Louisa Daley, deputy editor, Conference News, explores how technology and AI can help organisers get to know their audience.
When it comes to events, there is a common misconception that you can only know your audience once they walk through the show doors or fill out that all important post-event survey.
However, this narrative is changing thanks to the evolving technological landscape. AI and technology are creating new opportunities for organisers pre-event, by providing them with the ability to gain valuable insights about their audience.
I spoke to Bruce Rose, head of audience, Live Group; Margaret Launzel-Pennes, CEO, Pop Experiential; and Fab Giovanetti, CEO, Alt Marketing, to find out why organisers are audience mapping and how it is revolutionising event experiences for the better.
Starting from scratch
“AI and technology are really shaking things up in a fun way for organisers. It can help organisers get a head start in understanding who’s coming to their event, before it even begins,” says Giovanetti.
Across the board, event professionals define audience mapping as a process of creating ‘profiles’ of possible attendees, based on demographic, behavioral and psychographic traits, with the help of technology. “By segmenting your attendees, it helps you customise your event to suit their tastes,” adds Giovanetti. From arranging the speaker line-up and session topics, to deciding how you push out your event marketing, everything can be designed with the audience in mind.
“The content is almost crowd sourced. The kind of content that we are giving them, is the content they are asking for.” echoes Launzel-Pennes. In doing so, the content that organisers deliver on-site can “really resonate” with audiences, which in turn “boosts engagement and interaction during the event,” as Giovanetti explains.
Using age demographic as an example, Launzel-Pennes points out how Gen-Z attendees engage in a unique way. “They want a seat at the table and their voice to be heard, therefore, a traditional keynote wouldn’t work. Additionally, they may be listening to a keynote, but they might also be multi-tasking on their mobile devices. If we want to evolve as an industry, we must know who the customer is, what they expect and how they want to engage during the entire event lifecycle.”
The attendees, Rose tells me, are open to participating in audience mapping, now more than ever. He explains: “We use AudienceDNA, which is not strictly an AI tool, but it is very much a tool curated to map audience demographics.
“It’s proven very successful, we know this because we have used it for multiple events and those events have better outcomes and higher engagement rates.
“What’s most interesting to me is that the people that were willing to complete AudienceDNA was initially around about 50%, which is still quite high number, has now increased to 75%.” This suggests that the modern-event goer is now prioritising personalisation, and wants experiences built for them – not around them.
The most important thing to remember when doing this, is to handle their data carefully. “You don’t need to know someone’s life story, just gather the data that will genuinely help improve the event. Always make sure you have explicit consent from the attendees and be upfront about what you’re collecting and why,” adds Giovanetti.
Audience mapping isn’t just beneficial for attendees, as Giovanetti reminds us. “With a clearer picture of who’s attending, you can offer valuable insights to sponsors and exhibitors on how to make their contributions more targeted and impactful,” she adds.
The human touch
With this in mind, it’s reassuring that anyone can learn how to map their audience, and organisers do not need to be ‘tech savvy.’ “Technology has become quite democratised now. You don’t need a computer science degree in order to really get to grips with it,” says Rose.
Although audience mapping technology is useful and can be used by anyone, the event professionals agree that there is a danger of solely relying on it and taking what it says at face value.
“I wholeheartedly believe we need humans to add the nuances to make each event a success. While tech offers some amazing benefits for audience mapping, it’s crucial to blend it with human insight to get a well-rounded view of your audience. While technology can give you valuable data, it might miss out on the emotional and behavioral nuances that you’d get from direct human interaction,” warns Giovanetti. After all, our industry thrives off human connection – and no one is better versed in facilitating this than event professionals.
“What you get out of AI is only possible because of human brilliance. The human is guiding the ship, AI is just a powerful toolset. It’s only as accurate as the information you put in. That said, it is a lot of fun to engage with,” says Launzel-Pennes.
“We have created an event called AUTONOMOUSXP, which is entirely driven by AI. It is an experiment to see just how far AI can go. It has created audience personas, built the content framework, identified speakers and so on. The more we use it, we find, the more it gets to know us – and the output gets better and better.”
There’s also the danger of potentially excluding audience members. Rose explained: “There can be two issues with audience profiling with AI: the first is that these systems by their very nature, are black boxes. We don’t understand how they think, we just ask the question and it gives an answer. If you’re given an answer that is incorrect, you can quickly find yourself in a trap.”
“The second issue is that technology is really good at telling you ‘what’, but not ‘why’. You cannot loose that human aspect that makes events ‘events’.”
For instance, Rose says the technology has the inability to deal with ‘outliers’. “You may receive a suggestion that says 5% of your audience is neurodiverse, so don’t invite them. Which is an opinion a human wouldn’t have. You don’t know how that technology is coming at the answer and therefore it may exclude people, which is not acceptable from an ethical standpoint.”
The bigger picture
There is no point, however, audience mapping without an ‘end game’ in sight. “You should only use audience mapping technology if you know your long-term outcomes before you start doing it,” advises Rose.
“For a lot of events, organisers run events every year to build a community. At Live Group, we run a lot of registration sites and we have people that come to multiple events within our database. So, when Bob from Event A registers for Event B, we can say, ‘we have your AudienceDNA data, would you like to merge it across?’ This helps your audience member enter your event far better prepared.” After all, there is a key difference of an attendee who is returning to your event, versus, one who is attending for the first time.
“Use the insights to inform future events. If you know certain topics of formats really hit the mark, bring them back or expand on them for upcoming events,” adds Giovanetti.
To close our discussion, I asked the event professionals what the future holds for audience mapping. Rose said: “I don’t know whether audience mapping technology will become the norm, only because the events industry can be very slow to adapt to new technology and new approaches.”
Giovanetti offered a counter view: “I believe utilising tech for audience mapping will become the norm, if it isn’t already. It’s not just about making life easier for organisers; it’s about maximising value for attendees and sponsors alike, making each event more engaging and impactful than the last.”
Overall, the event professionals agreed that because the technology is moving so fast, organisers must use it now, to avoid getting left behind – even if it is just experimenting with smaller, internal events. One thing is for certain, events in 2024 and beyond may need to map the audience, if organisers truly want their attendees to feel like they matter.
