Feb 2-5, 2026
1,904
Social shares
12,181
Referral CTAs
1,956
registrations added
Industry: Energy (T&D)
CASE STUDY
11,642 energy professionals mobilized at DTECH 2026 through peer-to-peer marketing, generating $365K in visitor revenue.
Feb 2-5, 2026
Event Overview
DTECH (formerly DISTRIBUTECH International) is the leading annual event for transmission and distribution technology, organized by Clarion Events. The event brings together utility professionals, technology providers, and energy innovators to address the technologies and strategies powering the modern grid.
DTECH 2026 was held February 2–5 at the San Diego Convention Center, drawing more than 18,000 industry professionals and 684 exhibitors. More than 42% of attendees represented utilities, and 81% were decision-makers, making it one of the most influential gatherings in the energy sector.
To drive registrations and extend the event’s organic reach, Clarion Events partnered with Snöball to activate attendees, exhibitors, and speakers as peer advocates. Snöball’s peer-to-peer marketing campaigns mobilized 11,642 participants across all three audience segments, driving 1,667 additional registrations.
How we
did it
To scale DTECH’s reach, Snöball executed a 13-week peer-to-peer campaign starting October 21, 2025, with six booster emails that kept the audience engaged from registration opening through the event.
Each touchpoint was personalized by audience segment, ensuring exhibitors, attendees, and speakers each received messaging and assets tailored to their role.
Activating the attendee audience proved especially effective, as peer-to-peer sharing by attendees alone generated more than 200 registrations.
Deployed six booster campaigns across a 13-week pre-event cycle, aligned with registration milestones and key announcements.
Created customizable, personalized share cards and landing pages for exhibitors, attendees, and speakers, each with unique messaging, images, and referral links.
Drove an incentive program at the start of the campaign for attendees and speakers, which expanded midway to include exhibitors with a brand feature reward for the first company to drive 50 registrations.
Prompted exhibitors to actively promote the event using their referral links, leveraging their strong motivation to invite prospects, partners, and customers to the show.
Highlighted AI avatar customization steps in every email send to drive adoption of personalized share assets.
Refreshed social share cards with each booster send to maintain novelty and sustain engagement across 17 social channels.
Tracked shares, referral traffic, and conversions in real time through Snöball’s campaign dashboard.
Stephanie Miz, Marketing Director at Clarion Events, said: "Snöball allows us to scale our marketing efforts efficiently by empowering our community to help amplify our events, while freeing up our internal team to stay focused on broader marketing strategy. Over the past year, we’ve seen tremendous success implementing Snöball across multiple events, with engagement and reach far exceeding expectations."
Mobilizing Participants
8,285
attendees mobilized with a 14.19% share rate
Meet Darwin, a T&D industry professional!
He just signed up to attend DTECH 2026.
Darwin is instantly shown a personalized social card through which he can invite his peers and friends to the event.
Mobilizing
industry speakers
810
Speakers mobilized with an 8.17% share rate
Meet Don, a T&D industry speaker
He is set to speak at DTECH 2026. Don gets a personalized toolkit from Snöball through which he invites his network to sign up for the event and attend his session.
Mobilizing
Exhibitors
2,527
Exhibitors mobilized with a 27.13% share rate
Meet Cathy, a T&D industry exhibitor!
She’s set to exhibit for Nokia of America Corporation at DTECH 2026.
Cathy gets a custom promo kit from Snöball with trackable links, helping her invite prospects and showcase her booth.
Tech Stack
Snöball integrated with Map Your Show (MYS) to pull live exhibitor data – booth assignments, company profiles, and product categories – directly into the platform, ensuring every advocate’s share kit stayed accurate without manual updates.
A Sessionboard API integration synced approved speaker bios, session titles, and headshots into Snöball, powering personalized “I’m speaking” assets for each speaker. Each speaker’s unique referral link also synced back into their Sessionboard task list, making promotion effortless without additional outreach from the DTECH team.
LiveBuzz served as the event’s registration platform, providing the underlying data layer that connected registrant activity to Snöball’s referral tracking.
Peer-to-Peer Marketing Campaign Performance
Exhibitors were the most influential advocates, using LinkedIn and email to invite their networks and driving the majority of peer-to-peer registrations.
Across 17 social channels, advocates generated 1,904 shares and 12,181 referral visits to the event website, with LinkedIn as the top platform. The campaign ultimately drove 1,956 registrations, representing 14.32% of the total event audience, at a 13.69% click-to-sign-up rate.
Following the success of the campaign, the DTECH team has already incorporated peer-to-peer marketing into planning for future editions of the event, viewing it as a reliable channel for audience growth and community engagement.
13.69%
Click-to-sign-up rate
67.2%
LinkedIn share rate
1,956
Registrations added
$365k
Visitor revenue generated
10,771
Emails sent (43.9% open rate and 19.7% click rate)
CLIENTS LOVE US. WE LOVE THEM TOO
While the platform itself is intuitive and easy to use, having a dedicated expert supporting our campaigns has made a huge difference for our team.
The partnership with the Snöball team has been seamless, collaborative, and results-driven. We’re already planning year two implementations for several of our events and looking forward to expanding how we integrate the platform to maximize its impact."
Stephanie MizeMarketing Director, Clarion Events
