To get the Autumn event season started, we have 3 steps to success from one of our Account Director’s, Parry Malm. Parry has led marketing teams at 3 of the major events companies in the UK and shares his expertise below:

Ingenious ways to make exhibition & event attendees happy

We’re in the midst of the autumn event season, and if you work for an events company then it’s all hands on deck. I remember what it was like from my years working for various event organisers – too much to do, not enough time, the sales team bugging you for more leads, and the event directors questioning the pre-registration numbers against last year’s patterns.

To help you to balance these pressures, there are a few simple tricks that you can put in place using the MessageFocus platform to make your life easier, and drive more traffic to your shows. These are tried and tested tactics that I’ve used personally while client-side, and have helped numerous clients put into place since I’ve been at Adestra!

1. Reduce queuing time on the day

My flagship show was a 22,000 attendee exhibition in Frankfurt and it was the kind of show where people came along for all 3 days. We had 8 registration desks and 16 self-service touchscreens with which people could get their badges… if they brought their URN.

And of course, no one brought their URN. As an event organiser, it’s stressful to have thousands and thousands of people queuing, getting annoyed and blaming you. As a visitor, waiting in a queue is about as fun as being trapped in an igloo with Celine Dion on a loudspeaker, repeating only her high-pitched, lovestruck wails (and I know this firsthand to be very annoying – but that story is for another time).

So – here’s what I did. The show opened at 10am. At 8:30am, using Adestra’s SMS service, we texted URNs to every single person on the pre-registered list. The message read something like this:

Hi FirstName, hope you’re geared up for ShowName. Avoid the queues – use this URN number in the self-service kiosks! Once inside, visit Stand G60 for your morning orange juice.

On the first day, there were 14,000 people in the exhibition by 10:30 – and the average queuing time was approximately 5 minutes. I should mention – we had the second part of the message sponsored for 5 figures – and the company on stand G60 rebooked a stand 50% bigger for the next year. SMS represents not just a visitor experience improvement, but an innovative new revenue channel for the sales team to push at the last minute!

2. Deliver uber-personalised show planning content

When people pre-register for your show, they tell you all sorts about their buying needs. And yet, this data is rarely used in targeting the pre-reg list. Why? It’s an issue of data interoperability.

At my show, we had visitors select products they were seeking – up to 60 options – and asked exhibitors to detail which products they offer. We then correlated these two data sets, and sent out emails to the pre-reg offering uber-personalised plans for when they visit the show. Within MessageFocus, we created a data table that then held all of this data, and then used conditional content (IF/THEN statements) to send out an email that had a total possible 2⁶⁰ permutations – and that is a big frigging number. Uber-personalised, indeed. And it worked!

We’ve recently helped one of our favourite clients to do something very similar – check out the case study here.

Now, if you’ve read this far, I’m going to let you in on a secret – we also asked what I think is the best question ever to ask visitors.

I should really charge you big money for this bit here… but, I won’t, because I am a) a nice guy; or b) stupid.

Now, all I ask, if you use this question, when you start seeing the results… USE THEM! It’s great to have market insight, but if you don’t take action off the back of it, then it’s just information. And there’s no shortage of information in this day and age.

So – you want to know the question? Ok, here it is: “What is your biggest business challenge in 2012?”

Think about it. People go to trade shows and conferences to solve business challenges. Sure, they go to look at kit – it is a trade show – but the core motivator is to make their businesses run more effectively. If you aren’t asking what their challenges are, how can you offer any solutions?

We asked this in our pre-reg form, and gave people 8 options (they could only select one.) We then were able to target these people with show features and benefits directly related to their challenges.

And the result? A 18% increase in pre-reg conversion rate, year on year. Not bad for a day’s work.

3. Leverage twitter buzz to increase conversion rates

Personally, I find Twitter really annoying. I am very, extremely, deeply indifferent about a banal 140 character post about how your dog did something cute.

But, Twitter is a VERY effective business tool, especially around events. The key thing to bear in mind about Twitter is it follows trends… so, hash tags.

Step 1: Commandeer your event’s hashtag. Put it on everything – people’s badges, holding slides of presentations, on the show guide, anywhere you can. Make sure everyone there knows what your hashtag is. If you don’t, then you’ll have a million and one disparate Tweeters, and no commonality.

Step 2: Provide incentives for people who tweet. Get exhibitors to tweet special offers and giveaways… i.e. “Come to Adestra’s stand at #tradeshow for a glass of champagne at 3pm!” The more exhibitors are engaged, the more visitors will be engaged.

Step 3: Email a live feed of the tweets to the pre-reg who haven’t shown up yet at 4pm of Day 1 of the show, and then again at 11am on Day 2 (and so on if your show is 3 days etc.)

Think about it – you are letting everyone who’s not there know how awesome the show is… and what they’re missing. You are creating (or perhaps leveraging) the inherent buzz that exists when many thousands of people converge on one place. If people feel like they’re missing out, there’s a high probability that they’ll show up!

This can be achieved using Adestra’s automated content population tools – or, simply put, sucking RSS and XML feeds into your email. As soon as you hit the launch button, MessageFocus scrapes the up-to-the-second feed and populates it in the HTML email, all styled up as per your branding constructs.

Wrapping up…

If you’ve made it this far, then at least one of the above things piqued your interest. I can’t blame you – they are tried and tested methods of getting more people to your show, engaging with them on-site, and providing a better customer experience.

And the best part – we at Adestra can do this all for you. Get in touch, it will be worth it.

Till the next time,

Parry Malm
Account Director