Cvent CONNECT Europe 2017: Key Takeaways

With 490+ people attending, our first-ever Cvent CONNECT Europe was an amazing success, filled with inspiration, education, and insights! Our conference included some great news about how we’re improving our platform to maximize the impact of your events, regardless of their size, key industry trends, and how to further leverage the power of your events. Here’s a quick snapshot of our user conference:

• 490+ people attended our first Cvent CONNECT Europe
• 15 seconds: the average check-in time for our attendees using OnArrival360
• 30+ educational and informational sessions available to attendees
• 5 major product announcements

And a few key takeaways:

Event Cloud

From Near to Far: Forecasting the Future of Event Technology 

We were given a glimpse of what the future of events will be like and what’s unbelievably happening today!  Robotic Checkin, facial recognition, driverless buses as well as cars, even driverless flying taxis! Hotels which can change your view at a touch of a button. Facial feedback instead of surveys. Virtual reality, app concierge are all things which will be commonplace in our future.

From Arrivals to Departure 

A seamless onsite experience is now a necessity for attendees, and this session covered how using technology can save event planners headaches by ensuring that all facets of check-in, registration, badge printing, and session-scanning don’t have to be a nightmare.  A swift and seamless event can all be achieved with an iPhone!  We also learned that the data gathered at the event is priceless and how the insights can ensure event success, for planners and marketers alike.

Next Generation Registration Experience 

Flex is new from Cvent – it’s the most user-friendly interface to build your event registration and website – all with drag and drop technology.  Flex is a more intuitive way to build, design and manage event websites and registration, and a great leap forward in event management technology.

Apps a Necessity or Gimmick – Transform Event Attendee Engagement 

The importance of mobile event apps continues to increase.  Mobile phones and apps are part of everyday life with the average person having between 60 – 90 apps on their smartphone.  We use them to order food, clothes, taxi’s, communicate, date.  Attendees expect all the information from their event to be in their back pocket on an app as well. In fact, people suffer from ‘Nomophobia’ - No mobile phone anxiety. Event organizers, looking to keep their attendees engaged and informed, need to go mobile.

Not All Events are Complex 

With the help of England and Wales Cricket Board, this session detailed how using event technology can impact a company significantly by reducing admin support and freeing up working hours for staff. Cvent Express has been created to be a much more ‘consumerized’ event platform and planners can literally have their events up and running in less than 10 minutes.

Strategic Venue Sourcing 

Laura showed us how using a simple, automated venue sourcing technology solution can save companies time and money and can also increase team productivity.  Venue sourcing is more than "Google searching" - using a simple step-by-step RFP design process reduces time and means you can contact multiple properties at once and keep all quotes in one place so you can view them side by side and keep all reporting in one place. It will help you Increase efficiency, improve visibility, strengthen supplier relationships and reduce meeting spend

Chuck Ghoorah

Chuck Ghoorah, Co-Founder and President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Cvent, inspired a room of event planners that they should be more strategic and therefore take their rightful seat at the boardroom table.  Such a huge amount of the marketing budget is spent on events, and there are tools to automate so much of the execution that planners need to be more strategically focused and be demonstrating ROI to their senior management and board.

Make Your App Work Harder-- How to Market Your Event to Increase Engagement 

How do you get real ROI from a mobile event app? This session included five key tips on how to get the most out of your app:  1. Gather the team. 2. Create a plan. 3. Promote. 4. Educate. 5. Monitor the metrics. Other key tips – get social, add valuable content to the app, highlight networking, use multi-feature approach and customise graphics.

Event Marketing Best Practice

Currently, most meeting and event planners rely on email to promote their events to their audience. However, a paradigm shift is underway, especially in Europe, due in part to the new laws around data protection which will come in with GDPR.  This session offered tips on how to be more strategic marketers and included real examples where she has used other channels to drive registration to her events.

Winning Strategies for Maximising ROI at Your Events 

Supercharge your leads via events and maximise ROI. This session offered nine steps to increase lead generation from events – these include setting up goals upfront, align internally, build attendee profiles, engage your attendees via mobile apps, integrate with your marketing automation.

Inspiring keynotes

• Reggie Aggarwal: Founder and CEO, Cvent
• Chris Hughes: Brand Events, CEO
• Greg Wolfe: COO, Marketo
• David Rowan: WIRED UK, Editor-at-Large
• Nicole Yershon: Lab for Hire, Founder

Interested in attending next year, or want to take a deeper dive into some of our educational session content or keynotes? Visit our Cvent CONNECT Europe website.