When you’re hosting a large event, how do you maintain engagement and make sure your guests don’t get lost in the crowd? Even with a slate of exciting speakers and sessions, it’s easy for attendees to become passive guests that move from one session to the next if you’re not intentional about creating opportunities for them to engage at a deeper level.
We’ve compiled four of our favorite apps that help make large audience event engagement easier. Whether you need help with managing session Q&As, collecting event feedback, increasing lead capture, or creating networking opportunities, these apps can up the level of participation at your next event.
1. Slido
Slido is an interactive polling tool that will gather the opinions of your audience and display them in fun ways. Slido has a wide suite of tools to engage your audience including polls, ratings, multiple choice questions, open text prompts, word clouds, and quizzes.
The best part is that your guests don’t need to download the Slido app to participate. As the host, you just need to display your custom Slido code and guests can easily join in by entering it in slido.com or by scanning a QR code.
If you’re hosting a Q&A panel with a large audience, Slido’s Live Q&A feature is great for managing incoming questions and determining which ones are most important to the whole group. Attendees can submit questions live during the session and see what others are asking, upvoting the ones they are most interested in.
Photo: Slido.com
Our favorite feature:
We love Slido’s Word Cloud feature to start a conversation and display live answers in a dynamic presentation. Attendees can see their answers pop up onto the large screen as they submit them, and watch popular answers grow in size.
Next time you’re waiting to start your general session, open up a Word Cloud prompt that asks your audience what city they are coming in from.
2. Whova
Whova is an event management app that can take care of everything from registration to exhibitor management.
In addition to their event management features, they also have engagement tools like live polls, event surveys, and feedback forms. You can choose from multiple templates and more than 200 questions from their question bank to get started.
Through the Whova mobile app, attendees can fill out feedback forms for their specific breakout sessions. No worrying about sending a mass of feedback surveys for all of your sessions only to get a low response rate. With Whova, you can get specific and attendees only need to see and fill out the forms that are relevant to them.
Photo: Whova.com
Our favorite feature:
Use Whova to turn surveys into healthy competition amongst your attendees! Assign points for completing surveys and put prizes on the line for your highest scoring participants. Guests can keep track of their scores through a live leaderboard ranking, motivating one another to complete all of their surveys and rack up points. Your attendees are rewarded for submitting feedback, and in return you get the data you need.
3. Captello
If you’re hosting your event or trade show in a large venue, encourage your attendees to make the most out of that space by taking them on a scavenger hunt. Through Captello, you can add digital checkpoints throughout your venue that will strategically lead attendees to explore different sponsors and exhibitors. The Captello app also includes a digital leaderboard so participants can see who’s on top.
Photo: Captello.com
Our favorite feature:
Prizes are easy with Captello’s reward catalog. With hundreds of popular gift cards to choose from, there’s something for all of your guests to enjoy. You also have the option to customize prizes with your own merch or anything else that you think would resonate with your audience. You can even personalize the delivery methods for each prize, whether it’s an email or a handwritten letter for an impactful touch.
4. Eventee
Year after year, research finds that networking consistently arises as one of the top reasons attendees join in-person events. A recent report found over 60 percent of attendees said networking was their primary reason for attending an event. But a large attendance won’t guarantee that your attendees will make valuable connections they’re satisfied with. Eventee can help bring the right attendees together and make networking less overwhelming in a large event setting.
Even before your event date, attendees can create profiles and get matched with other guests in the Eventee app. They’ll have access to an attendee list and can search for others by name, position, and company. Attendees can connect with one another in the app’s 1:1 chat space, which includes a meeting scheduling function.
Photo: Eventee.co
Our favorite feature:
Create an exclusive social media feed for your event within the Eventee app. With Eventee’s live Social Wall, attendees can share their memorable moments, session thoughts, photos, and gifs with one another. Guests can interact with each other’s posts, and as an admin, you’ll have control to moderate the social wall throughout the event.
Need to rent iPads for your next event? We can preload any app to your iPads so they’re delivered completely ready to go for your event.
