Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition draws together the people, ideas and energy that define what’s possible in business events. For exhibition organizers, it’s a place to join forward-thinking peers eager to absorb strategies that move the needle and leave with a sharper vision for what their events can become. Whether you’re building something new from the ground up or pushing an established show to reach its next level, Expo! Expo! consistently delivers the kind of programming, connections and inspiration that make that growth possible.
Last year’s event delivered on every front and the sessions didn’t disappoint. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be revisiting some of the standout presentations from Expo! Expo! 2025 and sharing the key insights that had attendees buzzing. Think of it as your second chance to catch what you may have missed or a welcome reminder of the gold you came home with!
Captivate, Engage, Elevate: The Ultimate Marketing Playbook
The dynamic sessions featured in this installment fall under the Captivate, Engage, Elevate: The Ultimate Marketing Playbook learning track. Designed to give attendees a deep understanding of the latest trends, best practices and cutting-edge strategies for marketing in today’s fast-changing environment, this track covered everything from digital marketing and content creation to brand management, attendee acquisition and customer engagement. For event professionals seeking practical and applicable knowledge to drive growth, this was the room to be in. Let’s revisit three sessions that packed a serious punch.
Alignment In Action: Breaking Down Silos Between Marketing, Sales and Exhibits
Presented by Sherron Washington, MA, CEO & Marcom Strategist, The P3 Solution
If your marketing team is saying one thing, your sales team is saying another and your booth experience is saying something else entirely… you don’t have a messaging problem, you have a silo problem. That was the central diagnosis in Sherron Washington’s compelling session, which tackled the all-too-common disconnect between marketing, sales and exhibit teams.
When these departments operate in isolation, the attendee experience suffers and so does your ROI. Sherron offered a clear, actionable path to internal alignment that helps teams create shared goals, ensure consistent messaging, and build seamless integration between brand vision, selling strategy and booth execution.
Silos Show Up in Four Predictable Ways and You Can Diagnose Them
Sherron introduced the concept of “messaging fractures,” where marketing, sales and exhibits all communicate different things to the same audience. Beyond mixed messages, silos typically appear as:
- Undefined roles: Unclear ownership leads to assumptions and gaps
- No shared success metrics: Marketing celebrates awareness
- Sales celebrates deals and exhibits celebrates experience: But nobody’s celebrating together
- Late-stage integration: Last-minute onsite alignment meetings that create confusion instead of clarity
Recognizing these patterns is the first step toward fixing them.
The DMRA Framework Turns Alignment into a System, Not a One-Time Fix
Sherron shared a practical assessment tool built around four pillars:
- Direction: One unified show goal
- Message: Consistent content across the entire event lifecycle
- Role Ownership: Clarity on who owns what (and what they don’t)
- Actions: Onsite behaviors that match the goals, messaging and roles agreed upon in advance
The session included a live “Alignment Check” activity where attendees applied the DMRA framework to their own situation, and many discovered their teams would not have given the same answers to the same four questions.
One Pre-Show Meeting and One Post-Show Debrief Can Change Everything
Sherron’s practical prescription was refreshingly simple – hold one cross-team pre-show alignment meeting using a structured checklist:
- Unified goal
- Unified message
- Defined roles
- Aligned lead capture approach
Then follow every event with one cross-team debrief using the DMRA Assessment to compare what worked and what didn’t. The key is consistency; the alignment assessment tool only becomes powerful when it’s used as a habit and not a one-time solution.
The Bottom Line
Alignment doesn’t require total agreement but it does require intention, clarity and commitment. Sherron’s session was a powerful reminder that B2B events’ biggest performance gaps often aren’t strategic; they’re operational. With the right framework and a culture of cross-team communication, exhibition organizers can stop leaving ROI on the table and start delivering the unified experience attendees and exhibitors deserve.
Do This, Not That: Event Marketing That Works!
Presented by Jay Schwedelson, Founder and CEO, SubjectLine.com, GURU Media Hub, Outcome Media
Jay Schwedelson does not “do” slow. His high-energy, data-dense session was a masterclass in challenging the assumptions that event marketers have been operating on for years and replacing them with tactics backed by real performance data. Filling seats, whether virtual or in-person, takes more than a “Save the Date,” and Jay came armed with research, AI prompts and a few well-timed moments of tough love to prove it. Drawing from his “Worldata Research 2025 Performance Report” and his own experience running more than 150 in-person events in 2025 alone, he unpacked tips and tricks related to email marketing, demand generation and social media marketing to create buzz, drive registrations, and keep attendees engaged before, during and after events.
Stop Ignoring Weekends Because That’s Where Your Decision-Makers Are
A full 88% of event promotional emails are sent Monday through Thursday. Meanwhile, research shows a 23% surge in weekend web traffic from C-suite executives and VPs, and weekend click-through rates for event promotional emails rose 68% in 2025. Why? Because senior leaders are catching up on emails when they’re not in back-to-back meetings. Jay’s point was clear: weekend email volume is 94% lower than weekdays, which means far less competition in the inbox. The opportunity is enormous and most event marketers are still sleeping through it.
Small Subject Line Moves Create Big Open Rate Jumps
Jay walked through a series of surprisingly simple email subject line tweaks – each backed by hard data – that dramatically improve open rates:
- Capitalizing the first word or phrase in a subject line increases open rates for event promotional emails by 22%.
- Subject lines that start with a number see a 24% jump.
- A capitalized word in the middle of a subject line delivers a 16% lift.
- Using a greater-than or less-than symbol at the start of the subject line (e.g., “ENGAGEMENT > EGO: Join the Top Voices in Internal Comms”) drives an 18% increase.
- True personalization – going beyond first name to reference job function, company size, industry or company name – increases open rates by up to 32%.
- “Made for you” subject lines that signal tailored relevance without using a first name produce a consistent 15%+ open rate lift.
AI Isn’t Coming for Your Event, But It is Changing How Attendees Find It
Jay dedicated a significant portion of the session to what he called one of the most important shifts event marketers need to understand right now: AI-powered browsers and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). While most websites are nowhere near AEO-optimized (SaaS sites average 8-12% while direct-to-consumer sites average just 3–6%), AI browsers like Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s Atlas are already changing how people discover events, navigate registration pages and consume event content. Jay also shared ready-to-use AI prompts to help event teams audit their websites, benchmark against competitors and optimize their registration flow for this emerging landscape – no technical expertise required.
The Bottom Line
Jay’s session was equal parts wake-up call and tactical treasure trove. The event marketing playbook that worked five years ago, or even last year, needs a serious update. The good news? The changes that drive the biggest results are often the smallest ones. And with the right data in hand, event marketers don’t have to guess what works anymore – they can just do it.
Human Communications: The Relationship-Driven Event Marketing Strategy You’re Not Using (Yet)
Presented by Tim Hines, Founder, Marketing Starter Group
In a world dominated by automation, algorithms and artificial intelligence, Tim Hines made a case for something radical: being human. His session challenged event marketers to step back from their dashboards and their drip campaigns to ask a more fundamental question: Are we actually connecting with people?
Today’s attendees, exhibitors and partners expect more than transactions; they seek trust, transparency and authentic relationships. Tim explored how to rehumanize marketing in a way that builds long-term loyalty and drives results, offering a framework for crafting messages that resonate, designing experiences that connect and leading with empathy across every brand touchpoint.
We’ve Moved from B2B and B2C to H2H (Human-to-Human)
Tim reframed the entire foundation of event marketing around what he calls H2H (Human-to-Human) communication. At its core, H2H is about building emotional connections with customers and employees that are helpful, authentic, respectful and personal. The audience for any event is made up of real people with real emotions, preferences and communication styles.
Understanding what your audience looks like, how they communicate and where they engage is not a segmentation exercise – it’s an empathy exercise. Tim pointed to research showing that authentic, emotionally resonant communication has a measurable impact on the bottom line, with meaningful lifts in both engagement and conversion.
“Corporate Speak” is Quietly Killing Your Brand
One of the session’s most memorable moments centered on what Tim called “corp speak”: the kind of stiff, jargon-heavy language that looks professional on paper but leaves real people cold. The antidote isn’t being less professional; it’s being more human. Tim urged attendees to ask four key questions before any communication:
- Who are you speaking to?
- Why are you speaking to them?
- How are you speaking to them?
- Where are you speaking to them?
Getting clear on those answers, and then actually speaking like a person, is what separates brands that build communities from those that just blast campaigns.
A Human Comms Plan Isn’t a Feeling, It’s a Framework
Tim closed with a practical five-step plan for putting human-centered communication into action:
- Start with tangible goals.
- Audit your current communication channels.
- Identify your audience and learn their preferences.
- Align your channels and messaging to your audience’s needs.
- Get all stakeholders on board.
He also emphasized the importance of the “platinum rule” – not treating others the way you want to be treated, but the way they want to be treated – and making technology a tool that supports human-first communication rather than a barrier that replaces it. Tim reminded the room that the most likable, trustworthy brands are the ones that are consistent and genuinely interested in the people they serve.
The Bottom Line
Tim delivered something rare in a technology-saturated industry: permission to slow down and be real. In a moment when AI can generate your emails, your social posts and your entire campaign strategy, the differentiator isn’t speed or scale – it’s soul. Industry professionals who lead with empathy, communicate authentically and build relationships before they need them, will have the edge that no algorithm can replicate.
Looking Ahead
As we look ahead to Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition 2026 taking place 16-18 November in Milwaukee, it’s hard not to feel energized by what the 2025 sessions unpacked. If these recaps left you thinking, inspired or maybe a little uncomfortable about what you’ve been doing (in the best possible way), just wait until you experience the real thing!
