Be a master cat wrangler at your next event

“Managing an event can feel like a cat rodeo, with huge groups of people headed every which way and different things on their minds.”

Amy Kelley, Global Digital Content Manager at GES, penned those words in her recent Corporate Event News article. And she’s 100 percent correct. 

Anyone who’s ever been involved in event management knows those moments when the attendees zig instead of zag. They register late, forget to sign up for their selected breakouts, neglect to submit room requests, stray from the premises during key sessions, ignore the vendors, etc. 

The cat rodeo is real. Yes, we love them, we can’t live without them, but the wrangling can be exhausting.

“It’s easy to become frustrated when attendees do not do what we want them to do,” she continues. “Event planners predict behaviors based on activity history, then use those projections for forecasting and budgeting. When the target audience does not ‘behave’ as projected, it can impact the success of the event.”

Beyond throwing up your hands in frustration, what can an event manager do? Kelley provided a list of specific tactics that can help; let’s break out a few of our favorites below:

Use scarcity to drive desired actions

Getting your attendees to respond early often leads event planners to go down the scarcity route. 

“Scarcity and fear of missing out (FOMO) are two key ways to influence behavior,” Kelley notes. “Tactics including early bird pricing and limited seating can be effective. But be transparent when deploying these tools to ensure believability.”

If a VIP session will truly only allow 200 people to register, or early bird pricing really will expire at midnight, by all means use it. But don’t fake scarcity or you’ll lose credibility.

Increase scarcity to drive up real demand

Kelley recommends taking the concept of scarcity even further.

“If you can provide your attendees with something they can’t get elsewhere, they will not only support you in a loyal way, they will also pay top dollar for the privilege to do so,” she writes. “This tactic requires a unique selling proposition. Differentiate by selecting a unique venue, host city or time of year to drive more action.” 

Remove barriers to action

“If you want your attendees to take action, make actions extremely easy,” Kelley offers. “By removing the friction from the desired action, attendees will complete that action more often. For instance, if you want them to share their event experience on social media, provide photo ops and make sure your hashtag is posted everywhere.”

Other ways to remove barriers and keep those sweet cats moving forward:

• Make your event registration site fully accessible.
• Create a seamless experience for your attendees with a fully branded registration site that aligns perfectly with your brand.

Personalize, personalize, personalize

You have tons of data on your attendees and prospects. Use it strategically create a highly personalized registration experience that won’t leave them guessing.

“Audience segmentation categorizes people by type and personalization can be added to drive specific behaviors. Make sure your audiences know you are talking specifically to them,” Kelley recommends.

Engage them with gamification

Like cats with a laser pointer, engage your attendees by integrating gamification into your event tech flow.

“Gamification lets event planners create scenarios using public recognition and rewards to drive desired behavior,” Kelley notes. “It is less about gameplay and more about incorporating motivational theory.”

Meetingplays’ CMO Lori Esposito agrees: “At a base level, gamification hits on three psychological factors (motivation, ability and triggers) that drive human behavior,” she explained in an interview.

“Attendees are usually pumped up at the beginning of an event. But we’ve all seen it happen — attention wanes as time goes on and the emails pile up. With gamification, you can pulse activities throughout the event and launch new challenges to keep everyone engaged and excited,” Esposito continues.

Embrace the humanness of your attendees

Data and predictive behavioral analysis can and should be used to inform your event design. If you need help leveraging data into your registration and event flow, talk to us. We love hearing about your challenges and innovating the right solution for your event cats.