If you had to bet on one technology that will fundamentally reshape B2B marketing in the next five years what would it be, and would it have “agentic” and “AI” in the name?
Agility requires not just reacting to technological advancements like agentic AI, but proactively experimenting with them and adapting your strategies based on real-world results. It also requires organizational buy-in and a willingness to challenge established norms.
Today, we’re going to talk about the rise of agentic AI and its potential to revolutionize B2B marketing, particularly in event marketing.
To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome, Travis Cushing, Chief Product Officer at RainFocus.
About Travis Cushing
As Chief Product Officer at RainFocus, Travis Cushing brings over 20 years of experience in the events and SaaS industries, blending product strategy, customer empathy, and technical execution. With deep expertise in event technology, product-led growth, and integrated data-driven experiences, he is committed to transforming event workflows into strategic business drivers. His passion for people and experiences has built bridges between customers and development allowing RainFocus to execute and build great software. Travis Cushing on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-cushing/ Resources RainFocus: https://www.rainfocus.com
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom (00:35)
If you had to bet on one technology that will fundamentally reshape B2B marketing in the next five years, what would it be? And would it have agentic and AI in the name?
Agility requires not just reacting to technological advancements like agentic AI, but proactively experimenting with them and adapting your strategies based on real world results. It also requires organizational buy-in and a willingness to challenge established norms. Today, we’re going to talk about the rise of agentic AI and its potential to revolutionize B2B marketing, particularly in event marketing. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Travis Cushing, CPO at RainFocus. Travis, welcome to the show.
Travis Cushing (01:16)
Hey, thanks, Greg. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Greg Kihlstrom (01:18)
Yeah, looking
forward to talking about all this with you. Before we dive in though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself as well as a little about what RainFocus does.
Travis Cushing (01:27)
Sure, yeah, so I’ve been in software development and events actually for about 20 years, so a long time, seen a lot of different evolutions, but been leading the product at RainFocus since the beginning, which is about 12 years, so been really good. RainFocus is an event marketing platform. You run all your events, big to small, but it’s really about the data, what you’re doing from the events, what ROI you’re getting out of it, how you’re progressing people through their journey with your company.
So that’s where we specialize.
Greg Kihlstrom (01:59)
Yeah, love it. Love it. Yeah. And I know we’ve we’ve had a few guests from RainFocus over the years. So definitely always love to hear the latest and greatest. So let’s dive in. And I want to start with agentic AI and talk about that as well as some of the personalization aspects. So everybody listening is likely familiar with at least some of the use cases of AI. We certainly talk about that a lot on this show. It’s hard to avoid the topic of AI these days if you read or listen to anything.
anything from generative AI to predictive analytics and others. But agentic AI is a little newer, maybe still a buzzword here. First, can you talk about how does RainFocus define agentic AI?
Travis Cushing (02:40)
Yeah, sure. And I agree. It’s kind of just swirling around us all the time, right? And it changes so quickly. It’s tough to stay up. I mean, at RainFocus, we define a Gentic AI as this next wave of AI, but the ability to take action, right? So that’s what sets it apart from generative or predictive where, you know, those are great at output. They’re great at consolidating information, analyzing, but it’s generally things you need to take and then go do something with where a Gentic takes you to the next step where you actually
can take action for you, right? It can replace some of the tasks that you would do or others your customers would do. And that’s where we draw the line of distinction.
Greg Kihlstrom (03:18)
Yeah, yeah. And I think it is. Yeah, I mean, we’re certainly I think most people are at this point used to the idea of like you prompt and then you wait and then you prompt and then you wait. So, you know, to be able to have a I take some further steps for you. Besides that, that you’re outside of that back and forth can be really powerful. How are you seeing agentic AI in the event experience, you know, whether it’s personal, personalizing, doing other things and, really able to
Travis Cushing (03:28)
Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom (03:47)
tailor individual attendee needs, preferences, things like that.
Travis Cushing (03:51)
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of application in the event space, but specifically on the attendee side, or anything about personalization. You know, even over the last 15 years, you have a machine learning and you have recommendations and then, you know, that’s progressed and gotten better, but it really just kind of leads a person to water. You know, it’s like, Hey, here’s some things we think you should do. Here’s some suggestions we have for you. Right. And that agentic really takes you to this whole new world where you can create an entirely holistic experience for somebody that’s
it’s not only personal, but can become more personalized as they interact, right? So with recommendations, it’s really just responding to behaviors or maybe some demographics. It didn’t have the ability for you to interact specifically with it, take action for you, and then build on that, right? And agentic really changes your ability to get down to the individual and take them to a much deeper level of personalization than we’ve ever been able to do.
Greg Kihlstrom (04:46)
Yeah, and so then on the the on the back end of that, you know, how how can it work and help support? Still support those attendees, but from the organizational standpoint, like what can a genetic AI enable from a customer support or or things like that for, kind of behind the scenes?
Travis Cushing (05:06)
Yeah, that’s great question. for us, it’s interesting because we don’t offer customer support per se, right? But we feel like the solutions we’re putting out there can play a big role here. Because if you think about like going to a grocery store, you’re out of town, you go into a grocery store, and you know kind how things are laid out, but you got to go find things. And you go and ask an employer, you look at the signs or whatever. That’s kind of the world we sometimes throw an attendee into. And so they end up in the support box and they’re asking questions and whatever.
Agendic AI is all about a concierge experience, almost white glove at a personal level. So you think of that grocery store, if I walk in and I have a concierge who is just going to walk me around the store, take me directly to the things, it just automatically eliminates a huge amount of questions, problems, things that would end up in the support box. So we kind of view it as let’s solve the problem before it even becomes a problem. And by doing that, there’s a huge percentage of the support questions that don’t even end up there even.
though that’s not really the core problem we’re trying to solve, but it just naturally goes there.
Greg Kihlstrom (06:09)
Yeah, yeah. And so then let’s let’s talk a little more specifically about RainFocus and your your core focuses. You know, how does how is a Gentic AI playing a role now? And you know, how do you how do you kind of see that moving in the months to come?
Travis Cushing (06:23)
Yeah, so let’s start with just the attendee facing things, because I think there’s a few different areas, right, that we think about it. And so we’re working through attendee agent capability and agentic experiences there. And I think that’s a big part of what we want to do, right? That our customers, customers have to have a good time. They have to be led along. And that leads to better data, frankly, right? The more engaged an attendee can be, the more that that fills in their profile and kind of hits at the core value of what RainFocus is trying to
So that’s a big area of focus for us. So we’re also thinking on the admin side, how do we use agents? How do we help our users get to completion quicker? How do we make sure that what we’re doing…
in our administrative tools are allowing people to create the experiences they need to create, right? Every person who runs an event is trying to create the best experience out there. And the whole agent model allows you to step into a world that can be very complex and very snowflakey and bring that down into really getting at the heart of what you’re trying to accomplish. And so that’s an area for us as well. And then the last one is, and maybe talk more about this, but how does agent…
work and multi-agent capability interoperability is how is that going to work in the future? I think that’s big for RainFocus. I think we’re more the front end of that, but just what are the things we’re doing to collect data to understand attendees and how does that extend into the other systems that are being used inside these organizations? How can agents talk to agents to really complete a picture that’s been near impossible to understand in the past?
Greg Kihlstrom (07:53)
Yeah,
yeah. Well, I definitely want to get to more of the future things. But first, I want to I want to talk a little bit more about what you just touched on, which is the data side of this, too, because that’s another thing. mean, any any marketer, you know, there’s customers moving between channels and all of that. But events have some unique characteristics to them and some unique challenges in data and tracking and all that. So, you know, beyond simply
gathering the data, you know, how can agentic AI help marketers analyze and interpret event data, knowing that, again, it has some unique challenges with it.
Travis Cushing (08:33)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I think this is one of the things we get most excited about is that, know, AI and the ability to consume and process like large amount of data to make it understandable. And, and I think that holds true with event marketers, whether you’re thinking about what’s going on inside this individual event, how am I understanding the data to improve the event, to improve the experience, to improve my program, like all those things, I think.
We have tools that we’ve come out with and that we’re improving around agentic capability on just running reports, surfacing insights, leading you down the path to find the right things that are hidden in that data, right? I think there’s also the capability within this agentic world where I can understand more the impact of this person’s interest and how does that turn into intent and how does that show me how the people that are coming to my events are.
progressing outside of that event inside of our organization. So all those things are areas that we are doing and working on pretty heavily and see some exciting things there around the data.
Greg Kihlstrom (09:37)
Yeah, yeah. And I know you mentioned a few examples there, but you for those marketers that they may be used to kind of their their go to tool set or whatever of metrics and how they measure things like what what should they be thinking about knowing that a Gentic may unlock some things that just maybe weren’t possible or just weren’t accessible before. Like what kind of things should they be thinking about measuring?
Travis Cushing (10:02)
Yeah, I think probably the big thing and there’s some principle based things here, even though the technology is changing, right? And I think for as long as RainFocus has been in business and we’ve been focusing on the data, we always just talk with customers to understand and articulate what are the outcomes that you’re going for with your event, right? What’s your business hoping for? Why are they investing and spending money on these events? Like let’s start at the…
at the basic questions, you know, why things are happening, right? I don’t think that changes. I think you can get into this fallacy sometimes like, sweet, this new technology is going to not only give me the right answers, it’s gonna tell me the right question to ask. And I think those models and those tools have a harder time with that, right? So you still need to hold true to some of these basic principles of just like, why am I running this event? What am I hoping to get out of it? And articulate your questions, but…
Greg Kihlstrom (10:42)
Right.
Travis Cushing (10:55)
You know, the answers can come easier. That’s, just a reality. And I think for some marketers, they’ve been burned a little bit. Like they’ve done the work to ask the question and they do the work to work in the data. And then it’s just overwhelming and I don’t quite get there. And I spent a lot of time and I think, you know, maybe forget a little bit of the past, you know, hold true to some of those principles of how you get to the right answers and, and know that, you know, this new technology is going to help you get there a lot quicker and a lot more efficiently than maybe anything in the past could have.
Greg Kihlstrom (11:24)
Yeah, I mean, I love that because I do think I’ve seen what you just said, is, we might have great ideas in the beginning, but then, you know, we get these dashboards thrown in front of us or we just kind of bang our head against the wall and just aren’t able to get the things that we want. And so we start become we we start becoming biased of, OK, well, if it’s in front of me, it must be important. Right. Versus to me, you know, some of the unlocks here with.
being able to tie data better together and to be able to do some things that again, we’re either not feasible or just way too complicated. Now lets us really do what you’re saying, which is let’s start with the base that we’ve should have done that anyway, you know, but let’s start at the basics and really ask the fundamental questions and then use agentic AI, whatever, whatever the technology is to help us solve that. I think that’s an amazing opportunity.
Travis Cushing (12:15)
Mm-hmm.
Greg Kihlstrom (12:17)
to kind of take that step back, right?
Travis Cushing (12:20)
Yep, yeah, exactly. it’s, I think way more than not, there’s a little bit of a wall there to just get over to be like, okay, yeah, I’m on board that this can do something different than what I’ve done in the past, you know, but yeah, it’s an awesome opportunity.
Greg Kihlstrom (12:31)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, so going to, you know, some of the things looking down, looking down the pipe. mean, certainly there’s a lot of exciting things today to be to be able to do. But as you see marketers and event marketers adopting AI, you know, where what are some of the challenges or what are some of the questions that they should be asking before they before they start down that path that, know, so to
to turn a challenge into an opportunity and things like that.
Travis Cushing (13:05)
Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, we just pick up a thread from our last topic there. You know, you have to be able to let go of how you’ve thought about things in the past, you know, even from a solution standpoint, right? I think that’s one of the biggest challenges we’re all facing. You know, I face it with my team and building the software, you know, it’s like, yeah, that’s really cool, that new agentic thing, but…
I have this design, have this plan, I’ve been talking to customers about this, I’m going to move forward, even though there might be a totally different way to solve that problem. I think that’s probably the number one challenge I see out there is just rewiring a little bit to the possibilities. I’ve been really surprised as some of the solutions I’ve seen come out, not just by us, but by others, the things that we’re able to do with the Gentic and AI technology. And I think just being open to that and
You you sometimes have to take a step back to take a step forward because initially it can be a little slow. Like, okay, I’m interacting with this thing. I, you know, it looks like it could be, but there’s some work here and you got to get over that hump. But I think these technologies can take us a lot further than what technologies could in the past. And that’s a, that’s just a challenge that, you know, marketers need to get over. I think one example to think about is you see this trend of moving from campaigns to customer journey.
based thinking, right? And I think that was really hard in the past because the whole journey spanned, you know, four systems and different interaction points and tying that together was tough. I mean, there were a lot of attempts, but it was a hard thing, especially in these enterprise companies. know, like the systems are deep, the data is rich, like it’s hard, you know, AI and agents operating in these different systems, like you can see it start to come together that like, I can be customer journey based.
I can think about all these touch points lighting up, you know, and understand where this person’s been and the action they should take next. And that’s just one example where like, I’m sure people have attempted that. They’ve probably gotten close, but AI and agentic AI specifically is really going to unlock that capability of understanding that customer through the whole journey, progressing them. So that’s an exciting thing, but it’s a challenge to get over the mental block that like, that actually be done, right?
Greg Kihlstrom (15:13)
Yeah.
Yeah. And also to to what we were saying earlier, which is, we get used to something and you do kind of have to take a step back and rethink. And as amazing as what was built prior may be.
AI in this case, you know, it could be, you know, five years from now, it might be something else. But like right now, you know, AI and agentic, like it does require a different way of thinking about the same things in some, not in all cases, maybe, but like in many cases. And but once you once it kind of clicks, like I’ve found, you know, some people take to things quicker than others or just think in different ways or whatever. But, know, once it clicks, then all of a sudden.
They have a million ideas and they, you know, so I do think it takes a little bit of some people are just may just gravitate towards playing with the new shiny toys and other people are a little more comfortable with the way things were. And, you know, it takes all kinds, right? But but yeah, it’s it’s an interesting days. But I think it does take, you know, some of those early adopters to kind of mentor and coach some of the others and bring everybody up to speed.
Travis Cushing (16:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with you. And just a quick example with us when we’re thinking about it, the attendee agent, we obviously have a lot of plans around the attendee experience and nice designs and all this kind of stuff. And when we took a step back and just said, let’s talk about the problems we were trying to solve and the outcomes we were trying to help these attendees reach. you line those up and then you think about the solutions in a whole new context and you’re like, yeah, all those problems line up.
really nicely to this attendee agent experience and all these things I was thinking about, you know, maybe don’t apply, but you know, it’s hard to let go of that, like you said, but I think if you go through just again, some patterns that are tried and true, right? Like take that step back, understand why you’re doing it, define that problem or outcome, and then line up the solution. know, the light bulb can really go on. You know, if you’re one those people that are going to wait and see, you know, how it goes with other people, I think that’s fine, but you know, pay attention to it.
Greg Kihlstrom (17:15)
Yeah.
Travis Cushing (17:21)
You know, see how they’re progressing and see what inspiration you can get from that can really help.
Greg Kihlstrom (17:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and also I’ve found even taking the word or the phrase, whatever AI out of the question and asking the question that you asked, which is, what’s going to make the customer happier? Like I know, and you know, probably AI is going to be involved in it to some degree, maybe to a huge degree, but taking, taking that thing out of the equation in the question sometimes
Travis Cushing (17:37)
Yeah, totally.
Greg Kihlstrom (17:49)
lets people think a little more freely and think about actual problems and things so that you can get to a solution. And again, if AI and agentic and all that is part of the solution, then great. Again, it probably is, but it frees people up from like thinking about, well, I use chat GPT for this thing. Like, no, no, no, that’s not what we’re really talking about. We’re talking about something else.
Travis Cushing (18:02)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. You know, that’s a really good point that I think we should call out here, you know, as people are, because I, I, I, for my teams, for myself, and for everyone who’s listening here, I do think it’s important to be like, it doesn’t have to be AI. I think with any new technology, you just want to broaden your horizons a little bit and make sure you’re paying attention to possibilities. But it’s, it’s totally possible that you rethink that a bit and the solution you already had in mind is right or a solution that’s not necessarily AI driven could be the right.
right thing for that customer. think that’s a great point, as you think through this stuff. Don’t swing too hard one way or the other.
Greg Kihlstrom (18:44)
Yeah, yeah I know.
Right, right. It’s got to be real. It’s got to really solve the problem. And again, I know the power of the technology. Definitely. It’s you know, I think it can solve so much and maybe again along those lines. You know what is as you’re thinking about the future, you know, what’s your vision for event marketing in this age of agentic AI? mean, agentic is not going anywhere like it’s you know, it’s already proved its usefulness and
Travis Cushing (18:52)
Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom (19:17)
and just how much it can do. What are some of the exciting possibilities that you see here?
Travis Cushing (19:22)
Yeah. Yeah. I think the big thing for me just is this theme of accelerating people, right? You’re accelerating the experience people can have. They can get more out of the event. You’re accelerating our understanding of the behaviors and things that are going on at the event. Accelerating a team’s ability to run events that are unique and really hit the mark, you know? And so, and then, then really the crux of all that is
Okay, all this data is being collected and we can really accelerate the connection point between systems, right? And that’s, I think in each of these areas, there’s some AI or agentic capability that’s gonna play into it. There’s maybe other technologies, but I get really excited about the future and the ability for us to bring people together, you know, through these tools, these events. I think it’s so important to how we live and how we work, right? And the thing that we see that really is different from the past is,
how we connect to other systems that are inside an organization from an agent standpoint. I don’t think that’s going away. I think it actually is a technology that finally allows you to solve that problem in a holistic way to understand that customer fully. We play a part in that, but it’s a bigger picture. And the better we can be at my agent does this thing and it connects to this one and this one. And you have this multi-agent, you hear this term multi-agent, right? And interoperability. I think that’s…
where things are going and it’s moving from experimentation into a results. You know, I think the next year, year and a half, we’ll see how it goes. But that’s, you know, that’s where we get excited. You know, it’s the problem we set out to solve when we started and it’s exciting to see technology come along that really can make that possible. You know, it solves some, some significant things for our customers. helps people who are going to attendees, you know, have a better experience and, and really enjoy and, and get what they’re hoping.
out of these events.
Greg Kihlstrom (21:19)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Definitely, definitely exciting stuff. Well, Travis, thank you so much for joining today. Really appreciate your insights. One last question for you. I like to ask everybody, what do do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Travis Cushing (21:22)
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Yeah. Good question. And, you know, before I answer, just want to say thanks for having me on. it’s great talking to you today. ⁓ it’s really enjoyed it. what do I do? I’m, I’m a creature of habit, Greg. So I’m like a morning routine person. I mean, my productive time is, is early before, you know, around when the sun comes up, when it’s, when it’s summertime and I like to have some thinking time, I like to get outdoors. And so I, I have a regular schedule of, you know, listening, reading.
Greg Kihlstrom (21:40)
Yeah, of course.
Travis Cushing (22:02)
And then thinking about those things that really helped me stay agile, stay on top of things, you know, stay, stay open to new ideas and what other people are doing. And for me, that works well. You know, I have to dedicate some time when it’s quiet, when there’s not a million things going on during the day or when I’ve worn down a little bit. So that’s, that’s, that’s what works for me. Start early, do that first, and then let other things fall around it. And that’s really helped.
