CredSpark Case Study
Leveraging Personalization to Drive Event Engagement & Revenue
There are a lot of elements that go into creating a successful event or conference. But the truly great ones have one single thing in common.
Meaningful conferences create meaningful connections.
How do you create the conditions for a truly exceptional conference or event experience?
When’s the last time you attended a conference and left with something that really stuck with you: You learned a new strategy or tactic? You heard a speaker that left you energized? Connected with the perfect vendor? Met someone that ended up making a difference in your career? You know it when it happens and it makes you want to return to that conference again and again because you left with something of value.
Conferences, trade shows, exhibitions, and other large events are complex, with lots of moving pieces. Facilitating those “magic moments” at scale for individual attendees can seem baffling, daunting, expensive, or just plain impossible. In fact, it can look an awful lot like a huge conference agenda/prospectus looks to a prospective attendee: Overwhelming!
But what if you could create personalized event experiences at scale for individual attendees? How could you leverage that opportunity to close more registrations, increase event engagement, drive new sponsor and exhibitor revenue, and maximize the ROI of your events? In short, how can you create “meaningful connections?”
The following case study explores the value of personalized interactions in event marketing and management, presents potential use cases throughout the event experience and for each stakeholder, and provides real-world examples of event-based interactions deployed by CredSpark clients. Scroll to explore the entire case study or use the synopsis to jump to specific sections of interest.
Case Study Synopsis
- Personalization Starts with Information Through Conversation:Actions are Not Interactions: Introducing Dynamic Content Interactions
- What Are Top Brands Doing? Top Brands Are Using Interactions to Innovate Across the Event Experience
- DataPoint: Events and Conferences Are Once Again A High-Growth Business
- Personalized Recommendations: Personalization is Transforming Event Marketing & Driving Registrations
- Client Spotlight: Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo
- CredSpark Interaction: What Event Personalization Opportunities Are You Currently Overlooking?
- Live Event Interactions: Spark Explosive Engagement (And a Little Bit of Fun)
- DataPoint: Audience Data is the Fuel That Powers Personalization
- Sponsor & Exhibitor Opportunities: How Interactions Can Create New Sponsorship Offerings & Drive Revenue
- Creating Community Around Events: Engagement Doesn’t Have to Stop at the Last Session
- Explore Examples: Real-World Applications from CredSpark Clients
- Get Ideas, Insights, & Inspiration: Want to Connect with CredSpark?
- Additional Resources: More Strategies and Innovations for Events & Conferences
Introducing Dynamic Content Interactions.
Effective personalization starts with information through conversation.
Here’s a thought starter: Think about the mechanics of a great conversation. At its essence, the people involved receive information in a question- or story-based exchange and then adapt their responses based on that information to keep the conversation going, interesting, and valuable to the participants. When you boil it down, it’s really a learning and discovery experience.
Dynamic content interactions follow the same premise. In the world of conferences and events, they enable you to gather zero-party information from attendees, prospects, sponsors, exhibitors, and more and subsequently provide a more tailored experience based on that data. That data is the fuel that sparks “connection.” It can be leveraged to match prospective attendees to specific sessions, speakers, and topics that most align with their particular needs and interests. You can use it to create a sense of community at your event by connecting people with similar interests. You can connect sponsors and exhibitors to potential sales leads. The sky’s the limit. You just need to start the conversation with your audience.
Top brands are organizing (and reimagining) their events around data-driven interactions.
Innovative conference and event managers are deploying data-driven interactions across the entire event experience and are seeing impressive results. From the registration decision, through live interactions during the event, to the post-event follow up, these interactions create memorable experiences for attendees, generate zero-party data and insights, and enable a personalized experience for attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, and more.
DataPoint
Conferences and events are lucrative audience engagement opportunities.
With a projected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.5%, the broader conference and events industry will continue to be a big and valuable avenue for reaching and engaging with audiences. The challenge is they’re expensive to produce; so extracting the most ROI possible is essential for any events program.
Estimated Pre-Pandemic Industry Value
$800 million
Estimated Value in 2028
$2.2 billion
Source: Verified Market Research
Personalized Recommendations = Next-Level Event Marketing
Personalize the pre-registration experience to showcase the value of your event to each prospective attendee.
What value will I get from attending this event?
It’s the single, most important question event marketers have to answer for prospective attendees. The challenge is that every prospect has a different set of needs, interests, and expectations. So how do you align particular, relevant aspects of your event with an individual prospect’s needs?
You start a conversation.
Dynamic content interactions allow you to create an immersive, question-based experience where you can uncover the specific motivations, needs, and interests of prospective attendees. To make the experience more intelligent and responsive, event marketers are categorizing the various elements of their event (sessions, speakers, exhibitors, topics, social opportunities, education, etc.) based on the potential answers to those questions. This framework enables personalization at scale. Based on prospects’ individual responses in the interaction, you can dynamically display tailored marketing messaging and specific, personalized recommendations based on their individual needs, goals, and interests.
You’re no longer throwing one giant agenda at everyone and expecting them to do the work. You’re literally showing each person the specific reasons why they’ll find attending your event valuable.
It’s a powerful, immersive way to showcase the value of your event at the individual level. And organizations that have used this approach have seen impressive engagement KPIs, dramatic improvement in registration rates, and tangible ROI.
Client Spotlight
Explore how Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo used an interaction to surface relevant sessions and topics based on user responses, generated excitement for the event, and drove a 71% CTR to the registration page.
CredSpark Interaction
What event personalization opportunities are you currently overlooking?
Answer the following questions and you may discover innovative, new opportunities that you can implement to supercharge engagement and revenue for your current events and conferences. Plus, you’ll see how your colleagues in the industry answered to benchmark your own event programs.
Live Event Interactions
Include live interactions in your keynotes and sessions and spark new levels of engagement and just the right amount of fun.
Attending a big professional conference or event can seem like being on the receiving end of a high-pressure fire hose. Lots of information is headed in only one direction and you may get a very rushed 10 or 15 minutes at the end for two or three questions.
Incorporating dynamic content interactions into a presentation or education session allows you to bring the audience directly into the action in a live setting. They provide a mechanism through which you can get:
- real-time audience feedback and opinions,
- insights into audience knowledge on key topics,
- lively engagement opportunities to break the monotony of a one-way broadcast of a presentation,
- live, actionable data that can be used to take an audience down a different path based on their input,
- a chance for a little competitive fun by including game like elements like trivia, leaderboards, and more.
Tools like CredSpark’s Live Mode easily enable live engagement at conference-level scale. You’re now delivering much more than information. You’re delivering engagement and interaction. Learning science studies have shown that high engagement activities lead to greater knowledge retention and higher levels of participant satisfaction. And that leads to outstanding word of mouth and higher return rates for next year’s event.
DataPoint
Audience data is the fuel that will power personalization opportunities for your conferences and events.
2,770
Average Number of Data Points in a Single CredSpark Interaction
Sponsor & Exhibitor Interactions
Dynamic content interactions can be sponsorship opportunties and directly contribute to event revenue.
When you create engaging and personalized conferences and events, make sure you invite your sponsors and exhibitors to the party, too. CredSpark clients are using interactions in innovative ways to engage sponsors and exhibitors, provide high-profile brand exposure for them, and deliver data, insights, and leads they can’t get anywhere else.
Events are terrific platforms to provide sponsors with engagement opportunities with your audience. And they crave that. However, there’s one thing they want even more: actionable data on individual prospects to determine if they are viable leads for them or not. Conferences are expensive propositions for sponsors and exhibitors. Data-generating content interactions provide you with a way to stand out and deliver exceptional (and measurable) ROI for sponsoring or exhibiting at your event.
- We’ve seen clients use interactions to drive sponsorship revenue in a variety of ways:
- Incorporate sponsor content into interactions to drive affinity with conference topics and attendees,
- Drive booth traffic with exhibitor recommendations in attendees’ personalized event agendas,
- Incorporate lead qualification questions into audience interactions to surface potential leads for sponsors & exhibitors,
- Create sponsored competitions and gaming experiences to increase brand exposure.
Dynamic content interactions can provide your sponsors with unmatched active brand engagement, sales intelligence, and hyper-qualified leads. You have an opportunity to make your conference and event the “must sponsor and attend” budget line item for sponsors and exhibitors. And you just may create a lucrative new revenue channel in the process.
Creating Community Around Events
Event engagement doesn’t have to end at the last session.
In effect, conferences, events, expos, etc. are a lot like little communities. However, you’re not really creating and fostering community if you stop engaging when your online event ends or the moment people start heading for the airport.
We’ve seen CredSpark clients use dynamic content interactions to support community building efforts in two key ways:
- Gathering data prior to—or during—the event to group and connect attendees with similar interests, needs, and goals.
- Creating post-event interactions to keep attendees engaged throughout the year, introduce them to other opportunities, and encourage them to register for next year’s event when the time comes.
In the first example, innovative event marketers are using interactions to capture self-reported interest data from attendees and then using that info to create cohorts based on anything from similar interests, points in career progression, certification levels, and more. These cohorts create a world of opportunities to bring those people together for custom sessions, networking activities, and more.
For the second use case, clients are developing year-round engagement and activities for event attendees to foster a sense of community. The key aspect is that it’s not communication for communication’s sake. You have to continue to provide value in return for their attention. Clients are creating interactive experiences around session topics, gathering insights and opinions about future event topics and activities, developing micro educational opportunities and assessments, connecting attendees with other relevant content, products, sponsors, and much more.
With your live, online, or hybrid conference or event as the main “tent pole” of your event strategy, these interactions allow you to create other tent poles or engagement points throughout the year to keep the engagement and conversation going. And the data you collect throughout those experiences provide unmatched insights and intelligence to better inform your event strategy going forward.
Relevant Examples
Explore real-world applications of event personalization.
Click to view each specific interaction and learn more about the strategy and the outcomes.
Interested in ideas, innovations, and inspiration for your conferences and events?
Reach out. We’d love to share ideas and best practices to help you create compelling events that drive big benefits for your audience and your organization’s bottom line.
Additional Resources
Strategies and Insights on Event Engagement
