Future Proofing your #EventTech Stack

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Raime

Jeff

I am the CEO and Co-founder of Eventbase where I drive corporate strategy, leading our company’s growth to become the most trusted mobile event technology platform on the market.

Allie

*Introduce herself*

Jeff

It’s good to be here. Eventbase have been pioneers in event apps for 10 years. We power enterprise event apps for many of the biggest brands and conferences in the world.

Allie

Needs our tagline and what we do ….. Not so much top part but bottom part *use top section of website*

Allie

In the past decade, the events industry — an industry that hasn’t really changed much for over 100 years — underwent an incredible transformation.

As we’re looking into the 2020’s and how to future-proof tech stacks, there are four key forces we’re seeing drive transformation and creating both new opportunities — and challenges — for event managers.

Allie

First, we’re seeing advances in technology like AI, virtual reality, wearables, and sensors that enable deeper personalization and experiential activations like never before.

Allie

Next, events are taking a more strategic position within marketing departments as technology helps us get a better handle on our event data. This is elevating the role events play in the wider customer journey and overall marketing strategy as they continue to drive brand engagement, increase sales and improve customer loyalty.

Allie

The third force we’ll keep seeing the consolidation of data in event technology. There has been no shortage of mergers and acquisitions in the event tech space and this will continue to threaten the choice of event managers as they’re building and growing their event tech stacks.

So as we’re looking to future proof event technology stacks, keep these in mind.

Allie

The last force we’re seeing at play is security. In the past few years event marketers have been challenged with stricter data security regulations as the world adjusts to GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. We predict that this is only the beginning. In the next decade, we’ll continue to to see further changes in legislation and technology to protect attendee data.

Allie

Before we dive into how to future-proof your event tech stack, let’s take a few moments to talk about why you should future proof your tech stack. If everything is working fine right now, is there reason to change?

Allie
If everything stayed the same i’d be happy type of graphic *Old lady who doesn’t like change*

Allie

Jeff

The first major reason to change is personalization.

We’ve come to expect highly personalized experiences because of the technology we use in our everyday lives. From what to listen to on Spotify to what to buy on Amazon. What’s been dubbed the “The Netflix Effect” is our new normal.

As a result, we’re being conditioned to expect personalization in more areas of life, across both home and work environments.

And the world of conferences and events is no exception.

Jeff

According to a recent Event Marketer study, almost all marketers — 98 percent — believe personalization can advance customer relationships and 74 percent believe it should be a bigger priority in their business.

However, according to a 2019 Forrester report, two-thirds of event managers are not currently personalizing their events — meaning there is a huge opportunity here for event managers.

Jeff

Colleen Bisconti from IBM summed this up really well in a recent Forrester study, when she said, “we used to plan one event for 30,000 people; now we create 30,000 experiences in the context of one event.”

As competition for people’s time increases, we need to keep up with new standards of personalization or risk becoming outdated.

Allie

The third reason why event managers should be future-proofing their tech stacks is to solidify event marketing’s role as a strategic marketing channel.

Forrester reports that most event tech users still don’t consider their events to be part of the overall marketing strategy and there is a huge opportunity for them to change how events are viewed within the broader marketing department.

By future-proofing their tech stacks, event managers will be able to better justify their spend, gain more budget and integrate with the overall marketing strategy.

Allie

Gone are the days of asking if people liked the food an event. Shocker, no one likes the food. There is so much more valuable data that we can get at events that helps us to inform our sales and marketing departments and allows us to tie events directly to sales pipeline.

Allie

But what to do with all that data? Most of us have been collecting it in spreadsheets and then it sits in some ancient folder on SharePoint as we don’t know what to do with it and how it’s relevant. But think about the power of being able to look across your portfolio over the last 5 years. What changed? Is your audience the same? Value proposition of your event changed? Activities of what people find value in onsite changed?

Allie

With events taking up the largest share of the marketing budget, we also have to show the most value to the organization.

Updating title

Allie

Allie

Learnings from the Data Story Result in Customers …...

Allie

Jeff

*adlib based on what Allie’s intro is*

So, why does security align to brand loyalty? A survey from Gemalto found that 37% of their respondents wouldn’t do business with a company that has had a data breach. This goes up to 65% when financial data is involved. And, only 50% of respondents feel that companies take data protection seriously enough.

For event marketers, this means if there is a data breach, there’s a big chance you’ll lose some of your customers.

Jeff

However, most event marketers are doing everything they can to prevent this and they take data security very seriously.

We’ve seen our customers change when it comes to how they engage with attendees, sponsors and partners to share data and continue to drive experiences. They don’t want the integrity of their brand to be compromised by integrations or weak data security measures of a third party.

Jeff

*adlib*

Earlier this year the California Consumer Privacy Act came into effect and of course we had the introduction of GDPR in 2018. These laws have significantly changed the way attendee data is handled and it’s been a driver for why event marketers are taking data security so seriously. And as we see more laws, we’ll keep seeing more advancements — especially in the enterprise space.

We’ve been working with SAP since 2015 and they’re based in Germany, which has always had strict data privacy laws. GDPR was actually based on some of the German laws, so we have lots of experience with data compliance and being enterprise-grade.

Allie

Allie
Learnings from the Data Story Result in Customers …...

Allie
Is there a slide for this in the bizbash webinar?

Jeff

Something we’re really excited about at Eventbase that we see as furthering event personalization is our new Schedule View feature.

We’ve already had one event use it and it had a great reception so we’re looking forward to rolling it out to other events this year.

The Schedule View will allow attendees to better plan their time and allow event marketers to share personalized session recommendations in an engaging user interface.

The new Schedule View consolidates three views into one. It will be easier for attendees to toggle from the full schedule of sessions to their personal agenda with sessions they have registered for or have expressed interest in attending. They will also be able to easily access their unique session recommendations.

Within the new Schedule View, a feature called Agenda Gaps, will highlight sections of time where attendees have nothing scheduled. They can then quickly see sessions happening during that free time, which will help them plan their days and get the most out of their time at the event.

Allie

Personalizing Your Content & Meetings Experience

Take off pick the best rooms for sessions

Allie

Allie

Scott Brinker - Martech 5000

Allie

Find Event Tech Partners that are leading the industry on future thinking

Would love something more machine learning/AI

Jeff

Thanks, Allie. We’re really happy with the work we’re doing between Hubb and Eventbase to give our customers and their attendees a great user experience. For any event tech vendor who is best-of-breed, they should be best at what they do in the event tech space and can prepare you for the next wave of technology as you look to where your event strategy is heading.

One feature that helps with this is single sign-on, also called SSO.

This is a type of access control that connects multiple related, yet independent, technologies.

With SSO, users can log in with a single ID and password to gain access to the related technologies. You’ve probably used this already when you login with Facebook or Google instead of creating a brand new account. People forget their passwords and this streamlines logging in and really makes the difference between a seamless attendee experience and poor, frustrating one.

Jeff

Like I said, we’re really happy with the work Eventbase and Hubb are doing together. Here are some of the groups are really seeing the benefits of working with best of breed vendors.

Jeff

Coming up next month, our Director of Customer Experience, Jenna Watson-Brawn, will be presenting at SXSW on how marketers can bring events in their omnichannel strategy. Events are often overlooked as a piece of the marketing strategy and we’re going to talk about what it could look like to bring it into the overall strategy.

Make sure to add it to your favorites in the SXSW GO app, the session is called Events: The Next Frontier in Omnichannel Marketing and it’s on Monday, March 16 at 3:30 PM in the Fairmont. If you’re going to be there, please reach out to us. We’re hosting a reception afterwards and we’d love to have you there.

Hubb & Eventbase Partnership
Best in Breed Technology
Personalization Focus
Security Approved
Multi-Events Data Story Started Questions:What do you look for in a best of breed technology?What’s a good example of personalization?