Attendee Tracking provides Unbeatable Data Insights into your events
VenuIQ’s attendee tracking technology gives event organisers unparalleled insight into their event whilst being totally unobtrusive to attendees, and 100% sustainable.
Why add Attendee Tracking to your event?
How Does it Work?
Many of the original attendee tracking solutions in the early 2010’s either depended on Wifi, significantly less accurate and rarely linked to the attendee’s profile to give rich demographic data, or on tracking via the attendees’ mobile phone. Whilst this had promise in the early days, as Apple and Android have become stricter on data sharing, this has stopped being a truly viable tracking option. Firstly, users have to opt-in on their phone (and who does that any more? Our experience tells us 90% don’t), and secondly, they have to have the app open in the background of their phone (which also has significant battery drawbacks – you don’t want to be responsible for emptying your delegates phone!). As a result, these options use a sample of data extrapolated up to give estimations. It isn’t the true full, rich data that VenuIQ provides. In addition, because VenuIQ only tracks in set areas so once attendees leave a tracked space, there is no data collected.
At its most fundamental, there are two elements to our tracking solution.
Firstly, the small Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tracker that the delegate wears (known as a beacon). VenuIQ provides a number of options here but the most common are either having the beacon as part of the lanyard or stuck to the name badge.
This badge is either pre-assigned to an Attendee or assigned within seconds on arrival either using the complimentary VenuIQ check-in app, or integrated via VenuIQ’s simple API. In cases where customers want total data screening, tracking is done against Attendee IDs rather than names which are then matched up by the client after the event. Either way, VenuIQ is fully GDPR compliant.
The second part of the solution is the VenuIQ proprietary Gateways that are deployed in the venue.
In advance of the event, the VenuIQ customer success team will work with you in a detailed briefing meeting using your Event Venue Maps to plot out what the data objectives are for your event. From those key objectives, the VenuIQ experts can help determine the number of Gateways you need to hire and their configuration parameters. On Event setup days, the VenuIQ team usually come onsite to fit the Gateways in just a few hours and ensure data is being returned as planned. However, the Gateways are plug and play so after 1-2 events with VenuIQ support, we find that customers’ own teams can set up the Gateways effectively themselves should they wish.
Each beacon worn by a delegate sends a signal to a Gateway multiple times a second, creating billions of data points. The VenuIQ portal collects this data and immediately translates it into reportable data. All gateway hardware can be monitored remotely too.
What does it give you?
The VenuIQ tracking solution not only gives you something that can be deployed quickly and with no permanent, long-winded, installation but most importantly gives you exceptional data insights.
In a post-pandemic world, organisers of virtual events have become used to data insights into their events that were previously impossible. For example, who attended, who went where on the platform, who watched what session and for how long? And behind that, is the rich demographic data of those attendees so it’s not just who went to each session, for example, but by job level, function, country etc.
VenuIQ is the tracking solution that gives you all the data of a virtual event at a physical event. Plus we provide a killer insight report pack at the end of the event.
There really is no limit to the insight that can be provided but some of the key common insights:
- Full insight into who attended content sessions, without having to pay for staff at each session entrance and force delegates to have their badge scanned (who wants to do that in today’s world!)
- See how long delegates stayed in sessions – identify “session hopping”
- Improve your content programme by seeing what the most popular content is by attendee demographic types
- See what your VIP attendees did!
- Identify traffic choke points on heatmaps to better organise floorplans at future events
- Optimise your food and beverage service by seeing how many attendees were in catering areas at different times. Many clients save over 50% on catering costs in future events by better optimising the timings and volumes of their ordering commitments.
- Identify which attendee demographics spent time in key networking areas such as investor lounges.
- Wow your sponsors and sales teams with detailed insight into visitor traffic to key exhibitor and sponsor booths. No longer debate with sponsors on speculative narrative summaries of the success of the event driving traffic to their booth. Give them irrefutable proof!
- Add opt-in lead scanning for no extra cost
- Full integration via API/SDK into your event app and platform.
Sustainability & Cost
We like to think of cost as both financial and sustainability.
Firstly, in terms of sustainability, the entire solution is fully reusable. Attendees are educated on check-in of the importance of returning the beacon and the environmental impact. Our experience is an average of over 90% return rate. Used in this way beacons can last over 15 years before being recycled.
In terms of financial cost, we would love to give a totally simple pricing model but it is a little more bespoke than that as it depends on the number of gateways, the number of beacons required and the complexity of setup. We can provide that to you after a short discussion.
The Gateways are rented from VenuIQ and the Beacons can either be rented from VenuIQ or if your organisation does more than 2 events per year, it is far cheaper to purchase them. VenuIQ offers a free storage and dispatch service for any owned beacons.
In the vast majority of cases, the full cost of the entire tracking solution is less per delegate than the cost of the first coffee you might provide for them at the venue. And the ROI is many multitudes greater. Even compared to caffeine!
Add Attendee Tracking to your event
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