Tech Trends to Make Your Event Stand Out
Image courtesy of Crew on Unsplash
There’s no questioning the power of events. In an increasingly digital world, real-time interactions and the opportunity for businesses to form in-person connections is invaluable. As more and more industry leaders pick up on the benefits that come along with well-planned events, it’s imperative you stay at least one step ahead of your competitors.
While 86 percent of event marketers believe technology can play a major role in the success of an event, it’s in your best interest to keep up with the times. To get you started, we’re breaking down some of the hottest tech trends certain to make your next event stand out from the crowd.
EVENT APPS
Think of the one thing event attendees are guaranteed to have on hand—their phones. Disregarding all the ancillary pieces that traditionally come along with attending events, from name badges, tickets, registration forms and so on. There’s no question that boiling everything down into an attendee’s personal device makes sense. Developing an app for your event solves this problem. This incredibly useful technology allows attendees to more effectively network, keeps everyone up-to-date with the latest event updates, and provides organizers with an excellent dataset to pull insight from after the fact.
Leading up to the event, once attendees have downloaded your app, you can start building excitement by sending out session information or special features to expect. Your main goal at this stage is to educate people on everything your event has to offer, resulting in more registrations and generating hype as the day approaches.
Come event day, it’s all about personalization and optimized engagement. Through your apps event calendar, attendees can mark the sessions they’re interested in attending, creating their own personal schedule for the day. This not only increases attendee engagement, but it provides coordinators with data on what interests each attendee the most. This data then can be utilized to send individual notifications when their favorite speaker is about to go on or when seats for a particular session are about to run out.
While (back in 2014) 86 percent of event attendees rate event apps as one of the top three features that make for a more enjoyable experience, including this technology in your event organization is bound to improve the success of your event even more so nearly four years later.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)
2018 has seen rapid advancement in the field of AI, as well. For its remarkable abilities and efficiencies far beyond human capabilities, artificially intelligent tools can improve your event’s attendee engagement and post-event recap.
AI-enabled chatbots are an excellent way to improve event experience. These intelligent bots can act as personal assistants to attendees, answering questions on-demand, driving interaction, delivering personalized notifications, collecting feedback, and more; revolutionizing what good customer service looks like at an event. While attendees traditionally would seek out employees to barrage with questions, they’ll now have instantaneous answers to their questions right on their phone.
- What’s the WiFi password?
- Where’s the closest restroom?
- What time is the next speaker?
Chatbots can service hundreds of attendee requests at once. As the most important aspect of hosting an event that stands out is optimized customer experience, chatbots also provide intelligent analyses of the conversations they have with attendees. Through machine learning, bots are capable of understanding the emotion a user is expressing so to provide the most appropriate response to the questions or concerns they’re faced with. Should your attendees be frustrated with something, chatbots can pick up on that and solve their concerns before they become a larger issue.
RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION (RFID)
Building excitement prior to your event plays a big role in its success. In our hyper-connected world, people are sharing everything, especially exclusive items they possess and activities they’re participating in. RFID tags sent out to attendees are a great way to generate excitement and raise awareness of your event. Being a fairly new trend, the wristbands instantly up your events “cool factor”, resulting in social media shares.
Once on site, RFID provides numerous benefits to attendees. Beginning with the elimination of long entrance lines, this efficient technology enables gatekeepers to scan in over 20 people per minute at each gate. RFID also encourages greater attendee engagement. From photo booths, food and drink orders, scavenger hunts, and personalized session recommendations, with a simple tap, RFID streamlines and enhances event experiences.
On the backend, RFID technology provides organizers with immediate insight on how foot traffic flows through your event. This is particularly useful for multi-day events. The data gathered on the first day can help determine any changes in the layout that need to be made. It’s no wonder 35 percent of event planners believe wearable devices are the biggest trend in maximizing the event experience.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
As much as these technology trends will impress your guests, the data gathered through them will benefit you even more. As these tools gather and report data in real time, your ability to improve each subsequent event dramatically increases. Considering the potential profitability that comes along with a well planned out event, investing in these tools will not only help you stand out from the crowd but enhance the impact of all your future events.
Guest Author Bio: Maddie Davis is co-founder of Enlightened-Digital and a tech-obsessed female from the Big Apple. She lives by building and redesigning websites, running marathons, and reading anything and everything on the NYT Best Sellers list.
Are you RFID-ready for your next event? Choose the award-winning software - and team - that’s right for your event needs: