5 Social Media Tips to Promote Your Next Event

Social media is the place to be for promoting just about anything these days. Promoting an event is no exception. You have to be on key with your social network outreach in order to appeal to a wider base. To help kick off your next event promo via social media, here’s a few tips to put you on the right track.

1. Share an Event Teaser

How do upcoming movies create hype? With a trailer of course. You can do the same with your event by creating a teaser with highlight of last year’s event. You can edit it to include background music, CGI, or whatever you think is necessary to give the video an extra bit of pow. The teaser can also be supplemented with a more formal, unedited video of presentations and speeches from past speakers.

Here is an example of an effective teaser video from fragrance company Diesel to promote its musical concert Diesel On Tour. It’s rather short, less than a minute, but it gets straight to the point, featuring interviews from musicians slated to perform.

Photo credit: Oslo Hackney

2. Create a Referral Program

For best results, consider a double-sided referral program. Don’t know what this is? This is basically a referral where incentives are given to both the person that made the referral and the person that was referred. So, for example, instead of offering a $50 gift certificate to the person who referred a friend, why not give a $25 gift certificate to both the referred individual and the person responsible for the referral?

Here’s an example of a double-sided referral program from the dietary supplement company 22 Days Nutrition:

Photo credit: Referral Candy

As you can see, the customer and his referred friend are both rewarded. Promote the event heavily on social media and really drill in the fact that both the person referred and “refferee” get incentivized.

3. Promote Your Event Hashtag

Promote the heck out of your hashtag. Mention it on your event website, emails, printed flyers, and any social networks you’re active on. Of course, you have to be strategic with how you select a hashtag. For the most part, though, the rules are simple: keep it short and decipherable. By decipherable, this means your demographic audience should understand it even if it’s abbreviated.

The Amsterdam Dance Event, one of the biggest music festivals in Amsterdam, always recycles its hashtag, which is #ADE(year). So, for example, #ADE15 for 2015 and #ADE16 for 2016. This hashtag is very effective because it’s extremely brief, easy to memorize, and is easily discernable for the targeted demographic.

Photo credit: Sergio Tee

4. Share Your Story

Relay your story on your social network sites. People aren’t just interested in a company and its products but also the people behind it. People also like a good underdog story, so especially be willing to share your story if your company was rooted in humble beginnings. Don’t make it into a sob story, but do be sure to mention some of the stumbling blocks that had to be overcame.

The Facebook post below is an excellent example of someone talking about his origins and how it shaped both his company and who he is as a person:

Photo credit: Gevme

If you noticed, the story also contains some valuable life lessons towards the end. Stories like these are what really helps connect with our audience at a deeper emotional level.

5. Create Sharable Content

In the days leading up to your event, begin creating share-worthy content. Of course, sharable content can entail a wide range of things. This can be a funny meme or GIF, or a full-length blog post. A few other posts that you can incorporate might include the following:

• How-to articles or video tutorials
• A fun-facts article
• A white animation video of your industry or company
• Highlight of past events
• A Q&A event or U-stream

The content should tie back in some way to the event. The more specific you can be the better. If you’re running a digital marketing conference, for example, and a speaker will be speaking on the current state of SEO, then content should be SEO-related rather than, say, social media marketing. While the latter is a related topic, it is still a different subject. Disseminate the content on multiple social networks and particularly on LinkedIn since the content is industry-related.

You have (or should have) plenty of material to share to build up anticipation for your event. Social media is the place for spreading your content and creating word of mouth. Be consistent, and eventually all those views, shares, and likes will translate to a bigger event turnout.

Dan McCarthy is an Event Manager at Ultimate Experience, an event management company based in the UK. Dan has 5 years of event project management under his belt. He has worked on many successful events, and currently he shares his knowledge by writing on the company blog. Follow him on Twitter @DanCarthy2.

Start small, think big

A child’s first steps, just a few at first then within no time they are running; a business winning its first customer and then gaining more in the first few months, they’ve started small, but thought big.

When you're starting out in business, whether your aspirations are for a lifestyle business or to become the next Apple, there will nearly always be a staged approach to growth.

There is a real need for a plan! It’s critical to know where you are going and how you’re going to get there. You also have to have a firm grip on finances. Know how much money you’ve got, need to spend now and in the future, it helps to know that when you are shaping your objectives and goals.

It's worth saying at this point that I'm not a business coach (get one if you can, they can help you fly), but I have learnt some important lessons with Mitingu and previous businesses that I've been involved with. It's also a bit of self therapy writing this as it reminds me of what I have to focus on to get Mitingu where we want it to be and to keep my feet on the ground when it comes to realistic expectations.

It's been over 18 months since we launched out of private BETA into the big wide world. We’ve made great strides and are working with some fantastic businesses. It's been a roller coaster of a ride, but the team and our families have great belief that we will achieve our goals.

Dream big, but make sure you do it in baby steps!

Event communications...make them personal

It’s widely accepted that creating a personalised event experience that is relevant to the attendee helps build engagement and strengthens business relationships. However, despite these obvious benefits, there are still a large number of events that continue to use a generic, one size fits all approach.

We realise that a personalised experience covers many different aspects of the event and for that reason we are focusing on personalised communications.

At first glance, it might seem pretty obvious what we mean by personalised.

To us, personalised means a lot more than just using someone’s first name, company name or job title. They are important, but if a message is personalised and dynamic based on an individual attendee’s interests, preferences, choice of breakout session etc, it adds far more value and makes them feel special (Because everyone needs to be loved). 

Q: How do you achieve the personalisation?

A: By using a platform that is built to understand the need for usable and intelligent data. It should provide a simple admin and attendee pathway to capture and present the data in context and be relevant at every communication point. That is what Mitingu gives to both the event organiser and attendee.

Here’s a couple of examples of how adding a simple personalised element to an event reminder email can work.

Why it’s important to get it right

Before we continue, it’s important to emphasise that if you are planning to use personalised communications for your event, it’s important to get them right. Here’s an example that didn’t work well...

I recently registered to attend an event and it gave me two registration options:

1. Attend in person

2. Attend via a live web stream

I chose the second option. All good so far, but when I was taken to the "thank you for registering page", it gave me details on the event as if I was attending in person. The automated "thanks for registering email" also suggested that I was attending in person. I have to say I was questioning myself, so I double checked to make sure my registration was for the live web stream only, it was!

So, my first piece of engagement with that event wasn’t fantastic and you know what they say about making first impressions count!

Planning your communications

Depending on the size and nature of your event there are opportunities to engage with your attendees before, during and after. Planning and scheduling your event communications means that the whole process can be automated from the first touch point (perhaps a Save the date email), to the final post event message, or even ongoing marketing communications.

The beauty of planning and scheduling is that once it’s done then it will look after itself. The right messages will go to the right people at the right time.

Just some of the personalised messages you could send

Below are just some of the messages that you could include in your event communications strategy. They should all be personalised, using a combination of what you already know and the data collected during the journey to create relevant and engaging messages. Where applicable, you could also include attendee specific agendas, menus, accommodation details and more.

Before the event:

• Save the date
• Invitation
• Invitation reminder
• Booking confirmation
• Event updates and news
• Event reminders with attachments

During the event:

• News on the day
• Workshop/breakout session reminders
• Quick survey feedback requests
• Local places to eat and visit (if the event is across a number of days)

After the event:

• Event summary with presentation slides
• Event statistics
• Invitation to attend next event
• Ongoing marketing communications

Mitingu makes it easy for you to build and schedule all your personalised event communications from one platform. If you would like to see how then please contact us hello@mitingu.com and we'll happily schedule a demo to show you how they could work for your events.

4 activities to help you deliver successful events

The majority of people do not run or attend an event without having a good idea about what they want to achieve or what they want to take away from it.

The process of engagement and achieving mutual objectives starts with the very first piece of event communication; save the date or invitation emails for example.

We think there are four key activities to consider:

1. Give information

2. Get information

3. Use information

4. Stay on brand

1. Giving the right information

Clean, accurate data is the key. We've said it before and we'll say it again, Information is Gold Dust! Make sure the data you are using is up to date, it shows attention to detail and that you’ve taken the time to think about it.

Good data enables you to tailor your communications, even if you only know my name and company name then use it, I’ll appreciate it (I’m easily pleased!).

The event registration process gives you the perfect opportunity to gain valuable information about the individual attendee. Once you have information, such as their specific topics of interest, where they travel from, dietary requirements etc then it’s really important to include this in your ongoing communications before, during and after the event.

The more information you collect the more tailored your communications can be. If they are regular attendees of other events you run, that information should also be used. Mitingu enables tailored communications which evolve with every piece of data you collect, helping you enhance your attendee’s experience as well as building and strengthening engagement and relationships. Not using the data you collect is such a missed opportunity, knowledge is power after all and showing you know your attendees will leave a lasting impression, no one wants to feel like a number.

2. Getting the right information

I don’t think I’m on my own here when I say that I really dislike filling out long registration forms that are asking me questions that have no relevance to me; I’ve told you I’m driving to the event, so there is no need to ask me my flight number and so on.

Intelligent registration is the way forward! Only show me questions that are relevant to me, either based on what you already know or how I have answered previous questions upon registration. This means some questions will only appear based on how I have answered a previous question ('Show me you know me'). Make sure the form does not look daunting and time-consuming when I first land on it.  My point here is that registration forms are not ‘one size fits all’ and should be the right length for each individual attendee whilst only collecting information that is relevant to them.

Tailoring registration forms makes completing them quicker, easier and continues to build on the good feeling they have about attending the event.

3. Using the information

A few years ago I attended a Xerox event, the event registration process has always stuck in my mind, amongst other questions like my dietary preferences, they asked the following:

     i.        Which breakout seminar topic I was most interested in

    ii.        They had a prize draw at the event and asked me which prize I would like most

All the follow up emails I received from that point on used that information in both text and imagery, it kept me engaged and reminded me of why I wanted to attend. On a lighter note, it meant that any prize I may have been lucky enough to win (I didn’t!) was something that I would like and more importantly associate with the good event experience that Xerox had provided.

So, if you use information taken before (via a registration process), during and after (via feedback surveys) and tailor it to the attendee, that will build attendee engagement and give event organisers meaningful statistics and reports that will enable them to measure the true return on investment, success of the event and give them valuable insight on where future events could be even better.

4. Staying on brand

Staying on brand, whether that is the specific event brand, your business brand or a combination of both is another key factor. The attendee should immediately associate all communications and registration site with your event and your business.

As we say at Mitingu, it’s your event not ours!

It will not come as a major shock to hear that Mitingu can help you with all of the above, so if you would like to know more we’d love to hear from you.

‘Show me you know me’ why personalisation is a great idea for your event

A big driver for us when we created Mitingu was to make personalisation a key feature in the platform. Having worked in print and digital marketing for over 20 years, I have seen the positive impact that personalised communications have on response rates and ultimately a client’s bottom line.

These two quotes highlight our reasons for making this such an important feature of Mitingu’s offering to users...

“74% of online consumers get frustrated when content (e.g. offers, ads, promotions) appears that has nothing to do with their interests.” Janrain & Harris Interactive

“Personalized emails improve click-through rates by an average of 14% and conversion rates by 10%.” Aberdeen

Personalisation has to be a whole lot more than just “Hi Firstname”! Of course that’s important, but so is the content. For example; if you are running a conference on marketing communications with slots featuring on digital, print and multi-channel and you already know that I have a particular interest in print, then my invitation and event site content should be tailored to focus on that. It’s far more likely to get my attention and encourage me to register for the event. 

Once registered, I’ve given the organiser a whole lot more information about me, so subsequent communications should be tailored to what they know. For example. They know my address, so could include personalised travel instructions to the venue. They may also know my dietary requirements, so it could be tailored to and include a food menu specific to them. It engages with me and shows that the organiser is taking an interest in me as an individual and will cater specifically for me. It makes me feel special and the event experience has kicked off on a really positive note weeks ahead of the actual event.

We are passionate about promoting the correct use of personalisation across event sites and email communications. We’d love to show you how.

If you’re already a Mitingu user or would love to find out more, then contact me direct greg@mitingu.com and I’ll gladly walk you through how easy to set up it is and how it can make your events even better.

Data...anything but dull!

Recently, I’ve been lucky enough to work with a global marketing agency that specialises in the creative use of data. One of the things that really stands out for me is how a lot of people’s perception of data is that it’s quite, well...boring!

Maybe it’s the actual word “Data”?

If I tell someone that we have a lot of data on an individual or business, then their perception is a lot of analytics and metrics that don’t mean much. If I tell the same person that we hold a lot of information on an individual or business, then they can see the value and the positive impact that it can have.

Data is the key to building relationships in business. Use what you know about someone in a creative and engaging way, by utilising personalisation and content that is specific to their demographics, interests, previous buying habits etc. It gives you a much better chance of getting noticed and in turn, winning new clients and retaining existing ones.

I often get asked “What’s different about Mitingu?”. I could come up with answers such as we make it easy to brand your event sites as your own or it’s super simple to use. These are key features, but not necessarily differentiators. The real difference is in the way we collect, store and use data to personalise the registration and subsequent event comms, making it an engaging experience for the attendee.

There are only two driving influencers for anyone engaged in any form of event management - the event itself and the people who attend it. By inference, every event, no matter how large or small, is designed to deliver a positive and rewarding experience for those who attend it.

Mitingu is great at collecting and storing data in an elegant way. Why have great big event forms which are another potential barrier to someone completing a registration when you can give them a journey based on their previous answers and the information that you already have? i.e. Make it relevant to them. Using the data you collect to drive personalised and targeted communications before, during and after the event helps you to engage with your attendees and make them feel loved. What’s even better is that data can be used across the business for other marketing and customer service activities, giving it even more value.

So, the collection and intelligent use of data is what makes Mitingu and you special.

Zero to hero #2

Last month we promised you a bare all monthly post about our journey as a start up and how we've targeted £20k a month by March 2016. I'll be honest, right now that seems a big number, but we've always aimed big.

October 2015 saw us invoice circa £1500 so you can see that we have some real hard work ahead of us! The good news is that we picked up a new white label account and had six new pay as you go accounts. I know Eventbrite won't be quaking in their boots just yet, but give us a chance!

As I previously mentioned, all three partners of Mitingu have day jobs to pay for everyday life and to invest in Mitingu so our talented development team are well looked after and get rewarded for their amazing work. That does present a bit of a challenge because it means the hours we put into our business comes after a full days graft at someone else's. The only thing I have to say about that is that it's a whole lot easier when you're as passionate about Mitingu as we are and have great belief in it as a product. Also having an understanding family and friends helps enormously. They put up with seeing less of us during this time, their support,  encouragement and faith in Mitingu is invaluable. 

 

What we tried last month and what the results were like

Networking

Last month, we went to our first ever networking event. I have to say that it was surprisingly good! We made some really useful contacts and it was an education listening to how different people adopt different angles on promoting their business. The upshot of it was that we are now talking to an event management agency who are interested in the white label platform for a number of their corporate clients. We'll definitely be doing that again! 

Emails

We haven't got out as many as we'd like. The results we get from emails are generally really good, so we know it's a channel that's worth pursuing. To make us stick to it I will set a minimum target of 100 (we prefer to research and target rather than buy lists) personalised emails sent out by the middle of December 2015.

We have a number of active prospects from previous email sends, so we know it is worth doing.

Face to face meetings

These are my personal favourite, but right now we are limited to early morning/evenings. The good news nowadays, with dynamic and flexible working becoming more and more accepted as business are seeing the benefits of allowing staff flexibility in structuring their working week, is that we are still managing to get out and meet people.

Face to face meetings give us the chance to properly engage and build rapport with prospective or existing clients. I've always enjoyed business development so that's probably why it's my favourite method of engaging with clients. It's always much easier to gauge the level of interest and when a decision will be made from meeting them in person.

Online demos

We've had some interest from the US and Canada this month, so the only tenable way of demoing Mitingu is via the web. It's a great way of showcasing our product, but does have limitations as it's a bit tricky sometimes to gauge interest if you're not sitting in the same room.

That said, we'll persevere with them as we have won business from online demos in the past and I'm sure if we fine tune our approach, we'll win lots more.

Social media and blog posts

We go for the quality and not quantity approach mainly as we've not had as much time as we'd like to devote to Twitter and LinkedIn in particular.  The posts and tweets we have put out there have been well received and it's definitely something we will continue as it obviously helps to get our name out there and shows we have real passion for the events industry, marketing and start ups.

The most important thing is for us to stay passionate, enthusiastic and together as a team. We meet and talk regularly which helps us stay connected and keep on track. We are ready to take Mitingu to the events industry and know that we can make a positive impact.

Our message to any other start ups or in fact anyone at all reading this is to keep the faith and never give up!

Charge for add-ons at your events

We realise building a great event registration and comms platform isn't about what we think are great features, the most important opinions come from our current and prospective users.

You talk and we most definitely listen.

We've had a number of requests to be able to charge for extras at an event at the same time as registering to attend. Some examples of this include accommodation, gala dinners, breakout seminars and merchandise. We wanted to separate this from the actual registration cost, so we came up with the idea of allowing the organiser to set up a question in the registration form that could have a price attached to it. If selected by the attendee, then that price (including tax if applicable) would be added at the checkout stage.

We wanted to do it this way as it avoids having a long list of registration options to cover all the different permutations if things like gala dinners and break out seminars are part of the event.

Contact us anytime if you'd like us to talk you through this or any other feature. You can also find out more here.

We hope you like it. There's more exciting enhancements and integrations coming soon.

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.