Technology is an integral part of the events world. With dramatic leaps in event technology, event management services providers who adapt will reap the most benefits.
But why is technology so important for events?
Well, there are a few reasons:
- Event technology keeps attendees interested and focused on your events.
- It allows you to engage attendees in new and exciting ways.
- You can use it to enhance your events and find new ways to promote your speakers, products, or brands.
Let’s go over some of the best uses of technology for your events.
1. Artificial intelligence
The potential of artificial intelligence has been fascinating humanity for almost a century. But only recently did the uses we’ve read about in fiction books start appearing in real life.
Sure, we are still some years away from having robots entertain our event guests. But AI technology is already being used to make events better and more engaging.
Instead of bots, you can use chatbots, which are the next best thing.
They can help you engage your attendees online, answer questions, and collect feedback. Chatbots can even qualify your prospects and attendees to provide them with the best experience possible.
Chatbots can free up your staff time for more productive tasks. Plus chatbots scale well no matter how big your event is—and they integrate with any online platforms that you might be using.
A savvy corporate event planner could also use artificial intelligence to analyse event data. This can provide valuable insights into performance and help maximise the chances of success for future events.
So while AI technology may not yet be all that we imagine, its existing uses are not only functional but incredibly powerful as well.
2. Hybrid events
Most people draw a distinction between live events and online events. Many event planners don’t even consider the latter as “real” events.
But with technology becoming more prevalent, you should consider incorporating digital attendance elements into your events. These can help you reach the biggest audience possible. After all, that is the ultimate goal of any event.
When you add a remote component to your event, you instantly eliminate restrictions such as the location of your event, the venue’s capacity, and time considerations.
If someone isn’t able to attend in person, they can just tune in on their phone or laptop to participate.
What’s more, people who attend your event through the web are more likely to attend in person next year. This can help you increase attendance year after year.
Since streaming an event online is quite affordable, your per-attendee costs can be significantly reduced. That’s because your audience tunes in through the Internet, which scales without effort.
You can also use streaming as a promotional strategy by e.g. only showing a few sessions from your event. Even then, it can still produce incredible results.
Finally, with hybrid events, you can ramp up your social media efforts. By sharing streaming links on your social media pages, you will engage followers and quickly increase their numbers.
3. Event gamification
Event organisers hate it when people focus on their smartphones instead of the event.
But unfortunately, there’s not much you can do to fight it. (Unless you want to ban smartphones, which probably isn’t the best idea.)
Instead of fighting it, you could embrace the technology that your attendees are already using and leverage it to enhance their experience.
A good example of this is the process of gamifying your events.
If you want to drive participation in sessions and speeches, a quick way of accomplishing that is to create an interactive leader board. This way, you could track attendee participation in real time and show interactive stats of the most engaged guests.
Another way to gamify your events is to use trivia and quizzes surrounding the subject or theme of your event. You could hold trivia contests about your brand and products, or even at the end of speeches and presentations.
These types of contests can help ensure that people are not only attending but also engaged.
You could even announce a special prize for the most engaged attendees and hold a symbolic awards show. This can generate buzz and promote social media engagement. You can be sure that plenty of people will want to share the experience of an awards show on their social media feeds, even if it’s just for fun.
4. Event planning automation
You might not know this, but the job of a corporate event planner is one of the most stressful occupations in the world.
The ever-looming deadlines, combined with thousands of details that need to be taken care of, make for a never-ending stress cocktail that every event planner needs to deal with.
Luckily, event technology is slowly changing the situation for the better.
With the help of event automation tools, today’s coordinators can free up more of their time from tedious and repetitive tasks and streamline a lot of the processes.
We already talked about chatbots and how they can automate interactions with the guests. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Project management tools allow planners to take complete control of every event, helping to track progress and assign tasks more effectively.
Tools like Silverpop provide a wide range of features that help manage digital marketing with ease. You can use it to generate leads for your event, optimise your attendee journey, and analyse data to improve performance.
Time to embrace event technology
In the end, tools like these provide event planners with the one thing they need the most: more time.
While doing so, they not only ensure that the event planning process is less stressful but also help prevent crucial mistakes that could derail the entire plan.
Author: Sarah Hill is a content writer at Seven Events Ltd – a leading event company offering corporate event management, venue finding services and conference planning in Birmingham. 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.