Key Event Goals
As they began planning Knowledge 2026, the ServiceNow team set out to expand attendance beyond traditional IT buyers to reach C-suite leaders and users of their new CRM. They also wanted to give sales and field marketing teams direct control over their special interest activity (SIA) programs for the first time, and streamline ticketing for a high-profile concert in Las Vegas during the event. RainFocus provided the flexibility ServiceNow needed to achieve all three goals, while saving time during every stage of event planning.
Personalizing Session Recommendations
To simplify the attendee experience, the ServiceNow event team opted to reduce the number of sessions offered, focusing on conversational content and meetings. They redesigned their RainFocus session catalog to present each attendee with a product-interest questionnaire at the start that surfaced the most relevant sessions based on their answers.
To further simplify decision-making, ServiceNow incorporated AI-powered session recommendations that combined attendees’ past behaviors and ServiceNow’s own customer intelligence. Past session interests were fed from RainFocus into ServiceNow’s internal AI alongside pipeline data, digital activity, and buying center behavior to identify behavioral patterns. The enriched dataset was then passed back into attendees’ Attendee Portal where they could see relevant recommendations based on their full history with ServiceNow.
The approach paid off. Despite the reduction in sessions offered, ServiceNow’s personalization strategies resulted in an average of 10 sessions attended per attendee. This was nearly double the industry average for similarly sized events.
Managing SIA Invitations at Scale
Previously, managing SIAs such as dinners and VIP sessions required manual invite lists and resulted in disconnected schedules and little visibility into RSVP activity.
For Knowledge 2026, the ServiceNow event team used an early version of RainFocus’ Sales Module to give SIA owners across sales, field marketing, and customer marketing direct control over their programs.
In all, the organization held 113 SIAs led by 99 owners who successfully sent 15,000 invitations. The Sales Module allowed each owner to easily create an invite list, monitor RSVPs in real time, and track engagement. SIAs were automatically added to attendees’ agendas and reflected in the ServiceNow mobile app.
“We conducted a survey with the users to gather feedback on the SIA tool, and the response was remarkably positive! One of the most appreciated features was the integration with the RainFocus calendar widget. Users appreciated that their activities were automatically added to attendees’ agendas.” — Nate Okelberry, Events Platform Manager, ServiceNow
Because SIA activity was centralized in RainFocus and integrated into the company’s CRM, the event team was able to attribute SIA participation directly to pipeline for the first time.
Streamlined Digital Ticket Distribution
Beyond the sessions, meetings, and SIAs, Knowledge 2026 also offered an eagerly anticipated After Party. After experiencing an overwhelming rush at their ticket desk in 2025 for a similar event, the ServiceNow team needed a way to distribute tickets digitally.
They successfully used RainFocus attribution to define concert seating sections based on attendee type. Executives, Executive Circle members, employees, and sponsors each received designated sections.
Tickets were released to customers first, and then additionally to teams with access rules that offered the correct seating options. Attendees simply logged into their Attendee Portal to choose their seat. The RainFocus platform made the process easy and ensured there was no double booking. Reports generated in RainFocus were fed directly to Ticketmaster and venue teams, who distributed the tickets via email.
“The whole ticketing process was much more streamlined than the previous year. We received a lot of praise internally from our leadership team.” — Andi Davison, Director, Strategic Event Technology, ServiceNow
Organization-Wide Intent Data
Another key benefit of using RainFocus for Knowledge 2026 was the depth of reporting available to the team during and after the event. Seamless integrations ensured everyone could access the most relevant data for their role.
“RainFocus set up great dashboards for us so our leadership could see specific data based on their role. This was a big win! We received daily, weekly, and monthly reports in both SQL and non-SQL formats.” — Reshma Anoop, Senior Manager, Technology Solutions, ServiceNow
Leadership team members received event dashboards that enabled them to oversee the entire event without needing to request data from the event team. Once attendees registered, their data was passed to ServiceNow’s lead generation services. As leads built their agendas and visited booths, their journey was updated to reflect their intent. That intent data was shared with sales and marketing teams, giving them a real-time view of which products their customers were most interested in and showing them where to focus follow-up efforts.
