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 Events bring people together in support of a purpose, like networking, learning, celebrating, collaborating or simply sharing a common interest. With that in mind, how do you include more people and get more people to register, join and take part?
Save-the-date advertising is sent out a year in advance immediately when the venue is booked. Then, a series of marketing reminders are sent to the audience via email and mail. These inbox and mailbox items are very effective at reminding folks to schedule the time and plan expenses. However, there is growing opportunity in mobile that complements this traditional advertising very well. The usage of text messaging is growing worldwide, people have their phones with them and use them more frequently than their email on computers. Over mobile, the open rate is very high because the information arrives and is announced with a beep or buzz in the palm of the customer’s hand.
So “How” is very simple. Create an event information channel or an organization information channel (or both) in advance so that you can let folks subscribe to receive key information. The sequence of activities is planned out in detail in Part II , but in summary, would be the following:
• If you haven't already, find a suitable text messaging platform, like Resdida MOBILIZE
• Setup your channel(s). This takes less than three minutes
• Post instructions for mobile channels on posters, in newsletters and online to encourage folks to subscribe
• Plan, schedule and send relevant content
Once you have your mobile audience you can begin to engage them with relevant topics, coupons and incentives to forward invites to friends. Let’s take a look at each of these.
Relevant Content
No one likes SPAM, no matter the format. Relevant content is critical to keeping your audience as well as engaging them. If folks sign up for the ACME event channel, they will be expecting to hear news about the speakers, venue, vendors, promotions, activities, and other critical event-related information.
Most importantly, it’s best to be very clear in all communications and set expectations for the mobile experience. In signup instructions, tell potential subscribers the truth about what to expect and how often and answer key questions in your marketing materials. You can use a worksheet, like the sample below to think through what you are offering.
Making sure your message is consistent across all email, mail, web, print and “in-store” materials will be important for setting expectations for your audience. At the very least they should understand the nature of what you intend to send and how often you intend to send messages to them. The worksheet can become something similar to the sample advertising for the mobile channel shown here.
Then, be sure to keep the promises you make. That may mean special staff training and extra care around what messages are created and sent.
Keep them informed with relevant content they are expecting to receive, like information about the venue.
The text messaging channel can be used to assist with registration information, questions, and communicating key dates. Registration information, like websites, forms and phone numbers can be pre-programmed as content in MOBILIZE and scheduled in advance to deliver as planned.
Mobile creates an opportunity for dialog that will encourage people to register, join in and participate. Every transmission should be thoughtfully planned with the audience in mind. With MOBILIZE, you can plan and schedule well in advance to send at the pace you want.
Coupons and Incentives
One of the best ways to encourage participation is to offer coupons for registration. You can provide an opportunity for savings, like coupons to receive 50% off of a second registration or buy-two-get-one registration savings.
You can provide the coupon code right over the mobile phone and even encourage folks to forward coupons on to colleagues, friends and family. The more widely the coupon is shared, the more viral publicity and opportunity for growth is available for your event.
You can provide incentives to attendees to participate by providing a prize. A common and very effective incentive is holding a raffle of subscribers for one lucky participant to receive a free registration for the next year’s event. You can also provide an incentive for mobile subscribers to participate in event activities. For example, send a mobile coupon for 50% off of the services of a vendor or special seating for folks showing a mobile ticket at the keynote. To take care of your event sponsors, send an offer for drink tickets at the reception.
In Summary
In the end, your mobile text messaging program has been developed into an asset, a mobile CRM for folks who champion your events, your organization and your cause. To make the most of this, you can keep the channel active throughout the year as a great way to promote products, events and donation opportunities. Mobile text messaging fits nicely into the marketing tapestry in support of all of your efforts. It’s just a matter of process and procedure, and the details of the steps involved are spelled out in Part II. Be sure to review steps and your marketing timeline for ensuring everything gels and works together.
Implementing is affordable and easy as well but is not something that you need to tackle alone. Resdida is there to lend expertise every step of the way.
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 Time is money, and in this economy there isn’t much of either to go around. I know from my own experience running events that things are hectic and time is scarce. The last thing anyone needs is another moving part to manage. The more you can get done ahead of the event the better. Imagine for a moment what your experience could be … automating customer service, directing attendees to sessions, and making timely announcements. You can simply leverage text messaging to save staff time while actually increasing the level of service you provide. But how?
With Resdida MOBILIZE, it’s not difficult or time consuming, and it can all be set up ahead of event time. Here I will show you how to quickly and easily automate key announcements and reminders, automate FAQs and provide easy access to customer service.
Key Announcements & Reminders
Running events, you often feel like a traffic cop. There are lots of halts, go’s and general ushering of attendee traffic. Timing is everything and every minute counts in order to meet the tightly run schedule for the day. The goal is to get people into the next session, seated and ready to begin on time, every time.
There are several things you can do in advance to take some of the pressure off and ensure that attendees are informed and know where they need to be next. An easy option is to setup a Conference Channel and instruct attendees how to join. See Part II for detailed steps for instructing and encouraging adoption. Setting this up in MOBILIZE takes less than a minute. Once it’s set up, it’s very easy to use and manage.
Let’s assume you are staff for the ACME Conference. It took me less than a minute to setup the ACME Conference Channel; in fact, text ACME to 80474 to subscribe right now. If you do, you will see that the system will ask you to confirm by returning Y. Then, you will see a confirmation and welcome message for the channel.
Now, let’s say you know there will be cocktails on the 23rd floor at 6pm Tuesday of the conference. Let’s look at how you would schedule a text message reminder so you don’t need to worry about catching everyone at 5:45pm.
Start by creating “stories” for this and every other announcement or reminder that you’ll want to send during the conference. Here’s an example of the cocktails story below.
Then, add this Cocktails story to the Channel and schedule it to send at 5:45pm on Tuesday. While you are at it, schedule the remaining announcements to go out “just-in-time” during the conference.
Now you are done! MOBILIZE is now your traffic cop letting folks know where to go next as well as other mission critical information during the event. The only thing left to do is get folks to subscribe before or during registration.
FAQs
In addition to a channel, you can serve attendees and save time by pre-programming the answers to Frequently Asked Questions into MOBILIZE. Let attendees send a text message with the speaker’s last name to learn where and when those sessions are, or let them text INTERNET to learn the WIFI codes to access the network. This effort is easy to pre-program and saves paper and staff time during the event asking these questions. Be sure to place this information on the mobile information page in the event program. See Part II for more details on fostering participation.
Taking a closer look at the Internet example, setup is easy and takes less than a minute. You enter into MOBILIZE the key term INTERNET and the automated response “ID: acme Password: conf2011.” Instead of running around last minute printing handouts with Internet info and taking countless questions, you can use your mobile program to save time and trouble. Plus, if the ID or password were to change, you would just update MOBILIZE. Results are immediate and simple.
You can try it now for yourself by texting INTERNET to 80474.
Because MOBILIZE can adapt with you and absorb new information as it comes down the pike, it surpasses paper publishing by far in effectiveness and is the “green” solution as well. Instead of quickly running off to print those quarter-sheet info flyers, you are taking two seconds to make the change and inform folks in real time.
Customer Service
In addition to frequently asked questions, there are questions that fall outside the ordinary or times when the audience needs to quickly report a problem. Especially for events that are spread-out in large venues, it can be very helpful to offer the opportunity for folks to ask questions and report problems remotely via their mobile phone. This gets the information to staff faster and makes the process more convenient for attendees as well.
This, too, is easy to set up in MOBILIZE and is related to our functionality for collecting data from the field. You would choose a key term for the audience to use. In this example, I will choose AQ for Acme Question. You would choose an auto response to acknowledge that the question was received. Finally, you would instruct the audience to send questions following an AQ- to 80474.
Staff will receive information instantly from within the session that the projector has failed and can quickly dispatch AV resources to the Starlight Room. The attendee receives the auto-response “Thank You” message as a confirmation that the information was received. The issue is resolved quickly and everyone is satisfied.
In Summary
Automating essential repeatable tasks like key announcements, reminders, FAQs and customer service can improve the conference experience for both the attendees and the conference staff and allows for a more “green”, efficient and environmentally friendly experience as well . Staff time saved is priceless and putting technology to work for you feels great. Implementing is affordable and easy as well but is not something that you need to tackle alone. Resdida is there to lend expertise every step of the way.
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A mentor once said to me, “To achieve success, first you have to define it.” It makes sense, right? I need to know what I wanted to achieve before I can know whether I have achieved it. Same here! Success for your mobile program is what you make it out to be and should be based on your goals. Common measures of success include empirical measures like:
• Adoption (Percent subscribed of total)
• Participation (messages received/subscribed)
• Response (attendance, registrations, etc.)
Getting folks to subscribe, participate and respond to your mobile initiative takes some sales and marketing skill. Among many things that work, we are talking signs, ads, announcements, assistance at registration. I’m offering a recipe today to increase your chance for success.
You can create the right mix of the ingredients above and use a PARFAIT approach to achieve success for your mobile experience through promotion, advertising, repeat messaging, fostering a great experience, assisting wherever possible, instructing carefully and timing everything to the right cadence.
Promote and Incentivize
Lay your mobile foundation in advance and promote your mobile initiative. By this I mean starting two months in advance letting people know about the mobile program, including your purpose and reasoning behind creating your mobile program and their purpose and reasoning for wanting to participate. Driving the behavior is all about what it means to them. So start telling them and warming them up as early as possible. Questions that will help you find their incentive, include:
• Will it provide them valuable information that they can’t get elsewhere?
• Will it keep them “in the know” and ahead of their peers?
• Will it let them participate with the panel, take polls, vote on content?
• Will you offer them “a chance to win” when they subscribe? Maybe a free ticket to this or next year’s event?
Advertise the Program
Incorporate mobile into all of your advertising starting as far in advance as you can. If you haven’t yet chosen your full range of programming, you can make a start by simply saying that you are excited to have a mobile offering in the upcoming event and encourage folks to stay tuned. It is recommended that you begin letting people know over every medium possible starting at least two months in advance of your event.
Even if you don’t intend to fully use a mobile communications channel for the event (if you are only planning to do polling or voting, for example) you should set one up to let people start to familiarize themselves. If your event is Acme Event, set up an Acme Channel and tell folks, for example, to text ACME to 80474 to get started with the mobile program at the event.
Don’t worry if you aren’t sure what to say exactly or what your channel might be. Resdida staff can help you get this set up and help you with the ad content. You will want to convey this message in all of your email, web, mail, TV and radio advertising.
Repeat Messaging
Through all of these means of advertising, you can achieve repeat messaging before your event and get the audience warmed up to the idea of mobile at the event. This messaging should be repeated throughout the event location and throughout the programming as well verbally, through signs, and in program materials.
It helps to have signs about the program and instructions on the registration table, in signs at registration and in the event lobby as well as in sessions in the form of slides or signs on the wall. It is also helpful to place an instructions page in the event program guide or as a handout in the event bag. Our most effective events have used a few minutes of the opening session to explain the program and encourage people to take out their phones and subscribe right at the moment. Having that time set aside for them and having an explanation and request from the speaker dramatically increased their participation. The more reminders the audience has the more chance they will have to follow the instructions and participate in the program.
Fostering a Great Experience
One of the greatest barriers to participation is the worry of getting spammed via mobile. It is important to reassure the audience of your purpose for having the program and that you have no intentions of sending anything beyond that purpose. Most importantly, it is critical that the platform is run by event staff who respect those wishes and are careful with the number of type of messages sent.
Assisting at Every Turn
Creating a great experience also involves solid customer support. Have event staff available at registration to answer mobile questions and help walk people through the various ways of using mobile in the event. Also train presenters on how the mobile will work in their sessions and provide staffing to assist the audience during live polling and voting sessions. Resdida staff can be there for your event to assist with audience support and address any concerns.
Instructing Carefully
Carefully created instructions can make a tremendous difference to participation. Texting isn’t second nature to everyone and a good portion of some audiences haven’t heard the term SMS. The key is creating instructions that are “in English” and easy to follow. You will want to create signs that emphasize where the eye needs to focus, like what they are sending to where. For example, “Text ACME to 80474.” Verbally, you might say “Everyone please take out your phones now. Open text messaging and send a new message. In the body of your message, type ‘ACME’. Send your message to 80474.”
It is most effective to have a Mobile Program table next to the registration table staffed with proactive Mobile Program advocates. As people visit the registration table, they are directed to stop by the Mobile Program table next to enroll.
Timing All of the Above
I’ve mentioned that many of the above should be started in advance of the event. Timing is very important and below I outline a timeline for planning and implementing the techniques that will drive your success across all mobile event features.
The timelines above are generalized but provide a good framework for what to be doing when. Remember too that you don’t need to be doing them alone by any means. Resdida staff lend their expertise to help you get things just right along the way. Also, depending on the program you design for your event, you may find yourself doing some or all of the above. The next installment of this series will start digging into the details of the features you can implement for your events.
Success Measures
Once the event is over, it’s time to return to those success measures. As mentioned, it is common to look at adoption, participation and response.
For adoption, you will need to know the total number in attendance and the total number of subscribers/recipients (displayed in the top menu of MOBILIZE). If your event had 100 in attendance and 85 unique recipients in MOBILIZE, then your adoption percentage would be 85%.
Participation is measured as the number of messages received divided by the number of recipients participating. This is a great way to look at engagement. So if 500 messages were received in MOBILIZE and there were 85 recipients, your participation metric would be 500/85 = approximately 12 messages per person.
Response is a bit tricky and depends on what specific features you implemented and any behavior you sought to drive. For example, if you sought to drive attendance by advertising in the media with a coupon code, you can use redemption numbers for the mobile coupon to determine success.
In Summary
Achieving greater success using mobile can be as simple as planning and following a general recipe in the event process, think PARFAIT, and include promotion, advertising, repeat messaging, fostering a great experience, assisting wherever possible, instructing carefully and timing everything to the right cadence. This is not something that you need to tackle alone. Resdida is there to lend expertise every step of the way. Shoot us an email to learn more and be sure to check out our upcoming posts on the topic.
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I have led an d have been on teams running a lot of events and have to admit that I thrive a little bit on the chaos and excitement. There are tons of people, tons to do to make sure venue, food, collateral, speakers and processes all come together to make the event engaging and memorable. With so much to take care of it’s hard to imagine implementing a mobile component too. Yet when implemented well, mobile can save staff time, increase attendance, provide real time results and improve audience engagement.
I’ve been onsite with a number of our clients as well and have learned what it takes to achieve results. The smallest of adjustments to process and careful planning are the difference between a mere 10% adoption and a solid 90+% adoption. These figures are also true for diverse audiences in terms of age and tech savvy. Over the next five weeks, I will go in-depth on all aspects of best practices for using text messaging at events. They will be released weekly and will be labeled Event Series Parts II through VI. A general overview of each is outlined below.
Part II: The Steps to a Successful Text Messaging Program
What does a successful text messaging program for events look like? True, success is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but it’s generally based on empirical measures like percentage of participation and the level of activity (number of messages exchanged). You will see other intangible benefits in audience behavior like timely and larger response to announcements for sessions announced and expressed appreciation. To achieve greater participation and activity, it is critical to include certain elements in the event process, like signage, advertising, announcements, and assistance at registration. There are certain techniques that when deployed before and during the event can make a huge difference to success, and I will go through these in great depth in Part II next week, called Events Part II: Step-by-step success for Event Text Messaging Programs
Part III: Using Text Messaging to Save Staff Time
How can a text messaging service save staff time? Firstly, it is automated, so you can schedule key announcements days, weeks, or even months before. If you know there will be cocktails on the 23rd floor at 6pm… schedule a blast reminder so you don’t need to worry about catching everyone at 5:45pm. It is also a great customer service platform. Participants will write you back with questions and important information regarding operations. For example, one event we worked with set up an “Ask a Question” service. Took less than a minute to set up, provided great experience for participants who could stay in session and was fast for staff to answer. Look for Part III, which will cover leveraging text messaging to save time for event staff.
Part IV: Using Text Messaging as Marketing to Increase Event Attendance
How can a text messaging service increase attendance? It works just like traditional marketing but arrives in the palm of their hand with a much higher open rate. Create an event information channel or an organization information channel (or both) in advance. Let folks subscribe to receive key information. Post instructions for mobile channels on posters, in newsletters and online to encourage folks to subscribe. Once you have your mobile audience you can begin to engage them with relevant topics, registration information, coupons and incentives to forward invites to friends. Best of all, you can keep the channel active throughout the year as a great way to promote products, events and donation opportunities. Don’t forget to check back, because Part IV will cover event promotion via text message in great detail.
Part V: Using Text Messaging for Real-time Voting and Live Ratings
How do you get real-time results with a text messaging platform? To me, there is nothing more thrilling than seeing our Resdida MOBILIZE platform return results from live voting. There are actually a couple of ways to collect real-time information from the audience using MOBILIZE. Ask yourself: Do I need just a vote or a numeric score? In either case, you can set up a real-time audience poll in less than three minutes and see the results anywhere in the world where an Internet connection is available. You can even check results on your smart phone.
Part VI: Engaging your Audience with Text Messaging
How can a text messaging platform improve audience engagement? Above, I mentioned the event channel which is a great way to keep the audience informed and moving along the schedule as planned. However, it’s also possible to engage the audience in session with quick polls and in session questions. In addition, you can mimic the “Like” concept found on social media platforms to help guide content and speaker choices. This is ideal for the “un-conference” experience. Look forward to Part VI to learn more about this in depth.
Whether you have a conference, “un-conference”, film festival, fast pitch, workshop, or any type of event, implementing a mobile text messaging component for your event can provide a better experience for everyone involved from staff to speakers and participants. It’s a powerful technology. It’s affordable. It’s underused. Resdida is here to help you understand your options and be successful. Shoot us an email to learn more and be sure to check out our upcoming posts on the topic.
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Gartner recently outlined what it considers to be the most strategic tech for the coming year. I realised that Resdida was working on 7 of these 10 technology areas - some more than others of course, but it was a reminder of our focus, as Gretzky would say, of "skating to where the puck will be."
The 7 technologies are cloud computing, mobile apps, collaboration, video, next generation analytics, social analytics and context-aware computing.
What excites me most about these areas is that so much is possible within the technology that is available today, right now. As much as we'd like to hold our collective breath and wait until the world is the way we'd like it to be, the possibilities are almost endless for those organizations creative enough to leverage what is possible and respond to the world the way it is.
Our MOBILIZE platform is a solid example of this: by utilizing an affordable cloud-based software-as-a-service application, open source technologies, and the humble (but powerful) SMS, we are able to leverage the technology here and now to create something unique and truly powerful - whether you are reaching out to communities in the US or in developing countries. You can learn more about MOBILIZE here.
You can read the Gartner report here.
It’s a great reminder that so much is possible right now, we only need to leverage it
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