Actual article date: Oct 30, 2014

In recent days, there is much discussion of a surge of millennial entering the industry as the next big group of professionals, visitors and buyers at conferences and trade shows.

One of the key focus of the industry has looked at event apps as a game-changer and as an appeal factor to the new generation. However, what is astounding in the recent CEIR report, 2014 Young Professional Attendee Needs and Preferences Study, is that it points to the opposite direction.

The younger generation may not think that event apps is all that revolutionary.

The report showed that young users has a usage rate just 2% more than that of all attendees age group combined. And that is not because there is a lack of event apps (only 21% thinks that is so). The main reasons for low usage is as follows:

1) A full 59% prefers printed program and only 26% uses an event app to tap on the same information
2) Primary reason for not using the event app is that printed copies are preferred (37%)
3) The next top reason is the dislike to download an app for a one-time use (35%)

Why the hype about event apps when the supposedly most technologically savvy group, young professionals, does not have much interest in them?

At Jublia, we have worked with a number of conferences and tradeshows and these are what we found from experience:

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1. People are passive

A great number of delegates are passive and they do not actively engage the many platforms/channels that are made available to them. The incentives to engage are just not be good enough in most cases. This brings me to my next point.

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2. Personalised notification(s) is everything

It was never about how sleek the software is and how beautiful it is made to be. This is because if the attendees do not even access the software first, everything else is moot. That is why we here at Jublia focus on crafting the most personalised engagement experience to not only incentivise attendees effort to engage with the platform but also reach them via the most appropriate channel(s).

3.Keep your app user friendly

It is our belief that if users of a software is not sold within 5 clicks in an app and if they need to make more than 3 clicks to fulfill an objective, they will simply exit the app and not return again. That is why we spent much effort to automate processes so that users will never have to go through the meeting scheduling pains ever again while simplifying meetings scheduling to just a single click.

We need to start looking beyond the hype of software, apps and responsive websites.

Lets think about what is the most effective incentives to make attendees tick.

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