Event Engagement: 4 Creative Ways to Engage Attendees

From massive corporate conferences to small-scale nonprofit 5Ks, memorable events all have one thing in common — they actively engage their attendees. For many event planners, creating an atmosphere that piques the audience’s interest is a major priority that they center their entire event around.

They’re constantly looking for the latest trends to leverage in order to connect with their audiences. Thankfully, capturing attention and capitalizing on engagement doesn’t have to be some impossible hurdle you must overcome. There are tons of studies to reference and data-backed strategies that can make any event stand out. With the right ideas that appeal to your unique audience, you can easily connect with event attendees and make sure they continue supporting your organization for the long haul.

To help get the ball rolling, we’ll walk through four creative ideas that have proven to transform subpar event plans into extraordinary ones:

1. Generate Excitement With High-Quality Merchandise
2. Enable Remote Attendance
3. Create an Energized Atmosphere at the Event
4. Bring Social Media Into the Mix

Between tried-and-true methods and up-and-coming strategies, there are all sorts of ways you can engage your audience. You just have to figure out what works for your attendees.

1. Generate Excitement With High-Quality Merchandise

Custom event merchandise is a fantastic way to unify attendees and bring in additional revenue. When people are enthralled with your event, they’ll jump at the opportunity to buy something that helps them remember the extraordinary time they’re having, even if it costs them a few extra bucks.

Plus, the value of your merchandise will last way beyond the end of your event. Each time attendees wear your branded apparel or use some other merch in public, they’ll spread brand recognition in the community.

To take advantage of this valuable opportunity, either sell the merchandise at the event, allow people to buy it during registration, or give out swag bags (in which case you should build the cost into the ticket price). The great thing about leveraging an easy to use event registration tool like Event Smart is that merchandise can be sold alongside tickets just by creating additional ticket items.

Merchandise fits in with pretty much any event, and there are a few aspects to consider when it comes to offering your own merchandise, like:

• Decide what merchandise you’ll offer at your event. T-shirts and hats are historically crowd favorites at events, but other products like mugs and water bottles can be popular too. Just make sure whichever merchandise platform you use offers all of the products you need.
• Brand it to your organization and event. Choose appealing colors and ensure the design fits your event’s theme. Make sure to incorporate your brand colors, logo, and any other recognizable elements. That way, it will remind attendees about the great time they had while serving as a promotional tactic when they wear it out and about.
• Consider how you’ll distribute your merchandise. In-person events make it easy to set up booths and sell on the spot. If you sell during the registration process, make sure to order far enough in advance and set up a pick-up station at the event. For virtual events, use your merchandise design platform to sell the products and ship directly to buyers.

When you take the time to design merchandise that stands out, event attendees will be much more likely to buy it, especially if you make it easy for them to do so. Regardless if they attend in-person or remotely, merchandise can take engagement to the next level.

2. Enable Remote Attendance

The shift to virtual events during the pandemic altered the event landscape for the foreseeable future. While virtual attendance wasn’t optional for a while, many event coordinators are choosing to stick to this framework. Taking a hybrid approach or going fully virtual eliminates geographical barriers, allowing guests to attend no matter where they are. Not to mention, this can cut down on catering and venue expenses when you can downsize in-person attendance a bit.

This level of convenience can easily multiply your reach, increase revenue, and boost attendance. Although, virtual events have a few obstacles of their own. Engaging attendees can be challenging when they’re not in the same room as you, but with the right technology and strategies, you can easily overcome poor engagement:

• Leverage push notifications. Push notifications help keep everyone engaged no matter where they are. For instance, use push notifications at an auction fundraiser to let attendees know when they’ve been outbid. You might use push notifications to tell attendees that a session’s about to start, so they can head to their computers or log into their phone app and settle in with a snack. This works well for in-person attendees, too. You can use it to tell them to head to the correct room or visit a booth for a surprise snack.
• Gamify the experience. This helps encourage audience interaction and is particularly useful for networking events. Using a robust event management platform, award points for taking certain actions, such as visiting a virtual booth or attending certain sessions. For fundraising events, consider incorporating elements like a fundraising thermometer that fills in each time people donate, encouraging people to keep giving until you reach (or exceed!) your goal.

Replicating engagement in a virtual setting doesn’t have to be difficult. You just have to get creative in how you keep everyone involved. Audience participation will skyrocket when you take a few extra steps to pique their interest.

3. Create an Energized Atmosphere at the Event

The day your event arrives, guests show up to your venue brimming with excitement. How can you keep energy high instead of letting fatigue and distractions creep in?

Between speakers, sponsors, and attendees, there’s a lot to consider to keep everyone focused. Create an energized experience that your attendees won’t soon forget by leveraging these strategies:

• Line up the right entertainment. Your event’s main attraction is the entertainment you line up — it’s what the crowd is there for. For instance, conference speakers should be well-known in the industry and discuss topics of interest, while festival performers should be popular artists who suit your audience’s music preferences.
• Leverage live polling. Encourage speakers to add interactive elements to their presentations. A great way to do this is with live polling. Polling enables two-way communication, allowing attendees to vote on interesting topics and questions to be answered. This will ultimately shape the event and tailor the experience.
• Create a space specifically for networking. Events are a fantastic networking opportunity, so provide a quiet place to talk. Coordinate an open space that’s comfortable and inviting, such as a corner in the exhibit hall with a few couches. That way, attendees can talk without any interruptions.

Beyond the sessions, there are more engagement opportunities for attendees. Take charge of the atmosphere, and don’t just rely on well-known entertainment and a cool venue to wow your guests. An energized atmosphere will be instrumental in keeping everyone interested on the day of the event.

4. Bring Social Media Into the Mix

With a growing active global social media population, social media is a surefire way to amp up excitement for your event. Sure, you can post announcements and drive traffic to your registration page, but you’ll benefit the most by going further and experimenting with different types of strategies.

Here are a few ways you can creatively incorporate social media into your engagement strategies before, during, and after the event:

• Create a trendy hashtag. Create a hashtag that’s specific to your event, use it across all event promotion, and encourage people to use it when posting about your event. It should be short and memorable, so people can easily recall the hashtag without double-checking. It could be as simple as the event name and year.
• Host a social media contest or a giveaway. Nothing generates buzz quite like a friendly competition! Encourage followers to like and share an event-related post, tag their friends in a post, or tag your organization’s account in their story to have a chance at winning a prize, such as a free event t-shirt.
• Create a social media group/page. A social group is an effective way to build excitement for your event and develop an online community. Invite people who have historically supported your organization or attended your events. Then, encourage them to talk about the event, invite their friends, directly ask your team questions, and continue the discussion afterward.

Even after your event wraps up, social media promotion doesn’t have to stop. There’s plenty of post-event social media marketing opportunities to help capture and share your event’s success, such as sharing event results and pictures as well as liking and commenting on attendees’ posts. You’ll keep the conversation going and encourage everyone who feels left out to register for your next event.

Conclusion

A major part of sufficient event planning is figuring out how you’ll engage your audience from start to finish. With plenty of forethought and collaboration among your team, you can figure out the best ways to engage guests during each stage of the process.

All the preparation you put in and the unique ideas you generate will result in a memorable event that inspires people to stick around and keep registering for your events well into the future.