How ELX Congress 2025 Elevated Its Post-Event Engagement

In a prep call with Nicola Kastner, the CEO of ELX, just three weeks before ELX Congress 2025 in Chicago, she mentioned a surprising moment she had experienced at an event she once attended but hadn’t seen replicated anywhere else. A couple of minutes after that event ended, she told me, she received an email from the organizers, a “Thank you” note with her name, a warm message, and a photo from the event. Nothing she hadn’t seen before. With all the email automation tools available, it didn’t seem unique to receive a personalized message addressed to her.

But then it hit her: the photo in the email was of herself. That intrigued her and made her much more engaged with the email. The same email that was sent while she was still at the venue, along with hundreds of other attendees. How did they manage to upload all the photos so quickly, including those captured just moments earlier, sort them by attendee, pick the best one, and share it seamlessly?

Since that day, Nicola tried to find that tool but couldn’t match the technology anywhere. So, imagine what brain cell it ignited in me when Nicola told me about her experience - just three weeks before the ELX Congress. I couldn’t resist the challenge and took it to our devoted team at Kampfire. Not sure if I recognized a bit of skepticism on Nicola’s face (hard to tell over a Zoom call), but we were determined to deliver.

Now look, the technology is already built into Kampfire:

1. We developed the fastest, secure uploading technology in the industry.

2. We use top-notch AI-based facial recognition to bundle photo albums by face.

3. Our algorithms select the best photo of an attendee based on a set of flexible parameters chosen by the host.

4. We’ve already developed the algorithms behind Social Boost that measure attendee mood, social media preferences, and other attributes.

5. We have a platform where attendees already interact with their personal photos alongside CTAs, sponsor opportunities, and more activations.

We kicked off the project with the wonderful Hannah Elston, the Manager, Marketing and Communications at ELX, and by far the most non-tech tech-savvy person we’ve met, and within three days, we pulled off a POC. Hannah’s immersive understanding of the Kampfire system made it easy and fast to test, improve, and release. Above all, she took it upon herself to integrate it with HubSpot (note to self: add integrations with all leading marketing platforms). A couple more days, and the feature was embedded in Kampfire. Not without minor glitches and terrible UI, I admit, but it still got the job done. We even named it “Kampfire Spotlight.”

The ELX Congress took place in Chicago last week, from July 14-16, and it was a huge success. The ELX team of three superwomen - Hannah, Chloe, and Nicola managed to do it once again. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there, but the pictures tell the whole story.

Kampfire was activated by the end of the third day of the event, sharing personalized moments with attendees. And right as attendees were leaving, Kampfire Spotlight kicked in, sharing with each attendee their most memorable moment (at least that’s what our algorithm is trained to do...).

Our customers almost never see 100% engagement on the Kampfire dashboard. But when all attendees claim their photo album after the event ends, many of them more than once, that’s a moment to cherish. Nicola’s challenge was right on the mark, Hanna’s patience was amazing, and we now have a new, desirable feature that’s already been showcased at ELX in front of industry leaders.

Before I wrap this story, I have a little confession to make. Since we had only three weeks from inception to delivery, I wasn’t sure we’d make it. So, I had a plan B: everything Kampfire Spotlight does, we would do manually, just in case. And unintentionally, we discovered something incredible. We had a chance to compare one of our automatic tools to the manual process.

It confirmed something we’ve known for a long time: Kampfire saves days of work and delivers better results. By the time Kampfire did everything, our three-person team hadn’t even finished opening the pizza box they were planning to eat just before the photos landed in our drive.

What took three people 100 minutes (300 minutes total) took our system less than 3 seconds. And that was for an event with 100 attendees. Imagine how much time it would take an event team to pull off a post-event engagement campaign for 1,000 attendees or 10,000.

Perhaps that’s the explanation for why the post-event phase is so often overlooked. And once again, it proved to us that Kampfire isn’t just a “nice to have”, it’s a must-have.

Oh, and Nicola’s email after the event about Kampfire’s activation at the Congress meant the world to me:"Thank you so much for everything you did to support us. I loved the ability for the personalized emails on top of everything else you offer."