How to Leverage AI to Improve Personalization and Event Experiences

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been hailed as a key driver of digital transformation across practically every industry, and event planning is no exception. From planning to attendee engagement, AI can help make lives easier for planners and greatly elevate attendee satisfaction. Chatbots, recommendations, and advanced analytics are just some of the ways AI is slated to change the events-planning sector for good.
While many are looking forward to the return of in-person events, the disruption of recent times has forced organizers to take their events online. However, they are now starting to see the longer-term benefits of adopting a hybrid approach. The integration of modern digital channels and AI can now extend to traditional events as well, offering better experiences for attendees, organizers, and sponsors alike.
Here are some of the most exciting ways you can use artificial intelligence to transform your events:

Provide Better Networking Opportunities

Great networking opportunities are a hallmark of any successful event. After spending over a year watching dull webinars and having little or no direct interaction with other attendees and organizers, most people crave a more engaging experience. While the social element may be harder to replicate in the context of virtual events, AI can help remedy that. Moreover, this can be extended to in-person events as well by promoting ongoing social interaction.
For many brands these days, people come for the product but stay for the community. Events are important networking opportunities in their own right. People who make lasting friendships and professional relationships with other attendees are, after all, far more likely to remember an event and continue to engage with the brand long after it is over.
AI can power intelligent matchmaking in a similar way to how social networks can recommend new connections based on shared interests. By transforming interactions into real, meaningful connections, these advanced networking functions can even help close the divide between virtual and in-person experiences. For example, attendees can specify their interests, allowing the platform to automatically generate networking opportunities based on what people have in common. This works for content recommendations as well, especially for large events with multiple workshops and seminars running in parallel.

Improve Communication with Your Attendees

Event planners should take every opportunity to encourage their attendees to further engage with one another. After all, many people attend events to meet people who share their goals and interests. While AI-powered matchmaking can help spark those relationships, it can also help keep them going.
AI-powered chatbots are now standard across many industry sectors. They might not be able to replace human interaction, but that is not their purpose. Instead, they can facilitate attendee engagement in group chat sessions by recommending relevant content or answering common questions.
Chatbots are constantly evolving thanks to the rapid proliferation of data available for training them. For example, by analyzing attendee data and group conversations, they can better tailor their answers and suggestions to the needs of virtually any audience. Some can even provide automated translation services to aid communication across different language groups.

Chatbots can also help improve communication between event planners and attendees. They can cover any predefined range of topics to answer common questions. For example, with a chatbot-enabled mobile event app, people attending in-person events can get quick answers to questions concerning everything from parking to what is on the agenda. And last, but not least, chatbots never sleep, so you can use them to engage attendees anytime, anywhere.

Understand Your Audience with Advanced Analytics

You cannot expect to improve the attendee experience without access to the right information. On the other hand, there will likely end up being far too much information to wade through if you are relying on manual analysis alone. Event management platforms can capture attendee data across multiple touchpoints from registration to their interactions during the event to those that happen long after.
AI is the key to solving this problem. Powered by AI, advanced analytics makes it possible to gain actionable insights from vast amounts of data in real-time. Some of these insights can be acted upon automatically too. For example, AI can use data to progressively improve its ability to recommend everything from types of sessions to exhibit booths to workshops to networking opportunities. Furthermore, by building upon data gathered from past events, the algorithm will get progressively smarter and more accurate.
Having one integrated platform, in which all event-related activities and interactions are stored in the same, centralized database, can deliver timely and highly focused reports. Indeed, data is the fuel that drives advanced analytics, while AI serves as the bridge between the two. You can also use integrated survey and polling solutions to collect valuable feedback directly from your attendees.

Enhance Your Event Planning Process

Analytics are the key to continuous improvement, which is really what digital transformation is all about. By collecting data across every attendee touchpoint and using AI to help make sense of it, you will be armed with the insights to iteratively improve your events. If, for example, one of your workshops is not as popular as you would like, you will learn about it immediately, as well as the reasons for its poor performance. The same goes if attendees are having trouble navigating your virtual sessions or finding specific event booths.
AI can also automate many routine processes before, during, and after the event. Follow-up and lead-nurture programs can be automated based on the insights gathered from previous attendee interactions. Integration with your email marketing program can nurture attendees by providing personalized content based on the insights collected from polls and surveys and other interactions.
These are just some of the ways AI can enhance your event-planning processes and deliver a better experience to attendees and organizers alike. Moreover, AI algorithms themselves constantly improve the more you use them, as they adapt to your unique use cases. There is simply no better way to meet and surpass attendee expectations and make your events better and more profitable every time.
Stova’s event management platform gives you a 360° view of your attendees with advanced analytics and automation. Request your demo today to see how it works.