Events Part II: The Steps to a Successful Text Messaging Program

Reprinted from Resdida.com

A mentor once said to me, “To achieve success, first you have to define it.” It makes sense, right? I need to know what I wanted to achieve before I can know whether I have achieved it. Same here! Success for your mobile program is what you make it out to be and should be based on your goals. Common measures of success include empirical measures like:

• Adoption (Percent subscribed of total) 
• Participation (messages received/subscribed) 
• Response (attendance, registrations, etc.)

Getting folks to subscribe, participate and respond to your mobile initiative takes some sales and marketing skill. Among many things that work, we are talking signs, ads, announcements, assistance at registration. I’m offering a recipe today to increase your chance for success.

You can create the right mix of the ingredients above and use a PARFAIT approach to achieve success for your mobile experience through promotion, advertising, repeat messaging, fostering a great experience, assisting wherever possible, instructing carefully and timing everything to the right cadence.

Promote and Incentivize
Lay your mobile foundation in advance and promote your mobile initiative. By this I mean starting two months in advance letting people know about the mobile program, including your purpose and reasoning behind creating your mobile program and their purpose and reasoning for wanting to participate. Driving the behavior is all about what it means to them. So start telling them and warming them up as early as possible. Questions that will help you find their incentive, include:

• Will it provide them valuable information that they can’t get elsewhere?
• Will it keep them “in the know” and ahead of their peers?
• Will it let them participate with the panel, take polls, vote on content?
• Will you offer them “a chance to win” when they subscribe? Maybe a free ticket to this or next year’s event?

Advertise the Program
Incorporate mobile into all of your advertising starting as far in advance as you can. If you haven’t yet chosen your full range of programming, you can make a start by simply saying that you are excited to have a mobile offering in the upcoming event and encourage folks to stay tuned. It is recommended that you begin letting people know over every medium possible starting at least two months in advance of your event. 

Even if you don’t intend to fully use a mobile communications channel for the event (if you are only planning to do polling or voting, for example) you should set one up to let people start to familiarize themselves. If your event is Acme Event, set up an Acme Channel and tell folks, for example, to text ACME to 80474 to get started with the mobile program at the event. 

Don’t worry if you aren’t sure what to say exactly or what your channel might be. Resdida staff can help you get this set up and help you with the ad content. You will want to convey this message in all of your email, web, mail, TV and radio advertising. 

Repeat Messaging
Through all of these means of advertising, you can achieve repeat messaging before your event and get the audience warmed up to the idea of mobile at the event. This messaging should be repeated throughout the event location and throughout the programming as well verbally, through signs, and in program materials.

It helps to have signs about the program and instructions on the registration table, in signs at registration and in the event lobby as well as in sessions in the form of slides or signs on the wall. It is also helpful to place an instructions page in the event program guide or as a handout in the event bag. Our most effective events have used a few minutes of the opening session to explain the program and encourage people to take out their phones and subscribe right at the moment. Having that time set aside for them and having an explanation and request from the speaker dramatically increased their participation. The more reminders the audience has the more chance they will have to follow the instructions and participate in the program. 

Fostering a Great Experience
One of the greatest barriers to participation is the worry of getting spammed via mobile. It is important to reassure the audience of your purpose for having the program and that you have no intentions of sending anything beyond that purpose. Most importantly, it is critical that the platform is run by event staff who respect those wishes and are careful with the number of type of messages sent. 

Assisting at Every Turn
Creating a great experience also involves solid customer support. Have event staff available at registration to answer mobile questions and help walk people through the various ways of using mobile in the event. Also train presenters on how the mobile will work in their sessions and provide staffing to assist the audience during live polling and voting sessions. Resdida staff can be there for your event to assist with audience support and address any concerns. 

Instructing Carefully
Carefully created instructions can make a tremendous difference to participation. Texting isn’t second nature to everyone and a good portion of some audiences haven’t heard the term SMS. The key is creating instructions that are “in English” and easy to follow. You will want to create signs that emphasize where the eye needs to focus, like what they are sending to where. For example, “Text ACME to 80474.” Verbally, you might say “Everyone please take out your phones now. Open text messaging and send a new message. In the body of your message, type ‘ACME’. Send your message to 80474.”

It is most effective to have a Mobile Program table next to the registration table staffed with proactive Mobile Program advocates. As people visit the registration table, they are directed to stop by the Mobile Program table next to enroll. 

Timing All of the Above
I’ve mentioned that many of the above should be started in advance of the event. Timing is very important and below I outline a timeline for planning and implementing the techniques that will drive your success across all mobile event features.

The timelines above are generalized but provide a good framework for what to be doing when. Remember too that you don’t need to be doing them alone by any means. Resdida staff lend their expertise to help you get things just right along the way. Also, depending on the program you design for your event, you may find yourself doing some or all of the above. The next installment of this series will start digging into the details of the features you can implement for your events.

Success Measures
Once the event is over, it’s time to return to those success measures. As mentioned, it is common to look at adoption, participation and response. 

For adoption, you will need to know the total number in attendance and the total number of subscribers/recipients (displayed in the top menu of MOBILIZE). If your event had 100 in attendance and 85 unique recipients in MOBILIZE, then your adoption percentage would be 85%.

Participation is measured as the number of messages received divided by the number of recipients participating. This is a great way to look at engagement. So if 500 messages were received in MOBILIZE and there were 85 recipients, your participation metric would be 500/85 = approximately 12 messages per person.

Response is a bit tricky and depends on what specific features you implemented and any behavior you sought to drive. For example, if you sought to drive attendance by advertising in the media with a coupon code, you can use redemption numbers for the mobile coupon to determine success.

In Summary
Achieving greater success using mobile can be as simple as planning and following a general recipe in the event process, think PARFAIT, and include promotion, advertising, repeat messaging, fostering a great experience, assisting wherever possible, instructing carefully and timing everything to the right cadence. This is not something that you need to tackle alone. Resdida is there to lend expertise every step of the way. Shoot us an email to learn more and be sure to check out our upcoming posts on the topic.