How Technology Boosts Corporate Event Planning

The pandemic means that more corporate events are held remotely. There has also been a big increase in the number of hybrid events – those with online and in-person elements.

According to LinkedIn, 85% of businesses held a virtual event in the last year. And this looks set to stay. Companies expect 40% of their future corporate events to be virtual and 24% hybrid.

Pandemic aside, fewer corporate events are taking place in person anyway. Climate change means people are less likely to travel long distances due to the environmental impact of air and road travel.

According to a Business Visits and Events Partnership survey, 85% of corporate event planning companies identify climate change as a long-term challenge.

Data coming from Google searches says it all: the number of searches for the term ‘virtual corporate events’ has increased by 4,700% in the last two years.

If you want to run a successful corporate event calendar, you need to excel at virtual events.

For more on hybrid events, read our blog.

Virtual Events Present New Challenges

However, virtual event planning isn’t easier than in-person event planning. They present unique challenges – especially for large enterprise organisations. These include:

• Increased cost of using new technologies
• Increased complexity from integrating new technologies into an enterprise’s extensive tech stack
• High risk due to the factors mentioned above
• Difficulty
• Engaging audiences
• Creating a memorable corporate event that matches the in-person experience
• Offering tailored content and experiences
• Extending the experience to before and after the corporate event

There are three main ways that your corporate event planning team can overcome these issues:

1.Create a Central Platform to Manage Your Corporate Events

Corporate event planning managers should create a single event app where attendees, employees and speakers can engage with all of their corporate events. This makes your events easier to engage with, easier to manage and reduces your costs. The platform should allow attendees to tailor their experience by creating their own digital corporate event agendas. This means they won’t miss their favourite speakers. The platform should also enable digital networking before, after and during the event via chatrooms, forums and instant messaging.

2.Use Next-Generation Technology

Technology for remote events is developing fast. Make sure you stay on the pulse of the latest innovations so that you can use them for your events. One good example is using live engagement metrics to know whether the audience is listening or not at any given moment, so you know what is effective.

Other useful technologies include collaboration tools so that you can work together with events team colleagues on digital content, digital break-out rooms and the ability to integrate with event marketing platforms.

These technologies allow you to turn the digital experience to your advantage and provide a successful event. They also ensure that your corporate event planning process is seamless and easy to manage.

3.Engage, Engage, Engage

Engagement with attendees before and after events is critical to things like lead generation. Yet even the best corporate event planner will often struggle with this due to a lack of engagement tools.

The answer is to ensure that you have a range of engagement tools and opportunities on your single events platform. This means that you, your attendees and speakers all know where to go to contact each other. You can use this to support relationship building outside of the event itself.

A Flexible, Cost-Effective Solution

So how can event planners embrace technology and solve all three of these issues? Events software packages can help, but off-the-shelf solutions are often expensive and contain features you don’t need and may never use.

Another option is to develop your own solution from scratch. But this is an expensive, resource-intensive option.

The best solution is to create your own events platform using a no-code app building platform like Fliplet.

In the next section, we’ll explain the benefits that you could gain by creating an event management app.

How No-Code Apps Can Power Your Corporate Event Planning

No-code platforms like Fliplet provide pre-built templates. Users can easily add or remove new functions and design elements and content using a simple drag-and-drop interface.

This means that even someone with no coding skills can create a prototype app in as little as a day.

At Fliplet, we’ve created an event management template preloaded with all the functions you need. This is a gamechanger for corporate event planners – it means that they can quickly create a powerful app. They can then adjust the functionality themselves for no extra cost whenever they want.

Let’s take a look at how the event template features help overcome the issues mentioned in the previous sections:

Single Platform:

One profile for every corporate event

Users can create one profile for all events they sign up for. This makes signing up for events much quicker and easier. For example, you wouldn’t need to state your dietary requirements every time you sign up for an event that serves food.

View events live

Attendees can use your app to tune into presentations and talks—no more confusion between Zoom, Google Meet or Teams.

Access all event information

Attendees can access all of the information they need for the event in one place. This could include the schedule, supporting content, speaker information, who else is attending and much more.

Cutting-Edge Innovation:

Interactive floorplans

If you hold an in-person or hybrid event, you can provide interactive floor plans. For example, if you have a trade exhibition, attendees could use our app to access information about the company at each stand. For remote events, you could use this to create virtual floorplans.

Personalized agendas

Allow attendees to choose which talks, seminars and presentations they would like to attend. They can then tailor their agenda so that they know where to be and at what time – this also helps avoid any clashes.

Live polling

Allow attendees to vote on subjects during a presentation. Speakers can then gauge the audience’s opinion in real-time and adjust their presentation on the fly.

Gamification

Boost attendee engagement by adding a challenge element. Attendees could collect virtual stickers for attending presentations, or for posting about your event on social media. The app records this information and presents it on their profile. The results can be displayed on the app for all attendees to see, and prizes could be given to the winners.

Corporate event planning from any device

Busy event planners can’t just access their management platform from their work desktop. They need to access it on the go from their mobile or tablet across Android and Apple devices. With Fliplet, you can create one app which you then publish to any device. Our responsive design mode lets you see what your app will look like on mobile, tablet and desktop.

Integrates with other tools, data and systems

Fliplet allows you to use external content and data feeds. For example, if you are hosting an event for stockbrokers, you may want to provide a feed of the latest index prices. You can also integrate your app with existing marketing tools, such as email marketing, social media management tools and CRMs.

Continuous Engagement:

Social features

Fliplet’s events app has many social features to boost attendee engagement. This includes chat rooms, forums, attendee directories, instant messengers, the ability to contact speakers and social media integration. Not only does this boost engagement, it also helps you nurture a community around your event.

Notifications

Ensure your attendees don’t miss new events or the latest information about those they are already attending. Users can choose to receive push notifications, in-app messages, or emails.

Event follow-ups

Stay in touch with attendees before and after your event using your app. Send reminders, teasers and supporting content before events. Post-event, send thank you messages surveys and offer other engagment opportunities, such as training courses.

Discover How No-Code Brings Digital Events to Life

The easiest way to create an events platform like this is to use a no-code app builder like Fliplet. They are quick, easy and low cost.

To find out how you can do it with no tech skills, book a demo or sign up for a free account.

For more on events and event marketing, read our blog.