Take a True

Omnichannel
Approach to
Your Marketing:
Tune into Event
Channel Data
The Untapped Marketing Channel
Skilled marketers recognize the advantages of omnichannel
marketing for closing deals, retaining customers, and attracting
new interest in the brand. But even the most sophisticated
marketers may not be optimizing a key channel: events.

Events provide valuable opportunities to engage audiences and

collect zero- and first-party customer data that organizations own
and can leverage for marketing, outreach, sales, and engagement
initiatives. However, valuable events data that is collected and
shared with other teams is often underutilized.

In this eBook, we’ll discuss the immense potential contained in the

events channel—online, in-person, and hybrid event data. We’ll also
share four best practices for incorporating valuable zero- and first-
party event data into omnichannel campaigns. But first, let’s take a
brief look at the issues faced by events teams today.

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Why Events are
Challenging for Marketers Omnichannel Marketing

The events team is responsible for an organization’s portfolio of events.

This includes customer-facing product launches, partner conferences, customer
summits, webinars, and more. These and other events can help create brand
awareness, generate leads, and accelerate and enhance the customer experience, Web
providing a valuable resource for gathering direct feedback. Even with the high-
value information it provides, the events channel faces many challenges, however.
Email Mobile

Top issues facing event teams today:

• Events often lack a single point of integration
into omnichannel marketing. Poor integration
and fragmented technologies can complicate
efforts to harness and flow event insights into
marketing campaigns, content, or personalized
communications.
• Event data is undervalued. There is a common
misperception that events lack actionable data
because the information provided is not timely
or relevant. The result: Marketing teams focus
on other channels at the expense of events.
• It’s difficult for event teams to demonstrate
their value internally. Multi-channel marketers
Customer
may use multiple success measurements that Content Data Profile Events
leave out event results, making it difficult to
accurately measure their impact on the business.
• Leadership expects event teams to do more Digital
with less. Event teams are facing ever-increasing Advertising Social
budget scrutiny and pressure to reduce expenses.

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You can unlock the opportunity
that event data provides.

The third-party cookie has been a valuable data resource for years.
That’s about to change. Governments worldwide are implementing stricter
regulations around the collection and use of consumer data. Apple, Google,
and Mozilla have also announced plans to stop sharing collected data with Apple, Google,
other organizations, effectively killing the cookie. and Mozilla plan to
With the right integration, event data can provide richer insights
eliminate third-party
than cookies and enable better targeted marketing across the board. cookie support from
Benefits include:
their browsers by 2024
• Making more efficient marketing investments based
on real-time customer data.

• Upleveling personalization and providing better customer experiences,

which can increase customer loyalty and share of wallet.

• Identifying trends and/or insights that the broader organization

can leverage (e.g., customer interest in a product or feature).

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Your Not-So-Secret
Marketing Edge: Event Data
Individuals give organizations data in a variety of ways that can
be used to better personalize interactions. Every behavior, from
pre-registration to session attendance to post-event requests,
Zero-party vs. first-party data
provides insight into what matters most to the individual.

First-party data:
Based on the individual’s behavior.
Data collected before the event
Examples: session registration, badge scans,
info requests, on-demand views
There are two notable first-party data indicators to track
during this period: attribution and registration. Zero-party data:
Provided directly by the individual,
• Attribution data tells you how the individual arrived at your event information who decides what to share. Examples:
(e.g., email, online ad, social media, etc.). It provides insight into how customers Contact Us forms, non-anonymous
prefer to get information, and the type of messaging that resonates with them. surveys, ratings, reviews

• High-value registration data can be collected in the days, weeks, or

even months leading up to the event. An attendee’s registration form
can provide professional demographic information, such as title/role,
department, and purchasing power. An attendee’s schedule can also
contain valuable insight. Each session they add to their schedule
(or favorite) signals interest in the topic before the event.

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Data collected during the event
There are multiple first-party data indicators to track during this period, including
event badge scans, meetings with exhibitors, and on-demand viewing.
• Mobile engagement via an event app can
provide valuable insight into how the participant
considered using their time. Examples include:
seeking out networking opportunities; watching
online sessions; participating in chats; engaging
with games; or browsing for sessions, meetings,
and/or exhibitors.
• Q&A sessions and chats enable participants to
drive the conversation. The questions asked and
topics raised show what is top of mind and of
greatest interest to the individual at that time.
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• Event badge scans show which sessions the
individual attended during the event. These
may differ from the sessions they chose during
registration. Their choices show you what they
were most interested in during the event.
• In-person events provide an opportunity for
exhibitors to connect with existing customers.
These conversations provide opportunities for
customers to share positive feedback, express
concerns, ask questions, and offer suggestions
about the exhibitor’s product or service. That
information can then be shared with the
appropriate teams. These conversations may be
informal and/or brief, but they can have a big
impact on customer retention down the line.
Data collected after the event
On-demand viewing is a very important first-party
data indicator to track after the event. In this case,
attendees may elect to re-watch a session they
attended live (or online), indicating a stronger interest
in the topic. They may also use on-demand viewing
to catch up on sessions they were unable to attend
during the event.
Notable first-party data indicators
Attribution data:
Tells you how the individual arrived at your event
information (e.g., email, online ad, social media).
Registration data:
Shows you which topics, sessions, or other activities
captured the individual’s interest pre-event.
Data collected anytime

Zero-party data can be collected anytime. For example: Through these actions, the individual “tells” the
organization what they are specifically interested
• Contact Us forms provide an open forum for users to share their frustrations, feedback, praise, in, what they need, and/or what they are seeking.
or comments. This is unfiltered information that the individual has chosen to share with you. Marketers can use this information to create
experiences that are compelling, personalized, and
relevant to a group or the individual, accelerating the
• Surveys also collect voluntary data, but organizations can guide the conversation.
customer journey.
Asking the right questions can provide invaluable information, straight from users.

• Favoriting session content or exhibitors indicates a higher level of interest in a topic,

product, or organization.

• Interactions through the mobile app, such as searching for sessions, products,
or services, can show what the individual is interested in before the event begins.

Only 16%
of organizations obtain more than 75% of
value from customer data collected.
Source: IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey, January 2022

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Best Practices for
Upping the Ante
with Event Data
Open up a world of possibilities to connect
with your audience through events, activate
customer data across the buying journey, and
deliver meaningful, personalized customer
experiences. Here are our recommendations
for getting the most out of your data.
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BEST PRACTICE #1
Add the events channel to your omnichannel
marketing strategy Events touch every function that
a company uses to drive growth.
Marketing teams focused on other channels tend to discount the
tremendous value of event data and may not notice that it’s isolated
From product launches to sales
from other customer data. Ensure event data is incorporated into cycle acceleration to kicking off new
the overall omnichannel marketing strategy and integrations that
relationships, it all happens at events.”
allow data flow are housed in the same location as all other data.
This will give all teams access to this dynamic data in real time,
when it’s most valuable. Alicia Tillman
CMO, Delta Air Lines
BEST PRACTICE #2
Connect real-time event data to personalization
efforts and marketing automation efforts
A personalized outreach campaign based on interest is more likely
to fuel engagement than a generic approach. Innovative marketing
teams can connect real-time behavioral event data to marketing
automation tools to drive demand and identify talking points for
sales teams to attract and nurture customers.
BEST PRACTICE #3

Use event data to help create a

customer-centric culture
Creating a customer-centric culture can increase event ROI and
enable better customer experiences overall. Event ROI is an
effective tool to determine the value of an event. By learning their
event ROI, planners can make informed decisions about how to
maximize their engagement rates.
You can use event data to develop audience segments based on
the preferences of real customers—not theoretical ones. Then, use
those segments to inform future campaigns. By addressing topics
and issues that matter most to the audience, you can accelerate
the sales cycle and make a positive contribution to the customer
retention rate.
Benefits of a Customer-Centric Approach
• Lower customer acquisition costs with more
efficient buying experiences
• Higher retention rates due to more relevant
personalized content and outreach
• Audience-driven and relevant marketing
campaigns that deliver better ROI
• Enablement resources for sales team to drive
more timely, relevant, and effective follow-up
• A competitive advantage with increased efficiency
and optimal experiences

BEST PR ACTICE #4

Use event data in the lead qualification process

Marketers can score event actions and map those actions to

campaigns in the customer data platform (CDP) or customer
relationship management (CRM) platform to qualify prospects as
they engage with event content. This provides a huge value-add to
both marketing and sales teams.

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RainFocus Takes Adobe
Events to New Heights
The annual Adobe Summit showcases Adobe
Experience Cloud alongside the latest trends
and success stories from customer experience
leaders. As with any hybrid event, the organizers
wanted to maximize value by measuring
performance and gleaning insights.
The solution: the RainFocus platform.
2023 Adobe Summit
by the Numbers
Most importantly, by incorporating the events
40k
Global registrations
channel, Adobe provided marketing that reaches
its customers on every essential channel.
That enabled Summit organizers to become
laser-focused on attendees who were part of
key Adobe go-to-market segmentations.
10k
In-person attendees

Working with the RainFocus platform, the
Adobe-RainFocus joint team achieved a 360°
view of customer activity before, during, and
after the Summit.
30k
For example, Adobe marketers could produce
personalized customer experiences at scale based
on a better understanding of specific product
interests and types of content that go-to-market Virtual attendees
accounts consumed. They could also predict and

11M+
accommodate content consumption behavior
RainFocus ingested multiple data sources into based on persona.
Adobe Experience Platform and stitched together
multiple datasets in Adobe Customer Journey Social interactions
Analytics, an omnichannel analytics solution, using

20M+
a common ID key to arrive at a connected data view
of each customer in Customer Journey Analysis
Workspace. Stakeholders at all levels were able
to perform complex analyses without submitting Engagement minutes
complex queries to data science teams.

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Put the Events Channel
at the Center of Your RainFocus and Adobe have the solutions you need to bring event data into
the omnichannel marketing strategy spotlight. We can help you connect your

Omnichannel Marketing
real-time event data to fuel personalization efforts and accelerate sales cycles.
RainFocus and Adobe can also help you identify a path to a more customer-centric
culture, ensuring your marketing efforts are based on customer data, your most
with the Right Customer valuable asset.

Experience Solutions Ready to learn how you can turn your first-party and zero-party event
data into marketing gold? Learn more about the value of incorporating
the power of the events channel with Adobe and RainFocus.
Event data can be the star of your marketing show—but it’s often
overlooked by other teams. In this eBook, we shared four key
pointers for elevating zero-party and first-party event data across
the entire organization:

1 2 3 4
Incorporate event Connect real-time Use event data to Use event data in the
data into omnichannel data to personalization help create a customer- lead qualification process
marketing strategy efforts and marketing centric culture
automation efforts

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Resources
RainFocus x Adobe

Unlock the Power of Unified Events and Marketing

Adobe

Adobe Customer Journey Analytics

Adobe Experience Platform

RainFocus

RainFocus Platform

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