While flagship in-person events reign supreme for creating memorable experiences and forging business relationships, virtual events remain an important event portfolio component.
Plus, with their scalability and lower barriers to access for attendees, webinars and other types of virtual events help expand audiences and power a continuous engagement strategy throughout the year. As these events nurture leads, expand reach, educate prospects and customers, and support other goals, they serve as an ideal complement to in-person events.
For a virtual event to deliver on that value, the data that it produces must be comprehensive and readily available. Capturing attendee data across an event portfolio and putting it to use to inform sales and marketing strategy has long been core to the RainFocus platform for all event types.
RainFocus named a Leader
Most recently, we were excited to see that RainFocus was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Virtual Event Management Platforms, Q2 2026.
The report evaluated 12 virtual events management platforms on their current offerings, strategy, and customer feedback to determine rankings. RainFocus received the highest possible scores in 22 of the 31 total criteria measured. The criteria included sales and marketing technology integrations, experience personalization, surveying and feedback collection, and many more.
“Superior capabilities across multiple areas help clients deliver large-scale, highly customized virtual and hybrid events,” the report said. “It offers excellent data capture capabilities and global attendee profiles to personalize experiences. The platform is augmented by deep CRM/MAP/customer data platform (CDP) integrations, including multiple native connectors to the Adobe ecosystem.”
Why first-party data matters
The integrations and connectors bring increasingly vital data into an organization’s tech stack.
“As third-party data declines, virtual events are becoming a critical source of first-party buyer insight,” the report stated. “Buyers should evaluate how well vendors capture, unify, and activate data at the individual, account, and event program level.” It also described the evolution of virtual events into “scalable data and engagement engines.”
In addition to fueling business outcomes and demonstration event ROI, attendee data also supports personalization and differentiated event experiences.
The Forrester Wave report noted that virtual event attendees “value meaningful personalization including timely content recommendations and intelligent networking rather than passive participation.”
AI advances have made strategies to meet these demands more scalable and sophisticated. RainFocus Nexus, an advanced agentic AI layer in the platform, orchestrates real-time engagement for every interaction. New agents within RainFocus Nexus are steadily joining the lineup to streamline every step of event planning and execution, while amplifying data impact within a secure ecosystem that works with an organization’s existing AI tools.
High-performing webinars
Our Events and Marketing Strategy Survey found that webinars are the second fastest-growing event type. The attendance rate for webinars has increased 9% over the last year.
Given this growth, we recently highlighted best practices for getting the most out of your webinars and other virtual events.
These included prioritizing seamless integrated experiences, ensuring integrated data, and strategizing for maximum content value and engagement after the initial event.
Best practices for high-performing webinars start with building the event in the right event platform. During the vendor search, we recommend consulting the latest objective third-party research reports like The Forrester Wave™: Virtual Event Management Platforms, Q2 2026. Access a complimentary copy of the report here.
Forrester does not endorse any company, product, brand, or service included in its research publications and does not advise any person to select the products or services of any company or brand based on the ratings included in such publications. Information is based on the best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. This report is part of a broader collection of Forrester resources, including interactive models, frameworks, tools, data, and access to analyst guidance. For more information, read about Forrester’s objectivity here .
