How to Predict Event Attendance with AI

Splash is an event technology company with an AI tool that predicts event attendance.

The tool, called Attendance Insights, predicts event attendance based on thousands of similar events hosted on the company's platform.

It then provides recommendations on how to improve attendance.

We spoke with Splash's Director of Product Marketing, Zach Napolitano, to learn how the company's AI works and how it can help you knock your next event out of the park.

In a single sentence or statement, describe Splash.

Splash is a global event marketing technology company that enables businesses to host live, hybrid, and virtual events at scale.

How does Splash use artificial intelligence in its products?

Splash has introduced the event industry’s first predictive AI tool: Attendance Insights. A machine-learning tool that predicts event attendance based on tens of thousands of similar events hosted on Splash, Attendance Insights also provides data-backed recommendations to improve expected attendance.

What are the primary marketing use cases for your AI-powered solutions?

Marketing teams can hit their attendance goals across in-person, virtual, and hybrid events with the recommendations provided by Attendance Insights. These recommendations to strategically tackle attendance from all marketing angles, including machine learning informed tips for:

• Enhancing email open rates for invitations
• Strategically scheduling reminder email cadences
• Boosting page views through promotional channels
• Targeting attendance from senior job titles

What makes your AI-powered solution smarter than traditional approaches and products?

Attendance is frequently cited as one of the biggest challenges for event marketers. They pull out all of the stops to promote an event without knowing how these efforts will result on the big day.

Analysis would require an exhaustive look at past email and page performance, coupled with guest list comparison—all with specific event type and format in mind. This kind of undertaking demands time and resources that today’s marketers unfortunately lack.

Attendance Insights gives marketers an edge by digesting and understanding their attendance goals, then using thousands of insights—modeled based on data from industry leaders like Amazon, TikTok, and Zoom—to help them discover trends and optimize toward their desired outcomes.

Are there any minimum requirements for marketers to get value out of your AI-powered technology? (e.g. data, list size, etc.)

Customers who run their full event programs on Splash will benefit from insights sourced from a wealth of personalized guest and page data.

New Splash customers can still leverage insights based on data from tens of thousands of historical events hosted on the platform that most closely resemble theirs.

Who are your ideal customers in terms of company size and industries?

Splash’s best-performing customers are global Enterprise businesses in the software, legal, finance, hospitality, media and internet, and telecommunications space.

Our platform is built for small to medium sized events, hosted at scale. We have over 20 industry leaders hosting upwards of 200 events every month on our platform.

What do you see as the limitations of AI as it exists today?

To date, AI tools have helped marketers automate tedious tasks like creating event content and writing promotional messaging, but the challenge of boosting attendance requires strategic guidance.

Attendance Insights doesn’t only analyze historical data, but it also forecasts potential attendance based on factors like past event performance, audience engagement metrics, and guest list size.

What do you see as the future potential of AI in marketing?

Attendance Insights is just the first AI tool Splash is offering to customers. We’ll continue to invest in recommendation-based technology that mimics the role of a “co-pilot” for event marketers.

In addition to suggesting recommendations to increase attendance, our platform has the opportunity to dive one step further by offering recommendations on who to invite to achieve the best possible event ROI.

In the future, AI can become more contextual within our platform. This includes places like emails, where AI can give actual recommendations on subject line, tone, and length, the event page, where AI can make suggestions around event description or optimal event imagery, and for virtual events, AI that can spot the best places in the webinar recording to cut clips for social media.

Any other thoughts on AI in marketing, or advice for marketers who are just starting with AI?

The last time a single topic like AI dominated the industry was the rise of virtual events during the 2020 pandemic.

It was the #1 topic every marketer was thinking about. There were initial doubts about the effectiveness of events like webinars, but over time, the impact of virtual events became inevitable and undeniable. Today, leaders in marketing rely on a mix of in-person and virtual events to engage buyers and customers across the entire sales lifecycle.

AI is no different. It’s facing that same skepticism, but the tools that empower marketers to do their jobs easier, faster, and more efficiently will stick around.

If you’re just starting to adopt an AI tool into your strategy, consider questions like:

• Does this tool require me to step out of my workflow / event tech?
• Can I demonstrate the impact this tool had from a time savings or event ROI perspective?
• Can I easily onboard another teammate to this tool?
• Bottom line, consider whether it’s “help or hype.”