Event Personalisation: How to Create Relevant Guest Journeys Before, During and After Your Event

Key takeaways

• Event personalisation helps you make each stage of the event more relevant to different guests, from the invitation they receive to the follow-up sent afterwards.
• You don’t need to personalise everything. Focus on the guest information that should change what they receive or how your team responds.
• For B2B events, Marketing can keep control of the event process while Sales and relationship owners contribute the guest knowledge needed for more personal communication and interactions.

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You don’t need to use every field you have about every guest. Focus on details that will help you make a relevant decision or improve that guest’s experience.

Still deciding who you should invite for your B2B events? Read our guide to guest management for corporate hospitality events. 

2. Collect additional information to fill the gaps 

There are helpful details that may not already be covered in your CRM or relationship contexts. You can ask for them through the registration form, and you can also get them from phone conversations or typical email correspondence. 

The goal here is that you only ask for additional information when you know why you need it. For example: 

• Dietary or accessibility needs: Ask so you can make the necessary arrangements before the guest arrives instead of making them explain the same requirement again onsite. 
• Preferred language: Ask when you don’t already know it and need to make event communication easier for the guest to understand. 
• Topic interests: Ask so you can recommend sessions, activities or resources related to what the guest actually wants to get from the event (this depends on your type of event). 
• Whether they’d like to speak with someone during the event: Ask so you can arrange a relevant introduction or make sure the request reaches the appropriate person. 
• Other practical requirements: Ask when the answer will affect seating, access, transport, check-in or another part of the guest’s experience. 
• Consent preferences: Ask so any communication after the event reflects what the guest has agreed to receive. 

Again, before piling questions on your registration form, ask if you’ll do anything differently because you have that information. If there’s no clear action or benefit to the guest, you probably don’t need that information. 

Handling guest data such as dietary or accessibility needs? Make sure you collect and manage it in line with GDPR requirements. Read our guide to GDPR compliance for corporate events. 

3. Send personalised invitations when 1-to-1 communication matters 

Broad campaign messages still have their place. But when an existing relationship is part of why a guest may care about the event, a 1-to-1 invitation can make more sense. 

For example, you can decide: 

• Which guests should receive the general branded campaign. 
• Which customers should hear from their account manager. 
• Which priority prospects should receive personal outreach from Sales. 
• Which VIPs should receive an invitation from the executive, adviser or host they already know. 
• Which guests shouldn’t receive another invitation because they’ve already declined or aren’t relevant to the event. 

The goal here is to make it easier for Marketing to manage the communication centrally and control event branding while still using the right sender for guests who need a more personal invitation. 

With InviteDesk, for example, Marketing can prepare the branded invitation and reminder flow and send invitations on behalf of the guest’s account manager or executive sponsor. The guest receives the message from someone familiar, while Marketing can continue managing the campaign and guest responses. Your Sales team also gets visibility into registrations and responses so they can see who’s expected to attend, as seen below. 

This helps everyone on your team gain visibility into what’s happening as they plan for the event. 

4. Automate pre-event reminders based on guest status 

A reminder should help the guest take the next relevant action, not ask them to do something they’ve already done. That’s why your reminder flow should change as guests respond:

This keeps communication relevant to where the guest is in the process and prevents repetitive emails that make automated personalisation feel impersonal. 

By event day, your team should have enough context to know who’s expected, who needs additional attention and who should be involved when priority guests arrive. 

At arrival: give priority guests a timely, warm welcome 

For priority guests, decide before the event how the front-desk team will recognise them and who should be told when they arrive. For example: 

• If a VIP arrives, the front desk can alert the designated host so the guest isn’t left waiting or welcomed like an anonymous attendee. 
• If an important customer arrives, their account manager can be told while the guest is still onsite, giving them an opportunity to continue an existing relationship in person. 
• If a guest has already shared an accessibility or special requirement, the arrival team can provide the necessary support without making them explain it again at the desk. 

This is where your check-in process can support event personalisation. If the front desk is working from a basic paper list, they may know that somebody registered without knowing why the person matters or what should happen when they arrive. Giving the team the right context helps them trigger the welcome or support you’ve already planned for specific guests. 

For larger arrival setups, that information may need to move between platforms. Vivium, the Belgian insurance provider, for example, uses InviteDesk with fielddrive so registration data flows into self-service check-in and on-demand badge printing, with real-time updates between both systems. 

This means attendees don’t have to repeat information already provided during registration, while staff don’t have to reconcile another guest list at the door. 

You can also use InviteDesk’s ScanApp to alert account owners when their guests check in, so the relationship owner knows their guest is onsite in time to welcome them.  

During the event: adapt the experience to what guests need and do 

During the event, guest information is only useful if your team can act on it in time. When someone needs support, wants an introduction or shows interest in a topic, respond while you can still improve their experience.

The two primary things you should consider at this stage are: Make guest needs visible to the people who can act on them and use engagement signals when they can make something more relevant. 

1. Make guest needs visible to the people who can act on them 

Knowing what a guest needs only helps if the right person can see that information while there’s still time to act on it. For context: 

• If someone asks during registration to speak with a specialist, assign that request to the right person so the introduction can happen during the event. 
• If a guest tells a host they’re interested in a particular subject, the host should know where to direct them, whether that’s a session, resource or relevant person. 
• If someone raises a practical issue onsite, give staff a clear way to pass it to the person who can resolve it instead of leaving the guest to find help themselves. 

New needs may also come up during the event. When they do, capture only the information somebody needs to act on in an event management tool and pass it to the appropriate person while the guest can still benefit from the response. 

2. Use engagement signals when they can make something more relevant 

Guests may also show you what they care about through what they do during the event. The activity itself isn’t personalisation. It becomes useful when it gives you enough context to make something else during the event more relevant. 

Be careful not to infer more than the activity tells you. Someone attending a session on a particular subject may be interested in the topic, but that doesn’t automatically mean they want to speak with Sales. 

If you need richer in-event engagement features to collect these signals, you can use a tool like LineUpr alongside InviteDesk. LineUpr is a self-service app builder for non-technical event organisers to show event agenda, allow attendees to create a personal agenda, live polls, Q&A, surveys, and even provide real-time updates. 

This lets you capture responses to polls, Q&A and other in-event interactions without relying on manual notes. InviteDesk supports the invitation, registration, check-in and attendance side of the workflow, while LineUpr helps you personalise more of the experience while guests are at the event. 

After the event: personalise follow-up based on what happened 

Once the event is over, you have a more complete picture of the guest’s experience. You know whether they attended, whether your team agreed to do anything for them and whether there’s a specific relationship or next step that needs to continue. 

Use that context instead of treating everyone on the registration list as though they had the same experience. 

If a guest asked a question, expressed an interest or requested a meeting during the event, you should already have captured the useful details at that stage. And after the event, make sure the appropriate next action happens. 

For individual follow-up, record:

• What happened; 
• Anything the guest asked for; 
• Anything your team promised;
• Who owns the next action; and
• When it needs to happen. 

Move those details into the CRM or another system the responsible person already uses. This helps them know which guest requires attention, why they require it and what should happen. 

You can use InviteDesk to sync relevant event data to CRMs like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Hubspot and others. This will help your team carry event context into the systems where follow-up happens with ease. 

You also don’t need a completely unique email for every attendee. Guests with similar outcomes can still be grouped into sensible follow-up flows. The important thing is that the message reflects what happened, which makes every message relevant based on their experience. 

Read more: Post event follow-up checklist for B2B events. 

How InviteDesk helps you personalise B2B events

InviteDesk helps B2B event teams use guest and relationship context across invitations, registration, arrival and follow-up without requiring Marketing and Sales to manage separate versions of the event. 

Marketing can manage the event and communication centrally while Sales or account managers contribute what they know about their own guests. This way, Marketing can send invitations on behalf of the relationship owner, keep guest responses and attendance visible to the event team, alert relationship owners when their guests arrive and carry useful event information into CRM workflows afterwards.

This is how companies like Tectum Group use InviteDesk to divide event responsibilities between Marketing and Sales. Marketing creates the invitations, landing pages, reminders and thank-you emails, while Sales invites the right customers and monitors registrations. 

The goal here is to use the context that matters to make the right moments more relevant to the guest. And with InviteDesk, you can record those contexts and make it visible to the teams that need it. 

Book an InviteDesk demo to see how the workflow works for your team.  

Want The result is an event where guests are more likely to feel supported, which can help move the relationship forward. 

Book an InviteDesk demo to see how it works for your team