Is This Event Worth It? How Field Marketers Are Making Smarter Investment Decisions
Event ROI is not only about leads, meetings, and pipeline. Field marketing leaders are also considering the time, people, and attention required to produce those results.
Field marketers are not short on opportunities.
New conferences appear constantly. Sponsorship offers arrive every week. Internal teams bring forward ideas for dinners, activations, speaking opportunities, and regional programs – often while the events already on the calendar are still being planned.
The harder question is no longer “What could we do?”
It is:
Is this event truly worth our team’s time?
That question shaped much of the conversation during the GES Field Marketing in AI Town Hall, which brought together field and event marketers from established technology brands, high-growth AI companies, agencies, and consultancies across the United States and more than 10 countries.
GES Founder Lisa Gregory was joined by Regina Soller-Gould (Baseten), Kelly Brayton (LangChain), and Kerri Blanford (Everpure). Their organizations vary significantly in size, structure, and stage of growth, but many of the pressures they described were the same: expanding calendars, changing audiences, lean teams, and increasing expectations to connect event activity to business results.
Here are several ideas from the conversation worth carrying into 2027 planning.
Event ROI Should Include the Cost of Effort
Audience fit, meetings, pipeline, and influenced revenue remain important measures. But those numbers do not show everything an event requires from the team producing it.
An opportunity may look valuable on paper and still demand weeks (or even months) of additional coordination, detailed vendor management, executive time, cross-functional support, and manual work. When one event consumes the time and attention that could have supported two or three other programs, that effort belongs in the ROI calculation.
For lean field marketing teams, operational support can become a deciding factor. A strong audience may justify additional work, but teams should understand that cost before signing – not discover it once planning is underway.
Before committing to an event, consider:
Does the audience align with the people we need to reach?
Are we already reaching that audience through another program?
What will participation require from marketing, sales, executives, and outside partners?
How much execution support will the organizer provide?
What other opportunities will we have to decline or deprioritize?
The sponsorship fee is only one line in the investment.
A Full Calendar Is Not the Goal
The rapid growth of AI has created more conferences, communities, and sponsorship opportunities – but more activity does not automatically produce more value.
Kerri shared a useful 80/20 approach to planning:
80% of the calendar supports programs with a proven ability to advance business goals.
20% leaves room for new ideas and calculated risks.
That balance allows teams to experiment without building an entire plan around untested opportunities. When a new program does not work, the objective is to learn quickly rather than continue investing simply because the first commitment has already been made.
The panel also discussed several questions that help teams evaluate an event:
What is its job? Is the primary goal awareness and market presence, or is the event expected to generate demand?
Who will be there? Review the audience, previous attendee information, participating companies, speakers, and sponsors.
Where are those accounts in the buying cycle? A relevant title or company name is not always enough.
How does it fit the wider calendar? Consider whether one audience or tactic is already overrepresented.
What will it take to execute well? Account for planning time, staffing, travel, vendors, executive participation, and follow-up.
The right event mix will look different for every organization. The important part is being clear about what each program is expected to accomplish.
Follow-Through Starts Before the Event
A successful event is rarely a single interaction. Its value is built through the second, third, and fourth touches that follow.
That means the follow-up plan cannot wait until the team returns from the show.
Regina shared that her team works with a less-than-24-hour service-level agreement for hot leads, supported by daily onsite review sessions and immediate coordination with inside sales. Kelly described dashboards that help the team monitor pipeline and see which leads have – or have not – been worked.
Kerri added another important consideration: marketing also has a role in protecting sales capacity. If a webinar, trade show, and another campaign all deliver large lead volumes during the same week, even a committed sales team may struggle to respond effectively.
Before the event begins, teams should agree on:
What qualifies as a hot, warm, or longer-term lead
Who owns each type of follow-up
How quickly the first outreach should happen
What message and next step should be used
Where activity will be tracked
What nurture path will support people who are not ready for a sales conversation
The event creates the opening. The plan that follows determines how much value the organization can build from it.
Useful Content Is Winning Attention
When the conversation turned to experiences that are working, the speakers did not focus on creating the largest or loudest activation.
They talked about smaller gatherings where people could have real conversations, hands-on workshops that let attendees use the product, and resources that helped buyers better understand a problem or explain it internally.
Those resources might include:
Workbooks and checklists
Customer stories organized around a specific challenge
Technical workshops and live product experiences
Small, carefully matched gatherings for customers and prospects
Direct mail that leads with useful content
Physical books and other substantive resources people want to keep
Regina shared that a physical book written by one of Baseten’s leaders has become a strong conversation starter at events – particularly notable for an AI company operating in an overwhelmingly digital environment.
The lesson is not that every company should publish a book. It is that useful, relevant content can do more to start a meaningful conversation than another item selected simply because it can carry a logo.
AI Is Most Valuable When It Gives the Team Time Back
The most relatable AI examples from the Town Hall were not sweeping transformations. They were focused applications built around work the team was already doing.
→ Kelly created an agent to monitor shipments across carriers, send delivery notifications through Slack, and provide a weekly status report. Instead of repeatedly checking individual tracking pages, she receives the information where she is already working.
→ Kerri’s team developed an account-intelligence agent that reviews company information, recent earnings calls, internal data, and buying signals. It gives a new sales representative a useful starting point for understanding an account and its potential needs.
→ Regina described using AI tools alongside Slack and Salesforce information to bring together lead activity and updates that might otherwise be spread across different systems and conversations.
These examples share a common purpose: remove repetitive work, organize fragmented information, and give people more time for decisions that require context and judgment.
That is a practical place for event teams to begin. Look for the recurring task, the manual status check, or the information that must be gathered from several places.
The best first AI use case may be the one that quietly returns an hour to the team every week.
Build the Anchors – Then Leave Room for Change
By September, the speakers were already well into 2027 planning.
Some had established anchor programs and contracted major H1 events. Others maintained a rolling 12-month calendar so internal teams could plan around key dates and reduce conflicts.
But no one described locking every available week.
In a market where new events and audiences continue to emerge, leaving open space is a strategic decision. It gives the team the ability to respond to a strong opportunity without forcing it into an already overloaded calendar.
As you review the year ahead, consider separating your plan into three groups:
Anchor programs: Proven investments the organization expects to support.
Programs under review: Events that require more evidence, stronger results, or a clearer role.
Intentional open space: Capacity reserved for opportunities that have not appeared yet.
A useful plan provides direction without pretending the year will unfold exactly as expected.
Smarter Decisions Start With Better Questions
There is no universal list of events every AI or technology company should attend. The answer depends on the audience, business goals, company stage, internal capacity, and what the team can execute well.
But the questions field marketers are asking are becoming clearer:
Are the right people in the room?
What business goal will this program support?
What will it require from our team?
How will we continue the conversation afterward?
Is this the best use of our money, time, and attention?
Those questions may lead to fewer events, different events, or deeper investment in the programs already working.
The goal is not simply to do less or more.
It is to make each decision intentionally – and give the team the structure and support to follow through.
🎥 Watch the Field Marketing in AI Town Hall
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Planning your 2027 event strategy? Gregory Event Services helps technology teams evaluate opportunities, build workable plans, and execute programs around the world. Contact GES
