Three ways event marketers can procure new attendees: Use Reddit ads for early-stage discovery, Use ChatGPT as a clarity audit and not a machine to simply write copy and create emails that sound human.
It’s not marketing. It’s targeting.
If your growth plan is “email the list harder,” I have news: That’s not a growth plan. That’s a comfort plan. Your event marketing plan cannot be a cut-and-paste from last year.
Here’s the shift event marketers are living through (and pretending they aren’t): The audience changed.
Decision timelines are later. Attention is split across a dozen platforms. And the old playbook mostly recycles the same people and calls it “momentum.”
At Expo Expo 2025, Jay Schwedelson, the brilliant mind behind Eventastic, hammered home the same point in a dozen different ways: Net-new doesn’t come from doing more of the same. It comes from better entry points, better messaging and faster testing.
What event marketers are quietly panicking about
You’ve heard these in your own meetings:
- Attendance is flat or slipping.
- International attendance is thinning out.
- Canadian visitors aren’t converting like they used to.
- You need new market segments, but you don’t know where to start.
- Sponsors ‘have budgets,’ but interest is soft.
- Your team is maxed out and allergic to anything that sounds like a rebuild.
Also, the sectors are not feeling the same pressure:
- Medical/healthcare: funding down, approvals slower, ROI scrutiny brutal.
- Professional sectors: audiences are younger and harder to persuade with generic messaging.
- Commercial/B2B: sponsor dollars exist, but awareness and demand creation are the choke point.
The Art of Arrival: Elevating Registration with Purposeful Touchpoints
The metric that tells the truth
Net-new registrations are the truth serum. In-person events often have 30%-55% net-new registrations annually.
If you are not intentionally building net-new, you are capped. Period. And don’t forget, by 2030, Millennials and Gen Z will account for 75% of the workforce, signaling a massive shift in the attendee base for professional events.
Three plays that reliably drive net-new
1. Use Reddit ads for early-stage discovery (yes, really).
Reddit works because people self-organize by role, industry and problems. You’re not interrupting them. You’re showing up inside the conversation they’re already having.
How to run a smart test:
- Pick 1-2 high-intent communities tied to your attendee role.
- Lead with a question, not a billboard.
- Optimize for ‘request info’ behavior first. Registration comes after interest.
2. Use ChatGPT as a clarity audit (not a copy machine).
Most teams use AI to write more content. A better use is to find what’s confusing on your site.
Sample prompt: ‘Review this event website and tell me what’s missing or unclear for a first-time attendee deciding whether to go.’
You’ll usually uncover:
- Who it’s for is buried.
- Outcomes are vague.
- Key details are trapped in PDFs/images AI tools can’t read.
- If AI can’t understand your event, net-new people won’t either.
3) Fix email so it sounds like a person, not a brochure.
Email isn’t dead. Generic email is dead. Same template-based emails, boring, irrelevant subject lines are garbage. It won’t land.
What the data keeps pointing to:
- Open rates improve with consistent sending because engagement drives deliverability.
- The combo of three words or less in the subject line and no pre-header can lift opens significantly.
Try this mindset shift: Instead of ‘Register for our annual conference,’ write: ‘Is this actually for you?’
Two extra tips that make the whole thing convert
Retargeting closes the loop. Net-new visitors bounce. That’s normal. Retargeting is how you catch the ‘maybe later’ crowd without begging.
Sell the outcome, not the agenda. Net-new doesn’t care about your session titles. They care about what they’ll walk away with-skills, connections, opportunities, credibility.
The takeaway
Net-new growth doesn’t require a big overhaul. It requires a small test with sharp targeting, modern discovery channels, and messaging that respects how people decide now.
One segment. One angle. One test. Clear results. Then scale.
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Dahlia El Gazzar is chief ruckusmaker with DAHLIA+Agency. She is a tech company veteran, networker and event marketer. She has spoken at numerous industry events, including IMEX and IAEE.
This article appears in the March 2026 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
