Introducing CventIQ: AI Innovation Rooted in Human Experience

June 10, 2025

Events

By Mike Dietrich

Few channels propel businesses – and relationships - forward like meetings and events. For organizations, they build brands, deepen connections, and drive revenue. For hotels and venues, they’re often a cornerstone of profitability.

But pulling off a great event is hard work for both the organizer and the venue hosting it. Behind every memorable experience are hundreds of moving parts, from the big-picture vision down to the tiniest logistical detail. It requires executing countless tasks, precise coordination, and tight collaboration between organizers and venues. And while doing this for a single event is hard enough, doing it across a full event program, with dozens or even hundreds of events a year, is a whole different level of complexity.

At Cvent, we know this all too well. It’s why we started the company: to make it easier to connect marketers, planners, and hotels to deliver great event experiences. After three-plus decades of experience and working with a global community of event planners and hospitality professionals, we‘ve learned a thing or two about helping planners and hotels get their jobs done.

So when that kind of hands-on experience and deep domain expertise meets a once-in-a-generation technology like AI, things can get really exciting.

And that’s how CventIQ was born.

Introducing CventIQ^TM

CventIQ^TM isn’t just another AI feature. It’s a collection of powerful intelligence capabilities embedded across the Cvent platform. CventIQ brings together unmatched industry expertise, proprietary insights and analytics, a smart platform, and intelligent infrastructure with powerful AI capabilities. It's built by event and hospitality professionals for event and hospitality professionals, helping marketers, event planners, and hospitality professionals move faster and smarter, collaborate better, and deliver more engaging, high-return experiences. So, while the industry buzzes about the promise of AI, CventIQ delivers on it, backed by the real-world experience of the event community that helped shape it.

More than just smart—it’s experienced

The machine learning models powering CventIQ don’t start from scratch. They’re trained on what actually works in the real world—how planners respond to RFPs, how attendees navigate experiences, and how marketers drive registration and engagement. That foundation gives CventIQ a critical edge: it’s intelligent, but also deeply intuitive.
So unlike AI solutions that re-package internet-available data, five things make CventIQ different:

Unmatched Industry Expertise: Our more than thirty years of event management and hospitality experience, best practices, and lessons learned from across the event ecosystem guide everything we do.
Proprietary insights and analytics: Our solutions are powered by insights that put best practices, improved workflows, and prescriptive and predictive next steps in your hands every day.
Smart platform: As the world’s most adopted event and hospitality platform, our solutions are uniquely tuned to connect all your data together. The more events and programs you add, the richer the data gets. The richer the data, the more insights.
Intelligent Infrastructure: Our modern engineering approach, critical monitoring, and other intelligence-based practices bring innovation to you faster, all while helping ensure your entire event operations run smoothly, reliably, and securely. 
Powerful AI capabilities. As the power of AI and machine learning is incorporated into all of these elements, the benefits to our customers grow exponentially.

Delivering practical benefits – today

We know what you’re thinking—"Great, another AI thing." But CventIQ isn’t about flashy interfaces or gimmicks. It quietly powers the tools you already trust, making your workflow feel more like working with a great assistant than fiddling with a robot. It’s automating time-consuming tasks, introducing new levels of personalization, unlocking new insights, and removing the friction from the back and forth between Planners and Hoteliers.

So whether you’re planning, hosting, or attending an event, you will feel the power of CventIQ. Here are a few real-world of how CventIQ helps:

Event planners & marketers:

Instant Session Insights: Instantly analyze audience comments to understand sentiment and gain insight into speaker performance, session content engagement, session logistics, and more.
AI-Driven Content Creation: Automatically generate compelling, on-brand content for emails, speaker bios, and event pages to streamline and scale event marketing efforts.
Personalization at Scale: Deliver personalized session and networking suggestions to attendees, enhancing engagement and overall satisfaction.

Hospitality professionals

Simplified and Accelerated Prospecting: Streamline outreach with curated planner lists,personalized emails, and attract planners with immersive AI-powered 3D room layouts.
Faster Responses to Drive Conversion: Accelerate request-for-proposal (RFP) response times with AI-generated proposals, RFP insights, and response assistants.
Seamless Event Execution: Use intelligent tools, such as smart rooming lists and AI-generated event diagrams, to efficiently manage group business and bring plans to life with precision.

Event Attendees

Personalized Event Dashboards: Direct access to a personalized event dashboard that organizes every touchpoint, including registration, agenda, contacts, CMP credits, and on-demand content, ensures each attendee has a clear view of their unique event journey at a glance.
Effortless Session Snapshots: Real-time AI transcripts and slide captures empower attendees to effortlessly save and revisit important session content with just one tap, ensuring they capture all essential insights without distraction.
Efficient Knowledge Transfer: With AI-generated summaries, attendees receive customized highlights and actionable next steps from their event experience, including sessions attended, exhibitor booths visited, and connections made. This makes it easy to share key takeaways and demonstrate the event’s value to colleagues and superiors.

What’s Next?

This is just the beginning. The Cvent Intelligence layer will continue to evolve, with new capabilities rolling out regularly to make your event tech ecosystem even better. Every step of the way, we’ll continue to be guided by making meetings and events, easier, smarter, more collaborative… and decidedly more human.

Mike Dietrich

Mike is the Vice President of Product Marketing at Cvent, responsible for marketing Cvent’s Event and Hospitality Cloud product portfolios.

Mike’s 20+ years of industry experience include deep product marketing and management experience at the largest Event and Hospitality technology, Education technology, broadcast media, and telecommunications companies. In his current role, Mike is responsible for defining and executing go-to-market strategies to drive new customer acquisition, expansion, and customer retention.

Scaling Small Events Just Got Easier with Cvent Essentials

May 20, 2025

Events

By Victoria Akinsowon

As marketers, we don’t need convincing that events work. We see the results every time we host one—strong engagement, quality conversations, real pipeline. It’s no wonder that 72% of marketers say events are their top-performing channel.

But as events continue to prove their value, the demand to do more of them keeps growing. Another executive dinner. A last-minute roundtable. A regional lunch-and-learn. The requests keep coming, and the numbers back it up:

In 2023, the average marketing team hosted 14 events. In 2024, that number more than doubled to 29.

Almost a quarter of marketers say a single event takes 60+ hours to execute. That’s 900 hours of additional work, or the equivalent of a full-time employee working solely on events for half a year.

That’s a huge lift for already-stretched teams.

We built Cvent Essentials to change that—to help marketing teams meet growing event demand without burning out.

Why small events are on the rise

So where’s all this extra event volume coming from? Spoiler: it’s not big conferences—it’s the rise of small, repeatable events.

Make no mistake: large, flagship events—think Dreamforce, INBOUND, or Cvent CONNECT—still have their place. They attract large audiences, generate buzz, and build brand awareness.

But those flagship events are just one piece of the puzzle. The reality is that they make up only a fraction of most companies’ total event programs.

In recent years, there’s been a shift toward small, high-volume events, like VIP events, community and networking events, pop-up events, and sales-led, local field events. In fact, one survey by Forrester found that 58% of respondents said their organization planned to host more small in-person events.

And it’s easy to see why.

These smaller, high-frequency events are more repeatable, flexible, and offer greater opportunities to personalize the experience.

Whether it’s a VIP dinner for high-value prospects or an executive roundtable with your best customers, these events allow you to tailor the experience to where your audience is in their buyer’s journey.

This means you can form deeper connections, resulting in stronger engagement and, ultimately, more pipeline and revenue.

average number of events marketers are planning — The number of events marketing teams are planning to run has more than doubled

The hidden cost of scaling small events

But while small events are shaping modern event marketing strategies, there’s one uncomfortable truth: scaling them isn’t easy.

Some of the most common challenges include:

Manual, inefficient processes: Whether it’s building a landing page or trying to report on your event, a lot of tasks still require manual effort. That’s time-consuming and leaves little room for creative, strategic thinking.

Inconsistent branding: Running multiple events in parallel makes it tough to maintain brand consistency across every touchpoint.
Lack of visibility: Without the right tools, measuring the success of each event is challenging. Lack of visibility into real-time performance means missed opportunities to adjust and optimize in the moment.

Bottlenecks: Depending on other teams, like Ops, Design, and Legal, can slow down the event execution process. You’re always waiting on approvals, designs, or logistics, which can delay the whole program.

Limited scalability: As you scale your event program, the pressure on resources increases, and you’re likely to risk burnout. Marketing teams often find themselves stretched thin, leading to inefficiency and frustration.

And if you're on the team responsible for the extra 15 events a year, well, your workload has more than doubled. This leads to the ultimate catch-22:  

Option 1: Say “no” to doing more events, AKA your organization’s highest performing channel. 
Option 2: Keep saying “yes” and risk burnout, employee attrition, or cutting corners to get the job done.

But it doesn’t have to be this hard. And that’s where Cvent Essentials comes in.

What is Cvent Essentials?

Cvent Essentials is a simplified event management solution for smaller, high-volume in-person events. 

It’s designed specifically to help marketing and field teams run small, repeatable events at scale without the usual operational headaches. It’s built to empower you to self-serve and self-execute, so you’re free from the bottlenecks and manual processes that often slow you down.

In terms of use cases, think: 

Field marketing events

Education or training events

Sales-led events

Internal events

Any small events you want to get off your plate (i.e., delegate)

Cvent Essentials makes small events simpler by removing the friction that often holds teams back. Let’s take a closer look at what you can actually do with it.

What can I do with Cvent Essentials?

With Cvent Essentials, you can:

Launch your event faster: You can use pre-approved, branded templates for event pages, registration forms, and surveys, without having to rely on teammates for design or technical support.

Ensure consistent branding and compliance: Those pre-approved templates? They make sure every touchpoint meets your brand guidelines, while data privacy templates help you stay compliant with regulations like GDPR or CCPA, preventing errors and risky practices.

Manage the on-site experience: On-site check-in is often the first impression your attendees will have of your brand. And yet, many teams still rely on clipboards, spreadsheets, or even the notes app on someone’s phone to capture those leads. Not only is this not the best look, it’s error-prone, inconsistent, and slow.

With Cvent Essentials, you can check in attendees with a mobile app that syncs in real time with your CRM and marketing systems. So, no more waiting days to get lead data into Sales’ hands and no more manual uploads. And attendees will have a smooth check-in experience that sets the right tone from the start.

Engage your audience: From live polls and Q&A to post-event surveys, Cvent Essentials includes tools that help you keep your audience engaged and gather valuable insights throughout the event experience.

Track performance: Easy-to-use dashboards allow you to measure the success of each event and optimize as you go. Plus, integrations with your CRM, MAP, and other MarTech platforms give you a full view of your event data and its impact.

Example: Let’s say you’re planning a networking event. With Cvent Essentials, you don’t have to wait for design and web teams to create your event page or spend hours building one manually. Instead, you can select a pre-approved template, input a few event details, and launch your page in minutes.

What are people saying about Cvent Essentials?

We think Cvent Essentials is a game-changer—but don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what teams across different organizations are saying:

On saving time and moving fast:

“We had a last-minute event that came up, and we needed to get something out really fast…With Cvent Essentials, I was able to copy over a template that we had pre-made and get the event spun up in ten minutes. It was amazing because before that, it would have taken way longer.”
Nicole Vitera, Brand Engagement Manager, Buildertrend

On brand control and ease of use

“The registration and branding templates make it almost impossible for someone to mess something up, and super easy for everything to still work perfectly with our system. It’s expressly simple but infinitely customizable—and that’s exactly what we need.”
Chandler Crump, Events Technology Manager, Leadership Institute

On brand consistency across events

“If we didn’t have Cvent Essentials, many of our events wouldn’t be as organized or as branded, and a lot of our events would be coming through email or our larger event platform. It’s made our brand more cohesive and easier for us to manage them as a whole, so we’re able to take on more.
Katie Ryan, Brand Engagement Manager, Buildertrend

On freeing up central teams

“If we were able to empower other business units to build these sites themselves and build the invites and send them out themselves, it would free up a lot of time for our team.”
Chelsea Guerra, Associate, Events Management, Blackstone

See Cvent Essentials in action

Curious about how Cvent Essentials works? Check out this quick video to see how you can create your event page in minutes:

Make small events your strategic advantage

Small events aren’t just a trend—they’re the future of event marketing. And with Cvent Essentials, you can turn them into a powerful growth engine.

Instead of being a burden, imagine small events becoming your strategic advantage. With the right tech, you can say “yes” to event requests, continue to scale your events program, and drive greater impact.

Want to see how Cvent Essentials can help you scale your event program? Tour our interactive demo or schedule a personalized one.

A woman with glasses and braids wearing a black turtleneck and blazer poses for a photo.

Victoria Akinsowon

Victoria is the Content Marketing Manager at Cvent. She has over five years of experience developing and executing content marketing strategies that drive growth for businesses across industries. In her spare time, you’ll find her either learning a new language, travelling or reading a good book.