Software-as-a-service startup Bizzabo Inc. today announced that it has raised $15 million in funding to automate an essential but often overlooked aspect of companies’ marketing efforts: business conferences.

According to Bizzabo, customer events, partner meetups and other live gatherings account for 24 percent of the average chief marketing officer’s annual budget. A lot of the resources that are put into a conference go toward labor-intensive operational work that Bizzabo’s namesake platform aims to streamline.

The service acts as a central hub for orchestrating events. A built-in website builder enables companies quickly set up a landing page for a conference, while a complementary set of outreach tools can be used to attract attendees. One of Bizzabo’s most distinguishing features is a capability called Hot Leads that lets marketers identify registrants who had started the signup process but changed their minds and reach out with tailored promotions.

Event teams can see how they’re doing in a visual analytics dashboard built into the platform. Bizzabo shows the number of registrations, revenue and other core metrics along with more detailed breakdowns that provide insight into specific elements of a marketing campaign. A company could, for example, compare how a newly introduced ticket type sells compared to the existing options.

According to Bizzabo, its platform is used to support “thousands” of events for organizations such as Accenture plc, GitHub Inc. and Virgin Group Ltd. The startup further claimed to have seen recurring revenue more than double over the past year thanks to strong adoption.

Bizzabo will use the announced cash infusion to keep attracting corporate customers, as well as speed up feature development. The investment was led by Pilot Growth Equity Partners and comes just eight months after the startups announced its previous funding round. Overall, Bizzabo has taken in about $29 million from investors to date.

Image: Bizzabo