GenieConnect white paper

Personalizing the attendee experience

How personalization can deliver event success

Executive Summary
With the World Wide Web entering its third decade, the technologies based upon it have now truly come of age. We live in a world of mass-customization: companies such as Google and Amazon, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are able to sift through previously undreamt volumes of data and, based on their knowledge of the personal data of their users, serve up information that is relevant, useful and timely. This revolution has yet to be fully exploited in the world of events due to the lack of sophisticated tools. Event organizers whether in the commercial or corporate spheres have so far been unable to apply the data intelligence and insights necessary to treat their delegates as individuals or even segmentable communities. The upshot of this is that real opportunities to deliver value to all event stakeholder groups go unrealized: delegates fail to maximize the value of their participation; sponsors are denied access to those people that have a genuine interest in their product or service; and event organizers deliver an attendee experience that fails to maximize revenue or reputation. The clues to solving this puzzle are easily found in the mass-customization strategies used by the Internet companies mentioned above: it is about applying knowledge of the personal circumstances of an individual to intelligently lter information on their behalf; about making recommendations based upon the preferences of others with similar interests or backgrounds; and about linking individuals to companies and other attendees that have something of value to share with them. In short, it is about personalizing the event experience through the intelligent application of data. This White Paper will discuss the shortcomings of the existing un-personalized approach and the opportunities and challenges of using digital media to enhance the event experience. It will then outline how to construct an optimum experience both before during and after the event.

GenieConnect White Paper Personalizing the Attendee Experience

1. Introduction
Increasingly, brands seek to build relationships with their customers, associations need to engage with their members and large organizations look to connect their key sta. Creating opportunities for face-to-face event meetings remains a crucial mechanism for establishing and strengthening these relationships and today there are thousands of conferences held annually in the UK alone, with overall income totaling around 20 billion1. As digital channels make us more connected than ever before, human interaction has never been more valuable or more valued. For the various stakeholders at these events, the meaning of this value diers enormously. Exhibitors wish to have better qualied leads attending their booths. Associations seek higher member engagement. Sponsors require more targeted exposure to delegates. Conference organizers want to capture visitor feedback to inform content and speaker selection for future events. And all attendees want the best possible visitor experience. Creating smart connections between the various stakeholders is the only way to accomplish this. But the means of doing so remain largely opaque to corporate and commercial event organizers. An executive at one of the worlds largest trade event companies commented on the impossibility of sending customized emails to the tens of thousands of visitors attending their shows: There just isnt the time to do this. As a result, delegates are simply spammed with information with little guarantee that it is in any way useful to them. So, emails are sent encouraging everyone on a mailing list to sign up for an event for which many have already registered: messages are sent from sponsors in whom many recipients have next to no interest. And, amidst all this clutter, genuinely useful nuggets of information the rescheduling of a keynote event that most will want to attend, for example go simply unnoticed. Little wonder that the same executive lamented, They just dont read our emails. The key problem here is the inability to treat delegates as more than an undierentiated mass. The solution lies in applying the tools of mass-customization so common in the Internet world to the creation of a truly personalized attendee experience.
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Tradeshows and other events feature a huge volume of exhibitors, sessions, streams and potential business contacts that can easily overwhelm any delegate: providing them with the tools that allow them to spend their time most eectively whether this is a simple online exhibitor map, complex networking capabilities or a sophisticated recommendation engine enhances the attendee experience and creates value for the other stakeholders. Segmenting delegates into meaningful communities, putting them into contact with organizations and individuals that share their interests and aggregating their feedback will address all the key concerns outlined above and ensure that the opportunities for real value generation are not squandered.

Statistics taken from Opportunities for Growth in the UK Events Industry - http://www.hbaa.org.uk/sites/default/les/Opportunities%20for%20 Growth%20in%20the%20UK%20Events%20Industry.pdf

GenieConnect White Paper Personalizing the Attendee Experience

2. Digital channels challenge and opportunity

In the past, attendees received a printed catalogue or schedule and were largely left to their own devices to nd the session or exhibitors in which they were interested. Networking was largely a chance aair and opportunities for valuable meetings were often missed. Todays digital technology provides numerous ways to improve the attendee experience through greater personalization, due to access to the latest event and behavioral data. The exponential growth in mobile devices means that more digital channels are available for communication with event attendees increasing the chance of reaching an attendee at any given time. However, the danger is in overloading recipients with untargeted information: email fatigue is a well-established phenomenon a torrent of irrelevant emails and social media postings are seeing ever-decreasing impact and are therefore less likely to attract attendees and do nothing to enhance attendee participation. The way to overcome this is to collect and analyze information about each attendee and then use that to tailor the event experience to that specic individual. Profile, then personalize Digital channels are ideal for this. Not only does interactivity increase user appeal, but usage patterns can be captured automatically to continuously build a detailed prole of each user how and when they use each platform, which messages elicit a response, and what content is of interest. This information can be used to generate personalized communications for attendees that closely match their interests and needs. Thus, throughout the entire event cycle and across all platforms, organizers can actively engage attendees by providing relevant content and helping them make valuable connections. Automation is essential To achieve this, organizers need to capture user prole and preference data from registration, through the marketing phase, during the event and afterwards. This will involve gathering and combining information from email, web/microsite activity and data from an event app. This can also be combined with data from other sources e.g. previous events, sponsors, exhibitors, employers and interests of similar users to build a bigger picture of each attendee. The following sections outline the methods to set up a successful automated personalized event marketing program before, during and after an event.

GenieConnect White Paper Personalizing the Attendee Experience

3. Before the event marketing and converting pre-registrants to visitors

Personalization of marketing communications should begin as early as possible to increase the likelihood of messages being opened and acted upon. It is important to bear in mind that the majority of attendees will be using their desktop PC to research and plan attendance at events and that simply providing an app to cover all phases of their interaction with the event will not generate optimum engagement. For repeat events, it should be relatively straightforward to generate communications but even when contacting new prospects, general information including job title, company, or demographics will help begin prole building. From there, every attendee response or action can be used to rene their prole: emails opened, links clicked, behavior on a website or within an event app. Capture user actions In order to acquire this proling information, organizers should oer an online show guide, schedule or other event preview that supports many layers of detail for the user to explore. This should include documents, web links and video as appropriate and can be segmented by exhibitor, brand, solution area, session topic or other theme and be fully searchable. Providing easy-to-use tools to bookmark, like, share or add notes to content and build a schedule will all contribute to the perception of a uniquely tailored event.
GenieConnect White Paper Personalizing the Attendee Experience

Analyze user preferences As well as allowing attendees to customize an event website to suit their preferences, analysis of their choices makes it possible to automatically generate recommendations akin to Amazons customers who bought this also bought... suggestions. For events with vast amounts of content, intelligent assistance with selection can be very valuable to attendees. A good recommendations engine should suggest meetings based, not only on the attendees job title or areas of responsibility, but also on their interests and those of similar attendees. Suggestions are supported by biographical information, automated diary matching, booking and reminder messages. This can continue post-event with prompts to report if a meeting didnt take place and success of meetings. This pre-proling and engagement of attendees gives event organizers and sponsors insight into the number of likely visitors and their specic interests and connections. This enables better tailoring of events, facilities and oers in order to attract the right attendees. Sending personalized, segmented emails, and targeting banners to certain users can also help sponsors or exhibitors increase the impact of their participation at the event, with cost per click results.

4. At the event maximizing attendee engagement and value

The personalization of the attendees experience should continue throughout the event, as there are many opportunities to enhance it while improving exposure for sponsors or exhibitors. Attendees will probably revert to using a smartphone or tablet at the event and it is therefore important to oer the same information and functionality across all devices - computer, mobile device or tablet especially with regards to any information they enter e.g. when they select a favorite, like a part of the program, sign up for an event or schedule a meeting: this oers a joined up experience and completes their prole. Event apps to personalize the at-event experience It is vital to ensure an event app is well constructed, with an intuitive user-interface, and rich event information. A fully developed attendee participation app will oer realtime schedule management that reacts to late changes, as well as keeping track of pre-booked meetings, plus mapping and navigation facilities. An in-app messaging system will enable users to communicate directly to facilitate meetings. During presentations, live access to support material such as slides or background documents helps both audience and speaker. Annotation facilities are also useful, allowing attendees to keep their notes with the source material. Interactive features may be added, such as live polls, surveys and links to social media platforms so that attendees can share their thoughts. News feeds used within the marketing phase can shift into high gear to report event highlights, announcements and emerging trends.
GenieConnect White Paper Personalizing the Attendee Experience 6

Continued profiling Throughout the event, prole renement and recommendation should automatically continue within a solution, intelligently checking against the attendee schedule. The use of real-time information is integral to eective personalization, providing opportunities to deliver relevant content and recommendations when attendees are making decisions. Attendee movement can be tracked in real time via gamication applying gaming tactics and competition targets: rewards could be oered for completing tasks such as attending booths, presentations or meetings or to promote desired behaviors like networking or social sharing. The rewards could be virtual points with a winner selected or vouchers exchangeable for physical goods or services. Who, what, where and when Scanning attendee badges is already commonplace, but useful mobile tools can encourage attendees to exchange by scanning each others badges using their smartphones. This can greatly simplify and facilitate post-event networking. In addition, each scan provides a specic x in time and, when coupled with location specic actions, can enable organizers and sponsors to see how attendees move around the event. This information can be used for real-time analysis to launch on-the-spot promotions or for longer-term event layout and facilities planning. Live feedback and opinion can be sought via mobile engagement, again using gaming incentives if appropriate.

5. After the event 6. Summary follow-up and feedback

On return to normal oce activity, it can traditionally be dicult for attendees to follow up on event information. This is where a unied attendee engagement platform can continue to add value. Anything that was scheduled or recommended via the system will be retained, giving attendees a single port of call for reference and follow-up. They should be able to download their notes, presentations, and other documents, plus contact details from meetings or speaker sessions. Analysis and further development This activity is visible to the organizer for analysis and evaluation. Post-event surveys can be run and may trigger a range of personalized follow-up actions, from a simple thank you email to personal contact. Attendee data from all event phases can be analyzed to assess the success of marketing strategies and specic initiatives. The technology usage here reverts to desktop and laptop computers and communication via email and website, although attendees may continue to use the event app too. A uniform user experience needs to be maintained throughout this phase, and may be rolled on into the next events marketing. Personalization drives attendee engagement with events; and providing relevant, timely information signicantly increases the value and eectiveness of events for them. This benets organizers and sponsors through greater attendee engagement and better qualied leads, building a virtuous circle of improved results for all. At the heart of personalization is the ability to prole attendees, both through their stated roles, aims and preferences and through analysis of their online behavior in order to supply relevant content. This can be done in advance of and during events and could be described as converting event behavior into business intelligence. Achieving this manually is not practical but the technology to automate this process already exists, both in data capture and in personalized content selection and presentation, across all digital channels and including all the rich media types that constitute todays communications environment. Eective automated event personalization means that attendees will have a richer experience and will return to subsequent events to the benet of all stakeholders.

GenieConnect White Paper Personalizing the Attendee Experience

7. The GenieConnect solution

GenieConnect has developed a suite of smarter event technology that drive attendee engagement before, during and after events through automated personalization based on stated user preferences and observed behavior. The four components are:

A dedicated event marketing automation system that combines information from attendees registrations, use of web portals and event apps, and compares it against similar users proles to generate personalized recommendations for automated email-based event marketing.

MeetingsConnect, a one-to-one meetings management tool that personalizes and optimizes event networking by synchronizing and managing diaries and providing contact details in one convenient location.

WebConnect, a complete online attendee engagement portal that enables users to create their own agendas with favorite people, speakers and exhibitors, and provides access to rich media, detailed information and downloads before, during and after the event.

SmartConnect, a mobile attendee engagement solution that integrates with users choices made via web portal and extends the experience to the event oor, adding location-based services, note-taking tools and capturing movement and likes to drive personalized recommendations during the event.

More information on how these solutions support event engagement individually and collectively is available at

or call + 44 (0)1628569350
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