Tech tools for promoting meetings abound—it's just a matter of finding and utilizing them.
By her own admission, Julie Ford Musselman will never rank among the techno-geek elite. "I've never thought of myself as any kind of technical genius—just the opposite, really," she says. But Musselman, meeting planner for the Georgia Governor's Tourism Conference, is hardly a tech greenhorn. "I decided a couple of years ago that, ready or not, all this new technology was coming that could help me professionally, and that I would plow forward and try to figure it out."
Musselman has found herself surprised by both the plethora of new tools and solutions at her disposal—from e-blasts and social networking to cell phone-generated evaluation forms—and the learning curve needed to master them. "Frankly, once you get into it, it's not that daunting," she says. Rather, taking advantage of these cool new products and programs can prove particularly helpful, saving on time, money, energy, and, in an increasingly green meetings world, the environment. It's simply a matter of knowing what's out there and how it can best work for you.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
From a planner's perspective, using technology as a promotional tool makes sense on a variety of levels, from daily nuts-and-bolts items to those last-minute, ever-thorny communication issues. While cell phones, BlackBerry devices, and iPhones have been ubiquitous among rank-and-file attendees for some time now, the challenge for planners is figuring out how to creatively synergize those gadgets and all their uses with the right programs for more effective end results.
"More planners than ever are taking advantage of the information highway and its efficiencies to make their job easier," says Tom Anderson, manager of conferences and events for Point B Inc. in San Diego. Anderson manages a trio of tech-related shows that are promoted in large part by e-mail, websites, and webinars, which he touts as a handy networking tool and a warm-up for eventual in-person meetings.
In the past year, Eloqua, a software marketing company in Vienna, VA, has taken the webinar idea a step further, using San Francisco-based ON24 Inc. to conduct a series of 20-minute, virtual mini-meetings for potential clients as a lead-up to their first-ever user conference. "The platform was bullet-proof, so we didn't have to worry about technology and could simply focus on content," says Steve Gershik, Eloqua's former vice president of marketing innovation.
The results were more than Gershik had hoped for, as Eloqua's May 2008 meeting drew 4,440 participants. "It was remarkable how much of what we presented to them on-line actually drove attendance to the face-to-face meeting," he says. "It was like online dating: You get some info first, talk online a little, and then meet face-to-face."
In fact, social networking tools—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and MySpace, notable among them—have rapidly evolved into business vehicles as well. "These sites are easy to get organized on and don't cost a lot of money, so planners may want to leverage them for promotional purposes," says Rob Everton, creative technology director for Cramer, a digital marketing and event solutions company based in Norwood, MA. It's relatively easy, he says, to get a group started online as a means to build better, more targeted client relationships.
Once established, planners can then use virtual connections as a jumping-off point to promote face-to-face meetings, adding PDA and cell phone text into the messenger mix. In the process, the community (i.e., attendees) helps drive interest at an event as it's unfolding.
"I went to an event recently where I could use Twinkle's Locate Me application on my iPhone, which allows you to ID your Twitter friends who are nearby or, at the very least, have arrived and checked in at the show," says Everton. People posted Tweets about the event and created hash tags (little codes within their posts) to help others find information. That communication drew in fence-sitters who might otherwise have blown off the meeting entirely. "It demonstrates how last minute attrition can be lowered by luring attendees who've first checked things out online," says Everton.
Groups can also eschew their own wireless gadgets in favor of meeting-specific devices that deliver the works in one attendee-friendly device.
Chicago-based Spotme Inc. packs a lot into its compact wireless handheld products, from messaging and social networking to audience response, lead retrieval, attendance tracking, and electronic feedback, for up to 5,000 users per day.
Point B's Anderson has explored using nTAG, a similar all-in-one product, for his conferences. nTAG was purchased in March by Austin, TX-based Alliance Tech. "It looks and operates like an electronic name badge, with seminar room attendance sensors and automatic evaluation forms," he says. Attendees can use the nTAG device, for viewing their personal agenda, audience response, and exchanging business cards electronically with other attendees. After the conference, the attendees just turn their nTAG device back in.
PARTNERSHIPS HELP
Planners aren't alone in their pursuit of promotional technology, of course, as a number of industry suppliers are joining forces with technology developers to boost their own meetings business.
Cruise veteran Landry & Kling is set to roll out SeaSite.com shortly. The site is an online cruise marketplace for global meetings and incentive travel designed, in part, for internal marketing. "You're not just promoting this cruise meeting to your attendees; before you even get to them, you need to promote it to your bosses," says CEO Jo Kling. The appeal is in the details, she says, culled from some 70 lines and hundreds of ships, right down to room-by-room floor plans and A/V charts.
Earlier this year, the Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau debuted Meetings2GO, a mobile meeting software program designed for real-time text programming in cell phones and PDAs. "It's all permission-based and allows planners to connect with their attendees via their phone," says vice president of sales and marketing Barbara Dozier. "Planners can time their messages and prepare them in advance for when they want them to go out." The CVB can also insert a city guide with vendor coupons and special offers into the program.
Like nTAG and Spotme, Meetings2GO opens the door to the meeting's supplier side, along with a host of sponsorship opportunities. "It can bring incremental income for the group running the meeting; exhibitors can have their logo on the list, not just their name," says Franci Edgerly, president and CEO of ITI Marketing, the software program's Georgia-based manufacturer.
GREENER PASTURES
nTAG, Meetings2GO, and Spotme can also cut down on production costs by virtue of going virtual. That brings us back to Musselman, who used Meetings2GO last September for her Governor's Tourism Conference. Her biggest challenge: communicating with attendees and vendors in multiple locations.
"Honestly, I didn't know how it would work, but a broad spectrum of attendees signed up for the program and it turned out great," she says. Musselman composed text messages prior to each day's events, and then segmented their distribution by hotel. "I could text people staying at the Hampton Inn a reminder that their bus was leaving in 15 minutes or that a sponsor was hosting a last-minute hospitality suite later that day and say, 'please stop by and we'll arrange return transportation for you,' " she says.
And then there was the environmental footprint she didn't leave behind. "We didn't print out much, but instead posted a lot online, including the whole agenda, right there on their phones, and people really liked that," she says.
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