We are living in a world where everyone is becoming increasingly connected and it seems that everyone is either posting, tweeting, tagging or boomerang-ing their daily life. This is also the case for event attendees. Now, more than ever, attendees are eager to engage with fellow attendees, speakers, sponsors and the event organizers online. Thankfully, with the surge event app developers such as cVent, EventMobi, QuickMobile and PheedLoop event app technology is constantly evolving and becoming more competitive, making it easier for Event Planners to find an app that offers the services they require on any budget. For event planners who have not worked with event apps previously it is important to understand the benefits of going digital and how you can leverage the technology to benefit not only your attendees but also sponsors and your bottom line.
Going Paperless
One of the immediate benefits of using an event app for your event is that there are opportunities to use the technology in place of printed materials. Most event apps offer a landing page where you can post your event program which will significantly cut down on your printing costs. Additional opportunities to go paperless include uploading speaker presentations, bios, and schedules. With all of these items being hosted on the app you will reduce the printing costs and be able to avoid shipping materials. Pro-Tip: Have you ever found a typo after something has been printed and had to do a dreaded (and pricey) re-print? With everything hosted online, it is as simple as uploading a new file.
Sponsorship and Marketing Opportunities
Event apps are essentially a digital billboard, with separate pages for attendee listings, speaker bios, gamifcation, event agendas and much more. There is also countless pages for banner ads to sell to sponsors. With many of these advertisements being clickable, it’s a chance for sponsors to promote their brand and drive traffic to their website. In addition to advertising space the messaging and push notification options in event apps is another opportunity to sell as a sponsorship. Perhaps you have a trade show and an exhibitor is looking to drive traffic to their booth. You can consider selling push notifications to this exhibitor with the message to invite attendees to visit their booth number. This is a powerful marketing tool with a ROI that is easily measured.
Attendee Engagement and Gamification
Events don’t have to be all about work. Instead, they can actually be all fun and games! Most event apps include powerful gamification platforms which is a fun way for attendees and exhibitors to engage with one another. Looking to drive traffic to your exhibitor booths? Organize a scavenger hunt where attendees need to meet with exhibitors and answer questions only the exhibitors have answers to. Wanting to ensure your attendees are networking with one another? You can create fun games where every attendee is assigned a passcode and the objective is to meet with everyone and enter all of the codes. There are endless options for everyone. For engagement opportunities outside of gamification, you can utilize many of the live polling features which are set up in advance of the event with the presenters. Simple questionnaires are circulated to speakers in advance and these questions are added directly to the app. When speakers ask the audience a question the audience can easily respond using the app and receive results in real time.
Metrics
Event apps provides robust backend platforms which provide detailed metrics which are extremely valuable when gauging both attendee engagement and ROI. Event apps are not always the cheapest tools to implement, however, thanks to the software, monitoring engagement and usage it is easy to see if it was the right investment for your event. By logging into the backend of the platform Event Planners can easily pull reports, which show the amount of time attendees spent on the app, the features used the most as well as who was communicating with whom. Another powerful tool that event apps offer in gathering information is their survey capabilities. Many event apps offer a survey feature where you can preload survey questions which the attendees will be prompted to answer following each session. These results are gathered on the platform and can easily be exported for review and use in post event reports. The benefits of in-app surveys include the ability to capture feedback in real-time when attendees are still engaged and feedback is still fresh in their minds.
Comment below with other ways to make your events more digital!