Reversing Exhibitor Churn: How To Plug The Leaky Bucket & Retain Trade Show Revenue

The average successful trade show will churn between 25% to 35% of its exhibitors from one year to the next. However, many shows are closer to 50% in lost exhibitor retention. This represents hundreds of thousands lost in revenue for even small exhibitions, and millions lost on larger events. Exhibitor churn is the leaky bucket of our industry.

Why don’t organizers work on churn prevention as much as exhibitor rebook strategy?

I find myself asking this question because this should be a high priority topic for every event organizer.  I started my career as an organizer and have now spent almost a decade working for software companies in this sector and I’ve witnessed a lack of interest in trade show organizers devoting time to retention strategies and more time to advertising and seeking new business.

Whilst there is a healthy hyper-focus around onsite rebook across the industry, the emphasis is on booking as many companies as possible. Senior leaders strategize around how to create urgency and opportunity for upsell during rebook to maximize revenue, but opportunity is left on the table by not putting concerted thought and effort into identifying and rescuing exhibitors on the brink of leaving.

In SAAS, metrics like customer lifetime value and customer churn are a boardroom obsession that bleeds into the culture. Losing a customer is a very serious occasion, not least because the above ‘metrics’ are so closely attached to business valuation.

With this context, it’s easier to understand why the lack of devotion to this specific area from many trade show organizers absolutely fascinates me.

At MYS, through our booking and rebooking technology, we handle stand sales and rebooking for 250,000+ exhibitors per year on 600+ exhibitions. We have arguably more data than any single entity in the market on bookings, rebooking's and perhaps, most interestingly, exhibitor churn.

Even in an environment where most events are still seeing revenue growth, depending on the size of the show and the cost per m2, the 25-35% churn is likely between 300k - 1m of revenue per event. That’s quite a lot of money, isn’t it?

It's perhaps explained away by the fact that trade show teams are so adept at finding new companies to exhibit and at upselling existing companies that the churn continues rolling  on year after year. The leaky bucket, often seems to end up fuller than the previous year anyway.

For avoidance of doubt, it’s obviously totally natural (and healthy) for trade shows to lose a portion of exhibitors each year. Much of this is way outside of organizer's control and frankly good for the visitor as it injects newness into these events. But, it is my fundamental belief  exhibiting companies really WANT their investment to pay off, for the show to work, to come back. So, a re-frame of how we think about and act upon rebook and churn, combined with more attention and strategy here, would likely yield results.

To be clear, though, I’m not naïve enough to think organizers have a magic wand to indefinitely keep exhibitors who are unsatisfied. Huge SAAS companies like Salesforce, SAP and Cisco will consider it a win just to extend the lifespan of a customer. The view of these giant billion-dollar SAAS companies is always to buy more time. One or two extra years for a group of exhibitors that were otherwise going to leave is undeniably valuable as it scales but buying you more time to invest in new concepts, areas, visitors etc. could make those 1-2 years turn to 5.

What is holding organizers back from addressing exhibitor churn?

Likely a mixture of things, but a key factor would be a lack of reliable, actionable and scalable data. It’s easier to focus on mass tactical adaptations to improve exhibitor experience than it is to focus on hyper-individualized support for exhibitors at risk of churn.

However, if you had a list of 30-50 exhibitors that were ‘at risk’ before you got onsite, you’d be able to get in front of it, to handle comms, to affect change, align objectives and to try and win hearts and minds.

If I could narrow down the EuroMillions/lotto numbers, I’d certainly be more likely to play every week, wouldn’t you?

I’d be willing to bet that within most sales teams, you’d be able to cobble together at least 10 ‘exhibitors at risk’ just from a gut feel. You could get another handful from last year's feedback surveys. Some organizers will already do this, but many definitely don’t.

Unlock a predictive churn model that’s scalable and with higher accuracy

With the advent of AI and machine learning, organizers have all the data required to build out a statistical model on which exhibitors are likely to churn based primarily on behavioral analysis and engagement. Many of the exhibitors you lose will come into your next event knowing it is likely their last. Imagine you had a crystal ball that gave you that knowledge ahead of time and explained the data reasoning behind it. I’m certain that every Event Director or Sales Director around would try and do something to rescue them.

Last year at MYS, we built a predictive model for our clients to see how accurate we could get with predictive analytics called ‘MYS Insights’. Using data from our stand and sponsorship booking technology, our exhibitor portal, exhibitor lead management tools, and mobile app and the results blew my mind.

Our data scientists looked at millions of exhibitors with year-to-year historical data and through tweaking and testing the weighting of more than 25 factors, we managed to reach 70% accuracy at predicting churn before rebooking onsite began.

To give you an example, we used data points like these to inform us of at-risk exhibitors:  

-       Which exhibitors booked more or less stand space

-       Who book early or late

-       The number of years tenure

-       Who’s paying on time or not

-       Who’s engaging with emails or logging into exhibitor portals

-        And viewing the exhibitor leads vs. benchmarks

None of what we have put together with MYS Insights about exhibitors at risk is beyond a determined tech-savvy trade show organizer. You can build own models with data they already have and create an informed exhibitor churn prevention strategy around it.

On December 18th, Debbie Lee, Co-Founder of Benchmark, who this year supported rebooking strategy and execution for more than 250 exhibitions, is joining me for a webinar where we dive into the importance of uncovering the causes of exhibitor churn and showing our strategy solutions to mitigate exhibitor loss.

Join us for more detailed information about factors to consider when building your own exhibitors-at-risk model and share practical takeaways you can work on right now to reduce churn.

Sign Up For The Webinar Here:

The Missing Piece to Your Rebook Strategy in 2026. It's happening Thursday, December 18th, 4pm GMT / 11am ET.