Event Personalization: Creating the Ultimate Event Experience

While customer-centricity is definitely not a new concept for event professionals, attendee personalization is something that is just in its infancy. In a recent Forrester report, analyst Laura Ramos identifies event personalization as one of the top ways to make events more engaging. “In this age of the customer, empowered buyers – and attendees – demand that the events that they attend deliver on their experience expectations and objectives” writes Ramos. And she’s not alone…you’ll find personalization on the list of pretty much every top trends report or blog for 2017.

With the tools and technologies marketers and planners have available to them now there is an incredible opportunity to integrate systems and provide a much more relevant event experience. One that is informed by data and engages attendees by making them feel that the event was created just for them.

This plethora of data can be used by event organizers and marketers to suggest the sessions, topics, speakers, and other events that would be meaningful for a particular attendee rather than just providing generic bullet points and leaving them to fend for themselves. This can be incredibly impactful particularly for large scale, multi-stream events where agenda selection can be overwhelming.

And event personalization can extend far beyond just session selection. The event experience can really be customized for your attendees soup to nuts. From their first invitation to their onsite experience, followed by the content and communication they receive post event, the potential for event personalization exists in every interaction.

So where do you start? Well considering that technology for events has gone from being something new for delegates to being something they expect and rely on to guide them through the event experience, start with the data you’ve been capturing through your tech tools. Buried within that technology is a treasure chest of data that can guide each interaction with them.

Below are just a few ways planners are currently personalizing events for the attendees:

• Personalized event invitations based on past behaviour and past session selections (as a past attendee….)
• Activity suggestions based on demographic data (join other Operations Managers in the Ops Lounge)
• New session suggestions based on demographic factors (new session announced for tech industry professionals)
• Activity suggestions based on food preferences (veggie dog eating contest in the lobby in 5)
• Post event content delivery (here are the session notes you’ll be most interested in)
• Long term engagement (you attended the marketing stream so thought you might like this whitepaper)
  

But event personalization is just one of the ways that you can ensure you are maximizing the impact of your events and engaging your audiences.  Feel free to add your event personalization suggestions in the comments below.

What’s Next

If improving the impact of your events is important to you be sure to read Forrester’s Increase the Payoff for B2B Events to hear more best practices for making events more contextual and engaging. Available for complimentary download on our site for a limited time.