As an event planner, you know that attendee experience is key to the success of your events. In addition to meeting business goals, your focus should be on ensuring attendees have the best experience possible. Engagement is one key indicator of attendee experience – so whether your event is an internal training or a user conference, those fully engaged attendees get more out of events than passive attendees. Incorporating technology into an event is an increasingly popular method of achieving high levels of engagement. Adding event technology, like event apps, to your event strategy encourages increased interaction and engagement among attendees, and also gives your organization additional opportunities to engage your attendees. These benefits are true for small meetings and large conferences, alike. If your events are not leveraging technology to engage, you’re missing out on opportunities to reach attendees on their favorite platform - mobile. Here are five ways to utilize technology to boost attendee engagement.

Enable attendees to customize their experience

In the past, agenda booklets featuring multiple tracks, rooms, and speakers left attendees flipping through pages on pages of their agendas to find and keep up with session times and locations. Undoubtedly, relying on highlighting or circling sessions in a large paper booklet can lead to missed sessions or distracted attendees. With a mobile app, attendees can easily select their favorite sessions and put together a custom schedule, putting themselves in control of their event experience. With a quick look at their schedule on the mobile app, attendees can check out their planned schedules and get back to focusing on the event.

Provide up to the minute information with push notifications

Whether you need to send out last minute detail changes, send an important reminder, or send a message from a sponsor; push notifications offer an easy way to engage directly with attendees. Not only do push notifications enable you instant communication with attendees, sending push notifications can boost app engagement up to 88%, according to Localytics. So, rather than relying on emails or printed materials, with push notifications, you can be sure your attendees will see your latest message and will be motivated to return to your app for more.

Gather instant feedback with polls and surveys

Attendee feedback is critical in evaluating and measuring the success of an event. With traditional methods of collecting feedback, it could be challenging to gather attendee feedback once the event ends. There is no guarantee that your attendees will open up an email or visit your event site to respond to your post-event survey once they're back to their busy lives. But what if you could collect feedback throughout the event? In-app surveys and polls let organizers collect feedback throughout the event. By utilizing live polling at the end of each session or encouraging survey responses during breaks, you’re more likely to get top of mind feedback that will be more valuable to you and your organization.

Encourage social sharing with a seamless experience

Social media is a key tool in drawing up excitement for your event –  both the current event and future events. With social media embedded right into your event app, attendees can see what others are saying about the event and share their own experiences. By integrating social into your larger event program, social conversations can happen naturally and provide valuable insights for your organization. Mobile app platforms, like Guidebook, make easy for attendees to view and post to social channels right within the app. Paired with a social media display wall, your attendees will be excited to get in on the action.

Continue engagement following the event

Today, events can (and should) live on, far beyond the physical event date with mobile apps. Make the app available following the event and encourage attendees to continue engaging by keeping a dialog going. Utilizing an event app, you can continue to engage your attendees following the event by raising discussion topics like; how are you implementing your learnings from the event? Or, what was your biggest takeaway from the event? With an ongoing dialog, you can keep your event top of mind and have attendees ready to participate in your next event. Ready to use an app for a more engaging event? To start building an app, click below!