Event Hacks: Simple Tech for Event Managers

Anna Busby and Brittany Lawson hosted a live demo and discussion with real-life examples of how text messaging, mobile apps, GPS maps, and mobile fundraising can upgrade any event. Find the transcript and time stamps below.

[00:00:00] Anna Busby: So I am Anna. I am the marketing manager here at EngageBuySell. I've been here for about four years, but I'm also quite involved in a lot of special projects and client build out. So I'm here to kind of share how I've seen clients use the platform and I'll let Brittany introduce herself.  

[00:00:22] Brittany Lawson: Yeah, I'm Brittany Lawson.

I've been with EngageBuySell for about two years now, on the sales solution consultant side of things. I focus mostly on adult education and some youth education industries. But, you know, I have my hand in a little bit of everything. We work with a lot of groups.

[00:00:42] Anna Busby: Okay, so these are some of the technologies we provide organizations with events. Today we're going to focus mostly on the text messaging and the mobile web app builder. Those are probably the most popular. But we also provide GPS mappers that have blue dot location services. They're very popular for holiday like events.

We also have live screen displays that can be used for conversations, polls and fundraising thermometers. We have a donation page builder that integrates directly into your merchant processor that can be used to streamline some donations.  

touch on more in the demonstration of the mobile web app and the text messaging. So all kinds of organizations use these services. I see in the chat we've got some training and instructor workshops. Those are extremely popular among organizations and workforce development organizations. We've got a lot of youth and apprenticeship programs that use us.

I mentioned earlier holiday light shows. We've got alumni events, conferences, annual sales meetings. It really runs the gamut. So before we dive into the platform demonstration, I thought I'd touch on what a text messaging platform is. So, In order for a business to text, they need to procure a short code or a long code, which is approved by the carriers.

That's what the platform does for you. So if you were to sign up for an Engage by Cell account, we would help you with that process. We would get you your own code, and then you would have access to a web based dashboard. That's where you're going to send all your messages, where you're going to monitor responses, where you're going to control administrators, control your subscribers.

You can segment them into lists. So you can have more targeted communications. You can do one to many broadcast messaging or one to one chats. And we're going to talk today about how some of our clients use them for before, during, and after the event. And then we're also going to touch on mobile web apps.

So a mobile web app is a drag and drop app builder that is also housed in our platform and is most commonly used for events as a one stop shop for all of the information your attendees, your vendors, your volunteers, your team members might need all in one place. You can upload all kinds of content. It could be agendas, speaker bios, photos, existing PDFs.

You can build. Forms surveys and polls. There are no downloads required, which was actually intentional. We found with especially for events, people do not want to go to the app store and download a new app for something they only need for two weeks or maybe even one night. So with it being web based, they can access it immediately through a link or a QR code.

And that means changes that you make to it are live in real time. You don't have to ask an IT person to change the schedule on the app, which may or may not happen in time. You can just log into the portal and change it in a few seconds and it's live. And then last but not least, a lot of our clients use the digital apps.

as sponsorship space. A lot of the time these are paid for by sponsors. You can put their logos all over the app. We've done some special engineering to add frames with sponsor logos. You can, of course, have a footer on the site with the sponsor logos. We've seen a lot of creative ideas there.

[00:04:18] Brittany Lawson: So you all could scan this QR code with your phone, or you can actually text in the word convo to short code three, six, five, one, two. And then let us know in the chat when you've pressed send and received a response. Yeah. So this is the word combo to five, six, five, one, two, or you can use your camera app to scan that QR code.

It'll populate that text and all you have to do is hit send. Okay. We've got it. And I'm going to actually put the keyword in the chat in case anybody misses the QR code. pass it to Brittany. Great. So I'm going to give us a quick little demonstration on how the backend works.  

Off to the right, you've got the mobile version. So you can access a simpler version of this texting platform from your cell phone. So if you're out and about, especially if it's in the middle of an event, And you need to send like an emergency text, for example, Hey, weather alert, please take cover.

Or just maybe a reminder to a group, like your vendors, Hey, it's time to start packing up. You have two hours. There's a lot of different ways you can use this, but the mobile version is really nice because you can have it wherever you go. And it makes it really simple to contact your lists. So we have, a list here.

Everyone has opted in. And what you did was you texted in the main keyword, the primary keyword convo, every account would have their own primary keyword. And then you can have an unlimited amount of secondary keywords. These secondary keywords are really helpful because you can segment your overall list into, more detailed lists.

So maybe you want to specifically communicate with. a group that is interested in events. You can have a secondary keyword for events or RSVP for one specific event. The, it's unlimited the amount of secondary keywords you can have. So, and then there's a QR code for each of those as well. So now you've all opted in, you can go over to manage lists and see how many people are in each of the lists.

So we've got some people in our webinar lists. We've got a few people in some other lists. You can manage your subscribers here, and then you can go ahead and send a message when you're ready. lots of our clients use text messaging in different ways, but especially when it comes to events, you might use it for marketing purposes before the event launches.

You might use it for the day before as a reminder, a few texts during the event and post event text messages. Thanks. So let's send a little upcoming event reminder text message. So this is more of an alert. Hey, we have a gala coming up. You might want to attend. You can RSVP by replying with the word RSVP.

So I can choose a list here and I can choose multiple lists if I want to, but I'll just choose the one list. I can schedule this to be sent at a later time as well. So if I know I want this text to go out next week. I can do that and schedule it to be sent at a later time.

If it's during the event, maybe you have a daily text that you want sent out for when, lunch is served. For example, you could have a daily, weekly, those recurring text messages. So we'll do unscheduled and send now.  

[00:07:55] Anna Busby: We actually have workforce development clients that will use it in this way.

[00:08:00] Brittany Lawson: They'll have existing lists of job seekers and they'll send out an invite to an upcoming event with a link to register. Yeah, definitely. Great. So we should have all received. that text message. Now, if you reply with the word RSVP, I can show you what the back and forth looks like.

Because it's really awesome that you're able to send out a message to multiple lists and groups of people, but it's even cooler that you can have that response. So you can have that back and forth communication. We've got several clients that will have a big event and maybe there's a lot of questions that come with that.

So they have one person that's just kind of manning the conversation side of things in case those questions do come up. So I can go over to conversation over here and look at all these replies. So on my side, although you can't hear it, it's lighting up, but it's also telling me in my ear, you have a new message.

So I can go in here and see the different messages that we're receiving. So every time I get a new text, it's going to say new message arrived. So it alerts me and I can come in here and reply. So I'll just pick a random number here. This one here, I'll just say hello.

whoever that is. You'll receive this specific text message from me. Not everybody else on the list will get that. So you can have that back and forth communication.

Now on the mobile version, I'll show you how easy it is here. this is where you would log in from your phone. You can save this link to your home screen. So it sits and looks like a native app, but again, it's just web based. And once you log in, it will remember you for like 30 days or so. If you have that set up to do so.

You can view your conversations. individually received messages, history, subscriber list, schedule text messages, and you can just send a message on the fly as well. So maybe I want to send a text about a promotion we have going during an event. I'll type that in there and then I just choose my list.

I'm going to send it to everybody and hit send and we'll all receive that. Another great thing to have on hand is that emergency alert text message. So you can have some templates here. You can have some templates to choose from. So if there was like a weather alert, you could have that. So it's even quicker.

So you don't have to type it out. You just choose the template. It'll insert it. did you receive that?  

[00:10:33] Anna Busby: This idea about, sending out giveaways was actually, we have a client that runs an amusement park and every day they have new visitors and they have a new text list and they'll send out, Hey, go to the gift shop.

The first 50 people there get a free Tumblr. And she said, you wouldn't believe the way people ran to that gift shop. They also use text messaging for emergency alerts. Like this, this ride is down. It won't be back up for another hour. So we've actually had an association as well. Use us at an event to say, Hey, come by our booth for a free swag bag.

And that. helped them quite a bit with moving traffic over to where they wanted it to be at.  

[00:11:15] Brittany Lawson: Oh yeah, definitely. I've also heard of using text messaging for scavenger hunts. So, this past summer, Alameda County in California, they used text messaging for a scavenger hunt. They had a sponsorship from Kaiser Health.

And so it just kind of led their visitors on a wild goose chase to get the answers to these different questions, but it got their steps in. So by the time they completed everything and it said, you won, you've completed the scavenger hunt, go visit the registration desk. for your prize, they could go in and show that they received that text and they got a bunch of steps in.

Kaiser Health loved that. They got a little swag. I think it was a hand sanitizer with Kaiser's logo on it. And they've got a list so they could contact those people and let them know if there was an emergency during that day or whatever else too. There's a lot of different ways to use it. It makes me think of conferences too to help people get to different booths.

With that scavenger hunt method.

Well, that pretty much sums up, text messaging. So let's hop over to the mobile web app.

So at the top here, I'll just navigate to this tab. And then we are taking a peek at the mobile web app. This is the one that Anna showed earlier. There's a couple of different ways that she mentioned to get to this. So one could be through the QR code. You can just open this up and you can download this.

Or you could just take this link and send it out. The cool thing about the mobile web app is that as Anna mentioned, it's live. So anytime you make a change, it can be done on the fly and it's live right away. Saves you a lot of time and it's really easy to do.

It's all drag and drop. So we've got a test page down here. We'll just go in here and create a survey because a popular way to use text messaging and the mobile web app from a lot of our clients, especially with events. It's to get some feedback from people with a survey. So I'm going to drag down quiz and let's do event survey.

We'll just call this the same thing and we'll make it multiple choice. Did you think of the event today? We'll just have two different answers. I loved it.

It was okay.

And there it's live. So I can take this URL and go over to my text messaging

and send my message. Thank you. You all will receive this text with the link. And if you click the link, it's going to take you straight to that page with that survey to answer. Makes it super easy.

Go ahead and participate in that survey

and you'll see it says, thanks for participating. feel free to explore too. This is just a demo page. So if you click. The image at the very top of the screen that says events demo, it'll take you back to that home screen. you can click around and see an example of what this could look like, but it could all completely change.

[00:14:34] Anna Busby: Icons can be whatever you think is most relevant to your end user. It can match your branding, your look and feel. You can have sponsor logos on there, I actually added a couple of mapping examples in here as well. If you guys are curious to explore some maps, you can tap on that icon Two examples.

One is of an indoor conference center and then the other is actually a garden during a holiday lights event.  

[00:15:02] Brittany Lawson: I'm a little biased about that one because it's close to me. I've been there many, many times. It's a really cool map. Okay, great. I'll go ahead and stop sharing to give it back to you, Una.

[00:15:20] Anna Busby: Okay, can everybody see my screen?  

[00:15:22] Brittany Lawson: Yeah, we're good.  

[00:15:25] Anna Busby: Okay, so we didn't touch too much on our fundraising tools. I mentioned the mobile donate tool, which is you build a web page where you can collect donations. And that can tie in directly to this, screencast example, which is a real time live feed of donations that can have any look and feel you like.

And it shows in real time your donations rising to meet your goal. You can also manually add in donations here. If someone was to walk up to you and hand you a check, it doesn't all have to come through the mobile donate page, but it's pretty seamless when you build it like that. Is there anything I missed about fundraising, Brittany?

[00:16:06] Brittany Lawson: I think maybe just one really cool thing to know is that if you do the screencast thermometer, the fundraising thermometer, paired with the mobile donate page, They're linked. So if someone donates on that mobile page, it will automatically reflect on the screencast thermometer, which is awesome. It makes the process a lot easier if you're especially if you're hosting event, it gets the people going they see their name on the screen.

But then you can also go to that reporting and see okay who clicked on that link to do the donate. But then they didn't actually complete the donation. Then you can reach out to those folks and say, Hey, thanks so much for attending last night. If you have not had a chance to complete your donation yet, there's still time.

Here's that link to do so. So you can catch those people still, maybe they didn't have their card on them at the time. There's a million different reasons why they still will likely be willing to donate even a couple of days after your event.  

[00:16:58] Anna Busby: I've also seen this concept used with discussion questions and polls where they'll have a question on the screen and say text your answer to five six five one two and then all the answers that people are putting in will actually end up scrolling on the screen to get some discussions going or if you have a live poll it can it can show those results as well.

Okay, so we talked a little bit about, reporting one of the great things about using a dashboard to text rather than your own personal phone number is number one, you're not getting blown up by a bunch of text messages and a bunch of group chats. But number two, you have records of every conversation you've ever had.

You have all these analytics of what links were clicked in your text messages, what time of day the app was visited, what pages were visited the most. You get all that donor information if you're using fundraising tools to follow up with and it can just really help with making decisions for future events and kind of optimizing on.

What works this time and what didn't work. We've got some text messaging reports. We've got mobile web app reports and then some polls and quizzes. So one of the questions we get asked all the time is, okay, we've built this beautiful app. We've started this text messaging platform.

Now, how do we get people to start participating in it? The easiest way to start it, I think, is during the registration process. So whenever you register for something, you always see those little terms and conditions. You just have it in writing there that they agree to get text messages, or you can make it a checkbox where they can say yes or no, I agree to this.

There's always going to be opt out language associated with all of those text messages, so they can opt out at any time. You can also have it on your website. You can use it in your registration confirmation email Scan this QR code or text this number for access to it. You can post on social media about it. And then obviously you can use it, use the QR codes and the text code at signage at the actual event. We've seen it on trash cans. I've seen it on candy wrappers. I've seen it as a sidewalk decal. I've seen it on t shirts.

So We encourage folks to get as creative as they can and we're here to help with some signage ideas and some, we can actually create some marketing examples for you to use.

[00:19:32] Brittany Lawson: Yeah, that's true. You can put it on a million different things. I think I even have a sweatshirt that has a big QR code on the back of it. I've seen someone with a tattoo of a QR code. Don't necessarily recommend that. very creative nonetheless.

[00:19:45] Anna Busby: Yeah, very creative. That's commitment. Yeah. Okay. Well, if you guys have any questions, feel free to pop those in the chat now and we can answer them here with you guys, or you can put your contact info and we can reach out if you guys are interested in learning more. Our contact info is right on the screen there.

[00:20:08] Brittany Lawson: I do see a question. How do we get the engage by cell app? On the phone. Is it through the app store? That is a great question. So it's not in the app store. The best way to do it is to go to the link on your phone and just like your favorite page.  

I can hit the little box with an arrow at the bottom. So if you scroll down, you can choose add to home screen and they actually set it up so that it has their logo. So then when I save it, it's now on my home screen with their logo. I can click on it any time and it'll take me to their page.

[00:20:52] Anna Busby: Okay. So we've got another question. What are the costs. So everything is a la carte and it really varies depending on your use case. So you could just use text messaging. You could just use the mobile web app and the text messaging is actually scalable depending on text message bundles. I think how much is like 5, 000 texts, Brittany?

It's pretty affordable.  

[00:21:14] Brittany Lawson: 5, 000 text messages is 300 bucks. you can send quite a few text messages for that event.  

[00:21:20] Anna Busby: Yeah. And then we just have a platform fee for procuring your phone number and the platform itself.  

[00:21:29] Brittany Lawson: And of course there's better deals if you are looking at using it all year round.

But I'm sure you'll find that you love it and can think of a million other ways to use it. Cause like Anna mentioned, maybe the marketing team would like it, HR teams use it. We think outside the box for use case as well.  

[00:21:46] Anna Busby: It kind of goes either way. Either we have someone that only uses the service for one month out of the year and then they just keep coming back every year or a lot of times there are a client that uses text messaging year round and then they just really ramp it up around special events.  

[00:22:02] Brittany Lawson: that's exactly what happened this morning. We just had a client who normally uses us just for the holiday season. It's a choir group out of San Francisco and they decided, you know what, let's go ahead and just use it all year round. We've got a few more events this year. So it'll be great to see how else they use texting.

[00:22:20] Anna Busby: How long is the information stored? So as long as you have an account that you can find that information. It doesn't disappear if you no longer have an account, you can always reach out to us and we can go back in and get that info, but it's always going to be there.

All right. I think that wraps it up for today. You can send your contact info in the chat to us if you want us to reach out or again, our contact info is here on the screen and thank you guys so much for joining.  

[00:23:00] Brittany Lawson: Yeah. Thanks everybody. We'll be excited to talk with you further about how we can help with your events throughout the year.

[00:23:06] Anna Busby: Bye guys.

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