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Leslie Robertson, CEO, Open Audience, says eventprofs don’t need to break the bank when it comes to audience engagement – it’s all about partnership and collaboration.
Everything is about personalisation these days. Whether it’s about what we watch on TV, the Spotify playlists we listen to, how we buy our clothes online, or the way we travel around the world.
Add the algorithms of social media and the TV programming that serves up buffets of ‘recommended for you’, or the e-commerce platforms that can predict the colour of our next car, and it’s obvious we live in a tailor-made world of perfectly selected options – all driven by technology.
How did this happen, when as humans, we have resisted being controlled by tech for so long? How are our days curated by software and AI systems?
Back in 2021, McKinsey’s ‘Next in Personalization Report’ told us that 71% of consumers now expect personalisation when engaging with a business, and 76% said they get frustrated if they do not find it. Another survey in 2021 from Verizon called ‘The Human Connection: using technology to create a better customer experience’ confirmed that 78% of respondents considered a blended ‘technology-human’ interaction a better experience than human only approach. It’s clear that people’s perceptions of technology have changed.
There is no more human interaction than in the events industry, and no place more motivated to delivering personalised experiences. Connections, networking, information exchange and so on, is what it is all about. As industry, we are encouraged to use technology to help elevate the delegate experience and to harness the data we collect to understand our audience better.
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Unfortunately, most event companies are not massive global operations, with multi-billion-pound businesses and multi-channel marcoms campaigns, supported with bottomless budgets and highly functioning AI systems.
So how does a standard events business find the right tech and use it effectively enough to deliver a smooth, personalised, interactive event experience?
There is some incredible new tech out there, but that does not mean you instinctively know how to use it to deliver an amazing event experience. Buying a few licenses, doing some online training, and consulting with a support team living in another time zone, just isn’t good enough.
Whatever tech you do choose must be accessible, adaptable, intuitive/user-friendly, dependable and above all – secure and compliant. Of course, we are all excited when new tech breaks the surface, but installing, adapting, and using new tech systems can be a massive challenge, and is always a chunky investment in terms of time and money. It will need up-front and on-going support from experienced, skilled technology experts and a massive amount commitment to deploy it effectively and commercially.
So, what do you do if you are an event business looking to use next level technology to create that seamless, personalised, dynamic, human feel for your event engagement and/or communications? DIY can be frustrating and challenging, and someone in your team will need to be really tech savvy.
If you’re out of your depth or feeling uncertain, it’s probably best to partner with people who specialise in audience engagement technology.
I talk about the ‘Avengers Assemble’ approach, which means bringing together a talented team of event and technology superheroes who each excel in a specialist superpower – in our case, tech skills. Together, you will deliver an event experience you never dreamed was possible.
