Fork In The Road Blog

Events: Technology. Design. Strategy.

DoubleDutch Jumps from Games to Mobile Lead Retrieval, Sales and CRM

DoubleDutch Lead Retrieval CRMRecently, DoubleDutch, a mobile applications developer that was one of the first to introduce game strategy into the (primarily) corporate event environment, announced that it received venture capital funding in the amount of $4 million. The cash will help the company expand the marketing and development of their mobile platform, which now includes on-site lead retrieval, post-event sales tracking and ongoing customer relationship management. The new DoubleDutch mobile platform takes advantage of four key technology trends impacting face-to-face events in its quest to go where no lead retrieval app has gone before.

Mobilization

The mobilization of everything from wayfinding to conference agendas to matchmaking has been the “shock and awe” story at events for almost two years. What DoubleDutch has developed is new in the field of mobile, lead-retrieval apps. For one thing, the platform is no longer event-centric. It leverages the event to initiate the sales cycle—nothing new there—but remains functional through the sales conversion phase and into the post-event CRM phase. And, did I mention it’s all mobile?

Gamification

DoubleDutch hasn’t abandoned the gaming elements that made the event industry take notice of its platform in the first place. In fact, the game layer is crucial for collecting data about attendee interests and stimulating post-event enterprise engagement. “We are doubling down on gamification and social engagement. The behaviors that are gamified are thirteen times more likely to be performed than behaviors that are not gamified,” says Lawrence Coburn, founder and CEO of DoubleDutch.

Software deconstruction

Coburn envisions a mobile platform nimble enough to take on bigger tasks. “We think there is a larger trend called the ‘deconstruction of software.’ In the past, software has had hundreds of features that didn’t play well in the mobile world. We will see these monolithic CRM systems becoming smaller pieces,” he says. Hence, the introduction of DoubleDutch’s three-part “mobile CRM suite” that reduces the gargantuan lead retrieval/sales conversion/CRM process into bite-sized chunks.

Datafication

The game layer and social engagement functionality of DoubleDutch’s suite serve a higher purpose. “The social and gamification elements cause a lot of engagement. Every touch is a clue about where [attendees] want to spend their money. How can we turn that engagement into actionable data?” Coburn asks. The DoubleDutch platform converts game play during the event into data points that enable sales conversions.

The Takeaway: DoubleDutch has managed to do what none of the other event lead-retrieval apps has done yet—provide an end-to-end solution that begins at the event and ends with the customer. Corporate event strategists should be (and are) interested in this new iteration of mobile event applications, but third-party trade show and conference organizers should also take notice. DoubleDutch has added exhibitor ROI to the list of justifications for deploying a mobile event solution and for that reason it differentiates itself in a crowded field of competitors.

 

 

 

 

Talking to the Empty Chairs

Trade show and conference organizers—associations, especially—are very good at delivering information to their attendees and members. It’s a practice that drives business and membership. But, what about creating content for the thousands who have never and will never attend? There are compelling reasons to deliver consistent, unbiased and useful information to non-customers besides getting them to attend the live event.

Educating the community: Knowledge—research, news, case studies, and how-to videos—helps keep a market sector and its community vibrant. No event organizer is interested in building an event around an industry that is depleted, obsolete or shrinking. When organizations charge themselves with the task of keeping a group energized, they are the first to know when the market is on a downward slide.

Thought leadership: It’s critical for event organizers to help shape the conversation rather than just chronicle it. Some attempt to set the tone of the discussion through their blogs and social media outreach, but few really succeed. Instead they use their “bully pulpits” as advertising channels and shy away from controversy that could, in reality, help them stand out from the crowd.

Revenue:  More content equals more opportunities for revenue, especially if the pool of advertisers extends beyond the exhibitors and sponsors of the show. Advertisers eager to reach the entirety of the audience in a market would naturally be interested in every blog, newsletter, white paper, e-book, video, slideshare deck, infographic and cartoon.

Dialogue:  It’s easy to survey past and current attendees. But existing customers have already drunk the Kool-Aid. By talking to people that have never and will never attend, event organizers can understand how they compete with other marketing mediums, why they aren’t attractive to a particular segment and what’s working better for non-customers than trade shows and conferences.

Word of Mouth:  Just because one person is unable or uninterested in attending an event doesn’t mean they won’t tell others about it. In today’s social world, one tweet can land a customer and the full reach of free, frequent and great content passed along social channels is nearly incalculable.

Talking to the empty chairs is a long-tail approach. It doesn’t yield quick results and requires a consistent effort. And, because there is so much good information provided by bloggers, suppliers (that invest in useful, non-commercial content), consultants, independent trade press and marketing agencies, most show organizers—even the ones affiliated with trade publications—have to put out really good content in order to be effective.

The Takeaway: In a world where intermediaries like trade show and conference organizers compete with digital content producers, alternative channels for buying and selling and the economy, it makes sense to speak with and to the whole community or risk finding every chair empty when the music finally stops.

 

 

Crowdfunding Your Conference

The trade show and conference business used to be far more entrepreneurial than it is today. Back in the day, almost anyone with a great idea and a few friends could launch an event. Today, most of the new launches come from corporations, media companies and trade associations. The number of entrepreneurs in the b-to-b event industry has dwindled not because there are no more great ideas, but because the cash is harder to come by or the risk is too great for just one or a handful of friends to give it a go. That could change if the crowdfunding tactics being pioneered by artists and techies catch on in the conference world.

Crowdfunding is a system of investment that pools the financial resources of friends and strangers together to finance specific projects. Most of the online crowdfunding platforms employ an all or nothing approach—projects don’t receive the funding unless the financial goals are met within a specific time frame. In exchange for their pledges, supporters receive rewards (designed by those asking for funds) when the projects are funded. The leading platform is Kickstarter.

XOXO gets crowdfunding love

Earlier this year, Andy Baio (Kickstarter’s former CTO) and Andy McMillan used Kickstarter to raise $175,911 (the original goal was $125,000) to launch their XOXO Festival—a combination conference, exhibition (Market) and citywide funfest (Fringe) taking place September 14-16 in Portland. The festival is designed to bring together artists and technologists. After the 400 tickets to attend the festival ($400 each) sold out in 50 hours, they raked in another $15,000 selling “goodies” from local merchants, T-shirts and access to digital content. It’s not surprising that Baio and McMillan, who both have insight into using the Kickstarter platform, were successful. But, what about mere mortals?

Tiny Kitchen raises too tiny a sum

Not all projects are ripe for crowdfunding.  Just because the idea gets traction on social media channels or the event organizer has existing über-successful events doesn’t mean the followers and friends of said organizer will actually pony up for something new. That’s what Denise Medved of The Tiny Kitchen discovered. The Houston and Washington, DC installments of her Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show are successful with a huge following. But, when she turned to Kickstarter to launch a new event in Dallas, the crowd went cold.

Medved set a goal of $15,000, but only raised $1,000. She estimates that it took at least 20 man-hours just to create the pitch video—an essential component of the Kickstarter regimen—plus the time it took to fill out the forms and pour through the rules. She attributes the failure to two factors. Her existing crowd was formed around events in other cities. “Most attendees were from Houston or DC.  I’m not sure they cared about launching a show in Dallas,” she says. Another reason is that Kickstarter does very little to help. “The [Kickstarter] project requirements didn’t tell the whole story.  I thought they would reach into their database to help market,” she adds.

Chicago writers write (and video) their own future

Mare Swallow selected Kickstarter to launch the Chicago Writers Conference—an opportunity to place writers in the same room with publishers and literary agents. “It was a process much like starting a business. We put together a plan, did a lot of planning and talked to people that had a lot of experience on Kickstarter or had supported other Kickstarter campaigns,” she says. Her idea worked. The event will take place September 14-16 at the Tribune Tower in Chicago. The project was fully funded in 30 days by backers who pledged $7,725 (103% of their original goal).

Swallow used Kickstarter as a crowdfunding tool, but also as a community platform. “It was a constantly ongoing process that included networking every day. We were constantly adding rewards and I keep it updated for Kickstarter supporters,” she explains. Although her investment in time and effort paid off, Swallow admits it was hard work. “You need to be present with it every single day. You are doing just as much work in person [as online]. It’s not for the faint of heart,” she says.

Even Denise Medved agrees that crowdfunding could be a viable fundraising mechanism for events. Those who have been successful no doubt support that optimism. Wired magazine summed it up nicely when referring to Baio and McMillan’s efforts on Kickstarter. “They also believe that there’s a real underutilized potential for launching more events on Kickstarter. Baio, who helped build Kickstarter and who launched the event-coordinating startup Upcoming.com (acquired by Yahoo), points out that many event organizers have to lose money fronting venue deposits and planning for unknown attendee numbers. Kickstarter secures that audience ahead of time.” Who knew rewards like tickets, cupcakes, books and T-shirts could fuel an event-funding revolution?

Should They Stay or Should They Grow? Pushing a Show Community’s Collective Buttons

The 2012 Summer Outdoor Retailer Show concluded on Sunday, but the decisions about where to go next remain. Show managers are using an online platform called The Collective Voice to take the pulse of the outdoor community about where to move the show (it has outgrown Salt Lake City) and how to grow the show, or not.

The Collective Voice is an online forum that exists as part of the Outdoor Retailer website although it’s accessible by invitation only. To avoid influence from regional interests or the media, show organizers invited 20,000 attendees, exhibitors, non-profit advocacy groups, outdoor athletes and other stakeholders to talk freely about the show they love.

The issues that Outdoor Retailer is looking for input on, besides where to move the show include whether they should grow the show and, most importantly, “what does ‘outdoor’ really mean? “If we include fishing, stand-up paddle boarding, yoga and travel [for example], that changes the conversation about how we should grow. If we don’t want them, maybe we can fit in Salt Lake City,” says Kenji Haroutunian, VP of Nielsen Exposition’s Outdoor Group.

Outdoor Retailer has surveyed the community on these issues before, but Haroutunian says that surveys aren’t enough. “What [The Collective Voice] will do is fill in the gaps—the reasoning behind why people will check a box on the survey. The success in Salt Lake City is because of the culture and intangibles that you can’t get from a survey.”

So far, The Collective Voice has logged several thousand registrants and about 300 or so comment threads. “We already have people happy, ecstatic and upset,” Haroutunian says. The majority of comments suggest that stakeholders would like to stay in Salt Lake City and make it work. Haroutunian notes that companies with great locations on the show floor and those with 40+ shows under their belts are in the “stay” crowd. They are asking whether the show really needs to go. It’s the exhibitors crammed into tents and in meeting rooms that are feeling the need to move on.

From the beginning, The Collective Voice wasn’t designed as a forum. It is a variation of the GoExpo tradeshow management and matchmaking platform that already exists for the show. The majority of users access the Collective Voice forum using the same login information they use as attendees and exhibitors. “We wanted it to be efficient and to encourage people to use the same tool they are already familiar with,” Haroutunian explains.

Show organizers spent a lot of time providing the community with information to make informed decisions on the platform. They have listed the other destinations that could handle Outdoor Retailer complete with the housing and city service requirements. The site contains a comparison chart with metrics on how each destination stacks up to one another. The issues around the future vision of Outdoor Retailer are addressed at length in the FAQ section.

The Collective Voice platform is a departure from the traditional way that trade show organizers make decisions and Haroutunian wanted it that way. Most organizations fall back on a leadership group or volunteer strategic planning committee. “Coming into this industry, I was a bit surprised at the secretive decision making. I thought it was something that needed to be changed. One of my roles here is to change that model so that the trade show is not seen as necessary evil,” he says.

The open commenting period may be coming to an end soon now that Outdoor Retailer 2012 has concluded. The summer show—Outdoor Retailer has both summer and winter installments in Salt Lake City—is causing the most pain. “By fall,” Haroutunian says, “we should have a really good idea from the initial survey, the post-show survey and The Collective Voice platform about where to go from here.” Depending on the decisions, the final reveal could be dramatic.

The Collective Voice is only the beginning for Nielsen. “You will see more of this coming out of Outdoor Retailer especially for tapping into the collective intelligence and diversity of thought to create products and events. Our evolution is at stake. We want to use these tools to crack open the secretive approach to running the show. The broader the reach, the better the show,” Haroutunian explains.

Tapping into the voice of the community isn’t particularly new. Surveys have been around forever. Many organizations use calls for presentations to tap into the collective knowledge of their members come annual meeting time. But, the genuine desire to meet the needs of customers (especially for a for-profit company like Nielsen) by digging deep into the culture and psyche of a community is a sign of things to come—a sign that the community matters most of all. The Collective Voice platform just made it easier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Online Collaboration: The Next Best Thing to Being There

The meetings industry is no stranger to the idea of collaboration: planners bringing suppliers to the table, association members joining volunteer task forces and trade show organizers co-locating their events. More recently, participants have managed to emulate collaborative behavior on social media channels like Twitter (chats) and Google+ (hangouts) where facilitators preside over brainstorming and idea-sharing sessions. As the practice of collaboration evolves to online platforms, it’s time to reap the full benefits.

There is a proliferation of document sharing, group communication, collaborative visual reviewing and project management tools available, but few case studies of event planners using them. A recent initiative from the Outdoor Retailer Show and Nielsen Expositions signals a move toward a more collaborative approach to problem solving online. The group has introduced The Collective Voice website where the outdoor industry’s members can weigh in on the discussion around moving the exhibition from Salt Lake City (which it has outgrown) to other potential locations.

While The Collective Voice is unique and an excellent example of the Outdoor Retailer Group’s characteristic leadership, it stops short of being a work site instead of just a website. The next step for online collaborative platforms is to give them more functionality and purpose than floating communication stations. They can serve as virtual workspaces, libraries and asset storage facilities where actual planning, co-creation, ideation and iteration can occur. The collaborative work that results can impact the outcome of a specific event or help to solve a major problem plaguing the industry.

The advantages of online collaboration in the meetings industry are obvious. Virtual spaces are more convenient—participants can check in and out on their own schedules. They allow for a greater number of participants from a broader range of perspectives. Online interactions complement face-to-face relationships and offer contributors ownership in the project. And, Internet-based platforms can function as around-the-clock storage facilities for institutional knowledge and assets. With all of the talk about cloud computing, there is no better time to build upon the tools that are available.

Imagine what’s possible:

  • Event planners working more closely with suppliers—eliminating repetitive tasks and inquiries—by placing all of the event’s assets online: building layouts, event floorplans, room specifications, menus, A/V inventory, design library, event color palettes, move-in/move-out schedules, exhibitor lists, rules and regulations, timelines and event goals. When problems surface, all of the suppliers can weigh in (online) on the solutions bringing their considerable experience with other events (and presumably similar issues) to bear on the discussion.
  • Associations asking members to co-create conference presentations by placing relevant materials (articles, white papers, blog posts) online and inviting discussion on key topics from the participants. The work group(s) can collaboratively develop the presentation down to the actual PowerPoint and room design as an alternative to the current system, the legendary “call for presentations” followed by the flood of rejection notices.

The concept of collaboration is more complex than learning to work the levers of an online platform. It requires a mindset about the value of sharing ideas, information and collateral. It demands leadership from those organizations willing to explore the true value of openness and authenticity. The notion of online collaboration is a sea change for an industry that banks on the importance of face-to-face meetings. It’s also a critical back-up system when all of the players need to lay their cards on the table, but can’t make it to the game until a week from next Thursday.

I would love to hear from the platform providers on this topic. Anyone?

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