01 Setup
The brief is pipeline attribution.
A European technology company runs a 1,200-person flagship conference with an exhibition hall and hosted-buyer programme.
Marketing needs to know which sessions and meetings move deals forward.
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Start my shortlist Stack Autopsies
When event tech breaks
at the seams.
Three real event tech stacks. Named tools. Documented seams. Scroll to see where the data stops flowing.
Start with the problem closest to yours
Autopsy / 01
The Matchmaking Gap
B2B Conference — 1,200 Attendees
Failure mode Data silo in the matchmaking layer
The Matchmaking Gap
Bizzabo sends rich event data to HubSpot and attendee data to Grip, but Grip meeting outcomes reach HubSpot only through a manual spreadsheet export.
02 Stack
One strong core. One specialist layer.
Bizzabo runs registration, the event site and app, SmartBadge check-in, session tracking and the on-demand hub. HubSpot is the destination for campaign, engagement and nurture data.
Grip adds the sophisticated matchmaking needed for the hosted-buyer programme.
03 Flow
The primary pipeline works beautifully.
Bizzabo and HubSpot exchange registration, attendance, badge-scan and content-engagement signals through a native integration.
The team can attribute pipeline influence within 48 hours of the event closing.
48h to attribute pipeline influence
04 The break
The meeting outcomes stop here.
Grip receives attendee data from Bizzabo, but hosted-buyer meeting outcomes are exported manually into a spreadsheet.
Sales can see event engagement in the CRM, but the matchmaking result sits partially outside the main stack.
05 Lesson
Trust the weakest link, not the strongest.
A polished primary integration made the stack feel connected. The commercially important seam was the specialist layer that still depended on one manual report.
The team plans to close it with Zapier in 2027.
Autopsy / 02
The Three-Hub Problem
Association Congress — 4,500 Attendees
Failure mode Ongoing integration and reconciliation tax
The Three-Hub Problem
Cvent, Cadmium and iMIS are three equal hubs joined by custom middleware, API pulls and export pipelines that require active maintenance.
01 Setup
The work cannot live in one place.
A 4,500-person association congress needs complex registration, abstract review, scientific scheduling, CPD tracking and durable member records.
The event rotates between three European cities, but the data still has to follow every delegate.
02 Stack
Three jobs. Three systems of gravity.
Cvent owns registration and exhibitors. Cadmium owns the scientific programme and CPD. iMIS remains the association's member system of record.
Each platform is the hub for a different part of the event.
03 Flow
The data moves—but it needs supervision.
Cvent and iMIS use custom middleware maintained by internal IT. Cadmium pulls attendee data from Cvent, then sends CPD records to iMIS.
Every connection works differently, and every one requires active maintenance.
3 platform hubs joined by 2 integration layers
04 The break
There is no dramatic snap.
The architecture itself creates more points of failure, more vendor coordination and more staff time spent reconciling data.
The three specialist hubs slowly pull against one another.
05 Lesson
Sometimes the stack taxes you every day.
No single vendor matched the quality of all three specialists across registration, abstracts, CPD and AMS integration.
The pragmatic answer was to keep the best-of-breed stack and invest in better middleware.
Autopsy / 03
The Virtual Blind Spot
Hybrid Roadshow — 8 Cities
Failure mode Uneven engagement depth across attendance modes
The Virtual Blind Spot
RainFocus connects cleanly to Salesforce and Calendly while Brightcove's embedded virtual stream produces thinner engagement data than on-site scanning.
01 Setup
Eight cities. One pipeline view.
A software company runs the same half-day roadshow across eight cities in one quarter, with an optional virtual simulcast for people who cannot attend in person.
Field marketing needs to compare qualified pipeline contribution by city.
8 cities in one quarter
02 Stack
The leanest stack is deliberate.
RainFocus templates each city's registration and governs the central dataset. Brightcove supplies the embedded stream, Calendly keeps meetings simple, and Salesforce receives the event record.
A travelling field team cannot babysit fragile middleware at every stop.
03 Flow
The core stack answers the city question.
RainFocus sends attendee records, meetings and engagement into Salesforce through its native connector. The resulting report compares pipeline contribution across stops.
The external layers stay intentionally shallow.
04 The break
Same event. Different data depth.
On-site badge scanning produces session-level engagement. Brightcove records stream start and drop-off, but not the same granular session signals.
Virtual engagement reaches the model with less detail than on-site behavior.
On-site · session-level signals Virtual · stream start + drop-off
05 Lesson
What you do not instrument, you cannot compare.
The simple architecture solved the operational problem, but the virtual layer remained less measurable than the physical event.
The team is evaluating ON24 for deeper attention and content-interaction analytics.
Autopsy complete
Every stack has seams.
The question is whether you find them before event day—or during.
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