Imagine how you might do your job differently if your performance and compensation were evaluated based on overall session attendance and industry presenter ratings at your annual conference. While this notion may seem a bit extreme, conference education systems need increased accountability, which in turn leads to a competitive advantage. We all need improved systems for: Programming thought-provoking and relevant content. Recruiting or selecting industry presenters who will draw a … [Read more...]
Sponsorship Needs to Be More Than Banners and Clings
Sponsorship is the most powerful form of marketing. When done well, it can change participants’ attitudes and behaviors about a brand. Banners, ads, signs and enhanced listings shouldn’t be lumped into the same category — they don’t make that emotional connection. Recently I’ve received invitations to attend webinars and download industry research reports and articles all aimed to help conference and show organizers grow sponsorship revenue. Problem is, when you dig into these resources, you … [Read more...]
How to Turn Around Your Sponsorship Revenue
If your conference is like most, sponsorship revenue is underperforming. There are two benchmarks we like to use to identify healthy conference revenue business models: Industry revenue — 30 percent or more of a conference’s total revenue should come from the combination of sponsor, exhibit and advertising revenue. Expo/sponsor revenue ratio — for every $3 in expo revenue, a thriving sponsor program will generate $1 of revenue or more (a 3-to-1 or better ratio). If your conference … [Read more...]
5 Improvements for Event Registration Data Collection
It’s difficult to determine what to include — and not include — when collecting attendee data at the time of conference registration. We need to make it easy to click “yes” during the registration process, while also collecting intelligence to drive personalization. Data fields and pick lists should be normalized and updated across membership, meetings, subscriptions, and all of the organization’s other programs and services. Mandatory fields should be kept to a minimum. Here are five data … [Read more...]
Deliver Superior Conference Education Value
Here’s what hasn’t changed: Education continues to be essential to a participant’s experience. Here’s what has changed: I’m convinced that “something for everyone” programming — including basic content for the novice or intermediate practitioner — is no longer the right strategy for positioning your conference as a can’t-miss experience. We need to raise the bar higher and meet the needs of the experienced and advanced practitioners. Early and mid-career professionals can catch on, and are in … [Read more...]
Expo Decisions: Attendee Preferences over Exhibitors—Always
For those of you who organize large annual conferences and trade shows, there undoubtedly is a chicken-vs.-egg debate. On the one hand, your organization might receive as much as 50 percent (or more) of your event’s revenue from supplier investments in exhibits, sponsorship and advertising categories, making it a priority. On the other hand, you have the attendees or customers — the currency we use to get suppliers to invest in our events in the first place. Attract a smaller or a lower-quality … [Read more...]
Education Committee: More Advising and Curating, Less Slotting
Most meeting organizers invest a significant amount of time creating the educational programming for their annual conference. Models vary, but most include a 15- to 20-person conference committee (slotters) and army of reviewers (graders). Progressive organizers are shifting to a blended model, where conference committees act more like content curators and advisors and less like graders and slotters. Session and abstract submissions are still an important part of the process, but a greater … [Read more...]
Are Your Speakers Speaking to Speakers?
I wonder about the future of peer review for conference abstracts. While it is a critical filter for high-quality journals, it is a very inefficient process for accelerating innovation and discovery at conferences. Many healthcare and STEM conference business models are heavily dependent on participants who are able to justify their attendance in part because their oral or poster abstract has been accepted. We’ve analyzed some conferences in which the percentage of attendees who are on the … [Read more...]
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