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- [Part 1/3] Personalization - Forbes' 2025 marketing trends (for event hosts)
[Part 1/3] Personalization - Forbes' 2025 marketing trends (for event hosts)
The year is 2025 (finally) and no sign of decline in the private events space has been detected (yay!).
The Pay2Stay Team
January 07, 2025
On New Year's Day, Forbes published an essential compilation about key marketing trends for 2025 as identified by industry leaders.
At The Future of Events, we love such insights! But we can't help but look at them from a private events perspective aka, through our “Pay2Stay lenses”. So let’s dive in, shall we?
📝 Note:
This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on what private event hosts can learn from this year's marketing trends, according to the list on Forbes.
“This, but make it mine.”
That's pretty much what consumers will be saying more of in 2025, as personalization is no longer a “nice-to-have” but a “must-have”, Bold Commerce's VP of Marketing and Technology Partnerships, Casey Gannon, tells Forbes’ Senior Contributor Kimberly A. Whitler.
Casey is right. Tobias Ruck, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at event ticketing platform Pay2Stay, can confirm.
“Our objective at Pay2Stay was to put out a functional tool out there on both the App Store and Google Play Store and we've achieved that. Early customers now want more and at the top of their wish list is personalization,” he acknowledged.
“Adding their logo, applying corporate identity-based themes, and sending email invites from the app with their own email sender name are things that event hosts using Pay2Stay have requested.
“Our team is diligently working to deliver these custom features to a select group of early customers in 2025 Q1 before making them available to the public later this year.”
Between event hosts and event guests, the desire for personalization goes both ways. Veteran private event host and founder of Pay2Stay, Sascha Koch, is one to generously share pro-tips with his fellow event professionals.
“You need to make your guests feel special, always. Let them feel that the experience for which they're paying time —and sometimes money— is tailored for them. That's the purpose of hosting exclusive events,” he told The Future of Events.
“I focus on each patron like they have my full attention because that's what it truly should be about: giving my guests my full attention.”
💡 Pro-tip from the boss himself:
“As an event host, memorize the tiniest details of your guests’ likes and preferences. It could be something as subtle as discovering their preferred spot in the parking lot or their favorite seat in the room and making sure it's always reserved for them. Again, it could mean stocking up on their favorite beverage brand.”
Sascha, who is used to finish his work shifts in the wee hours when everybody has left and he’s done cleaning up, concluded:
“If I am hosting 50 people at a time for an exclusive night, I know exactly what each of them want. I consider that my job is to make provisions for my exclusive guests to the best of my abilities.”
Watch out for Part 2 as we discuss 2025’s growing marketing trend around consumers’ needs for human connections. Subscribe to get notified!
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