The Future of Event Marketing: Trends and Challenges [Infographic]

In a world where digital interactions are increasingly dominating our work and personal lives, even screen-addicted Millennials are starting to prefer in-person interactions over digital ones.

This is one of the many reasons why event marketing is cited as one of the most effective marketing channels, even above other trusted tactics such as digital advertising and email marketing.

To paint a clearer picture of the trends and challenges that will shape the event marketing landscape in the coming year, here is a comprehensive list of event marketing statistics.

You can view the visual summary of this post below or skip ahead to read a detailed list of statistics on business trends, promotional trends, event challenges and technology trends.

Business Trends

• Most marketers (31%) believe that events are the single-most effective marketing channel over digital advertising, email marketing and content marketing.
• 95% of marketers agree that live events provide attendees with a valuable opportunity to form in-person connections in an increasingly digital world.
• The majority of marketers (63%) plan on investing more in live events in the future both in budget and number of events.
• 80% of businesses that are overperforming in regards to their company goals will increase their live event budgets next year.
• 50% of marketers say that their organization is “very committed” to planning live events.

Promotional Trends

• 73% of marketers have increased the use of videos.
• 88% of companies use social media to increase awareness before an event.
• 76% of event organizers use Twitter to promote their events.
• Most marketers (40%) believe email marketing is the single-most effective channel to promote an event.
• 62% of marketers who use email marketing to promote their events use event management software.

Event Challenges

• 46% of marketers claimed that curating content and building their event agenda are the most time consuming aspects of event planning.
• 36% of event marketers said that their biggest challenge is increasing event registration.
• 29% of event marketers said that increasing revenue from event was their biggest challenge.
• 16% of event planners consider acquiring sponsors their biggest challenge.
• 70% of marketers say that the need to validate results from event sponsorship has increased over past 2 years.

Technology Trends

• An overwhelming majority of event marketers (86%) believe that technology can have a major positive impact on the success of their events.
• Event technology can help increase event attendance by 20%, increase productivity by 27%, and decrease costs by 20–30%.
• 75% of event professionals who don’t use event apps intend to adopt them.
• The top 3 features that event organizers want in an event app are: onsite registration 19%, registration within app 16%, and content capture 15%.
• 80% of professional organizers planning B2B events currently use some sort of event management software.

The original version of this post first appeared on Visme’s Visual Learning Center.