The Attendee Journey: 4 Key Touchpoints That Can Make Or Break Your Event
By Maggie Greene
There are infinite opportunities to engage with an audience along their journey through your event. Which ones are most important and why? Here we’ll dive into four key touchpoints that can make or break your event.
1. Before Your Event
The attendee journey begins long before showtime. It can even start before registration (if you have not explored the “Road to Go West” video series yet, do!) but your audience’s first official touchpoint as an Attendee is registration.
Let’s assume you have already sent out your waves of personalized confirmation emails. Everyone knows the deadline for travel and lodging, what to pack, when they should arrive. Now what?
2. App Launch
Out of every four attendees prompted to download the event app, three will do so (Edelman, 2019). It follows that if you fail to prompt them with a strong call to action like, “Download the Mobile App,” you may be at risk of decreasing adoption rates and, by extension, overall attendee engagement.
How do you empower attendees to make the most of their onsite experience? Provide key information and personalized messaging before they arrive. Send regular email updates to subscribers, when new sessions or speakers are added, and provide access to tools that will help them plan ahead.
3. On-site a.k.a Showtime
Congratulations, you made it to showtime! The content for your event is all dialed in. Your speakers for the mainstage are prepped and ready to WOW your attendees. Presumably you’ve communicated all the Sessions available at the event. You have sent beautifully personalized emails with suggestions for what to attend, based on audience interests. You are an event planner, after all, which is basically a superhero.
This should be your biggest takeaway, so you may want to write this down: if you wait until Day One to launch your app, you’ve missed the next most critical touchpoint for attendees. Failure to provide this important tool early on can make or break the entire event, putting you at risk for dissatisfaction and low attendee engagement.
Networking
Did you know that 76% of attendees only come to events to network? It’s not about featuring the most famous live entertainment and menu of unique cocktails. Give your attendees the chance to connect with the people and resources that are most relevant to them. That may mean revisiting configuration of and accessibility for your networking spaces. Will attendees get more value from open networking, private meeting opportunities, or a mix of both? Think about it. Talk with your teams. Then, make the magic happen!
4. Post-Event
By this point, your event journey is coming to a close. You know not to wait until you’re nearly braindead to communicate with attendees after your event. Plan ahead by staging your messaging. Ask attendees to complete evaluations before they go while it’s still fresh and top of their minds. Share key content from the event. Make it easy for them to find session takeaways by publishing them on your event app and website. And, lastly, remember to let them know what’s next by sharing the date and location for your next event so they can register to attend again.
Maggie Greene is Marketing Manager of Pathable, a leading provider of mobile event apps. They are the official event app provider for GO WEST 2020.