Conference News Winter 2023 | Page 33

33 Feature geo-cloning Cvent CONNECT . “ At Cvent , if we are capturing data , it is because we already know that we want to use it . We aren ’ t capturing data for data ’ s sake .
“ To make our virtual Germany event happen , we looked at the travel data to understand where people were coming in from for the London flagship event . We saw a trend that a lot of people were coming from Germany . So , we thought , why not give these attendees an opportunity to meet together virtually , without having to travel ?
“ This year , we have expanded the event because we could see that the interest was high , and the registration data is telling us that we did the right thing to expand it . So we have used that data to invest a little bit more into that event . It could go to Spain or France next ; we don ’ t know until we have a look at this year ’ s data .”
Touching on the topic of investment Asiedu speaks of , Temple added : “ We know that
businesses are under a lot of pressure when it comes to how they use their budgets . They are asked to do more with less , or at least the same with less . So , it is all about how we can be more efficient and effective with our budgets . A lot of that will come from redirecting resources , which data and AI can help with .”
Prevett also speaks of similar event success : “ We have worked with a client to improve audience engagement and event personalisation . Depending on the buckets of data collected throughout the event , they devised five different marketing campaigns ready to go post-event .
“ As soon as an attendee leaves the event , they fall into one of these five marketing campaigns . This allows them to personalise content based on what the attendees engaged with at the event , and they have seen a strong return of investment because of this . Personalisation is a key success metric , and you can ’ t get that without good data .”
Working smarter After speaking with the event professionals , it is clear that with a strong data set and event objectives , AI can not only speed up the analysis process , but also contribute to major event success .
Looking ahead , Prevett speaks of Amara ’ s Law . “ It says with all new technologies , we overestimate the impact they will have in the short term , but we underestimate the impact they will have in the long term .
“ So , I think event organisers are overestimating what AI can do right now , but are also underestimating how massive it will be in the next five to 10 years ,” he adds . “ I think people are looking forward to tech actually doing the analysis part for us , making suggestions and decisions ,” says Asiedu .
Across the board , the event professionals believe that event organisers should be working much harder to make their content work much harder for them – and AI is the ideal way to achieve this . Prevett concludes : “ AI will help event organisers become more efficient . Allowing us to have more time to do the fun , creative things , while AI is doing all the crunching of data and refining our processes .” CN www . conference-news . co . uk