How do you hook the attention of your audience, build their excitement for your event, and design an event experience that exceeds their expectations while delivering the business outcomes you seek? Yes, you can do it all. Our in-house event experience technologist, Ryan Costello, co-founder of Event Farm and Chief Strategy Officer at MemberSuite, shared his trusted technique in our recent event workshop: Crafting the Event Experience – Part 2: Experience Mapping.
Missed Part II of Crafting the Event Experience Workshop w. Ryan Costello?
Ryan’s method, experience mapping, takes you through the attendee journey, thinking not only about the function of each touchpoint but what emotional response it will evoke too. It helps you stay on track with your goals, especially when team members and stakeholders have lots of “good ideas.”
Move Your Audience Along Costello’s Conveyor
How do you deliver event experiences that drive business outcomes? First, you bring your target audience onto Costello’s Conveyor. This conceptual mechanism moves them from the first attendee touchpoints to conversion (i.e. the outcomes you seek).
This journey starts with your registration website and event invitation—the touchpoints where you build trusted hype. Ryan explained how to do this in Part 1 of our Crafting Event Experience workshop series. Your website and invitation branding express an experience or vibe that resonates with your audience.
Your branding elements give your audience the feeling that this event might be something they’d value. They decide to listen. Soon, they see you as a credible source and believe you have something compelling to offer.
You inspire them to take the next step: click on a link, share information with others, or register. You’ve emotionally connected with them because they feel you get them and influenced their behavior.
Ultimately, when you keep your focus on their experience and your objectives, you’ll achieve the desired outcome or conversion—they purchase, join, take away knowledge, develop relationships, or become warm leads for you and/or your sponsors.
How Do You Want to Make Them Feel?
Ask this question at each attendee touchpoint before, during, and after the event. Ryan’s webinar guest, Margaret Launzel-Pennes, CEO of POP Experiential, repeated the planner-like wisdom of Maya Angelou:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Take your site diagram and go step-by-step through every element of the event experience, thinking not just about the function of those elements (your perspective), but the attendee experience too (their perspective).
- Check-in set-up: What music will we play at the entrance?
- Trash cans: What do our trash cans look like?
- Name badges: Can attendees read badges when socially distanced?
- Conference room lights: Where’s the dimmer and color control?
- Taking seats before the keynote: How can we engage/excite them when they walk in?
- PowerPoint decks: Who’s reviewing the design of the speaker presentations?
Ask for each one: “How will it make attendees feel?”
Margaret suggests adopting innovator DNA. Be an anthropologist in your space instead of doing things as you’ve always done them. Step outside your normal comfort zone’s approach. She suggests looking at fashion and music industry events for inspiration, then morphing their big-budget ideas into something that works for you.
Guidelines for Event Experience Mapping
Simultaneously take on the attendee point-of-view while staying aligned with the desired business outcomes for the event.
When stakeholder agendas arise, trust your gut. Be confident in doing it your way—what’s best for the attendee experience and business outcomes.
Everyone loves suggesting a “cool” or “wow” experience, but these wow factors are good enough on their own. Every experience must move attendees closer to the desired business outcome.
Obey the rule of reciprocity. If you’re getting something from attendees, like information, what is the attendee getting back? If nothing, then it’s not allowed in the experience.
Build Interest and Excitement Before the Event
With experience mapping in your toolbox, let’s return to the attendee journey. You’ve already set up the registration website and sent invitations. Your marketing campaign pulls the audience along the conveyor.
Tap into your constituency for marketing and planning insight. For one of her events, Margaret consulted with a diverse group of millennials. Your think tank doesn’t need to be a formal group.
To build hype and instill FOMO, take advantage of the human impulse to share. Give them Instagrammable moments that build their expectations so they arrive at your venue raring to go.
Tease out programming instead of announcing all your speakers or highlights at once. Don’t rehash the same marketing messages over and over. Have something new to say in each email so people are tempted to open them.
Never resort to “hurry, we’re almost sold out” desperate-sounding messaging. Late registration is normal these days, especially for virtual events, so relax. If you’ve done thorough market research and planning, the people will come.
Use smart email marketing tools so you’re not sending promos to people who already registered.
Experiment with new channels, for example, paid LinkedIn advertising or retargeting. Go beyond your legacy audience to find a new audience awaiting you.
Share the attendee list so people get excited about who else is going. Everyone is craving community, especially when they’ve been feeling isolated during the pandemic.
Let your audience know they can trust you to provide a safe and enjoyable experience. Share your safety protocols in emails and an FAQ on your website. Use an event app to take care of business (vaccination or negative test validation and health screening questions) before they arrive so they enjoy a smooth check-in process.
Think about the attendee’s experience at the door. What will it feel and look like? Functionally, it’s a safety check, but do you want it to feel like a hospital entrance with people waiting in line for temperature scans? Certainly not. Now that Event Farm is integrated with CLEAR Health Pass, you can use our app to validate vaccinations and negative COVID tests, and ask health screening questions before the event, so attendees enjoy a smoother and quicker check-in.
Learn how our suite of Event Farm safety tools can take care of many essential attendee touchpoints before, during, and after your event.