Engaging attendees at an event is vital to its success; technology often facilitates this engagement process. Event planners now have many technologies, such as mobile apps for events, social walls, and virtual or augmented reality solutions.No matter the technology you employ to increase engagement at an event, its primary function should be to enhance the attendee experience rather than dilute it. Ensuring its success ensures attendees experience lasting impacts from engagement experiences at your event.
This guide demonstrates how online event engagement professionals can leverage technology today to increase engagement and interaction between attendees.
Engagement of an audience refers to interactions among participants as well as content provided by partner brands, event teams, or special events, participants' experience at an event.
Why Is Engagement Important?
Engagement levels provide valuable real-time feedback that you can count on from genuine friends. It is key to observe what occurs when people vote by clicking their mouse or walking around, with whom and where people invest their time - the Holy Grail of interest being how and with whom people invest their time each year; billions are invested annually into gathering these insights across major marketing channels and events such as yours to analyze. Break it down.
How To Calculate Engagement Score
As events vary greatly, we need a consistent measure to compare them against. That reference point comes in the form of an Engagement Score calculated through our SaaS event management platform - think of it like the interactive profile for an event. Engage provides three essential capabilities by helping manage engagement scores of events more efficiently.
Situational Awareness
Knowledge of our surroundings enables us to respond appropriately. Being aware of what's working or not allows us to quickly take measures that maximize positive aspects or minimize negative ones; becoming conscious allows us to set priorities when resources and time are limited.
Does foot traffic at your Platinum Sponsor Light decrease? Send an SMS text message directly to those involved or bring out a snack trolley - being aware of when critical moments exist is essential to focus your efforts on these critical moments.
Find Out Who The Key Influencers Are
Participants at events vary and respond in various ways, some arriving with an agenda and lots of energy, working alongside you on similar efforts. At the same time, other attendees do this to varying degrees. To create Influencers, high engagement levels must remain and be enabled. Influencers have an outsized effect on future attendance at events and performance results - it is, therefore, imperative that we recognize active networkers, popular sessions, or activities that trigger interactional surges as soon as they occur.
Events offer you an ideal setting to gain insights your partners require. Begin by closely watching their activities.
Continuous Improvement
As part of event diagnosis, it can sometimes be challenging to distinguish which parts of events should be repeated and which should not. An accurate evaluation requires an impartial approach that takes account of reality: low survey response rates in single digits, "squeaky wheel" effects, and personal bias. Effective event diagnosis relies on collecting inputs consistently before weighing them appropriately - something stock index funds do very similarly with real financial consequences based on market sentiment changes.
Comparing events to stocks is an invaluable way of understanding their performance, giving organizers an in-depth knowledge of their event's results and key trends within its context. Benchmarks may be beneficial, but it's best to analyze only your event directly to gain the fullest picture.
Manage Engagement on a Scale
Staff with experience and commitment is essential in creating all three components of event success - situational awareness, identifying key influences, and continuously optimizing events. For these goals to be met on an expansive and consistent scale, additional tactics such as advanced tracking technologies like smart badges are often utilized; lead retrieval devices with their accompanying analytics should also be integrated into event platforms to save your team time while connecting all relevant dots; otherwise, you risk creating more data without actionable insights into them.
Getting Started
Event goals vary based on an event's nature and audience; however, some universal benchmarks provide guidance. We'll break this definition into easily achievable metrics so you can begin tracking immediately. Participants' engagement encompasses their interactions with.
- Content included average sessions/attendees, time spent per session, and attendance statistics for Partners and Brands.
- Total exhibit hall time spent and average visitor dwell time within their exhibit booth area was also measured, as well as survey feedback received, site interactions made, and social media posts posted to these accounts.
- Special Event Attendees,
- Average Attendance Time Spent at the Event, Network Activity During, and Survey Feedback are reviewed here.
- This list may seem daunting initially, but the key step is getting started. Select metrics you can attain before working with stakeholders to develop engagement metrics specific to your event - quickly transforming every event into something your attendees enjoy while also collecting insights for stakeholders.
Productivity Boosting Event Technology
Event planners constantly search for innovative ways to engage their attendees and ease stress during an event. Below are five products you can use at your next conference to captivate attendees, make networking easier, keep attendees focused, and increase participation in keynote speeches. These devices are easy to use yet make a big impression on the site afterward.
NFC Badges to Ensure a Smooth Attendee's Experience
NFC (Near-field communication) badges offer event attendees and organizers a seamless and high-tech event experience, thanks to NFC (Near-field communication). Data transfers through holding your NFC badge near another device, saving time with processes like check-ins, active or passive session tracking, lead retrieval, or any of its many features - remembering being 30x larger than QR codes which store less personal info about attendees.
You Attendees Personal Pocket Planner - Mobile App
Use mobile event apps for event or meeting planning to streamline certain aspects. Mobile event apps provide essential assistance in event organizing; they help improve user metrics or increase engagement between attendees.
Planners can create their apps and publish them to match their brand or event identity while still including features desired by attendees today. Attendees will then have the power to design an event agenda of their choosing, schedule one-on-one meetings with one another directly via the app, send private messages directly, and more - not forgetting to gain insight into ROI or performance as well as increase revenue with banner ads, premium listings or sponsored push notification if using an event management software such as Convene; all data, including sessions and speakers details, will automatically sync over to this app making app management straightforward.
Read Also: The Advantages Of Arion Event In Event Management Business
What Mobile Can Do to Increase Engagement in Events
You can make an event more memorable for both the attendees and those who are hosting it. An event mobile app allows planners to reach participants during and after an event.
Before the event:
- You can send out a survey to determine what the attendees expect from your event. Planners can provide an experience that is more personalized based on the responses. Also, speakers can plan their talks around the needs of the audience.
- Apps' messaging systems can be used to encourage participants to communicate with one another.
- Remind people and send them helpful information.
The event will be:
- Push notifications are a great way to inform users about what is happening and where.
- Organize and bookmark speakers or exhibits you want attendees to attend
The Event:
- You can post photos, videos, slideshows, or both.
- Ask for feedback by sending out a poll
- Thanking event participants
- Inform them about events to come
Using polling technology, you can make your attendees a part of the story
Do you want to increase the attendance at your event and increase attendees' level of investment? By adding real-time technology like live polling presentations, real-time technology such as real polling presentations can increase engagement by inviting audience participation in telling their story and shaping expectations and preferences for attendees better than before.
Live polling has quickly become a feature of event management apps, enabling participants to take polls live during an event and see the results instantly during each session.
A Wider Audience with Live Streaming
Even at your best-planned events, there will always be those unable to attend who cannot make it physically. Live streaming your event, or brand can give them an immersive experience. They feel they were there in real-time, making the whole process of reaching more people much simpler while increasing the authenticity of brand experience and ROI.
Imagine an event where attendees could view live streams and interact with speakers via real-time video streaming without travel costs or language barriers being an obstacle. Or consider hosting an international conference where all offices could participate without worrying about travel costs or language barriers being an issue - without ever needing to compromise due to language issues.
Live streaming of virtual elements or events effectively expands your reach and builds brand loyalty among target customers.
Touchscreen Technology Interactive: Engage in any event
Engaging an audience without interactive products or events can be hard, but touchscreen technology makes any event more interactive. Touchscreen kiosks allow you to easily display products, websites, and applications while conducting individual or group demonstrations.
Video walls with touchscreens provide another form of touchscreen technology. These large monitors allow your audience to engage with PowerPoint or other media presentations. In contrast, the displayed charts, graphs, and surveys can allow attendees to interact. By including touchscreen technology at your next event, your attendees can get involved by engaging directly with products. They'll gain greater comprehension through interactivity while improving overall understanding.
Measurement of Event Engagement for Event Success
Your event's value must be shown clearly to attendees and sponsors; simply stating it was successful or targeted toward certain demographics is insufficient evidence of its true worth. Data must back your claims.
Tracking attendee engagement levels throughout your event stages can increase attendee satisfaction while helping market it more effectively to your target audience. Which data is worth tracking, and how best you can utilize this to add value to my event? Discover how technology is used to capture engagement metrics before exploring further steps that could maximize its success and ensure its lasting legacy.
Session Attendance
Access control and tracking software provide the ideal way of collecting this data. These solutions monitor movement throughout an event venue while restricting entry by attendees into specific areas or sessions, helping enforce limits on capacity as well as contact tracking at events - planners can measure passively who enters and leaves rooms by using beacons placed near doorways (for increased accuracy count a person as present if they remain for at least 10 minutes before counting them as being present).
Build Event Value: At the core of every successful event lies an expertly planned program. When accepting speakers that best suit your target audience, attendees will walk away feeling that your event was worth their financial and time investment.
Networking
How to Collect This Data: Mobile apps provide an effective means of gathering networking data at events. Your event app can monitor attendees who utilize its features, such as messaging or one-to-one matching.
What it Does: Attendees of events want to leave with connections from an event, make new business connections, or expand existing networks. A record of those connections formed at an event can demonstrate its worthiness to potential attendees and show prospective attendees why such an event would be worthwhile.
Use your mobile event app to track session engagement
Your mobile app provides an effective and efficient way to monitor attendees' real-time engagement during a meeting or event.
Live Surveying: To measure attendee engagement during specific sessions at your event, live surveys can be implemented using mobile apps to track the engagement of attendees in real time. Before your event, surveys and polls should be uploaded into your mobile event app for easy activation during sessions by speakers - then attendees respond via their devices via surveys/polls activated by speakers during presentations. Creating concise questions which allow attendees to complete them quickly can reduce confusion during an event as it keeps moving along smoothly; real-time surveys allow your audience to gauge engagement while providing you with real-time insights that allow any necessary changes immediately.
Live Feedback: After surveying your attendees, ask your speaker to display the live results of the survey in real time. Based on these results, they can determine how the rest of their presentation should proceed based on these responses; these also allow planners to gauge engagement levels with sessions while tracking their development over time. Real-time feedback offers planners valuable insight and can make attendees feel even more connected to an event by changing based on this feedback from attendees themselves.
Activity Feeds: Some mobile events apps feature streams or activity feeds for general announcements from planners and allow attendees to like, comment and upload pictures or announcements as a response. Planners can monitor chatter during sessions and afterward to address any inquiries from attendees or answer any pertinent queries from participants.
Booth Traffic
NFC (near-field communication) technology provides the means for gathering this data. Beacons can help track booth traffic by being placed strategically around an exhibit hall and given out as attendees' devices. Virtual event booths resemble those at physical trade shows or festivals by making communication easy for attendees, sponsors, and organizers. Furthermore, virtual platforms enable individuals to network more easily even though they cannot replace face-to-face events entirely.
Data about event attendees can help event organizers attract sponsors. Say, for instance, that your conference targets event organizers and that attendees seem most interested in mobile apps, event management software, and onsite event technologies; then this data could help attract sponsors for your conference by showing companies which products attendees might find most appealing at your expo booths.
Lead Capture
Leads may be collected using devices that scan QR codes. Device rentals may be made available, while certain companies allow exhibitors to "Bring Your Device," using devices purchased with licenses, downloaded with apps, etc., as lead collection tools.
Lead capture can help demonstrate event value: Exhibitors expect leads as part of their investment; with lead capture capabilities available through custom surveys or notes provided on demand to them from your event, your exhibitors can qualify leads through custom questionnaires to make sure only qualified leads pass to follow up at future events. Plus, you can use lead data collected to show potential exhibitors how many leads other events have generated before attending yours and help prepare them accordingly.
Noting the value of events to attendees, sponsors, and other stakeholders as a sure way to increase event success is an ongoing task of measuring engagement data. Set goals, benchmark data, and review your results annually. Make your data meaningful by setting targets, benchmarking data against benchmark data sets, and revisiting results year after year. Show attendees, sponsors, and other stakeholders the true potential of an event through the smart use of event analytics data.
Read Also: Usefulness Of Event Management Software In Event Management Industry
Keep Attendees Involved Between Events
After your event has concluded, assess its ROI and continue engaging current and potential attendees by regularly posting fresh content to your website and social media channels that spark their interest in attending future events. This may help drive greater attendance rates at future ones.
Content creation between events can be straightforward and relatively inexpensive, if not entirely free; all it requires is creativity and innovation. Here are a few simple ideas you can incorporate as you transition out from last year's event and plan for next year:
Create A Blog
Create and publish a blog for your event website and share industry articles your attendees can easily digest, such as lists and reviews. Doing this throughout the year will position you as an active thought leader within the field and demonstrate your thought leadership position to attendees.
Make More Videos
Video can be an engaging marketing strategy. The video has many uses, from behind the scenes at planning an event or an exclusive interview with keynote speakers to live streaming events with interactive features for audiences.
Share Aggregated Content On Social Media
Take time each day - in addition to your standard promotion efforts - to share 2-3 stories about current happenings in your field on social media, providing your event audience with new inspiration and event ideation opportunities. It could save time & effort.
Competitions And Discounts
An effective way of engaging attendees at events is offering them contests where they could win registration discounts and accommodations, VIP status, or exclusive event invitations. Make your contest interactive to encourage maximum participation; for instance, you could ask attendees to enter by taking short surveys, participating in Twitter polls, liking/following social media pages, or posting photos - anything encouraging engagement will help attract attendees.
Take Inspiration From Your Own Data
Your event management software's survey data, attendance figures, and demographic information can provide the ideal basis for creating engaging content during less hectic months. Use any data available to pique the interest of your target audience with small graphics or larger infographics; fact sheets or white papers also make for excellent ways to spark their interest; you could use Instagram messages such as this post from ABC Conference ("90% would recommend ABC Conference to their colleagues. Click our bio link now.") as an incentive or act as industry resources ("Check out this whitepaper to discover which technologies attendees of ABC Conference appreciate most.").
Updating Your Mobile App Is Essential
Even once your event has come and gone, its mobile app shouldn't remain dormant. After your event concludes, remove outdated information and post new year-specific info. Push notifications, alerts, or special deals provide another excellent means of keeping attendees up-to-date. Plus, they provide an avenue to stay in contact before and after attending.
Do Not Forget To Email
Email may be a more complex communication tool. However, it still has value in highlighting the amazing and engaging content produced each month and any announcements or information regarding events. Create a monthly newsletter showcasing everything new that's been produced and any important event information or updates that have come through for announcement.
Implementing even one or two initiatives between events will give your audience and yourself a tremendous service - they will feel better informed and engaged, leading them to attend more often and creating stronger communities overall.
What Is The Best Way To Facilitate Onsite Engagement?
Be certain that the technology you employ engages guests flawlessly, creating unforgettable memories and impressions in their minds. Event planners should select event technology that encourages interaction among attendees at every event - this ensures attendees come away from each experience with lasting impressions of positive memories from it all.
Successful event professionals use technology today to maximize attendee engagement during their events.
Wi-Fi Backup Plans & Support: Investing In These Plans Will Help Protect Your Wi-Fi Network
Wi-Fi connectivity is vital in technology use at convention centers and hotels; however, its consistency may only sometimes be reliable or consistent across a space or venue. Event planners should devise backup plans should Wi-Fi fail; consider sponsoring Wi-Fi usage at their event space, using mobile hotspots near technologies if costs become a barrier, etc.
Demonstrate Your Expertise
Teaching attendees to make the most of technology is essential, so demos and onboarding must be engaging and enjoyable experiences for everyone involved. A digital sign could highlight notable features if engaging through mobile applications; when showing virtual or augmented reality technologies, you may wish to have someone present to answer any queries and explain processes as required; you could even send emails/notifications in advance notifying people of an exciting new technology that you will be showing them, along with links providing more details - something your attendees won't get at an in-person demonstration session.
Find A Technology That Can Track Data
Today's events focus more on using data for an overall marketing and event strategy rather than on just one event's execution. While in the past, data collection at events was often very rudimentary and hard to interpret, event planners now have access to event analytics platforms which provide them with insight into improving engagement at events via mobile event apps and wearable tech; real-time evaluation of their events with wearable tech is also possible allowing event organizers to leverage rich engagement data with their marketing teams for driving future campaigns.
Elevate Human Experience
Most attendees aim to gain knowledge on new technologies, meet thought leaders, or network with new people at events they attend. Technology should make it easy for attendees to know when, what, and who is available, providing attendees with more efficient usage of time and better experiences overall. Lead retrieval technology enables easy information exchange without delay while remaining enjoyable.
Maximizing Audience Engagement During Virtual Events
Virtual events offer some advantages to audiences while keeping them interested and helping to prepare them for hybrid and physical events that might follow in the future.
Sponsors and organizers seeking to maximize this webinar must move away from top-down presentations towards engaging, interactivity, and customizability as their goals.
Virtual worlds can be just as captivating, and these proven strategies for increasing audience engagement at virtual or hybrid events will only further your enjoyment.
Offering Captivating Content
Effective content doesn't necessarily need to be advertising: It could help solve a particular problem, educate, or entertain its audiences - something especially applicable for virtual events. Due to internet audiences having short attention spans, your best and most relevant material should be divided into bite-size chunks; Amazon and Netflix recommend engines offer personalized suggestions as an additional strategy.
Encourage Interactive Sessions
Not advisable is an unending stream of webinars; rather, customized sessions in such a way as to increase active engagement among attendees. Use polls and surveys live polls and surveys live polls and surveys live polls surveys polls etc., to allow attendees to customize the session and feel included in it. During live Q&A, there should also be ample chances for feedback and to ask personal queries or give input directly from them.
Use Gamification To Increase Engagement
Gamification refers to the application of video game mechanics outside their intended realm - like awarding participants with badges, points, or ranks depending on their participation and organizing virtual treasure hunts - for use outside the traditional video gaming context. Gamification adds competitive fun elements into events and increases virtual engagement - perfect ways to engage participants.
Include Breaks Between Sessions
One of the greatest challenges when hosting a virtual conference is combating screen fatigue. Therefore, taking breaks between each session is imperative. Your platform should include virtual breakout rooms facilitating team activities like mini yoga classes, trivia competitions, stand-up comedy, or virtual happy hours allowing teams to interact. Adding themed events into breakout sessions can make your events even more unforgettable.
Support The Networking Moments
Virtual events offer attendees similar networking and socializing benefits as physical events; to facilitate networking among attendees at virtual events, allow attendees to have one-on-one discussions with experts between sessions through your event platform, meetings, group chats, or virtual water coolers can also serve to foster relationships among guests.
Conclusion
An important element of any successful event is audience participation. You can employ various methods to do just this - engaging presentations or interactive booths at an exhibit hall may work, as well as contests or networking cocktail parties as engaging ways.
Technology is critical in making events successful, helping event organizers perform their duties more efficiently while creating an enjoyable experience for attendees.
Meeting and event planning constantly evolve due to technological advances, making the interaction between attendees easier. One constant, however, remains: keeping attendees involved throughout an event lifecycle to maximize ROI and achieve the greatest return possible on your investments. A key ingredient to a successful event lies in finding technologies that enhance both hybrid and virtual experiences for attendees.
