Driving Attendee Engagement with Your Organization's Mobile Apps

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You have developed a new mobile app for your meeting attendees but how do you get those attendees to download and engage with the app and appreciate its value?  And how does event management avoid using the app in ways that will discourage use? For example, news alerts “pushed” to users by conference organizers can keep attendees informed of the latest happenings but they need to be used wisely.  The key is to respect your audience and send them only high-value notifications.

Here are a few quick tips:

Avoid Sending "Low Value" Messages

Sending alerts to your attendees such as “The General Session is starting in 10 minutes!” is a very poor use of mobile event apps and can have the effect of turning off app users. “Respect your audience and serve up only high-value notifications, directing them to helpful content. Anything less and you’re another interruption and attendees will opt-out.”

Conduct Daily Polls

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Survey your attendees and presenters about industry trends that you can distribute through daily polls on the app.  If you’ve got so many industry insiders under one roof, you might as well take advantage of the wealth of knowledge and deliver an added bonus to attendees. Plus, the information can later be used in organizational publications and meeting recaps.

Test Drive the App

Get a group of members, exhibitors, and industry sponsors to test your event app before it goes live. You can use their feedback to include or fix things you wouldn’t have otherwise thought of, and testers can help generate pre-launch buzz.

You can find the entire article by Katie Bascuas for Associations Now here.