How to understand attendees and personalise their experience with EVA

Clara and Marcos register for the same conference, but they are looking for different things. Clara wants to find suppliers of reusable materials. Marcos wants to understand how to automate attendee support. If both receive exactly the same recommendations, part of your programme may remain undiscovered.

Personalisation with EVA starts before you write to them. Registration questions provide context; EVA uses it in conversations, and EVA Insights helps you work with those interests and create audiences. You can then decide what to communicate, what to recommend and what you want to learn during the event.

Ask something that will change a decision

A registration question is useful when you know what you will do with the answer. “Which topics interest you?” can guide a session recommendation. “What kinds of people would you like to meet?” provides information for finding relevant people. Asking for a preference you will not use only adds work to the form.

Start with your event’s purpose. At a conference on event technology, you could ask what attendees want to improve: communication with attendees, team knowledge management or audience analysis. Those options should correspond to content or experiences you will actually offer.

Closed answers help you form groups using consistent criteria. An open answer adds detail: “I work at an agency and need to reduce enquiries about transfers.” You can combine both formats without turning registration into a lengthy interview.

Consider what you already know too. If the ticket type determines workshop access, you do not need to ask again whether the person can attend. Keep that information and connect it with their interests. A good match on topic does not overcome an access restriction.

From registration to a specific recommendation

Registration information reaches EVA through the relevant integration or the data the organising team provides. Useful data retains its meaning: who answered, what they selected and which event it belongs to.

Suppose Clara selects “reusable materials” and says she is looking for suppliers. The process could look like this:

Information collected	How it is used	Possible action
Interest in reusable materials	Guides content recommendations	Suggest a session on reuse in event production
Looking for suppliers	Adds context to a networking enquiry	Search for relevant profiles among available participants
Ticket with workshop access	Determines which activity she can attend	Send workshop instructions to people with access
Wants examples she can apply at an agency	Clarifies her need	Prioritise practical content when answering

EVA also needs to know about the sessions and their conditions. An interest in a profile, without programme information, is not enough to produce a useful recommendation.

Clara: What would you recommend this afternoon? I’m looking for suppliers I could work with.

EVA: The reusable materials session includes supplier examples and starts at 16:00. It fits the interest you selected at registration. You can also ask me about attendee profiles related to that topic.

The conversation gives Clara a suggestion she can accept, reject or refine. If she replies that she is now looking for lighting solutions, EVA receives information more recent than her registration choice. The system and organising team need to be able to distinguish that update from a fixed detail on her ticket.

Create audiences for relevant communications

An audience groups people who meet a useful criterion for an action. With EVA Insights, you can work with the available information about their interests and profiles to create those groups, rather than repeat an identical message across the attendee database.

For example, you can prepare a reusable materials workshop reminder for people who selected that topic and hold the appropriate ticket. Another group could receive content about AI agents. In EVA you prepare messages and their sends; if you want to use a list in your email marketing tool, check how export or connection works in your configuration.

A message can be personalised using closed registration answers, ticket type or attendee profile. EVA’s conversational replies can use more context. It helps to distinguish those two tasks so it does not appear that every scheduled message is automatically written and selected for each person.

Sponsor campaigns may also be relevant, but interest in a topic does not mean someone wants to buy, or authorise handing their details to any sponsor. Prepare a relevant proposal and decide which use of information is appropriate for the event. The audience helps with selection; it does not replace that decision.

Learn about your audience before the doors open

Aggregated interests can guide content decisions before the event. If registration shows interest in practical implementation examples, you can review whether you have left enough room for demonstrations or practical questions.

Some adjustments may still be within reach: adding a question to a panel discussion, preparing supporting material or highlighting a confirmed session. Changing the whole programme once everything is contracted may create a different problem. Use the information for decisions you can carry out.

Keep the answers of registered attendees separate from overall market demand. A topic standing out in that group does not prove that all professionals are interested, or that those people will attend the session. It is a signal to prepare their experience better and then check what happened.

Keep learning through conversations

EVA’s objectives help collect information during the event when it fits the conversation. You can define that you want to understand which examples the audience needs or which topics they want to explore, and EVA introduces a relevant question.

Clara: The materials session was useful, but I was looking for something more specific on lighting.

EVA: Are you more interested in reducing energy consumption or reusing equipment across productions?

Clara: Reusing equipment. That is what I want to work on for the next event.

This answer refines the interest and can guide future recommendations. It is different from a satisfaction rating: Clara can be happy with the session and need other content. Combining both details in a single score would lose that distinction.

EVA does not necessarily know what each attendee has physically done. In this example, Clara provides the session context. Other signals may come from connected systems, where they exist. Define questions around the information actually available, and avoid asking as if everyone had participated in the same thing.

Turn what you learn into an improvement for the next event

Learning has value when it leads to a decision. After the conference, you can review requests about lighting and consider a dedicated workshop next time. To contact a group, prepare an audience with relevant interests and check whether they are still current.

Across events from the same organiser, audience knowledge adds continuity: a returning attendee does not start from scratch each time. A preference from months ago may still have changed. Conversation gives you a way to check it and add new information.

Keep the final survey as another source. Conversations collect information from people who interact with EVA; the survey collects it from those who answer. Neither automatically represents everyone. When presenting results to the client, distinguish what you know, which group it comes from and what you still need to check.

You can begin with one well-prepared sequence: a registration question, a recommendation and a message for a specific audience. EVA and EVA Insights connect that process. The next time Clara asks what she should see, the answer can use what she has already told you, and your team can use it to prepare the event too.