Ali Warwick, head of sales at brand experience agency Strata, has shared a blog with Conference News highlighting the importance of data driven events.
In today’s marketing landscape, experiences are no longer a ‘nice to have’; they are a strategic necessity. But the way we measure the success of live, virtual and hybrid events is still catching up.
Gone are the days when attendance numbers or post-event satisfaction scores were enough. In an age of AI, performance marketing and shrinking budgets, brands must treat live experiences as data-rich environments, crucial touchpoints that drive insight, inform wider strategies and impact the bottom line.
The events industry is at a crossroads. The brands that thrive will be those that shift from outputs to outcomes and from intuition to intelligence.
Events are strategic but often underutilised
Live experiences sit at the intersection of content, community and conversion. According to Bizzabo’s 2024 Event Marketing Report, 85% of event marketers believe in-person events are essential to their company’s success, but only 23% say they have a robust system in place to measure event ROI effectively.
That gap is no longer sustainable. In a marketing mix driven by accountability and performance, data from live experiences must be integrated into the broader marketing ecosystem, not isolated in a post-event deck or lost in a feedback form.
The intelligence shift: from gut feel to hard metrics
Whether at a product launch, an investor summit, a pharma congress or a B2B roadshow, every attendee action has value. What they engage with, how long they stay, what content they revisit and how they move through a space can all inform customer profiling, content strategy, sales enablement, product development and loyalty programmes.
Yet, according to Forrester’s Global State of B2B Events Report, only 19% of B2B companies have strong integration between their events and martech stack, meaning much of this behavioural gold dust goes uncollected or underutilised.
AI can process the data, but humans must make it meaningful
‘Data without human insight is just noise’ was a key takeaway from our Making Moments Matter event, Popping the Bubble of Audience Demographics.
With the explosion of AI and machine learning tools, brands now have access to powerful ways to analyse event data. From facial sentiment analysis to real-time heat mapping and engagement scoring, the possibilities are vast. But here is the truth: AI can detect patterns, but it takes human insight to understand meaning and turn it into action.
This is where many brands falter. Data might be collected, but without the right strategic lens to interpret it, it sits idle. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 80% of marketers will abandon data-driven personalisation efforts due to poor ROI, not because the data is not there, but because it was not actionable.
To truly unlock value from experiential data, brands need strategic partners who can translate numbers into narratives and dashboards into decisions.
A new definition of success
This shift is not just about proving the value of events, it is about maximising them. When brands see live experiences as intelligence engines, they can feed data back into CRM and ABM campaigns, tailor post-event communications based on real attendee behaviour, drive more accurate forecasting and pipeline visibility, and make smarter content and investment choices.
And the results speak for themselves. According to Statista, companies that integrate experiential marketing with their broader strategy see conversion rates that are 30 to 40 percent higher across the customer journey.
The future is integrated, intelligent and intentional
As the events industry becomes more digitised, personalised and data-rich, the brands that succeed will be those who embed experience data at the heart of their marketing strategy, not at the periphery.
This is not a trend. It is a transformation. Brands must begin to ask whether they are measuring what matters at their events, whether they are feeding those insights into the wider business strategy, and whether they have the right mix of tools and talent to turn data into decisions.
Because in the near future, experience without intelligence will not just be inefficient, it will be irrelevant.
Live, virtual and hybrid experiences are no longer standalone moments. They are data-driven ecosystems that must be strategically integrated, AI-assisted and human-guided. As marketing continues to evolve, the brands that win will be those who understand that every experience is an opportunity to learn, adapt and lead.
