By Steve Mackenzie
In the competitive world of attracting attendees to your association’s meetings and conventions and engaging them once they are there, technology is by far one of the areas planners look to in order to gain that advantage and to create a truly memorable experience for participants.
Association executives are constantly bombarded with advertisements and sales people pushing the must-have technologies. How then do you differentiate between the relevant and the marketing fluff?
Having been involved in event technology for more than 22 years, it never ceases to amaze me just how many technologies make their way into the meetings and conventions arena. Regardless of the technology, ask yourself this question: By using this technology how are my attendees going to benefit? If you can answer that, you are well on the way to being able to sift through the technology jungle out there!
While there is no way to cover every option available, here are three of the biggest technology trends in the meeting arena for you to consider.
Mobile
If you haven’t factored attendees using mobile devices into your event strategy, then you’ve been living under a rock. Just a mere five years ago, we used to tell everyone to turn off their cell phones at the outset of an event. These days, it’s the opposite. We encourage meeting attendees to keep their phones on and use them to interact with the speakers, each other, and their social media connections.
Meeting planners are also developing mobile apps specifically for their events, which offer functionality that is relevant to the conference and types of attendees. Some apps simply provide an agenda and basic conference information, replacing the traditional printed conference program. Others are including gamification—a game designed to get meeting attendees to interact with one another.
Mobile apps allow your conference attendees to interact with you and your speakers, giving instant feedback instead of waiting for the traditional survey at the end of the event. Apps also allow you to widen your engagement, using the likes of social media so others who are not at the event can follow hashtags or other instant updates made by the people who are onsite.
A word of caution: Wifi and Internet connectivity go hand-in-hand with the use of apps, so make sure the venue you choose offers you good connectivity options. Wifi is not an option; it is a must have.
Beacons
Looking for a way to push messages out to your attendees’ smartphones other than adding to their already overflowing email inboxes? Beacons are starting to come into their own as a cost effective and cool way to do this, especially for suppliers who are trying to attract meeting goers to their exhibits. Beacons work on low frequency bluetooth and can be programmed to push messages (including graphics) out to people within a certain radius of the device itself. It may be a free offer if you come visit the exhibit, or it could simply be product information to replace the printed brochures noone wants to carry around any more.
There are many more applications than just exhibitor/attendee interactions. The association could push out its latest educational sessions or offer location help?
The options are endless, and this is a technology we will see much more of in the next few years. Again, this technology requires good connectivity. Most beacon messaging also requires meeting attendees to have an app on their phone.
Data and Personalization
You’ve probably heard people talking about big data. For an association meeting planner, it means harnessing all the information you are collecting about your conference attendees so you can understand them better. Events are a great way to see what topics people are interested in, whether it’s by the sessions they attend, by the stands they visit in the exhibit hall, or even by the tweets and other social media comments they post. By collecting and aggregating this information, you end up with a much better understanding of what each individual delegate likes and dislikes.
This information is invaluable to the association’s marketing team, who can then target people to attend other programs or purchase particular products and services you offer based on a member’s interests. Think of it like the meeting equivalent of Amazon’s “you may also like xxxx product” based on someone’s buying patterns.
Big data collection and personalization is a growing technology trend. After all, everyone is time poor, and if you are going to send your members marketing messages, make sure they are about things the particular member is interested in. A word of caution: Don’t just take the approach you must now start to collect a lot of data. If you’re not doing anything meaningful with the information, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of this trend.
These three technology trends are just an example of what is happening globally in the meeting arena and hopefully gives you some ideas to help you decide which technologies you want to learn about next.
Here’s to a great conference!
Steve Mackenzie is Vice President, Global Channel, etouches. He can be reached at 203-403-9075, smackenzie@etouches.com, or through his website at etouches.com.