6 New Ideas on How to Engage Attendees on Your Next Event

Event marketing is a seriously powerful tool for all marketers. Various reports estimate that Millennials will account for 75% of the UK workforce in ten years and that they will spend around half a million pounds on live events. As you can see, events are a quite a thing nowadays and they will only become more popular in future. But, what is a number one priority of events? Well, one of the most important aspects of events is the engagement. It’s really important to keep your attendees engaged. And people are always looking for new ways to keep the folks engaged at an event. So, let’s take a look at fresh 8 ideas that deal with engagement.

Social photo booths

Do you know what a social photo booth is? Well, have one at your event and you will see tons of photos appear online and they all ‘advertise’ your event. Social photo booths allow attendees to take photos, videos and even create GIFs. They can share those photos on their social media accounts. However, the stuff they share will be branded. And guess whose brand that will be?

Modernise everything

In the world of marketing, it’s all about standing out from the rest. One way to stand out is to do things differently than the competition. Forget the old ways and invest in event software. There is specialised software nowadays that will not only make life easier for you but it will also amaze your attendees. There are apps that provide you with most of the dull work such as sending out invites, messages and even providing analytics. You will look more professional and your attendees will see something they never saw before. In turn, that will make them want to see more. It combines beautiful and useful.

Comparison wall

By introducing comparison wall at your events, you will find out what your attendees deem to be important. These walls can be used for anything and everything. They can be used for your attendees to have fun so this could also count as a corporate event entertainment idea but you can also be a bit sly and elicit important info from the attendees. Say that you want to figure out what their event must-haves are. Just put messaging style clouds and start each one with ‘My ideal event must have…’ This is a great way to find out what your event lacks and what you might have even overlooked.

Campfire

Would you be open to the idea of starting a campfire at your event? Don’t worry, it’s not literally a campfire. Look, the times of speakers and rooms full of people listening to one person all the time have passed. You have to invest in new speaking formats to spice things up. For example, a campfire session is a good idea. These are led by a facilitator who runs the discussion with one or more experts. Each session should last somewhere around 30 minutes. These sessions feel more real and they are more engaging.

Live performance

Playing people’s favourite tunes over the speakers is okay. However, having a band fire things up brings your event to a whole another level. These live performances provide your attendees with a chance to jive to the music and enjoy the atmosphere. With live performances, the atmosphere is always great and more authentic. Especially when compared to YouTube over speakers and ads constantly interrupting playlists. When you get your attendees immersed in a throwback to their favourite songs, their energy will stay high and you will keep them engaged for longer periods of time.

Fun contests

People are competitive by nature. So, a little bit of friendly competition can light up the atmosphere quickly. Your event will be electrified if you introduce fun competitions like scavenger hunts or pub quizzes. Make the competition about your event’s theme. However, you have to make sure it isn’t boring. It isn’t all strictly business. Contest should be fun but you should also remember that the aim here is to promote your brand. On top of that, there are awesome apps out there that let attendees answer questions from their smart devices and they also get to see their answers on screen in real time. Impressive, right?

Conclusion

 You have to keep things fresh if you want to be better than the rest. Always look for innovative ways to boost your events. Remember that your rivals won’t sleep on all the novelties in the world of event marketing. Make sure that you don’t fall asleep too. So, go over these ideas once again and give them a go as soon as an opportunity arises. You won’t regret it and your attendees will appreciate your effort.

Welcome to the new Mitingu

It’s been over eighteen months since we launched the Mitingu platform and we’re really enjoying the ride (albeit with a few bumps along the way)!

Photo: Priscilla Westra

Test and measure

It was always our intention to focus on the business events market and, on the whole, we’ve been pretty successful keeping to that. From the beginning we decided to offer two options to potential users:

1. Pay as you go - Sign up via the website and start creating events immediately

2. Private/white label - A customised version with no mention of Mitingu

Like any good business coach will tell you to do, we have tested and measured the success of each over the last eighteen months. What we have seen is over 80% of our business (and growing) is coming from our private/white label offering. With that in mind, from August 2016 we stopped offering the pay as you go service to new users (existing clients are not affected by this) and have decided to purely focus on what we now call Mitingu Enterprise.

Say hello to Mitingu Enterprise

We’ve been busy developing this behind the scenes and it’s ready for release! It’s still simple to use as we like to keep things that way, but has a few more bells and whistles to help make your events even better. We also realised when it comes to pricing, it has to be simple too, so we have three pricing options, all flexible and designed to accommodate specific needs.

Here’s a brief introduction to some of the features we’ve added so far:

1. Improved analytics, giving you a better oversight of your events

2. Event accommodation

• Manage capacity and allocation

• Help your attendees choose the right hotel by providing information as part of the registration process

3. See which breakout sessions and workshops are the most popular and manage allocation and capacity accordingly

4. Pre-registrations: Gauge interest and manage invitations for limited space events

5. Incomplete registrations: View and contact attendees with incomplete registrations to encourage them to complete their registration

6. Reduce form abandonment with intelligent single or multi-page registration forms and surveys

7. Enhanced tagging and filters, personalise and segment your communications

8. Multi-lingual event sites and communications

Events and attendees from all over the world? No problem, with Mitingu you can quickly and easily upload translations for one or as many languages as you need at the same time, This allows the delegate  to decide which language they would prefer to register and receive the subsequent event communications in.

At Mitingu, we are all about providing our clients with “their” event management platform. A place where they can create and manage great looking, branded and multi lingual event sites as well as  communications, whilst collecting information about their clients and prospects that they can use to improve event experience and build long lasting business relationships.

If you would like to take a look at the all new Mitingu then we’d love to show you. No commitment necessary, but good honest feedback essential! Get in touch with us here or email hello@mitingu.com and we’ll set something set up. Our standard demo takes no longer than 20 minutes unless you want it to.

Event communications...make them personal

It’s widely accepted that creating a personalised event experience that is relevant to the attendee helps build engagement and strengthens business relationships. However, despite these obvious benefits, there are still a large number of events that continue to use a generic, one size fits all approach.

We realise that a personalised experience covers many different aspects of the event and for that reason we are focusing on personalised communications.

At first glance, it might seem pretty obvious what we mean by personalised.

To us, personalised means a lot more than just using someone’s first name, company name or job title. They are important, but if a message is personalised and dynamic based on an individual attendee’s interests, preferences, choice of breakout session etc, it adds far more value and makes them feel special (Because everyone needs to be loved). 

Q: How do you achieve the personalisation?

A: By using a platform that is built to understand the need for usable and intelligent data. It should provide a simple admin and attendee pathway to capture and present the data in context and be relevant at every communication point. That is what Mitingu gives to both the event organiser and attendee.

Here’s a couple of examples of how adding a simple personalised element to an event reminder email can work.

Why it’s important to get it right

Before we continue, it’s important to emphasise that if you are planning to use personalised communications for your event, it’s important to get them right. Here’s an example that didn’t work well...

I recently registered to attend an event and it gave me two registration options:

1. Attend in person

2. Attend via a live web stream

I chose the second option. All good so far, but when I was taken to the "thank you for registering page", it gave me details on the event as if I was attending in person. The automated "thanks for registering email" also suggested that I was attending in person. I have to say I was questioning myself, so I double checked to make sure my registration was for the live web stream only, it was!

So, my first piece of engagement with that event wasn’t fantastic and you know what they say about making first impressions count!

Planning your communications

Depending on the size and nature of your event there are opportunities to engage with your attendees before, during and after. Planning and scheduling your event communications means that the whole process can be automated from the first touch point (perhaps a Save the date email), to the final post event message, or even ongoing marketing communications.

The beauty of planning and scheduling is that once it’s done then it will look after itself. The right messages will go to the right people at the right time.

Just some of the personalised messages you could send

Below are just some of the messages that you could include in your event communications strategy. They should all be personalised, using a combination of what you already know and the data collected during the journey to create relevant and engaging messages. Where applicable, you could also include attendee specific agendas, menus, accommodation details and more.

Before the event:

• Save the date
• Invitation
• Invitation reminder
• Booking confirmation
• Event updates and news
• Event reminders with attachments

During the event:

• News on the day
• Workshop/breakout session reminders
• Quick survey feedback requests
• Local places to eat and visit (if the event is across a number of days)

After the event:

• Event summary with presentation slides
• Event statistics
• Invitation to attend next event
• Ongoing marketing communications

Mitingu makes it easy for you to build and schedule all your personalised event communications from one platform. If you would like to see how then please contact us hello@mitingu.com and we'll happily schedule a demo to show you how they could work for your events.

4 activities to help you deliver successful events

The majority of people do not run or attend an event without having a good idea about what they want to achieve or what they want to take away from it.

The process of engagement and achieving mutual objectives starts with the very first piece of event communication; save the date or invitation emails for example.

We think there are four key activities to consider:

1. Give information

2. Get information

3. Use information

4. Stay on brand

1. Giving the right information

Clean, accurate data is the key. We've said it before and we'll say it again, Information is Gold Dust! Make sure the data you are using is up to date, it shows attention to detail and that you’ve taken the time to think about it.

Good data enables you to tailor your communications, even if you only know my name and company name then use it, I’ll appreciate it (I’m easily pleased!).

The event registration process gives you the perfect opportunity to gain valuable information about the individual attendee. Once you have information, such as their specific topics of interest, where they travel from, dietary requirements etc then it’s really important to include this in your ongoing communications before, during and after the event.

The more information you collect the more tailored your communications can be. If they are regular attendees of other events you run, that information should also be used. Mitingu enables tailored communications which evolve with every piece of data you collect, helping you enhance your attendee’s experience as well as building and strengthening engagement and relationships. Not using the data you collect is such a missed opportunity, knowledge is power after all and showing you know your attendees will leave a lasting impression, no one wants to feel like a number.

2. Getting the right information

I don’t think I’m on my own here when I say that I really dislike filling out long registration forms that are asking me questions that have no relevance to me; I’ve told you I’m driving to the event, so there is no need to ask me my flight number and so on.

Intelligent registration is the way forward! Only show me questions that are relevant to me, either based on what you already know or how I have answered previous questions upon registration. This means some questions will only appear based on how I have answered a previous question ('Show me you know me'). Make sure the form does not look daunting and time-consuming when I first land on it.  My point here is that registration forms are not ‘one size fits all’ and should be the right length for each individual attendee whilst only collecting information that is relevant to them.

Tailoring registration forms makes completing them quicker, easier and continues to build on the good feeling they have about attending the event.

3. Using the information

A few years ago I attended a Xerox event, the event registration process has always stuck in my mind, amongst other questions like my dietary preferences, they asked the following:

     i.        Which breakout seminar topic I was most interested in

    ii.        They had a prize draw at the event and asked me which prize I would like most

All the follow up emails I received from that point on used that information in both text and imagery, it kept me engaged and reminded me of why I wanted to attend. On a lighter note, it meant that any prize I may have been lucky enough to win (I didn’t!) was something that I would like and more importantly associate with the good event experience that Xerox had provided.

So, if you use information taken before (via a registration process), during and after (via feedback surveys) and tailor it to the attendee, that will build attendee engagement and give event organisers meaningful statistics and reports that will enable them to measure the true return on investment, success of the event and give them valuable insight on where future events could be even better.

4. Staying on brand

Staying on brand, whether that is the specific event brand, your business brand or a combination of both is another key factor. The attendee should immediately associate all communications and registration site with your event and your business.

As we say at Mitingu, it’s your event not ours!

It will not come as a major shock to hear that Mitingu can help you with all of the above, so if you would like to know more we’d love to hear from you.

‘Show me you know me’ why personalisation is a great idea for your event

A big driver for us when we created Mitingu was to make personalisation a key feature in the platform. Having worked in print and digital marketing for over 20 years, I have seen the positive impact that personalised communications have on response rates and ultimately a client’s bottom line.

These two quotes highlight our reasons for making this such an important feature of Mitingu’s offering to users...

“74% of online consumers get frustrated when content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests.” Janrain & Harris Interactive

“Personalized emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversion rates by 10%.” Aberdeen

Personalisation has to be a whole lot more than just “Hi Firstname”! Of course that’s important, but so is the content. For example; if you are running a conference on marketing communications with slots featuring on digital, print and multi-channel and you already know that I have a particular interest in print, then my invitation and event site content should be tailored to focus on that. It’s far more likely to get my attention and encourage me to register for the event. 

Once registered, I’ve given the organiser a whole lot more information about me, so subsequent communications should be tailored to what they know. For example. They know my address, so could include personalised travel instructions to the venue. They may also know my dietary requirements, so it could be tailored to and include a food menu specific to them. It engages with me and shows that the organiser is taking an interest in me as an individual and will cater specifically for me. It makes me feel special and the event experience has kicked off on a really positive note weeks ahead of the actual event.

We are passionate about promoting the correct use of personalisation across event sites and email communications. We’d love to show you how.

If you’re already a Mitingu user or would love to find out more, then contact me direct greg@mitingu.com and I’ll gladly walk you through how easy to set up it is and how it can make your events even better.

5 things to get right when choosing event registration software

Choosing the right event registration software can be a tough ask. There are so many providers that it's difficult to evaluate them all.

To back this up, here's an extract from an enquiry Mitingu had in a couple of days ago:

".....frankly I am overwhelmed by the number of companies  that are doing this or similar stuff."

There are some things which are a given for pretty much all of the platforms out there such as:

• take payments online;
• send out confirmation emails and tickets;
• editor to enter content about the event;
• registration form builder;
• registration widget or buttons to embed on external websites.

Taking that into account and to help you make the right decision, we've put some suggestions together that could help you arrive there.

 

1. Branding

If you've gone through the painstaking, but rewarding process of organising an event, including promotional material and event branding, then why wouldn't you want your registration site, emails and tickets to carry on that theme?. Choosing a platform that allows you to brand the event site and emails is definitely a good choice.

It's not just about branding the look and feel either. The domain name that your site sits on and the email from address are equally as important. Using your own domain name ties everything up neatly and keeps the event registration site and emails on brand.

 

2. Data

Collecting and storing the right data on your attendees lets you communicate your event messages in a targeted and relevant way. Having an intelligent registration form builder that gives you the ability to show or hide questions based on what you already know about an attendee (registration type, stored preferences or how they have answered a previous question) keeps it relevant to them and speeds up the registration process with shorter forms.

It also helps you build a profile of the attendee that can be used for future events or general marketing activities.

Storing the data securely is an essential for most organisations. Mitingu's data is securely hosted in the UK across multiple sites with ISO27001 certification and PCI/DSS compliance.

 

3. The right message to the right person

Email inboxes are pretty much maxed out nowadays, so it's important that your event messages arrive to the right person with the right message before, during and after the event.

It's easy to do that with segmentation. If someone has registered for your event, then they don't want to receive a reminder email asking them to register. In a similar way, someone who has registered and marked their dietary preferences as "vegetarian" doesn't want to receive a menu with lots of non-vegetarian (if that's a word!) choices.

So, choose a system that not only lets you send out emails based on where they are in the registration process (not registered, registered, declined, checked-in etc), but also lets you segment further based on their preferences. We all like a one to one conversation!

 

4. An intelligent check-in

Checking an attendee in doesn't just have to be about scanning or search and swiping them in. You've collected information about them on registration, so why not make the check-in process a more personalised experience?

Mitingu's check-in app called Greet Desk not only checks attendees in, but also gives the door staff on screen prompts relevant to the attendee. For example, Joe is a VIP and he arrives at the event, is scanned in and the member of staff checking him in gets an onscreen prompt to show him to the VIP reception area. It's simple, but a nice touch.

5. The highest level of support

Most event registration platforms are designed so it's quick and easy for an organiser to set up their registration page or site. Mitingu can certainly offer that as well as giving the organiser the ability to create a bespoke event site with multiple pages and custom branding.

A great support site with the ability to raise online tickets is a must. In addition to that, it's essential to be able to speak to someone or even jump on a screen share to get an answer to a question. We think great customer service not only gives you loyal customers, but great advocates who'll recommend your business when they can.

Our support team and I regularly look over clients' event sites and make recommendations where we think something could maybe look better, or be more effectively communicated. We only offer recommendations as we appreciate a lot of look and feel is subjective, but we've never had any complaints about going the extra mile.

If you think we've missed some important items then please add to them in the comments section below. We'll respond to every one of them and any feedback is good feedback.

How event surveys help you to listen and act

Events are a great way of creating and cementing relationships by giving the attendee an unforgettable experience. I'll add that the experience should be a good one!

Surveys are one of the best ways to test and measure how good the experience was (post event survey) or is (survey during the event). Giving the attendee the opportunity to feedback their ratings and comments is precious information to the event organiser (we talked about Information is Gold Dust in an earlier post). It helps the organiser make the event even better next time and gives the business information that can be used for targeted marketing at a later date.

When you're planning your survey it's always good to consider the following:

1. Time is precious - make the survey short and sweet to maximise responses.

2. Make it relevant - things like... did they enjoy it, did they meet their objectives, will they come back?

3. Mobile usage continues to grow - make sure the survey displays equally well on a smartphone, tablet and desktop.

4. Let them be anonymous - some people are happy to give candid answers, but feel uncomfortable putting their name to them. Make sure they have the ability to respond anonymously.

Getting the results from your survey in an easy to digest format is also essential. When you are building your questions, choice selections (drop downs, choice boxes, radio buttons) can help as answers to these sort of questions can be displayed visually via charts and graphs, giving you an instant snapshot of what's popular and what needs improving.

Mitingu uses tagging to categorise contacts' preferences and we recommend that tags are applied to some of the survey questions. For example, if you have asked the attendee if they will come back next year, they could be tagged "rebook" if they reply yes, which will trigger an email giving them favourable rates on an early booking.

To sum it up, surveys can give you valuable information that helps deliver an even better event experience and can be shared with the business to help with ongoing marketing and forecasting activities.

The Power of One

If you organise events then I’m guessing you already know that time is a commodity that you don’t have enough of, and stress is an unwelcome one that you have in abundance! Just to back that up, event planners regularly feature in the top ten of the most stressful jobs.

With that in mind, why do some event planners still either use a combination of offline and online media, or a variety of different software packages and then manually combine the different sets of data?

I recently visited an event planner that takes registrations for their events via quite a nice online registration form on their website. I asked them what happens once the registration has been submitted and was amazed to hear that all they get is an email with the registrant’s details, which they then have to manually input onto an Excel spreadsheet! That’s a lot of work to do for every registration on every event, especially as some of their events have hundreds of registrations. I asked them to go back a step and tell me how they invite people to their events and promote them. They use a separate email marketing platform for that. The same email marketing platform also handles event updates. On the day of the event, attendees are checked-in using a printed version of the attendee spreadsheet.

Just to summarise...

1. Data is uploaded and email invitations are sent out from email marketing platform

2. Registrations via an online booking form on their website

3. Email to event planner with registration details

4. Attendee details manually input onto an Excel spreadsheet

5. Upload attendee spreadsheet to email marketing platform to send out event emails

6. Manually check attendees in via the spreadsheet

That’s 6 different labour intensive activities that have to be carried out! That doesn’t include any post event activity either.

For an occupation that was number 5 on the 2014 list of the most stressful jobs, that seems to me like a lot of unnecessary work when there is technology out there that will do all of this from one platform.

Mitingu is one of those platforms that could handle that whole process for the event planner.

Here’s how...

1. Contacts are either uploaded or selected via an integration with the client’s CRM

2. The branded event site and email templates are quickly set up

3. Email invitations scheduled and sent directly from the platform

4. Registrations automatically updated into the attendees list

5. Scheduled, triggered email updates and reminders are sent automatically

6. Check-in via Greet Desk (mitingu’s mobile check-in app) and automatically updated on the attendee list in Mitingu

So basically, all 6 of that particular event planner’s activities could be handled from one platform and without any time consuming manual intervention and collation of data.

That’s definitely the Power of One.

One reason why great experiences are better than material items

New Years Day 2015 and I had the usual “Happy New Year” call from my mum. Although this year it had a nasty sting in the tail! Mum also had to tell me that she’d been diagnosed with cancer (again). Her amazing spirit and positiveness somehow made it a bit easier and I am forever in awe of her for that.

It got me thinking about what really is important in life and work. We all need money to live and some of us, me included, like the finer things in life. However, what makes me smile long after they’ve happened are great memories. Seeing your child coming into this world, great holidays, great family/friends moments are all worth so much more than a new house, car, the latest iPad etc. Material items bring temporary happiness, great experiences bring lasting happiness.

Dr Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades. According to him “We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them...Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods...You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences."

From a personal point of view, I’ve made it my mission to create experiences that will bring happiness to my family and I long after the event that we can reminisce and laugh about.

It also got me thinking about things from a professional point of view. Mitingu is in the business of giving event organisers the tools to make their lives easier and to help them to deliver a great experience for the attendee. It’s incredibly demanding organising an event, so anything that enhances the experience for the organiser can only be a good thing.  An attendee that has been given a great event experience will remember that for a whole lot longer than one who has had an average experience, but walked out with a goodie bag full of giveaways!

Happiness...that’s my main driver and the one reason I believe a great experience is worth so much more than any material item.