How To Use 1 to 1 Appointments As a Powerful Event Engagement Strategy

In the world of event planning, you are tasked with making use of every possible strategy for engagement, and sometimes this is daunting. From initial contact through registration, the actual live event through targeted follow-up and data analysis, you are continually working to find ways to cement brand loyalty and create strong ROI.  Event engagement strategies that use 1 to 1 appointments to build a personalized experience for attendees is one of the most powerful methods in your arsenal. The actual implementation of this may look different depending on your event’s size and focus, but the principles remain the same. As you explore how to incorporate 1 to 1 appointments into your event planning strategy, here are some things to keep in mind.

Define exactly how 1 to 1 appointments can enhance your event attendees’ experience and increase your ROI. Personalized engagement needs to be more than interesting; it needs to be orchestrated to result in your desired outcome. Are you using 1 to 1 appointments to track the effectiveness of your advertising materials? To elicit enthusiasm and foster greater brand loyalty? As a way to evaluate the cost effectiveness of educational materials and presentations? To grow your customer base or refine your sales force? As a way your attendees can get their product questions answered which will result in greater conversions? By defining your strategy for 1 to 1 appointments, you increase your useful data collection and analysis, and enable direction changes when necessary.

Create anticipation during pre-event marketing efforts. Be strategic with social media chatter, email campaigns, and the event registration process in a way that highlights the opportunities for 1 to 1 appointments. Incorporate these appointments into your event scheduling software or mobile event app so attendees can make choices. By tracking interest in your 1 to 1 appointment availability, you’ll also be able to make certain you have adequate staffing, sufficient time slots, and are addressing the issues your attendees are most interested in.

Track and funnel. Successful event session management is so much larger than simply planning presentations and having an app to help attendees schedule 1 to 1 appointments. In order to be effective, each registrant needs to be strategically tagged from the beginning, tracked through each interaction during the event, then funneled into your automated followup campaign to help create conversions. By collecting data throughout the timeline, you’ll be able to measure your ROI with solid data points rather than guessing.

Consider adding virtual appointments. Depending on your event size and your target market, virtual 1 to 1 appointments may be a viable and powerful alternative. Incorporating virtual appointments into your event planning may enable you to have more experts available as well as greater appointment flexibility for attendees. Technology can certainly provide a virtual face-to-face opportunity even if participants are in different parts of the world, equally useful whether your entire event is conducted online or not.

Successful event management incorporates 1 to 1 appointments as a powerful and measurable engagement strategy. By carefully defining your goals and how you’ll measure ROI, building anticipation through multiple channels of pre-event engagement, tagging, tracking and analyzing data through lead generation and conversion, and perhaps incorporating virtual appointments, you’ll be well on your way to creating a successful event experience. Contact us today to explore how this strategy can work for your company.