Event Management Apps: 7 AI Tools (One is Free!)
Most event planners use AI for content creation, but few take advantage of AI features built in to event management apps to personalize event experiences and analyze data.
Most event planners are using AI for content creation—but only a few are tapping into AI features of event management apps to be able to personalize event experiences, drive KPI for event management, and power future event planning with advanced analytics of past events.
According to Forrester’s Q3 2023 B2B Events and AI Survey, 55% of marketers admit they’re not maximizing the value of the data they collect at their events. While content creation tools like ChatGPT and Claude dominate headlines, there’s a whole world of AI-powered event management apps transforming how corporate events are produced, attended, and evaluated.
Below are some cutting-edge tools that event professionals should know about—for both elevating the attendee experience and enhancing your own event planner professional development.
? Grip: The AI-Powered Event Management App That Thinks Ahead
1. Personalized Session Suggestions
Attendees want curated experiences—and Grip delivers.
Grip’s AI uses attendee bios and real-time behavior – session attendance and sponsor interactions tracked through Bluetooth badges – to suggest customized schedules. This feature is a game-changer for corporate event planning, giving each attendee a tailored journey through the event agenda.
? Use case: A new attendee arrives at your annual user conference. Instead of guessing which sessions to attend, Grip builds a dynamic schedule based on their profile and real-time engagement at earlier sessions.
2. Smart Networking Suggestions
It can be intimidating to face a conference full of people who all seem to know others, while you feel alone in the crowd. Grip’s intelligent networking tool recommends people to meet based on interests, job roles, and activity at the event. Its integrated scheduling assistant also helps users line up meetings that work around their personalized session schedule, all tracked in-app.
? Benefit for KPIs: Trackable meeting metrics like meeting acceptance rates and follow-ups contribute directly to the KPI for event management that you can report back to event stakeholders.
3. Interactive Venue Maps and Attendee Location Features Embedded in Grip Event Management App
This is really cool. Ever had trouble finding the person you want to meet at a large conference? Sure, we all have. At the scheduled time of the meeting on the in-app calendar, Grip will allow the attendee to see the location of the person they’re meeting with. Arrows in the map point the way towards the person’s location. (Maybe not so good if you’re trying to lose someone you really don’t want to meet with! Ha ha.)
Similarly, Grip’s in-app map functions like Google Maps for your trade show floor. When an attendee wants to find a particular trade show booth, they can see where their contact or booth is located and get turn-by-turn arrows—especially useful at large conventions.
? Efficiency booster: Helps attendees and sponsors make every minute count on a packed show floor.
? Grip + Backtrack: AI for Sponsor ROI and Lead Intelligence
4. Automated Lead Reporting, also from Event Management App, Grip
Here’s more AI magic. After the event, sponsors can log into a custom-branded portal to download .CSV files with:
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Who visited their booth
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Who had meetings
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Badge scans
These files can be fed directly into a CRM, streamlining lead follow-up and event production software analytics. No more chasing down data from organizers.
5. Sales-Boosting Voice Transcripts from Backtrack
The AI tool, Backtrack, goes even further by recording sales floor conversations and attaching voice memos and AI-generated transcripts to contact profiles. These insights help remote sales teams understand lead context and intent—critical to demonstrating KPIs to stakeholders and, ultimately, corporate event planning success.
? Why it matters: Sales-ready intelligence = faster follow-ups, better-qualified leads, and improved sponsor satisfaction.
⚡ Spark: Generating Event Topic Ideas and Schedules Like a Boss (for free!) with event management app, Spark
6. Instantly Generate Conference Schedules
Ever sat at a blank screen, wondering how to craft an actual conference schedule around the vague topic ideas that your client has thrown at you in a sort of a jumble?
When a client provides only vague topic ideas, Spark, an AI tool crafted with event planners in mind, can spin those ideas into a full-fledged event agenda—complete with session titles, speaker bios, and formatted schedules. This reduces days of manual work to minutes. And the best part? The schedule-generator I used to create the schedule above in minutes is completely free!
? An essential tool for event planner professional development, helping you become faster and more strategic.
7. Smart Social Media Repurposing
Spark doesn’t just create content—it adapts it. Whether you’re turning a LinkedIn post into a tweet thread or reshaping an Instagram caption for corporate tone, Spark helps you meet your audience where they are.
? Engagement booster: Maintain consistent messaging across platforms while saving time.
Final Thoughts: Going beyond content generation: bringing event planning and production to new levels
If you’re still only using AI for social media and blog posts, you’re missing out. Tools like Grip, Backtrack and Spark go far beyond text generation—they’re redefining event management apps, event production software, and how we think about ROI in events.
Integrating these platforms into your workflow isn’t just smart—it’s essential for the next generation of corporate event planning.
Faith Keiser is a former event photographer who established one of the best-known and most profitable event photography studios in Philadelphia, Faith West Photography, which she ran for over 20 years, interacting with event planners of all kinds. Before that, Faith was a pop music critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is now the Founder of the only vetted, peer-reviewed online marketplace, plus free community for corporate event planners and experiential marketers, eventnation.com. She and her husband, Ken, and daughter, Katie, have 2 rescue dogs, Mikey and Piper, who kindly allow us to share the sofa with them (especially when they’re scared by lightning.) EventNation donates a portion of its proceeds to the non-profit Carmen’s Dog Rescue in South Carolina. Carmen tirelessly rescues dogs in situations of abuse and homelessness.
