Lead Liaison

5 Creative Solutions for Event Organizers

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5 Creative Solutions for Event Organizers

Exhibitor Media Group reports that in 2023 companies expect to exhibit at an average of 47.2 in-person events per year (6% more than in 2019).

As trade shows and marketing events start to fill up the calendar, event organizers need creative solutions to bring in more attendees and drive value to sponsors and other stakeholders. In this article we outline five solutions for event organizers to bring life to their events. 

Scavenger Hunts

The classic scavenger hunt, or treasure hunt, was historically run using a piece of paper and stamps. Attendees would visit booths or prime destinations in an effort to complete their card. It’s sort of like playing a lottery ticket or bingo. Tick off all the squares and you win! In an age where digital dominates, organizers have an opportunity to move a scavenger hunt experience from physical to digital, while going green at the same time. Solutions exist that leverage QR codes as the destinations while attendees load a progress report that tells them what stops they’ve completed and where they need to go next. This is an excellent way for event organizers to drive traffic to key areas, exhibitors, or sponsors – getting them to do what you want them to do. Event organizers can also monetize each stop thereby creating additional revenue streams for their event. 

Two Truths and a Lie

This event experience encourages attendees to network with each other. I’ve been to many events in my career. Although the events industry is rather “clicky”, it never fails that I’m walking around the show floor introducing myself to people. Sometimes it feels awkward as people are almost suspicious of “nice guys”. Why should it be that way? Event organizers can give attendees a reason to connect with one another . Two truths and a Lie is one of the best ways to do that. Prior to the event attendees answer three questions about themselves, with two answers being truthful and one answer being a lie. Event organizers can program how the experience works, and whether one attendee needs to guess the truth or the lie of another attendee. If they get the correct answer the attendee earns points and a chance to be atop the leaderboard.

Speed Networking

We’ve all seen the popularity of dating websites grow over the past decade. The concept is great. Match people up, have them go on a date, and if there’s a good match then the rest is history. These concepts can also be applied to business through speed networking to help event organizers. Solutions exist where groups of people can join “rooms”, which might be dedicated to common interests. Attendees meet in the room at a specific time and are matched with another person where they have a time limit to network. Once the networking session is over, the attendees are matched to another person. This is a great opportunity to connect buyers and sellers together, like-minded buyers together, attendees with common interests, and more. 

Digital Activations

Exhibitors spend lots of time and money hauling in giant spin the wheels, whack a moles, or Plinko to their live event hoping the aid acts like a minno to hungry fish, attracting attendees in swarms. Event organizers have enough to worry about and can’t spend the time bringing in physical activations. Instead, solutions exist for digital activations that can be run on tablets. Event organizers can brand digital activations, sell sponsorships, and use them to deliver a message or preview content. When attendees engage with the digital activations they earn points. Points accumulate over the course of the event as attendees vie for a spot on the top of the event leaderboard. Attendees can be incentivized to participate if prizes are awarded for people that finish in the top X position on the leaderboard. 

Session Surveys

Event organizers often offer educational sessions at their event. Although, most organizers miss out on the opportunity to collect data, feedback, and further engage attendees with the use of surveys or polls. Surveys or polls can be displayed using a branded QR code at the beginning or end of a session – or even somewhere in between. Attendees can scan the QR code with their smartphone to take the quiz/poll. Data is aggregated for event organizers to use and provide feedback to the speaker while improving the experience for the following year. When attendees participate they can earn points and get a spot on the leaderboard – encouraging them to participate at deeper levels. 

We hope these five creative solutions for event organizers give you some ideas for your next event! Contact Lead liaison at www.Leadliaison.com if you’d like our help in providing any of these five solutions. We can help!

Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

Lead Liaison

Using Email to Get the Most of Your Events

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Using Email to Get the Most of Your Events

We have all been there. Your company has spent tens of thousands on your booth, staff presence, and extramentals.

How can you make sure you get the most of it?

Email.

From start to finish, Email can be the easiest to use, and also the best tool in your arsenal.

How, you ask? Let’s go into the details…

Pre-show

Many shows provide, either for purchase or as part of your registration, a list of attendees. Use this list to send out pre-show emails inviting people to a special experience or intentional meeting at your booth. If the show provider doesn’t provide such a list and you have been to the show previously, you can pick out previous attendees linked to that event in your database who are likely to return to the show based on previous years’ attendance.

If you’re running a contest or incentive to visit your booth experience, detail it in your pre-show email. It’s also a good idea to offer calendar scheduling for people to arrange time to meet with you.

Offer PDF documents teasing incentives, special offers, or explanations of your unique products and solutions to build interest. Pre-show email is your first touch, and provides a gateway to building interest. Be sure to include your booth number and a simple map or illustration so people can easily find you. This can even include downloading a show floor map indicating your location to make your booth easier to find.

During the Show 

People will often request documentation about your products or solutions. Why burden them with paper they might lose or damage when you can offer digital content that they will receive right away in their inbox for them to preview at their convenience? This has a secondary effect of reminding them about the topic of your conversation, which can be handy as they speak with dozens of exhibitors throughout the day.

When to send such an email varies and is up to your professional discretion. Sending the email right away when prospects are still on the show floor indicates that you deliver what you promise while it is still fresh on their minds, but this approach may also result in reduced open rates since it is unlikely they will see the email until they get back to their hotel room, or return from the event to sort through – and delete unwanted emails. Our suggestion is to include follow up email timing as a key question that you ask when discussing the material you will send them.

If you’re using a Universal Lead Capture platform such as Lead Liaison, you can ask them if they want the documents immediately, at the end of the day, or after the show, or any other time frame as a qualifier for sending the email. This way prospects get the documentation exactly at the time they specify.

On average, trade show attendees spend 8.3 hours visiting booths and displays…

So the courtesy of showing that you value their time can go a very long way in building relationships.

End of Show

The post-show email is likely the most important email you can send out. Personalize it with discussion recaps and send out thank you messages for spending time at your exhibit. The work week following an event is generally the best time to send post-event emails, as people will be back in the office and a simple reminder can do wonders to keep the conversation alive.

If you did not schedule meetings during the show, make sure to offer a calendar link in post show follow up. Toss out a meeting link and invite the people you met to connect again and discuss in further detail how you can help them.

On average, event attendees will tell 6 other people about their experience at the event.

If you were memorable, this is a great way to increase word of mouth marketing.

Carefully planning pre-show, during the show, and post show emails is a vital step that is guaranteed to help increase those valuable post-show conversation, and overall show ROI; and will also help with brand awareness as they see – and remember – your company’s brand and solutions.

 

Lead Liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

 

To see how Captello’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!

Lead Liaison

The Lead Analyser: Get Your Leads In Order

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The Lead Analyzer: Get Your Leads In Order

In the sales world, you have a lot to keep track of: new leads, existing leads, who needs follow-up, who still needs a touch, contracts sent, contract returned, and so much more! With multiple prospects and stages to track simultaneously, sales professionals need convenient ways to stay organized and focused on the target ahead. This is why Lead liaison has developed the new Lead Analyzer!

The primary function of the Lead Analyzer is to sort leads and keep track of sales stages from the point of lead assignment to deal closed.

Say you’ve just returned from a trade show. All of your leads are sent to the lead analyzer where they can start the journey through your sales funnel. The Lead Analyzer places leads in customizable stages. Leads travel from stage to stage based on what the sales professional deems most appropriate for follow-up.

For instance, after a recent trade show, we set these stages: Captured, Assigned, Outreach, Demo Booked, Demo Complete and Done. As we worked through qualified leads by priority (Urgent, Hot, Warm, Cold), we were able to move prospects visually through the sales funnel from stage to stage until either a demo was complete, or they completed all of the sales stages.

 

This alleviated the need for our sales team to keep track of leads on a spreadsheet, or a piece of paper! Using the Lead Analyzer, we are also able to understand what stage every lead is in at a glance, and we can quickly reassign prospects to the next stage with a simple drag and drop. From the lead analyzer, we can quickly view or play audio notes, and take actions such as:

  • Adding a note or task reminder to the prospect record in our CRM.
  • Adding prospects to automated workflows such as nurtures and rhythms or cadences.
  • Adding prospects to segments and lists.
  • Creating deals and tasks related to the lead.
  • Sending letters, emails and postcards to the prospect.

 

Another interesting use case for Lead liaison’s Lead Analyzer is to help me manage leads that haven’t come from a specific event (the best practice is to keep event leads separate so you can track ROI on each show).

I have different stages defined: First Outreach, Second Outreach, Demo Booked, First Follow-Up Post Demo, Second a Follow-Up Post Demo, Order Form Sent, and Order Form Received.

This helps in keeping my leads straight, So I can instantly see who needs an additional touch to get a demo booked, when I need to follow up post-demo, and it helps me keep track of those order forms I have sent out for a signature.

Lead Analyzer is part of Lead liaison’s Sales Enablement platform, which includes a free CRM called OneFocus. If you’d like more information about these topics, please Contact Us.

I’m sure once you experience the Lead Analyzer, you’ll figure out the best stages for your sales team. But overall, it’s going to make keeping track of where the leads are in the sales funnel much easier.

Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

Lead Liaison

Demystifying Engagement: How to Connect with Your Audience

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Demystifying Engagement: How to Connect with Your Audience

Connecting with your audience is vital to demystifying any form of engagement when it comes to event management. Liz King graced InEvent’s 360° event to shed more light on how to connect with your audience.

Liz King Caruso started her business on Twitter, but after connecting with like-minded individuals via social media, her Twitter account blossomed into a fully-fledged events business. Liz has experience in virtual and hybrid events for about ten years. Her expertise in virtual platform strategy and the monetization of virtual events is well sought after in the industry.

At InEvent’s 360° event, Liz left us with pearls of wisdom to help event planners engage audiences in a way that better serves virtual and hybrid objectives. If you missed it, you could catch her session on-demand here.

360° Key Takeaways from Liz King Caruso – Events specialist and consultant at Liz King Eventsent

Event engagement has changed significantly over the past few years. According to Liz, a good starting point is to re-imagine what in-person, virtual and hybrid events will look like in the future.

“I believe that hybrid is the future, and it is critical that we get ourselves out there and try it.”  – Liz King caruso

Sometimes hybrid events simply look like a live stream where the audience is watching remotely. There would be a great in-person event, and people are watching virtually, but the event’s main focus would always be the in-person event.

CTRL ALT DLT event in 2017

Liz King Events produced an event called CTRL ALT DLT a few years ago, where they had a virtual program and had hubs of people participating from all around the world. According to Liz, that was the closest example they had to the type of events being produced today in 2021, in 2017.

Liz reiterates that these event models have existed, and today we see that people want to interact with each other in a different way, which calls for a new way to look at the engagement at virtual and hybrid events.

While there is Zoom fatigue, there is no such thing as Netflix fatigue.

In Liz’s experience, she found that audiences are selective about what they spend their time virtually, which begs the question as to why people were getting tired of Zoom, but not of Netflix.

This is valuable insight for events planners because it suggests that event producers are doing something wrong.

“We have to be more entertaining. We have seen that people’s time attention span for anything virtual is really short unless you design a TV show. People don’t have the attention span to sit and watch educational content or to network for long periods,” says Liz.

Virtual events are great for introverts.

Whenever event planners talk about the engagement metric, they usually refer to how many people are on screen. In the beginning, event planners were asking questions like “are their videos on?” or “Are they participating in conversations?” To determine engagement, but in the last year and a half, she realized that maybe that approach is not the key to determining engagement anymore.

Different audiences

“A true hybrid event is an event with two different audiences, and they have all the perfect touchpoints.”

Liz King Caruso

 

 

Over this time, Liz has come to understand that the virtual audience and the in-person audience are two very different experiences and therefore should be treated as such, especially regarding engagement.

“When we are at a virtual event, we don’t have handshakes and hugs. The breaks are awkward because we don’t have a person to turn to on the right and introduce ourselves to. We are sitting in our home offices, and every second feels like 6 minutes”, says Liz.

With that in mind, event planners need to create two completely different engagement experiences for both audiences.

Ask yourself: To what extent do people want to connect when they are a part of two completely different audiences?

Think about the ways that you can connect your audiences to the content. Virtual event platform features like chat options, live Q&A, and upvoting questions are helpful for this purpose.

Liz suggests thinking about whether you can have your virtual attendees networking with each other in one way and your in-person attendees having a different networking experience with each other.

“I don’t think we should be that obsessed with these two audiences connecting with each other, but I do think we need to think about how those two experiences are and should be different.”

Liz King Caruso

Agenda

Does someone virtual want to attend an 8-hour day? Probably not. Event planners need to look at how we plan the agenda to be more meaningful for both audiences.

Think about how you can make the agenda about your attendees. With the TechsyTalk Global conference, most content was designed around what the attendees wanted to talk about. “We’re not even choosing topics until part of the event has started. We had a few sessions, and we asked attendees what they wanted to talk about. Then we had some breakouts where they became part of the conversation,” remarks Liz. “I think that’s critical, especially as people are getting tired of watching way too much content. Whether it’s live or pre-recorded, it’s too much content. They want to be part of that experience, so making the agenda about the attendees is really important.”

Shorter formats

Liz suggests having sessions of about 10-15 minutes long.

“People can get a ton of content in a small amount of time.”

Liz King Caruso

“Rethink the most important content for your session, make it a hitlist, and maybe do the Top 5 points. Those are always our best sessions,” says Liz. “We see even with in-person, people are there to network, they want to see each other, they want to experience all the things that they haven’t been able to experience. Content is not necessarily one of those things. They skip out on the mainstage sessions, so we may want to think about mixing up our agenda as well, to see how that works for the hybrid model.”

Production value

Better technical production is imperative, and investing in the right cameras and lighting will yield better results. “We have been talking in the events industry about TV production quality,” says Liz. “We have to be TV producers, we have to make events that flow and have an entertainment factor like survivor or whatever show that makes you wanna binge-watch, and we have been obsessed with that concept for a while now.”

Events are significantly different from TV because they are live, and they have a lot of other components.

“Access to better technology will make a big difference to your attendees when it comes to engaging them” – Liz King Caruso

Accessibility

The best way to engage our attendees is to make the event accessible so that they can attend. You can do this by offering:

  1. Translations and ASL (American Sign Language) – there are many different tools and technologies at in-person or virtual events that can make our events easier to access, especially as we have audiences worldwide.
  2. Different formats of events – people are tired of being online all the time, and with the increase of audiences on Clubhouse, there is a demand for other content formats.
  3. A 365 experience – event planners have been talking about this concept more and more over the past few months. A 365 experience allows you to share content throughout the year and keep our audiences engaged by using fresh formats like on-demand content.

American Sign Language (ASL)

 

“It’s not just about this one-time experience, but thinking about how we can build that out.”

– Liz King Caruso

 Entertainment

 

 

Offer entertainment breaks instead of coffee breaks. Try digital gamification experiences which might include virtual puzzles, trivia or jeopardy games with content relating to a presentation, company or solution, a fun game of BINGO, PacMan or Candy Crush with uniquely branded game elements to create excitement and really drive brand and message retention. “I recommend mixing that up in your agenda. Where an in-person audience will have lunch or bathroom breaks, fill that space with entertainment for virtual audiences, and that is how you will differentiate between audiences again,” suggests Liz.

Networking

People attend events for content and networking, but people want networking with the overload of content. InEvent has the new networking roulette feature for virtual audiences that allows attendees to be randomly paired with another event attendee.

But what does networking look like for an in-person audience? People want most of the event to be about connecting with other people, and we need to think about that for both audiences.

Engagement is constantly evolving, what one may understand by the word engagement may be different from another, but it comes down to really knowing your audience. Be more inventive with your event agendas. Think about the benefits for your event attendees and how you can facilitate the absolute best experience for them.

InEvent is a dynamic audio-video solution that has the ability to create, recreate and customize a variety of virtual interactions ranging from Webinars, to live broadcasts, panel discussions, summits, networking sessions, conferences, and spanning across the pharmaceutical, educational, corporate, and event tech industries.

The platform has cutting-edge mobile technology to make interactions and engagements with your attendee’s whole new levels with quizzes, gamification, interactive newsfeed questions, networking, and agenda.

Users can edit real-time videos in simultaneous collaboration without uploading files or using any external software. Its cloud-based platform will host your files and enable your access from anywhere.

Lead liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards,Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

Lead Liaison

Event Innovation: Increasing Engagement & Event Success Post-COVID

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Event Innovation: Increasing Engagement & Event Success Post-COVID

It’s 2022, we are a full two years out from the complete shut-down of our world with COVID-19. During that time, we were forced to change. The buzz words during the past few years have been “innovation” “new normal” “hybrid” “creative”. We saw the birth of virtual events, the growth of zoom meetings, the influx of Slack / chat between colleagues, and more.

Everything was digital, everything was convenient and accessible, but somehow, nobody felt truly satisfied with all this “innovation”.

Those of us in the event industry understood what was truly missing – authentic connection.
The opportunity to build relationships with a handshake, the ability to read body language by standing in proximity to each other. Put plainly – We simply missed the warmth of another soul. The good news – Excitement around face-to-face events continues to build. Booths are being rebuilt, and attendance is growing. However, what seems to be missing during this time is perhaps the best idea that was generated during the shutdown… innovation.

While forced innovation did not necessarily excite us during 2020, truly inspired innovation, organic creativity, and a fiery passion to create something new is something that is needed in today’s society. Specifically, we need this “innovation” in today’s events and seminars. Speaking with clients from around the world, we hear stories of how clients are still dragging in clunky, heavy Prize Wheels, outdated logo’d swag, flimsy paper documents, collecting business cards in a fishbowl that are easily lost, and writing down leads on a sheet of paper and waiting weeks to finally receive leads from event organizers.

Hence Lead Liaison, a solution dripping with innovation that is changing the way we all experience and execute events. Since the return of in-person events, Lead Liaison has electrified exhibit spaces and entire event floors with activity, increased collaboration and event lead capture, and excitement around attending and participating in event activities including training sessions, presentations and educational courses for those working on event credentials.

Lead Liaison true SaaS platform provides everything event professionals need, from an uber flexible premium lead capture app that gives users complete control of their forms and data to the digital activations that launch on any device anywhere making everything from scavenger hunts to self guided tours and educational gamification an instant gratification for attendees, exhibitors and organizers alike.
Bottom line – There is a better way to engage attendees and collect leads at trade shows. If you’d like to learn how LeadLiaison has been innovating the industry the past few years, we’d be glad to set up a time to speak with you. I know that the phrase “new normal” brings back tough memories, but together, as an industry, we can work to truly create a new normal that brings about positive change and provides room for continued growth.

Lead Liaison is a multifunctional event platform that provides: Universal Lead Capture, User Customizable Gamification, Marketing Automation, CRM, Lead Management, Sales Enablement, Leader Boards, Point Rewards & e-Gift Cards, Waypoints for Sessions & Scavenger Hunts, Player Profiles, and more with over 3,000 integrations for all common CRM and Marketing Automation platforms.

To see how Lead Liaison’s growing library of digital activations (games), universal lead capture, and reward-based solutions can help your company generate more leads at your trade shows, contact us today!