Why Corporate Events Feel Like a Drag: A Guide to Designing an Emotional Journey for Your Events
Open with a keynote. Close with a panel. Then a breakout. Then lunch. Another panel. Another presentation. On the surface, everything about your event looks like it’s going the way it should. But by half-day, you can feel it—energy is low, attendees are quiet. Engagement has dropped. Your event isn’t turning out to be the experience you wanted to create.
Unfortunately, this is all too common. When deadlines loom and logistics take priority, event content is often relegated into just a checklist of speeches and presentations to fill air time.
But the truth is: your content is what shapes the entire experience – not the goodie bags, the venue and lunch you spend so much money on. The right sequence of presentations and discussions can raise the energy, mesmerise your audience, deepen engagement, and lead to meaningful outcomes — whether that’s lead generation, community-building, or brand advocacy.
According to Momencio (2025), sequencing content with emotional pacing boosts attendee satisfaction by 35% and lead conversion by 25%.
So here’s how you can artfully and strategically design and sequence your event content to guide attendees on an intentional emotional journey.
The 3-Step Framework For Masterful Event Content Planning
Step 1: Mapping Your Audience’s Journey
In order to replace your event content with a choreographed experience, your first step is to map out the entire journey that your audience goes through. The goal of this step is to come up with a detailed list of every interaction, or touchpoint an attendee has with your event, from their first point of awareness to the final post event follow up. In order to build this map accurately you’ll need 3 key elements: your event’s goals, your audience personas, and their journey throughout the event.
While this guide focuses on applying audience personas and content strategies, to those who would like a comprehensive review of these topics, further reading is available here [insert link].
Now, let’s dive into the 3 elements. Think of it as if throwing a surprise party:
- Articulate your event goals:
Why are we throwing a surprise party? Is the goal just to create a shock and a laugh? Or are we trying to create an unforgettable memory that will be spoken about in years to come?
Your goal sets your overall content direction, it determines everything else — the message, the flow. If your goal is lead conversion, your strategy will be focused on creating compelling arguments, success case stories that encourage adoption, and a feeling of sooner is better than later. This ensures that you’re not just creating content to fill air time, but creating impact.
- Describe your audience:
Who are you trying to surprise? What’s their favourite cake and the music they love? Every detail will be tailored to them.
Go beyond the “software engineers” and “heads of marketing”, consider their true needs, motivations, pain points. Create a detailed persona of your ideal attendees. The more specific you are, the more personalized and impactful the experience will be, leading to greater engagement.
A good starting point is to use someone who may already be your existing client or customer. Consider what brought them to you and what value you brought to them. See an example below of a detailed audience persona for potential attendees at a tech product launch:
| Name | Alex, The Pragmatic Engineer |
| Role | Senior Software Engineer |
| Need | An efficient, proven solution and tools that solve immediate, real-world problems he faces at work. |
| Motivation | To write clean, high quality code and find ways to make his daily workflow less frustrating and more productive. |
| Pain Point | Detests marketing fluff and “vaporware” |
| Quote | Don’t tell me what it can do, show me how it works. I need to know if this will make my job easier on Monday morning. |
| Name | Jordan, The Technical Decision Maker |
| Role | Chief Information Officer |
| Need | A scalable, secure and maintainable platform that integrates smoothly with the team’s existing stack. |
| Motivation | To future-proof the company’s architecture and avoid technical debt |
| Pain Point | Skeptical of trendy tools that require too much change management or don’t scale |
| Quote | I don’t need a new shiny tool, I need something that fits our roadmap and won’t blow up in 6 months. |
- Know their journey
What are the different phases to your surprise? How will your target profile be invited? How does s/he get to the surprise location? What is s/he doing up till the point when you shout “Surprise!”, and what happens afterwards? Think of the multiple things that an attendee will be doing from the invitation all the way to after the event has ended.
Identify all the different touchpoints you have with your attendees throughout the entire experience – from the moment they are made aware of the event itself, throughout the event and even after they go home and open their social media to see the photos they were tagged in.
For each of the personas you have identified in #2, build the journey map with what they are doing at the touchpoint and how they are feeling at that point in time.
| PERSONA #1 – Alex, The Pragmatic Engineer | ||
| Touchpoint | Attendee Action | Default Emotional State |
| Event online registration | Register through website | Mild Skepticism
They’re deciding “Is this worth my time?” and evaluating credibility and relevance before submitting their details. |
| Arrival at event | Asks for directions and waits in long line to get lanyard | Overwhelmed
They are thinking “This place is a maze.” and would be focused on trying to find the room they need to head to. |
| Opening keynote | Find a seat in the back of the auditorium and start listening to the opening talk. | Disengaged.
They are bored listening to “Same old corporate talk.” and wondering when the first session will begin. |
| Technical breakout | Finds a seat in the smaller room and proceeds to take notes of the speaker’s presentation. | Interested but confused.
They find the speaker’s presentation intriguing but is thinking “Wait, the speaker just glossed over the hardest part of the implementation.” |
| Hands on lab | Sits at a shared table with a provided laptop and works through a technical exercise. | Engaged.
They are excited to have a chance to be hands on. |
| “Thank you” Email | Opens the thank you for attending email while waiting for his ride home. | Exhausted.
They are tired after the long day. “Okay, the event’s over. Time to catch up on a hundred work emails.” |
Now that you mapped out the journeys for your attendees, the next step is to define a “Desired Emotional State” based on your overall event goals. Remember the birthday party, in order for your target to be “surprised”, you would want him/her to be oblivious of your surprise up until the point where you bring out the cake, and even amplify the impact by having everyone pretend they forgot about his/her birthday.
For every touchpoint on your map, list down what you would want your audience to feel as opposed to their default states.
| PERSONA #1 – Alex, The Pragmatic Engineer | |||
| Touchpoint | Attendee Action | Default Emotional State | Desired Emotional State |
| Event online registration | Register through website | Mild Skepticism
They’re deciding “Is this worth my time?” and evaluating credibility and relevance before submitting their details. |
Confident in the event’s credibility, excited about attending, and anticipating clear personal or professional value. |
| Arrival at event | Asks for directions and waits in long line to get lanyard | Overwhelmed
They are thinking “This place is a maze.” and would be focused on trying to find the room they need to head to. |
Oriented and calm, they know exactly where to go and feel that everything is well-organized. |
Note that just like a movie, you want to carefully craft this experience. An event full of emotional highs at the start will quickly tire the audience and have them zone out in the later part. On the other hand, a weak first impression will leave them thinking of ways to get out of your event at the first opportunity.
A strong emotional experience is one that keeps teasing the audience with buildups and payoffs, such that it becomes a familiar rhythm – and something they look forward to, all the way to the very last session. And like any other rhythms they are meant to be intentionally disrupted so that things are kept interesting, and audiences are kept at the edge of their seats.
(Illustration of audience highs and lows here)
Step 3: Craft a content piece to achieve the desired emotional outcome
This is where we turn every touchpoint into opportunities for connection. It can be as simple as an automated reminder email to a full-fledged video. It doesn’t even need to be professionally done although having them expertly crafted will increase your chances that your message is received accurately. We call this a Content Matrix.
Every item in the Content Matrix is designed to take the audience from their default state to our desired emotional state.
| PERSONA #1 – Alex, The Pragmatic Engineer | ||||
| Touchpoint | Attendee Action | Default Emotional State | Desired Emotional State | Content Matrix |
| Event online registration | Register through website | Mild Skepticism
They’re deciding “Is this worth my time?” and evaluating credibility and relevance before submitting their details. |
Confident in the event’s credibility, excited about attending, and anticipating clear personal or professional value. | Content Piece #1 – Registration page with strong social proof (testimonials from previous attendees, or attendance numbers, speaker accreditations)
Content Piece #2 – Video on registration page showing a teaser of the panelists and topics covered |
| Arrival at event | Asks for directions and waits in long line to get lanyard | Overwhelmed
They are thinking “This place is a maze.” and would be focused on trying to find the room they need to head to. |
Oriented and calm, they know exactly where to go and feel that everything is well-organized. | Content Piece #1 –
Clear signages from the moment they enter (a simple, scannable map of the event’s layout) Content Piece #2 – Well-staffed check-in desks to minimize queues |
Having your content matrix applied throughout your event touchpoints will help you regain control over the event experience, ensuring that the right brand messages are being conveyed to your guests.
Conclusion
Ultimately, this three-step process is your blueprint for empathy at scale, ensuring every content decision is grounded in real human experience. Your event content plan isn’t just a checklist to “tick” — it becomes a critical driver of business growth.
McKinsey found that 71% of consumers now expect personalised interactions, and brands that deliver see 40% more revenue (Arora et al., 2021). When attendees feel truly understood and valued, they don’t just show up — they engage, remember, and return.
BCD M&E highlights that when events move beyond just functioning smoothly and instead emotionally resonate with attendees through storytelling, they’re more likely to leave a lasting impression and foster deeper connections (Thackston, 2022).
With the right planning tools, achieving personalisation at scale becomes possible. The content matrix is one such tool, giving your team a clear framework to turn your event content into meaningful experiences.
Start mapping your next event journey with clarity and confidence using the toolkit in this guide.
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Sources
Why most event journeys fail, and how to fix yours. (2025, February 6). Momencio.
The value of getting personalization right—or wrong—is multiplying. (2021, November 12). McKinsey & Company.
Thackston, K. (2022, November 2). Storytelling Statistics: Why marketing storytelling works so well. Marketing Words Blog : Work Less, Convert Better, Sell More.