The busy event-planner’s guide to year-round mobile communication

Timing

The easiest way to reach your users is via push notifications, which will appear on their lock screen. But be careful – It can be a tricky business to find the right balance and cadence of messaging your users. A flood of daily messages will most likely be annoying for your users and take all your time to prepare. Not reaching out enough will make users forget about your organisation and cut the ROI of your app. We recommend you to send messages whenever when you have something timely or important to say and spread your news to one or two messages per month. A tool that comes in handy for busy event planners is the scheduling feature. Here, you can plan ahead and write and schedule multiple messages for the next weeks.

Content

There is no better time to start with your year-round communication than when your attendees are still buzzing about your recent event. It’s the prime time of your app engagement, and you can expect to see a peak of users. Once the excitement has slowed down, the real challenge starts, and things get a bit trickier. How can you encourage your users to visit your app without an event to prepare for? Here are some quick and easy message content ideas to help you through the year:

• Surveys: Ask your attendees what they loved about your event (and what they didn’t) so you can improve their experience next time.
• Highlight photos: Recap the highlights of your event with a video or photos series. This will remind your attendees of all they got out of your event — and give them something to share with their friends.
• Event statistics: How many people attended your event? What were the most popular sessions? Who or what got retweeted the most? Share interesting insights you learned from the analytics or the post-event survey.
• Blog posts: If your organisation has a blog or news platform, share your new articles in your app together with a short intro and link. These messages drive traffic to your website and increase your event’s reputation as a thought leader.
• Content corner: Upload magazines, reports, and white papers right into your app and announce them with a short message.
• Sponsor news: Give your sponsors some spotlight and some of their insights or news. What’s important here is that the content is valuable for your attendees and not too commercial. A win for users, sponsors, and your organisation!
• Smaller events: Announce your workshops, trainings, or seminars through the app to bring more attention and connection even to smaller events.
• Teasers: Turn your users’ attention to the next event by announcing speakers, topics, or other details about your next upcoming event.

Engagement

The next factor in a successful, year-round app communication is to not only reach your users but to spark interaction in them. This is why it is important to add a call to action to your messages. Without it, your users might have a glance at your message and dismiss it right after. Try to encourage them to interact with your app’s features, other users, or your content. Leave them better informed and connected than they were before. You could encourage your users to upload their own pictures to the app’s social wall when you share your highlight images. Or, include a discount code and registration link when communicating about your upcoming event.