How O’Reilly Turned Add to Calendar into a Marketing Engagement Engine customer success

O’Reilly, the premier learning platform for technology professionals, has long relied on live, expert-led events as a core part of its value proposition. What started as a handful of sessions with a few experts quickly evolved into dozens of events, then hundreds, and today, thousands of live sessions happening throughout the year. All of these events are stored in their marketing data tables, with multiple events running daily across teams.

But their calendar experience had not kept pace with that growth.

The Challenge: Scaling Live Events Without Scalable Calendar Invites

Years ago, O’Reilly’s only option was a basic ICS file download from their website. Users had to click, download the file, locate it on their computer, and manually add it to their calendar. Many never completed the process, not knowing what to do, and attendance suffered as a result.

Even more problematic, their email program had no calendar integration at all. Reminder emails were sent without any Add to Calendar functionality. Unfortunately, there was no scalable way to generate dynamic calendar links inside Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The website had static ICS files hard coded for each event, but email recipients were essentially flying blind.

Time zones introduced even more issues. Different calendar providers interpreted ICS files differently, sometimes leading to inconsistencies. And because ICS files are static and unique, every individual event meant additional hours of work dedicated to creating unique ICS files.

As O’Reilly’s live event program grew from a few dozen sessions to thousands, the manual lift became unsustainable. The marketing team remained lean, even as event volume multiplied. They needed a scalable way to generate calendar links en masse, without adding headcount or managing a dashboard.

The Solution: Set and Forget Dynamic Add to Calendar at Scale

Tasked by his leadership to find a better approach, Andrew Davis, who leads marketing operations at O’Reilly, began searching for a solution that could dynamically generate Add to Calendar links inside their existing workflows.

They did not need a heavy interface or manual event management. They needed infrastructure.

“We didn’t need another dashboard,” Andrew explained. “We needed a developer-friendly way to generate calendar links dynamically inside our existing marketing systems. AddEvent fit directly into how we already worked.”

AddEvent’s Dynamic Add to Calendar functionality gave O’Reilly exactly that. Instead of relying on static ICS downloads, they were able to dynamically generate Add to Calendar links using event data already stored in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Data Extensions. Using AMPscript, Salesforce’s proprietary coding language, the team was able to pull event metadata from Salesforce Marketing Cloud Data Extensions directly into AddEvent links, enabling one-click calendar adds directly from emails.

AddEvent also solved the time zone and cross-calendar compatibility challenges O’Reilley had been running into. AddEvent’s tool interprets event data between O’Reilly’s systems and configures it specifically for each calendar provider. Users could add events with a single click, without downloading files or navigating confusing prompts.

After testing the functionality on live events and seeing immediate attendance improvements, O’Reilly rolled it out across all live programming. The impact was strong enough that their web development team replaced hard coded ICS files on the website with AddEvent’s direct Add to Calendar links.

The Results: Immediate Attendance Gains and Hundreds of Hours Saved

Live event attendance rates increased immediately after implementing Add to Calendar functionality in email. While exact percentage lifts are no longer available due to the length of time since implementation, the improvement was significant enough to justify a full rollout across all live events.

Operationally, the impact has been just as meaningful. By generating dynamic calendar links at scale rather than manually creating and managing static files, O’Reilly estimates the solution has saved hundreds of hours of manual work.

The team scaled from managing roughly 10 events to supporting hundreds, and now thousands, without growing the marketing team in parallel. What was once a manual, hard coded process is now automated and embedded directly into their workflow.

Add to Calendar has become foundational to how O’Reilly drives engagement across live events and on demand learning. The team is now planning to implement an AddEvent widget on their high traffic homepage, where personalized event recommendations are shown based on user type, interests, and prior searches.

The Next Wave of Increased Engagement

Today, Add to Calendar is not limited to live sessions. In 2025, O’Reilly expanded the functionality to their on demand learning courses. Recognizing that learners often intend to complete their online courses but get distracted, the team introduced Dynamic Add to Calendar reminders that allow users to choose their own return time. Each event reminder’s description includes direct links back into the course or event, reducing friction and improving reengagement. 

“It saves us hundreds of hours,” Andrew said. “We’ve scaled from a few events to thousands without having to scale the team at the same rate. Calendar is now a core part of how we drive engagement.”

Looking Ahead

Next, O’Reilly plans to bring AddEvent to its homepage, the highest traffic surface on the site. With personalized recommendations already displayed based on user behavior and interests, integrating an Add to Calendar widget will make it even easier for learners to commit to upcoming sessions.

What began as a fix for static ICS files has evolved into a scalable engagement engine. For O’Reilly, AddEvent is no longer just a feature. It is embedded infrastructure powering thousands of learning moments every day.