When it comes to association events, is content really king?

The (ahem) conventional wisdom around meetings is that if you have a solid education lineup, people will attend. But a recent report from MemberClicks, The Blank Badge: Turning Missed Attendance Into Event Growth, qualifies that idea somewhat. 

According to the survey of around 750 association and event professionals, content definitely does matter: 54 percent of respondents said that “timely and relevant content” is a key motivator to get them to attend. But time and money are stronger barriers to attendance: 56 percent of respondents cited workload as a factor to their non-attendance, followed closely by “budget approval from employers” (55 percent) and “cost of attendance” (49 percent). In 2025, practical money matters are getting in the way of event engagement.

Rich Vallaster, CEM, QAS, AAiP, senior director of industry relations and community engagement at Personify, which produced the MemberClicks report, says association leaders often neglect to consider nonattendees when they’re thinking about their event strategy. “When you survey the people who came, of course they were excited about the content or the connections, but we’re not surveying the people who didn’t come,” he says. “So content is king for those who came.”

The report suggests that associations have an overconfidence problem when it comes to understanding attendees’ motivations—53 percent of those surveyed said they understand why people attend their events only “somewhat well.” “Associations are building strategies on shaky ground,” the report says. “For example, an organization may believe that networking is the top reason members attend, when many members actually prioritize certification credits or leadership opportunities.”

To that end, Vallester suggests that planners make a point of factoring in some of those cost and travel factors into their understanding of attendees. “As an attendee, I could want all that content and I could want all that networking,” he says. “But how do you as an association tackle things where you don’t have a lever to pull? You can’t make flights cheaper.”

Moreover, he suggests testing assumptions about what members want in terms of location and timing of events. “I find sometimes, associations will say, we’ve just always historically had events at certain times,” he says. “And when you talk to attendees or exhibitors, they’ll say, ‘This is the worst time for us.’”

The MemberClicks report proposes that planners look to build in more flexibility around events to address these challenges—rethinking pricing, event length, hybrid options, and more. It also recommends that planners move beyond marketing strategies that don’t address the practical constraints on attendee travel. “Personalized emails and content refreshes can spark interest but do little to overcome time, travel, and budget constraints,” the report says. 

Instead, Vallaster says, associations should do more to provide potential attendees to persuade their employers to free up time and funding for conference attendance. That might include ROI calculators, budget justification templates, manager request letters, post-event reports, and case studies showing how attendance benefited the employer. 

“I see more convince-your-boss kits,” he says. “I’m also seeing more employers saying, if we’re going to send you we want you to come back and present five things you learned.”