Event marketing moves beyond traditional metrics to focus on attendees’ personal impressions
As artificial intelligence (AI) and automation stand poised to unlock the potential of face-to-face gatherings, the attendee count is no longer the ultimate benchmark of event success. Just as in consumer products, meeting and event trends are being driven by strategic marketing and promotional campaigns. Whether it’s an association seeking to energize its member base or a brand trying to capture consumer and/or employee loyalty, savvy organizations are rolling out strategic campaigns aimed at long-term success.
It’s not enough to watch the evolution of a prospect from a registrant to an attendee. With new and emerging tools, event planners can accurately gauge how invested attendees are and predict how their behavior will translate into future interactions, whether they attend in person or virtually.
Conventions and meetings, no matter how consequential to an association’s bottom line or corporation’s sales strategy, are no longer the end-all, be-all. Event planners and marketers alike are now in the business of creating communities that stay in touch regularly, not annually.
“Event marketing today isn’t just about promotion or filling a funnel. It’s about building relationships that last beyond a single interaction,” says Lindsay Martin-Bilbrey, whose LinkedIn profile emphasizes that her company, Nifty Method, “bridges the gap between marketing, sales, and customer experience through strategic, high-impact live events and hospitality.”
According to Martin-Bilbrey, new tools and tactics allow event planners to capture immediate goals, including attendance, while building something bigger. This combination of using technology to gauge, and sometimes steer, human interactions and connections can take events in a whole new direction.
Seeking champions
In event marketing, the baseline should be to secure a registration, according to Dahlia El Gazzar, founder of the Dahlia+ Agency. The goal should be much more, she says.
Your team will know if their strategy is truly connecting with the right audience—attendees who will maintain their relationship with your association or brand for years—during the “eyes light up” moment. “It is the point where someone does not just register for the event but becomes excited enough to share, comment, or advocate for the event,” El Gazzar says.
The job of event organizers is to identify those champions and convince them that your organization provides the type of content they don’t dare miss.
If you reach the right individual, a herd may follow, according to Martin-Bilbrey.
“What matters now is how people engage over time, whether they come back, and whether they choose to bring others with them,” she says.
Partnerships count
To capture the hearts of your event’s participants, the first step is to move past traditional labels like buyers, sellers, and sponsors, says Pablo Zacarias, global events and sponsorship specialist for Aviation-ISAC, a global community of aviation cybersecurity professionals.
“I prioritize open communication, collaboration, and genuine partnership,” he says.
All parties should be invested in the same goal: creating an event that proves worth the time and financial resources put into it.
Ken Holsinger, senior vice president of strategy at Freeman event production company, notes in its annual End-of-Year-Trends Recap, “The X factor isn’t about creating a moment that looks good on Instagram. It’s about helping attendees walk away saying, ‘That was worth it.’”
To that end, Zacarias actively seeks out destination marketing organizations, convention and visitors bureaus, and venue and hotel partners who work closely with Aviation-ISAC to promote events both locally and regionally. “Collaborating with sponsors, speakers, and partners extends an event’s reach far beyond what an in-house team can achieve alone,” he says. “Partners bring built-in audiences, added credibility, and shared resources, allowing planners to maximize marketing impact while being mindful of budgets.”
In these instances, planners act a bit like a ringmaster, keeping order when chaos is only a few missteps away. “Everyone needs to understand what is in it for them and how their contribution adds value to everyone else. It can be tricky to manage,” says Dax Callner, founder of the nonprofit Experiential Marketing Measurement Coalition. Based in the United Kingdom, Callner consults with many U.S. event clients on experiential marketing.
Making it personal
Emotional investment requires connecting with attendees on a personal level, says Cindy Lo, CEO of the Austin, Texas-based Red Velvet and Strong Events. “People want to be seen and feel heard,” she says.
Lo’s observation tracks with the findings from the Freeman report, which states that attendees cite building vendor relationships, learning and development, and making connections as their top priorities.
El Gazzar refers to the phenomenon as “vibe eventing.” In other words, participants want to “feel” an event more than just attend it. “People are no longer attending events that drain them,” she says. “They are choosing experiences that give them energy, clarity, and confidence.”
Callner says focusing on purpose instead of fancy is important when connecting with your audience. “Despite everyone’s overloaded inbox, I still find a smartly crafted email campaign can be very effective,” he says.
As for social media strategy, Callner advocates promoting on platforms your attendees already use. TikTok could work for a younger attendee base, while LinkedIn’s more professional tone could suit financial and medical industries. “I don’t think anyone can claim a specific channel is universally more effective,” he says.
Always ‘on’
The larger point is to keep the conversation going, says Martin-Bilbrey. An event that interacts with its base sporadically, or when registration season approaches, can be viewed as transactional—a major turnoff when attendees are craving connections. Webinars, virtual town halls, and other digital experiences work in tandem with the grand gathering, she adds.
“The strongest event strategies today treat in-person moments as peaks, not the whole journey,” she says. “Hybrid and virtual touchpoints do the quieter work in between, reinforcing trust, deepening relationships, and making the next in-person moment matter more.”
Despite the many negative aspects of the COVID pandemic, it accelerated a “long-overdue” mindset for events, according to Martin-Bilbrey, who noticed events shift from single-day experiences to ongoing engagement cycles; from attendance metrics to relationship and outcome metrics; and from an emphasis on attendance to outcome. Though livestreaming and recorded event sessions existed for at least a decade prior to the pandemic, the idea of 365-day engagement came into focus during this period of extreme isolation.
“Year-round engagement only works when participants are getting something worth staying for,” Martin-Bilbrey says.
Lo points to TED Talks as a model for associations and trade shows to expand their reach beyond three days in-person. “How are you capturing the content so that you can provide access to it year-round and, more importantly, make the content evergreen?” she asks.
Attendees will see through ulterior motives, such as caring only about revenue, adds El Gazzar. Whether it’s a webinar, virtual town hall, sales kickoff or large convention, the emphasis must remain on attendees, who are drawn to relevance and practical value, she adds.
“If people leave an event feeling energized, empowered, and ‘seen,’ the downstream value will follow,” she says.
In-the-moment marketing
Because of today’s technology, marketing doesn’t need to be limited to a pre-event or post-conference exercise.
AI has accelerated the turnaround time so much that planners can implement changes in real time. Real-time information about which sessions the attendees have participated in or are interested in joining helps organizers manage people flow during conferences. An empty session is not only a drag on the event vibe but also a disservice to sponsors. According to El Gazzar, organizers can help fill a potential lull by targeting the types of attendees the sponsors seek through push notifications and other in-event communication. This puts sponsors in a premium position to sell their services to the attendees whose interests are most aligned with their fast-moving campaigns.
“Speed matters because attention is fleeting, and energy is harder to rebuild than it is to maintain,” says El Gazzar. “AI tools are helping event organizers be agile and be proactive instead of waiting another year to implement what they could have done right there at an event.”
She adds, “The days of post-session or post-event SurveyMonkey evaluation links are over.”
Data is everything
While human intuition has its place, the unifying force connecting various event marketing techniques is data. Analytics takes out much of the guesswork.
For example, marketers can measure the success of an email campaign by open rates or the reach of social media posts through impressions. The results can shape which direction your organization heads next, Callner says.
“The lovely thing about campaign data is you can assess it and tweak your approach on an ongoing basis,” he says. “You can A/B test a variety of messages and tactics to see what performs better on an ongoing basis. You can remove stuff that isn’t working and invest more in the stuff that does.”
El Gazzar touts AI for doing much of the analysis for you. Planners and marketers can plug an Excel sheet with virtual and/or in-person registration data or sales information to identify trends that can inform strategies. Unfortunately, she says many planners are focused on demonstrating ROI rather than enhancing an event’s impact. “Most teams collect data to justify what already happened instead of guiding what should happen next.”
Defining success
There is more to marketing than trendy buzzwords like “engagement,” according to Callner, and sticking to the basics is often most successful. “It’s difficult to beat in-person for authentic human interaction, which is at the crux of any event strategy.”
Indeed, buzzwords won’t get event marketers far. According to Freeman’s trends report, attendees are choosing to go to fewer, but more impactful, events. “Attendees are becoming more selective and intentional about where they spend their time,” notes El Gazzar.
ROI is a treacherous acronym that may
not serve marketers as well as they think, Callner adds.
“ROI is a financial metric that can’t be credibly measured for the vast majority of events,” he says. “The key with marketing metrics is developing clear goals and targets, and determining as you go if you are meeting your targets.”
Martin-Bilbrey takes that sentiment a step further by describing events as one of an organization’s most powerful promotion tools. “When they’re designed with intention, planned events don’t just support marketing,” she says. “They become one of a firm’s strongest channels for marketing, sales, customer experience, and long-term
value creation.”
