End-to-end event marketing for a Vertical AI platform: choosing the right format for the right audience, running invites and logistics for conferences and executive dinners, and making sure every conversation ended up in the CRM with a follow-up plan.
For a platform selling into Front Office, Middle Office and Controls teams at banks and asset managers, relationships still get built in rooms — on conference floors, in panel discussions, and over dinner. intellimation.ai had a busy events calendar across London and New York, including SRP Europe and the Collateral Management Summit, but no single owner turning that calendar into a repeatable marketing motion: who gets invited, what format the event should take, how it connects back to the content and collateral already going out, and where every resulting contact ends up afterwards.
Match the event format to the buyer — large conference presence to build awareness, intimate executive dinners to deepen relationships with senior decision-makers.
Own invites, registrations, venue and travel logistics for events across two cities, so the team could focus on the conversations, not the admin.
Make sure every contact made at every event was logged in Zoho CRM, tagged by event, and assigned a follow-up — so events fed the pipeline rather than disappearing into someone's inbox.
I owned event marketing operations end-to-end: building and segmenting invite lists, managing registrations, coordinating venues, catering and travel logistics for both conference attendance and executive dinners, supporting on the ground at events, and managing the post-event workflow — entering contacts into Zoho CRM, tagging them by event and product interest, and setting up follow-up sequences with the sales team. I worked closely with Aaron Armstrong (Partner Sales) and the wider leadership team to decide who should be in the room for each event.
Not every event should look the same. The format had to match what we were trying to achieve with that audience.
Small, curated guest lists of senior decision-makers (Heads of Collateral, COOs, Controls leads). The goal was depth, not reach — real conversations about specific operational pain points, in a setting where people speak more candidly than they would on a conference floor. These were the highest-effort, highest-touch events on the calendar, and the ones most likely to convert directly into sales conversations.
Larger-scale presence at industry events such as SRP Europe and the Collateral Management Summit — booth presence, speaking slots and panel appearances. The goal here was awareness and volume: meeting as many relevant people as possible, capturing their details, and feeding the LinkedIn content (Case Study 01) and brochure library (Case Study 02) that would keep the conversation warm afterwards.
Built and segmented invite lists for each event by persona and seniority, managed RSVPs and registrations, and kept the guest list aligned with what each event was actually for — a dinner list looked very different from a conference contact list.
Coordinated venues and catering for executive dinners in London, and managed travel logistics for the leadership team's trip to New York — the same trip behind the "We are back in New York" LinkedIn post that became the sprint's best-performing piece of content.
Supported the team on-site at conferences — managing the booth, distributing the brochure library from Case Study 02, and capturing leads in real time rather than relying on business cards collected and forgotten.
Logged every contact in Zoho CRM straight after each event, tagged by event and by which of the five content pillars (Case Study 01) was most relevant to them, and set up follow-up tasks for the sales team so no introduction went cold.
A timeline of the major events I planned and ran marketing operations for across the year.
Major structured products industry conference. Booth presence, lead capture and on-site brochure distribution, timed alongside the Structured Products content pillar on LinkedIn.
Panel presence and an intimate executive dinner for senior Collateral & Operations leaders, run alongside the highest-performing brochure (Prime Brokerage & Collateral Management) and the post that drove a 51.7% engagement rate on LinkedIn.
Executive dinners with US-based prospects and clients, with full travel logistics coordination. The trip behind "We are back in New York" — the sprint's best-performing LinkedIn post (2,307 impressions, 146 clicks).
Every event fed a standing Zoho CRM reporting routine — new contacts tagged, follow-ups assigned, and event ROI reviewed against pipeline created.
Every contact captured at an event was logged with a consistent tagging structure, so the sales team could filter by event, city, and content pillar when planning follow-up.
The lasting result wasn't any single event — it was a connected system where events, content and collateral reinforced each other, all flowing into one CRM.
SRP Europe, Collateral Management Summit, NY client trip
Large conference presence & intimate executive dinners
London & New York
Tagged by event, city & content pillar for follow-up
Deciding "dinner vs. conference" early — based on who we needed in the room and what we wanted from them — shaped everything else: the guest list, the venue, even the talking points. I'd make this decision even earlier in the planning cycle next time.
The New York trip, the LinkedIn content, and the Collateral Management brochure all reinforced each other — the same trip that produced the best LinkedIn post of the sprint also produced the dinners that fed the CRM. Planning all three workstreams together, rather than in parallel, would make that overlap even stronger.
A great conversation at a conference is worth very little if it isn't logged, tagged and followed up. Building the tagging structure before the first event (not after) meant every later event slotted straight into the same reporting view.
Coordinating travel and dinners across two countries has more moving parts than a single-city event. With more lead time, I'd build a longer buffer into the planning timeline for cross-border logistics specifically.