While some elements in the marketing technology stack have significantly evolved over the last decade – think intent, ABM, and advertising – event technology hasn’t experienced the same pace of advancement.
Event technology has long been an essential but often overlooked piece of the event puzzle even though event strategists – responding to the evolving preferences and behaviors of their own audiences – demand more than just reliability. They demand (and deserve) innovation.
At Streampoint, this gap represents an exciting opportunity for transformation. Having joined as Vice President of Product and Sales Engineering last year, I know that Streampoint’s commitment to continuous innovation – and doing right by the event planners we serve – has a refreshed urgency. At IMEX, we launched the most current event management platform on the market, Aura. Our focus on advancing event professionals and saving them time is sharper than ever, and I’m excited to share the five tech trends that inspire our product managers, designers, and engineers as we push the boundaries of what event tech can deliver.
💻🔄 AI-Driven Automation
We pay close attention to the cross-industry, transformational impact of artificial intelligence (AI), taking inspiration from AI applications in both consumer tech and other leading business software. In our latest release, this inspiration translated to a leapfrog in automation capabilities in event tech. Taking inspiration from Wix, Squarespace, and others, we enabled the creation of event registration websites with just a few prompts. Not stopping there, Aura also analyzes the answers to these same prompts to create ready-to-use marketing materials, website section suggestions, and more.
Going forward, our applications of AI will play a central role in further automating routine tasks and optimizing event logistics, as well as personalizing attendee experiences and boosting exhibitor returns.
🧑🤝🧑🤝 Advanced CRM and Member Database Integration
Deeper integration of CRM and association member databases with event management software enhances relationship management with registrants and attendees well beyond post-event follow-up.
For enterprises, event-driven data are key to personalization and insights that improve lead scoring, power audience segmentation, and enable better-targeted campaigns and increased conversion rates throughout the funnel.
On the association side, integrating with membership databases provides significant advantages, such as seamless registration processes that automatically verify membership status and apply discounts where applicable. It also allows for the real-time updating of member profiles based on event engagement, supporting more customized outreach and retention strategies.
This level of integration is reflected in Streampoint’s registration capabilities, with features like member lookup through our group registration module and allowing exhibitors to find and add staff from prior years, making group registration a breeze.
What’s next? As we continue to innovate, we’re focusing on expanding our existing integrations to further streamline data flows between systems, driving efficiency and deepening customer insights.
🔒🛡️ Data Privacy and Security Enhancements
A cybersecurity incident involving a prominent registration and lead-retrieval provider underscores the critical importance of robust data privacy and security measures in event technology. The breach led to significant disruptions in major trade shows, affecting both organizers and participants.
This event highlights the criticality of event tech companies to prioritize safeguarding sensitive information and ensuring uninterrupted service.
Streampoint is steadfast in its commitment to implementing advanced security protocols, conducting regular system audits, and providing comprehensive training to our team. Our goal is to protect our clients from potential threats and deliver a secure, seamless experience for all users.
Of course, Streampoint’s behind-the-scenes efforts here include enhancing security protocols within the product according to regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and PCI as well as staying current with the dynamic landscape of PII/data retention policies and how that data is shared across integrated platforms. Further, we’re making it easier for organizers to delete the right data at the right time and implementing Granular Access Controls, role-based permissions to limit access to sensitive data, ensuring only authorized personnel can interact with critical information.
⏱️📊 Real-Time Analytics and Data Visualization
Digital marketing investments have started yielding diminishing returns across different channels due to shifting buyer behaviors, regulatory changes, and increased competition. Events are more intimate, engaging, and relevant for attendees while instilling trust within a brand. This means events are poised to be a dominant channel in lead generation and demand creation – and event organizers are poised to be revenue heroes – as long as they can speak to their impact. Real-time analytics and data visualization tools provide event organizers with immediate insights into event performance, attendee engagement, and ROI. By linking event insights to broader customer engagement metrics, event planners can track the impact of events on the sales pipeline or membership growth with greater precision.
At Streampoint, we recognize that empowering event planners goes beyond offering foundational tools—it’s about providing immediate, actionable insights that amplify their strategic role in an organization. Aura supports event planners with real-time analytics:
➡️ Robust reporting foundation: Aura offers a suite of prebuilt reports and features a powerful report-generation tool that functions like a BI tool.
➡️ Fully customized reports: Event organizers can create fully customized reports using any dataset, apply advanced filters with operators, and highlight key data points for quick and easy visibility providing invaluable insights into attendee engagement, ticket sales, and other essential metrics.
➡️ Real-time tracking: Planners can access live data on check-in rates, session attendance, and even engagement touchpoints, all accessible on intuitive dashboards that translate numbers into clear visuals.
🌱🎟️ Sustainable Event Technology
There is a growing trend towards sustainability in event management, with technology playing a key role in reducing the carbon footprint of events. We see this need reflected in analyst reports as well as incoming requests for proposals and expect this will become increasingly important to event planners and the organizations they represent.
In addition to our existing eco-badge option, we’re cognizant of the waste production that events can cause and seek to reduce our own footprint in our operations outside the product. We prioritize energy-efficient partners in our sourcing, seek to enable carbon offsetting through donation modules in Registration, and commit to identifying and implementing environmentally friendly tactics in our product development and deployment.
🚀🌟 Pushing Event Management Boundaries Forward
But we’re not stopping there. As we look to the future, our team is exploring innovative data visualization techniques, from predictive analytics that forecast attendee interest or onsite staffing need, to AI-driven sentiment analysis that gauges the mood of the event in real-time. By evolving our analytics and visualization capabilities, we aim to provide event planners with the tools to create data-driven narratives that speak directly to revenue impact, membership growth, and long-term brand engagement. Our goal is to make event management and insights as comprehensive and accessible as possible, ultimately transforming event planners into indispensable contributors to their organization’s success.
Ready to transform the way you manage events? Experience firsthand how Streampoint’s innovative solutions, like Aura, are empowering event planners to save time, drive insights, and create meaningful impacts. Request a demo today and discover how we can help you push the boundaries of event management forward.
