While flogging registrations is the endgame, delivering content is the play, he says.
Whitaker resists the knee-jerk urge to blast attendees with event invitations, focusing instead on sending attendees offers of well-crafted content.
"We want to be less like junk in their inbox," Whitaker says.
Content not only attracts attendees to an event, but involves them with the producer's brand after the event is history.
"It seems a shame to spend a huge amount of marketing to get them to turn up for two, three or four days, and then not really engage with them until the next event," Whitaker says.
"If we can keep the conversation going and see the event as more of a 365 activity, then that helps us to have better traction, stops suppressions within out database, and creates a better appetite for conversion if we draw them in through content marketing."
