How AI and Event Marketing Are Moving the Needle for Business Outcomes

Events are one of the most valuable ways for brands to create meaningful touchpoints with their customers, showcase products, and attract high-value prospects to build a sales pipeline. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that over half of CEOs believe that event marketing generates more ROI than any other marketing channel.

Not all events are created equal, though. Marketers have relied on surface-level metrics to determine the success of their events for years. However, in today’s complex landscape of AI and the increased use of digital tools, vanity metrics like number of attendees and website clicks fall short in showcasing the full value and business impact that event leaders are tasked to drive.

This is why marketers are shifting their focus from reporting on basic metrics to a more holistic framework that can demonstrate how the event attracted new customers, progressed prospects closer to conversion, and ultimately increased more revenue down the line.

By leveraging AI and predictive analytics, marketers can turn metrics and disjointed data across different departments and teams within an organization into a single source of truth with cohesive insights. This empowers event leaders by supplying them with the right data to drive business momentum.

How AI is Powering Business Outcomes

The traditional linear funnel of sales no longer applies in the world of B2B. Three-quarters (44 percent) of marketers believe they’re effective at running in-person events, but because buying decisions are now more collaborative and complex, with an average size of 11 people in a B2B buying group, teams need to rethink how they can truly accelerate business goals and capture the best ROI from events.

AI is redefining what event success looks like in many ways. By analyzing attendee behavior and engagement metrics, AI models have the ability to predict customer lifetime value and estimate the long-term revenue potential.

For example, when it comes to tracking whitepaper downloads, website clicks, or social activity of attendees after an event, it can take marketing teams months to determine whether an attendee has turned into a potential prospect, and to then develop post-event actions for that attendee. AI can gather this data in a shorter period of time, highlighting the main topics that are relevant and pertinent to the most important buying groups. This allows sales teams to prioritize follow-ups for the highest-value prospects that are closest to becoming conversions, while also helping them to tailor messaging accordingly.

Similarly, AI can assess the time to impact, such as how long it took for an attendee to generate pipeline activity or close a deal, offering insights into event effectiveness well beyond the day-of experience. Deal size and attribution also become clearer with AI, as it identifies which specific touchpoints within an event experience correlated with larger revenue outcomes.

AI has the potential to shift event measurement from reactive reporting to proactive growth planning, giving marketers and event teams the insight they need to make smarter decisions to improve their sales cycle.

Overcoming Fragmentation with AI and Predictive Analytics

Dozens of tools and platforms are used to ensure the attendee experience and business objectives are aligned. However, because these tools are widely utilized across different teams like marketing, events, IT, and sales, it can cause disjointed systems.

For example, marketing leaders might be reporting a strong number of registered attendees for the event, but sales teams could be seeing a lack of leads generated in their systems. These data silos and inconsistent reporting result in missed opportunities. To fully measure success and maximize event impact, organizations need a unified, overarching look at their data.

AI-powered platforms have the ability to solve data fragmentation and unlock the full potential of event engagement, making every interaction count toward measurable business growth. With AI, the burden of lengthy manual analysis is eliminated and leaders are enabled to act quicker and collaborate more effectively across departments.

Looking Ahead

Experiential-led marketing strategies are not slowing down, and by 2028, Gartner predicts mass digital fatigue will push CMOs to allocate 70 percent of their budgets to offline channels. Clearly, more customers, from B2C to B2B, are craving in-person connection and touchpoints with brands and organizations.

With new AI tools and solutions increasingly at marketers’ disposal, success in the next five years will be measured by how effectively their teams can convert interactions into long-term value, and how they build customer loyalty. Marketers can look beyond the actions taken at a singular event and understand how the attendees’ experiences impact tomorrow’s pipeline, revenue, and relationships.

While more marketers look to prioritize offline channels in the next few years, event strategies will still blend between digital, hybrid, and physical experiences. Embracing a new era where AI, predictive analytics, and unified data systems work together to showcase event success will be key in proving that these experiences are still ongoing drivers of business growth.

Ashleigh Cook is chief marketing officer at RainFocus. Cook is an accomplished marketing executive with deep expertise in sales, marketing, and product best practices and technology, committed to helping high-growth companies establish and scale marketing functions to deliver exceptional customer experiences that align with rapidly changing expectations and technology advancements. Before RainFocus, Ashleigh led marketing teams spanning GTM strategy, demand generation, ABM, client marketing, and operations at SiriusDecisions and Forrester.