Q’s to Consider:
What’s the Standard?
What are the newest bells + whistles being introduced?
Facial Recognition?… event check in
RFID..?
Chatbots…AI + Recommendations
Eco-conscious
Hologram apps???
CVENT acquisition—Community feature, Social Tables
Event Apps are now a must have. But how you choose one is important.
Attendees want to know what is going on, what to expect, and why they should be motivated to attend an event or conference.
Putting on a large conference is a huge investment of time and money. But providing a mobile app to your attendees should never be a decision to wait until the last minute.
1) Who should choose the event app?
3) What are the baseline features you should expect?
4) What are extra features that come only with premium apps?
4) What kind of support and customization do you need?
5) Will you actually use the features and their data collection to plan better events going forward?
6) How can your app engage you attendees before the event?
People like to be in the loop.
Build Connect tTo Event Content
Build a relationship between attendees and the content available to them on the app prior to the actual event.
Connecting attendees with the information available is crucial to garnering excitement around both the event and the app itself. Word of mouth is a powerful tool when it comes to advocating and marketing, so give people something to talk about. Articulate with your attendees in clear and simple language how and why downloading your selected event app will not only elevate their experience but will also enhance their ease of navigating am event’s many facets.
Most events aspire to create a memorable, seamless and cross-functional experience for attendees.
With an event app working for you, every attendee’s schedule can be pushed directly to a mobile device. And the biggest benefit with that, is you can immediately communicate schedule changes. If a speaker’s time slot is changed, or a breakout workshop has moved locations, you can send everyone a notice using the mobile app. It’s also a great way to invite people and to send them reminders. People don’t have to wait until they’re in front of a computer: They can respond immediately through your mobile app. The app increases the response rate and can give you a more accurate count of attendees. You can change the frequency and type of invite using the app as well. If someone is a high priority, they may get an invitation sooner, and maybe one that includes more links to event details.
In addition to having the capability to communicate announcements and organize and personalize schedules, event apps provide networking platforms along with other key information that undoubtably contributes to making the goal of a culminating, effortless experience a reality.
So long as it the right app for your event, and so long as that app is actually being used.
(**Don’t worry, we have some ideas about which apps might be the most beneficial for you. Take a closer look in our 2019 event tech landscape**)
Informative email and social media campaigns are easy ways to reach out and let your audience know about the technology quite literally at their fingertips. While it’s tempting to slip in all of the clickable links and attachments to what will be happening, brevity will be your strongest tool in crafting a more compelling email that won’t leave attendees feeling confused or bombarded. Simply allow the share and download buttons to be the main clickable features.
Along with informing attendees about your event app, a little incentive never hurt. People want to be in the know, but there’s one thing that people want more… free stuff. I.e., swag. Providing something simple that you may have been considering anyways, like a customized re-usable water bottle, to the first hundred people that download the app incentivizes, promotes and creates a reminder that will outlast the event.
How Else Can Having the Right Event App Help You?
Networking
Your attendees want to network at your meeting. Probably more than anything else actually. Rather than exchange business cards, they can easily scan an attendee’s name tag or find them directly within the event’s mobile app networking platform.
Mobile event apps can make the task of interfacing beyond that initial conversation much simpler. Attendees can spend more time focusing on making those meaningful face-to face connections without having to worry about the follow up or whether they missed an opportunity. The focus will be more on the conversations, and less on adding paper clutter to pockets and packs.
Additionally, encouraging key speakers or figures at the event to take advantage of the mobile networking platform contributes to the overall app adoption rate. By enabling easier accessibility to these notable people and talents within the industry, audience members are further incentivized to participate in using the space that’s been provided for them as a way to reach out and connect.
Vetting Data
Of course you want to tailor your event to the interests of your attendees. One great way to make sure you’re doing so is to leverage the customer data and information you gather from the app.
Offering a survey, can help you learn in real-time how content should be delivered both on-site and after the event, and you can also use survey responses from your last event to get back up to speed and help plan this year’s meeting. Offering a survey also tells your audience that you value their feedback.
Data can be relevant in making the next event more successful as well. Event apps have the capability to note the most popular attractions at an event through what gets the most clicks, foot traffic or scheduling, along with and what aspects of the experience weren’t as strongly received.
However, be mindful to be forthright about the data being gathered from the app and ensure that participants are knowingly consenting to this when they download it. Transparency lends to more trusting feelings towards the provider and the experience itself, as opposed to more underhanded routes such as having a default consent setting.
All of these mobile features can motivate an attendee to come back to more of your events by making attending your event a frictionless experience, and by building a lasting digital community within which the attendee feels they belong. And in the end, all of this that a mobile app facilitates, simply makes your event investment more effective, more tangible, and, hopefully, more profitable!