How to Turn Around Your Sponsorship Revenue December 11, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , education champion, packages, revenue, revenue ratio, sponsorship, tiers, VIP experience
5 Improvements for Event Registration Data Collection October 31, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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, … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Planning, Event Technology Tagged With: , customer intelligence, demographics, firmographics, registration data collection, registration forms
Deliver Superior Conference Education Value October 2, 2019 by Dave Lutz With the rapid advancement of AI, the bar for conference education is forever raised. “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. Leading conferences must meet the needs of the experienced and advanced practitioners. … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education Tagged With: , adult learning, DIKW, learning for life, problem solvers, station rotation
Expo Decisions: Attendee Preferences over Exhibitors—Always August 6, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Experience Design, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , booth sales, exhibitor advisory, exhibitor advisory committee, exhibitor advisory council
Education Committee: More Advising and Curating, Less Slotting June 24, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education, Experience Design Tagged With: , abstracts, curation, Education, education committee, grading, posters, rubric, slotting, submissions
Are Your Speakers Speaking to Speakers? June 4, 2019 by Dave Lutz 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 … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education
Looking into the Future of Event Tech April 24, 2019 by Dave Lutz Your guidepost for event-technology decisions should be to put your customer’s experience before your staff efficiency. As the event-tech space continues to evolve with a number of mergers and acquisitions, I see four changes coming for larger annual conferences. #1. Security is Expensive, but Critical Conference organizers are generally unaware that last year most event-technology … [Read more…] Filed Under: Event Technology Tagged With: , AMS, big data, CRM, event technology, GDPR, lead retrieval, trade show
What True Learning Is at Participant-Centered Conferences March 7, 2019 by Dave Lutz Putting the participant at the center of your conference programming by becoming more learner-centric, that is planning and offering education sessions that go beyond surface learning, is one of the biggest challenges facing conference organizers today. You need to enable participants to find meaningful and mentally stimulating experiences. The knowledge gap between the stage and … [Read more…] Filed Under: Conference Education Tagged With: , knowledge gap, learner-centric, learning process, participant-centric, speaker-centric
Free-Agent, Lisa Block, Joins Velvet Chainsaw February 27, 2019 by Dave Lutz While many have been focused this winter on who is going to land free agents like Bryce Harper or Manny Machado, Lisa Block inked a deal to join the Velvet Chainsaw Consulting team! Lisa will join our team just in time for opening day – April 2, 2019 – as Executive Vice President, Conference Strategy … [Read more…] Filed Under: Ramblings Tagged With: , EVP conference strategy and design, Lisa Block, PCMA, rockstar, SHRM, VCC
How Much Do Sellers and Buyers Trust Our Tradeshow Environments? February 21, 2019 by Dave Lutz The most glaring reality I’ve pointed to previously in this space — that three out of four B2B buyers conduct the majority of their research before talking to a salesperson — greatly affects the sustainability of the tradeshow business model. That, and the others explored in the five realities of today’s B2B buyer post, and … [Read more…] Filed Under: Business Model, Sponsorship & Exhibits Tagged With: , buyers, exhibits, expo, face-to-face events, sellers, trade show, trust
