A CredSpark Deep Dive
The CredSpark Guide
to Event Engagement
Chapter Two:
The Role of Data in Improving Event Engagement
Data can tell a compelling story about your events, but only if you set the stage properly.
Data is often an afterthought in conference and event planning. The sheer complexity of event logistics often quickly absorbs all available time and mind space. At CredSpark, however, we advise clients to actually start with a data strategy first and then build your conference or event around it. By understanding what data you want/need up front, you can plan and craft interactions throughout each stage of the event experience, driving more engagement and generating more insights from each of your stakeholders (attendees, speakers, sponsors, partners, and more).
An effective data strategy for conferences and events starts by answering these 5 key questions.
Who are my stakeholders? You and your organization are the obvious first answers. But think through the entire event experience and identify the key groups that the event is designed to serve. Do you need to break down attendees into different cohorts based on interests, career paths, etc.? Don’t forget about exhibitors and sponsors and their needs. Presenters and speakers are also important people to please.
Clearly identifying your stakeholders will set you up for the next key aspect in event data strategy.
What questions do I need answered? Notice that we didn’t say “what data do I want?”. It’s important to identify the information that will most move the needle for you—in terms of event engagement, revenue, stakeholder needs, and business objectives. Be brutal. Only ask for what will be used and useful.
We recommend the exercise of putting yourself in the shoes of each of your stakeholders. What topics or sessions are most pressing this year? What problems are attendees trying to solve? What information will help sponsors better qualify prospects? What information do prospective attendees need to hit that ‘register now’ button? What info would be useful to know in planning next year’s event?
Understanding how you or your stakeholders will use this data first will help you immeasurably in crafting effective questions and interactive experiences that you’ll need to capture it.
Where and when should I ask? The best approach to data collection is to think of it as a progression. You don’t want to throw a giant survey at your stakeholders and hope for the best. For each piece of data you’re after, map out what you think would be the most effective touch point in the event experience to collect it. And remember, your event doesn’t start when people show up. It starts when you announce it. Be sure to include data collection touch points in the marketing and communications in advance of your event (and after the event closes, too!).
What type of experience would be most effective to capture that information? Data collection doesn’t have to be tedious and boring for the participant. With interactive content, data collection can also drive audience engagement. Create compelling and creative experiences that capture attention, engage the audience, and provide value in return for the information they’re providing. Be strategic about the format and the user experience and consider the full range of options (polls, surveys, quizzes, personalized recommendations, games, and more).
What’s my plan for the data once I have it? There is nothing worse than making the effort to ask your audience questions and then doing nothing with the information they provide. Have a plan for the data you collect. Where will it go? How will those who need it access it? How will you utilize and act on the data once you have it.
Answering these key questions will form the basis of an effective event data strategy and provide a useful framework and roadmap for how that data can spark engagement and make your conferences and events more successful.
The Intersection of Data Collection and
Audience Engagement at Events
An innovative approach to data collection at conferences and events is not to treat it as an end in and of itself, but as an opportunity to engage—and even delight—your audiences (attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, etc.) and provide real value to them in return. Interactive content experiences provide you with an opportunity to do exactly that. Here are a few proven approaches that CredSpark clients have deployed.
Personalized Recommendations
One of the biggest challenges at large events is that you need to appeal to a large group of people with varied interests and needs. With a huge agenda and session overload, it makes it hard to appeal to what motivates an individual prospective attendee. An interactive content experience that leverages personalization is an incredibly powerful tool to achieve that. By asking strategic questions of prospective attendees, you can surface the issues, topics, needs, and interests that are important to them and then match them with your conference’s relevant speakers, exhibitors, sessions, educational opportunities, and more that best align with those parameters, providing a personalized agenda geared towards them.
You end up getting deep insights and actionable information on what’s most important to your audience, and you provide them with real value by directing them to the aspects of your event that best meet their needs and interests. Plus by showcasing relevance in a compelling way, this personalized approach also provides tangible ROI by demonstrably improving registration rates.
Lead Qualification for Sponsors
Another great revenue-driving opportunity is to create interactive experiences that capture lead qualification information for sponsors and exhibitors. By creating informative and even fun experiences, you can incorporate lead qualifying questions for individual sponsors and exhibitors and even directly connect qualified attendees with relevant vendors and exhibitors at your event. This approach not only creates a new sponsorship revenue stream, it provides incredible value to both sponsors and attendees by saving time, delivering actionable data, and directly answering their needs.
Live Engagement
Data-Driven Engagement can also be deployed right in your sessions by creating game-like audience participation experiences that capture real-time information from session participants. Tools like CredSpark’s Live Mode can instantly spark engagement and turn a one-way fire hose type of session into a dynamic and interactive experience that surfaces data on audience sentiment, knowledge, opinion, motivation, and more. Session leaders can even change the direction of a presentation or provide a “choose your own adventure” type of session by capturing real-time audience sentiment. Live engagements are not only effective in driving engagement; they’re informative, memorable, and even fun.
Creating Connection and Fostering Community
Innovative event planners and marketers are using interactive content experiences to help prospects and attendees network more effectively and “find their tribe” at their event. You can create experiences that capture interest, demographic, firmographic, and other data. Based on that audience intelligence, you can place people into relevant groups, cohorts, etc. and create in-person opportunities for them to meet, connect, and network. One of the most frustrating aspects of large conferences and events is finding the time and opportunity to make valuable connections with others with similar interests. Interactive content experiences can not only provide you with meaningful data, but help your audience create valuable connections that last long after your event.
Bringing It All Together
The key thing to remember is that generating audience engagement and audience data at your event should not be two separate endeavors. They can—and should be— one and the same. By integrating data and engagement into one cohesive strategy, you’ll set yourself up to deliver a conference or event that has impact, delivers value for all stakeholders, and drives revenue growth.
Explore other chapters in CredSpark’s
Guide to Event Engagement.
