Category
Event Matchmaking
40 articles in Event Matchmaking.
Defence Industry Matchmaking: How B2B Events Connect Primes, SMEs and Start-ups
How defence industry matchmaking events work: what primes and SMEs want from each other, why participants are vetted before the first request, what stays out of a first meeting, export control basics for organisers and how meetings feed European Defence Fund consortia.
Hydrogen Partnering Events: How to Match Producers, Suppliers and Offtakers
How to run B2B matchmaking for hydrogen projects: map the value chain, bring offtakers to the table, set fair meeting rules and measure what follows. With IEA data on the offtake gap and examples from Enterprise Europe Network matchmaking events.
International Buying Groups: How to Plan Regional Summits and a Global Congress
How international buying groups and cooperatives plan their event year: what the regional summits, the global congress and the leadership meeting are each for, which suppliers attend where, and what to report across the year.
Women-Owned Business Matchmaking: How Programmes Connect Suppliers with Buyers and Lenders
How trade promotion agencies, chambers and supplier diversity teams run matchmaking for women-owned and small businesses: recruit buyers with a sourcing need, prepare the businesses, let the scarce side choose and report contracts and loans, not meetings.
Ticket Tiers for B2B Events: What Each Ticket Should Unlock
How to design ticket tiers for B2B conferences and trade shows around access rights: days, areas, content, meeting rights and quotas per participant group, with an access matrix you can adapt.
Buying Group Conferences: How to Plan Vendor and Member Appointments
How buying groups and cooperatives run the appointment programme at their annual conference: booking rules, fair access to the most wanted vendors, what paying vendors can count on, a planning timeline and what to report afterwards.
Cluster Organisations: How Cluster Managers Run Member Matchmaking and a Year-Round Community
How cluster managers turn members into partners: which formats across the year create new contacts, how to run member matchmaking in a small cluster, how to keep contacts alive between meetings and what drives the cost of a platform.
EU Brokerage Events: How to Run Partner Search That Leads to Proposals
How to organise a brokerage event for an EU funding call: plan back from the deadline, make the cooperation profile do the work, match on missing roles and count the proposals that come out of it.
Inbound Buyer Missions: How to Host Foreign Buyers for Pre-Booked B2B Meetings
How export agencies, chambers, sector bodies and tourism boards host foreign buyers: the formats, how to recruit and qualify buyers, why visits come before meetings, fair rules for the meeting diary and what to report to your funder. With examples from Food Export USA, AHDB, VisitBritain and ApexBrasil.
How Long Does It Take to Set Up Event Matchmaking? A Realistic Timeline
From contract to the first booked meeting: how long event matchmaking takes to set up, what really sets the pace, and a plan you can work backwards from your event date.
Life Science Partnering: How Biotech and Pharma Conferences Run One-to-One Meetings
How partnering works at biotech and pharma conferences: profiles, meeting requests, acceptance, 30-minute slots, partnering tables and rooms, and what stays confidential in a first meeting. With the numbers from BIO and BIO-Europe.
Sports Business Events: How to Schedule Meetings Between Brands, Buyers and Clubs
Sports trade fairs and sports business summits run three meeting markets at once: brands with retail buyers, rights holders with sponsors, and rights holders with service providers. How to schedule each of them, and what a networking app for a sports summit has to do.
B2B Meetings at Events: Formats, Length and How to Schedule Them
Choose meeting formats, slot lengths and booking rules to suit your event's goals. Includes examples, a capacity calculation and the process from registration to follow-up.
Registration Questions That Make Matchmaking Work: What to Ask, and When
Matchmaking needs profile data, while short registration forms need fewer fields. Which questions belong before confirmation, which belong after, and how to phrase them so your meeting suggestions actually fit.
Is Matchmaking Worth It for a Small B2B Event? Four Tests and the Maths
Headcount alone does not tell you whether matchmaking is worthwhile. Matchmaking pays off at a small event when participants have more relevant counterparts than meeting slots, and enough of them to fill a diary. Here are four tests, a worked example with the cost per meeting, and the formats that work below the line.
What Is the Right Buyer-to-Seller Ratio for a B2B Matchmaking Event?
There is no universal buyer-to-seller ratio. There is a formula: the meetings each buyer can take, divided by the meetings each seller needs. Here is the maths, a worked example and the ratios six real events ran in 2025 and 2026, from Germany Travel Mart to IMEX and a reverse trade show.
Industry Partner Meetings at Association Congresses: Matching Sponsors and Members Without Losing Trust
How associations run one-to-one meetings between industry partners and members: separate opt-in, who may request whom, request caps, the healthcare compliance context and the numbers that show whether members still trust the programme.
LP-GP Meetings at Investor Conferences: How Organisers Schedule Them
How organisers of venture capital, private equity and fund conferences schedule meetings between limited partners and fund managers: who selects, how many meetings each LP can take, how to size the programme, a timeline and the rules that keep LPs coming back.
What Is a Reverse Trade Show? How It Works and How to Host One
A reverse trade show puts the buyers behind the tables and lets suppliers come to them. What the format is, how it differs from a trade show, UK meet the buyer events and hosted buyer programmes, and how to plan one that produces real meetings.
Should You Use AI Matchmaking in Your Hosted Buyer Programme?
AI promises better matches, but a hosted buyer programme runs on accountability. Where AI actually helps, where the black box becomes a liability, and how a controlled meeting matrix keeps every pairing auditable.
The 8 Best Matchmaking Platforms for Investor Meetings
Search for a matchmaking platform for investor-founder meetings and the results split into two product worlds, only one of which solves an organiser's problem. Six criteria that separate a meeting engine from an event app, and eight platforms compared against them.
How Investor Matching Algorithms Work: A Guide for Startup Conference Organisers
Between a founder profile and a confirmed investor meeting sits a stack of logic: rules, scoring, sometimes machine learning. How the four families of matching logic work, where they fail, and the questions that expose a black box before you sign.
KPI Framework for B2B Event Matchmaking: Six Numbers That Show Whether It Works
Organisers have learnt to measure their events, yet only 15 per cent call their networking very effective. This framework tracks six KPIs along the matchmaking funnel, from profile completion to follow-up conversion, with formulas, 2026 benchmarks and two worked examples.
Trade Show Matchmaking Software: How Exhibitor Matchmaking Turns Profiles into Meetings
What actually happens between a participant profile and a confirmed trade show meeting? This guide explains exhibitor matchmaking from the data points to the meeting matrix, what a trade show matchmaking app does, how large retail and industry shows schedule meetings and which numbers tell you whether it delivers.
7 Ways to Improve B2B Event Matchmaking in 2026
58 per cent of attendees come for the networking, yet only 15 per cent of organisers rate their own networking as very effective. Seven levers close that gap: from intent-based profiles and mutual confirmation to connection caps and stacked no-show defences.
7 Ways to Boost Hosted Buyer ROI Through Matchmaking
A hosted buyer costs 1,500 to 4,000 euro before the first meeting starts, yet the return is decided elsewhere: in matchmaking quality. Seven levers, from qualification depth to guaranteed meeting quotas, each with a 2026 benchmark and the one control metric that shows whether it works.
Why Is Matchmaking Important for Tourism Trade Shows? The Business Case in Numbers
Buyers choose events by the diary they arrive with, structured meetings convert into contracts, and counted meetings are the number funders accept. The business case for matchmaking at tourism trade shows, with benchmarks from ITB Berlin, WTM London, IMEX and peer-reviewed research.
Multilingual Buyer-Seller Meetings: Best Practices for Trade Show Organisers
At international trade shows, English-only planning quietly kills meetings that looked perfect on paper. This guide shows organisers how to treat language as a matching criterion: capture language data at registration, match for compatibility, tier meetings to decide between human interpreters and AI translation, and measure results by language pair.
What Is Investor Matchmaking? A Guide for Startup Conference Organisers
Investor matchmaking pairs founders with relevant investors through pre-scheduled 1:1 meetings. This guide explains the three layers behind it, why research on VC deal flow makes it necessary, how it differs from demo days and pitch competitions, and the four KPIs that show whether it worked.
How to Plan a Demo Day Step by Step: The 12-Week Playbook
A twelve-week operational playbook for accelerator organisers: investor curation, venue and AV, pre-scheduled meetings, the day-of run-sheet, budget benchmarks, and the four KPIs that decide whether the cohort raises.
How to Maximise Investor Meetings at a 2-Day Startup Conference: An Organiser's Playbook
A six-layer organiser's playbook for 2-day startup conferences: pre-event curation, platform configuration, the 1:1 meeting engine, the multi-format layer, real-time operations, and follow-up architecture. With 2026 benchmarks from Slush, Bits & Pretzels and IMEX, the six-number KPI framework, and an honest critique of when the playbook is the wrong tool.
Event Matchmaking FAQ: 15 Questions Organisers Ask Us Most in 2026
Only 15 per cent of organisers rate their networking as very effective. This FAQ hub answers the 15 operational questions we hear most about matchmaking, from cost and KPIs to GDPR and Hosted Buyer fit, with 2026 data and links to the deeper Converve pillars.
Matchmaking Software for Startup Pitch Events: Costs and Results Compared
Six matchmaking platforms compared on cost per completed founder-investor meeting, including the first tier to offer 1:1 meetings on each platform, a hidden-cost checklist and a decision tree for pitch events under 500 attendees.
Hosted Buyer Programme vs. Open Registration: Which Format Delivers More Qualified Meetings?
Hosted, open or hybrid? Compare the three trade-show formats on cost, meeting guarantee and ROI predictability, with a 6-row decision matrix for tourism trade shows in 2026.
The 23 Best Event Networking Apps and Platforms for 2026, Compared (+ Free Comparison Matrix)
23 event networking apps and platforms for 2026, grouped into four categories and checked on 4 November 2026: matchmaking, pricing, data location and which app fits which event. With a free Excel comparison matrix.
Do virtual events need randomness? A deeper look at chance encounters
Encounters by chance are an important part of events and we can use the pricipals of serendipity to re-create them in a virtual setting. Here's how
"Personalisation offers added value for event participants" - Interview with Dominik Deubner, MICE Club
MICE Club founder Dominik Deubner talks about current EventTech trends such as personalisation and matchmaking, and looks ahead to the first hands-on TechXperience conference.
Survey: User Experience Decisive factor of Software-based Business Matchmaking
A Converve survey of more than 60 trade fair, congress and event planners reveals what matters most in business matchmaking: ease of use, responsive design and a strong user experience.
Matchmaking at Career Fairs: TALENT DAY Case Study
How TALENT DAY Media + IT in Hamburg uses matchmaking technology to connect over 850 school pupils with 50 companies. A behind-the-scenes look at a successful career fair.
Case Study GDC 2016: How Do You Attract More Than 26,000 Game Developers to San Francisco?
For 30 years the Game Developers Conference has been the meeting point of the gaming industry. A look at how UBM gathers 26,000 experts in San Francisco and how Converve powers the B2B matchmaking behind it.