Words matter. If you’ve ever done any kind of marketing, you know that. And even as a consumer, you know that. Certain phrases just compel you to make a purchase. So how can you tap into some of that psychology when “selling” your organization’s membership? Below are a few words and phrases you may want to consider utilizing:

In terms of disseminating information onsite at your organization’s conference, how are you currently doing it? Do you give people printed handouts and booklets when they check in at registration? Do you have a conference app where those materials are housed, but also have printed versions onsite? Do you rely exclusively on a conference app, cutting out printed materials altogether?

While I generally recommend that planners look holistically at an event to see where video can play the most effective role, there's one spot where video makes sense most of the time: at the end of the event. Specifically, that general session where you bid everyone goodbye and good luck—and want to charge them up with excitement one last time, in a way that burns an overarching message into their memory.

The motto “there are no bad questions” does not apply to surveys. There is definitely a right and wrong way to ask attendees for feedback. The wrong way can confuse and annoy attendees — and ultimately lead to them giving up on your survey. It can also affect the accuracy of the answers you get. If you’re getting biased answers — and making critical changes to your events as a result — it could seriously undermine the success of your future events.

Earlier this month I noticed a Twitter thread started by an Australian professor organizing a scientific conference and crowdsourcing ideas from conference attendees in the scientific community. His tweet, “What’s the most effective idea you’ve heard of or accessed at scientific conferences to support parents with kids attending?” resulted in a lengthy thread with some great suggestions.

“Our departments are too siloed.”

“I don’t understand how my role makes an impact.”

“There isn’t enough transparency!”

Sound familiar? It can get easy to become so focused on our initiatives that we put our head down and barrel through - especially when times are busy and resources are limited. That said, this approach often leads to an unnecessary disconnect among staff.

With nearly 170 people arrested in connection with sex-trafficking activity around the recent Super Bowl in Atlanta, the FBI emphasized in the days after the game that the issue extends far beyond the premier annual sporting event in America. "Trafficking is not a problem just during large-scale events," the bureau said in a release. "It is a 365-day-a-year problem in communities across the country."

Let's be honest, event planning is a stressful job. At any given time there are a number of jobs that need to get done and it can seem like every deadline comes right down to the wire. The 18 tips in this blog post will help you save time during the event planning process and ensure your next event is wildly successful. Let's dive right in.

You followed all the steps: Before the event, you communicated digitally, created a clever hashtag, and started a buzz around your event. Once on site, you used engaging technology to track attendee behavior, got real-time feedback, and kept your content fresh with real-time social walls that sparked conversation. Every tech tool was a hit! So now what?

It’s easy to get into an afternoon/end-of-day slump. But how you end your day can have a great impact on how you begin your tomorrow. Obviously, you want your work days to be as productive as possible, so to make that more of a daily reality, try ending each day by completing the following six tasks:

Experiential marketing as a business is experiencing explosive growth. But with that growth comes added scrutiny. For brand-side marketers charged with partnering with experiential agencies to deliver breakthrough experiences for attendees, that means issuing more RFPs, more often, with more attention to the bottom line. But as the cultural landscape evolves, so does the search for the perfect agency partner. New priorities, such as inclusion and diversity, have surfaced. And the demand for standout creative has never been higher. Straight from the trenches at Salesforce, Accel, Facebook and Stripe, here’s how some of the industry’s most active event departments are reprioritizing their RFP processes.

Who wouldn’t want to come to a free event? Lots of people, it turns out. You build, they RSVP — but they don’t come. Even the most successful events have no-shows. Things come up; people can’t make it. But for free events, there’s no financial consequence to skipping the event. So free events tend to see much higher dropout rates — up to 50%, according to a survey of free event creators.

Unproductive business meetings cost companies an estimated $541 billion in lost productivity and employee time, according to the 2019 State of Meetings Report from the meeting scheduling platform Doodle. Forbes  reports that this figure does not include additional spending on things like travel expenses involved in sending employees to meetings. Such costs could be significant, since the US Travel Association estimates that American companies spend $154 billion annually on business travel.

Blockchain ticketing is set to change the way event professionals sell tickets works for good. Yet the meaning of blockchain for the event industry is still obscure. The buzzword around it and poor coverage from industry media is making event professionals even more confused. So what is blockchain? Why will blockchain ticketing have an impact on the way we sell tickets? Most of all... Why should you bother and what’s in it for you, event planners? We are bringing the answers to your most burning questions about the use of blockchain in ticketing and events.

You’ve set up the Facebook event page, you’re regularly tweeting and you’re posting about your event on Instagram. You might think you’ve covered all your bases. But you’re missing an important piece: an event website. It might seem difficult and unnecessary, but websites are still key for promoting an event and drawing in attendees. Taking the time to create one can be daunting, but plenty of host sites are making it easier than ever to create a site quickly and in a straightforward, clean manner.

In a world where more and more meeting attendees are addicted to their phones, used to the excitement of virtual reality, and have an ever-shrinking attention span, associations face a significant challenge as they design their in-person events: How to find learning formats that will drive learning and, as a result, ensure attendee value.

Organizational complexity is strangling innovation, productivity and engagement. It is fogging people’s ability to proactively focus our time and energy on the top strategic priorities. We get sucked into low value, reactive busy work, which contributes to ordinary performance. But we, individually, are also responsible for allowing complexity to drive constant distraction, low focus and low energy. We live highly cluttered lives, have become addicted to checking our phones, are too responsive to interruptions and do not nurture, protect and direct our most productive energy.

Planning your company’s trade show for the first time can be overwhelming, but successful planning and execution can yield rewarding results. The most important thing to remember is that a trade show goes beyond selling your product or service. It’s about people; the connection between the people staffing your booth and the people visiting your booth. It may be helpful to remember the 4 E’s as you embark on your first trade show planning and execution: educate, engage, empathize, and evolve. The 4 E’s are based on the research stated in the CEIR Industry Insights Series article titled It’s Not Your Father’s or Mother’s Trade Show Anymore – Engage with Caution.

The Bangkok Manifesto started as a series of workshops with SITE’s international board of directors, trustees of the SITE Foundation and a cohort of global experts in the field of incentive travel, facilitated by Martin Sirk, former executive director of ICCA. The final 10 statements of The Bangkok Manifesto were then crowdsourced with the full conference assembly using Slido, the online, audience engagement platform.

At last month’s Davos, one of the most eye-opening events for participants was an activity that literally kept them in the dark. The Sensory Dinner in the Dark experience took place in an unlit restaurant where participants were lead to their seats and served a meal they could not see. The diners were dependent on the wait staff to reach their tables and find silverware and food, and the waiters were remarkably adept at navigating the environment and serving in the dark. At the end of the meal, the lights were turned on and diners discovered that the wait staff that they had depended on so completely were people with visual impairments, showing that competency is not limited to the non-disabled.

On January 24, the Events Industry Council, comprising more than 30 member organizations within the meetings and events business, unveiled four principles designed to guide and motivate event organizers worldwide to embrace and implement sustainable practices in their work. These principles can be found on a new page within the Sustainability section of EIC's web site. 

Two news stories this week gave a conflicting vision of the use of AI robots as hotel staff. A Reuters’ story on Alibaba Future Hotel Management’s FlyZoo hotel in Hangzhou, China, describes sleek little robots delivering towels and cocktails, which, according to the story, Alibaba claims cuts labor costs and eliminates the need for guests to interact with people.

Benchmarking with similar companies is a valuable way to gather data on strategic meetings management best practices. I know many meeting managers who have developed strong relationships with their peers over the years. Their candid sharing provides them with new ideas and quick wins for program improvements. Additionally, benchmarking will help you understand how your program compares to that of your competition, which provides is powerful information for C-level executives. Below are six tips for your benchmarking journey.

Remember that glorious 2017 music festival in the Bahamas that garnered headlines for its excellent planning, exceptional execution and gorgeous attendees? Fyre Festival was all the rage, until it was supposed to happen and attendees found themselves stranded on an island with no infrastructure, F&B easily surpassed by your average soup kitchen, leftover FEMA tents for housing and, well, no festival.