Alon Alroy is the co-founder & CMO of Bizzabo, the world’s first Event Experience OS for hybrid, virtual and in-person events. Bizzabo is helping marketers and event organizers from world-leading brands to promote, manage and maximize their professional events, and to create memorable and impactful experiences. Over the years, Alroy has built Bizzabo’s go-to-market teams from the ground up, including its sales, marketing, strategy and customer-service teams. He was recognized as a “40 Under 40 Young Leader” by Collaborate Magazine, “100 Most Influential People in the Event Industry” by Eventex, and “40 Under 40 Event Industry Leaders” by BizBash. For more information, visit Bizzabo.com.

In-person events are gaining momentum once more. From January to September 2022 alone, Bizzabo saw a 724% increase in the number of in-person events held on its Event Experience OS. According to Bizzabo’s recent “State of In-Person Events” survey, nearly all (98%) of the 200+ event organizers surveyed said they hosted at least one in-person event this year. More than 80% of organizers held at least three in-person events in 2022 and plan at least three more in 2023.

Events transformed during the pandemic as event experience leaders used new technologies to nurture connections and create impactful experiences for attendees, speakers and sponsors. Those pivots to virtual and hybrid experiences revealed the crucial role of event data in creating personalized experiences while supporting business outcomes.

As we welcome a new era of events, event professionals can maximize business impact and create exceptional attendee experiences by taking advantage of the rich data in-person events provide.

Activate Your Data to Bridge the Gap

The most significant challenge event organizers face is what is called the Event Impact Gap. It’s the chasm between organizers’ aspirations to deliver impactful experiences and the limits imposed by their event technology. Data can solve this challenge, bridging the gap between expectation and reality in your event planning and execution. In-person events hold enormous data potential, offering your events team a powerful opportunity to understand and cater to your target audiences. With the right event technology, in-person event data gives unparalleled insight into audience behavior and interests, including the most appealing and engaging content, peers, sessions and exhibitors. These insights enable your team to better understand how attendees connect to your brand and thus inform your future event strategy.

The right event management software not only collects meaningful data but, more importantly, empowers organizers to activate data to offer exceptional event experiences. When you can access and act on data insights in real time, you can change the outcome of an event as it unfolds, maximizing its potential and offering attendees a better experience in the moment.

Measure Event Success

According to Bizzabo’s recent survey, 7 in 10 event organizers reported their event budgets increased or remained the same in the past year. As economic uncertainties persist, event professionals will need to demonstrate their event strategy’s business value. Actionable data insights equip organizers to assess event success against key metrics and better communicate event value. You may be tempted to ask your team to measure everything immediately. Take a step back, and establish your event goals before identifying the best metrics to measure progress.

Some common event goals include:

• Increasing registrations
• Driving brand awareness
• Offering better experiences for attendees, vendors, sponsors and staff
• Boosting sponsorship revenue
• Improving networking opportunities
• Educating the audience
• Growing revenue
• Generating pipeline
• Increasing ROE (return on event).

With your goals in mind, choose three to five critical metrics to track. Survey respondents cited attendance, engagement, pipeline, overall satisfaction and registration as priorities. For example, if your team wants to drive registrations, consider monitoring: event site click-through rates (CTRs); page bounce rates and form fill rates; marketing email open rates and CTRs; and social media clicks, shares and form fills.

Experiment With Event Messaging

The right tools enable your team to experiment with every aspect of event orchestration, starting with event messaging. Use A/B testing to identify which message versions your audience finds most engaging. By refining your email marketing efforts based on the data, you’ll improve the likelihood of converting prospects into registrants — and attendees. Take the same approach with your event website. Site engagement tools, such as heat mapping, show how site visitors interact with your messaging.

Consider these questions as you assess site engagement: Does site activity indicate a preference for certain call-to-action phrasing, e.g., save a spot vs. register? Do visitors view the agenda or gravitate toward speakers? Do visitors play on-demand videos from past events?

Personalize Registration to Gain Insights

Better data activation enables your team to offer attendees a more personalized experience, helping you satisfy rising attendee expectations. Don’t limit your personalization efforts to the event itself. Collecting useful data during the registration process powers personalization leading up to the event and throughout your follow-up efforts.

Offer attendees conditional questions that create a choose-your-own-adventure registration path. Responses lead attendees to the ticket type and sessions that best suit their event goals, and you’ll learn more about attendees’ motivation for attending, learning styles, topics of interest and networking objectives.

Registration also offers an opportunity to show attendees your commitment to prioritizing their needs during an event. Ask attendees to share their name pronunciation, pronouns and accessibility requirements. Provide examples of accommodations, but also offer open-ended responses to account for needs your team might not have previously anticipated.

Optimize Your Event in Real Time

Data gives event experience leaders the insights they need to experiment before, during and after an event and pivot. Imagine this: Your team deploys a poll as morning sessions end on the first day of your event. Collecting audience feedback on those initial sessions allows you to act quickly, adjusting upcoming programming to meet attendee needs.

The resurgence of in-person events has led some event organizers to incorporate advanced strategies such as wearable technology. High-tech badges, wristbands and other wearables offer attendees a novel way to interact while capturing essential behavioral data for organizers to facilitate touchless contact exchanges during networking, seamless session check-in reminders and tracking, lead capture for sponsors, novel event engagement and gamification.

Wearable technology adds an additional engagement layer for attendees while enhancing your team’s ability to capture and act on data.

How do you combine the behavioral and engagement data you collect to extend the value of your event past the closing remarks? You need technology that helps you use data instantly and easily to create effective post-event outreach.

In addition to quantitative data — such as most popular content downloads and most-attended sessions — capture qualitative insights through post-event surveys. When you know which sessions an attendee liked, the content they downloaded, and the networking connections they made, you can personalize post-event content and communications to enrich the attendee experience and maximize your event’s impact.

Attendee expectations continue to evolve in this new world of in-person events. To satisfy audience needs and support business outcomes, event experience leaders must use data as a strategic advantage. The true value of your data comes from your ability to use its insights to provide the best possible event experience — from experimenting in real time to measuring event success to personalizing content for better engagement. When you leverage event data to inform event decisions before, during and after an event, data becomes the hardest-working member of your events team. C&IT