Inspiration Hub

Account-based marketing can be very beneficial for your overall performance, as it enhances your event strategies in times where new solutions can make the difference as the competitive landscape is constantly growing. Change and innovation are prerequisites for reaching maximum audience impact and improve ROI.

In the event industry a lot depends on creating personal connections and relationships. People buy into people so it helps to be liked by colleagues, clients and vendors you work with. Although you are judged on the quality of the events you produce, being likeable is part of the criteria too. Successfully building relationships can open an array of opportunities. Make sure you don’t have any of these 15 bad habits to avoid being disliked and improve your working partnerships.

Website optimisation is directly correlated to the importance of communicating impactful online content, but also considered as a significant challenge to factor in when designing and launching it. Creating immersive experiences through attracting and activating audiences is the most sought-after goal that event professionals are eagerly after. For securing high impact, one of the necessary steps to undertake is to ensure that potential attendees can identify and access online information about your event through its dedicated website; probably the most effective channel to promote your activities.

While event professionals undergo the challenging process of searching new ways to further engage with event attendees, companies and associations are turning their interest to creating more immersive events aiming at expanding and retaining their target audiences.  That being said, even though live events are evidently promoting/causing increased engagement among the audience -leading to additional positive results: revenue and brand impact-, having a strong digital presence with a vivid online community is equally important for your overall success. Maintaining spirited digital communication channels is fundamental for staying connected with target audiences indefinitely.

With summer in full swing, state fairs and music festivals in full force, and many of us heading to the beach, the woods, or the mountains with a good book or Pokemon Go, it is easy to check out mentally. Yet this is the most important time of the year! Why? First, you have less than five months left to achieve your 2017 goals; about five weeks left to finalize your 2018 budget; and 15 days or so to update your strategy, change out staffing, or tweak your programs before Labor Day comes, and the focus shifts to day-to-day execution.

In today’s smartphone-centric world, we expect our experience of the world to be personalized. And your events should meet that expectation. A one-size-fits-all approach to your event won’t help you stand out in this experience-driven economy. With 9 out of 10 millennials having attended at least one event in the last year, you have to craft a truly unique experience to make your event the one they remember — and come back to.

When Chris Bailey graduated from business school, he declined to take one of the full-time jobs he was offered and instead shuttered himself away from the world for a year to dig into what’s known about productivity. 

Millennial attendance of music festivals has nearly doubled in just three years. New Eventbrite research shows that 29% of millennials have attended a music festival in the last 12 months, compared to only 17% in 2014. What’s more, 29% of millennials have attended a music festival in the last year.

When it comes to gathering attendee feedback, surveys are the go to for event planners. Although surveys may seem like the most conventional option, they are vital to retaining valuable information for future event success. It is important that they capture your audience’s attention and are built so that a large number of your attendees actually complete them.

Bad behavior at airports has been making headlines: Last month, an airport worker punched a passenger — who was holding a baby — at the Nice Côte d’Azur International Airport in France. And earlier this year, after a brawl broke out at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport over flight cancellations, three people were arrested with charges including inciting a riot.Now for the good news: We found four ways that airlines and airport administrators are rising above the fray and working behind the scenes to create positive change — and these examples are just the tip of the iceberg. 

You’ve decided that investing in face-to-face marketing will achieve your brand awareness and lead generation goals, now it’s time to get down to the business of creating a plan. It’s important to not only select the right trade shows to attend, but how much to invest, your messaging, campaigns to drive traffic to the booth, a compelling design that will attract the right prospects and leads to your space, and the experience they will have in your space. These are important decisions that can make or break the success of your program, but as important as these steps are, one of your first decisions can be the most important.

Headlines about big-name data breaches are becoming more and more frequent. In 2016, a record 4.2 billion records were exposed, with more than half of these caused by hackers. If data security isn’t top of mind for your events team — it should be.

Emotional engagement has always been viewed as a top tactic in the mainstream marketing industry since we tend to use emotions rather than facts to lead ourselves towards buying a product. It makes sense then, that this information can be transferred to the MICE industry when choosing a destination or venue. When delegates remember having a positive emotional experience at an event, it is more likely they attend similar events.

No matter what your industry is, we cannot stress the importance of nailing a thoughtful thank-you note. In the association world, this can be to your volunteers, your board, your executive director, or even your members! Either way, the ultimate intention for your note should be to make it personal, authentic, and concise. We outlined the six basic steps to make writing your next thank-you note a breeze.

Can sustainability really be cool? You bet! There are cool trends in sustainable events emerging daily as our industry sees a shift to experiential gatherings. The request by attendees to be actively participating in events as a learning tool makes this a perfect opportunity to participate in green meeting initiatives as well. The heightened awareness that events should include mindfulness, wellness, and healthy options is good for the mind, body and the planet. We are all learning from each other, building on one great idea after another at an astounding rate.

It takes a certain type of person to be an event organizer. After all, not everyone can handle the fifth most stressful job in the country. So it’s no surprise that doing the job can leave its mark — in the form of strange quirks that no one outside of the events industry would ever understand. If you identify with the following, you know you’re a pro event manager.

This video will help you understand the latest addition to the new marketing mix – and how you can incorporate their power into your event. It just involves finding the right people to help spread your message!

“Reflection moments are what we are going to have at the end of every session”, said Avinash Chandarana, MCI Group’s L&D Director, when he started his presentation at the Singapore MICE Forum. Boosting memory retention is a one-way street for overcoming the challenge of attendees’ forgetfulness and according to Chandarana “it only takes five minutes of quiet time at the end to increase retention and deliver a much higher ROI for the time spent here”.

You’ve heard it before: “We’re all in sales now.” And to an extent, that’s true - especially for associations. There are a lot of things competing for your members’ and prospects’ time (and not to mention, money), so every touchpoint they have with your association(and every person they come in contact with) is an opportunity to sell - or not. That said, are all of your staff members equipped to “sell” your association’s member benefits? Are you all on the same page with what those are and how they should be positioned?

It’s practically impossible to discuss digital marketing without eventually landing on the topic of SEO, which stands for search engine optimization. This process of purposefully and intelligently structuring your website content in hopes of achieving better ranking in search engines such as Google is arguably the most important and efficient tool for effective digital marketing. After all, what good is your content if no one is able to find it?

Event apps can help you save on printing and paper costs, and eliminate environmentally unfriendly paper waste. They can also update attendees in real time about program changes, connect peers and experts, and more. But only if you can get people to download and use the darn thing!

Today’s chief marketing officers have a lot more distribution channels than they used to back in the days when print and broadcast media were the main competitors for an exhibition organizer’s marketing budget. Not only is the market changing with social and digital competitors vying for their share of marketing dollars, chief marketing officers themselves have had to develop a new way of approaching their work, said Jean Foster, vice president of marketing with the Consumer Technology Association during her keynote address at Transform USA, held in Washington, D.C., this summer.

If marketers, and more generally business people, have discovered anything over the past few years it’s that everyone wants to be unique. Some of us even want to be our own planet with orbiting satellites that are interested in our every move. We share what we eat, love, places we go, superheroes we are most like, celebrities we are most likely to date, and a host of other ridiculous things, but this egocentrism has created a new challenge for event planners.

Creating event FOMO (fear of missing out) is a great way to extend event reach beyond the localized audience. Thankfully for the event industry, Snapchat has this covered on several fronts. Almost every time Snapchat brings out a new feature, it can almost immediately be applied to events in some way that benefits the attendee or the event itself. Snapchat is continuing this trend with a new feature it is calling Crowd Surf.