Because their flagship event serves as a prime opportunity to deliver personalized experiences throughout the customer journey, Red Hat set out to redefine its event marketing approach. By leveraging the advanced capabilities of RainFocus and Adobe technologies, Red Hat embraced a data-driven strategy to maximize impact and create seamless, highly engaging customer experiences.
Challenge
The Red Hat team wanted to deliver personalized attendee experiences, improve lead qualification, and maximize its event ROI at Red Hat Summit. However, data silos posed significant obstacles, hindering the full integration of events with broader marketing strategies. This lack of cohesion also made it difficult to accurately measure the impact of event initiatives, effectively track customer engagement, and scale personalized experiences throughout the customer journey.
Solution
To tackle these challenges, Red Hat implemented a robust data-driven strategy by seamlessly integrating event data from RainFocus — its event marketing platform — with Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) via the RainFocus Source Connector. This integration between RainFocus and AEP provided a unified, real-time view of event marketing data before, during, and after the event. With this data, Red Hat developed a more cohesive, impactful marketing approach across every phase of the event marketing lifecycle:
- Pre-event: Harnessing data enabled the team to create hyper-personalized email promotions, dynamic website customization, and precise audience segmentation to drive registrations and maximize even attendance.
- During the event: Enhanced attendee engagement through interactive booth experiences, real-time session tracking, and optimized lead qualification provided tailored on-site interactions for attendees.
- Post-event: The team leveraged engagement insights to refine follow-up strategies, segment buying groups, and personalize outreach efforts. Ultimately, this approach boosted product trials, engagement, and cross-sell opportunities.
Integrating RainFocus data with AEP enabled Red Hat to track, monitor, and continuously optimize experiences, ensuring data-driven decision-making at every stage of the customer journey.
Results and Impact
Through real-time data streaming and accelerating experience activation with Adobe and RainFocus technologies, Red Hat’s data-driven event marketing strategy delivered the following results:
- Over 20% year-over-year increase in engagement rates
- Accelerated campaign activation, saving an average of 12–24 hours in deployment time per campaign
- Substantial growth in event registrations through personalized experiences and targeted messaging
- Improved lead qualification and post-event engagement powered by actionable insights
Personalization and a multi-touchpoint strategy proved extremely effective. In fact, the Red Hat team found that registrants who received both on-site personalization and email invites were eight times more likely to register for the event than those who received only one touchpoint.
Overall, by breaking down data silos and integrating event marketing data into their marketing tech stack, Red Hat gained a holistic view of customer interactions, optimizing strategies and delivering tailored experiences. This data-driven approach was complemented by a culture of experimentation, fostering continuous innovation and adaptability in event marketing strategies.
Quote from Chris Sessoms, Sr. Manager, Web & Audience Technology
“Our collaboration with RainFocus has led to the real-time streaming data integration of RainFocus with AEP/RT-CDP through the native connector, allowing for the ingestion of our Red Hat Summit pre-, during- and post-event data over the past two years. This important collaboration and integration have resulted in advanced audience segmentation, data activation, experience delivery, analytics, and insights across both Adobe and non-Adobe technologies, with precise success and increased outcomes.”
Quote from Hannah Macking, Director, Digital Architecture
“Through the integration of our Red Hat Summit event data from RainFocus with advanced audience, activation, and analytics technologies with Adobe, Red Hat delivers a highly automated and seamless connected customer experience precisely aligned with each stage of the customer journey. This capability enables us to respond dynamically and make informed adjustments in real time.”
What’s Next
Red Hat is committed to further scaling its omnichannel experiences. The team plans to expand its integrations of RainFocus and Adobe technologies, enhance omnichannel capabilities, and leverage advanced tools like Adobe Journey Optimizer to deliver hyper-personalized event experiences to drive even greater business impact. This strategic initiative reflects Red Hat’s dedication to innovation and its vision for delivering exceptional customer experiences through data-driven strategies. Red Hat’s strategic use of unified data has not only transformed its event marketing efforts, but also set new standards for enhanced customer experiences and event engagement.
