Event Technology Delivers ROI
In today's economy, companies and organizations are re-evaluating their systems and processes with a new level of scrutiny. Rapid ROI is a key factor in decision-making and online registration, and eMarketing tools deliver it immediately.
Revenue Generation Through Better Attendance
Improved Response Rates
Jupiter Communications estimates that paper campaigns typically get a 1-2% response rate, while email campaigns get a 5-15% rate. Cvent's system allows you to send professional and custom branded emails.
Targeted Messaging
Easily personalize your email communications by sending different messages to different segments of your audience, such as clients, sponsors, prospects, and VIPs. You can schedule specific email delivery times for each segment based on when they are most likely to open it. Furthermore, utilize over 40 mail merge fields including name, title, and company, so your recipients receive emails that are specifically targeted to them. Response rates for a personalized approach are 50% more successful than a one-size-fits-all strategy.
No more bulk, impersonal emails!
Mobile Friendly = Registration Friendly
With over one billion mobile devices in use, it's likely that many of your potential attendees will access your event registration page from their smartphone. Cvent's event management platform allows planners to create a clean, simple registration site that is compatible with any web-connected device. This increases the likelihood that your attendees will finish the headache-free registration process and actually attend your event.
Reminders Increase Attendance and Reduce Attrition
Reminders are the best way to make sure your attendees get to the actual event. You can set the Cvent system to automatically send a reminder invitation every X number of days until those "undecided" give you a "yes" or “no” response. Our customers typically see a spike in registration in the days following an invitation reminder by as much as 100%.
Not only can you send automatic reminders to those who didn't register, Cvent can generate abandoned registration reports, so you can send reminders to people who began the registration process, but failed to complete it.
Monetizing the No's
This concept is very important when it comes to increasing future attendance rates. Does your current technology allow you to capture information from those who say "no" right from the email invitation? The goal of a marketer is to convert a “no” to a "yes." Here are some examples of what you can find out when you ask why not:
Why are they saying "no?" Cost, location, speaker, etc.
Do you want more information on my product?
Cvent calls this “monetizing the no's.” By finding out the reason someone declined, you can either maintain contact with those who are interested but have a scheduling conflict or make changes to your event in the future to win over those who gave a specific reason why they weren't interested in attending. We do this for our own product seminars when someone can't attend but is still "interested in receiving more information on the Cvent product." As a result, we get 33% more leads than if we only counted those who actually registered for the event.
Viral Marketing
By empowering your attendees to market for you, you will increase the number of attendees at your event. For example, if you have 1,000 mid-size business contacts to invite to a luncheon seminar, you might have 10% of those invitees input three other colleagues' names in the "tell a colleague" feature. That means an additional 300 invitees would be exposed to the luncheon seminar.
That's a 30% bigger marketing footprint than you would otherwise have had. Cvent customers report 10% - 50% higher attendance due to viral marketing, averaging about 20% more attendees. Moreover, you get to keep the names and email addresses of those additional invitees inputted into the "tell a colleague" area, which means that you are continually growing your database of potential invitees. Our customers have grown their databases 40% annually as a result of the "tell a colleague" feature.
Use Surveys to Deliver Better Events
By using Cvent's pre-registration survey functionality, you can organize better events. Through the survey, you can find out what your attendees want. You can market like crazy, but you must have a good event for them to come back. Use pre-registration questions to deliver a better event by giving them what they want rather than just guessing what content will be relevant.
Reduced Costs and Increased Productivity
Save Money
The cost savings from online campaigns vs. traditional print marketing campaigns are tremendous. You can send email for literal pennies per email, whereas print collateral can cost several dollars to produce and deliver.
Register Hundreds in Minutes
With the Cvent system, you can set-up and launch a campaign in minutes with a single tool, whereas with direct mail or fax campaigns it could take days or even weeks to set up and launch. That time savings means increased productivity for you and your team and allows you to focus on delivering better events.
Create New Revenue Opportunities through Partnerships and Sponsors
Generate New Revenue Opportunities
With Cvent, you have a built-in email marketing platform to generate new revenue streams. If your organization is hosting an event, you may want to bring in partners to offset costs, to get additional revenue for yourself, or to increase the potential attendee pool. All of this is made easy through the Cvent system.
Drive Value to Sponsors with Surveys
You can use survey questions in the event registration process to drive leads to your sponsors. For example, for an additional fee from a partner or sponsor, you could survey your invitees to determine if any of them are interested in receiving information about a new program your partner or sponsor is developing. Typically, sponsors get their name everywhere and introduce speakers with no real lead generation.
If you use the pre-registration questions for your 1,000 person conference, imagine 10% answered, "Yes, we want more information on xxx's products and services." That is 100 real leads that you have now supplied to your sponsor - much better than business cards picked up at a networking event. Your sponsors now have a demonstrable value because of these leads.
Selling "Electronic Real Estate" on the Invitation
Your organization can also increase revenue by selling space on the electronic graphical invitation. Event planners can often secure four or five-figure sponsorship deals in exchange for featuring sponsor logos on invitations and other attendee communications. Being able to quantify exactly how many people will see your logo increases your ability to do this.
Strategic Insight - Reporting and Data Analysis
Cvent offers advanced reporting and data analysis functions that help you track and understand your events. With Cvent, you can easily keep track of those who have accepted, declined, or not responded to an invitation and target them accordingly. You can also do cross-event analysis at the click of a button to understand which events are getting better response rates and what factors might be driving your results.
Use the e-commerce reporting functionality to easily track online payments and outstanding balances. Through a single interface, you can evaluate your event's success with up to the minute analysis or aggregate data across events to gain insight on trends.
Double Your Invite List
By working with a partner, you have the potential to double your invitee list and therefore increase new sales opportunities for your organization. If you are a hotel, you may want to partner with an airline as you have the same target market: travelers. With Cvent it's easy to add lists from your partner or sponsor's database to your invite list.
The Mobile Effect
CrowdCompass by Cvent builds event mobile apps for all types of corporate events, conferences, meetings, conventions, and trade shows. With the prevalence of mobile usage, these event apps have the potential to generate significant ROI.
Save on Printing Costs
Using a CrowdCompass mobile event app allows you to put all your event's content in the palm of your attendees' hands instead of in bulky, hardcopy packets. You can include schedules, maps, and detailed information about local attractions, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors in your app. This eliminates the need to spend money printing and shipping costly programs, brochures, and information packets.
Increase Sponsorship Opportunities
Mobile event apps provide you with an opportunity to create new sponsorship revenue streams. Not only can you sell banner advertisements to sponsors, CrowdCompass can generate reports for your sponsors detailing click-through rates and page views. This data provides sponsors with tangible reasons to keep renewing or increasing their sponsorship. Successful numbers can also be used to court new sponsors.
Enhance the Attendee Experience
Mobile event apps elevate the attendee experience. Apps provide attendees with an experience marked by relevancy, instant access, convenience, and connectivity. Attendees can engage with your event before, during, and after by simply tapping a few buttons on their mobile device. As a planner, you're able to connect with your attendees by sending push notifications, updating content in real-time and providing them with opportunities to use social media to promote your event and interact with other attendees. Mobile apps are becoming an essential part of successful events. If you want to create a buzzworthy event that keeps attendees coming back year after year, make it memorable with the latest in mobile technology.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that Cvent is designed to improve your event planning operation by increasing attendance and streamlining the labor-intensive process of executing events. By using the techniques herein, you will see immediate results to both your top and bottom lines. In an age where all departments are under the gun to show real benefits and ROI, Cvent gives you the tools you need to not only achieve these goals but also demonstrate them to senior management.
