Approximately 205 million people attend the estimated 1.8 million events that take place annually. Chances are, no matter the size of your attendee pool, you’d like it to be larger. As an event manager, it’s your job to boost event attendance—and this requires you to prove to business people why yours is worthy of a place on the schedules and budgets of time-starved, cost-conscious attendees.
Event attendees want clear value.
In the busy-ness of business, it’s a challenge to cultivate new, profitable, promising B2B relationships. That’s why, at B2B events, value comes in the form of establishing promising connections with the right prospects, leads, or partners.
According to 95% of attendees, face-to-face meetings are essential for long-term business relationships. And recent research has found that 40% of prospects are converted to new customers through such meetings, which are more than just an introduction, an exchange of business cards, or a half-hearted promise that you’ll get in touch with each other after an event. Rather, meaningful meetings that take place during an event between the right people (as defined by attendees themselves) can guarantee greater attendee engagement and satisfaction.
The way to create valuable connections is by bringing appointment matching and pre-scheduled meetings into the mix.
“Organizations are now beginning to recognize the irreplaceable role of face-to-face meetings in solidifying relationships, closing business deals, consulting stakeholders, and deciding major policies or strategies,” according to Meetings Deliver, a recent MPI whitepaper.
Appointment matching is designed to facilitate 1:1 meetings between and among attendees, sponsors, and partners in order to drive up resulting business value. It can be brought into the mix through automated technology and sophisticated algorithms or through old-fashioned handmade matches. Pre-scheduled appointments result by matching like-minded attendees and enabling them to arrive at an event with a full calendar of meetings lined up.
Appointment matching allows event managers to increase the relevance, worthiness, and impact of an event and gain a stronghold on a professional’s ‘to-do’ list. Even better, appointment matching technology that is built into an innovative event management platform allows managers to deliver this value with little to no additional manpower or effort. Sophisticated algorithms can enable organizations to seamlessly manage and facilitate an appointment program of any size.
Drive successful outcomes for your event attendees by investing in an automated appointment matching technology. The extra effort for you can be next to nil – but the benefits can be tremendous.