Posted on

Top Event Tech Trends of 2019 that can help ease your pain

Yes, you already know the basic stuff that all Event Management Software can help you manage. But all that looks basic can have extended features for handling complex event process requirements. Each event will have tasks that you may be forced to handle manually. Not necessarily. Event Tech is the magical world that is evolving every day and as an ardent event organizer, you need to keep abreast with the rapid technological evolution that is taking place right now right here.

Here is small snippet that gives you a primer of the endless possibilities.

Creating multiple registration forms

You can now create different forms for each type of pass or ticket. (For example – Employee offsite event organizers can create different forms for Employees and their Spouses)

Collecting additional information about delegates

When delegates book their tickets in the conference they wouldn’t be knowing their flight details. Organizers can get additional information about the delegates post registration. Technology allows you following options for setting the visibility of each registration form field

  1. Visible Pre-registration – Non-Editable Post registration
  2. Visible Pre-registration – Editable Post Registration
  3. Not Visible Pre-registration – Visible and editable post registration
  4. Visible and Editable by the Organizer Only
  5. Editable by the Organizer & only Visible to the Attendees on the app (g. Flight Tickets)

Automated emails with SMTP Integration

It’s good to send the most relevant information to the delegates at the right time through all possible modes. Emails are accessible nearly on all devices. It is important to brand your event through emails sent from your own email domain. For e.g., if your event’s name is “BMI 2019 Conference”, the same should be displayed on the sender ID of every email.

Let exhibitors capture stall visitor data digitally – save precious time and reduce stress

Offer your exhibitors’ quickest way of recording the profiles of stall visitors while keeping a note for the next follow up. You can even decide what profile details should be seen & captured by the exhibitors. For example, after you set few fields such as name, designation, organization as public. This will allow exhibitors to capture the details of the stall visitors by scanning their QR code. Exhibitors can then share the data in .csv format with their registered email ID.

Create heat map for exhibition visitor footfalls

As an extension of feature mentioned above modern event technology platforms give event organizers a gold mine of high-value data. You would exactly know how much time each delegate has spent on the stalls they have visited. Profile-wise segmentation of this rich data can reveal amazing insights about the ROI your event. This can also help you improve your future events even while optimizing pricing for the most visited stall locations.

Manage shopping cart to sell additional services to exhibitors and attendees

Many times to generate additional revenue in your conference you may like to add tour packages which the delegates can select and pay while registering for your conference. Similarly, there are many additional services that you may want to offer to the exhibitors like hostesses on hire and plasma TV on rent etc. Event Tech solutions offer you a way to create a list of products and services that the exhibitors can order just before the event or during the event.

Marketing Campaign Optimization

It is important for you to know the best marketing mediums that are driving maximum registrations for your event. This would help you optimize your campaign and get better ROI. Event Software allows you to create different URLs that can be embedded in respective digital channel and even converted to QR Code to be printed on magazines and newspaper ads. Modern event dashboards will show number of views and registrations from each channel.

About the Company

www.MyEventGateway.com covers you for every nuance of Event Automation. It is built around simplicity, functionality and flexibility by Channel Technologies Private Limited, an event management company itself having managed over 5000 business events. MEG gives you all access to most advanced Event Tech Solution. Sign Up today and become a wizard in Event Automation in hours.

Posted on

Top 10 Challenges Facing Event Organisers

The importance of corporate events for disseminating information among prospects and generating demand continues to hold sway. This in spite of the tilt towards digital.

What has changed is expectations from clients who today expect much a much bigger bang for their marketing rupee. We have reached an era where the expectation is that every attendee needs to be from a filtered database. A prospect waiting to sign on the dotted line –preferably tomorrow.

The man in the hottest seat, the event manager is grappling with nightmares waiting to come true! What are these avoidable scenarios and how does he prevent anxiety attacks?

Here are the 10 challenges that he can manage with meticulous event planning and execution:

  • Budgets that go haywire

Inability to breakdown the event into its minutest line item -a job best left to professionals, often leads to surprises. Event planners today need to dispense with frills, cut down on paper dependence and seriously look at ways to optimise costs by harnessing technology. Use event apps like myeventgateway that can not only help in providing instant budgeting but also provide the technology to cut down on costs by 30%!

  • Venue mismatch

Venue location as well hall layout, ceiling height, availability of pre-function space, size and dimensions of the hall are absolutely basic hygiene features. Their importance is often overlooked in our hurry to get a confirmed blocking well in advance. The result is often that the venue turns out to be at an inconvenient location, possibly far from the city or in an area known for traffic jams! Lack of attention to detail here can lead to issues like a chandelier blocking the screen or the sound of dinner plates being set, disturbing the keynote speaker!

  • Choice of speakers

Let’s face it-no serious prospect wants to attend an event only to listen to a sales pitch from a mid-level executive who is desperately seeking fulfillment of his quarterly targets! The draw is the speaker who has a track record. If you cannot afford an external thought leader who has domain knowledge of your industry, get someone from within who has the passion, energy, and conviction as your lead speaker. It’s always a good idea to communicate speaker names and the agenda in advance to your target audience. This also forces the event planner to doubly ensure the pull for the event in advance.

  • Chaos during Registration

Most of us have witnessed scenarios where the event has started and attendees are still queuing up waiting to complete registration formalities! Or an attendee who had registered in advance is being made to wait as his name is searched. This in itself can singlehandedly ruin the attendee experience. Avoid such eventualities by using event apps like myeventgateway that will ensure attendees enter the hall by just showing their QR code!

  • Questioners who hijack the narrative

We often see an event running beautifully until the Q&A starts and an attendee in love with his voice starts rambling and is too important to be cut short! The solution to that again is the technology that can enable attendees to write in their questions and speakers then filter and manage in order of priority.

  • Time Management

Ensure use of teleprompters, proper dry runs and strict discipline from the moment the event starts to avoid a cascading effect of delays. Important attendees do not take kindly to delays and have been known to walk out! Stick to timings is a commandment that must be on top of the event planning checklist!

  • Non-Interactive Sessions

Why stick to monologues which are bound to get dull and impact attention spans? Intersperse your event with quizzes -the results of which should be displayed instantly. Myeventgateway provides a range of such interactive features that liven up an event.

  • Poor Networking Opportunities

An important by-product for most attendees is networking for professional and social reasons. Most event organisers just provide lanyards and leave it to the more outgoing to introduce themselves. Technology again can help you know who else is attending and ping the ones you would like to connect with.

  • Cumbersome Feedback Forms

Imagine a voluminous feedback form holding you back from drinks and dinner as a hostess gently nudges you to complete it? Time to transfer such dinosaurs to apps and make them simple and brief.

  • Timeline Crunches

Senior decision makers do not like to be called for events with almost no notice. Besides busy calendars ego also comes into play! Keep realistic timelines from the beginning to prevent empty seats. Realistic timelines also help in ensuring no patchwork by getting substandard speakers or poorly thought out creative.

The corollary is that once such issues are thought through by the event team, a brilliant attendee experience can lead to a return on marketing investment that more than justifies the cost. Click on www.myeventgateway.com for a sure way to ensure the wow factor!

Posted on

7 smart tips to create your event budget within minutes!

myeventgateway bog post banner

Business Events are one of the most important components of the marketing mix of any corporate. While planning an event, a marketer has to also earmark a budget and take required approvals from key stakeholders. Once you have defined the objective, target geography and format of the event, the next step is to prepare a broad budget. We present 7 vital Tips for you to create an accurate event budget.

  • Event Venue & Banquet:

Choice of Venue and Banquet depends on the type of audience & duration of the event. In case your event lasts only two to three hours you can just offer Hi Tea or make it a breakfast event. For longer events, you should surely serve lunch or dinner. Cocktails are useful for partner events or existing customer events. In a Five Star Hotel, you can plan a budget of ₹3000/ pox for Lunch and ₹5000 / pox for a cocktail dinner. In non-metros, the prices go down by about 20%.

  • Event Speakers & Emcee:

Content and speaker profiles are crucial components of the event experience and the takeaway for attendees. Choose speakers with a proven track record and ensure they interact during your event. Also, ensure that the stage is managed by an experienced anchor who can coordinate and stitch various sessions together in an entertaining way. External anchors should be made to undergo mock sessions as their superficial knowledge about the company and products otherwise becomes obvious. If you need to get external speakers, keep a budget of ₹1.5 Lakh (Including Stay and Travel).

  • Designing & Event Branding:

As a marketer, you realize the impact of branding. Ensure the best visibility for your event theme and the products/messaging you want to highlight at the entrance itself. This is best done through high-quality standees and not the ones that are on flimsy flex that curls up or standees that keep falling! Flex Printing (though on the way out for environmental reasons) will normally cost you between ₹50 to ₹70 per square foot. Better still use LED screens/walls for backdrop and messaging. Budgets will, of course, vary according to needs but an amount of ₹50,000 is reasonable to set aside.

  • Audio Visual:

No compromises when it comes to hiring a branded audio system and projector or LED Wall. Who hasn’t attended an event where poor audio or video glitches spoilt the messaging!

A basic audio system with two standard quality speakers, two lapel mikes and two cordless handheld mikes for questions will cost you under₹10,000. A 3500 Lumens Projector, A switcher, long VGA cable, pointer with the remote mouse, 7 X 9 ft. masked projector screen will cost you about₹20,000 additionally. For large events of 500 or more people keep at least ₹1.5 Lakhs for Audio Visual arrangements.

LED walls are a great replacement for projectors and though slightly more expensive they double up as backdrops and also give extra space required for back projection.

  • Event Website and Registration:

Research indicates that automated events lead to the more elevated attendee experience. Event Management Software solutions such as MyEventGateway help immensely by taking registration and payments online. The subscription starts from ₹2000 per month to ₹30000 per event for a fully loaded solution with the mobile application. A budget of about ₹300 to ₹500 / attendee could be a thumb rule for planning budgets for an event technology platform. For large exhibitions, this can come down significantly to₹35 to ₹50 per attendee.

  • Registration:

To assist attendees through the check-in process, welcome them and coordinate inside the sessions you would need trained executives preferably females. Though two hostesses are required at the least, you should plan 1 hostess for every 50 attendees. The cost per hostess works out to₹2000 approximately. The number of hostesses can be reduced by about 30% by using myeventgateway.com

  •  BONUS tip:

Do you wish to create Event Budget in less than a minute? Now you can, after signing up on MyEventGateway, you need to just provide 5 to 7 details about your event and immediately your event budget will be built.

What more? You can even refine it by adding some items from a preset list or manually, you can also delete items that you may not want. The intelligent system also keeps saving your manually added budget items in your private Preset Budget Item List.

Posted on

How to get audience at B2B events

Events are the mainstay of marketing activity mix in B2B businesses, to generate opportunities. Hence they need to be carefully planned and executed. The key consideration is the quality of audience that comes to attend an event. The following ten factors need focus to get there.

The first factor is the why. Why would a target customer attend your event? These days information about your product and competing products are readily available on the net. Customers will not come just to listen to your sales pitch. It is then imperative we add general interest sessions about the technology or field that you are in. Preferably this session should be conducted by a neutral, respected person of authority on the subject.  Alternatively, people want to hear celebrities, senior policymakers and leaders. These sessions should form the core of the event.

The second factor is networking. People like to meet others in similar situations and discuss how they are addressing similar challenges. People also like to network to scout for talent or find jobs. It is therefore important to highlight the profile of attendees in all communication.

Location: In large metros, with current traffic scenario, event location becomes an important factor. Centrally located venue (or located close to where a majority of your target audience resides) that is well connected and with parking will ensure fewer dropouts.

Timing:  The timing of your event matters a lot.  It is difficult to draw senior people to day events as it interferes with their office work. Evening events or events which start after 4 Pm will usually get better attended. Even dates and days matter. Events closer to month end are less popular. Monday events are shunned. Events that start at the beginning of a long weekend will see less attendance.

Building Hype: It helps to build hype around your event. This can be done by sending a series of communications each highlighting a particular aspect of an event. Having quality speakers, celebrities in attendance, out-of-the-box content helps.

Reminders.: All registrants must be reminded on phone and email one day prior to the event. This ensures reduction in dropouts.

Venue Quality: Quality of revenue reflects on the perceived quality of the event. Choose good hotels or respectable institutions to host your event.

Multiple databases: No one agency can guarantee you 100% coverage of your potential audience. Use multiple databases to reach out to them.

Multiple Platforms: No one platform can reach out to all the potential attendees. Use a combination of emails, telecalling, social media advertising and digital advertising. Depending on the budget you may consider print, radio, outdoor and TV advertising too, but here targeting is difficult hence are expensive per unit of the result. Event listing websites like myeventgateway.com also increase event’s reach.

Brand association: Big and respected brands draw attendees. If you are a big brand great, if not try to piggyback at events where big brands are present.

We at Channel Technologies manage hundreds of events annually, all the above pointers are based on our experience and may or may not guarantee success in a particular event. So use these guidelines intelligently as you think they would apply to your event.

 

Posted on

Confront the Vital Question-Why will my target audience come?

As an IT company, with a range of cloud-based solutions, you are anxious about the need to expand your sales funnel. This quarter is going fine, but for the next quarter, things look quite hazy. There are thus visible worry lines on your brow!

Enter-Agency X: You decide it’s time to reach out to your target audience pan India through a series of events. You choose Agency X for this purpose and give them a brief on the profile of audience you require and the numbers and tell them to get started.

You are now hoping to get the right audience in a hall and get your ace speakers or partners to expound on the great features of your products. After that leads will follow and this will get you your expected revenues. So far so good. But as they say the best-laid plans of men and mice…!

In the heated frenzy to get started and log in more business, even the agency doesn’t confront the vital questions which are:

Why would people attend my event?

Like my solutions, does my event have a USP?

The Event Differentiator: Consider this in a scenario where this same audience gets invited by so many companies all the time. And this includes most market leaders.

Let’s face it-with traffic hazards and the need for family time, any such activity is seen as an infringement on private space. Serious audiences have had enough of cocktails, dinners, and freebies to be excited by such reasons.

The nightmare of empty seats or paying five-star rates for irrelevant people could be staring at you!

Confront and get the answers: To avoid this expensive learning, its best to keep this why-will-people-come question uppermost in mind and also commend the agency which insists on a satisfactory response.

What is the newness in my topics? Do I have content to offer which goes beyond a sales pitch? Do my speakers carry credibility? Is the perceived pull for my event being communicated effectively? And the clincher. Does my event have a digital backbone?

Do my events carry a brick and mortar image or does my software manage registrations, feedback, networking, and polling?

The Jigsaw Fits Now: Answers to these questions and more that will come up when you deal with the right agency, will ensure that all vital links that go to ensure a successful event from database to invitation process to registration to event management to leads – are sorted.

The right questions, as they say, are as important as the answers!

Posted on

We are moving towards a better Customer Experience ! (Or are we?)

My FIVE personal examples that debunk the myth

1.      A market leader in hotel booking

Three years back I booked a hotel in Dublin for a holiday through their site. Till today they inundate me with mailers offering special hotel deals in Dublin. The surmise seems to be that I am a person who would only like to go to Dublin for a holiday! Recently I used them to book a hotel in Vegas. Now the deluge of mailers for Vegas has begun.

2.      A leading ERP software company

We bought their cloud-based ERP software and gave up after two years of struggle –the package just didn’t cater to our needs. We still continue to receive updates as if we are customers even though we terminated our agreement four years ago! Would have expected a company with their technology edge to be smarter!

3.      A market leader in Satellite TV (DTH) in India

Navigating their IVR is a harrowing experience. I asked for a particular package and was given a cost after a 10-minute wait. Paid the amount as asked. Soon got a call saying the amount was less. Was the second time this had happened. Asked to be connected to a supervisor and was promised a revert. As usual, no one called..

4.      A Leading Private Bank

I have made three futile trips to the branch I deal with to collect a document. There’s only one person authorized to sign that document in that branch and she continues to extend her leave. Of course, the concept of calling and informing about the extended leave doesn’t exist!

5.      A Leading E-Commerce company

I have stopped dealing with them because of their utter disregard for the carbon footprint. Order a paperback and it comes in a carton big enough for a large oven. Order a pen set and it will also be delivered in a mammoth carton. All with endless amount of plastic stuffing.

Amidst all the increased consciousness about improving Customer Experience, enriching the Customer Journey, Personalisation, and with all the investments on expensive CRM software, a lot has been achieved but something serious is still amiss and needs to be addressed.

Posted on

6 REASONS TO USE A MOBILE APP AT YOUR NEXT EVENT

Using an event app is a must while managing events in these days

That this is the age of digital transformation is something we have all heard and seen.

Happening at an unprecedented pace, this transformation has not left the event industry untouched. A witness to this is the upsurge of event apps in the market.

Here are some reasons why you should consider using a mobile app at your next event.

  1. Save time and money on printing and mailing

If marketing guides and event brochures are littering your venue floor, an event app is all you need. Economise your time and money spent on designing and editing along with avoiding the environmental waste budgets for your paper products!

  1. Showcase agenda on the go

Event apps allow you to display the agenda in a well-organised way so that all participants can plan and personalise their schedules. On a mobile app like MyEventGateway, you have the advantage of sharing speaker profiles, photos, videos or collaterals before, during and even after the event.

  1. Be relevant and timely

No need to worry about any session changes or if a new speaker is joining the list! With instant notifications, you can ensure your participants stay updated. Send messages to all/select registrants via 3 modes: email, push notification and SMS with MyEventGateway.

  1. Manage attendees with CRM

How many back-and-forth emails will you have to send and receive? Is the spreadsheet you were working on yesterday still on your mind? With registration and feedback facilities available on event apps, attendee data management becomes easy.

  1. Automate on-site check-in

If manual check-in lists are the order at your events, it’s time to deploy an event app! With a mobile app that allows check-ins through QR codes, forget the usual snake queues for participants, especially in large-scale events.

  1. Not just mobile, apps are ways to connect

Event apps can actually let your attendees be true participants. Having an activity feed allows attendees to engage with each other during the event and afterwards. A tool for organic conversations to happen which otherwise are not so much possible during conferences!

With mobile technology evolving continually, it only makes sense that your events follow suit. So before you begin executing the plans for your next event, make sure you have decided on the event app you want to use in it.