses to publish and update events to their own websites and calendars — and update those calendars with the click of a button — Yext for Events publishes across leading events sites.

Yext has been named one of the Best Place to Work by Fortune and Great Place to Work® as well as a Best Workplace for Women. Yext is headquartered in New York City with offices in Berlin, Chicago, Dallas, Geneva, London, Paris, Tyson’s Corner, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Tokyo.