Conference sponsorships are premier opportunities for asset managers to connect with financial advisors, build brand equity, introduce new products, and generate qualified sales opportunities over a condensed period.

To truly maximize returns on this significant investment, the era of relying on mere presence and proximity is over. The greatest conference outcomes now belong to those who apply data and precision across the entire sponsorship lifecycle: before, during, and after the event.

From host to partner in behavioral intelligence

At VettaFi, we don't just host the leading advisor-centric Exchange conference; we also engage with the financial advisor community every single day. We understand what advisors are researching, what content they are engaging with, and where their investment interests are trending.

This unique vantage point has informed the development of our proprietary Investor Behavioral Intelligence (IBI) Platform. 

For Exchange ‘26, we are providing exclusive access to the IBI platform for all our conference sponsors. This platform helps connect issuers to the advisor attendees that might be most interested in their offerings. It features:

• Lead intelligence reports: On-demand reports that combine an advisor's digital and in-person engagement with behavioral intent signals, allowing for prioritized sales outreach.
• Advisor traffic tracker: A powerful tool that de-anonymizes advisor traffic on a sponsor’s own website, building a comprehensive audience view and tying website behavior directly to Exchange sponsorship and VettaFi digital marketing campaigns.
• Enhanced audience analytics: Multi-page pre- and post-conference reports outlining key demographic segments that a sponsor’s conference presence successfully reached.

"For too long, conference sponsorship has been about proximity, not precision,” said Craig Katz, Head of Behavioral Analytics at VettaFi. “By integrating our Investor Behavioral Intelligence platform, we are giving our sponsors an unprecedented advantage, powering superior prioritization of their most engaged leads.”

Your guide to data-driven sponsorship success

Access to these tools helps asset managers maximize ROI from their Exchange sponsorship. Here’s how you can leverage this intelligence across the entire event lifecycle.

1. Before: Precision targeting

The goal before the conference is to transform a static list of attendees into a prioritized ‘target list’ of high-intent leads. This ensures your team focuses its energy and resources on prospects most likely to convert.

• Enablement: Lead Intelligence Reports (pre-conference list) provides a behavioral profile for each advisor.
• Strategy: You can now qualify prospects based on demonstrated intent, such as recent research on specific asset classes or engagement with your digital content, rather than relying solely on their job title or firm size.

Action checklist (Before):

• Tier your target list: Use the IBI data to create a segmented attendee list based on two key factors: engagement with your brand and their relevant product interest.
• Focus outreach: Concentrate your pre-conference meeting requests, personalized emails, and initial outreach efforts exclusively on these high-value, high-intent prospects.

2. During: Strategic engagement

With the necessary data at your fingertips, your conversations move from generalized introductions to highly relevant, strategic discussions. This makes every minute of face time more productive.

• Enablement: The Lead Intelligence dashboard provides real-time access to prospect profiles, allowing for instant preparation for pre-scheduled meetings and spontaneous on-site conversations.
• Strategy: Knowing a prospect recently researched "ESG funds" or "Fixed Income ETFs," for example, allows your team to customize the pitch on the spot and quickly match the advisor's known interest with the appropriate product specialist on your team.

"The result will be more effective, data-driven conversations on-site, dramatically increasing the quality of interactions with high-value leads." - Craig Katz, Head of Behavioral Analytics at VettaFi

Action checklist (During):

• Custom pitches: Develop and prepare custom agendas and pitches for all pre-scheduled meetings based on the advisor's known interests.
• On-the-fly intel: Equip your team with tablets or iPads to access the Lead Intelligence dashboard for conversations that happen on the fly, ensuring every spontaneous interaction is informed and strategic.

3. After: Measurable conversion

Post-event data allows you to streamline the path to conversion and prove quantifiable ROI. The sponsorship is now an integrated, measurable step in your broader lead nurturing cycle.

• Enablement: Advisor Traffic Tracker (ATT) helps you tie Exchange engagement (e.g., badge scans, session attendance) back to activity on your own website, providing a full-funnel view.
• Enablement: Enhanced Audience Analytics (EAA) is your ROI enablement tool, providing robust reporting to support internal conversations about who you reached, what they cared about, and ultimately, to demonstrate the value of your event investment.

Action checklist (After):

• Strategic follow-up: Use the combined data (onsite interaction + web behavior) to segment and prioritize post-event outreach. For example, a lead that engaged with your onsite activation and visited your fund page post-event is immediately flagged as a high-priority, warm lead.
• Report back to leadership: Leverage these advanced analytics to share a clear, data-driven report of your success, justifying the investment and informing future sponsorship decisions.

Conclusion

Knowing who is on an attendee list is good. Knowing what articles they’ve been reading, what sessions they attend, and which asset classes they are most interested in is better.

The issuers who achieve the most success are those using precision data to plan well in advance, resulting in strategic conversations during the event and streamlined follow-up after the event.

To secure your competitive advantage and maximize the value of the Investor Behavioral Intelligence Platform, the time to act is now. Sponsoring early gives your team the critical lead time needed to analyze attendee data and build a truly maximized strategy.

Interested in learning more about how you can access the IBI platform and secure your head start for Exchange ‘26? Speak to our team.