The B2B Event Playbook: Building Revenue-Driving Events in 2025

#227: Events | In this episode, Dave hosts a live Exit Five session with Zuddl and panelists Stephanie Christensen (Event Marketing Leader) and Kristina DeBrito (Director of Strategic Events at Iterable) to break down how B2B marketers should be thinking about events in 2025. From small VIP dinners to large customer conferences, events are making a big comeback—but without a solid strategy, they can be a massive waste of budget.Dave, Stephanie, and Kristina cover:The key metrics to track to prove event ROI in 2025How to get executive and stakeholder buy-in for your event strategyWhat’s working in B2B events right now (and what’s not)How to follow up post-event to drive engagement and pipelineTimestamps(00:00) - – Intro to Stephanie and Kristina (02:15) - – Why events are making a big comeback in B2B marketing (05:42) - – The biggest mistakes marketers make when planning events (08:30) - – How to align your event strategy with business goals (11:15) - – The key metrics to track for proving event ROI (14:27) - – How to get buy-in from executives and key stakeholders (17:40) - – What’s working right now in B2B events (and what’s not) (21:56) - – The role of micro-events, VIP dinners, and executive meetups (25:10) - – Sponsoring vs. hosting your own event — how to decide (29:30) - – The importance of post-event follow-up and engagement (33:12) - – Virtual events: lessons learned and how they fit into 2025 strategies (37:05) - – Live Q&A: Expert answers to audience event strategy questions (42:30) - – Final takeaways on making B2B events worth the investment Join 50,0000 people who get Dave's Newsletter here: https://www.exitfive.com/newsletterLearn more about Exit Five's private marketing community: https://www.exitfive.com/***Brought to you by:Optimizely - the AI platform for marketers. Build your own AI agents or pull from a directory of 50+ pre-built ones for marketing use cases. Their new Virtual Teammates can join meetings, complete tasks, support campaigns, and keep your website optimized. Learn more at optimizely.com/exitfive.Webflow - A website platform built for the agentic web, letting modern marketing teams build fully custom sites that perform in AI search with no developer needed. Learn more at webflow.com/for/exitfive.Zoom Webinars & Events – The virtual event platform built to help B2B marketers run webinars that actually drive pipeline, with branded registration pages, live engagement features, and built-in tools to repurpose sessions into clips and content. Learn more at zoom.com/exitfive.Compound Growth Marketing - A full-funnel demand gen agency helping high-growth cybersecurity and enterprise software companies show up earlier in the buying journey, combining AEO, modern paid advertising, and a dedicated go-to-market engineering team. Podcast listeners get two free media planning sessions to find out what channels are driving the best ROI. Learn more at compoundgrowthmarketing.com/exitfive. ***Thanks to my friends at hatch.fm for producing this episode and handling all of the Exit Five podcast production.They give you unlimited podcast editing and strategy for your B2B podcast.Get unlimited podcast editing and on-demand strategy for one low monthly cost. Just upload your episode, and they take care of the rest.Visit hatch.fm to learn more