Since the start of the pandemic just over five years ago, the marketing industry and the role of B2B marketers have undergone a major transformation that restructures how brands connect with target audiences, measure engagement, and build brand loyalty. While the types of content, channels, and technology have evolved over time, one area where B2B marketing is seeing both renewed urgency and rapid innovation is virtual and hybrid events.
For many marketers, virtual events were a tactical pivot during the pandemic. But today, they are strategic tools for audience engagement, lead generation, and pipeline acceleration. However, simply hosting a webinar doesn’t deliver impact on its own. Effective virtual events prioritize personalization in the guest experience through measures informed by relevant and up-to-date data.
Why Should You Personalize Virtual Events
Whether attending an investor webinar, thought leadership panel, or product demo, event attendees arrive with different needs. They have different job roles and are often from different regions around the world. Without personalization, event content and delivery methods are not relevant, leading to a forgettable and diluted event experience. For marketers under surmounting pressure to deliver on event ROI, personalization is not a luxury but a necessary tool to event success.
Virtual and hybrid events are a gold mine for collecting relevant data for marketing purposes. Gathering data isn’t difficult, but organizing it and understanding it in ways that inform and improve practical marketing strategy decisions is a complicated task.
Data Types
Effective personalization relies on leveraging multiple types of event data. Here’s a breakdown:
Registration data:
Name, job title, company name, industry type, company size, language preferences and session interests.
Behavioral data:
Which sessions attendees joined, what time frames they frequented, how long attendees stayed in each session, and what resources they clicked and downloaded.
Engagement data:
Responses to polls and Q&As, chat engagement, and content sharing.
Post-event data:
Continued engagement with on-demand content consumption and follow-up survey responses.
Robust enterprise event platforms often include features that automatically gather and organize this data. This enables marketers to personalize experiences in real-time and improve segmentation and messaging strategies after the event.
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What “Personalization” Looks Like
Dynamic session recommendations:
By leveraging engagement data from previous sessions, event platforms and organizers can suggest upcoming sessions tailored to each attendee’s interests. This personalized approach keeps attendees engaged throughout the event and reduces the likelihood of drop-off.
Customized content:
Use both registration data to recommend relevant sessions, breakout discussions, or downloadable resources before the event even begins. Based on behavioral data gathered throughout the event, a personalized event agenda can be further customized to suggest content that matches an attendee’s role and preferences.
Real-time content adaptation:
Live feedback from polling and online chats can inform presenters mid-session. For example, if a large portion of the audience expresses interest or confusion on a specific topic, the speaker can pivot from planned topics to dive deeper. This reinforces and encourages audience interaction and leads to more impactful event dialogue during sessions and among attendees.
Tailored follow-up:
Post-event engagement is often where personalization delivers the greatest ROI for marketing pipelines. Attendees who show interest in a specific product or session can receive targeted content. Sales and marketing teams can then prioritize leads based on data-backed indicators, taking the guesswork out of strategy customization.
Networking recommendations:
Beyond event content suggestions, user registration and behavioral data can be leveraged to provide recommendations for the most relevant peers or exhibitors to personalize networking opportunities for attendees.
Balancing Privacy and Customization
In an era of mass concern over data privacy, marketers need to be responsible with data collection and transparency to maintain brand trust. Attendees should be clearly informed of what information from them is being gathered and how it will be used.
Event attendees have a thin mental line between deciding what personalization feels helpful vs. intrusive. For example, recommending a resource document based on registration to a session can improve the event experience. However, overly repetitive or tailored ads and messaging may feel more invasive and can erode brand loyalty. Data shouldn’t be used in a way that makes attendees feel monitored.
It’s also crucial that when using event technology and developing processes, your company and any third-party integrations align with important regulations, such as those from the GDPR or CCPA.
Industry Shift
Marketers are facing a major shift as third-party cookies begin to phase out, making first-party data more critical than ever. Virtual and hybrid events have emerged as powerful sources of direct and voluntary data when gathered from engaged attendees. When integrated with your marketing automation platform, enterprise event platforms transform this rich, contextual data into precise audience segmentation and deeply personalized experiences. This level of personalization not only drives higher-quality leads but also fuels the sales pipeline by enabling marketers to deliver strategic, relevant touchpoints that resonate and convert.
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