Connected cocktails and slick soirees
Anyone that's ever organised an event for their company knows just how much hard work is involved. As well as finalising a guest list, hiring a venue, and arranging transport, there are a lot of 'added extras' that can't be forgotten. The right entertainment, signage, and promotional materials can make a huge difference when it comes to the overall success of your event.
In our opinion, professional events often suffer from a lot of waste and clutter. Does each guest or delegate really need their own leaflet about your event, and yet another promotional pen? We believe that employing connected tech, rather than traditional marketing collateral, can save businesses money, as well as being more engaging and environmentally friendly.
If you're struggling for inspiration, here are our top five ways businesses can use connected tech to make their events even better.
Invitations
Rather than sending out uninspiring paper invitations, why not use connected tech to pique your guests' interest?
Consider using an NFC enabled object that your guests must tap with their smartphone to reveal the details of the event. Get creative, and make this something useful or fun, like some cool stationery or a box of donuts. You could even make your business cards connectable - when you hand them out, tell people to tap them to find out more about your upcoming event. A business card certainly requires less paper than a poster or invitation, and chances are you'd print them anyway.
If you're not sending out invitations, but you want to raise awareness of your event, you can use connected tech to do this too. Consider creating NFC or QR tech posters about your event that people can scan for more info, or to RSVP. Even better, you could set up a Bluetooth Beacon at your venue, and ping a message about your event to anyone relevant that walks past.
Donations and payments
If you're organising an event on behalf of a non-profit organisation, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to donate to your good cause. People simply don't carry cash as much as they used to, so you might find your donation tin a bit emptier than you'd like. Tackle this by using connected tech to enable mobile donations. You could make a charity bucket tappable, or use QR or NFC tech to make it easy to connect to your online donation platform.
For businesses selling a product or service at their event, connected technology can help with that too. Allow customers to tap an item to add it to an online orders basket or wish list. For more detailed or bespoke products, you could even add a connectable tag, to allow customers to read more about the item on their smartphone.
Activities
Don't assume that getting people to attend your event is enough - you need to keep them engaged and entertained once they're there.
Connected tech provides the perfect opportunity to create some slick, interactive activities that your guests will remember. If your delegates have lanyards or name badges, consider making these tappable. We recently worked with an organisation that used this idea to encourage guests to network - anyone who tapped the lanyard of every stall holder was entered into a raffle to win a prize.
We also partnered with an event that used the Thyngs connected tech to create a treasure hunt. Tapping a sign revealed a clue on your smartphone about where to find the next piece of treasure.
Click here to read our blog post about it.
Exhibitions and stands
If your business is hosting a stall at a conference or exhibition, try using connected tech to distribute information rather than printed leaflets or flyers.
Incorporate NFC or QR tech in event signage, and include a clear call-to-action so visitors know how to use their smartphones to interact with it. If your venue is notoriously difficult to find, you could even use this tech to help people arrive to the right place.
Promotional goodies and offers
Anyone who's ever attended a conference or exhibition probably came away with one of those canvas bags loaded with leaflets, pencils, and maybe some sticky notes. Apart from one or two interesting tidbits, most of it just gets dumped in the recycling bin.
Rather than wasting all that paper, we think exhibitors should be using connected tech to seamlessly distribute any offers, leaflets, and vouchers to conference delegates. You could use Bluetooth Beacons to send it out to everyone as they leave, or QR or NFC to allow users to only download the offers and info they're actually interested in.
We think connected tech can be applied to promotional freebies, too. Why give your delegates a static tote bag, when you could give them a bag with a QR code on, and a bit of tantalising messaging? Anyone that scans that code out of curiosity will be redirected to your event's website.
Exciting events
As you can see, there are loads of ways connected tech and objects can be used to make events slicker and more successful.
Most of the examples used in this article have already been implemented by event organisers, and the rest look set to be introduced in the not-too-distant future. It's an exciting time, and we can't wait to see what happens next.
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