The Power of Personalized Attendee Experiences

Technology has made personalization easier than ever. Starbucks, for example, can send you individualized offers based on the drinks you ordered in the past. Amazon knows exactly what products to recommend to you, Spotify can create playlists, handpicked just for you. If you’re wondering how these large corporations know so much about you, continue reading to find out. Let’s start by understanding what personalization means as it relates to marketing.

What is Personalization?

Simply put, personalization is tailoring your communications, event programs or content according to the data you know about your customer. Personalization is as easy as having your customer’s name on an email subject line or as sophisticated as knowing what events/sessions and type of content your audiences like to consume.

The Importance of Personalizing Events

Events should be about creating experiences attendees will remember, and the most memorable events are those that are tailored to your participant’s “buying” habits. The more you know about your attendee’s habits, content consumption and response triggers, the more personalized experiences you can create for them. Why is personalization then so important? Because it drives engagement and builds relationships. Regardless of your event type (virtual, hybrid or in-person), it’s safe to say that data is the difference between an “event” and an “experience”.

Humanizing the Attendee Experience

At their core, events are about human connections more than anything else. To fully realize the benefits of personalization with your events, you need to implement a people-first approach.

With the astounding amount of data that marketing events generate, it’s fundamental that you make good use of that data to your advantage. Instead of hosting a series of generic events, you can put your data to work and offer powerful personalized experiences that will stay with your audience for a long time. What’s interesting is that the more you get to know your audiences, the more personalized you can get – and build on that year after year.

How to Create Authentic Personalized Events?

Understanding how your prospect has engaged with your brand in the past across channels will enable you to deliver a better customer experience pre, during and post-event, ultimately extending the customer journey. This means more ROI for your business.

1. Start your Events with Personalization in Mind

   Create a fully branded, dynamic event website and consistent registration experience for attendees, from simple webinars to highly focused ABM or account-specific events.

   Although pre- and post-event engagement is not new, it is now easier and more effective in the virtual age. Set up pre-event networking activities to learn more about your attendees to gain insights into what they want to see or do during the actual event. Certain Touchpoint is your way of making meaningful connections with your attendees and gathering key data signals before, during and after an event.

2. Use What you Already Know to Get More Personalized

   Chances are you already know a lot about the people you’re inviting to your event. Your attendees want an event that is designed for their unique needs and goals.

   • Pull that information directly from your marketing automation or CRM system into your event management platform.
   • Use the data to start segmenting and understanding your prospective attendees, predict their interests, and personalize your pre-event outreach.

   The more personalized you get, the more your attendees will be engaged with your event and your brand. And that’s good news for your sales cycle!

3. Leverage your Event Data

   With the rise of more hybrid and virtual events, a new reality has emerged. Attendees can tell you a lot about their interests by the sessions they attend or the appointments they make. Flag various attendee activities by interest. With Certain, users can leverage attendee insights ranging from what sessions were attended to what they posted on social media while capturing over 300 data-points for personalized marketing efforts.

4. Customize Registration Flows

   Consider a registration procedure in which each individual attendee was able to find the ideal ticket type, price, and information, resulting in a simple and enjoyable registration experience. Every event marketer can provide a tailored experience!
   Examples of customized tickets:

   • VIPs
   • Early Bird
   • General Admissions
   • Speakers
   • Sponsors

   You may reduce the likelihood of a cookie-cutter approach by creating separate registration processes for different ticket registrants.

Use an event management platform that allows you to gather rich insights from the start to help power a tailored event journey for guests across a single event or series of events. Using Certain for your next event will bring together your virtual, hybrid, or in-person audiences together while capturing engagement data.

At the end of the day, it’s all about your attendee experience – and that’s a sum of each individual attendee’s experience. Marketing events need to be created with each individual’s experience in mind. People are different. They learn differently, they respond differently, and they think differently. Using Certain’s event management platform, your company can customize event communications to each attendee type, with relevant join links and session recommendations. Certain’s technology transforms a completely branded event into a one-of-a-kind experience for every attendee.

To find out how you can personalize your event, contact us today and speak to one of our event experts.