·          Call for Papers/Presentations:  50 10-page papers submitted, 5 review copies each: 2500 sheets
·          Save the Date Post Cards: 2000 cards, 4 to a sheet: 500 sheets
·          Conference Invitations: 3 pages, 2000 copies: 6000 sheets
·          Conference Materials: 10 presenters, 12 pages per presenter, 200 copies: 24,000 sheets
·          Total: 33,000 sheets of paper.

Paper is a significant line item in your budget.  If it cost $0.25 per sheet to copy/print those 33,000 pages, that’s over $8,000.  And that doesn’t account for the cost of mailing or shipping.   Reducing the amount of paper used is not just good for the environment; it is also good for your bottom line.  And that’s why we see more and more meeting planners looking for ways to “Go Green”.

If you are interested in adopting a “Go Green” strategy for your conferences and meetings, what can you do to move towards a paperless event?

·          Invite potential speakers to submit their proposals electronically and distribute them to reviewers electronically.  Saves 7%
·          Use electronic marketing to get the word out about your event. Saves 20%
·          Require that your speakers upload their bios, presentations, hand-outs etc. to a central repository.  Saves 70%

What are some of the technology options to explore?

·          Marketing: Create a compelling event website and use electronic invitations.  Even for closed or invite-only events, you can market effectively online.
·          Registration: Online registration for speakers, as well as attendees, using a system that allows them to upload documents for you, and/or your attendees, to download.
·          Memory Sticks: Here’s where you can get a huge paper savings.  Provide document kiosks in the registration area where attendees can download, onto a memory stick, all of the conference materials, organized by speaker or session.  For more information on MeetMax Conference Software and how we can help you implement a green meetings strategy, go to www.meetmax.com

Social networking has always been one of the key reasons people attend events.  And while nothing can replace the value of one-on-one meetings between potential business partners, social media is increasingly a good option for facilititating networking at your event — also a great way to promote your events.  Here’s an interesting list of 8 innovative ways to incorporate social media networking into your events.

http://ow.ly/QJYl

Most of our clients do some form of email marketing to promote their upcoming events.  Some create very sophisticated invitations in terms of graphics, fonts, colors and links, and some use very simple communications that look more like personalized letters.  Some email to the same list multiple times and others send just a single email.
So, which approach leads to higher registrations?

If you are like me, you get inundated with offers for free white papers that promise to tell you how to execute a successful email marketing campaign.  After reading a half dozen of these free white papers, here’s how I boil down the keys to email success:

• The quality of your list is the key determinant of success.  Your list should be email addresses for people who have requested that you send them invitations.  
• Content is the second most important element.  Write a strong subject line.  Make the content relevant to the reader.  Have a clear call to action.  Optimize the top 250×250 pixels with compelling information, so that the reader will scroll down “below the fold”. 
• For some people, you have to contact them multiple times to get a response.  Successful fundraisers know that for some donors, they need to send up to 4 reminder letters to secure the next year’s gift.  The same thing is true for event marketers.
• Measure the business result — how many people who received the invite then went on to register for the event.  Tracking just open and click-through rates doesn’t tell you how effective your email marketing is — it only tells you that someone read it.

What’s been your experience?  Have you got a winning formula for email marketing for your events? 

MeetMax and our sister company, Wall Street Webcasting, provide live and archived webcasts for 1000’s of conference sessions each year.  So, it is probably no accident that with the economy being what it is and event organizers working hard to maximize registrations,  I’ve heard from a number of people about how they would like to use webcasting to build attendance at events virtually.  Here are just two:

    * An international academic conference is planned for a week in a large city in Asia.  The organizers expect 2000 people to attend the 100 conference sessions in person, but they want to expand their reach by producing a shortened version for people to attend remotely.  Ten sessions will webcast live with viewers able to submit questions to the speakers via email.  The 10-session online version of the conference will then be available in an archived version for viewing later.  Different registration fees will apply for attending in-person, attending the live webcast version, or viewing the archived conference webcast.
    * A regional venture conference gives CEOs of start-ups an opportunity to get their story out to potential funders, partners and the media.  To expand their audience beyond local funders, they want to webcast the presentations.  To convey the sense of excitement in the room live, they will incorporate a Twitter feed into the webcast screen and display in the presentation room the Tweets from people attending both in person and remotely.

I am always in awe of people who can design efficient, timely, smooth processes.  I had an opportunity recently to watch one of our clients in action and the check-in process she organized was a thing of beauty!

Her check-in process was personal, professional, quick, and seemingly error free.  The corporate event had over 700 senior level attendees, most checking in between 7:30 and 8:45.

• The planner  had 7 stations set up for checking in attendees as they arrived.
• Attendees could step up to any of the 7 stations.
• At each station was a staff person, who accessed the attendee data on a lap-top computer, using a search function to quickly located the record.
• She then checked the person off and printed their badge for them on a small Canon personal printer.
• Behind the table, an assistant passed the staff person a bag with all of the conference information, who handed it to the attendee.
• The attendee was then directed to down to a separate station where they could pick up their personal schedule for the day, and request changes to the schedule.
• Once they had their schedule, a staff person waiting by the table, provided them with directions to their first session.

Watching the efficiency of this set-up, I timed a few of the people getting in line to see how long it took them to move through the process.  Most took less than 2 minutes and the longest was 7.  When the prominently displayed LED clock in the lobby indicated the time for the first session, all of the attendees had been moved through the check-in process.  It was impressive to watch.

Measuring event effectiveness requires an investment of time and resources. Is it worth it? MPI’s annual “EventView 2009 North America Report” concludes that companies that measure event performance are nearly 41% more likely to expect increases in their marketing budget than those that do not. For me, that makes a compelling case for measuring what matters in events.

Here are some of the approaches to measurement that I’ve heard about from our meeting planner clients at MeetMax and those that I’ve learned from my own experience producing events and conferences.

• You Get Partial Credit Just For Asking. Numbers of invitations sent, mentions in the press and in the blogosphere are all indicative of the impact on your company’s brand
• Everyone In. Make sure you are counting all of your attendees, even those that attend remotely.
• Beyond Counting Attendees: Establish metrics that are directly related to your business objectives for the event.
• Quantify the Cost: How much is a qualified sales prospect worth to your company? What does it cost you to generate one meaningful connection with a qualified prospect?
  • Count the number of qualified prospects, based on demographics, at the event
  • Determine the number of qualified prospects with whom your staff (or your sponsors or exhibitors) had a face-to-face dialog?
  • Calculate the cost of a single meaningful interaction, by dividing the total cost by the number of meaningful connections made.
  • Compare the cost of generating that sales prospect to the value of a sales prospect.
• Survey to Measure Perceptions and Satisfaction to Determine Whether Your Event Was Memorable and Met Expectations.
• Track The Long-Term Impact, Including Sales Conversions, Trends And Industry Averages.

Are you using an innovative approach to measuring event effectiveness? Post a comment and share your approach with us.

We read recently of a study done by the Destination Marketing Association International on trends in the meeting industry.  Their research called out a number of factors meeting planners need to be aware of, including:

• A volatile economic environment
• The battle for attention
• Smart and friendly websites
• An electronic culture 
• Going Green

 With corporate budgets tightening, meeting planners are thinking about how to best market their event to get the attention of their prospective attendees.  Strong innovative branding for events, that is reflected in electronic invitations, event websites,  and search engine marketing are all part of a marketing strategy designed to break through and catch the eye of prospective attendees.   Once you have captured their attention, making registration easy and accessible is key.  Increasingly, attendees expect that they will be able to register for an event electronically.  Using online registration can increase your registrations because you can convert their interest to a registration by giving them a means to register as soon as they have decided to attend.

The Going Green trend is good for the environment certainly, but increasingly it is a strategy for reducing the cost of producing an event.  Replace paper forms with online registration forms. Instead of mailing registration credentials, email a barcoded receipt that can be printed and presented at the door.    Replace post-conference surveys with electronic surveys.  Replace hand-outs with document downloads. Just think: iIf you have 200 attendees and you give them each a 20-page conference program, that’s 4000 pages. If you have 12 speakers at an event, and each one brings 75 copies of a 10-page presentation — that’s 9000 pieces of paper.  At $.10 per page, the savings just from switching to document downloads would be $1300.

Ever wonder how many trees it took to produce all the paper distributed at your last conference? Let’s take a look at a typical conference:

• Call for Papers/Presentations: 50 10-page papers submitted, 5 review copies each: 2500 sheets
• Save the Date Post Cards: 2000 cards, 4 to a sheet: 500 sheets
• Conference Invitations: 3 pages, 2000 copies: 6000 sheets

• Conference Materials: 10 presenters, 12 pages per presenter, 200 copies: 24,000 sheets
• Total: 33,000 sheets of paper.

Paper is a significant, if often hidden, line item in your budget.  If it cost $0.25 per sheet to copy/print those 33,000 pages, that’s over $8,000.  And that doesn’t account for the cost of mailing or shipping.   Reducing the amount of paper used is not just good for the environment; it is also good for your bottom line.  And that’s why we see more and more meeting planners looking for ways to “Go Green”.If you are interested in adopting a “Go Green” strategy for your conferences and meetings, what can you do to move towards a paperless event?

• Invite potential speakers to submit their proposals electronically and distribute them to reviewers electronically. Saves 7%.
• Use electronic marketing to get the word out about your event. Saves 20%
• Require that your speakers upload their bios, presentations, hand-outs etc. to a central repository. Saves 70%

What are some of the technology options to explore?

• Marketing: Create a compelling event website and use electronic invitations. Even for closed or invite-only events, you can market effectively online.
• Registration: Online registration for speakers, as well as attendees, using a system that allows them to upload documents for you, and/or your attendees, to download.
• Memory Sticks instead of Conference Books: Here’s where you can get a huge paper savings. Provide document kiosks in the registration area where attendees can download, onto a memory stick, all of the conference materials, organized by speaker or session.

At MeetMax.com, we have the systems and tools you need to reduce the amount of paper you use at an event, and at the same time reduce the overall cost of producing the event. The MeetMax.com online registration system includes electronic event marketing features like conference websites and electronic invitations, and speaker support for uploading materials (and it includes tracking tools for you to see who has or hasn’t uploaded their materials). The MeetMax Conference Kiosk system builds a document library, branded with your corporate and conference identify, for your event that attendees can access on-site to download those materials they want to take home.

Do you ever feel like you are drowning in sticky notes? “Update Sally’s email address.” “Keynote speaker needs hotel.”"Tony P. not coming to dinner.”"10 vegetarian meals.”"Change room for afternoon sessions to Fireside room.”Traditionally, registration is a paper intensive process. Direct mail pieces go out, and registrations come in by mail or by fax. And, then there are the little reminders that you write on a sticky notes from the phone messages waiting for you on voicemail.With an online registration system, you greatly reduce, if not wholly eliminate, all of this paper.

• Using email invitations and event websites to promote your event instead of direct mail saves the paper and the fuel costs for postal delivery.
• Accepting registrations online, or typing phone registrations directly into the online system, eliminates all of the paper coming into your office. And because you have an electronic copy of the registration, you don’t need to have a hardcopy of the record to refer to.
• Instead of printing out reports to provide to your vendors, team members, management or clients, email them reports directly out of the registration system.
  Have your speakers upload presentation materials and other information directly into the registration system and allow your attendees to download the materials they want. No more printing out hardcopies of every presentation for all attendees.
• No more sticky notes! If you use a registration system that is accessible from anywhere, that gives attendees the tools to easily communicate their contact information, preferences and choices to you directly electronically, and that allows you to email information directly to vendors and other stakeholders, what do you need sticky notes for?

An interesting article by Stanley Fish in The New York Times this week about the self-service economy we live in. The article is about getting a cup of coffee - but it  is extremely relevant to those of us working with online software systems. - many of which are self service these days.This is the way we live today - and frankly we all like the control we get from being able to have our hands-on.   But does it always lead to the best solution?  Fish describes the problem:

“A coordination problem (a term of art in economics and management) occurs when you have a task to perform, the task has multiple and shifting components, the time for completion is limited, and your performance is affected by the order and sequence of the actions you take.  And these days, you will face a coordination problem if you want to get a cup of coffee in the United States.“And your real problems begin when you turn, holding your prize, and make your way to where the accessories - things you put in, on and around your coffee - are to be found.  There is a staggering array of them, and the order of their placement seems random in relation to the order of your needs. “And two things add to your pain and trouble. First, it costs a lot, $3 and up. And worst of all, what you’re paying for is the privilege of doing the work that should be done by those who take your money.“The coffee shop experience is just one instance of the growing practice of shifting the burden of labor to the consumer - gas stations, grocery and drug stores, bagel shops (why should I put on my own cream cheese?), airline check-ins, parking lots. It’s insert this, swipe that, choose credit or debit, enter your PIN, push the red button, error, start again.“At least when you go on a “vacation” that involves working on a ranch, the work is something you’ve chosen. But none of us has chosen to take over the jobs of those we pay to serve us.”

It’s an issue we are constantly grappling with for our Clients at MeetMax.  The control and immediacy are what most of them want (and we’ve worked hard to make it happen)…most of the time.   But they do not want it all of the time.For new clients, understaffed clients, rushed clients, clients whose expertise lies away from software systems, clients who do not like administering a software system - then self-service is not the right choice, at that time. We have many clients who want to administer only urgent changes, and the reporting that is important to their event.  They do not want to administer file uploads, graphics - even setting up a new event.  They want us to do it so they can spend their time on menus, signage, facilities, room blocks and the other numerous aspects of a successful event.And it’s hard to argue that’s the wrong decision sometimes.If you want to read the whole article by Stanley Fish