7 Proven Ways a Mobile App Can Drive Engagement at Your Next Event

With distractions all around us and attention spans shorter than ever, it’s never been harder to make a lasting impression on your event attendees. The challenge is arguably even greater for virtual and hybrid events, in which it’s necessary to go the extra mile to engage your target audience.

That’s why mobile event apps have become essential for driving networking and engagement between in-person and remote attendees. The right mobile event app provides a way to bridge the gap between virtual and in-person attendees and keep everyone informed, engaged, and networked.

Here are seven proven ways an all-in-one event and networking app can help you:

1. Inform your Audience with Push Notifications

One of the main reasons for attendees to download your event app is to keep informed, so it stands to reason that push notifications play an important role. These real-time alerts are ideal for targeting the right people with the right information at precisely the right time. For example, an attendee might receive a notification if they have a new connection request from another attendee, or if you send them a reminder about an upcoming seminar or session. You can also use push notifications to promote your sponsors, gather feedback via polls and surveys, or even used proximity-based messaging in the case of in-person events.

2. Collect Valuable Feedback with Polls & Surveys

Customers love to have the opportunity to share their opinions and experiences. Your event attendees are no exception. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with web-based chat, polls, and surveys, a mobile event app offers a more convenient and accessible solution, especially for those who are attending in-person. After all, they’re the attendees who probably won’t be sitting in front of a computer screen. Polls and surveys can be effective at every stage of the event marketing process before, during, and after the event. They offer proven ways to boost participation as well. You can even use live polls and chat to allow attendees to provide real-time feedback to presenters during the event itself.

3. Connect People with AI-powered Networking

Regardless of whether they’re attending remotely or in-person, most people join events for networking opportunities. To that end, a networking app works rather like a social network by giving attendees the means to connect with one another. AI-powered networking takes things to the next level, however, by emulating human thinking to collect, process, and match all the individual interests and goals of your attendees. This makes it enormously valuable for larger events, where it might otherwise be easy for people to get lost in the crowd. It’s also a great way to bring both remote and in-person attendees together and deliver a consolidated and consistent experience.

4. Build Relationships with Attendee Messaging

A live chat solution can radically transform hybrid events for the better by simplifying planning and management. Whether it’s to give both your remote and in-person attendees the chance to get to know each other, deliver customer support, acquire and nurture leads, or simply get feedback, having a 1:1 messaging service is highly beneficial. Instant messaging also makes it easy to share contact data, which is also a great way for sponsors and exhibitors to collect qualified leads that they can follow up with later. This allows you to nurture relationships with your attendees long after the event itself. Add the ability to create chat groups to accommodate specific interests and activities, and you can greatly improve engagement rates across remote and in-person event formats.

5. Maximize the Impact of Your Event Sponsors

A key priority for event organizers is offering compelling sponsorship opportunities. The more you can offer your sponsors, the more likely they’ll be to return for future events, not to mention put you in touch with other valuable contacts. An all-in-one event app makes your events more appealing to sponsors for all the reasons we’ve mentioned above, while also giving you new opportunities to increase the reach and impact of your sponsors. For example, you might offer banner ads and sponsored posts to help your sponsors boost their visibility. Especially in the era of remote and hybrid events, where sponsors often find it harder to get noticed, having an event app that can also serve the needs of your sponsors and exhibitors is a great selling point to have on your side.

6. Boost Engagement with Gamification Tactics

Boosting engagement rates is a top priority for any event planning or marketing team, but it’s rarely easy when there are so many digital distractions to get in the way of things. Event gamification, often implemented via a mobile app, applies the addictive and competitive nature of games in non-game contexts. Gamification includes core mechanics, such as the ability to collect points, reach new levels, earn ranks or badges, participate in challenges, and compare progress with others via leaderboards. For example, actions like registering early for an event, completing a survey, or visiting exhibitions, might reward points which, in turn, lead to higher levels and rewards. That might sound superficial, but the way such concepts recognize and validate user actions is exactly why so many people enjoy games. An event gamification app might go even further by powering engaging scavenger hunts and other physical or virtual activities.

7. Enable Easy Contact Tracing and Access Control

A mobile event app can also improve the comfort and safety of your in-person attendees with seamless integration with self-service check-in kiosks and onsite badge-printing systems. For example, an attendee might display a QR code on their mobile app to access a venue. Since all such interactions are recorded, and geotagging can be used to track attendees as they move around the venue, it’s also possible to instantly trace contacts. This should help alleviate some of the concerns that persist following the height of the coronavirus pandemic, especially if certain restrictions and contact-tracing requirements end up being reintroduced.

Stova’s mobile event app provides a one-stop-shop for all your attendees and presenters to meet, network, and plan their events. Request your free demo today to see it in action.