Staying nimble

Cvent’s goal is “getting the friction” out of meeting and event planning, says McNeel Keenan, vice president of product management for the Tysons-based global event marketing and management company.

To do that, Cvent offers software products that handle registration, check-in, budgeting, marketing, speaker and exhibitor management for in-person, hybrid and virtual events. Hotels use tools such as Cvent Passkey to manage room blocks and Cvent Diagramming to manage multiple large events.

These products can streamline many time-consuming tasks, like responding to request for proposal (RFP) applicants, Keenan says. However, Cvent’s AI-powered tools “help craft a faster response,” he notes. Also, the company offers an annual user conference that includes training camps, tech tours and meetups.

This year marks Cvent’s 25th year in business. In 1999, CEO Reggie Aggarwal started the company with six employees, and it became profitable for the first time in 2004. Four years later, the company started the Cvent Supplier Network of venues. Then in 2013, Aggarwal took the company public, but in 2016, the company was purchased by Vista Equity Partners and taken private again.

With the pandemic came an important shift for all meeting planners and other industry professionals, including those at Cvent. The company began hosting virtual and hybrid events on a new virtual event platform launched in August 2020, and at the end of 2021, it went public for the second time. At the end of 2023, Cvent had about 4,800 employees and 22,000 customers worldwide, and it was back to in-person events.

And the deals weren’t yet done; in 2023, private equity firm Blackstone purchased Cvent for $4.6 billion, and in 2024, Cvent made several significant purchases.

In January the company acquired Jifflenow, which schedules and manages B2B appointments, and iCapture, which captures website visitor information for leads.

In June, it acquired Reposite to power the Cvent Vendor Marketplace, a network of more than 40,000 vendor offerings. 

And in September, Cvent bought Splash, an event marketing technology company that Keenan says is geared to “simpler, field marketing events,” such as lunches, dinners and parties that take place alongside larger trade shows.

Smooth sailing

Aggarwal said in a statement that the company’s M&A strategy is driven by customers, “and we hear all the time that our customers want one platform, seamless data flow and an improved attendee and customer experience. Each of our recent acquisitions has been a strategic move to address these needs and expand our capabilities to better support our tens of thousands of customers.”

Organizations want the flexibility to run a mix of formats and event types, which optimizes their budgets, “something that is even more compelling in an uncertain or challenging macroeconomic environment,” according to Aggarwal.

Artificial intelligence is the next frontier in events management, “but candidly, I think we’re still a ways away from seeing what it can really do for our industry,” he says. “Cvent focuses on the practical application of AI across its platform because we want to make it easy for all of our customers to harness the power of AI in their day-to-day lives.”

The company has already rolled out
20 AI-related initiatives — including predictive modeling for registration planning, personalization tools, AI-powered event diagramming and chatbots.

In-person events continue to be the priority, Aggarwal says. The reason is simple, he added: 65% of planners say in-person events are more valuable to their stakeholders now when compared with 2019.

“That said, virtual events and hybrid events are still core aspects of a successful total event program,” Aggarwal notes.

Coming out of the pandemic, Keenan says, organizers have learned that a hybrid event can require the work of running both a virtual event and an in-person one.

As a result, “ambitions are pared back,” he says. “Now planners are making the conscious decisioning to dial it back a bit. They’re thinking of their budget. People are asking what makes sense, and so we’re seeing more balance.”

Since the pandemic, organizers also have learned that “people now expect the content to be recorded. You can capture it and get more value,” he says.

Zero to 60

CAIS, a New York-based alternative investment platform for independent financial advisers, “has gone from zero to 60” using Cvent products, according to Andrew DePaul, its senior vice president of marketing.

“Our first event with Cvent three years ago was basically a trial run, an internal meeting in Brooklyn,” DePaul says, but there was plenty of work on the line, because CAIS held more than 100 events in 2022.

So far, DePaul says Cvent’s products have helped boost attendance at its 2022 and 2023 Alternative Investment Summit; the third summit was scheduled in October, and “I think we will break records,” DePaul says.

What helps event planners break attendance records is what Keenan calls the “bespoke experience” Cvent offers. The big thing, he says “is to enable organizers to personalize the experience” for each attendee.

In CAIS’s case, the Attendee Hub app, which connects attendees to all the content, networking and sponsors the event has to offer, is especially helpful, according to DePaul. “Through Hub’s one-on-one feature, people can see everybody else attending. They can connect and have a meeting on their own. We’ve ramped it up and we’re seeing better engagement. We definitely will be all-in again next year.”

CAIS is making plans to take its summit on the road and has been hosting smaller scale events such as round table dinners. Cvent’s products are useful for small events — and for small businesses, DePaul says. “They’re good at working with you, so you’re buying the things you need. You don’t have to do a whole package.”

Two products coming online soon are aimed at smaller users, such as nonprofit organizations.

Cvent Essentials, which is in beta, is a pared down version of the Cvent platform that is designed for occasional users and has templates to support various types of meetings with different support and resources.

Also in the works is Event in a Box, a check-in and badging program that can be used for events with up to 250 attendees.

Cvent’s wide variety of products was on display at this year’s Cannes Film Festival in southern France.

No, Keenan says, “we were not running the film festival itself,” but big sponsors such as Spotify and TikTok find new markets for themselves at Cannes by “running their own events on the side.” That’s where Cvent comes in.