Zero to hero #1

Growing a startup...the hard, but fun way

When we launched Mitingu, our online event registration and communications platform in January 2015, we were all super enthusiastic (we still are) about what we had created and how it could bring something new to the business events market.

There could even have been an element of "if you build it they will come" in the way we were thinking. Lesson 1 - that just doesn't happen if nobody knows about it!

We quickly realised that without money to support ongoing marketing communication programmes that you've got to do it the hard way and utilise the resources that you've already got.

There's a balancing act too. It's important to develop your product or service to a state where it's usable and sellable, but you need to tell people about it too. At Mitingu, the only investment we've had has come out of our own pockets, so we've had to manage funds really carefully. At this point, it's worth saying that we have gone out and found other income streams whilst we build Mitingu so that we can pay our mortgages and feed our families...there's no shame in that.

I'll get to the point!

I have decided to share our experiences in growing our start up, including all the high and low points from today. Here goes...

Our first target - £20k per month revenue by march 2016

How we get there and what we've learnt so far

We have a great product, we know that from user feedback. We just need to get it in front of more people.

We've tried a number of different marketing channels and I am convinced that a combination of them all is the way forward. I've read lots of stories about people no longer doing any outbound activities and getting plenty of business coming in via the social media channels. I take my hat off to them. In our case, it's definitely a combination of getting a consistent message out there and staying active to keep the pipeline growing. The best bit of advice I was ever given in my early sales days was to keep activity levels high and success will come.

Here's what we've used so far...

Emails - do your research and send out personalised emails which show the recipient you have taken the time to look at their business and tailor your message to show how your product or service can help them and their business. Talk about them, not you.

Blog - Blogging is new to me, but it definitely works. Don't expect a huge following or response overnight, but keep posting relevant and interesting stuff in tune with your market and you'll start to see some growth.

Ads - We've used Google Ads and Twitter Ads and we're going to give LinkedIn and Facebook a try. Google Ads are great, but if you're in a competitive market like us, they can get pricey. Make sure you've got your strategy right and keep a close eye on what's working and refine where necessary. Twitter Ads are more affordable and have shown some really encouraging results so far.

Networking - It can be pretty daunting walking into a room full of people you've never met before. This is something we're just about to start, so I'll feedback soon. It's one of the best ways to get your story out there, so bite the bullet and go for it. The few events I have attended so far have resulted in leads and actual business, so I am sold on it.

Demos - Selling the demo and not the product or service has also been a good route for us. There is no hard sell and if you've done your homework, then your prospect has a real need for your product or service and if you tailor the demo to that requirement then you'll win more than you lose.

Social media - We've focussed on Twitter and have seen some promising results. It has taken time to build the right following, but it's something we will be sticking with. LinkedIn is also something we plan to ramp up as it's one of the first places people in business refer to.

Those are just some methods we've used so far. We've also have some great referrals, face to face meetings, but the point here is to use what's available to you without spending money you don't necessarily have.

We'll keep this transparent, so at the end of the month I'll put up where we are against our target and what has worked for us and what hasn't.

Have a great month.

5 things to get right when choosing event registration software

Choosing the right event registration software can be a tough ask. There are so many providers that it's difficult to evaluate them all.

To back this up, here's an extract from an enquiry Mitingu had in a couple of days ago:

".....frankly I am overwhelmed by the number of companies  that are doing this or similar stuff."

There are some things which are a given for pretty much all of the platforms out there such as:

• take payments online;
• send out confirmation emails and tickets;
• editor to enter content about the event;
• registration form builder;
• registration widget or buttons to embed on external websites.

Taking that into account and to help you make the right decision, we've put some suggestions together that could help you arrive there.

 

1. Branding

If you've gone through the painstaking, but rewarding process of organising an event, including promotional material and event branding, then why wouldn't you want your registration site, emails and tickets to carry on that theme?. Choosing a platform that allows you to brand the event site and emails is definitely a good choice.

It's not just about branding the look and feel either. The domain name that your site sits on and the email from address are equally as important. Using your own domain name ties everything up neatly and keeps the event registration site and emails on brand.

 

2. Data

Collecting and storing the right data on your attendees lets you communicate your event messages in a targeted and relevant way. Having an intelligent registration form builder that gives you the ability to show or hide questions based on what you already know about an attendee (registration type, stored preferences or how they have answered a previous question) keeps it relevant to them and speeds up the registration process with shorter forms.

It also helps you build a profile of the attendee that can be used for future events or general marketing activities.

Storing the data securely is an essential for most organisations. Mitingu's data is securely hosted in the UK across multiple sites with ISO27001 certification and PCI/DSS compliance.

 

3. The right message to the right person

Email inboxes are pretty much maxed out nowadays, so it's important that your event messages arrive to the right person with the right message before, during and after the event.

It's easy to do that with segmentation. If someone has registered for your event, then they don't want to receive a reminder email asking them to register. In a similar way, someone who has registered and marked their dietary preferences as "vegetarian" doesn't want to receive a menu with lots of non-vegetarian (if that's a word!) choices.

So, choose a system that not only lets you send out emails based on where they are in the registration process (not registered, registered, declined, checked-in etc), but also lets you segment further based on their preferences. We all like a one to one conversation!

 

4. An intelligent check-in

Checking an attendee in doesn't just have to be about scanning or search and swiping them in. You've collected information about them on registration, so why not make the check-in process a more personalised experience?

Mitingu's check-in app called Greet Desk not only checks attendees in, but also gives the door staff on screen prompts relevant to the attendee. For example, Joe is a VIP and he arrives at the event, is scanned in and the member of staff checking him in gets an onscreen prompt to show him to the VIP reception area. It's simple, but a nice touch.

5. The highest level of support

Most event registration platforms are designed so it's quick and easy for an organiser to set up their registration page or site. Mitingu can certainly offer that as well as giving the organiser the ability to create a bespoke event site with multiple pages and custom branding.

A great support site with the ability to raise online tickets is a must. In addition to that, it's essential to be able to speak to someone or even jump on a screen share to get an answer to a question. We think great customer service not only gives you loyal customers, but great advocates who'll recommend your business when they can.

Our support team and I regularly look over clients' event sites and make recommendations where we think something could maybe look better, or be more effectively communicated. We only offer recommendations as we appreciate a lot of look and feel is subjective, but we've never had any complaints about going the extra mile.

If you think we've missed some important items then please add to them in the comments section below. We'll respond to every one of them and any feedback is good feedback.

Proud to be different

What makes mitingu different?

There is a huge selection of event registration systems out there so it’s a perfectly valid question. We’ve done our homework we know who the main players are and we know there are already excellent platforms out there, but we believe mitingu offers something different, something that helps event organisers get real value from attendee data, generate interest and ultimately, drive sales...

We’ve picked out the top four things that make us different…

1.      Happy customers – Great customer service, We live and breathe it. Our passion is to help our clients deliver great events and the registration and communications process is critical to that. We have a fully loaded support site, but we’ll go much further than that. We make it our business help wherever we can. 

”Greg is clearly a man passionate about the business he has created as well as the experience of customers who use his product. I organised an event using mitingu and received an unsolicited (but most welcome) email from Greg suggesting changes that would make the event registration on my website more user friendly. He even offered to talk me through how to make the changes. Now THAT is good customer service. Thanks Greg” HighStreetLawyer.com

2.    Data is gold - we recognise that collecting, storing and using data is key tool to driving more sales through personalised messages, business proposals etc. The more you know about someone, the more likely you are to hit one of their touch points, build a relationship and ultimately do business with them. Our intelligent forms display relevant questions to the attendee and hide others that are not, tag an attendee based on how they respond and use this information to tailor follow up communications before, during and after the event. Our CRM system securely stores all contact information, across all events.

”Simple and intelligent platform, the auto-tagging feature allows us to get the right information to specific attendees with great ease.” LUSH

3.      Connected to your brand - whilst we are obviously more than happy for you to display our logo and url on your event site, we appreciate that most businesses will want attendees to see their branding, not ours. This is why all our Pro and White Label accounts have this option as standard. Create event sites and emails with your design and branding and url, ensuing your attendees are connecting with your brand.

4.        Simplicity - there are lots of pieces of software out there that are crammed with features that most of us will never use. mitingu has some great features that enables event organisers create simple or comprehensive event sites. The key to it is making it as simple as possible to use. This is key for our business and constantly evolving, we work hard to ensure our site doesn’t get ‘too busy’ or complicated. Our User Experience (UX) is hugely important to us, We listen! Research and customer feedback helps us make our platform even better.

I could easily go on and on with other reasons, but we like action, so why don’t you put us to the test? Create a mitingu account and make your events fly, we’ll be with you all the way.

New in Mitingu - Product update July 2015

Event Surveys

We’ve been working hard to make Mitingu even easier for you to use. July sees the introduction of event surveys and enhancements to the WYSIWYG editor for event sites and emails.

Getting valuable feedback from your attendees to help you deliver an even greater event experience is now possible with Mitingu via our new survey tool.

Build intelligent surveys around the attendee, make them quick and easy to respond to and automatically collect and store the responses.

See responses via the survey dashboard and download the survey report for detailed analysis and segmentation.

WYSIWYG editor - image upload

Images can now be uploaded directly into the email or event site content via the editor. Drag and drop your files or choose a file from your computer. Add a link to a URL, resize and reposition it.

wysiwyg editor - file upload

Documents can also be uploaded directly into the editor, which will be accessed by the user as a link to preview/download

wysiwyg editor - scheduled emails

The scheduled email editor has one additional enhancement, file attachments. It's now possible to add documents as attachments as well as links. 

wysiwtg editor - shortcuts

Quickly adding personalised fields such as firstnames, event names and venues is now possible without manually entering the tag for that field. We've added a shortcuts icon onto the editor which lets you add a personalised field or link at the click of a button.

We hope that these help to make your events an even bigger success!

How event surveys help you to listen and act

Events are a great way of creating and cementing relationships by giving the attendee an unforgettable experience. I'll add that the experience should be a good one!

Surveys are one of the best ways to test and measure how good the experience was (post event survey) or is (survey during the event). Giving the attendee the opportunity to feedback their ratings and comments is precious information to the event organiser (we talked about Information is Gold Dust in an earlier post). It helps the organiser make the event even better next time and gives the business information that can be used for targeted marketing at a later date.

When you're planning your survey it's always good to consider the following:

1. Time is precious - make the survey short and sweet to maximise responses.

2. Make it relevant - things like... did they enjoy it, did they meet their objectives, will they come back?

3. Mobile usage continues to grow - make sure the survey displays equally well on a smartphone, tablet and desktop.

4. Let them be anonymous - some people are happy to give candid answers, but feel uncomfortable putting their name to them. Make sure they have the ability to respond anonymously.

Getting the results from your survey in an easy to digest format is also essential. When you are building your questions, choice selections (drop downs, choice boxes, radio buttons) can help as answers to these sort of questions can be displayed visually via charts and graphs, giving you an instant snapshot of what's popular and what needs improving.

Mitingu uses tagging to categorise contacts' preferences and we recommend that tags are applied to some of the survey questions. For example, if you have asked the attendee if they will come back next year, they could be tagged "rebook" if they reply yes, which will trigger an email giving them favourable rates on an early booking.

To sum it up, surveys can give you valuable information that helps deliver an even better event experience and can be shared with the business to help with ongoing marketing and forecasting activities.

What is tagging and why Mitingu uses it?

Tagging is a well established and arguably underused categorisation system that has seen prominence in blog use and more recently, social networks.

Tagging at its core is about assigning words or short keyword phrases to items to group them together. For example. Items tagged as “event” would be grouped together if you searched on that tag.

The main issue with tagging is it places emphasis on the content creator to assign tags to their content and often laziness prevails and content is incorrectly tagged or not tagged at all.

Tagging is an excellent and very simple categorisation system and by including it as one of the core features of our product we can leverage this grouping to allow our users to create business intelligence based on this data.

Tags are assigned to customers not events. They are assigned automatically, overcoming the overhead issues with assigning tags to users.

Tags can then be used as filters for content within web and email templates using simple if, then, else logic statements as well as filters for ticket types and add-ons.

In Mitingu, tags are automatically assigned as follows:

• Their ticket type selection

• Responses to custom registration questions

• Responses to event survey questions

Tags can also be manually assigned via the Mitingu Contact CRM or data upload.

In addition there are certain trigger points that allow organisers to schedule email notifications to be sent to attendees based on their tags. These can be at set times prior to (invitations, reminders, updates), during (welcome, on the day updates) and after the event (thanks for attending, feedback surveys).

The Power of One

If you organise events then I’m guessing you already know that time is a commodity that you don’t have enough of, and stress is an unwelcome one that you have in abundance! Just to back that up, event planners regularly feature in the top ten of the most stressful jobs.

With that in mind, why do some event planners still either use a combination of offline and online media, or a variety of different software packages and then manually combine the different sets of data?

I recently visited an event planner that takes registrations for their events via quite a nice online registration form on their website. I asked them what happens once the registration has been submitted and was amazed to hear that all they get is an email with the registrant’s details, which they then have to manually input onto an Excel spreadsheet! That’s a lot of work to do for every registration on every event, especially as some of their events have hundreds of registrations. I asked them to go back a step and tell me how they invite people to their events and promote them. They use a separate email marketing platform for that. The same email marketing platform also handles event updates. On the day of the event, attendees are checked-in using a printed version of the attendee spreadsheet.

Just to summarise...

1. Data is uploaded and email invitations are sent out from email marketing platform

2. Registrations via an online booking form on their website

3. Email to event planner with registration details

4. Attendee details manually input onto an Excel spreadsheet

5. Upload attendee spreadsheet to email marketing platform to send out event emails

6. Manually check attendees in via the spreadsheet

That’s 6 different labour intensive activities that have to be carried out! That doesn’t include any post event activity either.

For an occupation that was number 5 on the 2014 list of the most stressful jobs, that seems to me like a lot of unnecessary work when there is technology out there that will do all of this from one platform.

Mitingu is one of those platforms that could handle that whole process for the event planner.

Here’s how...

1. Contacts are either uploaded or selected via an integration with the client’s CRM

2. The branded event site and email templates are quickly set up

3. Email invitations scheduled and sent directly from the platform

4. Registrations automatically updated into the attendees list

5. Scheduled, triggered email updates and reminders are sent automatically

6. Check-in via Greet Desk (mitingu’s mobile check-in app) and automatically updated on the attendee list in Mitingu

So basically, all 6 of that particular event planner’s activities could be handled from one platform and without any time consuming manual intervention and collation of data.

That’s definitely the Power of One.

The importance of collecting and using the right data from event registrations

By inference, every event, no matter how large or small, is designed to deliver a positive and rewarding experience for those who attend it.

The motives behind why a brand creates an event and what their desired outcomes are from delivering a great experience vary from event to event. The balance that needs to be drawn is between the effort required in time and cost to create an event versus the benefit of creating a great experience.

The event registration is the organiser’s first opportunity to gather really accurate information about their attendees. It can help them tailor the event to deliver a great event experience for the attendees and also be used for ongoing marketing activities. In addition to that, it can make life easier for the event organiser, giving them valuable information to help them plan for catering, fine tuning event content and accommodation requirements.

Pulling the attendee data into a marketing automation platform is a really great way of getting added value from it. These platforms are designed to get the most out of accurate data, using personalisation across multiple communications channels to deliver the marketing message. Integrating your the registration platform with a marketing automation and/or CRM platform is a seamless way of pushing event attendee data and making use of it for other business and marketing activities immediately.

Planning what information is needed to deliver a great event experience and for ongoing marketing activities is essential. It's also really important to make sure the registration form is tailored to the attendee, so it's not asking them to complete fields which are not relevant to them. The Mitingu registration form builder can help with this as it gives the organiser the ability to filter questions based on registration types, known attendee preferences and how they have responded to a previous question.

As they say, "Data is the new gold".

One reason why great experiences are better than material items

New Years Day 2015 and I had the usual “Happy New Year” call from my mum. Although this year it had a nasty sting in the tail! Mum also had to tell me that she’d been diagnosed with cancer (again). Her amazing spirit and positiveness somehow made it a bit easier and I am forever in awe of her for that.

It got me thinking about what really is important in life and work. We all need money to live and some of us, me included, like the finer things in life. However, what makes me smile long after they’ve happened are great memories. Seeing your child coming into this world, great holidays, great family/friends moments are all worth so much more than a new house, car, the latest iPad etc. Material items bring temporary happiness, great experiences bring lasting happiness.

Dr Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades. According to him “We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them...Our experiences are a bigger part of ourselves than our material goods...You can really like your material stuff. You can even think that part of your identity is connected to those things, but nonetheless they remain separate from you. In contrast, your experiences really are part of you. We are the sum total of our experiences."

From a personal point of view, I’ve made it my mission to create experiences that will bring happiness to my family and I long after the event that we can reminisce and laugh about.

It also got me thinking about things from a professional point of view. Mitingu is in the business of giving event organisers the tools to make their lives easier and to help them to deliver a great experience for the attendee. It’s incredibly demanding organising an event, so anything that enhances the experience for the organiser can only be a good thing.  An attendee that has been given a great event experience will remember that for a whole lot longer than one who has had an average experience, but walked out with a goodie bag full of giveaways!

Happiness...that’s my main driver and the one reason I believe a great experience is worth so much more than any material item.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ― Confucius

We’ve already discussed the importance and relevance of personalisation in previous posts. We’ll now tell you why we chose our preferred method of driving the data for personalisation, tagging.

Q. Why did we choose tagging?

A. For it’s simplicity

Tagging is a well established and arguably underused categorisation system that has seen prominence in blog use and more recently, social networks. It is all about assigning words or short keyword phrases to items to group them together. For example, items tagged as “event” would be grouped together if you searched on that tag.

Tagging is an effective and very simple categorisation system and by including it as one of the core features of mitingu we have leveraged this grouping to allow our users to create business intelligence based on the data they have.

One of the historical issues with tagging is that it places emphasis on the content creator to assign tags to their content and often laziness prevails and content is incorrectly tagged or not tagged at all. We’ve overcome this issue in mitingu as tags are automatically assigned to customers not events based on the information they give, not what is assumed.

Tags in mitingu can be used as filters for personalised content within web and email templates, ticket types and registration form questions. Email notifications can also be automatically sent based on an individual’s tag or tags.

Rather than having to write rules around different activities we use tags to simplify the process.

Here’s a simple example of tags used to create a personalised event site in mitingu.

Event name: The Good Wine Conference

Tags used: “red”, “white”, “rose”

Personalised elements: Main banner, intro text, agenda, registration type

Site 1 - John's personalised site

Site 2 - Jane's personalised site

Site 3 - Charles' personalised site

Print versus Digital - Who’s the winner?

Invitations to an event are often the first chance to make a great impression. Do you print them or email them out?

I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. There’s a place for both and also a strong argument to send both printed and emailed invitations. Print is far from dead and is actually more of a premium product nowadays. I’ve also read some comments recently about the demise of email. Stats would argue otherwise!

Here’s a few pointers if you’re printing an invitation:

1. Personalise it - increase impact and response

2. Choose the right material - it’s an invite, so make an impression by printing it on a quality card (your printer can give you samples)

3. Make it easy to respond to - add something like a QR code so it can be quickly scanned to take the recipient to the mobile friendly registration page

4. Package it right - you’ve spent time and money getting the invitation right, spend a bit more to make sure it arrives in style and in the right envelope or package

If you’re sending an email invitation here’s some things to focus on:

1. Subject line - these stats from Campaign Monitor show including the word “Invitation” at the start of the subject line increase responses by over 9%. Avoid “spammy” subject lines

2. Personalise it - as with print, it increases impact and response

3. Make it snappy and quick to read

4. Add response buttons - make it easy for them by adding Register and Decline buttons

5. Track who’s opened, responded and bounced - follow up accordingly

So I guess there is no winner. My personal preference is to do both. They compliment each other and give your invitation two opportunities to be seen and responded to.

Startup mistakes I've made #1: The field of dreams

I've started several startups over the last few years and I've also had my fair share of failures along the way. In an effort to reflect on these mistakes that I have made but also to turn these failures into a learning experience, I have started blogging about them on my personal blog.

The first of these is probably the most obvious, but also the easiest to turn a blind eye to. The mistake is the field of dreams: "If I build it they will come" mistake.

The mistake is that by building a best of breed app, website, platform, service or whatever that users will find you and use it and your startup will be an immediate success.

The reality is that traction is not only very hard, it also takes time. You need to invest time in connections and networking and you need to create valuable content to help your brand build a following.

You can read more in the original and full post here. I have made many mistakes over the years, so I'll be blogging more on this in the coming weeks and months.

Right people, right event

Getting the right people to the right event might seem a pretty obvious objective for an event organiser however making sure it happens can be tricky….

It's all down to the data, (Information...it's gold dust), getting hold of strong data is the first challenge. Assuming you’ve been successful in that, the second challenge is using that data to tailor the content towards your audience.  Last, but not least, getting the subject line right for your emails provides challenge number three.

The good news is that you can do something about all of the above.

1. You can buy your basic data and build on it. There’s loads of places online where you can buy data lists, some better than others. The basic rule of you get what you pay for generally applies here. Research thoroughly and try and get some test data first to validate. If you’ve got some time and resource available then a combination of LinkedIn and web search makes it possible to build a fantastic database of prospects.

2. Once you’ve got the right information, it’s all about using it and making sure the recipient of your invite reads something that is relevant to them.

Having recently received an email from a health club where I have held a membership for 8 years, the opening gambit was “Dear Valued Member”! They know my name, I gave it to them all those years ago so have no problem with them using it!  This email then went on to ask me to vote for their Spa in a “Salon/Spa of the Year” competition. Although I’m a man who takes care of himself ( I moisturize, that counts right? ) I’ve never stepped foot into the Spa. However my wife, who is also a member, has several times yet they didn’t email her.  My point here wasn’t that they shouldn’t have emailed me as a member (I expect such emails), but if they’d used their data smartly they could have addressed the email to me and asked if my wife would vote for them and that would have engaged with me.

If you’re sending invitations to clients or prospects about an upcoming event, make sure you target those that may have an interest in what the event is about and don’t forget to use their name!

3. The good people at Campaign Monitor published a post last summer called The 15 most powerful words in subject lines. The subject line is all about making the right first impression and it was interesting to see that when “Invitation” is used as the first word, there is a 9.45% uplift in open rates and when used as the last word, a 7.69% uplift.

There’s no such thing as an exact science when it comes to subject lines, so it’s always worth creating a few and comparing the results to see which one is getting the best open rates.

Getting these three things right isn’t easy, but when you do, the benefits are well worth all the groundwork beforehand.

4 Ways Event Managers Can Use Personalisation to Impact ROI

Are you collecting data on attendees that register for events? Have you thought about and planned out how you might go about utilising this data? During the event registration and signup process, as an event manager or coordinator you have the opportunity to request information that you can then intelligently use to impact the ROI of an event.

These are just 4 ways that personalisation can be used to impact the return on investment for an event;

1. Dynamic, personalised event webpages

Once your attendee has registered for your event, the next time they visit the event webpage, information and elements of the site can be personalised specifically to their interests or motivations for attending the event. For example, the imagery could reflect the industry the attendee works in. You could include a call out box requesting responses to any additional non-mandatory questions they didn’t answer at signup in order to collect even more data. If they selected that they needed accommodation over the course of the event, you could include local restaurant ideas or things to do in the evening during the course of their stay.

2. Valuable meeting suggestions

Based on the attendees’ interests, role, industry and even where they are in their purchasing cycle, you could match-make them with your exhibitors, event partners or sponsors, inviting them to private meetings that will take place onsite during the event. By carefully profiling the data, you offer your attendees meetings highly personalised to their needs or motivations for attending. You will also solidify relationships with your exhibitors by connecting them with pre-qualified leads.

3. Personalised email marketing

It’s annoying to receive multiple and very apparent, generic email blasts in the lead up or during an event. Using the data you have collected, tailor emails based on the individual. Segment your attendees into defined profiles, sending them content or information related to their needs. For example, you wouldn’t send a sponsor email whose product and services pricing starts at £100,000 to an attendee who has indicated that they work at a company with a turnover of less than £100,000 per year.

4. Real-time interaction

During the event there are a number of opportunities to engage with your attendees. When attendees check in at the event you could automate emails containing the attendee’s personalised event programme, if you gave them the option to select and choose from different tracks or talks happening at the event. Even simpler still, but just as personal, you could pre-schedule emails following a speaker or sponsor’s presentation with further information including the slides from their talk to attendees who checked in to that specific talk. If you do not have the real-time checking in capabilities you can pre-schedule these emails to be sent to attendees who fit the profile for attending talks of this nature, perhaps basing your theory on previous event data.

These 4 applications and ideas for personalisation are just the tip of the iceberg with regards to what is possible. Uses for attendee data can be as simple or creative as you are willing to go. But no matter which end of the scale you choose, personalisation can be key to driving the impact on the ROI of an event, as well as creating lasting relationships with all event stakeholders; attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, speakers, etc. Personalisation enhances the experience for all those involved and can help in building loyalty and repeat business.

If you want to enhance personalisation to improve your event ROI, Mitingu is a user-friendly cloud-based platform that makes it simple to intelligently utilise attendee data and create a heightened event experience. We’d love to chat about more ways you could use personalisation for your next event. Or if you’re not much of a talker, you can sign up for a free account in minutes.

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Personalisation and Event Marketing: What’s the True Value?

We’re all in agreement that information is the gold dust of the business world. Yes? But how can you use this gold dust as an event marketer, coordinator or manager to see tangible value and results? And just how valuable can this information prove to be?

Targeted marketing, as a strategy, as you know isn’t ground-breaking. It’s been with us for a number of years and many marketers within various industries have adapted their tools, skills and knowledge in order to market to customers in this way. However, a recent article and survey demonstrated that, whilst marketers fully believe in the importance of personalisation, the number of those who feel that they are executing personalised marketing tactics and communication well, is astonishingly low.

Why? If your current event communications rely only on basic personalisation, you may be finding that your open rates, click through and engagement is steady and acceptable when compared against the industry standard. The saying, “If its not broken, why fix it?” may be true for your situation, especially if you manage a number of areas and elements for your events. You likely don’t have the time to become, what feels like, a data analyst in order to deliver highly personalised event communications or content to your audience. And don’t worry at all if this is you, two thirds of your marketing peers think this way too.

But what if we told you that a highly personalised event email results in six times higher transaction rates? Or a personalised website experience for your event attendee could improve sales by 19%? Pretty compelling stuff. But we know that there are challenges for event marketers to be able to create highly tailored event communications based on the information that an attendee submits when registering for an event. Challenges such as data quality, data saved across disparate files and systems, inability to link different tools or expertise.

With this in mind, especially those compelling stats we shared, our final question is; what if we said we could help you overcome these challenges and unlock the value that personalisation offers? As we said in our last blog, these are just some of the challenges that our platform is able to overcome in order to help you get the gold - the value - from your event marketing or communication activities in a simple way without a huge price-tag attached.

A personalised event webpage based on an individual registrant’s job title, conference programme choices and industry, could sound like a huge and almost impossible task to create without the right platform and tools in place. This is just one example of how Mitingu can take the personalisation of your event communication and marketing to the next level, seeing your registrant engagement rates, ticket sales and repeat/loyal event attendees increase.

Image Credit: ©Death to the Stock Photo CC