As an event organizer, you know that the event planning industry is introduced to new trends every year. These trends raise the expectations of event attendees which is why it’s important to stay up to date with them. Thinking ahead is integral to planning successful events.
A clear understanding of event planning trends combined with your past experience in the event planning industry enables you to design events that deliver value to your event attendees. In this article, we’ll look at some of the top event planning trends for 2019 and share some actionable tips to help you get started with a step in the right direction.
#1: Passive Attendee Engagement Through Technology
Passive engagement involves engaging event attendees in different activities without their active participation. Instead of expecting attendees to learn and use technology to find important information, implement techniques that engage attendees without their active involvement.
The vast amount of information shared during a several hours long event puts a lot of pressure on your attendees. Making it easy for attendees to passively engage with your event will significantly improve their event experience and save them from information overload.
You can use different tools and techniques to reduce active attendee engagement. For example, mobile apps and chatbots enable you to share information and gather feedback from your attendees with little action required from them.
In addition to this, RFID badges and NFC wristbands allow you to passively engage attendees without their active involvement. For example, you can use RFID badges to facilitate cashless payments at the door or store health-related information. Noodle Live provides RFID and NFC smart badges and touchpoints that you can use in your events, including:
• Session Check In. You’re able to collect data about attendees by tracking session attendance. You can use this data to better manage individual room capacity for your conferences.
• Content Collect. You can share content with attendees that will be delivered to their inboxes when they swipe their smart badge.
• Personalized Information. Displaying your attendees’ details on screens can help you deliver a more personalized event experience.
• Feedback Collection. You can use smart badges to gather feedback with Noodle Live’s on-screen surveys.
#2: Engaging, Purposeful Content Design
Event attendees want content that is purposeful and engaging.
People attend events with specific goals in mind. They invest their time with your event to be entertained, network with industry peers and thought leaders, and learn from the speakers. Your event’s content should be designed to help people understand how they will benefit from attending your event..
Every stage of your event should progress like an engaging story and conclude with a purposeful ending. It’s important that your event attendees are able to envision the outcome of each stage of your event.
To cater to the different end goals of your event attendees, you might consider offering multiple types of tickets or registration options. This is an easy way to create and deliver engaging, purposeful content design.
For example, you might offer a student ticket for curious learners granting them access to keynotes, a networking ticket for those looking to network with industry peers, and a meet and greet ticket for attendees who might want to meet with your speakers. Offering various ticket options allows you to increase your prospective attendee net by providing flexible options that can meet the various needs of all types of individuals and budgets.
The WordPress plugin, Event Espresso, lets you create as many different types of event tickets as you need for your events. You can set ticket prices, set quantity limits, let prospective attendees know when tickets will go on sale, and much more.
#3: Seating That Empowers Attendees
As an event organizer, you need to be mindful of your attendees’ unique needs. Is your event wheelchair accessible? Will the seating be comfortable for all types of individuals? If not, do you have different chairs that you can provide speakers and attendees upon request?
It’s a good idea to inform speakers about the stage lighting and furniture ahead of time. This way, you can make any necessary adjustments to your event’s stage well before the event.
#4: Opportunities to Unplug and Recharge
Events can sometimes become a high-pressure environment where information overload causes people to experience burnout.
In a typical event, loads of information and resources are shared in a relatively short amount of time. A constant flow of information and participation will slow them down well before they’re able to fully experience your event.
To help them re-energize, focus on setting up dedicated, no-noise areas with no WiFi connectivity, comfortable seating, and snacks. Your attendees will thank you for giving them time to unplug from the event so they can relax and recharge.
#5: Enhanced Event Security
Event attendees share all sorts of personal data with you starting from when they register for your event. As such, they expect you to protect their data and safeguard their privacy.
With cybersecurity breaches on the rise, your attendees’ personal information is always at risk. For this reason, keeping your clients’ data secure must be your top priority in 2019.
To implement data security, start by vetting your software vendors to ensure their compliance with data protection regulations. In addition to this, you might consider checking your event venue to make sure they have measures in place to protect you in case of a security breach.
Open source event management software, like Event Espresso, gives you complete control over your event and attendee data, unlike hosted solutions that store the data you collect on their own servers.
#6: Slow Ticketing to Maximize Profits
We hear about events that were incredibly successful because their tickets quickly sold out within a week, two weeks, or a month. But that’s rarely the whole story.
Savvy event organizers don’t focus on selling out their events but rather on making more money off of each event. One way they’re able to do this is by charging more money by offering greater value to attendees.
This slow ticketing strategy rewards dedicated event-goers or fans by giving them special access to VIP areas, finding opportunities to upsell limited edition merchandise, and other tactics to increase the revenue generated on each ticket.
To implement this trend in your event planning, you might consider creating different pricing tiers for different customers. You might offer discounts and amenities to people who’ve attended previous events. Event Smart is an event ticketing platform powered by WordPress that lets you generate a list of attendees and track attendance at your events. You can use this list to offer tickets to repeat attendees at a discounted price for future events.
#7: Increased Marketing Involvement in Event Planning
Marketing professionals are becoming increasingly involved in the event planning industry. With companies shifting their marketing budgets towards events, event planners will be sharing event organization and planning with marketing professionals.
To make the most of this opportunity, take a step back to think strategically. Consider what the marketing team’s goals are and how you can help them achieve their goals. Learning marketing and networking skills might help you improve your sponsorship packages.
#8: Gathering Data for Crowdshaping
Metrics play a crucial role in creating great events. Gathering data directly from attendees through the use of RFID or iBeacons helps you better understand their requirements. The shift in event trends this year will be more about how this data is collected.
Gathering data helps you do crowd shaping – the process of monitoring and meeting attendees’ demands in real-time. Using RFID badges, you can collect all sorts of data about which aspects of your event were most successful, which stalls were least visited, and gather metrics such as dwell times and engagement. This data can be used to improve your event’s experience in real-time.
To implement in your event planning strategy, you can use AI [Artificial Intelligence] processing tools to give you information about your attendees’ behavior and interaction with your event in real-time. For example, the popular automobile maker Nissan used geolocation functionality to provide information about specific vehicles as attendees approached them at their auto show.
Conclusion
In 2019, the technological evolution and corresponding shift in attendee expectations will redefine how you plan and organize events. Understanding how this shift can affect your event planning business will help you succeed in an industry that is built on change.
And, if you’re able to capitalize on these trends, each one presents opportunities to maximize revenue and deliver more value to your event’s attendees.
What new trends have you observed in the event planning industry? We’d love to hear from you so let us know by commenting below!
