The planners we work with often say event app games are the highlight of the entire event! They can be fun, competitive and, if used well, can drive specific event outcomes such as attendee networking or key message delivery. Whatever your drivers, there are some principles to bear in mind when planning your event app games.
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Drive Real Outcomes
Some event app games reward participants for creating digital content such as points for tweets or points for checking in on the event app to a session. Resist the temptation to use your game in this way. A game that drives engagement with your event content or facilitates conversations between attendees and exhibitors will deliver you a far greater return on your investment.
1. Don’t Include Too Many Challenges
Think about how much time your attendees will have available to complete the challenges in between attending sessions and eating lunch etc. Then work out the optimal number of challenges to include. The game can become overwhelming if it is used to drive traffic to a large exhibition.
Consider only including your top sponsors in your event app game as way to keep the number of challenges manageable. This will make it more fun and encourage more people to participate. In our experience 10 challenges works well for an event over 1-2 days.
2. Mix It Up
The easiest type of challenge to include is one where the participant enters a numeric code to receive points. Think about different places you could place these codes. A recent client printed the codes on the back of attendees’ name badges, which encouraged attendees to talk to people they didn’t know. This gave the event organiser the outcome they needed: a high level of attendee-to- attendee networking. If you’re running employee events consider publishing a code during early morning sessions to encourage attendance. This is another great example of how to use event apps for networking.
3. Keep It Short And Simple
If you include questions in your game that require words as answers, make them one word and easy to spell. Most event app games require the exact case sensitive word to be entered for the points to be granted. To avoid confusion only use words where the first letter would always be written as a capital, a person’s or a place name for example. If this all sounds too restrictive simply leave out these types of questions.
4. Promote Pre-event
Don’t forget to include the event app game and the prizes as part of your pre-event communication plan. During the event your in-app push notifications are a handy way to promote the game, give extra kudos to the leaders and announce the winners.
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