Five Ideas To Encourage Delegate Engagement

Encouraging delegate engagement at events is critical to participation and the success of your event. Increasingly over the past couple of years event technology has improved to help meeting owners increase engagement.

The Crystal team have long championed the importance of encouraging delegate engagement. We want passive attendees to become active participants, regardless of whether they have an appropriate smartphone or Twitter account. We encourage engagement by being inclusive not exclusive.

Delegates will engage with and remember your event message and content better when they are involved and indeed when they set the pace, one reason why event formats such as Unconference and Open Space are popular.

Here are my five ideas to help you encourage delegate engagement.

1. Gamification

Many of the social sites we inhabit these days are directly influenced by gamification. You may not have even noticed. But if you are drawn to sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and many others then you are almost certainly being gamed to some extent. Likes, Follows, Endorsements, Friending, Recommendations, Connections, Badges, Stars and Unlocking Content are examples of features all designed to reward, incentivise and keep us coming back to the site to engage further.

2. Speed Networking

It maybe obvious, but networking at events continues to be one of the most highly rated reasons people attend events. But confident networking is also one skill many of us don't have well polished. So facilitated networking or networking enabled by technology will become a very popular way for delegates to get more out of meetings. The better the networking experience the better the engagement and the memory of the moment.

3. Self Select Agenda

Enable delegates to self select their own agenda, if possible, in real time. Consider enhancing this activity with 30-45 second video pitches from the presenters to inspire and promote the topic or session.

4. Discuss and Debate

Give delegates plenty of time for verbal debate and discussion to capture the key points which can then be analysed and played back by each group or in summary by the host. One smart improvement we've made to our brainstorm technology is the introduction of liking of ideas and comments for immediate, group led analysis and feedback.

5. Personalised Reports

Delegate engagement starts before and continues after the event. When using an event app it’s important that any personal content such as notes are sent out after the event. But what about the other content created? Delegates will have made contacts, sent messages and participated in voting and brainstorm activities (both personal and group). Delegates may be interested in some of the presentations or other event assets. There will be outcomes and activities both personal and shared as a result of the event; so a timely, personalised email containing all this content will help keep the event outcomes at your delegates' fingertips.

Summary

We've got the live event experience, expertise and enthusiasm to support you from concept through great project management, to delivery and beyond with our apps running on iPad minis, Airs or Own Device.

If you are interested in the latest custom event app with great advice from the delegate engagement experts contact then get in touch.