At Hannover Messe 2025—one of the largest industrial trade shows in the world—Emerson leveraged STAR’s sensor technology to track attendee behavior and optimize booth performance in real time. The result? A 40% increase in qualified sales leads and a doubling of time on stand for engaged visitors.
Emerson’s goal wasn’t just to show up. It was to evolve its trade show strategy into a measurable, insight-driven engagement model. With the help of STAR’s integrated heat mapping solution, the team captured the data they needed to align content, layout, and staffing strategy with real attendee behavior.
Vision for the trade show exhibit
For years, Emerson has led the industrial automation space with advanced solutions and technologies. Each year at Hannover Messe, the company sets out to share its expertise with the roughly 200,000 attendees. With core messaging and proven demos already in place, Emerson’s goal in 2025 was to make its presence more measurable, better understand attendee behavior, and gain insight into strategic enhancements that could optimize engagement within the booth. Key objectives included:
- Analyzing booth traffic and dwell time
- Identifying high-performing demos
- Improving staff engagement
- Using data to inform future booth strategy
“We have used STAR’s heat mapping and customer engagement tracking now for several events,” said Jay Gatz, Vice President, Commercial Execution & Strategy, Emerson Discrete Automation. “The richness of data and insights collected has helped us to not only understand the sequential path of interest between displays and topics but also identify how to reshape our booths year to year to enhance engagement and time on stand.”
STAR custom exhibit solution
To help Emerson evolve their approach, STAR provided an integrated sensor heat mapping solution tailored for industrial trade shows. The solution includes strategically placed beacons and cell phone IP tracking to detect visitors, traffic patterns and dwell time. STAR ensured optimal spacing—at least three feet apart—to reduce signal overlap and collect accurate data across multiple zones.
Sensors tracked visitor movement across demos, pinpointing high-interest areas and uncovering underperforming zones. Emerson used this insight to test separating certain demos into different areas, which clarified what content kept attendees engaged.
Impact of custom exhibiting
Initial results revealed strong engagement across multiple touchpoints, along with several key takeaways to inform future exhibit strategy:
- Emerson saw more engaged visitors, despite a lower total attendee count compared to 2024, suggesting stronger content alignment and improved visitor targeting.
- General dwell time increased overall, indicating higher interest; however, slightly shorter “engaged dwell time” raised important questions around pacing and content delivery.
- A professional trainer was brought in to elevate staff engagement strategies. Data later confirmed that trained team members drove higher visitor interaction compared to when other staff members rotated in, emphasizing the importance of proactive, well-prepared personnel on the show floor.
Overall, heat mapping validated the booth layout strategy and generated actionable insights now being applied to upcoming shows, including Pack Expo Vegas 2025. The Emerson team will leverage this data to make more informed decisions on staffing, demo optimization, and resource allocation.
Beyond anecdotal insights, the data delivered measurable business impact. “The results have driven a greater than 40% increase in our sales lead generation and more than doubled the average time on stand for engaged visitors,” said Gatz. “When we combine the insights and lessons from the heatmaps with our earned media, social, and sales outcomes, our marketing team is empowered to quantify the benefits of shows and events to our global management team and set the dialog for targets and planning on future events.”
Conclusion
By partnering with STAR and integrating heat mapping and behavioral tracking into its exhibit strategy, Emerson has created a replicable, data-informed model for event success. The team now uses insights not only to refine booth layout and engagement tactics, but also to support broader business objectives—from justifying trade show investment to aligning on future goals with senior leadership.
