Acquiring and utilizing attendee data at a conference, meeting, or trade show has always been a point of emphasis for event planners. Luckily, mobile apps provide significant advantages to paper programs and other methods of years past in generating information from attendees such as demographic information, feedback, and a host of other useful insights to improve upon next year’s event or generate leads and potential clients.

Learn how analyzing mobile app analytics in tendem with survey, live polling, and user authentication features are the first steps to better understanding event attendees in the digital age.

Mobile App Analytics

Most mobile app providers give event planners access to analytics to show details ranging from total downloads and average time spent in the app to the most popular pageviews, error reports, and a breakdown of devices used to download the app. Unlike paper programs, with no easy or accurate way to track attendee activity, the digital age enables event planners to determine virtually every activity in a mobile app and thus what attendees are doing at the event.

Metrics not only tell the story of app activity, but reading between the lines provides valuable insight into which content made the most impact with attendees, the popularity of 3rd-party ads and internal marketing or branding sections, and perhaps most importantly the sessions and speakers to keep in the agenda for next year.

Attendee Surveys & Live Polling

Incentivizing users to fill out in-app surveys generates quantifiable data much harder to obtain with traditional comment cards and other easily discardable or overlooked options. Survey results--either sessions and speaker-specific, pertaining to the entire event, or specifically used to gather demographics--are collected in the mobile app’s content management system in near real time. Viewable in list and graph formats or downloadable in raw data to manipulate in 3rd-party software, results provide unlimited potential to showcase telling data on attendees.

Need to determine which keynote speakers to invite back and what sessions failed to engage attendees? What about the average age and gender breakdown of attendees or feedback pertaining to the entire event such as what percent of attendees plan to come back the following year? Contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses may also be obtained to generate mailing lists, leads for the sales team, or to simply send follow-up thank you notes and urge people to come back the following year.

User Authentication

By enabling a user authentication feature, event planners can use a mobile app to glean contact information from attendees and even track in-app activity to better understand user’s interests and priorities. Typically, for attendees to register in the app, names and email addresses are entered by users during the registration process; data is submitted to a CMS for administrators to accept or reject. The registration process can include an opt-in for email newsletters or marketing materials to serve as a source for generating additional leads and potential clients. Even without overtly asking for emails for the purpose of marketing campaigns, the ability to view a list of registered users--complete with name, email, and other pertinent information--provides valuable insight into who is participating in the event and what areas of the app made the most impact.

For more information on user analytics and to discuss AppBurst’s mobile event apps: