XING Events, the event industry’s expert in event marketing, attendee management and ticketing, recently published its event marketing study 2017 “What are the go-to marketing strategies of the industry, and can they be optimised?”
XING Events led the survey among national and international organisers and attendees, aiming to find out which activities are used by the organisers and which are the most important. The research also investigated how event attendees search, find, and choose events. With information based on survey findings, XING Events provides organisers with useful tips on using digital activities effectively to further optimise their marketing efforts.
A clear result of the study: digitalisation has a firm spot in the event marketing world. More than two thirds of the organisers stated to have achieved their goals thanks to digital channels. Attracting more attendees (84 percent of answers) and increasing the events’ profile (72 percent) take the top ranks as organisers’ goals. These results are motivation enough for 64 percent of organisers to take even more advantage of digitalisation in the future.
Attendees too have arrived in the digital era for events. When it comes to selecting the channels however, organisers and attendees are taking rather different paths in 2017. Besides their website, organisers are strongly focusing on established communication channels like email marketing (76 percent) and social media marketing (73 percent). Attendees on the other hand emphasized that personal recommendations from friends and acquaintances play the most important role when choosing events (66 percent). Email and event newsletters are right behind with 59 percent indicating the effectiveness of these methods among the organisers’ target group.
