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 line item you nix.
It’s a simple thing, and there are a hundred or more ways to accomplish it. One of our favorite solutions is the DoubleDutch app. You can easily turn attendees into fans when you make the most of DoubleDutch or a similar mobile experience for your event. Here are six reasons why.
Build Relationships
While a great deal of marketing now takes place online, nothing can replace the impact of a live conference or meeting event. Your meeting allows attendees to meet your staff face-to-face and learn about your product. You can build relationships more effectively at a live event. This event is also a great place to introduce a new product to your audience.
Mobile apps can make many tasks much easier. You can eliminate hard copy invitations and event schedules, for example. Your attendees can get updates, announcements and other information through a mobile device. This makes attending your meeting, and networking with you or other attendees, easier and more meaningful.
Event Planning
A mobile app is 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.
Schedule Changes
Every attendee’s schedule can be pushed directly to a mobile device when you have an event app working for you. 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. Don’t leave your attendees wandering in the dark.
Networking
Your attendees want to network at your meeting. Probably more than anything else actually. Rather than exchange business cards, they can now scan an attendee’s name tag or find them directly within the event’s mobile app community. Your attendees will be able focus more on the conversations, and less on adding more paper clutter to their pockets and packs.
Surveys About Your Event
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 offer a survey, which can be easily accessed through a mobile app. This 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.
Attendees Who Want to Come Back
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!
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For these six reasons, when it comes to planning your next event, think mobile, and think success.