Events are a powerful channel for driving revenue, but without a clear strategy to qualify, nurture, and engage event leads, most will never progress into real sales opportunities. The real challenge lies in turning that initial engagement into meaningful, sales-ready conversations. A study by MarketingProfs found that 73.5% of B2B marketers take four days or more to follow up with event leads, and only 2% follow up on the same day. That kind of delay can cost you deals—and let hot prospects go cold.
With AI-powered event technology solutions like buying signals, conversational and agentic AI, teams can now move faster, automate smarter, and turn event engagement into sales-ready conversations. Here are three proven ways to make it happen.
1. Align Around Engagement Data to Spot High-Intent Buying Signals
Not all event activity indicates interest, and not all interest signals readiness to buy. That’s why it’s essential for sales and marketing teams to align on which behaviors represent high-intent buying signals, and which ones require further nurturing.
How to do it:
- Track meaningful engagement signals
This includes attending product-focused sessions, asking questions during a demo, downloading solution briefs, or booking time at your booth. These are classic buying signals that should trigger deeper qualification.
- Build a shared lead scoring model
Collaborate on what actions reflect genuine intent versus general interest. Assign weighted scores to different behaviors to help prioritize leads based on real-time engagement.
- Use AI to uncover hidden buying signals
AI-powered tools like Certain’s Event Intelligence platform can detect behavioral patterns across multiple touchpoints, surfacing leads that show signs of buyer readiness.
The takeaway: When marketers and sales teams align on what key buying signals to track, lead prioritization becomes faster, more accurate, and more profitable.
2. AI-Powered, Personalized Post-Event Outreach
According to a report by Forrester, 92% of event professionals plan to improve their attendee follow-up strategies to maximize ROI – with good reason. Generic follow-up is a surefire way to lose a lead’s attention. After an event, attendees expect timely, relevant communication that reflects their actual experience, not a copy-and-paste “Thanks for attending” email.
This is where Agentic AI comes in. Unlike traditional AI, Agentic AI doesn’t just respond to inputs – it takes action. It can autonomously analyze attendee behavior, determine intent, and trigger tailored follow-ups based on real-time engagement.
How to do it:
- Marketers: Use Agentic AI to segment and personalize at scale by automatically matching follow-up content to attendee behavior, like sessions attended or content downloaded.
- Sales reps: Tap into AI-generated insights to send timely, relevant outreach. If a lead revisits your pricing page post-event, that’s your moment to engage.
The takeaway: Agentic AI helps both marketing and sales deliver smarter, faster, and more personalized outreach by turning event data into actionable buyer insights. This not only enhances the attendee experience but also accelerates the conversion of leads into sales-ready conversations.
3. Use AI-powered Insights to Make Smarter, Faster Follow-Up Decisions
Not every event lead is ready to buy right away, but knowing who to follow up with, when, and how shouldn’t take hours of digging through dashboards. That’s where conversational AI-powered insights give sales and marketing a major edge.
Tools like Certain’s Touchpoint Ignite inform and streamline follow-up by allowing teams to ask natural-language questions (e.g., “Which leads showed the most buying intent?) and instantly generate actionable insights, charts, and reports. No data analyst required.
How to do it:
- Marketing: Use conversational AI to quickly surface which sessions drove the most engagement or which personas were most active, and adjust your nurture strategy accordingly.
- Sales: Ask direct questions to uncover high-intent leads based on real-time engagement, and prioritize follow-up with greater speed and confidence.
The takeaway: With intuitive, question-based reporting, sales and marketing teams can take action faster, unlocking deeper buyer insights and acting on them while interest is still high.
Stronger Together: Where Sales, Marketing, and AI Meet
Turning event leads into sales-ready conversations is a team sport. Sales and marketing each bring essential strengths to the table, but the real power lies in how they work together.
When marketers capture and interpret the right engagement signals, and sellers act on those insights with personalized, well-timed outreach, event leads move from scanned badge to closed-won faster.
From smarter segmentation to insight-driven follow-up, today’s AI-powered event tools don’t just help you scale, they help you connect, convert, and close faster.
Ready to see how Certain helps sales and marketing teams convert more event leads into pipeline? Let’s talk!