Best practices to extend your meeting engagement duration — and increase ROI as a result.

We help you develop an agenda, find the ideal location, contract and negotiate with vendors, promote healthy environments and behaviors, and build custom meeting solutions. But where Bucom brings the most value is the return on your meeting investment.

 

The attendee journey no longer starts when they step off the plane for day one of the meeting and it doesn’t end when the ballroom lights go up, doors open, and everyone rushes to catch an earlier flight home. Attendees that are invested in the meeting and messaging will be more engaged attendees from the start, which delivers more value from your meeting investment.

 

Here are ways to stretch your meeting cycle to keep attendees engaged and invested before, during, and after your meeting.

 

 

Before the meeting:

Engage attendees through our custom, all-inclusive registrations/communication services:

• Include content driven by attendees (send surveys and polling from the start) so they feel like their voices are heard and their time is valued. Bucom’s custom, all-inclusive registration site provides survey and polling tools, personalized logins, reminders, meeting messaging, and tracking.
• Be upfront with safety guidelines and expectations to build comfort throughout the planning process. If people feel safe, they are more likely to attend.
• Build excitement weekly with teasers about speakers, competitions, and events.
• To make sure virtual attendees feel included and important, provide specific connection requirements, schedule details, and regular reminders.

 

 

During the meeting

Now that you have them in the meeting room or connected online, you need to keep their attention:

• Encourage discussion and free flowing communication between virtual and in-person attendees through real-time, interactive virtual platforms and meeting apps.
• Create comfortable and interesting environments to encourage networking and active participation. (TIP: Attendees who stand have higher levels of engagement and are even more creative during brainstorming.)
• Choose energetic emcees to keep communication flowing freely between virtual attendees and live meetings and to create seamless transitions between presenters from all meetings.
• Use breakouts, chat rooms, and online collaboration tools to create a personal meeting environment for networking, training, and teambuilding. (TIP: Take it a step further and give team members active roles to lead discussion, taking notes, etc., to grow their courage and confidence.)
• Integrate audience response systems such as games, leaderboards, awards, badges, and prizes, as well as technologies such as photo/video sharing, holograms, and animation to unite participants.
• Create visually stimulating meeting content with sticky notes, cool graphics, idea mapping, and other tactics to keep attendees focused and improve memory of key points.

 

 

After the meeting

Don’t let it end when they get on the plane:

• Everyone wants to feel appreciated. Send thank you notes from leadership to show that attendees’ time and energy is appreciated.
• Use analytics software to gauge engagement across presentations and material.
• Send surveys to all attendees to gain important insight into the value and key takeaways from the program and what/how to focus resources moving forward.
• Recognize questions asked during the conference and highlight responses to show that the leadership team values attendee input.
• Follow up periodically with video clips, photos, and informational updates to keep the messaging alive.

 

Give us a few minutes of your time to learn how Bucom can build a meeting solution that will maximize the return on your meeting investment and make sure your teams stay engaged longer. Contact us today!

 

 

The bad news is that this is the last post in our “Ignite Your Meetings: the Ultimate Guide to Sparking Innovation and Engagement” blog series. The good news is that you can easily catch up on any you missed on our blog.