BUILDERTREND

Buildertrend provides construction project management software tailored to general contractors, supporting operational efficiency and client experiences across local markets nationwide. They manage a number of large and small-scale events designed to bring together local vendors, national suppliers, and builders to facilitate business connections and relationships within the industry.

BACKGROUND & GOALS

Challenging scalability across field events at Buildertrend 

Brand Engagement Managers Nicole Vitera and Katie Ryan oversee events across Buildertrend’s portfolio. “We previously managed about 15 events a year, which were tier one and tier two events” explains Nicole. These included trade shows and conferences, as well as educational initiatives. Earlier this year, however, the small team was tasked with a monumental challenge: overseeing an additional 370 events as part of Buildertrend’s acquisition of CBUSA. “As a subsidiary of Buildertrend, they did their own tier three field events, which were planned by their regional managers,” says Nicole. “We realized very fast there was no brand consistency or true template on how to run these events.” 

Nicole and Katie encountered a slew of manual processes that created operational drag, including spreadsheets, back-and-forth email communications, and one-off logistics. With dozens of field stakeholders executing invitations and follow-ups separately, mismatched branding extended from the first to the last touchpoint. “Buildertrend is very big on customer experience,” notes Katie. “So we realized we needed to build out a process for those teams that would be scalable, trackable, and help reduce friction points.” In addition, their team needed to improve attendance tracking and ROI reporting for these events. Check-in and participation notes often lived on paper and didn’t reliably make it into Salesforce for downstream visibility. 

APPROACH

Empowering the field with Cvent Essentials 

Determined to find an answer, Nicole began their search for a technology capable of supporting their high-volume, repeatable events. Because Buildertrend already used Cvent, she knew exactly where to look. “I knew I was going to need to come to Cvent CONNECT and find a solution,” she recalls. Onsite at Cvent’s flagship annual conference, Nicole heard about Cvent Essentials – a new tool that was in beta at the time. She elaborates, “I was told Essentials was a tool tailor-made for smaller events, and I knew immediately that could be the solution we needed.”

Empowering their field teams with a modern, self‑serve solution has given everyone meaningful time back in their day. “It helped take some of the workload off our field teams as everything is easily laid out in one place,” Katie says. “At the same time, it helped take work off our plates so we can ultimately take on more.”  

Nicole agrees, noting the value of their investment in Essentials. “I always think about Essentials and Cvent as another employee on top of our team, because if we didn’t have it, we’d have to hire someone for that role,” she says. Essentials has helped saved Buildertrend company resources while elevating overall results. “Not having to expand our team and invest in another person – who wouldn’t do it as good as Cvent Essentials does – means we can instead focus on making our events even better from a strategy standpoint,” Nicole notes.

The regional team can then access branded, automated emails to manage invitations, which they can personalize – within guidelines – to ensure consistency. They can add personalized signatures and include venue details, the event agenda, parking requirements, and more for a smooth attendee experience. “Essentials is very customizable, which the teams love, so they’re able to make them feel personal while still following some guardrails,” Katie notes. This not only protects the Buildertrend brand but also creates a recognizable, repeat experience for attendees. “Registrants are now starting to see the same branding on the registration site and in emails, so it’s more of an experience for them,” Katie adds. Nicole agrees, noting, “For us, brand consistency is not just our logo – it’s the whole customer journey.”

Essentials: One platform for seamless experiences, high engagement, and deep insights

Onsite, field staff use integrated check-in with a mobile app that syncs in real time with their CRM so teams don’t have to wait days to get data into the right hands — or waste valuable time on manual uploads. “We integrate Essentials with Salesforce, and we use the OnArrival check-in for that,” Kate shares. This preserves data quality for follow-up and reporting while ensuring a smooth check-in experience that sets the right tone from the start. Katie adds, “All of that data is automatically connected, so that way our field teams can easily see their notes, who has checked in, and other key information in real-time.” From there, they can leverage this data to track attendance patterns and attendee interests, building a more complete profile for personalized follow-up.

In addition, Essentials provides integrated tools for onsite engagement and feedback. This includes polling, Q&A, and feedback so Buildertrend attendees stay engaged throughout the entire experience. Automated post-event surveys ensure teams can get valuable insights for post-event lead nurturing. “I personally have never received as much survey feedback as I do from Essentials,” Katie shares. “It’s great because that team has never been able to collect that data before, so it’s really helpful for them.” Nicole elaborates that the previous post-event experience lacked the ability to collect this type of attendee data. She says, “Before, you would maybe get a thank you email whereas now we send a post-event email with the survey and we can actually collect data to see how impactful these events are.” In addition to improving attendee relationships, this equips Katie and Nicole with the data they need to clearly demonstrate the value of their event program.

The impressive results of Buildertrend’s Essentials use are clear. “Essentials has changed our entire program,” Nicole says. “It used to be pen and paper invites, whereas now it’s a full, start-to-finish experience.” She adds that Essentials has created “a true customer experience we didn’t have beforehand.” Katie agrees, noting that the tool has helped elevate their overall program. “It may have felt like meetings previously, but now they feel like events,” she observes. “They now have the full structure so from the moment you sign up to when you’re giving feedback post-event, the whole thing matches.”

Learn more about Cvent Essentials

Optimizing the broader Cvent platform for scale

As Nicole and Katie continue building their Essentials playbook, they’re also optimizing their use of the broader Cvent platform. “We do use a lot of other tools with Cvent,” Nicole shares. These include using:

• Cvent Registration to build tailored registration pathways for more complex events, reducing friction and ensuring accurate data capture for targeted campaigns. Attendees can self-manage registrations, freeing the team to focus on strategy and experience design.
• CventIQ to deploy the AI Writing Assistant for on-brand site copy, emails, and session descriptions and the AI assistant on event websites to answer registrant questions in real time and drive conversions.
• Attendee Hub as a centralized, fully branded destination where attendees can manage agendas, explore sessions and speakers, network, and stay informed via push notifications. CventIQ powers AI-driven recommendations tailored to each attendee’s profile and behavior, while surveys and reports surface insights for ongoing optimization.

Together, these tools help Buildertrend deliver consistent, high-quality experiences across a diverse portfolio of conferences, trade shows, and regional field events.

Nicole points to a clear example where iCapture’s value stands out. “We do a huge trade show that consists of 110,000 attendees, and we have a 4,500 square foot booth,” she explains. At that scale, exhibitors must rent each lead scanner — a challenge with 120 staff onsite. “We have to rent 25 or more scanners, and they’re very expensive,” Nicole elaborates. “And then you have to get their software on top of that, pay to download the list, and so on.”

iCapture’s flexibility as a single, reusable tool proved a major benefit. “When I saw that iCapture can be used at any of these trade shows and conferences, the value was clear,” Nicole offers. “It ended up being three times cheaper than what I was paying for lead scanners, my list, and everything else — just for that one show — so now we have iCapture for all our trade shows.”

With iCapture, Buildertrend now gathers more detailed, accurate lead data, giving the team a true view of booth activity and impact. Nicole notes they once estimated roughly 500 booth visitors based on lead scans, but the reality was far different. “This year, we actually had 2,722 scans in our booth, so on the marketing side, I was able to show that touchpoint per customer was much lower of an expense than we thought it to be.” This level of visibility helps quantify ROI and refine resourcing for future shows.

She notes that eliminating manual post-show list syncs has improved lead management timelines and boosted speed-to-lead. “We used to have to bring all the leads back to Buildertrend and manually compare it to Salesforce, whereas iCapture is automatically syncing to Salesforce so you can have people scanning at the show who have an opportunity ready by the time they get home so we don’t lose potential customers,” she adds.

Learn more about iCapture

RESULTS & LOOKING FORWARD

Looking towards a future of growth at Buildertrend

By standardizing their field events on Cvent Essentials and layering in core Cvent solutions, Buildertrend has transformed what these local and regional gatherings represent for the business. Together, these capabilities have turned their field footprint into a scalable, data-driven growth engine that tightly aligns marketing, sales, and customer experience.

Looking ahead, Katie and Nicole plan to build on the momentum of their now robust events program by launching an annual user conference for Buildertrend’s diverse audiences. “It’s going to be a great opportunity for us to showcase how much we can do, all the tools we have, and everything we’ve learned so far,” says Katie. Nicole agrees, pointing to the power of the data they’ve collected to support this vision. “We’ll have so much data and we’ll have it all in Cvent, so it’s just so exciting to see where we’ve come from to being the industry leader now,” she says. “It’s truly been an amazing thing to be a part of.”