10 Questions to Ask Before Buying Event Management Software: Question #6

We work with a variety of customers from small to mid-sized businesses to global organizations with thousands and hundreds of thousands of employees. But each customer – no matter how large or small – has very similar questions when it comes to buying event technology. We brainstormed the top 10 questions that we believe smart companies should ask before buying event management software. In this blog, I’ll spotlight the importance of each of the questions – and their answers – in a series of 10 posts.

Thanks for following this blog series. In our last post, we discussed how event management technology can make attendees happy.  Here’s another question you should ask before buying event management software: “How can event technology deepen my relationship with attendees?”

In an ACTIVE Network/Event Marketing Institute survey of 2012 event tech trends, 94% of meeting owners said their top event need was to improve the attendee experience. Meanwhile, 85% said expanding customer engagement was their top concern.

When considering event management software, ask yourself if it helps you increase your ties to attendees via:

• Social media that creates blogs and other communities and lets attendees view YouTube videos
• Mobile event app so attendees can view and schedule sessions, download agendas, view daily news updates, participate in goal-oriented business games
• Data and insights allowing you to personalize the event experience for your attendees

Read all 10 Questions Smart Companies Need to Ask before buying event management technology!

Next blog:  Question #7– How will event tech improve my relationship with exhibitors?

Other Resources:

- The Connected Event – an analysis of technology use, best practices and benchmarks.

Written By: Don Munro

10 Questions to Ask Before Buying Event Management Software: Question #5

We work with a variety of customers from small to mid-sized businesses to global organizations with thousands and hundreds of thousands of employees. But each customer – no matter how large or small – has very similar questions when it comes to buying event technology. We brainstormed the top 10 questions that we believe smart companies should ask before buying event management software.  In this blog, I’ll spotlight the importance of each of the questions – and their answers – in a series of 10 posts.

How to improve the event experience for attendees? Make their lives simpler! In an ACTIVE Network/Event Marketing Institute survey of 2012 event tech trends, 94% of meeting owners said that “improving the attendee experience” was their top event need.

It’s a snap to simplify the attendee experience. Just make sure the event tech you’re considering buying can make it easy for them to:

• Register and engage with your event via:
  • Pre-populated forms for easy registration
  • Automated communication tools, such as surveys and messaging
  • To network with attendees via such tools as:
    • A portal that participants can use to search for and connect with others
    • To recommend, share content using a mobile app

Read all 10 Questions Smart Companies Need to Ask before buying event management technology!

Look for our next post:  Question #6 – How will event tech improve my relationship with attendees?

Other Resources:

- The Connected Event – an analysis of technology use, best practices and benchmarks.

Written By: Don Munro

Join Us at HSMAI – Experience Event Management Software Solutions

The meeting and event planning industry’s premier show, HSMAI MEET Mid-America, is coming up later this month in Chicago, IL at Navy Pier. We’re excited to be there as a diamond sponsor and meet with attendees, where we’ll be showing our ACTIVE RegOnline™ and ACTIVE Conference™ event management software solutions.

Meet with Us

To learn more and see the software in action, sign up for a one-on-one meeting with ACTIVE Network (booth #419):

• Tuesday, April 23
• Wednesday, April 24

By meeting with us, you’ll receive our complimentary event management software buyer’s guide and be eligible to receive 10% off standard volume discounts for RegOnline.

HSMAI Educational Sessions – Our Top Picks

HSMAI MEET Mid-America is not to be missed! You’ll get to participate in two days of free education and networking opportunities to help move your meetings and events forward. Here are our top picks for the show:

April 23, 9:00AM – 10:00AM
Promote, Engage and Connect: How Social Media can Enhance Your Event
Kelly Cutler, CEO, Marcel Media
While collecting business cards in a fish bowl does still have value, leveraging the power of social media will enhance your connection with meeting and event attendees. Not only is social media a powerful tool to promote an event, it can and should be used as an engagement tool during the event, and a channel to maintain connections after the event. What can you do to take events to the next level? This session will address best practices, important tools and the key steps to developing an integrated social strategy.

April 23, 10:15AM – 11:15AM
360 Event Engagement Marketing: How PCMA is Doing It
Jason Paganessi, Vice President of Business Innovation at PCMA
Izania Downie, Director Strategic Partnerships, ACTIVE Network
This case-study focused discussion, will illuminate how event management technology is transforming the way the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) runs their own events. This session will discuss the key requirements to integrate digital and mobile technology with your full engagement marketing strategy for increased event success.

April 24, 9:00AM – 10:00AM
Extending the Life of Your Meeting Content…Before, During & After your Meeting
Juli Jones, CAE, Vice President, HSMAI
As meeting and event professionals, we and our teams spend a lot of time and energy (and some of our best thinking) developing educational content — whether large or small, live or virtual. Learn from your colleagues to stretch the value you get from your investment in educational content development.

We hope to see you there! Unable to schedule a one-on-one meeting? Leave us a comment and we’re more than happy to answer any questions you have.

Written By: Rebecca Yetzer

Three Event Technology Ideas from PCMA Convening Leaders

I attended the PCMA Convening Leaders conference in early January (Disclosure: ACTIVE Network is a communications partner with PCMA). This will be my third time attending the conference, which has a reputation for driving technology innovation within the industry. This year’s conference was no different with lunch incorporate into part of the experiment – testing different cuisines or creating a learning lunch area.

As a marketer, I’m always looking at how technology can be leveraged for your event. Here are three considerations for your next event:

• Shout it with Tout: Think of Tout as a video version of Twitter. Why would you use it versus YouTube? The key here is using a video medium to capture questions, feedback and reactions in 15 seconds or less. As an organizer, it’s a great “teaser” to other content at your event. Currently being leveraged by media outlet and consumer organizations, such as 49ers and WWE, Tout is venturing into the events space. Hurry – while currently free, the company may soon move to a paid model.
• In-person versus Virtual perspectives: While I was unable to attend this session, I did hear some very positive feedback from attendees. Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw lead a session that challenged attendees to evaluate how room sets (the type of seating used as well as layout) can impact learning and participation for attendees. This was also streamed to the virtual audience. The key take away? For the virtual audience, they had a different reaction to the room sets than those sitting in the convention center. If you plan to stream a physical event to a virtual audience, be aware that how virtual audiences “see” the room and presentation is significantly different than a physical audience.
• Mobile is the New Black: Mid last year, we highlighted in several blog postings about the level of mobile usage within the meetings and events industry. At the time, we noticed that mobile was just gaining ground with mobile usage beginning to saturate beyond 100% (meaning owning more than one mobile device). At PCMA, it became clear that mobile devices, from smart phones to tablets, are an essential part of an event planner’s life. In fact, the learning lounge session on tablet tricks & tips and mobile apps were regularly overflowing. Beyond leveraging mobile devices to help with event logistics, attendees will begin expecting a mobile event app to help navigate the show floor itself.

What event technology ideas are you seeing at events?

Written By: Cece Salomon-Lee

PCMA Gets Smart. And What Other Associations Can Learn From It.

When Jason Paganessi, VP of Business Innovation at the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) talks association technology, he speaks with the unguarded enthusiasm of a child talking toys. Yet his technology strategy is serious business.

Today, he and PCMA announced ACTIVE Network as their exclusive event management technology partner to power most of PCMA’s global events—from annual conferences such as Convening Leaders to worldwide chapter events.

“We sat back and said, ‘we really need to know more about our members’…And that’s the situation a lot of associations are in right now.” – Jason Paganessi

Without good technology, many associations have bad data. Data is often scattered across several systems or, even worse, buried in excel spreadsheets. So, associations rarely have a persistent view of a member’s behavior – or even that person’s most basic information. Read the rest of this entry »

Written By: Eric Olson

4 Achievable Attendee Engagement Goals

Written By: Guestblogger, Tara Barnes, Marketing Director at Pathable

You may be feeling smug because you’ve got your attendee engagement strategy ready to roll, but the real work has just begun. While having that roadmap in place is a crucial jumping off point, you now need to think about the measurable goals you want to achieve.

The key word in that last sentence is measurable. Numbers tell us a concrete story. What exactly are you measuring? In what increments? During what time period? While you may think “I want my attendees to interact with my speakers more,” how will you judge if this is happening, and if it is happening successfully?

Here’s an example of the importance of measurable, concrete goals: Let’s say that you want to increase the open rate on your event marketing emails. If you increased your email open rate by 0.005%, would that feel like you’d really met your goal? Creating realistic and measurable goals has to be a top priority for your event and organization.

While the goals for every event will be different, I wanted to help you get started with four of our favorite attendee engagement goals.

1. Increase traffic to your event website by 25% in a 30-day time period – You can’t measure this without knowing your starting point, so if you’re not currently tracking website statistics, hop to it! Google Analytics is a powerful, free tool.
2. Grow event community adoption rates from 70%-80% over a two year period – We recommend comparing a community for the same event. As you approach year two, be sure to note what you’re doing differently to try and grow those numbers.
3. Increase the number of session feedback survey completions by 15% – This can be slightly harder to measure if you’re gathering data from paper surveys. A tool like Survey Monkey can simplify the recording and measurement process.
4. Increase your event marketing email open rate by 1% per email – Again, tracking is essential here. Consider sending your marketing emails through a program like MailChimp that allows you to easily segment, target, A/B test and track things like open and click through rates.

The above are simply meant to be suggestions and ideas as you shape your own event’s attendee engagement goals. Remember to measure! I touched briefly on some tools above but stay tuned for a follow up post on more suggested tools for attendee engagement throughout your event’s life cycle.

Tara Barnes (@PathableTara) is the Marketing Director for Pathable, Inc. In addition to a background in event planning/management, Tara has extensive experience in marketing, social media, communications and public relations strategy.

Written By: Irene Coghlan

Infographic: Social media trends in tradeshow and event marketing

• 47.8% of tradeshow and event marketers spend 1-5 hours on social media marketing per week.
• 102% is the average increase of Twitter followers from businesses that start a blog
• Mobile smartphone usage is set to increase from 83.5 million users in 2010 to 142.1 million users in 2014
• 66% of users access social networking via a smartphone.
• Smartphones like the iphone and Android are increasing the opportunities to connect attendees and other tradeshow participants.

This week’s stats and infographic are brought to us from Echelon Design and Exhibitor Media Group. It provides an interesting look at some of the most widely used social media tools and their application and effectiveness in today’s event world. Please enjoy and let us know what your experience of social networking and events has been?

Please  share your comments below

Written By: Irene Coghlan

Infographic – Engaging Your Event Audience With Social Media

Events are all about engagement, but extending that engagement beyond the event itself can be a challenge for many event planners, marketers and conference organizers. This week’s infographic is brought to you courtesy of Northwest Creative Imaging who has illustrated how you can leverage social media before, during and after your event to enhance engagement and extend the event lifecycle.

How do you use social media to engage your event audience?

Written By: Irene Coghlan

4 Smart Tips for Creating an Attendee Engagement Strategy

Written By: Guestblogger, Tara Barnes, Marketing Director at Pathable

Your event is one in a million… but that isn’t meant in a complimentary way. Your event is one thing among a million others that your attendees are thinking about on a daily basis. You need to work hard to get attendees engaged with your event’s content. You need to capture and hold their attention. And you can’t do this by throwing a couple of tweets their way and thinking that all is well.

Making sure your attendees (and potential attendees) are engaged with your event year-round takes careful planning and strategy. Each event’s strategy will be as unique as the event itself, but there are specific, well-tested tips that will get anyone started in creating their engagement roadmap.

Tip #1: Set clear, measurable goals. This may seem like a no-brainer, but goals are often overlooked. You can’t know how well your strategy has worked unless you have goals you’re trying to achieve and ways to measure if you’re meeting them. Goals will differ for everyone but might include: Increasing registration numbers, generating more website traffic, number of social media shares, etc.

Tip #2: Properly load your tool chest. You want to engage with attendees, and you think you’ve got just the right social media tools to do it with. Perhaps you do, but these need to be tools your attendees are already using, not just what your favorites are. Select your social media and communication tools carefully. Poll your attendees to see what they’re already using. It’s far wiser to use a few tools well than to manage a dozen poorly.

Tip #3: Set a schedule and stick to it. Good marketing and engagement with any audience comes from providing relevant content in a timely manner. A content schedule is an important part of an event’s engagement strategy. Once you have your communication mediums pinned down, map out your content. What do you want to be communicating to your attendees before you open registration? Just before your event? On-site? Post-event? You need to think of content through every phase of your event’s life cycle, plan out when you need to communicate it and which tools you will need to do all of that.

Tip #4: What’s in it for your attendees? A common mistake planners make when trying to engage with attendees is exclusively trying to sell what makes their event so wonderful. You don’t want to neglect that, but the central focus of a good engagement strategy is showing attendees what’s in your event for them. Focus on what they will learn at your event. Who will they get to network with? What new products and services will they learn about? Additionally, the more questions you ask attendees and the more you empower them to help shape your event, the more relevant your content will be to be to them.

Attendee engagement should be an on-going endeavor, and creating your strategy is merely the jumping-off point. Stay tuned for more posts on engagement management with tips for goal setting, choosing the right tools and ways to extend that engagement year-round.

Tara Barnes (@PathableTara) is the Marketing Director for Pathable, Inc. In addition to a background in event planning/management, Tara has extensive experience in marketing, social media, communications and public relations strategy.

Written By: Irene Coghlan

Digital Trends Series – Generation Y

Our society is witnessing the rise of a group of people who have grown up with the internet, and been the catalyst behind the dramatic transformation of the way we communicate today. Not only are they very much at home in the digital environment and highly active online, but they are also driving our adoption of social media. This group is known as Generation Y.

Who are Generation Y?

As a demographic classification, Generation Y first appeared in 1993. It refers to anyone born after 1981 – the successors to both Generation X and the Baby Boomers. This group are the workers and wealth generators of today, and are a highly influential target audience for marketers and brand owners.

However, their drivers and motivators differ distinctly from previous generations and their consumption psychology is one born from the new media age. This psychology affects both the way they consume media and how they are motivated to buy into a brand proposition.

“Generation Y’s acquaintance and aptitude with technology in all its forms, from an early age, sets it apart from previous generations,” says Professor Rob Davidson from Greenwich University. “This is the first demographic to grow up with the internet and it is clear that its members view the web as a two-way communications tool. This has led a shift in media consumption towards the internet, social media and mobile phones. As a group, Generation Y also demands more honesty and engagement from the brands it buys from, meaning organisations need to think beyond conventional marketing to make an impact.”

Crucially, they are a critical and difficult audience to communicate with in conventional terms and with conventional media. As a group, they demand transparency from a brand, and to be valued and treated with respect. What’s more, in an environment of ‘social advocacy’, any brand that tries to, or inadvertently, misleads them will potentially find itself damaged.

So having established this fundamental ground rule, brands also need to consider how Generation Y respond to media. They react best to communications that understand their uniqueness, and their particular way of receiving and processing information. The key is to use as few words and as many strong images as possible.

Telling the brand story

It’s vital to be aware that the balance of power has shifted, and to understand that rather being directly sold to, Generation Y want to be engaged. Marketers need to consider whether they are still telling stories about their brand or whether they are helping their customers to tell theirs. Brands should be encouraging customers to ask: “Where do I feature in this story?” In short, Generation Y do not buy the brand or the product, they buy what that product does for them.

Generation Y buy on emotion and justify purchases with logic. Social currency is emotional, but conventional research and focus groups generally only return logical responses. So marketers need to understand the emotive effect of their brand or product on this sector of society and deliver two key drivers of behaviour: the need to belong and the need to be significant. You cannot buy the attention of Generation Y, you have to earn it!

Get it right and Generation Y can not only be a tremendous source of new ideas for a brand to evolve itself, and at the deepest level of engagement can and should be involved in the evolution of products, services and brands.

Written By: Cece Salomon-Lee