We recently had the pleasure of working with our development partner, EventMobi, to present a workshop at the world-renowned IEEE POCO in Sydney.
The workshop focused on event tailoring and the importance of understanding and determining your ‘event personality’.
Every event has a unique personality. Your event could be outgoing and extravagant, detail focused and thoughtful or innovative and progressive. Whatever its personality, making sure the event’s tone and feel informs every detail will ensure it’s the perfect fit for your attendees.
The Power of Tailoring
A useful analogy to underscore the power of event tailoring is to think about your ideal outfit. Clothes with the perfect fit that match our personality and style make us feel amazing. Compare that to an outfit that doesn’t suit us or is way too tight or too loose…we generally feel uninterested in the clothes at best, uncomfortable and self-conscious at worst.
Think how impactful your event will if you can harness that feel-good factor of the perfect outfit for your attendees!
With the tools and technologies available to organisers and planners there is an incredible opportunity to deliver a much more relevant event experience. By utilising data (such as from previous event feedback surveys) and thoughtful curation, attendees can feel the event was created just for them.
This data can be used by event organisers and planners to suggest topics, sessions and speakers that would be meaningful to particular attendees. This can be incredibly effective, particularly for large scale, multi-stream events where agenda selection can be overwhelming.
Personalising the Whole Event
Personalisation can extend beyond just session selection. The event experience can really be customised for your attendees from start to finish.
Whether it’s the first invitation, onsite experience or post event communication, the potential for personalisation exists in every interaction.
Event tailoring may seem like a daunting proposition but by starting with what you know the ideas will unfold naturally.
With event technology now the norm rather than a novelty, you will have plenty of pre-captured data. Buried within that data is a plethora of information that can guide each interaction with your attendees.
Here are a few ways planners are personalising events for their attendees:
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Personalised event invitations – based on past behaviour and past session selections (e.g. as a past attendee…).
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Activity suggestions – based on demographic data (e.g. join other Specialist Spinal Physiotherapists in the Spinal Lounge)
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New session suggestions – based on demographic factors (e.g. new session announced for app industry professionals)
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Activity suggestions – based on food preferences (e.g. vegan canapés and cocktails)
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Post event content delivery – based on post session surveys (e.g. here are the session notes you’ll be most interested in)
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Long term engagement – based on attendance data (e.g. you attended the marketing stream so thought you might like this whitepaper)