Why Associations Need an Integrated Event Tech Stack

Ben Muscolino:

Events are an incredible touch point for associations and for any organization running events, because there is no fresher piece of data than the data that they gave you at that moment when they registered for that event or when they showed up for that event. And if you track that and ensure that in a uniformed way, it becomes very usable as well. That context, that personalization is so easy to do when you're just very intentional about actually using some of the data that you're gathering.

Alyssa Peltier:

Great events create great brands. But pulling off an event that engages, excites, and connects audiences, well, that takes a village. And we're that village. My name is Alyssa.

Rachel Andrews:

I'm Rachel.

Felicia Asiedu:

And I'm Felicia.

Alyssa Peltier:

And you are listening to Great Events. The podcast for all event enthusiasts, creators, and innovators in the world of events and marketing.

Hello, everyone. What has been going on in this wide, wide world of events? My name's Alyssa and I'm one of your regular hosts here at Great Events. Now, today's episode will focus on a conversation many of you are grappling with in today's events landscape which is, how in the heck am I going to cater to the five different generations of attendees, all of whom want things done and delivered according to their preferences and personalized to them as an individual? Now in 2025, as is true for all event organizers, association event leaders are particularly on the hook for getting this right. And truly delivering on one of those core value propositions, which is to connect members through events designed to educate and build relationships. So how can association event organizers rise to this challenge of designing the right experience that mirrors the needs of multiple member segments within budget and also without going crazy?

Today's conversation will be facilitated by a very special guest host and also fellow Cvent-er, Elizabeth Wu (Powell), and she's going to help answer those very questions. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Elizabeth, our in-house solutions manager for our association and nonprofit clients. Now, whether that's working with sales, client services, tech, or engaging with our customers, she carries the torch for bringing Cvent's event tech solutions to over 4,400 customers who reside from those nonprofit and association spaces. She's also walked in their shoes being a former nonprofit event planner herself.

I'd also like to introduce a very special guest from one of Cvent's Alliance partners, Ben Muscolino, CEO, president, and founder of several technology solutions from the association space. Some of you may be familiar with Breezio, AMS Geek, Data Sangria to name a few. He's also been a member of ASAE for 15 years now and comes to great events, ready to share his wealth of knowledge. And working directly with associations and their technology needs. Now, with that, take it away, Elizabeth and Ben.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Thanks for that introduction, Alyssa. 2025 is the year associations have an incredible opportunity to deliver on their value propositions. We join associations because we want to gather, network, learn, galvanize. Maybe even do a little legislation on the hill. The power of bringing people and organizations together is because they see the value in what the association offering.

But we're seeing associations enter this pivotal place. In fact, a lot of event organizers or institutions that are running events are running into this challenge where now, we've got five generations to cater to. Many events just end up being a corporate expense and many contacts, but associations have to get these right when it comes to their budget and member expectations. So it's a little challenging to do this effectively when you're trying to talk to five different groups.

And that's a summary in itself. If you look at your membership data, there's probably several different ways to segment it by event preference or learning track. So how can you do this effectively? You've got to be building systems and processes internally and your tech stack needs to be set up right. You want to be gathering the right data and act on it quickly.

And so, that's where our guest today comes in. Ben is going to share his expertise on how associations should be integrating their tech stack and looking at their data in 2025. We're going to get into all the ins and outs of all the cool things you can do, but we're definitely going to take it at a high level too. Ben, why don't you introduce yourself a little bit and share your relationship with the association industry?

Ben Muscolino:

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's really exciting. Not only am I a big event guy, right? I'm a big tech guy. I love the association space. I always say that working on the for-profit side of the nonprofit market is such a privilege and we just get to help people to all these solutions. And a lot of that comes back to data these days, so I'm totally pumped to talk to you about this today.

Yeah. A little background on me. I've been in the space about 18 years now. I used to sell PRGR Software at a little company called Vocus that was publicly traded, that rolled in decision. I think it's even rolled up somewhere else now. But I was selling PRGR software to associations there and I worked for an AMS company. As I worked my way through that, I found my passion for consulting. Working in small market sales to large market sales to director of client services and in charge of strategic initiatives and I just fell in love with that moment that you solve the problem for the association.

And so, I've been an AMS consultant for about 11 years now. That went quick. Helping associations solve problems around their data and technology and a big passion of mine within that consulting team has always been building integrations, creating connectivity, which is a funny coincidence because I took over as CEO of Breezio in 2019 as well which all it is is just a community platform that works in the association market.

And so, with AMS Geek as the consulting, Data Sangria as the integration platform that we deliver through AMS Geek and Breezio, I think I'm a walking metaphor for what we do. And that is connecting people, connecting data, and allowing people to find value in those things. So yeah, been in the space a long time and it's really a pleasure to be a technology leader in the space, because there's so much going on, there's so many problems to solve, and there's so much to learn from vendors, from associations. And data is the currency these days, right? We have to figure out how to leverage these things.

I guess last to mention my background in the space I run, a podcast called The Association podcast. And there's such a great community over there too with Association Strong and Association Chad and Association Thrive and Reboot IT. Like there's a community of podcasters over there too, right? And we meet up at events which is the theme of some of the data we're going to be talking about today. So for me, it's just a pleasure to be here. I've taken a lot of pleasure in the almost two decades in the space and even working with Stephen quite a bit over the years.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Yeah. We're excited to have you on here too. And for our listeners, usually, the events field attracts creative types, operational minds. They're in the trenches. They like things that they can see, touch, hear. So when we start talking about event data and integration, then the further we get into the technical side of it, really intimidating. And so, I am just excited that you're going to be able to bring both your association knowledge and your tech expertise with really being in the trenches with how associations can be leveraging their integrations and data. But also, be able to explain it in a way that is really making sense to myself and our audience here.

I love to start off by asking a high level question and just that, why should associations care about their event data? Beyond obviously some of the basics like registration and general things that they're reporting on their events, what are some of the things that you would say associations need to care about the most when it comes to their event data?

Ben Muscolino:

Yeah. There's a few ways to look at it. Events are an incredible touch point for associations and for any organization running events. Because there is no fresher piece of data than the data that they gave you at that moment when they registered for that event or when they showed up for that event, whether it's a changed email or a title change or a new zip code where they live. And then, you start to find preferences of people. And if you track that and store that in a uniformed way, it becomes very usable as well in the association's opinion. They want a lot of information from that member, right? Here's a big membership application.

And there's been this big back and forth for many years like, how do we lower the barrier of entry but get what we want to fill out a 360 degree profile and create a living profile for this association? And I think that events are an incredible tool to complement the membership application and allows you to pare that down a little bit. Lower the barrier of entry for them to join and then start to leverage things like connected event technology to say, "Well, we didn't want to overload them when they filled out the membership application. But every event we go to, let's get a little bit more data that we may have wanted to put on the membership application. But was it really needed for them to join?" If not, maybe leave it off and start to consider how you layer that into event touch points and event registrations to gather other bits of information to build out your member's profile. Instead of clobbering them over the head with some cumbersome membership application.

And so, in terms of filling out profiles and gathering data, events are an incredibly powerful tool for that. But the fact that they registered for an event, whether it's your national conference or it's a chapter event or something like that, it allows you to start evaluating their level of engagement in the organization, their buy-in.

If you're a trade association, how engaged are the people that are under the organizational member that you have? So that you can gauge, who are the champions that are making it more likely for this organization to renew with us? Or can we trend that individuals are more likely or less likely to renew with us based on how engaged they've been showing up to an event, virtual or otherwise? It says something.

They're raising their hand. They're saying, "I'm going to be here for this. I'm going to show up. I'm going to be involved. I want to be part of the community." And even the little things, right? How do you leverage the fact that they registered in a personalization way? When we talk about data personalization with our content management systems, our email marketing tools, and you want to market differently to people that have already registered for the event to let them know, "Hey, we just want to keep you up-to-date on what's coming." Versus people that haven't registered yet, "Hey, I know you haven't registered yet, but this is what's upcoming." That context, that personalization is so easy to do when you're just very intentional about actually using some of the data that you're gathering.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Just earlier today, we were chatting through some of the Cvent, like 2025 event trends that we're seeing. And it's so centered on having a streamlined repository of data that you can access and pull insights from very quickly. Being able to leverage AI only happens when all your data is centralized and you're able to access it quickly. Personalization becomes so much easier when all your eggs are in the fridge.

We were talking about this concept of data lakes with my integrations product marketer here at Cvent and he was saying, "A lot of the challenge today is instead of your eggs all in the fridge, when you want to go make an omelet, you're going to make an omelet. And you realize, 'Oh. Well, I've got two eggs in the laundry room and two eggs over here,' and like, 'Oh, wait. This egg's half-cracked.'" I mean, I don't know if that's a perfect metaphor. But it helps me understand that before we're even talking about things you can do with the data, you've often got to get set up. But I know we'll get more into that later.

I liked how you touched on the trend of understanding the relationship between events and membership. And I'd be curious to hear if you've seen associations wanting to understand their engagement data for a sponsorship perspective. Having bigger, better sponsorships or charging more, because they're able to tie engagement and impact with the data they can pull with these integrations to sponsorship. Is that something you're seeing come up as a use case?

Ben Muscolino:

It is actually. When you talk about non-dues revenue and sponsorships and things like that, the better that you're able to inventory assess and create funnels in some of your data like, "These people fit this member category and these people fit this member category." And that has to do with a good integration strategy, making sure you have a good data continuity plan between all of your systems.

The more detail you have in that, the more valuable it is for the partners that want to come support your event. And as one of those partners, Breezio, AMS Geek, Data Sangria, we sponsor all of the shows that we go to and we are very intentional about asking questions and making sure that we take that data. And are not only responsible with it, but we want to get as targeted as possible as well. And so the more information that we can get that's useful, it tells us, "These aren't people for us to reach out to. These people are and here's why." So it creates value on both sides long-term.

I'll give you a great just real-world example. Having a list of registrants is one thing. But when you have proper single sign-on set up, for example, and it's bringing over your unique member ID and some of the things that the member doesn't really care about. But it autopopulates their data, it autopopulates their member type. With Cvent, they have such a great API, you can actually have it put you right on a registration path for a certain price or allow the member to say, "I'm actually not that type of member anymore."

It streamlines the member experience, but it allows the data to come over with the registration instead of just having a registering count. So what is the context around that registering count? That context is where the value lives, right? Everything from sponsoring your online community alongside your event or having sponsors on your website and knowing the traffic of the types of members that are going to be there, all of those details in the same way that you might buy advertising for your business on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever. And we were always like, "Oh my gosh. Look how targeted you can get. I can just get in front of these specific people." If you take the context from your systems and roll that into your registrations, the value just continues to compound. Because it's not all a quantity game anymore, it's quality and the quality of your data is well-rounded as those records become. It's just more and more valuable.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

So what would you say is the biggest challenge for associations today that they're looking to solve when they come to you and they're looking at some of these integrations? Is it the single sign-on seamless experience? Is it more than that? Talk to me about what associations are coming to you asking to solve.

Ben Muscolino:

It's interesting. Sometimes they're on both camps, but it's usually one camp or the other and they're so intertwined. So it's a lot of fun for us, because we're not telling them anything they don't know, but we get to connect the dots for them to help them understand the value. Because we have people that say, "I want to know which of my vendors or partners are registered already and which aren't, so that I can then send personalized messages to them." Same thing with members and non-members that are registered or aren't registered. You want to be able to say, "Did they register two years ago, but they didn't register this year? Let's send them a unique message too."

So that level of personalization for marketing and getting that data back to your AMS, for example. So that it can then go from the AMS, that event data over to your email system, right? And that becomes wildly useful data to bring the registrations as they happen every day, hourly, whatever it is. To have those integrations in place and then there's the other people that are like, "Well, we're all about user experience. We want to do single sign-on, because we want our members, when they log in, to get validated for the pricing that they get. We don't want it to be an honor system. We want them to authenticate against the member database and show and prove that they're a member."

Because it's going to eliminate issues when people say, "Oh, I thought I was a member but I'm not," and then you have to charge them more or issue a refund or whatever. It takes some of that out, but it autopopulates fields in the form. So when you do that, now, you've got this white glove experience where I went to the registration platform on Cvent and I said, "Yeah. I'm a member," and I click and I enter my credentials from my AMS single sign-on. It redirects me back to the Cvent page and then my profile is loaded in there. I don't even have to fill out the form. Just my meal preferences or which sessions I want to attend or whatever it might be.

They're used to these things being readily available for them to make their life easier and it is virtually impossible for most associations to build this stuff out on their own. So we have to properly integrate with these tech stacks to do that. The most important part as a data nerd is when you authenticate and do that single sign-on and make that user experience for you members better, one thing that happens is it brings the unique member ID over, which nobody's paying attention to except me. And I'll tell you why.

Because in order to sync the data back to the AMS to it useful for your marketing team or your advocacy team or whatever to know who's on site, who's registered, who didn't, that unique identifier allows you to map the data back to the AMS purely and cleanly from record to record instead of creating duplicates. And a lot of people will run registrations and they'll say, "Well, let's import our registration list." And then, they start to muck up their data a little bit by creating duplicates. And some people might use their Gmail to register for an event, but their professional email might be the one on file. And so, being able to see those things come alive and connect the dots for associations is a lot of fun and teach them the value of why it's important to get the data there in the first place. Because it makes that value coming back so much greater for personalization across your organization for years to come.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Yeah. And talk to me about who you find is being the internal champion for this, for integrating the event tech with the CRM and the AMS's? Is it the planner raising the charge? Is it the marketer or is it the IT person you're working with? Is it the executive or the board? Who's really getting the lightbulb moment?

Ben Muscolino:

It's such a good question because you find that there's incredibly smart people at a lot of associations. And one thing that I see often is they understand the strategy. But if it's not connected, what we end up doing in the association market is we throw bodies at it. We throw people at it. Well, these people are smart enough to figure it out. Absolutely. No question. But what if those people could be working a little bit more on the polish for the event or the messaging or the personalization or adding value in programming instead of doing some manual data shifting here and there, right?

It's not about replacing people with technology, it's about optimizing the organization. And I find that the role of IT has shifted, right? And in the association space, shifts happen slowly. It's true, right? There's a lot of consensus building, there's a lot of governance, and it's good because it's all about the programming and the advocacy for their industry and the credibility of the content they're putting together. It is what associations do best.

And the IT director, the CIO, if you will, of today is someone that really understands the strategy. And though it may not be their budget, it's their role in the organization to make sure that they go to the events department and say, "What dependencies do you have on AMS data?" And go to marketing and say, "What dependencies do you have to do your job well with event data or membership data?" And then, when they can put all of that together, the budgets to get those things done may come from different departments, but you need a quarterback.

And that's where IT fits the role because I assure you, the people in events, the people in marketing, the people in membership, they can tell you exactly what they need. But a lot of times, they're left to go do things in a silo. And the moment that you start collaborating in these organizations, you realize the unintended consequence of creating efficiencies and the staff all of a sudden creates a much better member experience. And then, all of a sudden, your annual fund for fundraising goes up, registration goes up, churn goes down for membership, sponsors go up, sponsor average investment goes up. All of a sudden, you start to see a trend that, "Hey, we had this little bit of time left over from these efficiencies that we were able to create value. Our members realized it, our partners realized it, and they're doubling down with us." And that's what technology fuels these days, I think.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Yeah. I really loved how you just painted the picture there. And I wondered, whoever is listening, who let out a huge groan when you talked about they see the value, but they're stuck in the silo. And I feel like that leads us into our next line of thinking is where are we in the evolution of this in the association space? How many associations are actually good at doing this yet or are optimized for this or are a lot of associations struggling to even think this way?

Ben Muscolino:

I love this question because this has been in flux. So there's, again, an incredible amount of smart people doing this. What happened is we had a slippery slope a few years ago where all the API's got better, and the software has got better, and the ability to share data got better. And you know what? It turned into this all-you-can-eat buffet and people were like, "Just start syncing our data from this system to this system."

We need to be intentional about the data because it becomes more usable when it actually has an impact and it's not just overloaded with their data. Systems have gotten better at the same rate that everyone has learned and gotten smarter in the industry. And it is the most fun to be in this industry right now, because you can slow down. The tech is so good that you can slow down and be ultra intentional about, "Well, let's not sync all the data over here. What are the things... Let's talk to the people that are going to use this data and only bring over the things that we need, that we're going to use." And then, it allows us to actually use that data. Instead of bringing everything over and then people get overwhelmed and they say, "Well, I want this data. But I don't really know how to find it now because it's buried in this amount of data that we have." We've got to be careful about that.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Yeah. I think that it's an interesting concept, this thought of intentionality. Because you're so right, raw data is just noise. It's how do you set things up for success to actually drive insights down the road? And that requires this backwards scoping. So how do you get all the players at the table and figure this out?

Ben Muscolino:

So I don't think it's for everyone to come up with. But if you get some key stakeholders together and perspectives from different departments, all of a sudden, you start operating as an organism that you really are which is, "We're all focused on the same mission." But the mission within the organization is to have the best event possible, to have it marketed the best we can, to have it tracked the best we can. Get the CEUs back in for sessions they attended. And you get a few of the right stakeholders in there and that data plan comes together faster than you think.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Yeah. And so, I feel like that is such a great segue into some key takeaways or for our audience, it does swing pretty event planner heavy. What might someone who is totally having their light bulb moment now, they see the value in this, where do they start? What would you have them take action on first within the organization?

Ben Muscolino:

Start with your vendors. Usually, you go to your AMS company. You go to Cvent and you check the marketplace, who has experience doing this thing that I need? Because they'll help you put that plan together. They'll ask you the right questions. So I think starting with your vendors to say, "Who has expertise in doing this with the systems that we have?", is a great place to start. Internally, it's really not hard to just grab your morning coffee and call someone. Hop on Teams and be like, "Hey, you want to have coffee?" And say, "I am thinking about what would make my life easier when I'm taking on this part of the planning of this event. Who has the relationship with my vendor?" Because it may not be always that event planner, it may be someone in IT or whatever.

And these don't have to be these overly planned meetings, but you can get in very quickly and inventory your objectives. You can inventory your data pretty quickly, "Okay. We're going to register. What do we include in registration?" Start to inventory your data. And a common misconception of building connected systems is that you have to be technical. You don't. All you have to do is say, "Here's my description of my business use case." And if you're not documenting some of those things, you need to be.

Because whether you need the integrator now or you already have an integrator putting it on paper, sharing it with people may add value to it or remove things from it. And then, everybody's aligned on that and then you can get to work on sharing that with somebody that knows how to translate that into, "Okay. I know what you want to do. Here are the questions I have about your data and your systems," that you don't need to understand programming at all. You just need to understand your business case or your use case.

If you document those things and share them with people, there's such an incredible ecosystem of partners around the association space. But particularly, Cvent has an incredible roster of partners that already know their tech. Why go hire an engineer that doesn't know Cvent when you're trying to integrate Cvent, right? You guys have one of the coolest looking ecosystems of partner directories. Go look at that. That is a great place to start, I think, in a lot of cases.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

Yeah. So a little bit of research, assembling the right team, having thoughtful, concrete conversations. What does that inside superhero execution team look like? Is it making sure they're talking to membership or sponsorship or their IT tech stack owner? Who do they need to all bring to the table when they're having these vendor conversations?

Ben Muscolino:

Yeah. I think, certainly, it's the core, right? You've got your events teams. You've got your programming teams, the people that are putting together the content. They may not want to have a lot of input on it, but they want to be a part of that conversation. Once you get some of that put together, bringing it to your executive director or your senior leadership and say, "Hey, I don't need you to do anything. I just want you to know, this is the team that we've put together. These are some of the questions we're asking ourselves because we want to be thorough. We want to make sure that you and our members and everybody's happy. Is there anybody you think I'm leaving out?" And they're going to say, "No. Great job," or they're going to say, "Actually, call Susie from the foundation. I'm so glad you brought it up. Call Darren over there. Call Alex."

I think managing some of that information up does a few things. It reassures them. It gives them a storyline to bring to the board to, "Hey, let me tell you about this proactive cool thing that's going on around data continuity, around our events that our staff's working on." And all of a sudden, the board is looking at the CEO like, "Wow. What a great job they're doing." And it also makes them aware that if there's budget needed to execute on some of these things, they've now been made aware that there's a real plan coming together and someone's not just lobbing a proposal onto their table, because it does cost money. It saves time and creates value that way outweighs the money, usually. Always, I would argue.

But it does cost money to get these things done sometimes. And so, the better job you can do putting that together and managing it up allows you to execute, I think. Because most, if not all, association executives, they want you to be successful. If you show the effort that you're putting a plan together to make them and the members and the mission more successful, they're going to support you in doing that.

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

I just want to thank you for taking time to be on our Great Events podcast. Ben, you just come with such knowledge about the association space, even building out technology solutions, consulting with them as clients for over a decade. Talk to us about where our listeners can go to find more of what you have to say or what you're doing.

Ben Muscolino:

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. And actually, we've had Cvent on The Association podcast. So you can come listen to some really cool association conversations over there and dig through and find The Association podcast episode with Cvent on it. Some people think that I split my time in an interesting way, but I would say that I focus every minute of my day in working to solve solutions for associations. And it's the pleasure of my life and I get to do it at Breezio which is breezio.com.

Powering member communities. Sometimes integrating with event data. So we create communities alongside those events at AMS Geek which is where we have a very close relationship with Cvent and get to help a lot of their association partners. And then, get to leverage our platform at AMS Geek which is called Data Sangria.

Look for us. You can google us or it's breezio.com, amsgeek.com, and datasangria.com. Super easy, right? No tricks there. And reach out to us. We are awesome to work with just like your friends at Cvent. And we really appreciate the opportunity as a partner to come on and talk about some of the trends we're seeing. Maybe lift up the veil a little bit on the fact that tech has gotten so much better that if you wondered yourself, "What if?", around your event tech, the answer is probably yes. So ask somebody, right?

Elizabeth Wu (Powell):

All right. Stay curious. Thanks, Ben.

Ben Muscolino:

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Alyssa Peltier:

Thanks for hanging out with us on Great Events, a podcast by Cvent. If you've been enjoying our podcast, make sure to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

Rachel Andrews:

And you can help fellow event professionals and marketers just like you discover Great Events by leaving us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.

Felicia Asiedu:

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Rachel Andrews:

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Felicia Asiedu:

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Alyssa Peltier:

And that's a wrap. Keep creating, keep innovating, and keep joining us as we redefine how to make events great.