New Research from Cvent Reveals Marketer Confidence in Events as a Pipeline Growth Channel

Cvent opened day one of its flagship Cvent CONNECT conference with an expansive lineup of programming purpose-built for marketing leaders and brand professionals, reflecting a fundamental shift in how leading organizations think about events. A new Cvent study of nearly 1,000 marketers and event professionals puts data behind what many in the industry have long suspected: as AI-generated content proliferates and audience skepticism grows, live events have emerged as the channel buyers trust most. The research findings are clear:

“For too long, the market treated events as logistics or cost centers that were first on the chopping block when budgets tighten. That era is over.” – Amy Lucia, Chief Marketing Officer, Cvent

• 85% of respondents say the rise of AI-generated content has made it harder to build audience trust, with generic or AI-generated content cited as the single greatest risk to audience credibility.
• 98% say in-person and community-based events remain central to their marketing strategy.
• 81% report that audience trust in their brand increased following an in-person event.
• Read More The Trust Gap: Why Events are Marketing’s Most Powerful Growth Engine

That research shaped a robust marketer-first Cvent CONNECT agenda. At its center are two invite-only experiences for senior marketing leaders, alongside a broad slate of sessions—many streaming live and on-demand for virtual attendees—designed to give every marketer a practical framework for running events as a connected, measurable growth channel. The through line: how to turn the 34% of program budget¹ already going to events into first-party data, pipeline signals, and provable revenue outcomes.

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• The CMO Summit, hosted by Cvent Chief Marketing Officer Amy Lucia, features Lisa Cole, author of The Limitless CMO, delivering the keynote and leading a working session on building the AI-powered marketing organization.
• The Executive Marketer Experience is a closed-door session for senior marketing leaders to make the case for events directly: they are one of the most powerful ways to build trust, generate leads, and accelerate pipeline. The program gathers leaders from brands including Capital Group, Delta, TD SYNNEX, Gainsight, and more.

“For too long, the market treated events as logistics or cost centers that were first on the chopping block when budgets tighten. That era is over,” said Amy Lucia, Chief Marketing Officer at Cvent. “The marketing leaders attending CONNECT have stopped treating event technology as an operations tool and started running it as a core part of their marketing stack. Events are where the richest first-party data gets created and where buying intent is real. The 80%² of teams whose event data never fully connects to their CRM or marketing automation are leaving their most valuable pipeline signal on the table. Event-Led Growth is how the best teams are closing that gap.”

LinkedIn Brings Its Event-Led Growth Playbook to CONNECT 2026

To further reinforce the convergence of event execution and marketing performance, LinkedIn will host a session at CONNECT 2026 to showcase how its integration with Cvent is closing the loop between event activity and pipeline outcomes.

Through the Cvent integration with LinkedIn, marketers can publish events directly to LinkedIn’s professional network, sync invitee lists into LinkedIn Campaign Manager for precision targeting, and push registration data back into Cvent for full attribution. The result is events that generate measurable pipeline signals before, during, and long after the session ends.

The integration between ON24, a Cvent company, and LinkedIn extends this model to webinars and virtual events. ON24’s integration enables customers to build audience segments from first-party engagement data, including registration and content interactions, and activate those audiences within LinkedIn to support targeted campaign execution, helping teams reach the right buyers and drive measurable pipeline growth.

Marketer-First Sessions Available to All Attendees

Key marketer-focused sessions, including those highlighted below, are open to both in-person and virtual attendees. Sessions are built around the questions that are top of mind for marketers including how to prove event ROI, how to capture and activate attendee intent, and how to run a connected event program that accelerates real outcomes.