How session sponsorship works and how to set it up?

This article explains how you, as an event organizer, can set up sponsored sessions on the Grip dashboard and help companies generate leads through two methods: passive sponsorship and active session check-in.

Using the Grip Dashboard, you can enable sponsors to collect leads from event participants in two key ways:

• Passive sponsorship: Companies generate leads when participants add their sponsored sessions to their personal schedules.

• Active session check-in: Sponsors or event staff scan participants' QR codes as they enter sessions, creating leads even if the session was not added to their schedule.

Table of contents

• Ways to collect leads from sponsored sessions
  • Option 1: Passive Lead Collection (Sponsor visibility)
    • Headline sponsor
    • Session contributor
  • Option 2: Active Lead Collection (Session Check-In Scanning)
  • Managing and exporting scanned data
• FAQs

Ways to collect leads from sponsored sessions

Grip gives you two ways to allow sponsors to generate leads from sessions:

1. Passive Lead Collection — Companies sponsor a session and automatically generate leads when participants add the session to their schedule.
2. Active Lead Collection — Sponsor company representatives physically scan event participants into sessions to collect leads.

Option 1: passive lead collection (Sponsor visibility)

To allow companies to passively collect leads, you’ll assign them as sponsors within the session setup. There are two ways to do this:

A. Headline sponsor

This sponsor receives the highest visibility on the event platfrom.

What event participants see:

• The company’s logo and the “Session Sponsor” tag appear in the main Event Agenda, before participants click into the session.

• The company’s logo and the “Session Sponsor” tag are also visible inside the session details page once participants click into the session.

  

How to set it up on the Grip Dashboard:

1. Go to Event Agenda > Sessions
2. Click into a session
3. Navigate to the Settings tab
4. Assign the Headline Sponsor
   • ⚠️ Only one Headline Sponsor is allowed per session

How it works in the event platform:

• Participants can add the session to their schedule.
• If the sponsor’s Team is activated, event participants who add the session after the Team is created become leads and show up in the sponsor’s My Team > Leads section

B. Session contributor (with role type: sponsor)

Use this if you want to list more than one sponsor per session, each with a custom role title.

What event participants see:

• The company’s logo and role (e.g. "Knowledge Partner") appear after clicking into the session details

How to set it up on the Grip Dashboard:

1. Go to Event Agenda > Session Roles
2. Create a role (e.g., “Knowledge Partner”) and set the Role Type to Sponsor
3. Go to Sessions > Session details > Session Contributors & Sponsors
4. Click Add Profile, search for the sponsor company, and select the role created
   • ✅ You can assign multiple sponsors to a session using this method

How it works in the event platform:

• Participants add the session to their schedule.
• If the sponsor’s Team is activated, leads are created for attendees who add the session after activation.

Option 2: Active lead collection (session check-in scanning)

With active lead collection, you or your sponsors can scan event participants as they enter a session. This is ideal for onsite lead capture—especially when event participants haven’t added sessions to their schedule.

• General session check-ins – You can record attendance for any session and collect that session attendance data via Grip Dashboard.
• Sponsored session check-ins – Enabling sponsors or exhibitors linked to a session to collect event participant leads even if event attendee hasn’t added the session to their schedule on the event platform.

For full setup instructions and a guide to using Session Check-In on the event platform, please see: How to Set Up and Use Session Check-In on Your Event Platform.