Data is an invaluable resource which when used well can help you enhance your delegates’ experience and your post-event ROI.
Event organisers have a wealth of data at their disposal from each event they hold which can help them improve future events and make them more engaging, informative, and successful. From attendee demographics to social media engagement, event data can provide valuable insights. Dash Tabor, Founder and CEO of TUBR, a Sheffield-based predictive analytics business, helps businesses to collect and get the most out of the data at events.
“One of the things that’s really important to recognise is that GDPR only applies to personal data,” Dash explains. “There are a lot of things that can make data personal. Obviously, name, or email address – if there are identifiers that can be tracked back to an individual, that might still need to be treated as personal data. But for the most part, if you’re using anonymised data you can still do a lot without breaching GDPR. You do need to be careful about the terms and conditions of what you say you’re going to be using it for, but if you make that broad in the terms and conditions, they you are fine to use the data without having to worry about GDPR.”
Having data from your previous events or from delegates you know will be attending can help you plan to better your event.
“If you wanted to go down the GDPR route and use personalised data, there’s a lot you can do with that. You can do to personalise people’s experience. You can see what they’ve looked at, what they’ve booked to before, when they arrived. You could maybe try to get them to arrive sooner or spend more in your venue based on this data. If someone bought a cold drink at the last event, maybe throw in a discounted deal with a light bite to get them to spend more. You can analyse behaviour and then use that data to attract more people to your events.”
Using technology to provide your delegates with information about the event can also allow you to collect accurate data about behaviour: “If you have an app for running your event and providing your delegates with timetabling information, allowing them to check in etc; you can use this to see what time people usually arrive and the number of people you usually have at different times in different spaces, then know how many staff you need to employ. Data can help with sustainable targets, reducing waste and avoiding running out of products if you can predict how much food or drink is sold at each different till during a large event.” Food for thought for event organisers.
“You can analyse behaviour and then use that data to attract more people to your events.”