Checked In with Splash
Welcome to Checked In with Splash. Consider this your VIP backstage pass to learn from experts about how to create meaningful experiences that drive ROI, boost engagement, and tip the scales in your favor.
Checked In with Splash
Making Big Events Feel More Personal with Jack Tattersall
In this webinar replay, Camille White-Stern sits down with Jack Tattersall, Director of Global Sales at Guidebook.
They discuss strategies and tools to bring the intimacy and magic of smaller events to larger flagship gatherings.
Tune in to learn:
- What to look for in an event app
- Tactics to engage attendees before, during, and after an event
- Tips to maximize sponsor visibility
- How to build an event community
...and more.
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Learn more about the Splash and Guidebook partnership: https://splashthat.com/webinars/no-bs-attendee-engagement
This is Checked In with Splash. Welcome to Make Sure your Biggest Events Aren't a Bust. My name is Camille White-Stern. I run experiential marketing here at Splash, and I am thrilled to welcome you to today's virtual discussion. We're diving into strategies and tools to help you bring the intimacy and magic that smaller events typically create for attendees to your largest events to ensure that you're delivering impactful experiences. I'm always talking about how smaller, repeatable events are the best drivers to create deep connections with your audience and produce consistent, reliable revenue for your business. But to have a comprehensive, event-led growth strategy, it's critical to consider including bigger events like brand summits or user conferences in the marketing mix to fuel growth. We know that these larger events can often feel overwhelming and challenging, because when audiences grow, the range of expectations widens. But fret not, because that is why we are here today. We're bringing you tactics and strategies to help your biggest events succeed as they scale, and I'm so excited that Jack Tattersall, Director of Global Sales from Guidebook, will be joining me later for this discussion. Okay, before we dive in and get to the good stuff, really quick, let's run through a few housekeeping items, because we have some first timers in the audience. If that is you welcome At Splash, we support marketers across the globe, from the world's leading brands, in their efforts to unlock event-led growth, and we're doing that by providing a tool that helps you simplify your processes, amplify your organization's brand and measure your results in order to grow your business through repeatable event programs at scale, whether they're in-person, online or hybrid. Now let's get into why you're here and tuned in with us today to talk about ways to encourage connection, maintain engagement and deliver exceptional experiences at scale to make sure that your biggest events aren't a bust.
Camille White-Stern:Before we tackle the intricate choreography of a larger scale event, let's take a minute to talk through the foundational steps of an event-led growth strategy. As a refresher, when we say event-led growth, we mean a go-to-market strategy centered around scalable event programs that drive real value for your stakeholders and growth for your business. But these events aren't solely about size. They're strategically aligned with specific pipeline and revenue goals, making them incredibly valuable in today's go-to-market landscape. In short, companies use various marketing channels to convey their message and connect with customers. With an ELG motion, events become a powerful tool to seamlessly integrate their brand, narrative, messaging and value proposition with their audience. This is where having a holistic event-led growth strategy becomes critical. Depending on where buyers are on their journey, your prospects and customers will have vastly different needs right. So smaller, more repeatable events are, by nature, less risky and typically less expensive, allowing you to experiment and hone in on what works and what doesn't work with your audience and build trust with your brand, these events start to build a true community of peers that can be champions of your brand. Overall, laying this foundation of scalable, repeatable events is key to successfully filling the room when it comes time to scale up your bigger event initiatives. So now that we've covered the profound impact of smaller, repeatable events for your audience and their imperative role within the event-led growth strategy, let's talk about the benefits of larger events, as well as some potential challenges you might face along the way.
Camille White-Stern:As your event programs start to gain real momentum, you'll reach a point where transitioning or just adding these larger scale events into your overall event strategy becomes a crucial next step and trust me, I get it. The potential upsides are huge. You can exponentially expand your audience reach, skyrocket your brand visibility and unlock all sorts of new opportunities for sponsorships, partnerships and revenue generation. Hosting these larger scale events puts your organization squarely in the spotlight, from more media attention to creating industry buzz and, obviously, the social media amplification that comes from larger events, you have the opportunity to create a powerful halo effect that'll amplify your message and thought leadership to new audiences you might not have been able to reach before. These marquee events also enable you amplify your message and thought leadership to new audiences you might not have been able to reach before. These marquee events also enable you to showcase your company's growth, innovation and expertise in a much grander way, and a more impactful way as well. The potential financial benefits of scaling up definitely shouldn't be overlooked either. Larger events open the door to some seriously lucrative sponsorship opportunities, as businesses are eager to align their brands with the buzz and prestige of your high-profile gatherings, especially now that you've established trust with your brand champions through other programs within your event strategy. This sponsorship revenue can then be reinvested to make your events even bigger and better, creating a glorious cycle of growth.
Camille White-Stern:But it's not just about sponsorships. The scale of your audience also translates to greater potential for direct revenue generation. I'm talking ticket sales, of course, but also things like event merchandise and branded product sales, virtual or hybrid event registrations and content access, exhibitor or vendor booth fees, exclusive VIP packages and experiences, valuable attendee data and lead generation for sales, licensing, event content and IP. I mean the list really goes on and on. But, as we discussed, scaling up events successfully isn't without its challenges. As the size and complexity grows, it gets harder and harder to maintain that personal touch, the intimate connections, the meaningful engagement that are so crucial when you're trying to build deep relationships with your audience. I want to pause right here and hear from our audience. In-person engagement can be so tricky, so let's do some knowledge sharing. What are some of the most effective or unique tactics you've used to keep or boost engagement at your in-person events? Throw it in the chat.
Camille White-Stern:At Splash, we've seen success in getting attendees to co-create on content before and during an event and creating ways for each attendee to make their voice heard during an event, making them feel seen and appreciated in a meaningful way. Let's see what we've got in the chat here. Jesse said raffle prizes. Christy said trivia and giveaways Love it. Michael said word clouds survey interactions. Melanie said call blitzes after reminder emails are sent Love that. Kelly Colton, hey Kelly, said table tent of icebreakers for people to use to kick off conversations at individual tables Love that tactic we're going to be doing that at one of our upcoming events. Actually, I love these suggestions and these tactics. Oh, Jean said a coffee corner. Love it. I need more details, jean. It's really awesome to see what some of y'all have done.
Camille White-Stern:And getting back to the task at hand, it is so challenging with bigger crowds, there are much more moving parts and higher stakes, and all of this can lead to an impersonal experience where attendees feel lost in the shuffle, and that's the last thing you want when you're trying to create those strong, memorable connections, am I right? So how do you strike the right balance? How can you capture the benefits of scaling up while preserving the intimate, community-driven feel that your smaller events excel at? Today, I'll hope you'll all be active participants in this conversation. You already are, so thank you, as we share insights and effective strategies to scale without sacrifice and make sure that your biggest events aren't a big failure to the people that matter the most your audience, your buyers and your customers. I'm so thrilled to welcome Jack Tattersall, the Director of Global Sales from Guidebook Splash's newest partner. Jack, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you doing?
Jack Tattersall:first of all, yeah, good, yeah, great energy. With that introduction. It's great to see lots of events people come from and some ideas to lots of social elements. I think and it's like attendee interaction is has been the theme.
Camille White-Stern:Absolutely. Well, I want to make the most of our time together, so let's dive right in. I would love for you to share a little bit about your background. You know, like how you got to where you are today. It's so interesting and I think it'd be great for our audience to just get a little peek behind the curtains, more insight into your experience and how you came to Guidebook and focused on what you're doing at Guidebook.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, thanks. You may have heard already, but I'm based over in London. So yeah, we're based over here.
Camille White-Stern:We have a small team here, yeah absolutely.
Jack Tattersall:We have a team in the US and a small team over here in the UK. I've been at Guidebook for nearly seven years and for all that time I've been focused on helping new Guidebook customers and existing Guidebook customers unlock the full potential of mobile apps at their events. But we try and think beyond that. We try and think about increasing engagement, increasing event return on investment and top level as well. So during that time we've always just tried to always improve events, not just provide a great mobile app.
Camille White-Stern:I love it. Well, I couldn't think of anyone better to be part of this conversation with me today. So again, thank you for your time. My first question is kind of geared around attendee engagement, as we were just talking about in the chat, getting some ideas crowdsourced from our audience on what they've seen work well in the past. In your opinion, what are some effective strategies for fostering attendee engagement at larger events? And additionally, I'd love to know if you've recently encountered or been a part of any particular memorable engagement experience at a larger scale event.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, I think it's sort of fourfold. In terms of attendee engagement, I think interactive sessions are really important. So incorporating the audience participation through polls, q&as, live discussions, things like that, just as you've done at the start of this webinar. You know gamification A couple of our attendees have already mentioned that kind of thing. So points, badges, leaderboards, you know motivating attendees to encourage exploration in different parts of the event, not just be focused on one thing.
Jack Tattersall:Networking, of course you know. So hosting facilitated networking sessions, speed networking rounds, making sure that your partners are engaged with that as well. And then social media, I think you know photos, selfies, competitions through, you know, photo wall, live tweets, dedicated event hashtags, those sorts of things I think will really help with that engagement. And then the second part. So sort of my recent experiences. The best events for me always think about getting like ahead of that engagement. So connecting the dots for their attendees up front, trying to engage people around their content, sponsors, shared interests, challenges that they bring to the event and getting that all done before they turn up to the event. This will not only help with engagement ahead of time but also deepen their experience once they get there with a personalized approach.
Camille White-Stern:I love that. Especially what you touched on last really stood out to me and is kind of a way to bridge the gap between a smaller scale event right when typically with a smaller event it is easier to ensure that there are going to be shared interests or people in the same field or same industry that you know will want to connect with one another. So I'm curious if you could expand on that thought a little bit and share any specific tactics that event organizers can use to just maintain that consistency and deliver those memorable experiences as they transform from smaller to larger events, whether it is through curating smaller groups based on shared interest or the kind of attendee networking opportunities that you can facilitate. Just any additional thoughts you have there or specific tactics I'd love to learn and I'm sure our audience would also love to learn from you.
Jack Tattersall:Absolutely yeah. I think consistency is definitely key here. I think maintaining your event's core values and the brand identity as you expand is really important. It's just thinking about the value and the reason that you run the event.
Jack Tattersall:Having scalable engagement strategies, choosing engagement activities that can be easily adapted to your larger audience. So using polls rather than a long survey that people do individually. So getting polls and things people laughing at results or really thinking about what everyone else is thinking about rather than being isolated. Having a dedicated team, allocating larger teams to manage larger logistics just makes sense. So just making sure that when you have more attendees, you have a bigger team and you're thinking about how to scale that way. And then, lastly, communication Clearly communicate all your event updates, any changes and important information through your consistent channels, making sure that, just because you get bigger, you don't forget about those key communication pieces that people need to know about.
Camille White-Stern:I think those are really helpful best practices that you've shared. And kind of leads me into the next category of questions that I want to dig into with you, which is you mentioned having a larger team as you scale up with your events, which I definitely see the benefit of. I imagine, when I think about how to be successful, I think about people, process and technology. So, getting into the tech realm a little bit, what are some of the factors that event organizers should consider when deciding whether or not to incorporate an attendee app or other types of technology into their larger event strategies? How do you think about that?
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, absolutely, and there's multiple factors obviously that you need to think about when thinking about an app or any software that you use for your events. Apps can be highly beneficial for managing any event, but especially when they've got complex schedules, numerous speakers, diverse content and kind of lots of channels, especially where you want to make sure that those are shared channels, especially where you want to make sure that those are shared Networking.
Jack Tattersall:If that's a key focus, an app with features like attendee directories, matchmaking algorithms and messaging can obviously be invaluable so that networking piece can be really enhanced by any mobile app.
Camille White-Stern:Yeah.
Jack Tattersall:And then sponsor partners, making sure that you're catering to your sponsors. If you expand and get bigger, your sponsors may get lost within a busy and large event.
Camille White-Stern:That's huge. And with these larger events, as you have just articulated, you not only have to think about delivering on the attendee experience, which needs to be exceptional, but you also need to make good on what you've promised your sponsors, what they're going to get out of participating as a sponsor in your event. So I love that you've brought that up.
Camille White-Stern:I want to dig into two things. One you mentioned networking and I'm curious if you can dive in a little bit more with me and just kind of talk me through how an attendee app like Guidebook can contribute to enhancing that overall attendee experience, particularly when it comes to the facilitated or curated networking opportunities and the personalized engagement. And then, once we talk about that, I want to circle back a little bit of a curveball for you, because I didn't necessarily tell you I was going to ask you this. But also I think you just bring up such a great point that you also need to make sure your sponsors aren't getting lost, that they're getting the visibility, that they're getting the value out of being a partner on your event. But let's go back to the kind of curated networking opportunities and personalized engagement. What are some of the kind of features or functionality that you would really want to have in an attendee app that allows for that to be possible.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, I think what I mentioned before, so facilitating connections through those attendee directories and messaging allowing icebreakers.
Jack Tattersall:So the team organizing the event to start speaking on the social feed to begin the conversation, to ask those questions, making sure that people aren't embarrassed to be the first person to ask a question or the first person to post. You know, really fostering interaction beyond, like chance encounters. You know, really building that connection. And those features can be the attendee list, the social feed photo wall, meeting booking, et cetera. Beyond that, for personalized experiences, having a personalized schedule, if you do have different content streams that are happening simultaneously, you want to be able to allow your users, attendees, to build their own schedule based on what they're interested in, receive personalized recommendations, saving things for later, making sure that what they're going to see is what they're interested in, it's going to help with their challenges. And then making sure you're keeping things real-time. So offering real-time updates, schedule changes, making sure announcements are timely and keeping your attendees informed and engaged.
Camille White-Stern:Love that. I'm curious. You mentioned real-time updates, but in terms of the personalized engagement and kind of the messaging that you can kind of push through your attendee app, when does that begin in? Again, kind of another curveball question for you. But I'm just curious when does that begin in the lifecycle of the event? Right, because you had mentioned earlier, the engagement begins before maybe they step foot on site at your event. So in the timeline of your planning and your marketing leading up to the actual start time and date of the event, how do you think about what's the sweet spot for really digging into some of these engagement tactics?
Jack Tattersall:We usually say around 4 to 6 weeks before. When you get a month before an event, that's when people start thinking about it. They're probably planning travel, hotels, those sorts of things a month, four to five weeks out. So that's when you can really start that engagement. And the good thing about using an app is and especially with Guy because you can start and launch that app way before so you can run through your trial periods, et cetera, and make sure it's good with your team and then you can launch your attendees, say 6 weeks out, giving you the opportunity to really build hype, share the messaging and allow people to begin building their network within the app. So we always say yeah, 4 to 6 weeks to make sure that people aren't rushing and people are really making use of all of those networking features way before they set foot at the event.
Camille White-Stern:And you're kind of effectively expanding the footprint of your event as well by doing that right. As I said, the engagement, the experience itself can begin before the kind of technical start date and time of the event, and I'm sure that probably goes a long way in creating a positive experience for your attendees and also probably ensuring that they actually show up and are engaged right.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, you're sort of continuing the sell right. I think if an attendee builds a network, books some meetings with delegates, builds a schedule, they're probably going to feel slightly more built into the event and like they're part of the furniture and kind of leading into the sponsorship part that you asked about. I could talk about sponsors and that return all day. It's such a great part of an event app and just make sure that your sponsors get that real exposure they get, you know they can have access before as well, so people can learn about the partners that you have, the exhibitors you have. They can get real return and metrics on how they've been shown in the app and how they've been engaged with. So there are so many ways that you can enhance that. Yeah, it does. You know events are finite, no matter how long they are. I always feel like they're always finite in terms of time that you have people on the ground, so be able to extend that before and after it's always a bonus.
Camille White-Stern:Yeah, we actually have a couple of questions, amanda. We're going to get to your question in a second. That was actually going to be one of my next questions for Jack, but I see that Michael has asked and just shared very honestly and I get it, michael, relatable it's very challenging to do pre-event activities I'm assuming activities also here can be translated to getting that pre-event engagement. Most have a mindset that the event starts on the event date, fair point. So Michael asked can you share a strategy or a tool to get people engaged before the event? Also, michael shared that he'd love to hear you play one of your cars.
Jack Tattersall:He definitely doesn't want to hear you play.
Camille White-Stern:Maybe it's the outro, I don't know. A little ditty for us, but yeah. So I'm going to give a shameless plug, I think, if I had to say a tool, michael. And then I want to hear your perspective, jack, and maybe you can share a specific example. But obviously you need a really powerful registration platform, right, that's going to get people to register for your event.
Camille White-Stern:When it comes to other types of engagement beyond just registering for the event, adding it to your calendar or registering for specific sessions, I think this is where Michael maybe would love a little bit more color on like a specific strategy. If you have an example, jack, on a specific tactic that you've seen work really well, especially with guidebook customers, right, and how are they getting pre-event engagement? Is there some sort of like networking pre-event engagement? Is there some sort of like networking matchmaking tactic that they can do? I know there are a lot of different and really powerful features and functionality within guidebook as a tool to facilitate that pre-event engagement, but maybe if you could just dive in a little bit more, we got also three thumbs up on this question from Michael, so I see, there's an audience here.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, michael's happy because his question has been voted up. Yeah, it's a great question and we get this a lot. Are people going to download the app before they come? Are we going to have a huge rush at the door telling people to get app downloaded? Are we going to have a problem with data? That sort of thing? And yeah, I think that is a great question.
Jack Tattersall:The best way for me is to really shout about the value. What value is the app going to give to get those initial downloads? Obviously, you need to use your communication channels to do that, so email usually is the way, but also your social medias, linkedin, etc. Talk about what the user is going to get from using the app. They're going to be able to build a great network, book meetings, visit partners, see all the content, link up with speakers, really personalize their event and also get the real-time updates.
Jack Tattersall:As you get those initial downloads, which you can see coming in in our metrics panel, you can then start engaging with your existing users. Then you start using email channels, continue using email channels, but you also start using the app. So you send notifications, you let them know. You're going to launch half of the schedule and then one week and then some more the next. So you're using that to build hype, keep people coming back into the app and then, as you get closer, I think it's the more social element. So having a selfie competition or a photo of you traveling to the event where you're coming from, those sorts of things, using our leaderboard feature to get people to post and earn points for posting and points for building a schedule, and then maybe have a prize draw for whoever's at the top of the leaderboard.
Camille White-Stern:That's that gamification kind of element you mentioned before.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, so there's lots of ways you can do it. It does need a plan. You can't just sort of go at this ad hoc, but that's why getting people on early and really pushing it early, you're going to put a lot of time into building an app. You've already put a lot of time into building an event, so really shout about it. Make sure that you're showing that value, putting yourself in the attendees' shoes and thinking why would they download this app? What do they want on there?
Camille White-Stern:Michael, hopefully that was some helpful clarity for you there. I want to go into Amanda's question because I said that was kind of where I wanted to take the conversation next. So we've talked a bit about utilizing the right tech to accomplish meaningful engagement at scale. We can always circle back to this topic if I see more questions in the chat. So, folks, I'm keeping an eye on it. Fret not, we will have time for just some more unstructured Q&A with Jack. But I'm curious.
Camille White-Stern:You know we've talked about like driving engagement pre-event. We were literally just talking about that. You've shared some helpful tactics as well around doing that during the event. What about continuing that engagement or those connections after the event? What are some strategies or best practices that you can recommend for maintaining attendee engagement once the event officially concludes? What do the tactics look like? Any sort of insight on timeline, how you might want to think about that? Are you doing that in the immediate 24 hours post-event? Is there anything that you can think about beyond that day after the event? I just would love to hear from you there. And, like I said, Amanda had asked a similar question Do you have any suggestions for continuing the engagement post-event to keep the momentum going and folks excited to come back.
Jack Tattersall:Absolutely yeah. So the good thing about using Guybook and, I'm sure, other mobile apps is that you can keep updating the content as you go. So sharing things like recordings of sessions, those presentations, pdfs and resources through the app will get people coming back. I'm making sure you're letting people know that that's going to come. So at the end of the sessions maybe everyone sort of plugs like my pdf, my slides are going to be launched after the show so you can get them in the app after the event finishes.
Jack Tattersall:Sending, sending out event surveys and feedback forms always with incentives are good, but through the app is easy. It's a quick way to get feedback. You can do short, snappy feedback forms and it's on their device so they're not having to open an email. They can just you can send them a notification, they can swipe it and they can fill out your three, four question feedback survey and then maybe having maybe content or exclusive offers in the app, discounts for early access to future event information, discounts on future event tickets, but all push through the app so you have to kind of be an event user. And then those networking and connections in Guybrick they can continue forever, basically. So if you're messaging with someone, you can continue to use the app. That way, the organizers can leave the social feed open and people can continue the discussion and Q&A in there. Speakers can be involved, so that sort of part of our software, of our platform, can be available as long as the attendee likes.
Camille White-Stern:I love that. It's almost like a way to kind of almost get a two for one, where you not only have this attendee engagement tool for your event but it also becomes a community engagement tool as well after the event. I also love that you mentioned having either additional content or some sort of drop or announcement or way to kind of sign up for that next event, which kind of goes back to what I was talking about at the start of this webinar, where ideally this larger scale event fits into a holistic event strategy that you have. It's actually perfect segue, because Sarah was asking about do you have some tips around creating a 365 event community to keep engagement all year? And I will just chime in first, jack, if you don't mind, and say Sarah, like this is exactly what is at the heart of and the purpose of having, like I said, a holistic event strategy or other, you know said differently an event led growth strategy.
Camille White-Stern:So previously I've talked about, if you are only thinking about doing a large scale event, even if it's a multi-day event and it's taking up three or four days out of the year, what are you doing for the other 360 plus days a year to engage your community, your customers, your buyers, right, that's where having these additional event programs are critical. Right, you need other types of ways to engage them. But really, your smaller repeatable event programs are going to be fuel for your larger scale event. So it's always like what's next? I'm never thinking about doing a one-off event. If I'm going to launch an event or an event program, it's always going to fit within a broader strategy. Launch an event or an event program, it's always going to fit within a broader strategy. So maybe you know, even in the case of a larger scale event, you could have more than one large scale event per year.
Camille White-Stern:Absolutely, and we certainly see customers doing that. I'm sure, jack, you have a number of customers that do that as well, and I think it's always just important to recognize that you need to have that next meaningful event or touch point already planned and that's going to be part of the call to action for your attendees at the end of the event, whether it's, you know the interaction could be hey, download my PDF or come back to the app and my slides from my talk are going to be available there. Or, as you said, come back to the app and my slides from my talk are going to be available there or, as you said, jack, some sort of like discount or announcement about the next opportunity for those attendees to attend the next event or engage with the community or engage with your brand. So that's my spiel. I'm going to get off the soapbox for a second and let Jack chime in Again, just thinking about tips around creating that kind of year-round engagement plan for your community through your events.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, we work with a lot of associations who have this big flagship event once a year. Some small ones and they always not always but they generally ask us how do we sort of engage our membership year-round and we can have a year-round sort of engage our membership year round and we can have a year round sort of community within the app so they can use that to promote, obviously, the events that are happening, as well as sharing leadership thoughts and any kind of results, those sorts of things, and create community chat as the year goes on, not just always based around an event, and obviously they can use that to make sure that people are aware of other events coming up and things that are happening at the company.
Camille White-Stern:I love that and also I'm just seeing Andy put in the chat as well. We're seeing success in hosting smaller events throughout the year, reminding everyone of that big flagship event on X date and Andy retweet. That's exactly what I was trying to articulate as well. So well said, and it's also great to hear, jack, that you're seeing your customers have a similar approach. Even if it's just through the community chats and conversations that can happen. Even if you don't have the resources to do a ton of different event programs throughout the year, at least you can maintain the conversation and keep people engaged that way.
Camille White-Stern:I want to talk about there's so many things I want to talk about, but I want to address another question from the chat before we move on. Courtney asked any tips on securing event sponsors. I think this kind of goes back to what I was also curious to learn from you, jack. Just around, you know, as an event organizer, you're planning a large scale event. You're, you know, ideally have an amazing tool like guidebook at your disposal to help engage your attendees. To help engage your attendees, what are some of the ways that you can kind of position this opportunity to potential sponsors, and how does that tie into the features and functionality of Guidebook in terms of what you can say they're going to get out of participating as a sponsor or a partner in your event, because I think how you package and position the offering would be equate to the tips for securing event sponsors and would probably answer Courtney's question.
Jack Tattersall:Absolutely yeah. I think if we're ever attending an event as a partner, as an exhibitor, we want to know who's coming right, who are we going to be able to speak to. So, definitely, nailing your ideal customer profile for your sponsors is great. That's getting them in the door, making sure they know who's coming and that they're going to be the right audience for that sponsor and then making sure that any collateral that they're involved with or networking opportunities that they want to be involved with are handled in a good, easy way and that they can get facts and metrics and statistics after the event to know how it went.
Jack Tattersall:That's a really good piece. With a paper program, for example, if you sell double page spreads or you have lots of sponsored showcases in there, once you hand that paper program to an attendee you have no idea what they've looked at and what they've engaged with. But with something like Guidebook, you'll see the metrics, you'll see impressions, you'll know who's contacted, who, who's booked in at a sponsor booth, for example. So making sure they know before that after the event they're going to get this information so they can then see their return on investment as well. To get this information so they can then see their return on investment as well. So I think that's a good piece. And then, if you use an app or if you use other platforms to showcase your sponsors, making sure they know what they're going to get and how they're going to be showcased beforehand.
Camille White-Stern:I think one of the things you just mentioned is so key because without having a tool like guidebook to be able to surface those engagement metrics from your attendees, typically you are just telling your sponsors like here's how many people who registered, here's how many people attended in general and in the world. If you don't have an app like Guidebook, maybe you have a little checkbox on your event registration form that's some sort of opt-in question to allow you, as the event organizer, to share attendee information with your partners or sponsors. But beyond that, you're kind of limited in the value that you can deliver to your partners or sponsors. But beyond that, you're kind of limited in the value that you can deliver to your partners and sponsors. But having a tool like Guidebook in Place allows you to provide so much more value and really deliver on the ROI that your sponsors are expecting. If I'm sponsoring something, I don't want to just know who registered or attended and if they're willing to, let me contact them after the event. I want to know more about them. That's one of the key benefits of hosting a larger scale event, especially if you have multiple sessions, is that you actually I mentioned it earlier right Like you just get so much valuable attendee data, and so I guess the question is like how are you leveraging that data as an event host? How are you allowing your sponsors to leverage that data? So it's really helpful to hear how, again, the tools and technology that you have in place really lend themselves to unlocking all these possibilities.
Camille White-Stern:Okay, we've got one question that I think is good to answer Before we get to our Q&A. I just have a couple more questions for you, jack, and folks promise I'll make it quick so that we can address any unanswered questions as well. Okay, so we've talked about, like, continuing the connection after the event and the specific features and functionality that guidebook unlocks for event organizers to do so. I am curious if we can get into some more real world examples, because I think that's always helpful for our audience to connect these ideas and these principles that we're talking about to actual real life. Here's what's worked here. Here's where we've seen customers finding success. So I'm curious if you could share a notable example where Guidebooks platform played a pivotal role in enhancing event outcomes for attendees and or for sponsors, such as the things we've talked about already increased attendee engagement, improved satisfaction and just measurable ROI.
Jack Tattersall:Yeah, I have two small examples. We work with a lot of cons in the anime and gamer market and the organizers of those always do so well to foster engagement in the lead up to the event. They build hype using the social elements of the app. They get people talking, sharing pictures and their plans for the show, so everyone feels a part of the community. You know before they've even come. The organizers send notifications to engage with the existing users, drip feed content in the lead up and just make sure that users keep coming back into the app to access all the new features. This means that users are always in the know, have built a network and end up having a much more engaging experience throughout. And also then, because the users are so engaged with the event and the app alongside it, they get more feedback about how the event could improve as well as feedback on how it went. The event organizers are so happy because they feel like they know a huge amount more from their event because of the app.
Jack Tattersall:And then I went to an event the other day where they engaged with their sponsors in a really engaging way. They gave them basically a chance to showcase themselves and introduce themselves to the audience, allowing them a 60-second intro on the main stage which gave them opportunity to answer one question, making it short and snappy for the audience. Everyone wins because the sponsors feel that they've got the chance to address everyone and then also people know who's there and get a chance to go and network with them in the exhibitor room. So that was just a really cool example. I thought the other day that sort of breaks down that barrier of people were not going to speak to your exhibitors.
Camille White-Stern:Love that, and we've got a comment from Sarah that it's huge to give sponsors that opportunity. Agreed it is. I mean, not only are you giving visibility to their brand logo and all of the marketing materials pre-event, but you're actually giving them a chance to speak and connect directly with your attendees during the event. That's huge. I love that real life example. Thank you so much.
Camille White-Stern:With the remaining time that we have, I have one more just fun question for the audience, actually, because I love to crowdsource and you know knowledge sharing is so powerful when we do it together. Jack, you mentioned being able to leverage Guidebook to pre-event or even during. You know, maybe launch some icebreakers and get your attendees to get to know each other. I'm curious from the audience, what are some of your favorite icebreaker questions that you've either leveraged or encountered? Maybe we can do some crowdsourcing and maybe we can surface up the most creative ones in our little post-event recap. So throw it in the chat, Even if you don't think it's the most creative or groundbreaking, maybe the most effective icebreaker. I'll share one of mine. Whether you're doing an intimate event or even doing a larger scale event and you're leveraging an app like Guidebook, I love to ask folks what is one professional or work-related challenge that they're facing today or trying to work through today. The reason why I love asking that is because that can go a long way in helping you facilitate those curated networking or kind of engineered serendipitous moments of connection. Because if you can find themes or commonalities between challenges that people are facing one, you could spin up a little chat about that and have people do some live brainstorming or solutioning together. The other reason I love that is because you never know who in your audience has a really impactful solution or answer to that challenge or question that they've already kind of worked through. And so then you can match people up of hey, I'm facing this challenge or I'm working through this issue with the people that are saying I have experience with that, here's what I've done, here's what worked for me, and that's just another way to deliver real value for your attendees. You can actually help them solve real world challenges that they're facing in the moment, and it's something that I'm personally passionate about.
Camille White-Stern:The other icebreaker that I love, and it kind of lends itself to just creating a deep community connection, is to ask folks what is one thing that you are just looking forward to personally and it doesn't have to be work-related. At a dinner that I hosted recently, someone was just excited that their daughter was turning six and they'd spent all this time planning their daughter's sixth birthday, and they told us all about the cake fiasco and getting the right theme for the cake, and it is so helpful to just get to know people on a personal level. And then, connected to that, this is my last tactic and then I'm going to read what people have said in the chat. I love to ask folks again this is really about community building what is one thing that you can give or offer to the community that you're kind of creating and fostering, and what's one thing you would like to get or gain, Because that leads to a genuine reciprocity where people actually want to be part of your community, right? Because, one, people love to feel like they can add value to other people's lives and be of service, be of use. And then, two, you don't want to just give, give, give and get nothing in return, Right? So asking folks what's something you feel like you can give or get from being part of this community gets them in the mindset. One, that they are an active participant in the community and that they are going to provide something valuable to someone else and also have the opportunity to get something valuable for themselves.
Camille White-Stern:So those are my three icebreaker question tips. Jean said I love the softball questions too, Like should pineapple on pizza be allowed? Christine said what would your dream job be if salary isn't a factor? That's a really good one. Tisa said soft or hard tacos there's such a range in how you can engage people, but I love some of these suggestions here. Melanie said meet and greet ops. Name someone you'd like to have a 15-minute chat with. That's a good one, jack.
Jack Tattersall:I'm curious anything coming to mind for you in terms of who I'd like to have 15 minute chat with yes and or just like icebreaker ideas I think icebreakers superpower. I think that always shows a lot about a person like what superpower would you have for 24 hours?
Camille White-Stern:oh, I love that one. What would?
Jack Tattersall:your superpower be for me probably flying. I think that'd be great just to like fly around, go like really fast. You could go to those places in 24 hours love it what about?
Camille White-Stern:you. Oh, oh, my gosh, hard to pick just one. Funny enough, I actually have like a recurring dream that I do have the ability to fly. I don't know what that means.
Camille White-Stern:Where do you fly To restaurants to see different types of food, just like anywhere, but like I literally just like lift off the ground and I can just like fly through the air. So if there are any dream interpreters in the audience, let me know what that means I might have. I think I would probably choose having the power to manipulate time, so to slow it down, speed it up, pause, stop, rewind. I think that would be a pretty epic superpower, because time is really the one of the only resources that is truly finite, cannot be regenerated, and maybe it's just because I'm getting older, but I feel like time is going faster and faster and I sometimes just want the ability to slow down, pause, stop, so I think that would be mine. I'm seeing some questions in the chat, one that they're just loving these questions. We will definitely share some of these icebreaker questions in our follow-up. So, yes, don't feel like you have to be taking notes. Like I said, this is all being recorded. I want to go ahead and answer Sarah's question really quick and then we will announce our winner for today, if we have a social raffle winner, I'm checking with my backstage producers Extraordinaire, we've got Haley and Chelsea backstage with us. They're making sure that this event is running smoothly.
Camille White-Stern:But Sarah's question was how do you have attendees co-create content on site? That's a really good question. I can speak from the experience that I have had. And then, jack, if you have anything to add to that in terms of how to leverage Guidebook to do that, I have a few ideas, but you're the Guidebook pro here, so I want to let you chime in. In general, sarah, I would say co-creating content on site can truly be as simple as getting people to weigh in on asking questions and having those questions shape a live discussion that is happening. I've seen some really interesting ways of doing that where I've even seen event organizers literally do. I don't know if you've heard of like the unconference format for an event, but you kind of go into it with we think we're going to cover this in the event, but once we get there, we're actually going to let our audience kind of dictate and guide what we're going to talk about, and it could be something like kind of a non-whiteboard whiteboarding session or brainstorming people sharing ideas.
Camille White-Stern:Even if you just have people like writing things on sticky notes and posting them on walls, right, there are ways that you can get your attendees to engage and kind of co-create that content in real time. I've never personally done that. I've seen it done before. I haven't experimented with that myself, but that is one kind of out there way of doing it. And then another way that I have done is really just getting people to share challenges or questions that they have at the start of an event and then using that to guide a discussion experience at an event. So that's one tip that I have in terms of co-creating during the event.
Camille White-Stern:I will say another fun way that I've done it is we had a kind of improv comedy teacher come in and had an attendee kind of shout out a topic or an idea. Maybe you've seen in some kind of like comedy shows people crowdsourcing ideas for what to talk about or jokes to tell. That way that was fun but definitely a little bit more playful. So it depends on how playful you want to get. But, jack, I'd love to hear how you think about leveraging an app like Guidebook to kind of co-create content on site. I wonder if that could be done through like the push notifications or chats or even just leveraging the social feed.
Jack Tattersall:But anything you wanted to share there wonder if that could be done through like the push notifications or chats or even just leveraging the social feed, but anything you wanted to share there yeah, for us it's always like discussion around the event as a whole or in sessions, so you can break out those discussion boards for in session only or you can just have everyone on the social feed of the app posting and commenting, liking etc. So it's always that kind of way for us and making sure that snowballs and gets bigger and the event organizers are, you know, sending those seeds in to get people to discuss and talk about lots of different topics love it I love the post-it, the post-it thing too.
Jack Tattersall:I see we see a lot of that and then people posting pictures of post-its in the app and like the way that those just scale and grow. So it's definitely getting people writing things down and collaborating, but then maybe using the app as well to sort of share it afterwards and maybe vote on things.
Camille White-Stern:I love that. All right, folks. Well, we're at time. So, jack, first of all, I just want to thank you for sharing your wisdom and some real tactical solutions here for maintaining the magic of connection at larger scale events. I know personally, I'm walking away from this chat with some new strategies that I'm going to try and I'm really excited to hear from the audience. If you guys test any of these things out, let us know. We are at time. And so here is how you can enter our social raffle giveaway. I told you we were changing things up and I had a little brain blip for a second about that, but here's how you can actually enter to win our social raffle. We're going to announce it via email. The way to do it is to register for our upcoming events.
Camille White-Stern:So this is not the end of our discussion today on how to make sure your biggest events aren't a bust. We will be back next month with Guidebook with even more tactics and solutions and exciting things to dig into. As I hinted earlier, splash is partnering with Guidebook officially to bring you an incredible, easy solution to fill the empty attendee app space that might exist in your event toolkit. So next month, on May 21st, we'll be joined again by more of the Guidebook crew for a masterclass in attendee engagement. All right, on behalf of the entire Splash and Guidebook crew, thank you so much for joining us today. We live for creating opportunities for marketing and events professionals like you to learn with us and your fellow event marketing peers. I hope you'll join our community so we can keep these kinds of discussions going even beyond today's event. And if you found this content valuable, please, please, let us know. Truly, last but not least, I promise I mean it, if you're interested in learning more about Splash or Guidebook and how our tool makes it easy to create, manage and execute events that grow your business and amplify your brand, join us next week for Meet Splash and or join us for that May 21st event that I mentioned.
Camille White-Stern:Meet Splash, as I said, is a quick 30-minute demo where we're going to dive into the Splash product a bit more and how it's a game changer for you and your business's bottom line, and that May 21st event is the perfect opportunity to learn more about the Splash and Guidebook partnership. All right, folks, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for hanging out with us today and until next time, take care. All right, folks, that's it for today. If you enjoyed today's episode or are a fan of the podcast in general, please let us know.
Camille White-Stern:Support this show by subscribing on your preferred podcast platform and, while you're at it, leave us a rating. We so appreciate feedback we receive about the show. So if you ever want to get in touch, you can email us at podcast at splash that dot com or, better yet, join our Slack community where you can message me directly. Last but certainly not least, if you're a marketer using events to help your business grow and want to learn how Splash's platform can take your events to the next level, like we have for MongoDB, UCLA, Okta, Zendesk or even Sweetgreen, visit our website at www. splashthat. com. Until next time, take care.