Written by CadmiumCD Contributor Pamela Shigeoka
At this point, a mobile app is pretty much a must-have for any event. Attendees expect to have the schedule and exhibitor information at their fingertips, and since the vast majority of people carry smart phones today, a mobile app is the easiest way to get that data to your attendees. CadmiumCD first launched eventScribe in 2011 and gave it a major overhaul in 2015. Today, eventScribe is an excellent choice, particularly for educational conferences. Let’s take a look at some of the features that make eventScribe work so well for branding, ease of use, and attendee engagement.
Navigation and Branding in One Package
The navigation system in a mobile app should serve two purposes: to help attendees find the information they want quickly and to get more eyeballs on your sponsors. Ease of use is incredibly important, as an overly complicated navigation system can make users give up on using the app when they can’t find what they need within a click or two. And it goes without saying that you want your sponsors to be highly visible.
Our tile layout system, introduced with the eventScribe relaunch in 2015, provides a lot of functionality and branding capabilities that you won’t find in other event apps. We have several template options available, so you can choose which one will best suit your event’s needs. If you have a lot of content, you might want to choose a layout with more tiles so attendees can see more options when they open the app. For a smaller event, fewer tiles might work better. And all of the templates are fully customizable, so we can adapt any of them to fit your needs.
Since the tiles can be customized with your event’s graphics, eventScribe makes branding your app easy and attractive. CadmiumCD has teams that can help you with your artwork, if you need it, and we can also provide the image specs if you’d like to create your own. All of the graphics within the app itself can be changed to suit your needs, and the app’s icon can also be customized for your event.
The app also can support two splash screens that appear when the app is first opened: one for your event, and one for a sponsor. Another sponsorship feature is the ability to support a rotating ad space on the main app screen. We recommend using multiple images from a single sponsor, so your analytics for ad clicks won’t be confusing, but if a sponsor has multiple images or texts they’d like to share, the rotating ad space is perfect.
Information at Your Fingertips
One powerful feature you can find in eventScribe is the Virtual Grab Bag. This feature lets you include PDFs or images from third parties or additional information about your conference without dealing with printed fliers and booklets. You can use digital fliers instead of printing them, thereby reducing the amount of waste produced at your conference. All of this information can be accessed from the Grab Bag screen, so attendees have easy access to it. This is a great way to deliver extra educational files as well as information about events going on within your conference.
Secondary Action Tiles are a way to make scheduling content easier to access in the app. The schedule has three distinct sub-menus: happening now, full schedule, and My Schedule. You can elect to move certain menus to main screen if you want to emphasize them, such as Happening Now. That way, when an attendee opens the app, they can click Happening Now to go directly to a list of panels and events going on at that moment. My Schedule shows everything that an attendee has saved from the schedule or exhibitor list. Attendees can also add personal events, such as a coffee meeting with a fellow attendee, to My Schedule.
Note-Taking With Ease
One of the most popular features in eventScribe, and one we’ve won multiple awards for, is our side-by-side note taking system. Instead of simply popping up a blank page to take notes on, eventScribe allows attendees to take notes side-by-side with slides during presentations. We convert each Powerpoint slide or PDF page into an open-source image file that attendees can then draw or write directly on. They then have the option to print their notes as a PDF and edit notes before sharing them with colleagues.
During educational conferences, this kind of note taking experience can really help attendees keep track of what they’re learning. They can refer back to their notes and see the slide at the same time, so they will know exactly what the speaker was saying as they took a particular note. This is also good for sessions that qualify for continuing education credits, as attendees have a better chance of absorbing information that might come up on a quiz.
Scavenger Hunts
The last thing a show organizer wants is for attendees to wander through the exhibit hall without engaging with any of the exhibitors in a meaningful way. Gamification is a great way to increase attendee engagement with your sponsors and exhibitors by giving attendees tasks and offering points and potential prizes. The scavenger hunt option in eventScribe lets you associate a different number of points with each exhibitor. So if you have a platinum sponsor and you want to draw more attention to them, you can designate more points for attendees to visit that sponsor. This makes the feature a great revenue driver with sponsorships.
The scavenger hunt works by directing attendees to go to a booth and scan a QR code. This brings up a question in the app; if they answer correctly, they get full points. Incorrect answers encourage them to scan and guess again. This encourages interaction between exhibitor and attendee, rather than just having them visit a booth or ask for a code. Exhibitors have a chance to talk about their product or company in more depth, and attendees are far more likely to learn about that exhibitor. The scavenger hunt has proven to be a highly successful way of increasing engagement on your exhibit hall floor.
These are only a few of the ways eventScribe can help improve attendee engagement and make navigating and learning at your conference easy. To find out how you can best use eventScribe for your conference, schedule a demo.
About Pamela
I am a freelance writer who enjoys dipping my toes into a wide variety of writing subjects. I have an M.A. in English but found that teaching wasn’t for me, so I’m applying my training to writing instead. I’ve been blogging for ten years and have written everything from book reviews to pop culture essays to business topics. In my spare time, I enjoy writing fiction, playing games, and learning new crafts. I live in Corvallis, Oregon, with my husband, daughter, and dog.