MATCHMAKERS: At the 2011 BIO International Convention, staff creat- ed a “Personal Event Planner,” which allowed the 22,000 attendees to connect with other attendees based on their interests and other attributes, as well as a “Company Network Directory,” which listed sponsors, exhibitors, speakers, and companies. Attendees could use both tools to reach out and make contact.
ECEF is an invitation-only event for 200meetings-industry
leaders,whichmeans thatmost of the attendees already know or have heard of one another, or at least one another’s organ- izations. In contrast, theBiotechnology IndustryOrganization’s 2011 BIO International Convention, held at the Walter E. WashingtonConvention Center on June 27–30, drew more than 15,000 attendees from48 states and 65 countries. To helpall thosepeople con- nect with each other, BIOcreated a “Personal
CERTIFICATIONMADE POSSIBLE
EventPlanner”systemthat included profiles of attendees sorted not only by name and geographic location, but bymore than 100 different categories.Theprofiles included photos,LinkedIn URLs, Facebook addresses, andTwitter streams—all collected during the registration process. Attendees used the system to connect with one another before, during, and after the meet- ing. A “Company Network Directory” linked attendees to exhibitors, companies, and speakers. Enabling those online relationships—attendee-to-attendee
and attendee-to-exhibitor—is now expected by many peo- ple, particularly younger professionals. “I don’t think that the iPhone generation,which gets immediate gratification, imme- diate purchasing and networking and communication, is going to wait six months to get on a plane to go cross-country,” Lippman said, “thenwait in a cab line to thenwait in the reg- istration line at a hotel, towait in a line to get on a shuttle bus, towait in the registration area of a convention, to thenwalk around a building to see if they can find somebody.”
The Personal Touch Still, attendance-building should not be purely transactional, according toCollinson. It’s not enough to createmessages and leave it up to prospects to engagewith and respond to them. Collinson said: “There needs to bemore relationship selling.” Admittedly, it can be difficult to take a personal sales
approach to attendancemarketing if your event is large and your staff is small. One efficient tactic, Collinson said, is to take the final attendee registration lists from previous years andmap attendees geographically, identifying pockets in loca- tions with concentrations of people coming to your event. Thosewill be good places to offer pre-event seminars to drive attendees to your largermeetings. (For anotherway to drive attendance with geographic networks, see “The Social Net- work,” p 59.) John J. Toner V, vice president for convention and indus-
try relations for theUnited Fresh ProduceAssociation,makes building one-on-one relationships a priority by reaching out
PEOPLE-POWERED: The People Report
Workforce Symposium Summer Camp leverages
the online networks of its speakers to attract atten-
dess, saidMelissa Papaleo, director of events and
industry partnerships. It alsomakes its attendee
registration list public, to help drive attendance.