levi_hb - Meetings.Health

Different Ways to Measure Event Success

by levi_hb | Oct 17, 2019 | Meetings Industry

Success can sometimes be a matter of perspective. An event that fails to generate immediate cash returns could seem like a failure from a sales perspective, but if it generates a ton of targeted leads, it may be a smashing success from the marketing team’s point of view. The point is that there are different ways to measure success.

When it comes to hosting meetings and events, it’s imperative that you find meaningful ways to measure success, not only so you can justify planning future events, but so you can find ways to improve on every experience, fueling future successes. A reputable and experienced global event company like American Meetings, Inc. (AMI) can help you to pinpoint and track the metrics that matter to you.

How do you know what facets of your event to track so you can compile a gauge of your ultimate success?

Here are several different ways to approach the process of calculating the success of your meeting or event.

Cash Money

Cash is king – there’s simply no denying the appeal of profit. Some events are geared toward selling, through ticket sales, prod

Uct/service sales, or both, and in such cases, tracking profits is a major measure of relative success.

However, if you’re spending more money than you’re making, you’re going to have to work harder to find ways to label your event a success. This is why it’s so important to work with your event management company to track other aspects of your event, as well. Not every meeting or conference has profit as the top priority.

You may be looking to expand brand awareness with media coverage and social sharing, or you might want to generate leads. However, if you want to prove success where your many goals are concerned, it is essential to find ways to track progress, especially if you don’t expect to break even from event registration, the sale of products or services during the event, and so on. Regardless, you definitely need to track profits.

Event Registration

How many people are signing up to attend your event? If it’s an annual event, did you see more people clamoring to register than in years past, or has attendance dropped for some reason? Are you opening more spots for additional attendees? Do you have a ballpark figure

for the number of guests that would constitute a successful outcome? Are you tracking customers versus professionals like industry and media attendees?

Whether this is your first time hosting an event or your meeting or conference has happened annually for the last 20 years, the number of people showing up matters, as does the makeup of the crowd, including returning patrons versus new leads. Gathering data about numbers and categories of attendees could help you to determine whether you and your event company have successfully reached certain goals.

Event Company Tabulations of Customer Satisfaction

Here’s a question you should ask after every event: did the attendees enjoy it? If guests don’t enjoy themselves, they’re not only unlikely to attend future events, but they certainly won’t act as brand ambassadors and generate new recruits. How can you even gauge customer satisfaction as a measure of success? There are several ways.

You could monitor social media and see what event attendees are posting to gauge relative satisfaction. For more direct measurement, you can create surveys with targeted questions and the option for guests to make suggestions. Your event management company could even supply facial recognition technology, posting cameras throughout your event to assess facial expressions and chart positive versus ambivalent or negative emotions.

Says Florencia Meindl, Meeting Manager at AMI, “It doesn’t really matter how many people register or how much money you make if attendees don’t enjoy the event. In order to create a platform for future success, you need to impress attendees so they talk you up on social media and create a level of FOMO that ensures greater demand to attend your next event.”

Event Management Tracking of Media Coverage

Not all meetings and events are open to the public or the media, but if you’re looking for coverage and sharing, you and your event company definitely need to track your presence in both traditional and social media channels. You should track press coverage across channels (print, radio, TV, and online) and pay attention to what people are saying on social media, as well, including the stance of content and the number of likes and shares.

An expert in modern event management like AMI can help you to find the metrics that matter most to you and find the most effective and efficient ways to track them in order to measure event success and improve in the future.

American Meetings Network Prime Member: Sonesta Fort Lauderdale Beach

by levi_hb | Oct 14, 2019 | The American Meetings Network

Meet our Prime Supplier: Sonesta Fort Lauderdale Beach

Our Prime Supplier Member Sonesta Fort Lauderdale Beach joined The American Meetings Network and they are already seeing the benefits by meeting 1:1 with AMI’s Meeting Planners and Sourcing Managers at Global Procurement Day.

About Sonesta Fort Lauderdale: Laid-back sophistication just steps from the beach.

The sun. The surf. The soft, sandy beach—all just steps away from the laid-back sophistication of Sonesta Fort Lauderdale hotel. With sweeping beach-side views, unforgettable service and winner of the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence—it’s clear why we’re a preferred destination for Fort Lauderdale hotels.

Find stylish, newly renovated accommodations and a haven of relaxation and warmth the moment you arrive. Walk along miles of warm, white sands. Lounge on the sundeck by our newly renovated outdoor pool. Bask in the ocean breeze and dine on delicious cuisine at Steelpan, a Caribbean-American fusion kitchen and bar, serving up a menu influenced by the multicultural island flavors of South Florida. Or step outside for shopping, entertainment, food and art all within reach.

6 Ways to Make Your Event All About Your Attendees

by levi_hb | Oct 10, 2019 | In-Person Meetings

When planning a meeting, conference, or other corporate event, it’s easy to get caught up in the message you want to convey, the atmosphere you want to create, and the return on investment you want to secure. As a result, you could end up making your event all about you, instead of focusing on what attendees will get from the experience. When you do this, you might create an expensive spectacle that fails to impress your target demographic and tanks your industry credibility.

Says Lauren Turner, Associate Account Manager at AMI, “A good conference organizer or event planner knows that failing to focus on the attendee experience can lead to disastrous results. Ultimately, these are the people you need to impress if you want your event to be successful.”

How can you ensure that your event is tailored to the wants and needs of attendees? How can you create a unique and engaging experience that elicits praise and makes attendees want to return for subsequent events? Here are several ways to make your event all about your attendees and ensure an entirely positive response.

Find the right conference organizer

When you partner with a reputable and experienced global meeting services organization like American Meetings, Inc. (AMI), you’ll get a lot more than just strategic planning and logistical services. You’ll gain access to a certified meeting planner/event expert offering a wealth of knowledge and experience that ensures you have the resources and guidance to make your attendees feel valued and catered to.

Understand your community

Before you ever start brainstorming logistics with your conference organizer, you need to take the time to consider who is attending your meeting or event. What does this community value as a whole? What do they hope to gain from attending your event specifically? How can you work to provide them with the convenience and value that will elicit positive reactions and compel them to return for future events? Answering these questions is the first step toward planning an event that revolves around your attendees.

Personalize communications

Event attendees want to feel like their community is well-represented, but each guest is also an individual, and doesn’t want to be treated like just another cog in the machine. The good news is that there are simple ways to make your event more personal and provide opportunities for guests to personalize their experience further.

For starters, you’ll find that it’s relatively easy to personalize communications, delivering generic information in a personal way electronically. Collecting pertinent information during the registration process can help you here. You can also create opportunities for attendees to personalize their own experience by setting up hashtags and encouraging users to post pics, videos, and comments from the event.

You could have your conference organizer set up photo ops throughout the event or even add photo booths that send pics to the cloud for easy digital access and reposting on social media. There are even easy, interactive apps like Gifyyy that create short videos and upload them to the cloud. Personalizing your event allows you to reach individual attendees, and innovative ideas can result not only in greater participation and enjoyment by guests, but also increased sharing that benefits your brand and your event.

Have your certified meeting planner vet speakers

Speakers can make or break your event, so it’s important to choose the right ones. You naturally want to impart relevant and timely information, and you need industry authorities to add credence to the proceedings. However, you also need an element of entertainment to keep guests riveted. Don’t choose a guest speaker simply because he has a new bestseller or she’s a household name. Pick the speakers that are going to connect with your attendees and enhance their experience on multiple levels.

Up the ante on technology

Technology is an essential component of any modern event, and your certified meeting planner can help you to select the equipment and applications that are going to make your event run smoothly and create an engaging and interactive experience for attendees. For example, certain technologies can add convenience by expediting registration and check-in.

The right technology can increase your ability to track user movement, activity, and participation at your event. It can create interactive and immersive experiences that wow guests and encourage sharing. In other words, you must carefully consider how you integrate technologies.

Go to the source

Your certified meeting planner from AMI is not going to abandon you after your conference or event is over. Surveys and follow-ups designed to understand the attendee experience will give you clues as to how to improve future events. With help from the experts at AMI, you can focus on attendees and craft successful events every time.

American Meetings Network Prime Member: Limo Corp Worldwide

by levi_hb | Oct 7, 2019 | The American Meetings Network

Meet our Prime Supplier: Limo Corp Worldwide

Our Prime Supplier Member Limo Corp Worldwide joined The American Meetings Network and they are already seeing the benefits by meeting 1:1 with AMI’s Meeting Planners and Sourcing Managers at Global Procurement Day.

About Limo Corp Worldwide

We value the opportunity to provide our customers with a memorable experience, which allows us the opportunity to earn their future business. We strive always to plan, communicate and execute at the highest levels in order to reach this goal, which is vital to the success of the company.

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Snapchat vs. Instagram: Which is Right for Your Event?

by levi_hb | Oct 3, 2019 | Technology

There are so many social apps that could create opportunities for event attendees to connect with each other and share their experiences via dedicated event accounts. It can be difficult to decide which ones are going to best suit your brand, your event, your goals, and of course, your audience. After all, you don’t want to spread yourself too thin and divide your efforts by providing too many options for attendees to choose from.

Says Annie Fernandez, Director of Marketing at AMI, “Utilizing Facebook is pretty much a given, and many companies still incorporate Twitter, as well. If you want to add another trending platform, you might find yourself torn between Snapchat and Instagram. Adding an image-sharing forum, especially one that encourages creativity and personalization, is a great way to facilitate engagement and allow attendees to contribute in social and experiential ways.”

Really, though, you might have some trouble telling the difference between the two photo-sharing platforms these days. Snapchat had a novel idea when they started thanks to photos that self-delete, generating near-instantaneous FOMO. To compete, Instagram, already a powerhouse in its own right has seized upon some of Snapchat’s desirable features and developed its own version.

Is Snapchat nearing expiration, or does it still have something to offer? Does Instagram do it best, or have their efforts to clone Snapchat’s successes fallen short? Which one is better for your event and your audience? Here are a few things you’ll want to discuss with corporate event planning companies before you decide.

What’s the Skinny on Snapchat?

Snapchat’s 16 million daily active users are nothing to sniff at, especially since they tend to fall into the tech-savvy and socially influential millennial group (the majority of users are in the 12-24 age range). This can be a difficult group to engage at events, but connecting is made easier with an app they already use and enjoy, especially since the average user is engaged 25-30 minutes per day. This means you have ample opportunity to increase visibility and connection with users.

Of course, Snapchat isn’t just for youngsters. It turns out more than half of new users are 25 and older, which could mean this social app is simply catching on later with a more mature audience.

What features recommend Snapchat? The photo deletion feature may not be particularly appealing for brands that want their content in front of users as long as possible, but the fleeting nature of the content means users are likely to look at it sooner rather than later for fear of missing out, and this can work to your advantage if you string out narratives through pictures and videos via Snapchat Stories. You and your event management services team can also create geofilters unique to your location and your event, creating further exclusivity and FOMO.

Corporate Event Planning Companies Like Insta Gratification

There’s no denying Instagram has the upper hand in this race with exponentially more users, numbering 500 million. The average age of users is slightly higher at 19-29, which means for the most part, they’re old enough to attend your events. However, only about 20% of those users are in the U.S. – not necessarily a problem if you cater to an international audience.

If you and your event management services team are interested in opting for Instagram, there’s a lot to love, starting with the fact that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, allows for cross-posting, so that you can post pics to Instagram and Facebook simultaneously. This time-saving bonus is great for harried hosts and corporate event planning companies.

Instagram also blatantly snaked the stories feature from Snapchat and made it their own with Instagram Stories, where photos and videos can be posted for 24 hours (with no option for likes or comments, unlike other Instagram posts). Geofilters aren’t available, but geotagging is, and this can make your posts easier for a target audience to find.

Of course, the thing that really pushes Instagram over the top is hashtags, which make content more shareable and searchable. The use of trending and event-specific hashtags can expand your reach and increase engagement.

Ask Event Management Services Pros Which Platform Suits Your Event

Experienced corporate event planning companies can help you to determine whether Snapchat or Instagram is better suited to your upcoming event by considering your audience and what you hope to accomplish. Even better, these event management services professionals have the know-how and connections to help you implement effective marketing and engagement strategies on your social platform of choice.

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