The Events Industry Has a Blind Spot When It Comes to Attendee Engagement
Photo Credit: Participants at IATA's brainstorming event at Plug and Play, wearing their event badges. Plug and Play
Skift Take
If you can't first measure engagement, then it's hard to improve it. Digital tracking devices are a good investment for planners and something to add to their toolbox, along with mobile apps and surveys.
With the explosive growth and innovation happening in digital technology, it has become easy to track the behavior of event attendees in a way never possible before. Badges and wristbands embedded with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and even radio frequency can provide rich data about how successful an event is.
Most event organizers and venues have not yet embraced these technologies, however. The reason for this is pretty simple: Collecting and analyzing the data is a big investment, and many of these metrics are so new, there are no industry standards or best practices to make sense of the numbers.
“People are aware of this technology,” said Michael Burns, head of sales and marketing for Aventri, an event planning and technology platform. “But like any new technology, there's the standard adoption curve. And we're still in early adopter phase.”
But in a sector that moves slowly, it's not clear when this will change — especially as many organizers are not convinced of its impor
