Peter Jack, EMG Event Management Group director discusses how marketers can make the most of their events by using them to boost client databases.  

These days a company’s database of contacts is often considered one of its most important assets, providing an avenue for companies to directly market to potential clients.

However, building a robust database is no mean feat. Most tactics traditionally involve asking customers to register their details during a transaction and getting them to agree to receive marketing materials.

Despite the fact that marketers attempt to gather customer data at every touch point, surprisingly many still overlook the rich opportunities events offer in terms of being excellent platforms for data gathering. In fact, the people who attend a company’s events are often its most relevant and important stakeholders.

By implementing appropriate data gathering tools, marketers can make their events work for them after the event finale and well into the future.

Take, for example, Clean Energy Council’s annual conference and gala dinner. Its last event attracted over 2000 participants, 150 trade exhibition booths and 600 trade visitors. To successfully capture the details of these highly targeted individuals and businesses, EMG built a customised registration platform incorporating over 60 registration types. By successfully capturing Clean Energy’s attendee data, the company is now in a position to regularly communicate with a large group of highly relevant key stakeholders.

Incorporating the right online registration platform to host your event attendees’ details is only one of the many ways to capture data – the new currency of events.

Events provide a real opportunity to gain an insight into what people are experiencing when they are experiencing it. Introducing real-time feedback via mobile devices, augmented reality and virtual 3D user experiences, these media and others not only create a great user experience but also allow the organisation to capture true and meaningful data that has real currency.

Attendees at events are a source of information that is to yet be fully mined in its value and potential. As humans it is part of our DNA to engage with other humans and events provide the perfect platform for this engagement.

By creating opportunities that suit the varied and many individuals who attend events to engage at a level which suits them when it suits them, we gain a deeper understanding of their experience.