What mobile event app should you use? The American Express 2018 Global Meetings Forecast has some interesting insights into this decision. The study had one planner stating that there is still some reluctance to use event apps because of the overwhelming number of choices.
So this leads to another question – what uses of a mobile event app can best benefit the organization and the attendees? According to the American Express Forecast, the two most compelling reasons are communication and engagement. In the questionnaire, improving communications seems to fall into two camps: relaying day-to-day information to the event participants; and rapid communications regarding schedule changes and emergencies. The latter is best exemplified through the use of push notifications, with Email as a backup.
The study also asked what mobile app feature is important to the success of meetings. Here are some findings:
- The schedule/agenda is the most important feature. Implicitly, this will usually involve letting the attendee build their personal itinerary. With a related high score are speaker profiles.
- Following up on the first question, communications is of second most importance.
- Surveys are the third most popular item. The feedback to the planner is probably the key value here.
- For attendee engagement, session question & answer and polling received high scores.
- Analytics and session attendance scanning were also highly valued.
- Some might find surprising that gamification and beacons received low scores. These results should not be illuminating, however. App games typically are used by only 10% of the attendees. App-based beacons are problematic from a technical standpoint – if the attendee does not turn on location tracking, no data is collected. Both of these features tend to unnecessarily drive up the cost of the app.
Contact us if you would like to find out more about the most important features of mobile events apps.
