Congratulations! You’ve built your mobile event app, an important first step for event organizers to ensure their registrants and attendees are receiving the information they need. Now you’ve reached a critical hurdle. Many registrants and attendees might not know how to use a mobile event app. And, if they’ve had experience using them in the past, there’s no guarantee they’ll know how to use yours.
To ensure that your registrants and attendees know how to get the most out of your mobile event app, it’s important to provide clear messaging on how they should use it. No small feat considering all of the other messages your attendees are being peppered with.
In all honesty, this is the part of the process where event planners enlist help from event marketing experts. Properly showcasing the mobile event app isn’t just about telling registrants the various features of your event technology. It’s more about cutting through the clutter and explaining how the conference app will allow them to use their mobile devices to enhance their entire event experience.
What Information Should You Cover About Your Mobile Event App
Before we get into the “how” you cut through the noise and make your event mobile app tutorials stand out from the crowd, you need to know what to cover and how to cover it. Below, we’ll discuss what the items you need to cover are and what the best format is for getting your message out.
How do mobile event apps solve common problems of your registrants?
We’ve all seen feature-based marketing before. A company has a great product, and they tell you in painstaking detail all of the things under the hood. But, they don’t do a great job at telling you the problem it solves or the benefit it provides. And therein lies the issue.
People’s decisions are often driven by emotion. As event planners, we want to emphasize the great new features of the mobile event app. And they are important. However, they should ideally be phrased as solving a pain point of an attendee or showcasing the actual benefit to them. For instance:
Event App Features versus Benefits Example
Feature-Based Messaging: Enhanced Peer-to-Peer Messaging Capabilities
Benefit-Based Messaging: Don’t lose contact! Connect with like-minded individuals throughout the event with peer-to-peer messaging!
The difference can be profound. In the example, you’re still telling them the feature is P2P messaging. But the way it is messaged is much different. Each of your event app features that you want your attendees to utilize should showcase a benefit.
But, no matter how you slice it, you need to give an overview of all of the key features in your mobile event app to remove the guesswork from your attendees.
Showcase how your attendees can use your event app on their mobile device
For your tutorial, it’s important to include how to download the app (including whether you have an android app, ios app, or both), how to open the app, how to navigate within the app, and how to use any relevant features.
Each step should be clearly outlined in an intuitive manner and should include screenshots or visuals of how each step works in order for users to be able to visualize how the app works. Additionally, it is important to provide support resources such as contact information in case a user runs into any issues while using the app. Knowledge base articles are always a good way to help app users. You may also want to include a summary of key takeaways at the end of your tutorial so users can quickly review how they should use the app and refer back to the tutorial whenever needed.
The format you present your tutorial in is important, as well. One of the easiest, most intuitive ways to help registrants navigate your event app is to provide a video demo. Consider breaking your tutorial into bite-sized videos to help your registrants learn the ropes. Every effort you make will get you closer to a successful app experience for the registrant.
Your knowledge base should also include the following items:
How to Find and Book Sessions
We’ve seen event apps that make it impossible to find and book sessions. One of the ways that you can find and squash these user experience issues before they happen is to create a demo showing how to book an event. If you think it is too challenging to explain by video, imagine how the end-user experience will be. This is one area where we’ve seen creating quality demos provides valuable insights to the event planner and spurs change.
How to View and Edit the Agenda
Like with finding and booking sessions, your attendees need to know how to set and change their personal agenda. Going through this process and providing adequate documentation will go a long way toward ensuring they are able to make the necessary edits.
How to Access Maps and Directions
Whether you are running virtual events, hybrid events, or an in-person experience, providing ample direction is a key piece component of attendee engagement. And, regardless if someone is attending a virtual event or an in-person event, there is the possibility for them to get lost.
Conference apps play an important role in the satisfaction of your event attendees.
For physical events, showing them how to use the mobile event app to navigate the conference center is crucial. Left up to physical signage and landmarks, people will get lost.
Additionally, with virtual events, providing instruction on how to access certain breakout sessions, trade shows, or networking opportunities is vital for the virtual event experience.
How to Engage with Sponsors and Exhibitors
Did we just mention trade shows? Satisfying your exhibitors and sponsors is a key piece of meeting management. By allowing attendees to be informed about the event app, you’ll be helping to drive traffic and audience engagement to their booths, signage, or ads. It goes without saying that the more ROI an event can return for its sponsors and exhibitors, the more likely they will work with you in the future.
How To Distribute Your Mobile Event App Demo
Now that you know how to demo app features, you might be ready to send an email to your resources and call it a day! The unfortunate reality is that the average person receives a whopping 121 emails per day! Your odds of being read the first time aren’t as high as you might think they are.
And, while an email campaign should be part of your strategy for showing registrations how to use your event app, it should be one strategy of many to get the information into the hands of your attendees.
Also note, there is a marketing principle called the “Rule of 7.” It generally means that the end user needs to be familiarized with your message through repetition. The number originally theorized is 7, but some believe you need to have even more touchpoints. So what does that mean to getting your registrants familiar with your event app? The more valued added ways you can get in front of them, the better.
Below are a few techniques that work well for getting your registrants to take the desired action:
Create an Email Campaign
While email may be oversaturated, it is still an important channel for delivering high-quality information, like a tutorial on your app. Consider your sending cadence. Sending a message about your mobile event app immediately following registration makes sense. But, it probably shouldn’t end there.
Consider the journey of your registrants. Are they virtual attendees? Is it an in-person or hybrid event? Knowing whether you are strictly trying to get someone to use virtual event apps or a custom mobile event app for an in-person event is key to how you should market to your registrants by email.
And, for those who want to be truly ambitious, we recommend doing a journey mapping exercise considering your registrant personas. Basically, you’ll be developing a fictitious person and determining the ideal way that they will absorb information about your event app.
Prominently Display an FAQ
Creating an FAQ page to answer how to use your mobile event app is a great way to get registrants up-to-speed quickly. Your FAQ should be laid out in a simple and straightforward manner, with visuals or videos as needed. This information should be prominently displayed on your website home page and you should link it from any emails sent about how to use the app.
Your registrants are likely to have questions, and a well-written and visible FAQ will divert them from your service center to a self-service tool. Those time savings can be invaluable to your event team.
Leverage Push Notifications and Pop-Ups in Your App
If someone downloads the app and begins using it without looking through their emails or perusing your FAQ, there is still a chance to get them up to speed. As a last-ditch effort, you can place a pop-up on your app home screen to have someone do a brief, in-app training. This type of hands-on experience lets them become familiar with your event app while they’re actually in the app. It can be powerful.
And, we love push notifications when used correctly. Sending push notifications through your mobile event app with information on how to get started can also help drive engagement and make sure your registrants know how to use the tool.
Gamify Your Mobile Apps Training
Gamification is a big thing for event organizers to have a handle on. And, you can actually use gamification to promote event app competency. Consider giving points to individuals completing the training. Award badges based on successful completion of training modules. It may seem like overkill, but it’s another great way to get attendees engaged at virtual and physical events, and can help remedy the issue of event app uncertainty.
Final Thoughts on Training Users on Your Mobile Event App
You’ve taken all of the work to create a mobile event app that is useful to all of your stakeholders. If you’re working with an organization like EVA, you’ll get white glove service and integrations with premiere event apps to make your process even easier. Now, it’s time to take the next step and get your registrants, exhibitors, and other stakeholders up-to-speed. By creating a good plan for what you need to train them on and how you will deploy the training, you’ll be well on your way to fostering engaged attendees!
