Meetings Memo: 4 Secrets to Conference App Success

In April, AIIM—which calls itself “the global community of information professionals”— held its third annual conference, complete with its third conference app. But this year, the app, developed by Double Dutch, was especially successful with attendees, who AIIM President John Mancini describes as “techie, but not technical.” Just how successful? Total attendance was around 800, and the app had 676 active users who completed 243,656 total in-app actions.

Mancini credits the app’s success to four things:

1. Letting people interact before arriving onsite. “We opened up the app four or five days before the event began,” he says. “That created and built in activity ahead of time.”
2. Showing people how it works. AIIM took time at the beginning of the meeting, before anything else, to walk all attendees through the app. “That set the tone for engagement throughout the entire event,” Mancini says.
3. Creating an easy-to-use interface. The app had a user experience and “activity feed” that was similar to Facebook, which most attendees were comfortable with. “That familiarity was key to engagement with our crowd,” he says.
4. Building in integration. AIIM displayed photos being uploaded and conversations taking place within the app on big monitors. During breaks, people could see all that activity. “That created further interest and participation,” Mancini says.

(serkorkin/ThinkStock)