How to Use AI for Event Outreach

Event Outreach Strategy: The 5 Plays

To maximize your event ROI, coordinate outreach across five plays. This playbook focuses on the how-to for each, using Gem-E to personalize at scale:

1. Marketing to prospects — AI-personalized invites to ICP prospects at registered companies
2. SDRs promoting the event — add a P.S. event promotion across all active outbound sequences
3. AEs to open opportunities — personalized invites to contacts in active deals
4. CSMs to customers — invites to your booth, dinner, or 1:1 meetings
5. Executive touch — optional high-touch outreach from your CEO or CRO to priority accounts

Each play can be set up as its own workflow in UserGems, or you can combine segments into a single workflow using conditional instructions (covered in Step 4). The steps below walk you through the full setup.

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At a high level, this is how to use AI (Gem-E) to personalize event outreach:

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Step 1: Get your registration list and tag contacts in CRM

Start by getting the registration list from your event organizer. You may receive a list of people, a list of companies, or both.

If you have a list of people: Upload to your CRM and tag each contact with an event-specific field.

Create tags like:

• [Event Name] 2026 — Registered
• [Event Name] 2026 — Attended
• [Event Name] 2026 — No-Show

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If you only have a list of companies: Upload the company list to your CRM, then use UserGems to find persona-matching prospects at those companies:

1. Open UserGems’ Signals page and create a Custom Signal (Account) using the Salesforce Report ID for your event company list
2. Check the box to “Find Prospects” and select your target Persona from the dropdown
3. Go to the Audience page, filter for: Company Signal = [your custom signal] + Has Email = Yes
4. Save the audience and give UserGems 24 hours to build your buying groups and capture signals

After the event, update the tags: convert “Registered” to “Attended” for people who showed up, and move non-attendees to “No-Show.” This gives you two clean segments for post-event follow-up.

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💡 Pro Tip: Use these same tags for reporting. Even if you’re not planning AI-powered follow-up for a particular event, tagging attendance is worth doing every time.

Step 2: Build your Audience and Workflow

Create a workflow in UserGems that uses the event signal from your CRM as the trigger.

1. Create a new audience targeting contacts with your event tag (e.g., the Salesforce field “Events” equals your event name).
2. Create a new workflow linked to that audience. Select “Generate AI email” as the action.
3. Keep the audience simple. It just needs to capture everyone associated with this event. You’ll segment attendees vs. no-shows in the next step using conditional instructions.

Step 3: Decide your messaging strategy by segment

Not every segment needs the same approach. Here’s a framework for deciding when to use Gem-E AI emails vs. hard-coded emails:

💡 Pro Tip: The hybrid approach is a powerful middle ground: write 1–2 base emails with your specific language, then feed them to Gem-E with instructions to personalize using signals. You get consistency and personalization without choosing one over the other.

Step 4: Add Conditional Instructions for Gem-E

Conditional instructions let you write different prompts for different segments within the same workflow — so Attendees get one message and No-Shows get another, or Pre-event Registrants get a different tone than cold ICP prospects.

To add a conditional instruction:

1. In the workflow, go to the Content section
2. Click Add Content → Generate with AI → Conditional Instructions
3. Write your prompt (see the templates below)
4. Critical: After creating the condition, add a filter to specify which sub-signal it applies to (e.g., “Event tag = [Event Name] Attended”)

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💡 Pro Tip: This filter step is the most commonly missed part of the setup. Without it, your conditional messaging won’t target the right contacts. After you create the condition, scroll down to find it in your content list and add the filter.

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You can add multiple conditions in the same workflow — one for attendees, one for no-shows, one for different event roles. This is easier to manage than creating separate workflows for each group.

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Sample Prompt Templates

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PRE-EVENT: Invite to booth / event

This audience is prospects and customers we want to invite to our booth at [Event Name] on [Date] in [Location].

Create a 3-email sequence inviting them to stop by our booth.

In each email, highlight the highest-scoring signal at that company (if any).

Our booth is [#Number]. Our [Title], [Name], will be there and would love to meet 1:1.

Include this copy in the first email: [your specific CTA or value prop].

Keep emails to 2–4 sentences. Tone should be warm and personal, not salesy.

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POST-EVENT: Attendee follow-up

This contact attended [Event Name] on [Date] in [Location].

We connected with them at the event. Key themes included [Theme 1], [Theme 2], and [Theme 3].

Reference their attendance and any relevant signals. The goal is to [book a follow-up meeting / continue the conversation].

Keep the tone warm and personal. Emails should be 2–4 sentences.

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POST-EVENT: No-show follow-up

This contact registered for [Event Name] on [Date] but did not attend.

We did not connect with them. Reference the key themes: [Theme 1], [Theme 2], [Theme 3].

Mention what they missed and offer an alternative way to engage (recap, 1:1 meeting, or next event invite).

Keep the tone friendly, not guilt-tripping. Emails should be 2–4 sentences.

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Step 5: Configure AI email cadence and preview

Once your conditional instructions are set, configure how many emails Gem-E should write and preview the output.

1. Go to the Instructions tab in your workflow. Specify the number of emails (e.g., 3–4 emails for pre-event, 2–3 for post-event).
2. Enable Gem-E by toggling on AI messaging. Confirm when prompted.
3. Preview the generated emails. Gem-E will draft personalized messages based on your prompts and each contact’s signals.
4. Iterate if needed. If emails are too long, add instructions like “Keep emails to 2–4 sentences.” If the tone is off, adjust your prompt in Content and hit the refresh button to regenerate.

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💡 Pro Tip: Gem-E is already optimized for reply rates. Your prompts should focus on event-specific context (booth number, themes, CTA) and signal usage — not on persuasion tactics. The AI handles the rest.

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Step 6: Add a PS across all campaigns to promote your event (optional)

In addition to dedicated event workflows, you can amplify event promotion across all outbound emails by adding a P.S. line that promotes the event. This covers Play #2 from the strategy overview — SDRs promoting the event in their ongoing sequences.

1. In Gem-E (not inside a specific workflow), go to Content → Links
2. Add a new link with your event registration URL and a short promotional message
3. Gem-E will automatically append this as a P.S. to all outbound emails across your active workflows
4. Turn it off after the event to stop promoting a past event

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💡 Pro Tip: If you’re also running event-specific outbound (e.g., “Come to our booth”), exclude that workflow from the global P.S. link. Otherwise, prospects get a double promotion — the email invites them to the event, and the P.S. also invites them to the event. Work around this by applying the link to all campaigns except the event-specific one.

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Step 7: Review schedule & limits, then activate

Before activating your workflow:

• Check your sending schedule — make sure emails are timed appropriately relative to the event date. Pre-event sequences should complete before the event.
• Review sending limits — protect your email domain by respecting daily send caps, especially if you’re running multiple event campaigns simultaneously.
• Verify the sender — make sure the “from” address makes sense. For prospect outreach, your SDR or AE. For customer invites, the CSM or an executive. For booth outreach at a conference, someone who will actually be at the booth.

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Save and activate the workflow. Monitor replies and adjust prompts if needed in the first 24–48 hours.

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💡 Pro Tip: If multiple people on your team are sending event outreach from different mailboxes, keep an eye on total volume per domain. A sudden spike in sends can hurt deliverability.

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Quick Setup Checklist

Pre-event:

1. Get the registration list from the event organizer
2. Upload to CRM and tag contacts (or find prospects at registered companies using UserGems)
3. Create an audience and workflow in UserGems
4. Add conditional instructions with prompts for each segment
5. Apply filters to each condition (don’t skip this!)
6. Set email count and style preferences in Instructions tab
7. Preview Gem-E emails, iterate on prompts
8. Add a global P.S. event link in Gem-E → Content → Links
9. Review schedule and limits, then activate

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Post-event:

1. Update tags: Registered → Attended; non-attendees → No-Show
2. Create a new workflow (or update the existing one) with post-event conditional instructions
3. Attendee prompt: reference the connection, event themes, book a follow-up
4. No-show prompt: share what they missed, offer an alternative touchpoint
5. Preview, iterate, and activate
6. Turn off the global P.S. event link

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