The Launch of NextME’s Waitlist and Queue Management App in the Event Production Space
Over the past few years, the restaurant industry has discovered the time and cost saving benefits of using NextME to manage waiting lists. Restaurant owners, staff, and diners alike have enjoyed the rewards of this incredibly easy to use tech solution for an age-old problem. But what if NextME could help other businesses and industries just as effectively?
With this idea in mind, we began working toward integration into a new and exciting industry: event production. This industry is becoming more and more important in the business world, and delivering a positive customer experience has never been more crucial.
Experiential Marketing
Trade shows, conferences, expos, and other industry events are making huge waves in the business to business sales world. In fact, Forrester Research estimates that events are almost a quarter of the B2B marketing budget. It’s been proven as a leading way to communicate with potential clients directly and clearly.
Events and experiences are an amazing way to create connections with consumers too. Big names from Amazon to Oculus VR are harnessing experiential marketing to create positive associations with their brand. As consumers zip through the commercials on their TiVo, or stream their favorite shows on platforms that skip the ads entirely, live events and product demonstrations are quickly becoming an important way to reach out to the public directly.
For those new to the event marketing space, the biggest fear is usually that nobody will show up. Experienced teams know how to generate buzz and overcome this hurdle. So what happens if your event goes well? You’re likely to have lines of people waiting to engage with your brand during busy trade shows, conferences, or events. Long lines can kill your marketing before consumers and clients even get near them.
Picture this: You spend months designing and promoting a top-notch interactive booth for an upcoming trade show. Maybe it’s a high-tech experience. Maybe it’s one-on-one time with your best experts. Whatever the draw, you’ve got potential customers salivating over the chance to engage with your brand.
A potential customer hears the amazing buzz you’ve created and puts it on a to-do list for the day of the show. After arriving on the show floor, they seek you out, only to be turned off by a crowd of people who are already impatiently waiting their turn.
Don’t let a long line turn potential clients away. NextME’s technology is tailor made to handle this sticky situation.
A Better Waitlist & Queue Manager
Here’s how the above scenario could have gone. Instead of seeing a crowd when they first approach your booth, they’re greeted by a friendly smile of your host, armed with a tablet. The host plugs in the customer’s name and phone number and immediately the customer receives a text confirming their place in line. They’re now free to wander the show as they please, and can check in at any time to see their place in line in real time.
Better yet, the text the customer received included a link. This link takes them to a page you’ve designed, introducing your company, product, experience, or anything else you like. You can even use this space to collect attendee data and generate sales leads with interactive promos, letting attendees enter drawings, or newsletter sign-ups. It also lets them visit your social media pages or suggests a hashtag for posting their trade show experience. So you get to introduce them to your brand while they wait!
When the customer’s turn is almost ready, she’ll receive a second text alerting her to return to your booth. She’ll have the option to confirm or cancel her place in line, so you’ll receive fewer no shows than standard appointment setting methods. When she returns to the booth, instead of being bored by a long waiting period, she’ll be just as excited and ready to go as the moment she first approached the booth.
A Proven Queue System
And of course, this isn’t all theoretical. We partnered with digital marketing and event planning agencies, like Deckel & MoneyPenny, to manage wait times for large conferences. They used NextME for big name corporate clients like General Electric Appliances and other large corporations, so it’s already been proven to scale well.
The result? Increased efficiency. Happier attendees. A standardized process for queue management. Better communication. And the ability to meet tight deadlines with little training required for implementation. And after the doors close? Plenty of analytics and reports to pore over so you can see exactly what worked well and what might need tweaking for next time. To read more about NextME’s case studies, check it out here.
So what are you waiting for? If you manage events of any size, NextME is the solution that will allow you to up your game in real time while engaging attendees and providing essential real-time communication tools. Feel free to request a demo or give us a ring at (877) 639-8631.