Right now, digital transformation is raising the bar across every function — from the way revenue teams manage pipelines to how product teams build and iterate.
For teams leading events, the upside of embracing the latest steps in digital transformation extends well beyond running smoother events. It means contributing to the organization’s success and advancing individual careers.
In this post, we’ll share step-by-step guidance for modernizing how you work as an event professional.
Step 1: Start With a Modern Infrastructure
The first step in any digital transformation is eliminating legacy systems and manual processes. Your organization should use an event marketing platform designed to scale securely. Ask any other stakeholders involved in the purchase decision to prioritize having a single, integrated platform for every event over cost savings. Doing so will help you avoid data silos and lengthy procurement cycles.
Adopting an open infrastructure will help you to see how event engagement impacts sales and marketing, as well as improve communication between departments. In turn, you can also use customer data from other platforms to further improve event experiences.
Step 2: Level Up AI Strategy in Your Day-to-Day Work
You may already be experimenting with AI tools, but specialized frameworks in the event platform can help you spin up events faster and surface seemingly hidden insights. Some of the many ways that event professionals are currently using RainFocus AI include constructing registration workflows, building reports, transcribing sessions, incorporating facial authentication into check-in flows, and analyzing attendee sentiment.
In addition, AI helps event professionals predict and influence attendee behavior. Learning from attendees’ behaviors, AI can offer relevant session or meeting recommendations.
Step 3: Demonstrate Impact Through Data
Finally, telling effective stories with the data captured is the final step in a digital transformation. Connecting your event platform to your CRM, marketing automation, and revenue tools will help you generate evidence of event success. Metrics such as pipeline influenced, leads generated, sponsorship ROI, and attendee engagement scores illustrate the value of events.
Current event reporting might center on headcount, logistics, and simple standalone stats. A digital transformation requires reporting on business outcomes. This shift helps events be seen as revenue drivers.
Undergoing a digital transformation — at the individual level and more broadly throughout the events team — keeps you moving in step with your technology and revenue teams. Selecting the right platform and embracing more advanced uses of AI will help you grow as an individual and as a team member, and give you the ability to transform event insights into actionable business intelligence. For more best practices, read our digital transformation e-book.
