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Lippman Connects partnered with EVOLIO Marketing to share research, including about using predictive AI for attendee acquisition, at the recent Attendee Acquisition Roundtable in Chicago.
When Mariaelana Morales attended Lippman Connects’ Attendee Acquisition Roundtable — a facilitated information-sharing session for a small group of all kinds of professionals involved in marketing to and acquiring event attendees — held July 18 at the Marriott Marquis McCormick Place in Chicago, she left with a notebook crammed with ideas she had scribbled down to bring back to her marketing team.
Mariaelena Morales
Morales, PCMA’s director of integrated marketing, said that she was struck by the variety of organizations represented by the 22 roundtable participants, each with their own challenges — yet “also facing the same big issues.” Several topics that resonated with the group included how to attract the next generation of event attendees, how to build community at events, and how to leverage the bleisure trend, specifically when an event is held in a host destination that’s not necessarily on everybody’s must-visit list, Morales said. With budgets being so tight, more events are being booked in second-tier destinations and the question then becomes: “How do you create a story that will help potential registrants build an experience outside of the event in the destination?” she said.
“Half the organizers at this Attendee Acquisition Roundtable were vice presidents and directors,” said Sam Lippman, producer of the Attendee Acquisition Roundtable, as well as the Exhibition and Convention Executives Forum (ECEF), Exhibit Sales Roundtable, Large Show Roundtable, Midsize Show Roundtable, and Digital Summit. “So all day long, the conversation was strategic as well as tactical. And because we had almost equal representation from independents and association organizers, their information exchange was richer because it came from different points of view. I come away from every roundtable having learned something new and am continually amazed at how our industry has upped its marketing game.”
Intelligence on Artificial Intelligence
Lippman Connects partners with EVOLIO Marketing to share research at the Attendee Acquisition Roundtable and Joe Federbush, EVOLIO’s president and chief strategist, was one of five presenters. The other speakers included Rose Horcher, CEM, CMP, vice president, client services, Choose Chicago; Nicole Bowman, vice president of marketing and communications at IAEE (International Association of Exhibitions and Events); Kim Vinciguerra, chief experience officer at International Carwash Association; and Tyler Day, group director and marketing strategist at mdg, where he is the account exec for Carwash.
Federbush presented insights on future attendees and bleisure travel, as well as AI and it was his discussion about data analytics that Morales found to be the most eye-opening, she said, especially when he talked about predictive AI for attendee prospecting — not a use for the tool that Morales had previously considered but could address many of the other topics broached by the group.
“The question came up of why aren’t we using predictive AI to help us figure out if our attendees will be the same as those who have come in the past three years?” she said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, fantastic!’ Can AI help us figure out how to find our attendees for next year? That just blew my mind. I never thought about it in terms of if I feed AI a list of previous event attendees, how can it help me find future attendees?”
Federbush gave the example of how a major pharmaceutical company used analytics and generative AI to determine which health-care providers would be attending a show where the company was a sponsor and exhibitor (see slide below). Company representatives contacted these providers to ask about, invite them to, or confirm a scheduled meeting before, during, or after the convention, and then to track their prescribing habits post-event. The result, Federbush said, was the company increased its pipeline and ROI.
Joe Federbush, EVOLIO’s president and chief strategist, shared a case study at the event.
The predictive capabilities of AI set off a flurry of possibilities for Morales. “What I would look for is, say you have a lot of representation in this industry or sector — here are additional organizations that you can go after that can give you a critical mass,” she said. You could also in your prompt ask AI to generate the opposite — to find you “more companies in the bottom-three representation that you want to grow,” Morales said. “So you could penetrate the top three organizations as well as cultivate the bottom three.”
She said also she wants to pursue the potential for AI to help with attracting the right roles — “say you have a lot of directors from this industry but need more participants at that level in another sector. Or perhaps your attendees are too top-heavy — how can you find next-gen employees at the same organizations?”
Morales said that she could see how gen AI could help do some of the audience mapping that she would do if she looked at “a million spreadsheets and did a whole bunch of research. But it would take me days, right? Feed it to the robots instead,” she said, “and it comes out in two minutes.”
Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.