The State of Event Attendee Intent

October 2026 update

FOST London 2026: what 222 attendees told Sena

FOST London put six API and AI conferences under one badge. For the first time, Sena wrote to every registrant with a phone number, and 222 people sent at least one message.

More than one in ten came for a job. 26 of the 222 people said that they came to FOST to find work. No registration form asked them, and the event had no hiring information to give them.

What attendees asked that nobody could answer

Each gap below is a page of information that the event did not publish. The organizer now has the list for the next edition.

Swipe the table to see every column

The same event also gave us data on attendance. Read the FOST London no-show data, or the full FOST London case study.

At one forum, 60% of profiled attendees came to sell

At one regional business forum, 60% of profiled attendees said they came to find clients, generate leads and win contracts. That fact appeared nowhere in the registration data. The organizer had planned the event's meeting programme for attendees who came to meet each other as peers.

This result changed how we match people, because almost every meeting format in the industry assumes a room of buyers and learners. When most of the room came to sell, a match on similarity puts competitors at the same table. One attendee told us exactly that, in plain words, after he got his schedule.

The share also changes from event to event. At a developer-focused tech conference, the share was about 15%. You cannot borrow either number, so you have to measure your own, and registration will not do it for you.

Buyers, sellers and learners, by event type

The mix changes with the format and the audience. The two ends of our data are far apart.

With the same product in the same year, the forum had four times the share of sellers. No organizer can borrow this number from another event.

Regional SME business forum: 60% client acquisition. The audience was mostly small business owners and independent consultants: HR advisors, insurance brokers, IT providers, coaches and lawyers. Most of them sell professional services to the same buyer profile. A speed-business format in that room seats sellers with sellers unless something actively prevents it.

Developer-focused tech conference: 9 of 58 attendees, about 15%, said outright that they came to sell. Staff from three sponsors were among them. One attendee said plainly that he did not want sales pitches. Both groups were legitimate attendees, and both met in one directory with nothing to tell them apart.

Multi-stage tech festival: a different pattern again. 78% of conversations were about where to go: which stage, which room, what is on next. With five concurrent stages, attendees first needed to find their way, and the wish to meet people came up only after that.

So "sponsors want to meet attendees" is not a plan on its own. At the first event, a sponsor that sells to SMEs had qualified prospects all around it. At the second, sponsors competed for a minority of the room, and most of the sellers chased the same buyers the sponsors wanted. Those two events need different sponsorship products. Neither organizer had any way to tell which one they had from their registration export.

61 to 69% of attendees who talked to Sena described their goals in full

Of the attendees who talked to Sena at all, 61 to 69% described their work, goals and interests in full. They did more than ask a question.

At the regional forum, 69% described their goals in full. The typical conversation ran to 5 messages. At the multi-stage festival, the share was 61%, and most of those conversations started with a question about where to go. The goals came out when someone asked which stage to go to.

People told us their goals in conversations they started for other reasons. A form asks for effort and gives nothing back. A conversation answers the attendee's question first.

This rate counts only attendees who talked to Sena. Many registered attendees never did, and that gap is larger. The next section covers it.

What drives engagement, and where it failed

One choice matters most: did the organizer put the opt-in on the registration form and promote it? It matters more than the channel, the copy or the technology.

We publish the 19% and the 6% because a report where everything worked is a sales pitch. In the middle case, two-thirds of attendees opened the message and only a third answered it. People saw it, and it did not make its value clear enough to earn a reply. At a content-led event, it also competed with the programme itself.

When you judge any attendee-engagement product, ask about this number first. Ask how many registered attendees at a named event replied. A rate over "active users" tells you nothing.

What this data cannot tell you

Sena talked with attendees who opted in, on WhatsApp and web chat, before and during each event. Every figure comes from one named event, and we do not average across events.

The limits

• Eight events do not stand for all events. These eight chose to use Sena. Most are B2B and European, and their organizers already cared about who meets whom. Do not read these percentages as industry norms.
• We count only what attendees told us. Some people do not say they came to sell, so the 60% figure is probably low. Attendees did not pick a group. We sorted their goals into groups ourselves.
• The groups are small. The breakdowns cover 128 attendees at one event and 58 at another. That is enough to show that the two events are very different. It is too few for a precise figure at either.
• We are not neutral. We sell a product that collects this data, and this research says the data is worth the effort. Every number comes from one named event, so you can check it.

This report contains no attendee names, employer names, contact details or quotes tied to a person. We publish totals for each event, with client consent.

What you can do with this data

You can do four things, and none of them need you to buy from us.

• Add one question to your registration form. One field tells you roughly which room you have, and that is more than most organizers know today. Ask: "Are you here mainly to learn, to hire, to buy, or to sell?"
• Do not plan meetings for a room of peers. If a meaningful share of your audience came to sell, a match that treats everyone alike will seat them with each other. Split the format by goal, or expect complaints.
• Put any attendee-channel opt-in on the registration form. The gap between 76% and 6% in our data is mostly this decision.
• Ask every vendor "out of how many?", us included. You want the number of registered attendees at a named event who replied.

You can cite and reuse this research under CC BY 4.0. If you want us to clarify a figure, or think we read our own data wrong, tell us. We will correct this page before we defend it.

Keep reading

• Four in ten registrants did not come. Most went quiet first.: no-show data from 1,411 FOST London registrants.
• WhatsApp for event attendees: what works and what breaks: the channel behind these conversations.
• Prove sponsor ROI beyond badge scans: what this intent data is worth to a sponsor.
• Best event networking apps, ranked by outcomes: how to grade any platform against these questions.