The BusyEvent Blog

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• Changing the Equation for Organizers and Attendees – http://j.mp/cqhdWk <-> #mpi #iaee #cemaonline #eventprofs #tradeshow #
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• The Startup Success podcast w/ CEO David Schenberg – @BeLinker new features, enhancements and 'client wins': http://j.mp/cE6eHa #eventprofs #
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Changing the Tradeshow Industry with a New Breed of Apps #eventprofs #iaee

IAEE – the International Association of Exhibitions and Events – published a very intriguing article about the Changing Tradeshow Industry and a new breed of event applications.  As you may know, Expo! Expo! is coming up early December, so the timing for discussions about how the tradeshow and events industry is being improved is perfect.

In addition to a variety of tools that are ‘web only’, BusyEvent’s Event Bookmarking System and the use of beLinkers is broadly highlighted.

Enjoy!

• Changing the Tradeshow Industry with a New Breed of Apps (PDF)
• IAEE Exhibitions and Events Magazine for Expo! Expo!

Keep Doing That and You’re Going to Fail! #eventprofs #tradeshows #assnchat

That’s the message I woke up to this morning. . . I’m glad I work out on Thursday mornings!

As we continue promoting the Event Bookmarking tools and more people engage in the conversation, it’s a good sign that someone is going to disagree (based on the surface impressions) of what we’re doing and why.

And that’s what happened today.

The first Tweet came in last night: 2 be honest, your product seems too much like (name of failed product) to succeed.  Then, after responding we got this: ask urself how many similar single-application gadgets have succeeded & why can’t the functionality B ported 2 a cellphone?

And that’s when the problem became clear . . . he thought we were promoting a hardware solution – and we’re not.

Now, I’d like your opinion, based on what was sent to us on Twitter – how would you have responded?  Something stronger or do you think what I wrote will start a flame war?

More importantly, even though it’s a bit lengthy, does our response help clarify what the Event Bookmarking platform can do – and that it’s independent of hardware?  In other words, ‘do you get it’?

Hi there (name of Twitterer):

Thanks for reaching out on Twitter. It’s interesting you should latch on to the ‘device’ element of the Event Bookmarking system.  Since that’s not how we promote the web accessible Event Bookmarking SaaS platform, your perspective is an insightful one.

First, a little background and in advance, I apologize for the length of my response.

Event Bookmarking is a web-accessible communications system (think of it like a Facebook-for-Events) that allows people to tap into their passions, at events.

Based on our experience, those passions are:

• Connect with each other – via tag-based matchmaking, tapping into personal and professional networks and creating links between the people they meet at events.
• Learn about things – via the bookmarking of sessions, speakers, products, exhibitors and other people.
• Participate in the conversation – via audience response tools such as polling and surveying, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook feeds and
• Communicate pre, during and post event – with the people, products and ideas that they were exposed to and want to maintain a relationship with.

In addition to the above, Event Bookmarking (which is an embedded or stand-alone module of our Meeting Manager platform) has a significant “green” impact by allowing exhibitors, speakers, sponsors, attendees and the event producers to ‘leave the paper at home’ and instead, link to or upload their information into the Event Bookmarking system.

Other than the positive economic and ecological impact, content owners can also track (like a WebTrends tool) who clicked on or downloaded their information and clicked through to their LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter feeds, which fosters lead management, connectedness and the tracking of a communication thread that other tools can’t provide.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, none of the above mentions a specific hardware solution.

And as I’m sure you’ll agree the use of smart/mobile devices (although on Twitter you mentioned the use of cell phones which is a path we have already evaluated and rejected) offer a greater flexibility (with the inherent distractions – which create their own issues) than a single purpose device, which is why we offer smart device tools, as well.

If we were only an event management company running ‘tech focused’ events for 1000 or fewer attendees, then likely we’d only offer the BusyEvent LIVE ‘mobile device’ solution.  However, since we run corporate and association events of 500-5000 attendees (with1,000 exhibitor booths) and consumer events with up to 50,000 attendees (and 3,000 exhibitor booths), offering a ‘smart/mobile device’ solution alone would be short sighted.  To give you a greater insight to a specific event, I’m attaching a case study from the (name of client) event held mid-May.

Our goal is to assure that everyone at any event has access to the information and communications channels that matters most to them.  Event Bookmarking allows every event participant to contribute to, participate in and access all of the information streams available at an event via whatever hardware they carry and if they don’t want to use their personal hardware, they can use ours; the BeLinkers.

Thanks again for reaching out . . . I look forward to continuing our conversation about how these tools can impact the events you are involved with.

———————————

So, based on what was sent to us on Twitter – how would you have responded?  Something stronger or do you think what I wrote will start a flame war?

More importantly, even though it’s a bit lengthy, does the above help clarify what the Event Bookmarking platform can do – and that it’s independent of hardware?

If you’re interested, let me know (via comments) and I’ll let you know what his response is.

Tradeshows . . . Where Good Leads (no longer have to) Go To Die. Almost a year ago we wrote a series of articles on the challenges that tradeshow attendees face: Tradeshows, Where Good Leads go to Die (Part 1 & Part 2), our version of a Jerry Maguire document.  Taken as a whole, it outlines the problems in the tradeshow and events industry and describes a set of solutions.

So today, as part of the solution, we are launching BeLinker, a proprietary software and integrated hardware system designed to improve audience response, face-to-face social networking, lead management and data-based revenue creation for events.

What is BeLinker and the BusyEvent Event Bookmarking software platform?  Among other things it solves the “We don’t do trade shows because there’s no value in them” problem, for exhibitors.  Everyday, we talk with event managers, vendors sponsors, speakers and attendees discussing the good, the bad and the ugly about their events.  One of the core issues we discuss is the pressure for a return on investment in the expo or booth area.

In any economy, participation in an expo is dependent upon the amount of qualified leads a vendor received for their time, money and efforts. But simply agreeing to invest in a show is only half the battle because traditional lead management only produces a list of who was “scanned”; a list of a list, if you will.  It can’t produce a list of truly ‘qualified leads’.

The follow up on these lists can be daunting and is typically done by placing those new leads into the sales pipeline for eBlasting or even worse “dialing for dollars” phone calls made by the newest sales trainees or more expensively, top sales talent.

After a busy show, attendees get pounded with junk mail and emails and phone calls thanking them for stopping by and ‘pitching’ the product or service.  As a result, little list qualification occurs and they simply become part of the database going forward.  Solving that problem is what generated the lead management component of BeLinker (PDF Download).

And now the story that started it all… Years ago, we attended one of the tradeshows about tradeshows. We happened across one of the dozen or so ‘event management’ companies (translation – event registration software), ate the candy, took a brochure out of guilt, and thanked them for their time.  We learned a lot from that experience.  We were two people in a show full of several thousand attendees. We came, we saw, we talked and then we left . . . For us, that was that.

And that’s when the emails and the phone calls and the invitations started coming.  “We’re having a webinar!”, “We’re doing a luncheon in your town!”, “We’re offering new modules that we’ve stacked on top of the other ones… it’s all shiny and new and you MUST BE THERE to see it!!!”

Since we were relatively unimpressed with what we saw and were already well into the development of the BusyEvent Event Management Platform, we opted-out and took this one-time experience as a good dose of what not to do.  Our event management clients were telling us what they wanted, didn’t like, wished they could have and we had already been building tools like this for over a decade as one-off software. The time was right for us to build an event platform.

But the lunch invitations kept coming.  Even as we were launching Version 1 of BusyEvent and made no secret to who we were, nobody at the “we’ll invite you to a luncheon and show you our stuff” company had any tools or information to know if we were a qualified lead or not – so we’re still on the list today.

Last week, we received another email (the 4th in a period of 6 months) about another lunch and demo of their tools and that’s when we sat down and started doing some math.  What did this one unqualified lead cost them and how many unqualified thousands more are rattling around in their system?

If they had just been able to sift through the thousands of contacts they gathered at the event we attended to find the 50-100 good and qualifiable leads it would have been more useful to them.  What they do with the other 900 is up to them . . . so, here’s what we do:

1. First, everyone doesn’t get a color glossy brochure that will sooner-than-later find its way into a landfill.  Instead, had that original event had the BeLinkers (PDF Download) in use, every contact could be filtered and the qualified leads would get more attention.
2. Then, we track who downloaded our PDF brochure, clicked on the link to our site, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc… and expressed ANY follow-on interest.
3. By self-identifying as ‘interested’ each of those more-qualified leads would get a call from us about the real actions that occurred (we met, we talked, you clicked a link, etc…) and as appropriate, those qualified-leads would continue through the sales funnel until a more expensive contact, such as a meeting, a lunch, or demo, etc…made sense.
4. The others would all get an invite to a webinar, links to downloads and perhaps a quick 3 question survey about what they’re interested in.  And they’d remain in the ‘more qualifications needed’ list.

Before Event Bookmarking, Sales and Marketing would have no way to measure a successful show other than the number of contacts they gathered – qualified or not, “just get me names”.  Those really aren’t leads, but rather, names on a list.  Then inside sales is incentivized to get people to come to the luncheon no matter what their level of interest.  This occurs over and over until nobody knows where the leads came from or what money is best spent on Marketing.  It’s the “brute force approach” and we believe that budgets will never be there for that, ever again.

What you’ll see by watching the 5-minute LIVE BeLinker Presentation is what we’ll address for every attendee; the actual measurement of ROI and the identification of which contacts are worth spending time and money on and converting into leads.

That’s why . . . rather than continuing to be part of the problem, we’re offering part of the solution.

What is BeLinker and the Event Bookmarking Software Platform?

Among other things, BeLinker solves the “We don’t do trade shows because there’s no value in them” problem, for exhibitors.

It’s a software and purpose-built hardware platform that combines Lead Management with Audience Response, Face-to-Face Social Networking and an online information source to extend a 3-5 day event into a 365 day year-round connection between attendees, vendors, speakers, sponsors and event managers.

So, feel free to download our ‘Green Friendly’ brochure and call us to discuss how to cut the cost of event management in half while getting quality event information as it happens.