Background
The Loan Market Association (LMA) is a membership association that serves over 800 members across the finance industry. Alongside delivering regulatory updates and market research, the LMA focuses heavily on education and training through a wide variety of events, from large-scale conferences with up to 1,000 attendees to smaller seminars, roundtables and training courses. Most events are free for LMA members, adding significant value to its member services.
For its flagship Sustainable Finance Conference, the LMA hosted a hybrid event with 500 in-person attendees and additional online participants. Looking to modernise the attendee experience, increase engagement and integrate sustainability into the event itself, the LMA turned to CrowdComms event technology.
Event Goals
- Boost attendee engagement with the event
- Motivate sign-ups and encourage active participation in the event app
- Promote sustainability through meaningful action
- Streamline networking and eliminate waste from physical business cards
Challenges
- Low digital engagement: despite the success of past events, the LMA struggled to engage attendees with previous event apps and faced low adoption rates
- Networking obstacles: traditional business cards often went unused and left behind, missing opportunities for meaningful connections and wasting materials
- Cost barriers: the previous event platform provider was overly expensive for free-to-attend events and lacked the user-friendly tools and support needed to amplify engagement
- Inefficient manual processes: registration and badging were previously handled manually, causing delays and inefficiencies during event check-ins
Solution
A creative collaboration with Tree Nation connected app engagement to a sustainability goal: points earned by using the app were converted into trees planted, creating an eco-conscious incentive for participation.
Gamification drove engagement. A leaderboard and interactive app features encouraged competitive, active use of the app, making the event more dynamic.
App-based networking replaced physical business cards with digital ones, streamlining connections and reducing waste.
CrowdComms provided a cost-effective, intuitive platform with customisable features, allowing the LMA to choose the tools that suited its event while benefiting from responsive customer support throughout.
CrowdComms kiosks automated registration and badge printing, ensuring faster check-ins and a smoother start to the event.
Outcome
The Sustainable Finance Conference saw a significant leap in attendee engagement, with 72% of delegates adopting the event app. With 206 trees planted through the Tree Nation initiative and widespread enjoyment of the app’s gamification features, the event was hailed as a success. Moving forward, the LMA plans to continue using the CrowdComms platform for its flagship events, especially where exhibitors and sponsors are involved, with expanded hybrid functionality and real-time tracking for sustainability initiatives among its top priorities.