Reshaping digital foundations for the future.
Red Hat breaks down data silos to create smarter, more personalized event experiences.
85%
increase in click-to-open rate for Red Hat Summit emails
Objectives
Improve personalization across email and web for Red Hat Summit attendees
Use data-driven insights to optimize registration and engagement strategies
Deliver connected, seamless experiences across key attendee touchpoints
Results
85% increase in click-to-open rates for Red Hat Summit emails
3x increase in early registrations for Red Hat Summit
34% of registrations driven by on-site personalization
Stronger foundations, better experiences.
A strong house starts with a solid foundation. Without it, walls crack, floors shift, and eventually, everything falls apart. The same is true for digital experiences. If the underlying architecture isn’t strong, every interaction built on top of it becomes unstable. For Red Hat, an IBM company, ensuring a strong foundation isn’t just about keeping systems running — it’s about building scalable, reliable digital ecosystems that power innovation.
Nowhere is this more evident than at Red Hat Summit, the company’s flagship event, where more than 6,000 people from 80+ countries come together to explore the future of enterprise technology. But behind the scenes lies an intricate digital ecosystem that requires precision, integration, and a rock-solid foundation to function. That’s where Hannah Macking and Marcia Coman come in. As Red Hat’s director of digital architecture and senior infrastructure architect, respectively, they don’t just focus on driving registrations. Their goal is to create an intuitive, connected journey for every attendee — before, during, and after the event.
“No one walks into a house and compliments the foundation,” says Coman. “But if it’s not solid, everything built on top of it is at risk. My job is to shore up that foundation, ensuring our teams have the stability they need to build beautiful experiences that draw people in and create lasting connections.”
But for years, the team struggled with the same problem: data silos. Registration lived in one system, website interactions in another, and email campaigns in yet another — causing missed opportunities, inconsistent messaging, and lost sales potential. Determined to fix these challenges, Coman, Macking, and the rest of Red Hat’s Digital Architecture team set out to unify insights and transform how the company engages Summit attendees. Together, they created a new data-driven strategy built on Adobe Customer Journey Analytics and Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform, giving them a full picture of each attendee’s journey and the ability to personalize experiences at scale.
“With Real-Time CDP feeding into Customer Journey Analytics, we finally had a full view of our attendees. Instead of piecing together fragmented data, we could see how people registered, what sessions they attended, and whether their interests aligned with their actual behavior. That insight allowed us to personalize their experience in a much more meaningful way.”
Marcia Coman
Senior Infrastructure Architect, Red Hat
Bridging the gaps with Adobe.
Determined to guide Summit attendees through a meaningful journey, the Red Hat Digital Architecture team began identifying pain points in their current system. “We used to track unique visitors with cookies, so if someone signed up on their work laptop and later visited the site from home, they’d get a banner saying, ‘Please sign up for Summit,’” says Coman. “And they’re thinking, ‘I already did that.’”
This disconnect frustrated attendees and led to lost engagement, missed conversions, and, ultimately, revenue left on the table. Red Hat couldn’t accurately track what attendees were interested in, which meant follow-ups weren’t always relevant. Potential customers exploring the company’s products weren’t getting the right messaging at the right time, making it harder to turn Summit interest into long-term business impact.
The team knew that to create a better experience, they needed to unify attendee data. That’s when they turned to Customer Journey Analytics and Real-Time CDP, which became the backbone of their transformation.
Real-Time CDP bridged the identity gap, stitching together attendee data across devices and channels. Now, if someone registered at work and later visited the Summit website on their phone, they were recognized immediately — eliminating duplicate prompts and ensuring a frictionless experience. The results were immediate and measurable. Within 24 hours of launching Summit registration, Red Hat saw three times the registrations compared to the previous year.
At the same time, Customer Journey Analytics provided a complete view of attendee behavior, allowing Red Hat to track how people engaged before, during, and after Summit. “With Real-Time CDP feeding into Customer Journey Analytics, we finally had a full view of our attendees,” says Macking. “Instead of piecing together fragmented data, we could see how people registered, what sessions they attended, and whether their interests aligned with their actual behavior. That insight allowed us to personalize their experience in a much more meaningful way.”
That visibility led to a game-changing insight: attendees who received both an on-site personalization and a targeted email invite were eight times more likely to register than those who only received one. With this data-driven approach, the Digital Architecture team could move beyond generic outreach, using tailored engagement to strengthen connections and drive higher conversions instead.
The power of personalization.
With a strong data foundation in place, Red Hat turned its focus to ensuring that every Summit attendee received a more relevant and engaging experience at every touchpoint.
To achieve this, they used Adobe Target to create dynamic on-site personalization campaigns at key event milestones, like when registration opened or the session catalog became available. Using behavioral data and real-time insights from Customer Journey Analytics, they crafted personalized content that spoke directly to each attendee’s interests and past interactions.
The Digital Architecture team didn’t stop there. They worked to unify personalization across channels, integrating Adobe Marketo Engage with Real-Time CDP to ensure a seamless experience between email and web.
“Marketo Engage was the missing piece,” says Macking. “For the first time, we could create macro audiences in Real-Time CDP, refine them into micro audiences in Marketo Engage, and ensure every touchpoint is connected. It’s transformed the way we engage attendees across channels.” With personalized, data-driven messaging in place, open rates surged by 47% and click-to-open rates jumped by 85% — proving that a connected, relevant experience drives stronger engagement.
“Marketo Engage was the missing piece. For the first time, we can create macro audiences in Real-Time CDP, refine them into micro audiences in Marketo Engage, and ensure every touchpoint is connected. It’s transformed the way we engage attendees across channels.”
Hannah Macking
Director, Digital Architecture, Red Hat
Scaling success through teamwork.
For Red Hat the transformation didn’t happen overnight — and it didn’t happen alone. “Data is messy,” Coman laughs. “And implementing new technology isn’t easy. But we’ve been able to move forward because we embraced collaboration.”
That collaboration extended far beyond their own efforts — reshaping the entire organization’s approach to personalization. By breaking down silos between marketing, IT, and engineering, Red Hat created a unified strategy for customer engagement.
“When people buy the Adobe tools, you have to work together,” says Coman. “You can’t just implement Customer Journey Analytics or Real-Time CDP in isolation and expect results. It takes alignment across teams to put data to work in a meaningful way.”
With better audience segmentation, real-time behavioral insights, and precise targeting, Red Hat improved engagement across every stage of the attendee journey. Personalized, data-driven experiences ensured that attendees weren’t just interacting with Red Hat at the event — they remained engaged long after.
Looking to the future.
With a solid foundation in place, Red Hat’s digital architecture is safe from structural issues that could bring the whole house down. Now, the Red Hat team has set their sights on what comes next.
They plan to increase automation and personalization through Marketo Engage, leveraging insights to deepen customer relationships and enhance engagement at every stage. For a company that thrives on innovation, this is just the beginning.
“If you’re afraid to fail, you won’t take the risks needed to innovate,” says Macking. “We’ve taken those risks — and the results speak for themselves.”
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