Blackthorn Outlines New Platform Vision to Redefine Salesforce-Native Event Management

NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackthorn, the Salesforce-native event management company, today announced a new platform vision designed to unlock the full power of Salesforce to manage modern events.

As organizations manage an increasingly complex mix of digital and in-person experiences, many are still relying on fragmented tools disconnected from Salesforce, making it difficult to demonstrate the impact and return on their events. With Blackthorn, event and business data are united in Salesforce as the single source of truth.

The new platform vision breaks free of the traditional Salesforce interface limitations to make it easier to plan and design modern, on-brand events, and to measure and report on their impact in real time — regardless of your Salesforce expertise.

This announcement marks a strategic milestone for Blackthorn, offering an early look at how the platform is evolving to meet rising expectations for usability, design flexibility, and enterprise-grade reporting. Live demonstrations of in-development capabilities aligned to this vision will be showcased during a virtual event in February.

"Event teams are being asked to do more than ever — deliver exceptional experiences, prove business impact, and operate seamlessly within Salesforce," said Chris Federspiel, CEO of Blackthorn. "Our new platform vision is about removing friction for planners, elevating attendee experiences, and unlocking the full value of Salesforce-native event data, without forcing teams to compromise on scale, flexibility, or insight."

A New Direction for Event Planning on Salesforce

Legacy event tools have traditionally focused on features, while neglecting the fundamental connection between event and business data. This fragmentation creates unnecessary complexity, limits visibility into performance, and makes it difficult to connect events to pipeline, engagement, and outcomes.

Blackthorn has solved these challenges by bringing event planning, execution, and analysis directly into Salesforce, providing organizations with a unified and scalable approach to managing everything from simple webinars to enterprise-scale conferences. With this differentiated foundation, Blackthorn is now making it easier for everyone to manage Salesforce-native events.

"From the beginning, Blackthorn was built as a truly Salesforce-native event platform — not an add-on or connector layered on top," said Andrea Adcock, Chief Product Officer at Blackthorn. "We've spent years proving that native matters at scale. This next phase is about expanding the platform's usability and experience layer so more teams can fully unlock what Salesforce-native events make possible, regardless of their Salesforce skillset."

At its February event, Blackthorn will preview innovation across three core areas:

A Modern Planner Experience Outside of Salesforce

Blackthorn is introducing a new web-based planner interface designed to make event setup and management more intuitive for every role involved — regardless of your Salesforce expertise. The web-based planner dynamically adapts to your organization's Salesforce configuration and automations, reducing the need for users to log into Salesforce. This simplifies complex workflows and democratizes event management while preserving the power, flexibility, and security enterprises require.

Branded, Customizable Event Experiences

Bold design meets flexible layouts: The new Blackthorn page designer gives planners granular control to create modern, on-demand event pages without custom CSS or development resources. The modular, drag-and-drop page designer includes reusable components and flexible layouts so organizations can scale design consistency across events while maintaining creative control.

An Intelligence Layer Focused on Efficient Outcomes

Built on Blackthorn's Salesforce-native foundation, a new AI layer helps teams gain efficiencies and better understand event performance and impact. Practical tasks like transferring tickets that previously took many clicks can now be accomplished with a quick chat message.

Blackthorn's AI isn't trying to replace ChatGPT or other predictive text tools. Instead, it's helping you move faster through common tasks so you can focus on delivering events that drive results.

In addition, Blackthorn is adding new pre-built dashboards and reporting templates to surface rich, actionable insights about your events' impact — without relying on manual exports, spreadsheets, or deep Salesforce expertise.

Looking Ahead

Blackthorn will showcase live demonstrations of these forthcoming capabilities during a free virtual event in February. Planners, customers, partners, analysts, and media are invited to attend and get a closer look at how the platform is evolving to support the next generation of enterprise events.

For more information about Blackthorn, visit www.blackthorn.io.

About Blackthorn

Blackthorn is the leading Salesforce®-native event management platform. With Blackthorn, you can run your entire event program from your Salesforce CRM. Blackthorn Payments centralizes online, subscription, event, and mobile payments directly in Salesforce. Blackthorn Messaging lets you easily send and track text message communications directly in Salesforce. Blackthorn was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in New York.

Media Contact:
Lauren McCullough
SVP of Marketing
lauren.mccullough@blackthorn.io

SOURCE Blackthorn