How to Leverage Event Personalization for More Engaging Events
Event personalization ensures attendees enjoy a more authentic and engaging experience — from personalized event invitations to activities they’re more likely to participate in during the event. With 41 percent of marketers believing events are the single-most effective marketing channel, it is crucial now more than ever to implement event personalization to create a lasting connection with attendees. To get started, here are some tips and tools to personalize your next event.
Let Past Data Lead You
Before you start using current technology to personalize your next event, look to past data for clues. When examining data from past events, take note of ticket sales — which sessions drew the most attendees? This can help you customize your event agenda. Consider demographics, like the age, profession and geographical information of past attendees. From which cities or locations did they hail? If you have data on their interests and food preferences, you’ll have a head start on personalizing your next event, especially if you notice trends across attendees.
Use Registration to Gather New Data
By using an event-planning software platform with customizable registration capabilities, you are able to customize registration routes for every attendee, taking their specific demographics and interests into consideration. For example, if you’re hosting an event open to senior-level professionals in a particular profession, as well as job-seekers in the same profession, registration questions may not be the same for both groups. With the ability to distinguish one attendee type from another, you have the ability to personalize questions and other event offerings, including event sessions and activities. You may even be able to suggest suitable accommodations tailored to attendees -- budget hotels if students are attending an event, for instance, or high-end properties for senior-level employees -- if attendees are traveling from afar to attend an event.
Go Mobile (but Not Fully)
If your event attendees are a mix of millennials and an older audience, ensuring the event website is mobile-friendly and desktop-friendly is ideal. To keep everyone engaged, make content concise and easy to navigate that potential attendees do not opt out of completing registration because they’ve been bogged down by the process. This is especially important when tailoring information for a mobile site or app.
Curate Your Message
Before, during and after the event, attendees should be engaged with personalized email campaigns. Address attendees by name and company. The more personalized details to infuse into a message, the better, as personalization increases click-through rates. After all, personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates.
Don’t Bombard Attendees
While personalization can make attendees feel like an event was created for them, there are times when event producers can take things too far. Carla Jones, head of event operations and client services at Haymarket Events, tells eventsforce.com, “Remember that too much personalization can be invasive and doesn’t necessarily bring any value to the event experience.” While push notifications from a fully integrated app may help some attendees navigate a particular event, they might also turn attendees off if they feel bombarded by notifications and information not relevant to them. “You have to think about your end user,” Jones said. “If you don’t get balance right, you’re going to annoy them. Remember that people are happy to give you their information if they see value in doing so.”
Erica Garza is an author and essayist from Los Angeles. Her writing has appeared in TIME, Health, Glamour, Good Housekeeping, Women's Health, and VICE.
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