This is a sponsored post written by Greg Kockott, Managing Director at HelloCrowd. More information about Event Manager Blog’s sponsored posts.
Mobile Apps for Events – The new buzz word, the new big technology play in the eventing and conferencing industry. They’re great and there’s no doubt that they can add enormous value to your attendees, not to mention the savings in printing costs.
But who can afford to pay the going rate for a Mobile App these days? Who can afford to splash out the onerous price tag associated with a Mobile App? Who can afford to wait 4 to 6 weeks for development? Why should this great technology be limited to your biggest events? Even if your event lasts a full week that’s still an enormous investment in what really should be disposable event technology.
Big Events Get Big Technology – What About Smaller Events?
There’s no doubt that a large event with 2,000 to 3,000 attendees can warrant the cost of a Mobile App, but that’s certainly not where the value in Mobile Apps lies. Smaller meetings can derive as much value and engagement from Mobile Apps as their bigger brothers.
The reality is that we’re never going to be able to drive large scale adoption of Mobile App technology unless we’re able to make them available at every event we host. Attendees need to come to expect an app at your event to drive the behaviour we expect from our Mobile Apps.
The goal of having Mobile Apps is to improve engagement and by incorporating a Mobile App into each and every one of your events, regardless of size, event attendees will become so used to engaging with your event through Apps that overall engagement will improve and ultimately your ROI on your event and your event app will improve.
Mobile Event App / Planning Tug of War
On average planners have around 4 weeks to deliver an event from scratch. On average Mobile App providers require around 4 to 6 weeks to deliver a Mobile App for your event. See the problem right there? Planners hope to integrate Mobile Apps into their events but the timeline required to develop them makes them redundant – failure to launch.
Mobile Apps should be built off the back of a framework that allows for the core technology to be reusable while still offering a great custom branded solution to planners, exhibitors and sponsors.
By finding a Mobile App provider that can offer you a multi-event container that allows you to publish events within a few hours you can ensure that every event that you do has a custom build regardless of the lead-time. Find yourself a provider that’s able to deliver on your clients expectations no matter the lead time.
Cost Shouldn’t be the Killer
The cost / price of your Mobile App should not be the killer. Mobile Apps are the only piece of disposable technology at the event that requires such massive budget consideration. And this is the primary reason for low adoption rates across events, especially smaller events with smaller budgets.
Beware when signing up with a Mobile App provider as many of them will require payment upfront, offer complicated pricing structures with hidden add-on costs and charge a significant premium to the advertised price for the cool functionality that genuinely drives engagement and ultimately app success.
In Conclusion
Until event planners start demanding certainty of costs and transparent pricing options for their Mobile Apps without sacrificing branding and features the Mobile App industry is going to continue to demand huge price tags with unworkable turnaround times, limited to large events.
Visit our Mobile App budgeting tool and see what your event apps are going to cost you for the year.