10 Ways To Make Your Conferences More Engaging
One of the most important ways you can measure the success of your conference event is by understanding the engagement levels of attendees.
Poor engagement levels indicate that your attendees weren’t actively engaged and therefore, may not have effectively processed the information you were presenting to them.
There’s no denying that often conferences can be very information-heavy and involve a lot more listening than active participation.
Of course, they need to be informational. But there is a balance to strike.
We are strong believers that the most successful conferences are the ones that truly consider and optimise the attendee’s experience.
From entertainment to new technology, we’ll discuss lots of ways to elevate your conference (or sales kick-off) and ensure optimal attendee engagement – ensuring you both hit your ROIs.
Key Takeaways
- Maximise engagement by discovering creative ways to ensure attendees are actively involved and retain valuable information during your conference.
- Immersive theming can transform your conference space, inspiring networking and collaboration among attendees.
- Innovative entertainment options, from live performances to interactive tech, can captivate attendees at key moments and elevate the event experience.
- Break-out spaces play a crucial role in providing networking opportunities and allowing attendees to refresh, keeping them engaged and focused throughout the event.
- Event technology, such as apps, live polls, and digital business cards, can streamline interactions and encourage active participation.
Table of Contents
Why Should I Make My Conference More Engaging?
10 Ways to Make Your Conference More Engaging
- Immersive Theming
- Conference Entertainment
- Break Out Spaces
- Event Technology
- Fun Conference Catering
- Networking
- Engaging Conference Visuals
- Guest Speakers
- Interactive Elements
- Competitions and Giveaways
Why Should I Make My Conference More Engaging?
Without attendees you don’t have a conference event, therefore, you need to ensure that you’re creating an event that fulfils their personal ROIs.
Attending an event costs time and money, so attendees will want to be sure that they will benefit from attending your event.
These benefits could include gaining more knowledge and insight into a particular subject area or providing networking opportunities.
To ensure you are setting your future conferences up for success, you’ll want to make sure that your conference builds up a group of attendees who will really benefit from your conference.
Therefore, one of the critical things you want to consider when planning your conference event is that you are marketing your event to the right audience.
This is because if you market to the wrong audience, they will likely be the least engaged at your conference, as the event information and topic may be irrelevant or uninteresting to them.
Furthermore, by having engaging, interactive and fun elements to your conference, you are creating an event that will be talked about, recommended and shared on social media. You’ll create inspired attendees who will immediately want to book to attend your next event.
Whether you’re engaging with employees, consumer audiences, partners or business customers, attending a face-to-face conference is one of the best ways to immediately improve their engagement and ability to retain information.
75% of B2B marketers believe in-person events are the most effective marketing tool, and over 50% of marketers believe that one-on-one interaction at events helps build relationships and furthers an organisation’s business goals.
If you are looking for guidance with ways to make your event more engaging, you can get in touch with our team who can advise you on what will work well for your space and goals.
10 Ways To Make Your Conference More Engaging
As you can see above we, have highlighted multiple reasons why you need to ensure your Conference Event is engaging – now we want to tell you how to make this happen!
As an Events Company, we have been creating engaging, conferences and sales kick-offs for years and we certainly know a trick or two when it comes to maximising your attendee’s engagement.
Below we have listed 10 of our favourite ways to elevate your Conference Event and generate more delegate engagement.
1. Immersive Theming
Break the mould with your conference event and bring an immersive theme to your conference!
Now more than ever, organisers are working to create visually inspiring events! Long gone are the days when the most creative decorations at the conference would be a branded T-board! We now embrace the new era of creative event theming – regardless of the event.
We have already seen corporate environments incorporate this idea of immersive theming into their head offices, with lots of Insta-worthy photo opportunities, colour, cool lighting and carefully created chill-out zones.
So why not apply this same design principle when creating your conference event?
We supply a wide range of off-the-shelf themes as well as having a creative design team ready to design and install bespoke themes. Therefore, our team can work with you to curate a conference space that is visually inspiring to delegates.
Often Conference Events have multiple different areas, therefore, we recommend theming each of these areas slightly differently to encourage the right kind of behaviours from your attendees.
For example, in a space where you want to encourage networking, use seating that groups people together. Create open spaces and apply a theme that will encourage guests to talk to one another.
Themed Sales Kick-Offs
Sale’s kickoffs will hugely benefit from added creative theming, reinforcing corporate goals and energising your sales team for the year ahead! If you want more advice on planning your sales kick-offs, check out our detailed blog here.
2. Conference Entertainment
There are so many ways you can utilise Event Entertainment at different stages of your conference to help engage attendees.
Below are some opportunities where you can use entertainment at different stages of your conference, as well as some specific entertainment we think would work really well!
Entering the event
This is where your attendees form their very first impressions of your event – therefore you want it to be good! Why not consider:
See how we implemented festival themed entertainment at this conference in London Magna Cartas Island.
Whilst networking
You want to ensure that entertainment whilst networking is none-intrusive but also encourages conversation, some options we recommend are:
See how we implemented Sci-Fi LED robots and dancers into this festival themed entertainment at this conference in London Magna Cartas Island.
To break up the day
There will be lots of talks and presentations going on on stage throughout the day and we think it’s a great idea to also break up the day by having some entertainment performing on stage. Some of the options we suggest are:
As a conference entertainment specialist our team can guide you on the right options for your event, just get in touch with our event experts to discuss you conference entertainment.
3. Conference Break-Out Spaces
One great way to keep attendees engaged and feeling their best is by creating multiple different inspiring break-out spaces where they can choose to go before or after speeches or presentations.
You can create spaces with big tables and open planning to encourage conversation, or you can create spaces that have informal seating and tables to allow people to write up notes or check in on emails.
We would also suggest ensuring there are complimentary drinks and snacks that delegates can help themselves to.
These spaces will be the areas where delegates take time to collect themselves before the next presentation as well as catch up with other attendees, so they need to be comfortable and welcoming.
There are some interesting findings on how important it is to take breaks between meetings – which you can also apply to conferences:
- “Breaks between meetings allow the brain to ‘reset’, reducing a cumulative buildup of stress across meetings.”
- “Back-to-back meetings can decrease your ability to focus and engage”
- “Transitioning between meetings can be a source of high stress”
What can we take away from this? The need to incorporate breaks between sections of your conference.
Before changing subjects or activities, encourage delegates to take a break in the break-out area to reset and therefore be ready to take on more information in the next section.
4. Event Technology For Your Conference
There are so many ways you can incorporate event technology into your conference event to encourage engagement. From apps to interactive maps, live streaming to live polls, Q&As and digital business cards.
The best way to centralise all of this technology is through an event app. These can be custom-built to ensure they offer exactly the services you want. Furthermore, they are an excellent tool you can use post-event to monitor and track engagement from your Conference Event.
In this app you can add in the running order of the day, allowing attendees to highlight and add to their personal agenda the talks that they would like to attend.
You can also integrate an interactive map of your event into the app, letting attendees see what is going on and where to ensure they don’t miss a thing.
Our partners who build our event apps are also able to incorporate digital business cards into the app, allowing attendees to scan another attendee’s QR code to save their information for conversations they may want to have together in the future.
Furthermore, with the opportunity to submit questions through the app and vote on live polls, attendees will be able to easily engage with multiple different elements of your event.
5. Fun Conference Catering
Running a full-day Conference Event means that at some point your attendees are going to be hungry and want something to eat.
Why not use this as an opportunity to dive into more engagement by offering some fun and creative Catering Options for your guests to experience?
Whether you opt for a variety of different food trucks offering a wide range of catering, or perhaps some engaging dessert options such as candyfloss machines, rolled ice cream or even liquid nitrogen desserts.
You might also want to consider having mixology-style mocktails on offer at your event, allowing your guests to shake their very own mocktails to enjoy.
6. Engaging Networking Opportunities
One great way of creating a fun networking opportunity throughout your event is by creating a leaderboard to track the top networkers at the event.
Using your event app, we can create a digital leaderboard at your event showing who has networked the most throughout your Conference Event.
You could then look at rewarding the top networkers with prizes.
Another great way to encourage networking is by allowing guests to create a list of attendees they would like to network with through the app – almost like a professional Tinder.
You can also incorporate Team Building Activities into your event, where attendees are put into different groups and set tasks they must complete with the top team winning a prize.
All of the above ideas are great ways you can encourage engagement and networking throughout your event.
7. Engaging Conference Visuals
Please don’t just rely on bog-standard PowerPoint presentations as visual aids throughout your Conference Event!
There are so many ways you can incorporate inspiring and engaging visuals throughout your Conference Event that will elevate your attendee’s experience. Some of our favourites include:
- LED Screens with state-of-the-art videos
- Interactive screens where attendees can control what comes up on the screen
- Touch-screen maps
Incorporating your brand logo throughout the event space is a simple yet effective way to reinforce brand identity. From custom-designed stage backdrops to subtle integration within decor elements like table settings, digital screens, and break-out spaces, your logo can serve as a cohesive thread that ties together the entire theme of your event.
By seamlessly blending your logo into various aspects of the event, you’ll create a visually striking experience that not only engages attendees but also strengthens brand recognition.
8. Relevant Conference Guest Speakers
One of your goals at your Conference Event should be to inspire and motivate your delegates, and what better way to do this than by booking an inspirational Guest Speaker?
Consider choosing someone who is either relevant to your industry, or someone who has achieved something incredible in their field of expertise. This is important as you want your attendees to really connect with the speaker.
Ensure that the Guest Speakers’ presentation is very visual, showcasing their achievements. Additionally, ensure you leave plenty of time at the end of the talk for a Q&A session, so attendees can ask your guests any important questions they may have.
9. Interactive Elements
Plan your conference venue space so that there are plenty of interactive points throughout the event. Whether that’s QR codes to access exclusive information, immersive spaces to walk through and take pictures of, videos playing with headphones connected for guests to listen in on or entertainment for guests to engage with.
These need to be spread across the whole of your conference venue space to ensure that at each point of the attendee’s journey through the conference, there is something that they can engage and interact with.
10. Competitions and Giveaways
As mentioned above, there are many ways that you can incorporate a competitive element into your event and they are a great way to drive engagement.
Take a look at your conference event and see what behaviours you want your attendees to exhibit and how they match up with your ROIs. From this, look at how you can build competitions around these to encourage that behaviour.
This is a great engagement opportunity for both the conference organiser and the attendee as both targets get something out of it and who doesn’t love some healthy competition!
Engaging Conference Event Management
Ready to elevate your next conference? At Julia Charles Event Management, we specialise in creating engaging, memorable conference experiences that captivate your audience from start to finish.
Whether you need immersive theming, interactive technology, or innovative entertainment, our expert team can help you design a tailored event that maximises attendee participation and hits your goals.
Let’s work together to make your next conference unforgettable.
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- Holographic Technology in Events: The Ultimate Guide
- How to Create Unique Conference Team-Building Events for Your Company
- From Holograms To Hybrid: A Glimpse Into The Future Of Conferences
- What Technology to Incorporate into a Conference 2024
- Event Branding Ideas For Including Your Logo At Your Corporate Events
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