Corporate events took a massive hit during COVID-19. But in 2023, they will be back with a bang, with more in-person events than ever.
But with so many invites on everyone’s calendar, how can you ensure your flagship event stands out from the competition?
The short answer is to make sure you focus on experiences in your live event. Make the day memorable for all the right reasons by making it fun and interactive for your guests. Here are some ideas to help you do that.
Try AI-Powered Personalization
Personalization is a great way to make an event memorable for your guests. And with advances in AI, making the most of personalization has never been easier. Here are some ideas for you to try:
- Offer a personalized registration facility
- Include language translation for guests at the end based on their profile
- Add personalized welcome messages when they arrive at the event
- Provide customized recommendations, e.g., talks within the event that would suit their interests
The trick to using personalization effectively is gathering plenty of data about your attendees before the big day.
So make sure you spend time putting together an easy-to-use but comprehensive registration facility to gather all the necessary information.
Use Social Media
You need to get people talking for a day to be an event experience. And what better way to start a conversation than by using social media? Here are popular methods for you to try:
- Create a dedicated social media account for the event
- Create a buzz before the event by offering a countdown on social media
- Sharing sneak peeks of what will happen that day
- Live-tweet the event and tag attendees
- Create live video streams on social media about the event
- Create a custom hashtag and get attendees to upload photos and videos of the event using that hashtag
- Run a question-and-answer session on social media before or after the event
The best thing about social media is that it’s free. So it’s an excellent way to get more signups for your event and, at the same time, make the event more of an experience for those who go.
Use Interactive Tools to Gather Feedback
If you spend months planning an event, reading negative feedback several weeks after it finishes can feel somewhat disheartening.
However, there is an alternative that will help you improve your event and make it a positive experience for attendees. And that’s by offering live, interactive feedback tools.
You can do this using a website or stand, but this involves getting attendees to answer quick questions about the event. You take this information immediately and use the feedback to tweak the event.
For example, you could use the survey to determine if the noise or temperature level is acceptable for attendees. If the answer is no, that’s a simple change you can make immediately.
Run a Competition
Competitions are fun, popular, and easy to get your attendees more engaged in the event.
If you want to run a competition, the most important rule to remember is to offer a prize that has a strong link to the event itself.
For example, if you run a wedding exhibition, you could give a free catering package to one lucky winner. That makes far more sense than offering something unrelated, like a free iPad.
Get people to sign up online so that you can gather people’s email addresses.
This makes it easier to follow up with competition entries and allows you to send more event information to those emails (providing they tick the relevant data privacy box when signing up).
Create a Dedicated Event Website
A dedicated website will help an event to feel more exciting and important than simply sticking to one basic email invite. And since it’s easy and low-cost to build a dedicated website, you shouldn’t skip this step.
Use your website to gather invites beforehand and offer itineraries and sneak peeks of what will happen on the day.
You may have guest speakers, in which case you can use the website to share content (such as videos) so that people learn a bit more about what they will see on the day.
After the event, share videos, images, and other relevant content from the day. If your event includes talks, you can also add a valuable transcript from all the presenters for that day.
Build an App
Embracing cutting-edge technology will help an event feel more exciting and more of a live experience. It offers that wow factor. So you could consider creating a basic, low-cost app that people can download and use on the actual day of the event.
There are plenty of things you can do once you have an app.
You could use it to run a competition. You could add booking functionality and share the day’s itinerary. You can also use it to add practical information such as an event map or transport details.
Include a Virtual Pre-Event
You may assume that a virtual event replaces a live event, which was often the case during the COVID-19 pandemic. But have you thought about using a virtual event in conjunction with a live event?
That’s an excellent way to make the day an exciting experience for your guests. You could use a virtual event a week before the day and run a web chat with a guest speaker.
Or you could use a virtual event to provide snippets of people’s experiences on the event day.
Virtual branded events also allow attendees to network before the day, making the event more valuable when they arrive.
Experience First Live Events
You want your live event to be the one people talk about for weeks. And to do that, you’ll need to be a bit inventive and somewhat daring in your ideas. Use this guide as your starting point.
But you might need some more inspiration, so you must get your hands on our 2023 expo tickets before you go. You can do that by heading to our booking page now.
