Association Polls

Mobile Conference Apps Continue to Gain Traction

By Association Adviser staff • May 15, 2015

If you think more of the live events you’re attending are offering event-related mobile apps, you’re right. Nearly 90 percent of respondents to last month’s unscientific poll of Association Adviser readers told us their organizations either offer or plan to offer a mobile conference app for their live events. What’s more, nearly 42 percent of respondents to our 2015 Association Communication Benchmarking survey said their organizations offer mobile apps at their live events, up from 34.7 percent in 2014.

Association Adviser April Poll Results

Elaine Richardson
Elaine Richardson, Naylor Association Solutions

Elaine Richardson, a Naylor group publisher, said more than 3,500 MBA students and graduates use the mobile conference app at the National Black MBA Association’s annual conference. Attendees can look up who is recruiting before the conference through an exhibitor list within the app, and keep tabs on what’s happening at an employer’s booth (example: Samsung is giving away new phones) in real time during the conference.

According to Richardson, the most popular feature of NBMBAA’s mobile app is the activity feed that connects to an attendee’s LinkedIn and Facebook accounts and averages more than 1,000 posts each day during the conference. Attendees post what they’re doing, comment on education sessions they attend and reply to posts from other attendees or employers they saw within the app.

Skip Cox
Jonathan “Skip” Cox, Exhibit Surveys, Inc.

When it comes to trade shows, Skip Cox, CEO of Exhibit Surveys Inc. and a co-presenter of our upcoming webinar 7 Ways to Improve Exhibitor ROI, said any tools show organizers can provide to make navigating the show easier for attendees will go a long way toward sustaining repeat attendance. “Many [trade show] attendees are way past the awareness stage and much further along in the purchase consideration phase,” he said. “Forty-nine percent of attendees at a typical show are planning to buy. Show organizers, and especially exhibitors, need to be better prepared.”

See Hank Berkowitz’s story in today’s issue for more insights from Cox.