Wärtsilä is a global leader in marine and energy technologies, delivering solutions that power industries and support the transition toward more sustainable societies. With operations across more than 180 countries and a complex global organisation, the company relies on events as a key part of its marketing and relationship-building strategy.
To manage events at scale and ensure valuable customer data flows into its marketing ecosystem, Wärtsilä uses Lyyti as its global event management platform.
Building relationships in long sales cycles
Wärtsilä’s products—ranging from ship engines to energy solutions—are large-scale investments with long sales cycles. Deals can take months or even years to close, making relationship building essential.
Events, therefore, play a critical role in Wärtsilä’s marketing mix. Through customer events, expert sessions, and webinars, the company creates opportunities for meaningful interactions with customers and prospects.
“Live events are still king in our kind of business. Deals are not made out of the blue — it takes time to get to know customers and build trust, and events are an essential part of that process,” says Sami Virtanen, Digital Marketing Manager at Wärtsilä.
Each year, thousands of participants join Wärtsilä’s events worldwide. In a single year, the company hosted events with over 4,500 registered participants worldwide.
A centralised approach to event management
Wärtsilä’s marketing organisation is global but structured across multiple business units, including marine and energy. To support this complex setup, the company has centralised its marketing technology stack.
At the core of this stack is Salesforce for customer data and marketing automation, integrated with Lyyti for event management.
The goal is clear: ensure that event data becomes a meaningful part of the overall customer journey.
Through integration with Salesforce, participation data—such as event attendance or engagement—feeds into lead scoring, nurturing programs, and sales insights.
“Event participation is a strong signal from prospects and customers. We want to leverage that data in our marketing activities and lead nurturing programmes,” Virtanen explains.
Supporting global teams with consistent tools
With marketing teams operating across multiple regions and business units, Wärtsilä needed a solution that supports global collaboration while maintaining brand consistency.
Lyyti enables Wärtsilä to centrally manage templates, layouts, and brand guidelines, while giving regional teams the flexibility to organise their own events.
This balance helps maintain consistent branding while enabling local teams to tailor events to regional audiences.
Virtanen and his team also support internal users through a “champion model”, where experienced users in different regions help share knowledge and best practices across the organisation.
From event data to business impact
In modern marketing, data plays a growing role in decision-making. Over the past decade, Virtanen has seen a major shift toward data-driven marketing.
“The biggest change I’ve witnessed in marketing over the past decade is the amount of data we can gather from digital and physical touchpoints — and how we can use that data to better understand and predict customer behaviour,” Virtanen says.
Event participation data is now integrated into Wärtsilä’s lead scoring models. For example, attending a live event is considered a stronger buying signal than consuming other forms of content, helping marketing and sales teams identify high-potential opportunities.
A partnership built on collaboration
For Wärtsilä, choosing a global event platform meant finding a solution that integrates seamlessly with its technology stack while remaining easy for teams to use.
Beyond technology, collaboration has also played an important role in the partnership.
“We’ve built Lyyti together with our customers over the past 18 years, and it’s great to see how companies like Wärtsilä use the platform globally to support their marketing and sales processes,” says Petri Hollmén, founder and CEO of Lyyti.
With events continuing to play a central role in building relationships and driving long-term sales, Wärtsilä’s approach shows how a unified event management platform can support global marketing while turning event participation into valuable customer insight.
Hero photo by Wärtsilä Corporation
