marketingtechnology
How event technology is becoming a core go-to-market lever, enabling organizations to translate engagement signals into smarter pipeline and revenue strategies.
What does “meaningful engagement” mean in today’s environment especially for audiences that are digitally saturated?
Meaningful engagement today is defined by intent and relevance, not volume. Audiences are inundated with content and notifications, meaning attention is no longer freely available, and has to be earned. Engagement becomes meaningful when the interaction is timely, context-aware, and clearly valuable to the individual on the other side of the device. Instead of asking the audience to passively consume more content, the focus should shift to creating moments where they can participate, signal interest, and move a relationship forward.
Increasingly, meaningful engagement has become a two-way exchange between the audience and the brand. This enables the audience to derive personalized value by actively participating in the conversation, experience, and community. It can be as simple as emoting on a livestream, or as complex as a tailored meeting with hand-picked experts, peers, and activities for that specific audience. Because most aspects of customers’ day-to-day lives have become digitally saturated, this type of valuable engagement also delivers purpose.
Event technology has evolved far beyond registration and badge scanning. What capabilities are now table stakes for delivering connected event experiences?
Today’s event technology must support the holistic attendee experience, going beyond a single event or program. To do this, a connected data foundation is essential to modern event experiences. Table stakes now include unified attendee profiles, real-time behavioral data capture, and bi-directional integration with marketing systems and CRM. These capabilities allow teams to understand more than simply who attended, but how and when they engaged, what they found valuable, and where that activity fits within the broader customer journey. Without this connective tissue, events remain disconnected moments rather than strategic touchpoints.
What role does real-time data play in adapting experiences while an event is still happening?
Real-time data allows teams to move beyond static execution models by providing immediate visibility into how attendees are engaging across sessions, networking, and event content. It can take an event from a fixed program to an adaptive environment. When teams have immediate visibility into session engagement, content interaction, and attendee movement, they can respond in the moment and adjust staffing, promote different content, or facilitate more meaningful connections. This shift away from static agendas and toward experiences that evolve based on actual behavior make the event more responsible and valuable for attendees.
Furthermore, events provide a wealth of first-party intent signals that can offer value beyond logistical management. The real-time discovery of an expansion opportunity, high-value meeting with sales, qualified lead for a partner, or connection with an influencer, are just the beginning of key customer milestones achieved through an event experience. These behaviors can drive the right next best action to accelerate the customer journey, whether it be another onsite experience, marketing campaign, sales engagement, or recommendation.
Many organizations now view event technology as a core part of their GTM stack. What’s driving this shift?
Events generate some of the strongest first-party engagement signals available to marketers. As traditional digital attribution becomes less reliable, organizations are prioritizing channels that provide clear indicators of intent. Event interactions, such as what session an attendee joins, who they meet with, what they participate in, offer high-confidence insights into buyer interest. When that data is connected directly into GTM systems, events move from beginning standalone moments to measurable accelerants to pipeline and revenue.
What challenges do organizations face when translating event engagement data into actionable pipeline insights?
Fragmentation is the biggest challenge. Event data is often captured across disconnected tools without a shared data model or consistent definitions of engagement. This makes it difficult to unify insights, act quickly, or deliver clear context to sales teams, which can slow down analysis and follow-up. When engagement data isn’t standardized or integrated, its value can decay rapidly after the event, limiting its impact on follow-up and pipeline acceleration.
How are sales using event intelligence to have more relevant, timely conversations with prospects?
Event intelligence gives sales teams context before and after contact. As opposed to starting conversations cold, reps can see what a prospect engaged with in the past, topics of interest, and where interest was concentrated. This allows outreach to be relevant and rooted in the attendee’s experience, not just within a generic sales narrative.
As part of this, event insights can also greatly inform post-engagement follow ups. When data is delivered quickly and shows which attendees had the highest levels of engagement or interest, follow up conversations are not only timely, but better aligned with buyer intent.
What organizational shifts are required to treat events as a revenue driver rather than a brand-only channel?
It starts with intentional planning and shared ownership. Events have to be designed with GTM outcomes in mind from the beginning, supported by shared KPIs across events, marketing, and sales. Organizations need to move away from managing disconnected tools and toward orchestrating outcomes by relying on technology to handle complexity while teams focus on strategy, alignment, and execution.
Revenue teams should also be an active participant in pre-, during, and post-event planning, to drive audience acquisition, craft personalized experiences, and have better oversight in engagement. These elements should be readily available and a part of co-planning efforts in order to support nomination goals, activities like timely follow ups, and management oversight.
What innovations in event technology are you most excited about from a GTM and revenue perspective?
The most meaningful innovation is the shift from task automation to decision support. Emerging, agent-based approaches can help teams identify buying signals, guide attendees through relevant experiences, and recommend the next best action in real time. Rather than replacing human judgement, these systems augment it, helping teams recognize key moments as they happen, and act with greater precision across the event lifecycle to ultimately connect the full spectrum of events to the customer journey.
