Your Guide to the 7-Step Event Tech Framework

Welcome! Since this is my first article, let me introduce myself and share why I’m passionate about event technology.

I've spent my entire career in corporate America, starting at Intel straight out of college. There, I joined the internal events team who took on management of the annual sales kickoff each year.

Surrounded by seasoned professionals, I was thrown into projects focused on emerging event technology. Back then, mobile event apps were just taking off. Researching these tools quickly became a passion, and I set out to become an expert across the six major categories of event tech. Over five years, I earned a promotion to Event Technology Strategist within a newly formed Event Center of Excellence. There, my focus was on helping marketers, IT, and event managers choose the best tech for each Intel event.

As our portfolio grew, managing various event types, each with unique budgets, audiences, and goals, it became increasingly complex, especially for new planners. As I shifted into my last role at Intel, Capabilities Manager, I created this framework to help the teams identify the ideal mix of technologies for any event scenario, which I still use and now want to share with you today.

Who this Framework Helps

Whether your company already has trusted vendors and platforms, or you’re starting from scratch, this flexible framework guides you in defining the best event tech options and crafting an actionable plan.

...If you need help with vendor selection, RFPs, or building your stack from zero, I’ll cover those in a future article.

TLDR: The Seven-Step Event Tech Framework

Step 1: Budget & Support  

Evaluate your resources. Your budget determines what support models you can access:

• Self-Service: Use internally funded tools, requiring time and personal expertise.
• Fully Supported: Tap into centrally managed platforms or teams, if available.
• Agency Supported: For complex needs and quick turnarounds, agencies offer expertise, but sometimes at a higher cost.

Identify your budget and preferred support early to streamline planning.

Step 2: Event Type, Audience & Content

Classify your event:

• Event Delivery: In-person, hybrid, or virtual.
• Audience: Employees, unknown external (public), or known external (B2B, B2C, press, minors).
• Content: Gated (confidential): Requires Identity verification and secure platforms and Un-gated (public): Often for marketing; less strict access controls.

Step 3: Registration, Website & Communication

Your event management tool is the central hub for registration, content, and communications. Match your tech stack to your budget, support model, event type, audience, and content requirements. For example:

• No budget? Use internal options like Microsoft 365 (Outlook, SharePoint, Teams)
• Large budget? Consider robust platforms (Cvent, Rainfocus, Bizzabo) and agency support for scale.

Step 4: Selecting your Event Technology

Choose solutions across these major categories:

• Event Management Platforms
• Attendee Engagement Tools
• Event Infrastructure
• Analytics & Measurement
• Virtual Event Solutions
• Global Accessibility & Localization

Pair tech choices with the experience you wish to create, factoring in audience size and desired engagement.

Step 5: Measurement

Use tech to capture both explicit (registration, surveys) and implicit (app engagement) data. Define KPIs, map out what’s measurable, sketch dashboards, and plan your data collection methods.

Step 6: Feedback Management

Gather both direct (surveys, polls) and indirect (behavioral analytics) attendee feedback. Include event manager insights to spot technology strengths and weaknesses. Partner with “voice of the customer” programs to connect feedback from events directly to your business’s broader strategy.

Step 7: Data Management

Compile data year over year to analyze trends, ROI, and event effectiveness. Avoid switching tools too frequently, consistency builds stronger program-level insights. Use historical data to inform strategic decisions and roadmap future investments.

Wrapping Up

This framework is designed to bring clarity to your event tech decisions, whether you’re a novice planner or a seasoned pro facing new challenges. Identify your resources, classify your event, select the right tools, and turn your data into action.

The Detail

Step 1: Budget & Support

In many organizations with a mature event management strategy, there is a pre-existing roster of agency partners and an event management platform available for use. This setup can significantly streamline your planning by providing access to vetted experts and standardized tools consistent across events.

If your organization has these resources, your budget decisions and support planning may focus more on how to best utilize them effectively. If not, and you are starting from scratch, then steps such as gathering detailed requirements, issuing RFPs, selecting vendors, and building your tech stack are important considerations. These procurement and selection processes, while foundational, fall outside the scope of this framework and will be addressed in a separate focused article.

Typically, the more complex the event design the more expensive the event and the key areas that drive cost are around the different support types. These could be centrally paid for in your organization or an outside cost for each individual event.

• Self-Service / DIY – Look internally at the software that your company already funds, where you can gain a license and use that tool directly. If time can be dedicated to learning that tool, then you could use it yourself to produce a registration site, email communications, setup an audience response tool, event mobile app, webcast, etc. This option is usually time-consuming, but you won’t need to go and outsource that support from a vendor or agency.
• Fully Supported / Supplier Supported – If your organization has a centrally funded, internally managed event tech stack, you may be able to leverage that support. This eliminates costs for individual event planners and gives you access to a dedicated resource for your event build. Typically, this arrangement comes with a defined service level agreement, for example, submitting support requests within a set timeframe to secure assistance. It's an ideal option for teams with little or no budget, but you'll need to plan ahead to meet requirements, which can be challenging for quick-turnaround events.
• Agency Supported – We see this option used most by events with complex requirements. Agencies are great subject matter experts, and they can not only manage your event, but also build out in different event technology tools. This option is usually the fastest turn around time and based on the type of agency you award the business to they can support low, medium and high budget options.

Step 2: Event Delivery Type, Audience & Content Classification

When you have multiple event types and different audiences for each of those events you start to create different event profiles. Let’s break down the three different event types first:

Event Delivery Type -

• In-Person Only – Attendee’s are in-person attending the meeting or event, there is no digital component for the attendee to engage with other attendees.
• Hybrid – Attendees are in-person at a physical location as well as through a digital experience. This could be through your event platform delivering the Keynote through a live stream, through an event mobile app that connects attendees for networking opportunities, to capturing content onsite and making it available to attendees after the event. This might be a hot take, but most events are hybrid.
• Virtual Only – Attendee are attending the event through a digital experience. This could be on a virtual event platform, live streaming on social media, webinars delivered monthly and OnDemand video libraries of recorded content for attendees to access asynchronously.

Once you know the type of event you are having then you can start to break down the different audiences you are targeting. Below you will find the most common ones:

Audiences –

Employees (Internal) - Your target audience is your employee base.

External Unknown - Think of the public at large, typically a marketing audience that you are trying to connect with through lead-generating events or audience acquisition. These audiences can also be at events your company participates in, where you don’t own registration and anyone could walk into your booth, meeting space, networking gatherings, etc.

External Known -

• B2B - If you’re a B2B company these could be partners, customers, suppliers, I typically group these audiences as being under an NDA.
• B2C – If you’re a B2C company these are consumers, college recruits, gamers, end-customers, etc.
• Press / Analyst / Influencers – You are typically targeting this audience for launches, but also roadmap updates and earnings announcements. This audience sometimes have embargoed requirements, so treating them like B2B audiences might be necessary to ensure only those allowed to gain access to that content are admitted.
• Minors (under 18) – If your inviting minors there are unique requirements you must put in place from a privacy and legal perspective.

The last piece of detail you need to be aware of is the content you are delivering. You can boil this down to two types of content: gated and un-gated. Each company has varying levels of confidential information, but for simplicity’s sake we will focus on confidentiality in general terms.

• Gated Content – When the content being delivered is classified as confidential, we must gate this content to ensure that the right level of security is applied to the individual who is accessing it. The two audiences that typically have gated content are Employees and External Known. In my experience you would use a system to verify an individual’s identity, such as through an account setup and single sign on (SSO) credentialing. This ensures only the individuals you want to have access to that environment or content do and different tools support this requirement differently.
• Un-gated Content – When content is un-gated, we still might capture the individual’s contact details, but there isn’t a security component required like there is for gated content. This is generally information considered not classified or it is for public release. Your legal team can help you with this classification.

By this point in the planning process, you should now know your event budget, the level of support you have/need, the event delivery type, target audience and content classification.

Step 3: Registration, Website & Communication –

I made Registration, Website & Communication its own step because it serves as the events data backbone. In a hub-and-spoke model, the event management tool should be your single source of truth, centralizing attendee info, session details, and everything attendees need. This core platform can then share data with the rest of your event tech stack, based on the needs of your event.

Start to use the answers from Steps 1 & 2 to determine which event management tool to use.

[Budget] = [Support] + [Software Cost]

For example – if your budget is $0, then you need to identify your support options and at a $0 budget it typically lands on you or an internal team dedicated to providing support, and the cost of the software has been funded outside of your event budget.

Then, once you know how your budget will be impacted by the support and software cost, you will use the next equation:

[Event Type] + [Audience] + [Content] = Event Tech Option

For example – your budget is $0, and you are hosting a Virtual Only event for Internal Employees sharing Confidential information, so your event tech options are to utilize broadly available tools, like those in the Microsoft 365 suite.

Event Tech Option = Outlook Email for Communication, SharePoint site to act as the event website where you can list an Agenda with links to a Teams Meeting, Webinar or Live event, which can capture Registration.

Now you might be saying, “Kelly, Microsoft 365 suite of tools are not the best at event management,” but I’d come back and say, it depends on what you have at your disposal and if you’re not given a budget to manage an event it can be useful, particularly for internal audiences.

Let me give you another example, let’s start with our first equation:

[Budget] = [Support] + [Software Cost]

Example 2 – if your budget is $1M, then you have more options are your disposal. You could identify an agency to provide support, and you could pay for a more robust event management tool, like Cvent, Rainfocus, Bizzabo, etc.

With this example you would probably fall into the Fully Supported / Vendor Supported or Agency Supported model. If your organization has software to use internally your software cost's might be covered, if not make sure you budget for software cost accordingly.

Then again, once you know how your budget will be impacted by the support and software cost, you will use the next equation:

[Event Type] + [Audience] + [Content] = Event Tech Option

For example – your budget is $1M which provides you with agency support and multiple tools to support your events, and you are hosting that same Virtual Only event for Internal Employees sharing Confidential information, so your event tech options are to utilize the best tool that can ensure the security of the content being distributed.

Event Tech Option = [Cvent, Rainfocus, Bizzabo, etc.] to setup event registration, event website and send event communications. This is the best option because you have setup this tool with SSO to verify the employees identity.

So, knowing your budget, the support and software options available, the event type, target audience and content classification are crucial to determining which tool to use.

Step 4: Technology

In this step you will select the technology that meets your requirements to deliver the experience you want, so please use the following Event Technology Key of all the major types of technology that can be used at your event.

Event Technology Key

1. Event Management Platforms - Software that supports event management, facilitation and customer/attendee journey planning. Examples: Registration and Attendee Communication as discussed in Step 3.
2. Attendee Engagement – Anything an attendee can interact with that connects them to the meeting or event. Examples: Check-in/Badging, Attendance Tracking, Lead Retrieval, Event Mobile App, Audience Response Systems, Meeting Management, Matchmaking.
3. Event Infrastructure – Foundational event technologies required to deliver the event and deliver onsite. Examples: Network, AV, Digital Signage, Equipment rentals, think the hardware needed at an event.
4. Analytics & Measurement – Gathering the right data to measure customer and attendee satisfaction, event KPI’s, historical trends, calculate ROI and help determine future investments. Examples: Metrics, KPI’s, OKRs, Surveys, Analytics, dashboards and post event reporting.
5. Virtual Event Solutions – Tools to engage attendees digitally. Examples: Webinars, Webcasts, Video Conferencing, Virtual Events, OnDemand Video Hosting.
6. Global Accessibility & Localization – Tools that enable global audiences to access content adapted for local markets through machine translation and localization. Localization involved tailoring content to fit the language, culture, and preferences of specific regions. This includes not only translation, but also video subtitling, dubbing, and real-time sign language interpretation via video to ensure accessibility for diverse audiences.

Don't focus only on the event technology type, it should match the experience you want to create. I consider both virtual and in-person event experiences by looking at two factors:

• Audience participation: Decide how active or passive you want your attendees to be; this influences your event activities and the technologies required.
• Audience size: Larger audiences usually mean more passive experiences, which shapes your technology choices.

Please find the two charts below to help illustrate the different options you might have.

Virtual Only

In-Person Only

Once you understand your audience, the types of events you are hosting and the available technologies you have in your company, you’re ready to build out your technology options by profile.

To organize yourself create a chart like the one below:

Profiles to Create

 Example Profile for Internal

Note: you might have the same technology for each event type and there are some event technology areas that you wont need a particular solution, ie. in-person only wont need virtual event solutions.

Once you complete your Technology profiles you will be able to quickly identify the tools to use for each event type, each audience and each event tech type.

Step 5: Measurement

The true power of event technology lies in its ability to collect comprehensive data at every touchpoint during your event. This includes explicit data, such as registration details and survey responses, but also implicit data generated by attendee actions, like session attendance, engagement with content, app interactions, and networking behaviors.

By organizing and presenting this data through dashboards and reports, event managers can measure key performance indicators (KPIs) that demonstrate the event’s impact. These metrics might include attendee satisfaction, engagement levels, lead generation, and conversion rates.

Measurement transforms subjective success into objective insights, enabling planners to prove value to stakeholders and identify what worked well and what could be improved.

A few activities I find extremely helpful are listed below, the goal of these activities are to one identify what you want to measure and then make sure your event technology is able to measure it, I have found most event tech will be able to help capture this detail, but you might also have data living in other systems within your overall marketing and sales tech stacks that you will want to look at as well.

Exercises:

1. Define your KPIs: List key performance indicators that matter for this event (i.e. Attendance rate, session engagement, lead generation, satisfaction score).
2. Data Mapping: Identify what data points your event technology can collect explicitly (registration, surveys) and implicitly (click behavior).
3. Dashboard Design: Sketch or outline a dashboard layout that highlights the KPI’s and data visualizations you want to track in real time or post-event.
4. Data Collection Plan: Document of when and how data will be collected, stored, and accessed (during registration, live event, post-event surveys).

If your organization can be disciplined to do this on the micro event level, then you will have a great start to building out your macro event program level data.

Step 6: Feedback

Gathering and analyzing feedback is critical for continuous improvement. Event technology allows for collecting direct feedback explicitly via surveys and polls delivered during or after the event, ensuring you capture attendees’ voices while the experience is fresh.

Equally important is capturing implicit feedback from attendee behavior, such as how they navigate your event, which sessions were most attended, how they interacted with exhibitors or sponsors, and patterns of engagement.

This holistic feedback approach provides a full picture of attendee preferences and pain points. Sharing these insights with your planning team highlights areas of success and signals where improvements are needed for future events.

Furthermore, I have found that if you can partner with the team that manages the “voice of the customer” program within your company, events can be another channel that provides direct input and feedback from your customers. So often I see teams collecting data on event specific feedback but miss the opportunity to gather more granular details from their customers.

One example is when you have customer meetings on site, being able to register that the meeting happened, everyone showed up and you were able to share what was talked about in the meeting can help signal any shifts in direction or new opportunities that customers might have.

It's important to gather feedback from event managers on the tech they use. After years of managing various software solutions, closing the loop with users ensures your tools meet their needs. Using a standard set of tools also lets leadership access event data easily, saving event managers from having to organize and report information after each event.

Here are a few exercises I would recommend doing to support Feedback Management:

1. Survey Construction: Standardize this across all events and make sure to draft short surveys or polls tailored to gather insights into each major part of the event (content, logistics, technology, networking).
2. Behavioral Observation Checklist: Create a list of attendee behaviors to observe or track digitally that can imply satisfaction or friction points (session drop-off, app usage patterns).
3. Feedback Sharing Process: Plan how to synthesize and communicate both explicit and implicit feedback to your planning teams with actional insights.
4. Continuous Improvement Brainstorm: Hold a quick post-event team session to discuss what feedback reveals and identify priority action items.

Step 7: Data Management

Our last and final step is the long game, the part of my job that felt the most exciting, but I knew it wasn’t going to come to fruition overnight. This is how your team demonstrates their value year over year. Over time, the accumulation of event data creates a rich historical resource for strategic decision-making. By managing and reviewing this macro-level data across multiple events, the trends in attendance, engagement, ROI, and feedback, you gain a powerful perspective on what event types deliver the best results and which audiences or content areas resonate most.

This data-driven approach helps you optimize your event portfolio and investment decisions for the months, quarters, and years ahead. It guides when and where you should focus your efforts, improve formats, or experiment with new technologies and strategies.

I know it’s not the sexiest thing to use the same technology year over year, but when you go off and change your mind event over event you do yourself and your organization a disservice. I’m not saying to stick with a tool that doesn’t work for you or becomes outdated, but more so make strategic decisions that last more than 1 year (I recommend 5).

Ultimately, strong data management creates an informed roadmap for your event program’s sustained growth and success.

Here are a few exercises you can do to setup better data management practices for your event and organization:

1. Register all events happening at your company: When all event planners register the events happening you create unique event profiles that can be compared year over year.
2. Historical Data Inventory: List all the types of data collected across past events and where that data lives (platforms, spreadsheets, reports).
3. Trend Analysis Setup: Outline a simple approach to analyze year-over-year trends by event type, audience, and content using your historical data.
4. ROI Evaluation template: Build a basic template with your leadership team to calculate and record ROI metrics for each event based on costs, leads generated, and strategic value.
5. Strategic Roadmap Planning: Use past data insights to draft a high-level plan for future event investment focusing on what works best and areas for innovation.
6. Creating an Event Name Taxonomy: Create a taxonomy that your team can use when tracking your events. If you go to CES every year and have different meetings and networking gatherings you want to name that event the same for data mapping. This will allow you to look at historical data and find all the CES's to compare year-over-year.

I hope this was helpful and I am curious what you think! Share your thoughts in the comments or feel free to email me directly, kmburhop@gmail.com.

Written by Kelly Burhop and editing support provided by Perplexity