4 Ways to Leverage Real-time Response Technology at Events
An event is very similar to a marketing campaign – you establish goals, plan, and then launch, hoping for the best.
However, many event management companies don’t treat it as such and are mostly in the dark about how the event is going, what the attendees are responding to, and whether the goals are being accomplished.
That’s where real-time response technology can be a real game-changer.
It enables an event company to collect feedback from attendees in real-time and make timely adjustments, as well as know precisely what is going on at all times.
But how exactly can you leverage the technology in your events? Let’s go through some of the main ways to do so below.
Get Immediate Feedback
Sometimes, figuring out how your event is going can be a challenge, especially when you’re in the middle of it.
However, at the same time, getting real-time feedback about what’s working and what isn’t can be crucial if you don’t want to risk disappointing your attendees without the ability to do anything about it.
For starters, you can use live polling to compare the response to different products, speakers, or performances, which allows gaining in-depth insights about your audience’s preferences, which you can use in the future.
You can even use the live feedback feature during presentations, which can help the speakers figure out what to focus on and which areas of the presentation need the most work.
Some of the things that you could add to your survey include asking attendees to rate how they are enjoying the event, rate the value that they are getting from the presentations, gauge the likelihood of attending future events, as well as collect demographics data or whether they have attended previous you organized.
The ability to make informed real-time adjustments is something that event management companies of the past could only dream of, so leveraging this technology can be a real game-changer once you figure out how to use it for your events.
Measure Key Pre-Event Metrics
When implementing real-time response technology, it’s essential to use it not only during the event but before and after as well.
Namely, you should make sure that you track the pre-event metrics that are the most important and can provide you valuable insights about the attendees of your event.
For one thing, you should track your event registrations and figure out exactly where they are coming from so that you know which approaches are working best and should be the focus of your campaign.
And since the real-time response app is a crucial feature in collecting feedback, you should also track the adoption rates, figuring out what percentage of the attendees are using it. That can help you gauge whether the insights that you’re gaining are reliable.
You should actively encourage people to use the app and could even incentivise it by promising special offers or exclusive updates through the platform.
The more people you can get to download your app, the more valuable the insights that you gain, and the bigger impact the app can have on increasing event engagement and participation.
Track Social Engagement
According to some of the experienced event company, an event is only as successful as the social media buzz that it generates.
While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, social media does in fact play a huge role in the success of an event, as it helps to organically reach a much larger audience than the actual attendee list and ensure that the event gets put on the map as one of the most important gatherings in the industry.
Unfortunately, for many companies, generating a response on social media is a challenging task – getting people to share their experiences with their friends and followers requires not only a memorable event but also an understanding of how to get the conversation rolling.
So, how can you get people to be more active on social media and track your progress?
Well, by using the social listening feature available in some apps, you can know in real-time what hashtags your attendees are using when talking about your event and know how much engagement you are getting.
To take control of the conversation, introduce your own hashtags, and make them a central part of your event, prominently displaying them throughout the venue.
If you want to generate a social media frenzy, you could even consider incentivising the use of your hashtags, implementing an interactive points system for using hashtags, and giving out exclusive prizes and rewards during the event.
Analyse the Insights
Real-time response technology offers numerous opportunities for tracking and engaging your attendees, as well as gaining the ability to pivot during your event in case something isn’t generating the response that you hoped.
But at the same time, the vast amount of data that you end up collecting shouldn’t be shelved as soon as the event is over.
In fact, you should take the time after your event to carefully analyse everything that went down, as you can learn a lot from the responses and use them to make your upcoming events more engaging, more in tune with your audience’s expectations, and better suited for realising your goals.
You can even use the app to hold a post-event quiz, asking the attendees to rate various areas of the event after it is over and once they had a chance to process what happened.
Since you already have access to their attention through the app, you can probably get quite a few responses, which can serve as a good starting point for your next event.
Ask how the attendees learned about your event to figure out which promotional approaches worked best, inquire about different aspects such as the venue or entertainment, and gauge the interest in various speakers or topics so that when the next event comes around, you focus all your effort on the areas that deliver the most value.
Sarah Hill is a content writer at Seven Events Ltd – a leading venue finder in Birmingham offering event management services, team building activities and conference organiser. She started her career in the events industry almost a decade ago as time progressed, she became an avid event blogger sharing her insight on corporate event planning.