LinkedIn Boosts Event Promotion with New Integrations and Lead Generation Features

LinkedIn has unveiled new platform integrations and tools to help businesses maximize the impact of their events, responding to a significant rise in event sharing activity on the professional networking platform. The new features include integrations with webinar hosting platforms ON24 and Cvent, plus lead generation objectives for event advertisements.

According to LinkedIn, event ads drive an average 31% increase in viewership, creating substantial opportunities for businesses looking to expand their event reach through the platform.

Streamlined event management through third-party integrations

LinkedIn's latest update allows event creators to seamlessly manage their events through the webinar hosting platform ON24. This integration enables users to create and promote LinkedIn events directly from the ON24 platform, with options to run LinkedIn event ads without switching between systems.

"When hosting an event on ON24, it can be managed from start to finish after opting in and setting up the integration," LinkedIn explained. "And, regardless of whether the event is hosted on LinkedIn or not, marketers can now go to the Company or Event Page – before, during or after an event – to boost and reach more people."

The platform already supports event hosting through Zoom, making this new integration with ON24 an expansion of LinkedIn's efforts to accommodate diverse event management preferences.

Similarly, the new Cvent integration focuses on enhancing audience data management. Users can now sync event data directly between Cvent and LinkedIn, facilitating easier transfer of lead information to customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

"When setting up an event in Cvent, the new 'Connect to LinkedIn' option under 'Audience Segments' turns attendee and registration lists into audience segments that marketers can choose inside LinkedIn's Campaign Manager," LinkedIn stated. This feature allows marketers to "seamlessly retarget high-intent audiences, personalize messaging based on event engagement, and drive conversions with precision."

These integrations represent a significant advancement in LinkedIn's event management ecosystem, complementing its broader LinkedIn Business Manager capabilities for marketing professionals who need to coordinate campaigns across multiple channels.

Enhanced lead generation capabilities

Perhaps most significantly for business users, LinkedIn is adding lead generation as a specific objective when creating event advertisements. This new option is designed to help marketers more effectively convert event interest into tangible business opportunities.

"Quickly turn event interest into pipeline by selecting 'lead generation' as the campaign objective and 'event' as the ad format to reach people most likely to register," LinkedIn explained. "Once leads are captured through the campaign, they will sync directly to a CRM or marketing automation platform (MAP), making it easier to demonstrate business impact."

For users of Integrate or ON24, LinkedIn is streamlining the lead collection process even further. The platform will now automatically route leads from both organic and paid registration forms directly to CRM or MAP systems without requiring manual uploads or intervention.

These automated workflows eliminate potential delays in lead processing, allowing businesses to respond more quickly to potential opportunities generated through their LinkedIn events.

Expert Tip: To maximize the effectiveness of lead generation through LinkedIn events, consider creating segmented follow-up email campaigns based on attendee engagement levels. Those who actively participated in Q&A sessions or stayed for the entire event might receive different messaging than those who registered but didn't attend.

Growing importance of LinkedIn events

These updates come as LinkedIn reports substantial growth in event activity on the platform. The company recently revealed a 24% increase in events shared during the last quarter, following a 15% rise in LinkedIn events during Q4 of the previous year.

This consistent growth suggests that businesses are increasingly recognizing LinkedIn's potential as a channel to expand the impact of their professional events to wider audiences.

The rising popularity of LinkedIn events coincides with broader trends in virtual and hybrid event formats that gained momentum during the pandemic and continue to evolve as valuable marketing and networking tools. For businesses already focusing on LinkedIn's e-commerce and revenue generation potential, these event tools provide another avenue to nurture prospects through the sales funnel.

Maximizing event promotion strategies

To fully leverage LinkedIn's event capabilities, marketers should consider:

• Coordinating content strategy: Develop pre-event content that builds anticipation and establishes thought leadership
• Utilizing audience targeting: Apply LinkedIn's professional demographic filters to reach the most relevant attendees
• Implementing cross-promotion: Share event highlights across other marketing channels to maximize visibility
• Analyzing performance metrics: Track registration-to-attendance ratios and engagement levels to refine future events

According to LinkedIn's own marketing research, companies that combine event promotion with thought leadership content see up to 45% higher engagement rates than those promoting events in isolation.

Optimizing for post-event engagement

The value of LinkedIn events extends well beyond the live session. To capitalize on post-event opportunities:

• Repurpose event content into shorter, shareable formats for continued visibility
• Create dedicated follow-up sequences based on attendee engagement levels
• Analyze attendee profiles to identify common characteristics among your most engaged participants
• Use event recordings as gated content to generate additional leads

These techniques align perfectly with current evolving SEO and content marketing practices that prioritize value-driven content and user engagement signals.

Availability and implementation

LinkedIn's event boosting capabilities and integrations with Cvent and ON24 are now available globally to all users. Meanwhile, the lead generation objective for Event Ads and the Integrate integration are currently in beta testing with select users, with wider rollout expected in the coming months.

These features collectively represent LinkedIn's strategic focus on becoming a more comprehensive platform for professional event marketing and management.

How to leverage these new LinkedIn event features

1. Use the ON24 integration to streamline your webinar promotion workflow and reach LinkedIn's professional audience without platform-switching
2. Connect Cvent data with LinkedIn to create more targeted follow-up campaigns based on actual event engagement
3. Test the new lead generation objectives to directly measure ROI from your LinkedIn event promotion efforts

For marketers already using LinkedIn events, these integrations provide powerful new capabilities to measure and maximize the business impact of their event programs, while potentially reducing the technical overhead of managing events across multiple platforms.