FORTÉ

FORTÉ is a leading professional audiovisual (AV) systems integrator, serving a diverse range of business, commercial, education, and government clients across the U.S. Their mission is to design AV solutions that are easy to integrate, intuitive to operate, and simple to maintain. 

With a rapidly expanding events program growing in both scale and complexity, Senior Digital Marketing Manager Nate Ross led the charge to modernize FORTÉ’s event and marketing tech stack. He sought a solution that could streamline processes, enhance attendee experiences, and deliver actionable insights for both marketing and sales.

BACKGROUND & GOALS

FORTÉ’s search for a unified event and marketing platform

When Nate joined FORTÉ over 10 years ago, the company had no formal marketing department and relied on third-party vendors for event management. This led to fragmented processes, inconsistent attendee experiences, and limited visibility into event data. Key challenges included lack of a unified ownership and manual, error-prone data processes between event and marketing platforms. “We needed to develop a process, as well as figure out where the tech stack lived and how to involve the right parties,” Nate explains. 

Without a centralized events and marketing platform, FORTÉ had difficulty scaling events and maintaining brand consistency. There were also limited insights for sales and marketing teams across the events lifecycle. Nate’s search for an integrated solution resulted in fragmented and siloed platforms that couldn’t meet their needs. “Nothing was the total solution we were looking for,” he says. Upon discovering Cvent, Nate says he put the platform “through the wringer.” After extensive research and a beta run, they found Cvent’s to be a right fit. “Cvent just rose to the occasion,” he says. “I knew that I could trust the platform and trust the service I was going to get.”

APPROACH

Driving smarter results through seamless martech integrations with Cvent

Nate says the integrations Cvent offers with martech solutions like HubSpot help automate the flow of registration and attendee data so there are no manual syncs or duplicate lists - creating a simple, streamlined process. “You instantly have flow between Cvent and HubSpot, giving me insights into who has registered, what sessions they attended, what exhibitors they see – and that information is huge because it helps not only our data flow but our investment in the events,” Nate shares. 

Using Cvent’s Registration platform allows Nate's team to manage complex event registration builds with flexibility in mind. They can create unique registration paths or attendee types for highly personalized experiences, such as VIPs, speakers, and staff. They can also drive key metrics by tracking registrations using code snippets and reference IDs to know where registrants are coming from and which marketing tactics are most successful. Attendees are able to easily modify or cancel their registration, saving valuable time.

From there, Nate's team uses a number of martech integrations to empower their teams and streamline processes, including a:

• HubSpot integration: FORTÉ leverages a HubSpot integration to automate data flows and provide critical insights for measuring event ROI, leading to better-targeted campaigns and improved visibility into the impact of their events.
• Salesforce integration: A Salesforce integration provides visibility into event impact within FORTÉ's sales pipeline, triggering more personalized post-event nurtures and accelerating lead generation.
• Google Analytics Integration: FORTÉ relies on this integration to report on visitor behavior through customized dashboards that connect metrics to campaign performance for deeper insights. 

As they continue to evolve the complexity of the integration over time, flexibility is key. HubSpot serves as their data warehouse, so Cvent provides Nate’s team the freedom to connect as much or as little data as they need. “Now that we can pass a good amount of information back and forth, we plan to use a middleware to expand and make it a two-way integration,” he adds.

In addition, a Google Analytics integration helps FORTÉ track website traffic across their event and registration sites, generating dozens of different reports with detailed fields for page views, visitor tracking, benchmarking, time on site, and more. They’re able to connect these metrics to campaign performance with customized dashboards to fully evaluate what success looks like.

Last, the Salesforce integration gives FORTÉ's sales and marketing teams real-time visibility into event impact within the sales pipeline. “This integration is going to allow us to get more depth from some of the information we already get from Cvent,” Nate explains. “For example, we can identify manufacturer partners and note where customers are visiting, then automatically pull them into a cadence in Salesforce for an automated post-event nurture.” This integration will ensure prompt lead follow-up and stronger alignment between sales and marketing. “We have a whole promotional track with multiple audiences we are serving information to – attendees, partners, internal staff, and so on – and this allows us to tailor that communication,” Nate says. Detailed attendee insights help increase post-event engagement, allowing sales teams to act as strategic business partners for their customers. 

Transforming processes: The value of Cvent’s integrated platform and services

Unlocking the power of automated integrations between Cvent and FORTÉ’s broader tech stack has transformed how they manage event data, streamline workflows, and empower sales and marketing with real-time, actionable insights. Nate advises, “If you don’t have to piecemeal it all together with basic forms or multiple platforms, you’re able to see the progress of these people through your events in one source of truth – and then you can better nurture them post-event with information that’s specific to them.” 

He adds that the integrations have helped accelerate their sales cycles. “The integration prevents data from becoming stale or being static,” he notes. “You don’t want it living in one place and not the other, so with integrations, you have that data instantly in different places – whether that’s Cvent, or HubSpot, or Salesforce, it just makes it much more actionable for our sales and marketing teams.”

FORTÉ’s successful and rapid adoption of Cvent was facilitated through hands-on expertise and dedicated support provided by Cvent’s professional services team. Nate shares, “Cvent’s been a critical point in implementing everything, especially as quickly as we did at the beginning.” With a launch timeline of just one month, the support Cvent provided was crucial. “You’re not just buying software,” Nate insists. “You’re buying a solution that has support with it, and I think that’s where you’re going to find a lot of other platforms don’t add up – is that support piece and the team you have behind it.” 

FORTÉ relied on professional services to not only get their first event set up and running, but to execute the entire experience. “The Cvent team helped set up our event website and we used their services onsite as well,” he says. “You don’t miss anything by having the experts there, which is the Cvent team.”

Powering streamlined, personalized attendee experiences 

In fact, Nate’s team now expertly manages the onsite experience using solutions like OnArrival Premium. This provides attendees an effortless check-in and badging experience, whether at the registration desk or at standalone mobile kiosks. OnArrival not only eliminates long lines, but mitigates the need to pre-print badges, which often results in wasted time and resources. With OnArrival Premium, FORTÉ can also leverage capabilities like session check-in and tracking, signature collection, check-in planner alerts, kiosk mode, and more. All of this data is housed in Cvent, providing rich insights into attendee behaviors and preferences from a single source of truth.

FORTÉ also leverages the Cvent Attendee Hub to drive personalized attendee engagement and deliver a seamless event experience. After struggling with a sluggish, underperforming app in the past, Nate now relies on Cvent’s native Event App as a comprehensive solution—enabling attendees to build their agendas, access session and speaker details, and receive real-time updates through push notifications. Networking features such as one-to-one messaging, attendee recommendations, and discussion forums foster meaningful peer connections. 

With a wealth of pre, during, and post-event data, Nate’s teams is now better able to identify hot topics and high-value prospects based on criteria like session attendance and exhibitor engagement. They can also curate in-event and post-event experiences, such as sending SMS notifications when VIPs check in or guiding attendees to relevant vendors based on their interests. They’ve also helped provide exhibitors with detailed analytics on booth traffic and attendee engagement, supporting co-branded marketing efforts.

RESULTS & LOOKING FORWARD

Turning insights into action

Streamlining data management has helped enhance FORTÉ’s relationships with their customers and prospects. “The integrations just help take a lot of the manual resource time off us so we can be more curated in how we’re communicating post-event for marketing and sales,” Nate explains. With a variety of stakeholders across the business, democratizing this data could be a challenge. Cvent’s Access Portal ensures Nate can share key info without constantly pulling manual reports. Access Portal houses real-time event reports, survey data, event calendars, and much more as a central resource for the organization. Nate can set visibility parameters to ensure stakeholders see the data that is most relevant to them. This means stakeholders can self-serve without waiting on Nate’s team. “It’s their go-to spot for anything they need,” he says.

Ultimately, Cvent’s unified platform and seamless integrations have enabled FORTÉ to move from manual, fragmented processes to a scalable, data-driven event program. They're now able to empower both marketing and sales to deliver more personalized, impactful experiences. Dedicated support and professional services from Cvent ensured a smooth, rapid implementation, setting FORTÉ up for continued growth and innovation.

These enhancements have increased ROI by improving accuracy and the overall attendee experience, such as removing registered attendees from paid ad campaigns in real time to reduce unnecessary spend. Importantly, they’re now able to fully equip sales teams with detailed insights into attendee behavior, enabling more personalized and timely outreach. This has led to an accelerated pipeline with increased internal alignment between marketing, sales, and events teams.

Shaping the future of FORTÉ events

FORTÉ continues to expand its use of Cvent, with plans to integrate Shopify for enhanced exhibitor management and explore more advanced virtual event capabilities. The team aspires to further personalize attendee experiences by using real-time data to curate digital signage, content, and networking opportunities during events.

Nate attributes the successful growth of FORTÉ’s program to their strong focus on fostering meaningful human connections. “We deal with a ton of technology and a ton of software, but it’s that human interaction that’s more important,” he says. By partnering with Cvent, FORTÉ has built a scalable, data-driven event program that delivers value for attendees, exhibitors, and internal teams alike. These solutions and services have empowered FORTÉ to move beyond manual processes, unlock actionable insights, and position themselves as a strategic partner to their clients – driving both business growth and exceptional event experiences.