The BusyEvent Blog

Apps Based Lead Retrieval – Why They Don’t Work

On a recent LinkedIn thread, the question was asked: “What kind of lead retrieval systems are being used at trade shows now?  I am hearing about apps that are like a lead retrieval system available on iPhones, Droids, etc…Thoughts?”

The good news is that with the plethora of personal technology, the entire lead management process can now – and some say FINALLY – be flipped on its head to provide exhibitors with truly qualified leads and event producers with tremendous amounts of actionable and monetizable information.  The bad news is that, with one notable exception, the lead management landscape remains much like it has for the past several decades – albeit with new shiny objects.

Here’s our thoughts . . .

Hi there <<Name Withheld>>

There’s a reason that upwards of 80% of the leads available from a trade show are NEVER FOLLOWED UP WITH!!!

Some things to consider:

• The technology of lead retrieval has gone from a hand shake, to notes scribbled on the back of business cards, to fish bowls, to touch screens to bar code swipers, to card scanners and now phones.  The problem?   Unfortunately, all they give the exhibitor is a list of people that stopped by their booth.  Are a list of people that got scanned at a booth truly a list of qualified leads? (READ: “Tradeshows . . . Where Good Leads Go To Die“)

• Here’s a typical lead management scenario: The attendee goes up to the booth and the exhibitor has to ‘activate’ them with a tool.  How many lead opportunities are missed because the attendee doesn’t have the time, doesn’t want to bother, never made it to the booth, or, they met the exhibitor in the restaurant, in the hallway or in the bar where the lead retrieval technology isn’t working?  Today’s technologies are all passive. (READ: “Are Your Event Attendees Lying To You?“)

• EVERY one of the phone based technologies simply collects who got ’scanned’.  NONE of them (with one notable exception) provide you information on how interested the attendee is, by telling the exhibitor if the attendee viewed or interacted with their products or services – before, during or after the event.  How valuable would it be if the exhbitor could actually ‘track, measure and report’ on who interacted with their information?

• Why is it incumbent on the exhibitor to activate the attendee after the attendee finally approaches them?  What would it mean if the attendee had the power to express interest in exhibitors without the exhibitor having to do anything? (READ: “Are Unqualified Leads Balancing Your Event’s Bottom Line?“)

There are numerous other parts to this discussion and the failures of the current crop of technologies masquerading as qualified lead management tools:

• The ‘green’ element,
• The cost of giving a list of contacts to the ’spam/cold call’ sales force
• The ’scan and wait’ versus the ‘real-time activation’ of an attendee to receive information NOW
• . . . and many others  are all significantly important to this discussion.

Find out how to solve the above and overcome the costs associated with buying the ’show provided’ solution by turning your smart phone – ANY smart phone – into a BeLinker, NOW (oh, btw, there’s nothing to download or install):  http://www.busyevent.com/belinker

Information about the core BeLinker System and BeLinker On Keypad is available at: http://j.mp/BeLinkerOnKeypad

Information about the expanded BeLinker On Mobile Platform on:
- ANY smart phones (no applications to install or downloads required) and
- ANY internet connected device via cellular, wifi and hardwire is available at: http://j.mp/BeLinkerMobile

Haven’t had enough? There’s even more . . . learn how to monetize your meetings and access the BeLinker System: Visit www.BusyEvent.com

——————————————————————–

The Old Way is Broken.

We’ll Pay You to Fix It!

Tens of thousands of event attendees already use BeLinker, the most powerful, hand held, mobile and social media platform for events, worldwide!

Now, help your event attendees connect to people, products and information and create more profits for your event – at the press of a button!

Get your share of the $55,000 BusyEvent Stimulus Package and finally get what every event producer really wants, 1 – money in your pocket and 2 – the inside scoop on your event!

Calculate your event’s ROI and
get your share of BusyEvent’s $55,000 Giveaway

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

No Longer A Secret – BusyEvent Announces Release of BeLinker On Mobile

St. Louis, MO – August 13, 2010

BusyEvent, the leader in live event solutions, has successfully launched the 3rd generation of its event communications system, BeLinker On Mobile.

“Right now technology developers are bringing out all kinds of ideas, hoping the market will accept them.  Those tools are typically good at doing one thing well, or require a download, or only work on a single phone system (like the iPhone) and that’s where BeLinker On Mobile is different” said BusyEvent CEO David Schenberg.

By providing tools that impact the business purposes for an event, BeLinker seamlessly integrates Audience Response, Lead Tracking, Document and Session Management and Social Networking from a single integrated system.

Developed for face-to-face and virtual events, BeLinker On Mobile enables a new level of connectivity, and engagement while generating increased profitability from new and existing revenue streams and provides every event participant using ANY internet connected device, real-time access to their personalized event information portal.

With nothing to download or install, event participants can collect and store their connections with people, products and information and access their Virtual Totebag using:

• ANY smart phone (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.),
• ANY internet connected device (iPad, laptops, desktops and Netbooks) as well as
• The original BeLinker Wireless Keypad introduced in 2008.

Decades of event experience have gone into the creation of BeLinker On Mobile.  By first looking at what event producers, corporate event professionals and attendees have been asking for, BusyEvent is providing a complete package of tools that no other single system offers today, which includes:

1. communication with their attendees in real-time
2. event adjustments on the fly
3. tapping into the secret conversations (social networking) at an event
4. voting, polling and audience response included
5. providing a lead management system that generates leads instead of just a list
6. ‘greening’ of the event with access to event materials, speaker presentations and exhibitor brochures in a “Virtual Totebag” system and
7. extending the event beyond the 3 days and 4 walls into the virtual and hybrid event space.

Most recently used by more than 5,000 attendees of the Domino’s Pizza 50th Anniversary Rally, BeLinker enhanced audience response, face-to-face social networking, lead management, document and session management. The Domino’s event team effectively managed thousands of event details in real time through the secure BusyEvent dashboard system.   Client Chris Brandon was quoted saying, “I was floored by how everything went all week – and considering record event attendance and a new property we’ve never worked at before, it really is a testament to the job you guys did.”



Information about the core BeLinker System and BeLinker On Keypad is available at: http://j.mp/BeLinkerOnKeypad

Information about the expanded BeLinker On Mobile Platform on:
- ANY smart phones (no applications to install or downloads required) and
- ANY internet connected device via cellular, wifi and hardwire is available at: http://j.mp/BeLinkerMobile

Haven’t had enough?  There’s even more . . . learn how to monetize your meetings and access the BeLinker System: Visit www.BusyEvent.com

——————————————————————–

The Old Way is Broken.

We’ll Pay You to Fix It!

Tens of thousands of event attendees already use BeLinker, the most powerful, hand held, mobile and social media platform for events, worldwide!

Now, help your event attendees connect to people, products and information and create more profits for your event – at the press of a button!

Get your share of the $55,000 BusyEvent Stimulus Package and finally get what every event producer really wants, 1 – money in your pocket and 2 – the inside scoop on your event!

Calculate your event’s ROI and
get your share of BusyEvent’s $55,000 Giveaway

Meeting Planners Under Increased Pressure To Show ROI

HotelMarketing.com is an excellent resource of information for event planners as they look at how to best work with venues and facilities.

In April, they published the following with a keen eye towards the continuing pressures of meeting planners to ‘prove’ ROI.  While we have a particular focus on ROA (Return on Action) as the only truly provable metric (Are Your Event Attendees Lying To You?), it’s intriguing to learn what, from a suppliers perspective, the critical measurable itemsare.

According to a new survey, the measurements most often requested of meeting planners include:

• event evaluations/satisfaction surveys
• net revenue
• attendance size
• room night count
• sponsorships
• ability to stay within budget
• rate of repeat attendance
• level of responsiveness to client needs and
• increased service per attendee per dollars spent.

Nearly half (49 percent) of the meeting planners attending the 10th Annual Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International’s (HSMAI) Affordable Meetings Mid-America Conference & Exposition at Chicago’s Navy Pier, April 14-15, 2010, stated that they feel increased pressure to show metrics/statistics that attest to the success of events.

Industry professionals are paying more attention to ROI and outcome measurement, especially now that budgets are tighter and meetings are coming under continued scrutiny.

“Interestingly given the economy, price isn’t the critical deciding factor for meeting planners.  Meeting planners are instead looking for value and a solid return on their investment. This year, they’re scrutinizing every detail of the cost in order to ensure they receive maximum value,” said Dr. James Houran, President of 20|20 Assessment™.

The top five factors surveyed planners said they use to select specific venues for events were (in descending order of average rating):

1. size of the meeting space
2. guest room cleanliness
3. customer service
4. location of the venue and
5. price.

——————–

The Old Way is Broken. We’ll Pay You to Fix It!

Tens of thousands of event attendees already use BeLinker, the most powerful, hand held, mobile and social media platform for events, worldwide!

Now, help your event attendees connect to people, products and information and create more profits for your event – at the press of a button!

Get your share of the $55,000 BusyEvent Stimulus Package and finally get what every event producer really wants, 1 – money in your pocket and 2 – the inside scoop on your event!

Calculate your event’s ROI and get your share of BusyEvent’s $55,000 Giveaway
http://j.mp/beROI

Taking Advantage of Social Sharing – 10 Ideas For Fun and Profit

For most of us, sharing came naturally.  Sharing food or fun or experiences was part of who we were as we learned how to become social.  But then, as the world changed and siblings encroached, sharing became part of a zero-sum game; If you have, then I don’t.

That of course, is when adult society got involved; “Go on, share that with your friends”, or the dreaded “So, Mr. Slawin, do you have enough to share with the rest of the class?”  From its natural beginnings, sharing became a societal norm; albeit controlled.

With the advantage of hindsight, we can see that sharing isn’t driven by technology.  Instead, sharing is driven by people’s need to be connected and accelerated by their ability to use technology to do it themselves, if they have to.

So, how can event professionals take advantage of social sharing for their events?  And most importantly, what’s going to happen if they don’t?

The major assumption in the desire to enable ’social sharing’ at an event is providing your attendees with a voice.  Since the core reason that events, tradeshows and conferences were developed has stopped being a problem: (If The Old Events Model Is Broken – What Will Work In Its Place?), not enabling people to share beyond the 3 days and 4 walls of your event will result in lost opportunities, reduced event revenues and dissatisfied participants (Will A Hybrid Event Cannibalize My Face-to-Face Attendance?)

If you don’t provide and manage a variety of face-to-face, virtual and hybrid channels for communication and information distribution, your event participants are going to develop them on their own and you lose your ability to monetize, influence, learn from and profit from that conversation.

How to take advantage of Social Sharing for Fun and Profit!

1. Never mistake Shiny Objects with something that will truly impact the quality of the event and improve the outcomes for your attendees.  As an example, if a new mobile application requires your event attendees to do much more than sign up and show up or a vendor’s tools require them to access the venue supplied wifi to get an app to work, people won’t use it (An Example of How to Integrate Twitter, Into an Event).
2. People do what they’re used to doing.  Asking your attendee to change their behaviors to work within your system, typically won’t result in anything successful. Instead, focus your offerings by leveraging what people are already doing and grow their capabilities.
3. Create experiences and content that is meant to be shared.  Encourage the use of social sharing applications and foster their use by promoting them broadly because social sharing becomes the ultimate form of distribution and word of mouth (Why Social Sharing Is Bigger than Facebook and Twitter).
4. Listen to what your event attendees are thinking and give them easy and immediate access to share their thoughts with you (What Your Attendees Are Thinking and What Your Attendees Are Thinking, Aren’t Telling You and Why You Should Care).
5. Make sure that every attendee, sponsor and exhibitor has the opportunity to participate in whatever systems you create.  That means, an app that only works on 25% of your participants mobile devices, or creating a high tech solution for a low tech audience will result in your eliminating a potential source of information, revenue and emotional connections to your event and each attendee.
6. Know what matters most to your attendees and exhibitors.  Is it content?  Is it contacts?  It is leads?  (Changing the Equation for Organizers and Attendees)
7. Focus on actions, not things that look like actions (Are Your Event Attendees Lying To You?)
8. Don’t forget about email.  With all the focus on Facebook and Twitter and event specific social networks, email is still a major source of shared links and click-through’s. Email is the original social network.  Leverage it with enticing content and useful information.
9. Use tools that do more than a single thing.  5 vendors and 5 different tools means your data is spread into 5 different buckets and there’s no real way to create seamless information in that way.  Plus, monetizing that disparate data is nearly impossible.
10. Know the power and value of data and leverage it.  Social sharing is the simplest form of public approval and feedback, think of it as a feedback loop that allows you to evaluate who your event influencers are, what their influence is and how to best engage them – in real time.

——————–

The Old Way is Broken. We’ll Pay You to Fix It!

Tens of thousands of event attendees already use BeLinker, the most powerful, hand held, mobile and social media platform for events, worldwide!

Now, help your event attendees connect to people, products and information and create more profits for your event – at the press of a button!

Get your share of the $55,000 BusyEvent Stimulus Package and finally get what every event producer really wants, 1 – money in your pocket and 2 – the inside scoop on your event!

Calculate your event’s ROI and get your share of BusyEvent’s $55,000 Giveaway
http://j.mp/beROI

An interview with BusyEvent President and Co-Founder – Brian Slawin

What is your background that caused you to want to be in the event software business?
In the 90s, I was running the flight instruction department at Parks College of Saint Louis University, looking for ways to provide easier access to the materials our flight students had to master in order to earn their pilot certificates.   With some friends that were in IT, I developed what would now be known as a Learning Management System, but back then were simply an accumulation of downloadable documents and HTML pages.

With more and more students accessing these materials via the university network, my flight instructor colleagues approached me asking if I could put their materials on the network as well.  My job gradually transformed from being a line flight instructor to becoming more focused on the development of the curriculum and the distribution of materials, testing, standards, etc…  Through this time I also was working with the Toyota Air Sports team where I got to learn more about experiential marketing, the importance of data in making marketing and business decisions and frankly, how much fun the events world is.   Blending these two areas of my life, I began developing web sites and other online materials for airshow performers and eventually the air shows themselves.  As I got more involved with the air shows and began to better understand the logistics and how events were utilized as business, communications and marketing vehicles, I became more and more interested in how technologies could solve the various problems that events struggled to overcome; information management, communications, business development and sales, people management, logistics, etc….

That’s when I left Toyota and the University and began working at several event agencies and where I met my business partner, David Schenberg.

How many years have you been in the event industry?
I started in the mid-90s so, it’s going on 16 years.

What is the strangest/funniest thing that has ever happened at an event to you or your client?
I’m not sure how funny or strange this is, because at the time it was sure nerve wracking, but in the end it turned out fine and once again showed that staying calm under pressure, is the best approach.

We were at an event in Barcelona and about 15 minutes before the keynote featuring Sir Richard Branson was about to begin – all of the power to the backstage equipment went down.  It’s where we were stationed and getting ready to run the BeLinker audience response for about 2,000 attendees.  As the clock ticked down, people were running around frantically, throwing circuit breakers, looking for battery backups, trying to figure out what had happened . . . the walkie-talkie traffic was intense.  With the doors about to open and still nothing resolved, the BusyEvent team gathered and began to methodically run through our Plan B.  That’s when I looked over and saw that one of the non-English speaking grips had disconnected our entire system, thinking that it was a non-essential piece of equipment.  In doing so, he also had accidentally turned off the main power switch for all of the backstage power.  I called to the floor director and said “hey, I think I know what happened” and related to her what I was seeing.  About 20 people ran backstage and the poor grip was so startled I’m pretty sure he still hasn’t stopped shaking.

Once the power was restored, all went on according to play, with a few less hairs in everyone’s head.  But, once again it shows that in times of extreme pressure the best thing to do is keep your head and continue thinking and communicating.  As my business partner David says “It’s not what happens, but how you respond to it” and that’s so very true.

What are you most proud of having accomplished with BusyEvent?
One of the things that I am most proud of, is the way our company has continued to keep ‘solutions’ at the core of our focus, rather than developing a thing and looking for a problem to attach it to.

We continue to focus on our capabilities and the vision we had when we started our parent company, Panamedia Group in 2006.  While it hasn’t always been easy, or the quickest path to revenue, we knew that the events industry was ripe for a variety of solutions that would improve communications and make managing and running an event more efficient and ultimately more profitable for each of the stakeholder groups.

By building our expertise in a variety of areas that are parallel to the core of our business (such as developing the software for our Interactive Donor Walls) and gaining experience working with permanent placement hardware solutions, our capabilities to serve our clients’ wide variety of needs and source the appropriate solution continues to grow.

So, what I’m really proud of having accomplished is that most of our clients make us their first phone call . . . even if isn’t directly what we do, they know that we’ll always take the time to steer them on a good path.  The trust that we have earned and the relationships we’ve built are very satisfying and rewarding.

——————–

The Old Way is Broken.  We’ll Pay You to Fix It!

Tens of thousands of event attendees already use BeLinker, the most powerful, hand held, mobile and social media platform for events, worldwide!

Now, help your event attendees connect to people, products and information and create more profits for your event – at the press of a button!

Get your share of the $55,000 BusyEvent Stimulus Package and finally get what every event producer really wants, 1 – money in your pocket and 2 – the inside scoop on your event!

Calculate your event’s ROI and get your share of BusyEvent’s $55,000 Giveaway
http://j.mp/beROI

Well, he’s done it again.

Richard Feldman, has stirred the pot once again in the LinkedIn Virtual Events and Meeting Technology group by asking the question:  Will running an online event in conjunction with a physical event cannibalize my face-to-face attendance or enhance it?

It’s a great question and a topic that’s been blunting the full-fledged embrace of virtual tools by the events industry.  As we ad smart phone capability to the BeLinker software platform, the discussion of revenue possibilities, profitability and ‘eyeballs’ has been a frequent one with our clients.

Here are our thoughts!

The good news is, there’s already a model for creating virtual access to live events.

• It’s highly successful,
• Massively profitable
• Growing exponentially every year and
• It is a model for the events industry!

Back in the 60s, professional sports leagues were having this very same debate; would televising games in the local city cannibalize attendance?  Some early experimentation led to 72-hour blackouts until it became clear that the answer was NO, it won’t cost ‘onsite’ eyeballs.  Instead, what was found is that adding ‘virtual’ channels and enabling hybrid participation expanded the audience, creating more revenue and turned time-based content into infinitely accessible, monetizable content.

Much like any sporting event, some people will want to go to the live event, some will want to watch it on TV (their computer) and still others will want to pick-and-choose their highlights later.  For each of those audiences, there is a channel (the venue, the web cast + Twitter and then videos-on-demand).

Each of those audiences can be served and each of them bring revenue and marketing opportunities which is good for the attendees (”I was there but didn’t quite hear the presentation”), good for the event producer (creating additional revenue by providing access to content) and especially good for the exhibitors and sponsors (marketing and exposure well past the end of an event plus the ability to generate once and utilize content well into the future).

The hard reality is, if the event producer doesn’t provide a virtual channel, the event attendees are going to create one anyway.  Wouldn’t it be better to promote and take advantage of its possibilities rather than continue to bury your head in the sand, ignoring what’s really going on around your event?

Given our experiences utilizing the mobile BeLinker platform, that question has been asked and answered dozens of times.  In the case of each of our clients, that answer is a unanimous “YES” to hybrid events.

Want to learn more about your event ROA? Take the BusyEvent $55,000 ROI Challenge and we’ll show you how to help your exhibitors leverage your attendee’s actions and take advantage of an event’s hybrid possibilities!

More importantly . . . can you tell when they are because, they probably don’t mean to.

When asked, most attendees will tell you what they hope to accomplish, what they plan to do and how they intend to maximize their event experience. . . in reality, they don’t have a clue.

Ask any exhibitor what they really want to know and they’ll tell you “give me data on what my prospect is actually doing – show me the action”!   An event attendees actions, then, become the true measure of their desires because nothing else matters – not even what they say.

Measuring and reporting on action, calculating Return on Action (ROA) and providing exhibitors with tools to impact their ROA at an event, is the most important aspect that event planners can leverage.  Unfortunately, with a focus on ROI and ROO people get confused by what they’re measuring and what creates value.  It’s time to face some hard facts:

• According to Brian J. Carroll upwards of 90% of event exhibitors don’t have a lead management and qualifications process and simply show up to an event/tradeshow and hope for the best.
• Zadsol Solutions found that 43% of tradeshow attendees received relevant information AFTER a buying decision had been made.
• And the hardest fact of all . . . according to CEIR, 80% of tradeshow leads are never followed up on.

Said another way, “there’s no ‘there’, there”.  Here’s a typical scenario:

1. An exhibitor goes to an event and comes back with 1,000 contacts (RFID hits, bar code scanned list tape, fish bowl business cards, etc..).
2. The old way would say that’s a good thing.
3. However, based on the hard facts, it’s probably a very bad thing. . . . frankly the worst thing that could happen to a sales force because nearly all of those leads are under qualified, acquired by the wrong incentives and are proximity based (rather than action based).

So, what are proximity based leads?

Someone enters an exhibitor’s booth and their badge gets scanned.  Or, someone drops their business card in a fish bowl because the exhibitor offers a prize, there’s a scribbled note (”follow up with Bob”) on the back of each business card and probably the worst offender, the RFID system told the exhibitor that a particular person with a particular title dwelled in their booth longer than the average – is proximity really activity?   Tragically, each of these contacts came to the exhibitor’s booth, soaked up the event specialist’s time, took a brochure and probably ate a few Jolly Ranchers – before moving on with the exhibitor’s time and money and candy!

At its core, the old events model is permanently broken due to a variety of influences and the keepers of the status quo are trying to keep it that way.  Whenever you hear someone talk about ‘proximity’ information, which typically sounds pretty cool (”You’ll know exactly where all the people walked on the tradeshow floor”), make sure to ask the business question “how does that help my exhibitor accomplish their goals“?

The silence will be deafening.

– – -  In the first article in the BusyEvent “Fixing the Problem” series (If the Events Model is Broken, What Will Work In Its Place), we focused on where we’ve been. Next in our series of posts on “Fixing the Problem” we’ll address exactly what ROA is and most importantly, what it isn’t!  – – –

Want to learn more about your event ROA?

Take the BusyEvent $55,000 ROI Challenge and we’ll show you how to help your exhibitors leverage your attendee’s actions!

We’ve seen it before.

When the internet first started, every company had to have a web site – until someone finally asked the question “why”?

In marketing, they’re known as early adopters and thank heavens for them . . . because they’ll shake the bugs out of the system and either give it enough breath to live past its early days of growth (Twitter) or kill it and move on to something else (Friendfind).

In the events industry, we’re living in a similar ‘early adopter’ phase when it comes to shiny objects – specifically, mobile and the plethora of applications providers searching for a way to wedge their solutions into the event planners world.

On the opposite side of that gold rush is the status quo (What Part of Status Quo Don’t We Understand?) whose old guard are fighting tooth and nail to maintain their position and keep things the way they’ve always been.

And, just like in real life, the best solution is usually somewhere in the middle – not acting hastily while also managing innovation-stifling analysis paralysis.

Which brings us to Richard Feldman’s recent question on LinkedIn:  TOPIC: Using onsite technology to bridge the gap between physical and virtual events.  I have done some research into vendors in the on-site networking technology space and have found two . . . I have invited both of them to comment on their technology, both hardware and software.

In response to that invitation, BusyEvent CEO, David Schenberg outlined the difference between an event planners goals and those of an event technology provider – and in doing so, overviews the operational and financial reasons to provide your attendees and exhibitors with an onsite technology that allows them to:

• do what they want to do,
• where they want to do it,
• with the tools they choose to use.

————-

Richard – Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

There are a few conversations going on surrounding this topic right now. The hottest one is in direct response to the flurry of mobile tools that have discovered how to play in the event space. In general, mobile assumes the following things are present to be successful:

1. Everyone has a smart phone and is ready to use it at an event.
2. The venue holding the event is cellular accessible.
3. The attendees are tech savvy enough to want to use their smart phone.
4. Attendees want to spend their time “heads down” in their phone building social networking tidbits to contribute to the collective.

If you look at high-profile events like SXSW where some of these “one trick pony” mobile tools were available, they were only used by a small % of the audience.

Which is why a solution looking for a problem, doesn’t work in the events space.  For live event technology to be a success it really should be:

1. Available to and usable by to at least 80% of the audience.
2. On the attendees choice of their device (smart phone, PC) or one offered by the event (ex: BeLinker keyfob).
3. Usable by the attendees without them needing to do anything to get and create value – other than registering for the event – to enable basic participation.
4. Easy to use without creating a “partial attention span” audience.

There are some excellent technologies available in a few vertical markets but integrating 3 or more of those is an event planner’s nightmare.  There are also some well integrated solutions in the $35-$75 per attendee price range, but that may not be feasible for an event of 3,000+ people.

So, there needs to be a happy medium of easy to use, a solid list of expected features and a reasonable price that allows an event planner to provide a good solution and create additional profitability.  Oh, and the data should be usable before, during and most importantly AFTER the event, feeding back into the client’s business processes.

As events look at how to cut their costs and fundamentally re-engineer the flow of revenue from 3rd party vendors BACK into their own pockets, fluffy features that don’t get used and don’t have a business purpose aren’t going to save an event any money and will eventually be dropped because of their shiny object nature.

By partnering with a company that has decades of event experience, rather than a technology provider looking for a problem to solve, an event planner will find a specific solution for their event, and the event industry’s need.

– - -  In the first article in the BusyEvent “Fixing the Problem” series (If the Events Model is Broken, What Will Work In Its Place), we focused on where we’ve been.  Next, in the first of a series of posts, we turn our attention to measurement and the false expectations that a focus on Return on Investment and Return on Objective create.  – - –

Want to learn more about your event ROA?

Take the BusyEvent $55,000 ROI Challenge and we’ll show you how to help your exhibitors leverage your attendee’s actions!

An interview with BusyEvent CEO & Co-Founder – David J. Schenberg

When did you start the company?:  August, 2006

What do you sell?:  A traditional expo, tradeshow, conference, congress or meeting comes with a high-level of inefficiency, uncertainty and expense.   Our BeLinker product enables the delivery of value to each participant.

Through a combination of Professional event services Software as a service an On-site event hardware . . . we deliver tangible and measurable ROI.

Imagine going to an event and being able to:

• Efficiently collect all of the people, products and ideas that you were interested in and then,
• Rather than trying to carry home a tower of business cards and loads of brochures you could
• Login to your Virtual Totebag, reach out, connect, share and learn more about the things you were interested in.

That’s BeLinker and it’s now available on mobile devices.

Describe the typical person who buys what you sell?:  Event and meeting planners, marketing professionals, associations, event production companies, corporate event planners and event owners.

How many people like that exist in your market?:  The event industry, in just the US, is made up of more than 3,500 unique events per year that have attendance of +/- 2,000 attendees, per event.  There are thousands of event professionals that would consider our technology in helping run those events, if they just knew about it.  In some cases as many as 3 different parties might consider our tools for the same show because we cross several vertical markets.
Why should people buy from you as opposed to your competitors?:  Buyers have a choice:  They can procure from 4-6 different suppliers and manage the communications between those teams and databases or they can choose BusyEvent and have one platform to manage it all.  BeLinker, which is our premier product, has been actively sold and purchased since May, 2009.

To date, we have supported more than a dozen events in the US, Europe and Asia.

If I had a magic wand and could grant you one wish what would it be?: 60 sales professionals to call on every event 30 days after it ends to get them talking about how we can help them make their next event cost less and deliver more measurable benefits for everyone involved.
If that wish were granted tonight while you are asleep, what are three things people would notice have changed when they come to work tomorrow?:

1. The owners would be more relaxed and pleasant
2. Doughnuts
3. Starbucks instead of Folgers

• Heading home after 3 successful days in Dallas. Looking forward to afternoon meetings and then, it's LA for a week! #eventprofs #

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