As a technology arms race continues to invade every corner of business, those in the meetings and incentive travel industry keep a close watch for any tools that can increase attendee engagement, streamline registration, enhance experiences or otherwise increase the ROI of offsites.
“The role event technology plays is evolving as quickly as the nature of technology itself,” states a report from BizBash, an online resource for meeting and event professionals, and etouches, a provider of cloud-based analytics and data-driven event management and venue sourcing solutions. A survey co-sponsored by the two companies shows that although planners of meetings, conferences and other confabs are more conversant than ever in technology, they do not always use the platforms or functions that can best benefit their events.
The survey report, entitled “How Planners Today Can Better Use Technology to Drive Audience Engagement,” states that among planners who produce corporate meetings and conferences, the tech tools utilized most frequently pertain to logistics rather than strategic services. The most commonly used sites or apps were registration or ticketing software and email marketing tools. The most commonly used functions across platforms were, respectively, registration, email marketing and event website management.
“Registration, scheduling and agenda tools are crucial elements of event technology, particularly when it comes to mobile apps. Planners also should consider the potential value of mapping and wayfinding functionality, particularly for those using larger venues or on spread-out campuses,” the report states.
Connecting in multiple ways
Planners today still use a mix of high- and low-tech touchpoints to communicate with their constituencies. Email is far and away the most common method, with 83 percent indicating they use it, followed by social media (69 percent), and word-of-mouth (54 percent).
Apps are hitting their stride in meeting and offsite use. Roughly half of survey respondents (49 percent) indicated they currently use mobile apps for their events. Making sure an event app has the necessary functionality for attendees’ convenience enhances engagement, both with the app itself as well as between attendees.
Planners who specialize in corporate meetings and conferences use apps almost 10 percent more frequently than the overall pool of respondents. Some 57 percent of respondents in this sector say they use event apps.
Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) of respondents said their event app includes agenda tools, making this the most popular category. Wisely, 44 percent said they include social media connectivity, which is a vital way to promote the event and get buy-in from attendees, and 40 percent include networking tools, while nearly as many (39 percent) include polling functionality.
On the other hand, a whopping 71 percent of planners in the corporate meetings and conferences cohort incorporate agenda tools
into their apps. Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) include speaker profile information, the second most-common functionality for this subgroup. More than half include networking tools, a jump of 11 percentage points over the overall pool of respondents.
These are critical distinctions: For a mobile event app to deliver its ROI to an organization, it needs to offer these multiple touchpoints that facilitate engagement between attendees as well as communication between the event organizer and their audience.
IMEX eye on the future
One hot spot for monitoring trends in technology for meetings and events is IMEX, the biannual tradeshow held in Frankfurt, Germany, and Las Vegas. “It’s always interesting to see what’s happening in meetings and events technology at the IMEX shows,” says Carina Bauer, IMEX Group CEO.
Bauer says the Frankfurt show in May highlighted refinement and evolution of a lot of technologies in spaces like engagement, event management, attendee management, and supplier and venue sourcing.
“There was a strong sense this year that tech is not an end in and of itself. The novelty factor is not what it used to be,” she says. “Tech is now firmly positioned as the means to an end and planners are much more savvy about what that end — the attendee experience — needs to look and feel like.”
Bauer says the overall market has matured and is entering a new phase in which it is becoming more responsive and relevant to humanness.
“Eyes are always on how technologies can become more intuitive and simplified to fit with day-to-day planning and live event needs, yet still deliver increasingly strong and useful data and enhanced attendee experiences,” Bauer says.
With this in mind, topics like gaming, event apps, intelligent networking, CRM, and building digital communities around events were all focal points of discussion in Frankfurt. GDPR compliance was also understandably a new discussion point.
Bauer says the show’s “wow factor” was enhanced by presentations in facial recognition, a mini-app creation platform and new technology for virtual meeting rooms, interactive walls and streaming.
Tech gets personal
“It was telling to note that personal and mobile tech usage at the show continued to expand rapidly,” Bauer says. “There seemed to be more Fitbits and smart watches around than ever before, and Wifi data usage was exponentially up over last year’s levels, demonstrating how technology continues to become more and more intrinsic in our lives and work.”
As fast as technology evolves, Bauer expects to see even more new technology at IMEX America 2018, which is scheduled for Oct. 16-18.
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