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How CMOs are rethinking metrics moving beyond vanity KPIs toward lifecycle value and ROI, while balancing CFO pressure to automate with the need to preserve brand voice and integrity.
How is NRF redefining the role of events by becoming a platform for ecosystem-building and community?
Events as a whole are an excellent way to create a larger sense of community. However, NRF specifically creates continuity across various retail partners, technology providers, and decision-makers, allowing ideas and relationships to develop past the show floor. This show in particular excels at purposeful networking and going beyond an annual meeting, operating as an ecosystem that builds connections and offers a platform to connect everyone involved.
For example, they host education sessions for practitioners to share their best practices. They also offer year-round engagement like virtual sessions, meetups, and gatherings on a global scale, underscoring the foundation’s core role in driving innovation to shape the industry.
NRF integrates data and AI to offer personalized attendee journeys and engagement experiences at every touch point, before, during and after the event. Doing this builds richer and more relevant connections, both to the content and other professionals.
In your view, what will differentiate high-impact events from “check-the-box” events over the next few years?
Traditionally, marketers have relied on surface-level metrics to determine the success of their events for years. However, in today’s complex landscape and with the increased use of digital tools, only counting vanity metrics, like number of attendees, falls short in showcasing the full value and business impact of an event.
With more AI and tech solutions at marketers’ disposal in the next few years, the impact of events will be measured by how effectively marketers can convert interactions into long-term value. AI tools can speed up this process by helping teams to look beyond the isolated actions taken at an event, such as registration data, engagement metrics, or survey feedback, so they can better understand how the attendees’ experiences impact tomorrow’s pipeline, revenue, and relationships.
The distinction between a “check-the-box” and high-impact event will ultimately come down to whether marketing teams can prove an event contributed this type of sustained momentum, or only captures activity in isolation.
How has the shift toward lifecycle value and long-term ROI changed the way marketing teams plan and evaluate campaigns?
The traditional linear funnel of sales no longer applies in the world of B2B. 44% of marketers believe they’re effective at running in-person events, but because buying decisions are becoming more complex with multiple stakeholders, teams must rethink how they can accelerate business goals and capture the best ROI from events.
This led to a more connected approach to planning and evaluating activations, where teams leverage AI to better analyze attendee behavior and engagement metrics to predict customer lifetime value, and estimate long-term revenue and ROI potential. Evaluation now centers on influence across the full journey, not just performance at a single point.
What challenges do CMOs face when trying to align metrics with executive expectations especially at the board and CFO level?
Attribution is one of the biggest challenges when it comes to marketing and aligning metrics with executive expectations. Opportunities aren’t driven by a single tactic, but rather influenced by a mix of campaigns, channels, content, timing, and follow-ups. Revenue is the result of multiple touchpoints working together, often over a long period of time. But that complexity doesn’t always translate easily in boardroom conversations. What boards want is clear ROI with data to back it up.
Time horizons and differences in priorities are another challenge. Boards and executives work on quarterly and monthly time horizons, while many marketing investments are set at longer times for impact. Focus areas are also intrinsically linked but different – boards care more about data like revenue growth, margins, and cash flow, and marketers focus more on share of voice, engagement, pipeline metrics, velocity, and customer lifetime value.
Overall, CMOs aren’t struggling to prove ROI from a lack of data, but rather how they connect that data to metrics discussed in the boardroom. In fact, the global martech market is expected to increase from $131B in 2023 to $215B by 2027. Despite the enormous industry growth, many companies still can’t tie their current marketing investments directly to business outcomes. Fragmented systems across marketing, sales, and events, only amplify these challenges, making it difficult to tell a cohesive story.
To demonstrate value and close this gap, more marketers will partner hand-in-hand with CFOs to establish shared KPIs and align on what real impact really means, while beginning to measure data beyond clicks and impressions, and managing martech like a strategic enterprise asset.
CFOs are pushing for automation and efficiency across marketing. Where do you see automation delivering value and where does it do more harm than good?
Pushing for automation where it drives operational clarity and scale can help improve overall operations and remove friction, reduce cost, and provide resource allocation. However, automation delivers the most value when it removes the burden of manual analysis and allows teams to act faster on metrics that actually influence business outcomes. For example, AI can synthesize attendee behavior across events, digital interactions, and post-event engagement to surface patterns that would otherwise take weeks or months to uncover. Examples of this include which buying groups are showing intent, which topics correlate with pipeline creation, and how long it typically takes for this momentum to turn into revenue. This helps marketing and sales teams prioritize follow-up, tailor messaging, and focus their time on the highest-value opportunities to boost rather than chasing every interaction equally.
On the other hand, it can cause issues when it replaces intentional experience or human connection. It’s important to keep authenticity in mind when it comes to automation. AI can be a powerful engine for fueling meaningful connections, but leaning on generic, AI-generated marketing content only adds to growing digital fatigue, and risks customer backlash. Automation should power precision and insight, not replace empathy and strategy.
What role does cross-functional alignment between marketing, finance, and technology play in redefining success metrics?
Cross-functional alignment is essential for moving from reactive reporting to proactive growth planning. Marketing, sales, finance, and technology all contribute unique perspectives and pieces of the data needed to understand true event impact. However, when these teams operate in silos, success looks different depending on the system or report being referenced, whereas alignment enables a shared view of performance that leadership can trust, build upon, and act on for tangible results.
Using customer data integration (CDI) centralizes and aligns customer information across all touchpoints, such as sales, marketing, and service channels. For example, by integrating real-time behaviors with holistic customer journey records, businesses can create detailed, up-to-date customer profiles. Based on these customer profiles, companies can tailor communications and touchpoints to individual preferences, ensuring a more relevant and personalized experience.
CDI also facilitates an omnichannel approach that supports seamless, two-way communication and continuous feedback loops, streamlining workflows by breaking down silos between departments and enabling teams to work collaboratively.
How do data and storytelling coexist in a metrics-driven marketing organization?
Data provides the evidence of how buyers behave, how long it takes for impact to occur, and which touchpoints influence outcomes. Storytelling connects those insights into a narrative that explains what changed, why it matters, and what should happen next. Together, they allow organizations to move beyond dashboards and into strategic decision-making. Without storytelling, even sophisticated data fails to drive alignment or action.
What capabilities, technological or organizational will be most critical for CMOs to thrive in this evolving landscape?
AI is disrupting and transforming the way that we work, as more marketing organizations are already learning to vibe code to deliver more value quicker. The most successful teams will be the ones who embrace AI, but also inspire their teams to use it for better efficiency when it comes to automation, workflows, and automating tasks. This allows teams to focus on the strategic areas and accomplish more in advancing their company's objectives.
CMOs will also need the ability to see and understand the full, non-linear customer journey across digital, hybrid, and in-person experiences, rather than relying on isolated metrics from individual campaigns or channels. The CMOs who thrive will be those who can combine human judgment with predictive insight to turn interactions into sustained momentum, loyalty, and revenue over time.
As part of this, authentic thought leadership and messaging in the midst of AI and digital fatigue will be paramount. With more brands pivoting to AI to support their content engines, there is risk for undifferentiated, vanilla perspectives, meaning brands need to elevate their efforts to break through the noise.
