Meet the company using AI to optimize events

As AI places sales leaders at a crossroads, the benefits of brand growth and pipeline expansion in other channels are more crucial than ever. Enter events: These often glitzy gatherings of peers in occasionally far-flung locations are becoming essential for elevating a brand and growing relationships.

It seems B2B event intelligence and marketing platform Vendelux wants to make that trip more of a sure thing. It’s attempting to walk the fine line between what AI can do well, and how that can help humans optimize costly and time-consuming in-person encounters.

The best of both worlds: Alex Reynolds, Vendelux’s co-founder and CEO, said many companies were looking to different mediums to find pipeline.

“We’re seeing budgets definitely be reallocated toward events,” Reynolds said. “It was 25%–30% a year ago. That’s going up to 30%–40+% as people are shifting dollars over.”

For Reynolds, this means showing up prepared is more important than ever. The platform’s AI technology integrates with CRMs to make sure that event data is integrated quickly, so humans can capitalize on the potential pipeline. In practice, AI makes sure calendars are booked and the correct personnel are sent to meetings with ICPs at each and every event.

“You should be able to say: Based on your pipeline, based on the exact companies that you’re working on deals with, you should go because you have $1 million or $5 million worth of value that you can touch at this event,” Reynolds said.

Not only can this data be used to determine proper deployment for events and teams, it can be used internally to help event marketers get the most return on their investments.

Optimizing human interaction: Natalie Jagoda is an event marketer at data storage and management company Qumulo, where she regularly meets with sellers to create events that can uncover new pipeline.

“You can always put together something fun and exciting, but if it’s not directly in correlation to [sales teams’] business objectives, their sales motions, they’re not going to care. They’re not going to help you drive registrations,” Jagoda said.

Jagoda said Vendelux helps her decide where money is best spent, and how resources in relation to an event can best be deployed.

“[Vendelux has] an ROI calculator on their platform. I was actually showing my boss the other day: If we’re trying to think ahead to sign up for some of these large trade shows, we can plug in numbers like how many people we think we’ll get at our booth [and] how much we’re going to be spending on our sponsorship,” Jagoda said.

Beyond this, Jagoda said she uses ROI and event data to prep sellers with follow-up strategies after events, which also helps uncover future pipeline opportunities.

The road ahead: While building out pipeline coverage will always be top of mind for sellers, there are opportunities outside their immediate sales funnel that can help supercharge dealmaking. AI continues to change the contours of these channels, and where events are concerned, there is ample opportunity for greater synergy between the teams in a rev org near you.