04/26/2019

Daily Buzz: Event Tech and the Future of Annual Meetings

Big changes are ahead for annual conferences

As event technology continues to evolve, so will the way annual conferences function. Dave Lutz writes on the Velvet Chainsaw blog that the following event tech trends will make the biggest impact:

Big investments on increased security measures. To protect attendees’ information, meeting planners will want to work only with tech partners that prioritize data security. “What this means is that event technology solutions need to invest more heavily to ensure that they protect attendee personal data and credit card information,” he said.

More attendee behavior tracking. With the influx of data available, Lutz said to focus more on explicit behaviors, which can offer more insight. “Don’t track who is in a certain area, their dwell time, or other implied behaviors,” he said. “Instead track the exhibiting companies an attendee favorited on the app, the sessions they attended, and the handouts they downloaded.”

Less integration. “Association management systems (AMS) were never built to manage complex annual meetings and exhibits,” Lutz said. “Instead of wasting lots of money on an integration for exposition or speaker management systems, select a best-of-breed configurable solution and focus on making it easier for the customer to connect and process through single sign-on (SSO).”

The demise of lead retrieval. Although this trend might be a few years away, Lutz said the lead retrieval model  is disappearing. “Exhibits are less about lead generation and more about nurturing,” he said. “Exhibitors aren’t going to continue to shell out hundreds or thousands of dollars each to collect contact information.”

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.