How Do Attendees Navigate Your Event?

By Maria Arnone, Vice President Media Development

You may think you know how your return attendees use the various informational pieces you produce for your event. What specific pieces of information have they come to rely on? How do they navigate their experience?

But what about a first-time attendee? Do they know where to look to find relevant information for planning as well as on-site?

If you haven’t deployed one before, a communications survey can be a valuable tool to understand the information needs and content consumption of your attendees. A survey can reveal interesting — and sometimes unexpected — results like the following (from actual top-tier Ascend health care clients).

• 45 percent share the mailed preview with a colleague
• 64 percent of attendees plan to take their printed daily newspaper home with them
• 76.9 percent visit an exhibit booth during the conference because of something they saw in the hotel door bag (a bag filled with information on Symposia and products hung on hotel room doors for attendees staying in the hotel blocks only)
• 68.8 percent are reminded to visit an exhibitor because of information they saw in an on-site directory.
• 54 percent prefer the combination of both print and online for receiving information

We at Ascend often have theories of how attendees use a particular piece. We may even include some general questions about the event media on our large, post-conference survey to prove those theories. But your best bet is to conduct a specific survey on the information usage of your attendees. This will yield quality information about your significant communications effort.

There are a several ways to get this information from your attendees:

• Roving surveyors at your meeting can quietly and respectfully approach attendees who seem free and ask them to spend a few minutes helping your association understand attendee information needs. This is a laser-like strategy that does not encumber attendees’ time or attention.

• A follow-up electronic survey can be sent to attendees. Again, explaining that a few minutes of their time can result in improved communication tools at their next meeting is a compelling message. You also can enter respondents’ names into a drawing for an interesting prize, such as an iPad or gift certificate.

• You can conduct focus groups on event information needs during your event. This is the most costly and time-consuming strategy, but results in good anecdotal information that adds color and texture to attendees’ behaviors.

There are probably people in your organization who have perceptions about new and traditional platforms (i.e.; a print piece versus a tablet app) that a survey can truly enlighten. We’re happy to share sample questions with you as well as our own learnings of how technology is influencing meetings and the content presented there. Contact me with any questions.

What platforms do you think your attendees use the most to navigate your event? How do you know?