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Are You Marketing the Event or the Experience? Three Lessons for Event Marketing Strategy

If you're writing event marketing copy right now, there's a question worth sitting with before you send the next campaign email: are you selling the event, or are you selling what changes for the person who shows up?



I spent a day at the Human2Human Forum in Dubai last month, consulting with the organisers at GRS Research & Strategy. Nine sessions, speakers from Informa, dmg events, Atlantis, DWTC, Bocconi University. No exhibition hall. Just people who run in-person experiences talking honestly about what's actually driving growth and why. Three things stuck with me, and I haven't stopped thinking about how they apply to the way we brief, write, and measure event marketing.


The first is the post-COVID exhibitor data. Enrico Gallorini shared Explori/UFI/SISO benchmark figures across thousands of exhibitions globally: before COVID, exhibitor NPS sat at minus 14. After the return, it jumped to plus 10. Satisfaction rose from 3.55 to 3.80. Likelihood of return went from 3.87 to over 4. These aren't numbers from people who are just glad to be back in the room. They're numbers from people who understood, for the first time, what they'd actually lost. Enrico's argument is that in-person experience has already become a luxury product, not because it's expensive, but because being fully present with people who care about the same thing you do is becoming genuinely rare. If that's true, and the data suggests it is, then your next registration campaign probably shouldn't open with "join 500+ exhibitors across 30,000 sqm." It should open with the thing the reader can't get from a webinar.


The second is the ADIPEC story. Geoff Dickinson described how a small, national, biannual oil and gas show under competitive threat grew to 239,000 visitors over fifteen years. The UK's Energy Industries Council called it the Glastonbury of energy shows, which tells you something about how emotionally committed people are to being there every year. The decision that drove the growth is the interesting part: Geoff said they deliberately chose not to optimise for margin. They put the money into content, ministerial panels, CEO sessions, fireside chats, round tables, plenary sessions, and obsessed over whether people felt something rather than whether the P&L looked tidy. Lower margin, more revenue, built entirely on emotional commitment. Most of us in event marketing spend our days on the measurable stuff, cost per registration, open rates, conversion funnels, and that matters. But ADIPEC is a fifteen-year case study in what happens when you invest in the thing that's harder to measure and let the returns follow. It raises a fair question about where the balance sits in your own marketing budget.


The third is about AI, and specifically about what it shouldn't be used for. Professor Gianluca Salviotti from Bocconi University laid out five principles for AI in live experiences, drawing on Brunello Cucinelli's idea of "gentle digitalisation." His line was: AI cleans the path, humans walk it. Use data before the event to design better connections. Use automation to handle the logistics and admin that get in the way of the experience. But don't let the tech become the thing people interact with. Nobody flies to Dubai for a chatbot. For anyone adding AI features to an event app or automating attendee touchpoints right now, it's a useful filter: is this removing friction from the experience, or is it replacing the reason someone came in person?


I've been thinking about what ties all three together, and I think it's this: the brief has changed. Not in a dramatic, throw-everything-out way. More that the events seeing the strongest results are treating their marketing as an extension of the experience itself, not just a funnel that gets people through the door. The copy, the creative, the measurement, all of it shifts when you stop describing what's happening at the event and start describing what happens to the person who's there.


And honestly? That's a more interesting brief to work on.


What does this actually mean for event marketing strategy?


On the "experience as luxury" point: Next time you're writing a registration email or landing page, try leading with a sensory or emotional detail instead of the logistics. Not "Join 500+ exhibitors across 30,000 sqm of exhibition space" but something closer to "For three days, you'll be in a room with the people shaping the future of your industry, and every conversation is one you chose to have." The logistics still go in the email. They just don't lead it. Put the dates, venue, and numbers in the second half, after you've given the reader a reason to care.


On the content-drives-emotion point: Look at your event's content programme and ask whether your marketing treats it as the product or as a line item. Most event websites bury the conference agenda three clicks deep and lead with floorplan and exhibitor lists. If your content is what makes people emotionally committed to attending, it should be the first thing they see, and your campaign copy should sell specific sessions the way you'd recommend a specific talk to a colleague: "The panel on [topic] last year changed how I think about [x]. This year they're going further."


On the AI point: Before you add any AI feature to your event experience, run it through Salviotti's filter: does this remove friction, or does it remove presence? A matchmaking tool that suggests relevant people to meet before the event? That removes friction. An AI chatbot that replaces the help desk during the event? That removes presence. The distinction sounds simple but it catches a surprising number of planned features that sound innovative on a slide deck but would actually make the in-person experience feel less human.


Thanks to Enrico Gallorini and the team at GRS Research & Strategy for putting the Human2Human Forum together. And to everyone who presented so openly.


Exhibitor data: Explori / UFI / SISO, Global Exhibitor KPI Benchmark, 2017–2024.



I'm Natalie Gurney, founder of Marketing Alchemist. Over fifteen years at tier-one organisers, including dmg events and Informa Markets, I've directed marketing for major exhibitions across the Middle East and Asia, building the campaigns, content strategies, and commercial narratives that turn events into experiences people come back for.

If you're rethinking how your event marketing positions the experience rather than the logistics, and you need someone who understands both the strategic shift and the operational reality of making it happen, let's talk. Marketing Alchemist provides hands-on support for campaign messaging, content strategy, and marketing team capability building alongside strategic guidance.


Ready to talk event marketing strategy? Contact us today, or email: natalie@marketing-alchemist.co

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