Most B2B event teams treat the registration form as the foundation of their database.

It feels logical. Ask attendees for their details. Store the answers. Use that data for marketing, sales and reporting.

The problem is simple.

Attendees are not data professionals. If you let them define your structure, your segmentation, and your classifications, your database will drift. Over time, it becomes inconsistent, incomplete and hard to use.

If you care about segmentation, exhibitor ROI and long-term audience growth, you cannot let your attendees dictate your event data.

The Registration Form Is Not a Data Strategy

A delegate form serves one purpose. It allows someone to register quickly and move on.

Your data strategy serves a different purpose. It must:

1. Support segmentation

2. Drive exhibitor value

3. Enable targeting

4. Protect long-term database quality

Those goals require structure and control. A self-completed form does not guarantee either.

What Attendees Should Enter

Attendees are reliable when entering factual, objective data about themselves.

Use forms for:

• First name and last name

• Business email

• Company name

• Job title

• Country

• Phone number where required

These fields are concrete. People know the answer. There is little interpretation involved.

Even then, you need controls:

• Mandatory business email validation

• Free text restrictions where possible

• Character limits

• Duplicate checks

• Format standardisation

Without this, you will still see issues:

• Personal email addresses

• “Director” with no context

• Company names spelt three different ways

• Placeholder entries to skip a field

Objective does not mean accurate. It still requires governance.

What Attendees Should Not Define

The problems begin when you ask attendees to categorise themselves.

Fields such as:

• Company type

• Industry sector

• Job function

• Seniority level

• Budget authority

• Purchasing responsibility

These require interpretation.

One person selects “Marketing”.
Another selects “Commercial”.
A third chooses “Other”.
All may do the same job.

Job titles make this worse. A “Head of Growth” could sit in marketing, sales or strategy. A “Founder” could be a one person start up or a 500 person CEO.

Self-categorisation introduces:

• Inconsistent logic

• Inflated seniority

• Misaligned sector tagging

• Poor segmentation

You end up with data that looks structured but behaves unpredictably.

This directly impacts:

• Hosted buyer qualification

• Targeted email campaigns

• Exhibitor reporting

• Lookalike audience building

The Hidden Risk of Optional Fields

Optional fields feel polite. You reduce friction. You increase completion rate.

But optional fields create gaps.

If 40 percent of your audience skips “job function”, your segmentation breaks. If half skip “budget authority”, your hosted buyer filtering becomes unreliable.

Incomplete data forces guesswork later. Your sales team will not trust it.

Optional fields should only be used where the data is not commercially critical.

If it matters for segmentation or revenue, you need another method to capture it reliably.

The Hidden Risk of Mandatory Fields

The opposite extreme is worse.

Long compulsory forms create fatigue. Fatigue creates bad data.

You see:

• Random dropdown selections

• “Other” chosen repeatedly

• False answers just to continue

• Abandoned registrations

When people feel forced, quality drops.

Compulsory does not equal accurate.

You must balance friction and integrity.

Why Enrichment Beats Self-Classification

If you want reliable segmentation, do not ask attendees to interpret your taxonomy.

Build it yourself.

Use:

• External company data sources

• Standardised industry coding

• Manual research for high value accounts

• AI assisted job title normalisation

• Structured enrichment processes

For example:

• Let attendees enter job title

• You classify job function

• Let attendees enter company name

• You define company type and sector

This shifts control back to your data team.

It also ensures:

• Consistent categories

• Clean reporting

• Comparable year on year analysis

• Stronger targeting for sponsors

Registration Forms Should Capture Identity, Not Strategy

Think of your form as a gateway, not a database builder.

It should capture:

• Who the person is

• Where they work

• How to contact them

Your internal systems should determine:

• Seniority tier

• Decision making power

• Industry classification

• Company size band

• Strategic value

When you separate collection from classification, quality improves.

The Commercial Impact of Poor Delegate Data

Poorly structured event data affects more than marketing.

It affects revenue.

Exhibitors rely on:

• Accurate visitor profiles

• Clear breakdowns by role and sector

• Evidence of buying power

If your classifications are inconsistent, your reporting loses credibility.

In B2B events, trust in data drives rebookings.

A weak data model undermines that trust.

Practical Steps to Improve B2B Event Data Collection

If you want to improve your B2B event data collection best practice:

1. Audit every field on your registration form

2. Remove subjective self classification where possible

3. Define your internal taxonomy first

4. Introduce structured enrichment

5. Validate objective fields technically

6. Limit compulsory fields to what is essential

7. Monitor completion quality, not just completion rate

Treat your database as a product, not a byproduct of registration.

Final Thought

Attendees are experts in their jobs. They are not experts in your data structure.

If you let them define it, your segmentation will drift, your reporting will weaken, and your commercial value will erode.

Control your taxonomy. Validate your inputs. Enrich your records.

Do not let your attendees dictate your event data.

To learn more about how to craft the perfect database, get in touch with our experts today.