Welcome to the new Mitingu
We've tested, measured and here is the result! Say hello 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:
Pay as you go - Sign up via the website and start creating events immediately
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.
5 things to get right when choosing event registration software
Choosing the right event registration software can be a tough task. The number of players is high, but here's some pointers that could help you make the right decision.
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.
Proud to be different
What makes mitingu different?
There is a huge selection of event registration systems out there so it’s a perfectly valid question. We’ve done our homework we know who the main players are and we know there are already excellent platforms out there, but we believe mitingu offers something different, something that helps event organisers get real value from attendee data, generate interest and ultimately, drive sales...
We’ve picked out the top four things that make us different…
1. Happy customers – Great customer service, We live and breathe it. Our passion is to help our clients deliver great events and the registration and communications process is critical to that. We have a fully loaded support site, but we’ll go much further than that. We make it our business help wherever we can.
”Greg is clearly a man passionate about the business he has created as well as the experience of customers who use his product. I organised an event using mitingu and received an unsolicited (but most welcome) email from Greg suggesting changes that would make the event registration on my website more user friendly. He even offered to talk me through how to make the changes. Now THAT is good customer service. Thanks Greg” HighStreetLawyer.com
2. Data is gold - we recognise that collecting, storing and using data is key tool to driving more sales through personalised messages, business proposals etc. The more you know about someone, the more likely you are to hit one of their touch points, build a relationship and ultimately do business with them. Our intelligent forms display relevant questions to the attendee and hide others that are not, tag an attendee based on how they respond and use this information to tailor follow up communications before, during and after the event. Our CRM system securely stores all contact information, across all events.
”Simple and intelligent platform, the auto-tagging feature allows us to get the right information to specific attendees with great ease.” LUSH
3. Connected to your brand - whilst we are obviously more than happy for you to display our logo and url on your event site, we appreciate that most businesses will want attendees to see their branding, not ours. This is why all our Pro and White Label accounts have this option as standard. Create event sites and emails with your design and branding and url, ensuing your attendees are connecting with your brand.
4. Simplicity - there are lots of pieces of software out there that are crammed with features that most of us will never use. mitingu has some great features that enables event organisers create simple or comprehensive event sites. The key to it is making it as simple as possible to use. This is key for our business and constantly evolving, we work hard to ensure our site doesn’t get ‘too busy’ or complicated. Our User Experience (UX) is hugely important to us, We listen! Research and customer feedback helps us make our platform even better.
I could easily go on and on with other reasons, but we like action, so why don’t you put us to the test? Create a mitingu account and make your events fly, we’ll be with you all the way.
How event surveys help you to listen and act
Getting feedback from your event attendees is vital to help you deliver an even better experience moving forward.
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.
What is tagging and why Mitingu uses it?
Tagging is a simple and powerful way of categorising data. Find out how we use it to help drive business intelligence.
Tagging is a well established and arguably underused categorisation system that has seen prominence in blog use and more recently, social networks.
Tagging at its core is about assigning words or short keyword phrases to items to group them together. For example. Items tagged as “event” would be grouped together if you searched on that tag.
The main issue with tagging is it places emphasis on the content creator to assign tags to their content and often laziness prevails and content is incorrectly tagged or not tagged at all.
Tagging is an excellent and very simple categorisation system and by including it as one of the core features of our product we can leverage this grouping to allow our users to create business intelligence based on this data.
Tags are assigned to customers not events. They are assigned automatically, overcoming the overhead issues with assigning tags to users.
Tags can then be used as filters for content within web and email templates using simple if, then, else logic statements as well as filters for ticket types and add-ons.
In Mitingu, tags are automatically assigned as follows:
• Their ticket type selection
• Responses to custom registration questions
• Responses to event survey questions
Tags can also be manually assigned via the Mitingu Contact CRM or data upload.
In addition there are certain trigger points that allow organisers to schedule email notifications to be sent to attendees based on their tags. These can be at set times prior to (invitations, reminders, updates), during (welcome, on the day updates) and after the event (thanks for attending, feedback surveys).
The importance of collecting and using the right data from event registrations
They say data is the new gold. We take a look at why and how collecting attendee data can not only help deliver a great event experience, but can also be used for other business and marketing activities.
By inference, every event, no matter how large or small, is designed to deliver a positive and rewarding experience for those who attend it.
The motives behind why a brand creates an event and what their desired outcomes are from delivering a great experience vary from event to event. The balance that needs to be drawn is between the effort required in time and cost to create an event versus the benefit of creating a great experience.
The event registration is the organiser’s first opportunity to gather really accurate information about their attendees. It can help them tailor the event to deliver a great event experience for the attendees and also be used for ongoing marketing activities. In addition to that, it can make life easier for the event organiser, giving them valuable information to help them plan for catering, fine tuning event content and accommodation requirements.
Pulling the attendee data into a marketing automation platform is a really great way of getting added value from it. These platforms are designed to get the most out of accurate data, using personalisation across multiple communications channels to deliver the marketing message. Integrating your the registration platform with a marketing automation and/or CRM platform is a seamless way of pushing event attendee data and making use of it for other business and marketing activities immediately.
Planning what information is needed to deliver a great event experience and for ongoing marketing activities is essential. It's also really important to make sure the registration form is tailored to the attendee, so it's not asking them to complete fields which are not relevant to them. The Mitingu registration form builder can help with this as it gives the organiser the ability to filter questions based on registration types, known attendee preferences and how they have responded to a previous question.
As they say, "Data is the new gold".
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ― Confucius
Tagging is a powerful way to drive personalised content in a really simple way. This is how we do it at mitingu.
We’ve already discussed the importance and relevance of personalisation in previous posts. We’ll now tell you why we chose our preferred method of driving the data for personalisation, tagging.
Q. Why did we choose tagging?
A. For it’s simplicity
Tagging is a well established and arguably underused categorisation system that has seen prominence in blog use and more recently, social networks. It is all about assigning words or short keyword phrases to items to group them together. For example, items tagged as “event” would be grouped together if you searched on that tag.
Tagging is an effective and very simple categorisation system and by including it as one of the core features of mitingu we have leveraged this grouping to allow our users to create business intelligence based on the data they have.
One of the historical issues with tagging is that it places emphasis on the content creator to assign tags to their content and often laziness prevails and content is incorrectly tagged or not tagged at all. We’ve overcome this issue in mitingu as tags are automatically assigned to customers not events based on the information they give, not what is assumed.
Tags in mitingu can be used as filters for personalised content within web and email templates, ticket types and registration form questions. Email notifications can also be automatically sent based on an individual’s tag or tags.
Rather than having to write rules around different activities we use tags to simplify the process.
Here’s a simple example of tags used to create a personalised event site in mitingu.
Event name: The Good Wine Conference
Tags used: “red”, “white”, “rose”
Personalised elements: Main banner, intro text, agenda, registration type
Site 1 - John's personalised site
Site 2 - Jane's personalised site
Site 3 - Charles' personalised site
Right people, right event
Getting the right people to the right event might seem a pretty obvious objective for an event organiser however making sure it happens can be tricky….here's a few tips on how combining good data with relevant content can help
Getting the right people to the right event might seem a pretty obvious objective for an event organiser however making sure it happens can be tricky….
It's all down to the data, (Information...it's gold dust), getting hold of strong data is the first challenge. Assuming you’ve been successful in that, the second challenge is using that data to tailor the content towards your audience. Last, but not least, getting the subject line right for your emails provides challenge number three.
The good news is that you can do something about all of the above.
1. You can buy your basic data and build on it. There’s loads of places online where you can buy data lists, some better than others. The basic rule of you get what you pay for generally applies here. Research thoroughly and try and get some test data first to validate. If you’ve got some time and resource available then a combination of LinkedIn and web search makes it possible to build a fantastic database of prospects.
2. Once you’ve got the right information, it’s all about using it and making sure the recipient of your invite reads something that is relevant to them.
Having recently received an email from a health club where I have held a membership for 8 years, the opening gambit was “Dear Valued Member”! They know my name, I gave it to them all those years ago so have no problem with them using it! This email then went on to ask me to vote for their Spa in a “Salon/Spa of the Year” competition. Although I’m a man who takes care of himself ( I moisturize, that counts right? ) I’ve never stepped foot into the Spa. However my wife, who is also a member, has several times yet they didn’t email her. My point here wasn’t that they shouldn’t have emailed me as a member (I expect such emails), but if they’d used their data smartly they could have addressed the email to me and asked if my wife would vote for them and that would have engaged with me.
If you’re sending invitations to clients or prospects about an upcoming event, make sure you target those that may have an interest in what the event is about and don’t forget to use their name!
3. The good people at Campaign Monitor published a post last summer called The 15 most powerful words in subject lines. The subject line is all about making the right first impression and it was interesting to see that when “Invitation” is used as the first word, there is a 9.45% uplift in open rates and when used as the last word, a 7.69% uplift.
There’s no such thing as an exact science when it comes to subject lines, so it’s always worth creating a few and comparing the results to see which one is getting the best open rates.
Getting these three things right isn’t easy, but when you do, the benefits are well worth all the groundwork beforehand.
4 Ways Event Managers Can Use Personalisation to Impact ROI
Are you collecting data on attendees that register for events? Have you thought about and planned out how you might go about utilising this data? These are just 4 ways that personalisation can be used to impact the return on investment for an event...
Are you collecting data on attendees that register for events? Have you thought about and planned out how you might go about utilising this data? During the event registration and signup process, as an event manager or coordinator you have the opportunity to request information that you can then intelligently use to impact the ROI of an event.
These are just 4 ways that personalisation can be used to impact the return on investment for an event;
1. Dynamic, personalised event webpages
Once your attendee has registered for your event, the next time they visit the event webpage, information and elements of the site can be personalised specifically to their interests or motivations for attending the event. For example, the imagery could reflect the industry the attendee works in. You could include a call out box requesting responses to any additional non-mandatory questions they didn’t answer at signup in order to collect even more data. If they selected that they needed accommodation over the course of the event, you could include local restaurant ideas or things to do in the evening during the course of their stay.
2. Valuable meeting suggestions
Based on the attendees’ interests, role, industry and even where they are in their purchasing cycle, you could match-make them with your exhibitors, event partners or sponsors, inviting them to private meetings that will take place onsite during the event. By carefully profiling the data, you offer your attendees meetings highly personalised to their needs or motivations for attending. You will also solidify relationships with your exhibitors by connecting them with pre-qualified leads.
3. Personalised email marketing
It’s annoying to receive multiple and very apparent, generic email blasts in the lead up or during an event. Using the data you have collected, tailor emails based on the individual. Segment your attendees into defined profiles, sending them content or information related to their needs. For example, you wouldn’t send a sponsor email whose product and services pricing starts at £100,000 to an attendee who has indicated that they work at a company with a turnover of less than £100,000 per year.
4. Real-time interaction
During the event there are a number of opportunities to engage with your attendees. When attendees check in at the event you could automate emails containing the attendee’s personalised event programme, if you gave them the option to select and choose from different tracks or talks happening at the event. Even simpler still, but just as personal, you could pre-schedule emails following a speaker or sponsor’s presentation with further information including the slides from their talk to attendees who checked in to that specific talk. If you do not have the real-time checking in capabilities you can pre-schedule these emails to be sent to attendees who fit the profile for attending talks of this nature, perhaps basing your theory on previous event data.
These 4 applications and ideas for personalisation are just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what is possible. Uses for attendee data can be as simple or creative as you are willing to go. But no matter which end of the scale you choose, personalisation can be key to driving the impact on the ROI of an event, as well as creating lasting relationships with all event stakeholders; attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, speakers, etc. Personalisation enhances the experience for all those involved and can help in building loyalty and repeat business.
If you want to enhance personalisation to improve your event ROI, Mitingu is a user-friendly cloud-based platform that makes it simple to intelligently utilise attendee data and create a heightened event experience. We’d love to chat about more ways you could use personalisation for your next event. Or if you’re not much of a talker, you can sign up for a free account in minutes.
Information...it’s gold dust
Data obtained from events via our platform provides business development teams that gold dust - information - and gives them a whole lot more to talk about with clients and prospects, including new avenues to sell or simply to strengthen business loyalty.
Information...it's gold dust. It’s a big statement, but we believe it’s one of the most important ways for a business or individual to reach their goals and succeed. We all know that knowing your market is great and knowing your customers is key. Having knowledge of both sets businesses apart from the rest.
While chewing the fat over lunch with my two business partners we applied this theory to the event space and came up with this overarching question and answer; What is generally the required outcome of a business event ? Sales and information.
Mitingu is a cloud based platform that enables - no, it empowers! - event organisers setting up registration sites to engage with their attendees before, during and after the event... all the time collecting information gold dust for their future use. We can’t guarantee event organisers who run an event through Mitingu will generate more sales (as much as we’d love to). However, what we can guarantee is that, by using our powerful data collection and intelligence features, they will have more and better information about their clients and prospects at their finger tips.
Our goal is to help businesses increase sales opportunities by building a full data profile on event attendees. We want to make 'databases' with just a name, address and email a thing of the past! Data obtained from events via our platform provides business development teams that gold dust, information, and gives them a whole lot more to talk about with clients and prospects, including new avenues to sell or simply to strengthen business loyalty.
Going back to my headline… we actually believe information is better than gold dust. Gold dust has value to its owner only once, at it's point of sale. Information, on the other hand, can be used time and time again to drive more sales, build better relationships and most importantly, create a great business.
There are some fantastic tools out there to gather, store and use information including social media, marketing automation and good old face to face meetings. Why not add Mitingu to that list now?
If you’d like to find out more about how we use data intelligence to build profiles of your event attendees that can be used for but not limited to; ongoing events, marketing or customer service then drop me a line greg@mitingu.com and I’d be more than happy to show you how.
Greg Wood, Co-founder
Image Credit:
©Hammonton Photography via Flickr CC