Data plays an increasingly important role in event strategy as part of an integrated customer lifecycle, from impacts to privacy law to isolated customer data, to an even brighter spotlight on marketing ROI.
Our event technology experts researched key takeaways from the RainFocus INSIGHT conference that highlighted the role data quality is playing in the area of event strategy and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a pivotal role going forward.
Concerns over data privacy, and the ethics of collecting advertising data without explicit user consent, have led to a decrease in third-party cookies. The slow demise of third-party cookies demands new data collection strategies. Events will play a bigger role in capturing data that allows the rest of the marketing and sales efforts to thrive. The good news is that companies don’t need cookies to gather event data. Registration information and badge scans show what topics and sessions people attend and what activities they enjoy.
Events can provide key insights into a customer or prospect’s persona, from measuring clicks, content engagement, downloads, surveys, registrations, quizzes, preferences, and app usage. However, with mass amounts of information, data quality and cleanliness are imperative.
Not only will companies need to be more creative in how they collect data, they will need to find ways to keep the data clean. This may seem like a tall order, but customer data platforms (CDPs) are emerging as the data hero! A CDP acts as a central hub for all your customer data, merging it into a single, unified view to understand your customers better. This holistic profile becomes the foundation for personalized marketing campaigns, improved customer experiences, and increased engagement. CDPs can feed information to the event technology platforms, which can help create personalized agendas, expert meetups, or other event suggestions.
AI is the talk of the town. We predict it will be essential to the advancement of CDPs in the future. CDPs are typically programmed to dedupe data, profile individuals, and make targeted recommendations. Historically, humans have decided the rules for these steps. However, adding AI will allow for increasingly more accurate profiling and targeting. Imagine manually looking at 5,000 customers who all bought the same products and then attempting to create a profile for those types of customers. Now imagine asking an AI to do the same thing. It increases speed and efficiency for marketing and sales, helping you to create the best customer experience and journey to move your prospect or customer through the customer lifecycle. That is the power of AI with CDPs.
Executive leaders are applying more pressure on marketers to improve ROI for all marketing activities - events included. The big question is: How much pipeline is in the room? With clean data and improved quality, marketers can identify not just how many people are in a room or how many qualified leads registered, but how much pipeline is associated with each attendee, each event, each session, and each track. Marketers have the power to measure which activities produced the highest conversion rates.
The events industry is embracing this data-driven era. While the decline of third-party cookies presents challenges, it also paves the way for more ethical and sustainable data practices. Customer data platforms and clean data strategies empower event organizers to understand their attendees better and personalize their experiences. With technology at the forefront, the future of events is bright, promising, engaging, personalized, and sustainable for all.