The Event Goal: Education and Connection
The Annual Congress brings together over 100 event leaders, with the primary goals of fostering meaningful connection and peer exchange. ELX used RainFocus’ Base Conference template to track progress toward those goals. RainFocus dashboards made reporting easier, and a HubSpot integration allowed ELX to apply registrations, clicks, and cancellations to member engagement scoring.
Personalizing On-Site Experiences
ELX intentionally used small details to make members feel seen from the moment they arrived. As part of their registration, attendees were asked to list their favorite snacks and drinks. ELX used their responses to provide instructions to hotel staff to leave the preferred items in attendees’ hotel rooms. In addition, each attendee received a pillowcase embroidered with their initials.
“Every element felt thoughtfully curated — from the snacks waiting in my room to the opportunity to select personalized gifts that were later delivered directly to my room.” – April Shomper, Senior Director, Events Strategy & Planning, Vizient
Leveraging Registration Data
RainFocus registration data also helped ELX fill in gaps in their member data, helping them better understand their community so they can tailor future experiences to members’ needs. In addition, members’ session preferences entered during the registration process automatically mapped attendees to specific sessions, creating a more curated experience.
Using attendees’ profile data, ELX divided attendees into cohorts that were introduced at the beginning of the event. Cohort members were encouraged to sit together throughout the event to enhance their networking. Attendees’ responses to post-event surveys indicated this guidance helped them form new connections and find their way around the event.
“As a first-time attendee, I immediately felt welcomed and included. The communications leading up to the event and the dedicated first-timer reception made it easy to navigate and connect immediately with other first-time attendees.” – Sarahbeth Roberts, CMP Sr. Manager, Events & Experience Marketing, SAS
Confidence in the Future
Hannah Elston is senior manager, partnerships, marketing, and communications at ELX. As part of her role, she oversaw the marketing, communications, and registration work supporting the 2026 ELX Annual Congress. The ELX Summit, Europe 2026 follows the event shortly. Despite a short turnaround, the team was confident RainFocus could once again help them deliver a world-class registration experience.
Plus, with most of the groundwork already laid, the team needed only to copy the Annual Congress and edit details like date and location to speed up registration launch. The overall registration flow, emails, and forms could remain intact. For a small team running multiple member experiences each year, a repeatable registration structure reduces unnecessary rebuild work and lets them focus on the member experience.
“When we first discussed using RainFocus’ Base Module, we thought this would be something we would only use for the Annual Congress because it’s a bigger event, but we found that the platform actually has advantages no matter what the event size is.” — Hannah Elston, Senior Manager, Partnerships, Marketing, & Communications, ELX
This case study is the second half of a two-part story. Read the first half of the story to learn how ELX set up registration using RainFocus’ Event Checklist.
