For exhibition organisers, it’s not just your attendees you want to win over and retain — there’s also the all-important exhibitors and vendors that make your event possible (and profitable). Thankfully, modern technology can help create a goldmine of data when it comes to learning information about your attendees and what they’re engaging with. This information is crucial to the future of your event, because it can be used to prove value to your exhibitors and sponsors.

Having the right tools will go a long way in helping you unlock the most valuable information for proving ROI to exhibitors. Here are four of my top tips for collecting attendee data that exhibitors are looking for at events:

Tip 1: Use an event app to track attendee behaviour

Mobile event app technology has come a long way in recent years and is becoming more accessible than ever to organisers. As these apps can track the behaviour of your attendees in real-time, they provide the most accurate picture of what motivates people and how they are spending their time during an event.

Eventbrite partner, Entegy, for example, offers an event app with Attendance Tracking that provides rich data on the movement and habits of individual attendees. You might see that that an attendee mostly visited a certain type of exhibitor booth, which gives organisers and exhibitors pinpoint accuracy in targeting future events or campaigns to individuals.

Other examples of data you can uncover from event apps include:

  • Number of active users — how many people are engaging with exhibitors?
  • Top interests — what topics and exhibitors draw the highest crowds and can you expand on this further at your next event?
  • Event flow — which sites and session times receive the highest foot traffic?

To discover more about custom event apps and other time-saving tools, check out the 2017 Guide to Event Technology for Conferences & Exhibitions

Tip 2: Create a complete picture of attendees with Customer Relationship Management

For a full 360° view of your attendees, you may consider investing in a CRM tool such as SalesForce or HubSpot. These customer management tools allow you to track attendee behaviour and trends, build a view of your customers, and track event performance and growth. The information they can track can be extremely useful in the growth and performance of your events — the kind of information that exhibitors and sponsors are looking for when deciding where to invest their time and money.

For example, if you can show that your event attracts an audience that is 60% female, with 70% under the age of 40, you could prove that you have the right audience for vendors targeting this lucrative market, whereas a company who predominantly sells to an older male audience may not recognise the same value.

Read more: Improve attendee data with CRM integration

Tip 3: Use gamification to incentivise exhibitor interactions

If you’re looking for a fun and playful way to drive traffic to exhibitor stands, then a little thing known in the tech word as ‘gamification’ could be the answer. Gamification essentially takes attendee interactions and turns them into a game or challenge. For example, by creating an event passport that incentivises visits to exhibitors, you provide a fun reason for event-goers to visit your vendors while helping to foster personal interactions and friendly competition.

Using an event app to manage this via people’s smartphones is the easiest way to do this and the most effective. In addition to providing an incentive for people to interact with exhibitors, you’ll also be able to see how many people have used this feature to prove value to your vendors and help guide them to make changes if they’re failing to see value or foot traffic.

For more ideas on how your exhibitors can increase visits, read ‘6 easy ways to attract more attendees to exhibition booths.’

Tip 4: Survey your current exhibitors and sponsors

The easiest way to find out if your exhibitors and sponsors feel like they’re getting value for money is to ask them. Collecting data from exhibitors such as revenue or visits to their site is great for showcasing ROI, but if you really want to make sure they’ll come back again, ask for their feedback. If they were disappointed, it’s better to address this upfront rather than finding out ahead of your next event.

Running a simple survey (such as the free ones available from SurveyMonkey) following your event is the best way to capture exhibitor sentiment while the day is fresh in their minds.

Learn more about event data

To discover how to use event data to make crucial decisions that drive registrations, surpass attendee expectations, and fuel the success of future events, download Eventbrite’s free guide ‘Beyond Registration: Using Data to Supercharge Your Event’.

If you would like to know more about how Eventbrite can help you achieve your conference or exhibition goals, you can also reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn.