7
Predictions for the
Mobile Event App Industry
in 2014
QuickMobile is the recognized worldwide leader in the mobile event app industry, building apps for thousands of events and millions of attendees annually around the world. Since 2008 the company has defined the industry in technology, innovation and design, delivering more mobile event apps than any other vendor, and currently has technology partnerships with all the leading event industry organizations including MPI, PCMA, IMEX, GBTA, ACTE, CEMA and others. QuickMobile serves the
Introduction
The pace of adoption of mobile event apps accelerated rapidly in 2013, and is showing no signs of slowing down in 2014. Mobile event apps are rapidly going
mainstream as an increasing number of organizations embrace the mobile experience for all types of events - trade shows, conferences, symposia, team meetings, sales kick-offs, and virtually every gathering of internal or external audiences.
QuickMobile is the industry pioneer and recognized global leader, having launched more mobile event apps than any other vendor. We have had the privilege of watching this industry take shape and expand since its inception, amassing a substantial
amount of supporting data and experience that gives us a unique perspective on its evolution. In 2014, the landscape will continue its pace of growth and change. This paper offers seven predictions for what this will look like.
Contents
Overview
Prediction #1
Enterprise-grade Mobile Event Apps Become Available to Everyone
Prediction #2
Social – in the Right Context – Is More Important Than Ever
Prediction #3
Mobile Event Apps Transform the Engagement Spectrum
Prediction #4
Mobile Event Apps Get Personal
Prediction #5
Event Owners Will Leverage Analytics to Deepen Business Intelligence
and Validate ROI
Prediction #6
The Proliferation of Mobile Event App Vendors Will Continue
Prediction #7
The Emergence of Genuine “Connected Communities”
Conclusion
13
04
06
16
19
21
24
26
29
Overview
Prior to 2013, only the most forward-thinking organizations tended to use mobile
event apps. They were the Innovators and Early Adopters (according to the technology adoption lifecycle based on the Rogers bell curve).
Whether out of budgetary limits or simple lack of awareness, the majority of event owners and organizers are not yet incorporating mobile apps into their events. In fact, according to a March 2013 survey of more than 16,000 businesses worldwide, 75% of mid-market organizations (less than $1 billion in revenue) and 71% of corporate organizations (over $1 billion) ‘seldom’ or ‘never’ used mobile apps at their events.
Figure 1 – Rogers Bell Curve Depicting the Innovation Adoption Lifecycle
Innovators
Early Adopters
Early Majority Late Majority
Laggards
In 2014, the mobile event app market will enter a new stage of market
acceptance, exiting the “Early Adopter” phase and confidently
entering the “Early Majority” phase
Mobile event apps will soon become
commonplace, simply because it is just too compelling for both attendees and event organizers not to use them. These apps are much more powerful than just eliminating paper-based programs that quickly go out-of-date and the important contributions made to sustainability; in reality their value is realized in enabling, and capitalizing on the immense power of genuine engagement. Whether pushed by the realization that a mobile event app is vital in achieving meeting objectives, or pulled by increasingly sophisticated attendees demanding more mobile content and less paper, mobile apps will gain in popularity because they provide true engagement and quantifiable ROI.
Figure 2 - Use of mobile event apps by size
(Source: Survey of Meeting and Event Planning Professionals, Frost & Sullivan, July 2013)
“
Mobile event apps
will soon become
commonplace,
simply because
they are too
compelling”
1
Enterprise-grade Mobile Event Apps
Become Available to Everyone
Organizations embracing mobile apps and seeking to embed this technology effectively into their daily operations will require a higher level of functionality and support. They will expect a platform that integrates well into their IT and business ecosystems, and is equipped to handle a wide variety of event types. This increasingly sophisticated platform, like other new technologies before it, will have explicit
enterprise-grade performance requirements:
In 2014, both event organizers and attendees will demand
greater functionality, reliability and performance from mobile
event apps
Organizations expect that the technology solutions they choose will provide consistent, dependable service, with the ability to scale according to their usage requirements. They expect these solutions to be available 99.999% of the time, translating to less than 6 minutes of downtime annually. Meeting these expectations requires sophisticated underlying server infrastructure with built-in redundancy and failover, as well as overt disaster management and
recovery policies.
Vendors will also be expected to offer 24/7 support to accommodate the diverse nature and location of their events. As the apps themselves get engrained into the daily habits of meeting organizers and attendees, it will be essential for vendors to be able to respond to support issues quickly and effectively.
As mobile event apps become part of the mission-critical infrastructure for many organizations, solution providers will need to offer a more robust and resilient
Scalability and Reliability
As smartphones and tablets become more powerful and users become more sophisticated, attendees will expect to have access to specific functionality that addresses the unique characteristics of their event. Certain meetings may require multifaceted in-app document management and note taking capabilities. Other meetings may not need that at all, instead requiring advanced interactive networking tools. Ultimately, genuine flexibility requires the ability to configure and deploy via a comprehensive platform according to the unique needs of the event and its attendees. Template solutions simply won’t work because they do not address the prerequisite for a wide variety of different functional components. Flexibility is the key to successfully addressing the unique needs of today’s meetings.
Parallel to platform flexibility, and no less important, is ease of access. As organizations realize the value of using
Enterprise for Everyone
Enterprise-grade functionality and performance is no longer the exclusive domain of the enterprise. No matter the size or budget of any given event, there is simply too much at stake to risk things going wrong. In 2014, buyers from all segments of the market will demand enterprise-grade performance, security and support, even if they don’t necessarily require enterprise-scale functionality. In other words,
they expect to be treated like an enterprise client even if they opt out of the full-scale package. Such is the nature of sophisticated event organizers and how they approach all their vendors. Will an event fail if the app under-delivers? Perhaps not, but the opportunity to deliver superior value – and hence to earn an appreciation in brand value – will have been lost. To the small association, this can translate into declining membership or sponsorship, a potentially fatal scenario. To the mid-sized company, this can translate into damaging and costly erosion of employee or customer loyalty. Event apps will be expected to deliver results, results that are increasingly well defined as the market matures.
mobile apps for all their meetings and events, they begin to see their app platform as an on-going, mission-critical resource. Depending on their internal resources and capabilities, different organizations will require different levels of access, single sign-on, and control. Some event teams will wish to build and maintain event apps themselves so they can maximize responsiveness to attendee needs. In order to achieve this, they will require a self-serve ready back-end content management system (CMS) that is accessible, intuitive and straightforward, and a permission-based login system that complies with organizational structure and security policies.
Other organizations will prefer vendor or third-party assistance, to varying degrees. Vendors that offer solutions that span the full spectrum of customer needs, from complete independence to white-glove service, will enjoy the greatest success. Also within the realm of flexibility, global organizations
will also require their event app platform to have built-in multi-language capabilities. This will be vital to ensuring adoption and usage across the
organization’s entire geographic and linguistic footprint, whether defined by their own employees or their customer base. Apps that are only available in English will have little appeal to multinational or multiethnic organizations.
As mobile apps go mainstream in 2014, taking their place alongside other mission-critical operational platforms both event-related and otherwise, they will need to integrate smoothly and effectively into the broader IT environment. Whether through a simple web view or embedded directly into the native code, these integrations will greatly enhance the overall event experience and dramatically increase
organizational productivity and ROI. Broadly speaking, opportunities for integration
Integration
Figure 3 - Event lifecycle, 2013 v. 2014
include the obvious – registration and social networking platforms – and the less obvious – marketing automation, customer relationship management (CRM), content management, e-commerce and market research systems. The former are increasingly common today, allowing seamless updating of attendee lists, schedules, and speaker data to provide basic meeting utility and participation. Some of these integrations modestly increase adoption and utilization of mobile event apps.
2014 will witness the mobilization of the entire registration process,
enabling attendee engagement through the app from the very
beginning of the event lifecycle.
Others, including social platforms such as Jive, Chatter, and Yammer promote wider app adoption and utilization, and considerably enhance an event’s networking and collaboration opportunities beyond native functionality around in-app messaging and contact sharing. After all, face-to-face meetings succeed through the iterative giving and receiving of information; the more an event app can replicate and facilitate this exchange, the more it will be used.
As for the latter set of integrations – those involving technologies that scale beyond the event itself – more and more leading-edge organizations will expand their mobile platforms to drive value and insight, and even develop new streams of monetization. With the inevitable momentum of mobile payment solutions that simplify and enhance the registration experience to year-round collaboration tools that extend the depth and range of conversations, there is virtually no limit to how a mobile app can deliver value. Best-of-breed marketing automation and CRM systems such as Eloqua, Marketo, Salesforce and others will be routinely integrated into sophisticated mobile event apps, particularly for trade shows and association events but also vital to certain types of internal events as well.
Along with mobile apps come the increasingly stringent requirements for data security and privacy. This is no longer the exclusive domain of the enterprise; organizations of every size and function are subject to mounting ethical and legal pressure to control and protect the information under their purview. Fiduciary responsibility and internal and external policies exist to govern what organizations must do in this regard, from data storage to disaster recovery, encryption to secure updating. By definition, Internet access and mobile devices carry inherent security risks, including but not limited to the apps that run on them. Only through a holistic approach to security – one that includes how mobile apps are built and maintained – can organizations effectively satisfy
obligations to their stakeholders.
Security
Branding
In 2014, mobile apps will be established as vital tools for brand
enforcement
An organization’s brand is often its most valuable asset. The brand expresses uniform quality, credibility and experience. Brands often outlive the product cycle and provide important market differentiation. Given their value, brands must be
handled carefully, both externally – for customers and the public – and internally – for employees, management and
shareholders. Regardless of the nature of the organization or the size of its event, a mobile app offers yet another platform through which to promote the brand. It is
“
To accept
anything less
than the optimal
extension of
the brand is to
concede failure”
absolutely essential that event owners and organizers take full advantage of the app to propagate the brand promise.
This involves much more than a simple logo and a color palette; it applies to the very function of the app itself, and to the way it is used to share information and engage with attendees before, during and after an event. To accept anything less than the optimal extension of the brand – through design, communication, and overall experience – is to concede failure.
Social – in the Right Context –
Is More Important Than Ever
Social is a great deal more than Facebook and Twitter zeitgeist. While these immensely successful social platforms have earned their much respected and rightful place,
they assume lesser relevance in many types of events and meetings, particularly those of an internal or private nature. There is a subtle yet essential distinction in what ‘social’ means in these types of events. For attendees of internal corporate events, the motivation and desired outcome of networking are more about the organization –strategic planning, education, team building, product launches, training, motivation, etc. – than they are about the individual or sharing with the public. If confidential or proprietary information is present, then discussions and sharing must be closely guarded, and kept within the ‘walls’ of the event and its sponsoring organization. In these environments, social networking platforms like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn present real and present threats to confidentiality, with potentially grave consequences from leaks, accidental or deliberate. Imagine for a moment what could happen if
photos or blueprints for a prototypical new product were to make their way onto an
In 2014, mobile event apps will embrace social networking
by offering what is needed, not what is trendy
Three Types of Social
The fundamental sociological needs that sustain interest in live events - to gather in groups, to socialize and to share - will be satisfied even more through mobile apps that can deliver an elegant and effective solution, and meaningful engagement and collaborationopportunities. Where traditional events underwhelm in areas such as networking, spontaneous meetings, content creation and sharing, mobile events will succeed in new and exciting ways.
Collaboration is essential for internal events, but having the right tools in the mobile event app to deliver this function is imperative. The challenge for event organizers is to find the right platform for their needs. There are three types of social networking platforms: Social, Business Social, and Enterprise Social. As we explore in our white paper entitled ‘What To Expect From Mobile Event Apps in 2014’, event organizers must learn and appreciate the difference between these three types, and must enthusiastically embrace the approach that best suits their particular event. The following chart lists the most popular social networking platforms by type.
Figure 4 - Popular Social Networking Platforms by Type
Deloitte predicts that by the end of 2013, 90% of Fortune 500 companies “will have partially or fully implemented an enterprise social network”1 . Yet the real key to their
success will hinge on user engagement, not just deployment. There is still ample room for growth in how users truly engage with and through these platforms. As they gain traction and become increasingly enmeshed in users’ day-to-day activities, it will be difficult to imagine a mobile event app that doesn’t include social networks.
Mobile Event Apps Transform the
Engagement Spectrum
Simply having an app for an event will be insufficient. The market has matured enough beyond this point, and as we have said elsewhere in this paper, organizations that do not address the increasingly sophisticated demands of their attendees will pay the price in declining attendance or participation. There are basic functional requirements that every app should have, and then there are the elements of surprise and delight that help to drive adoption and usage. Examples of such elements include:
Including game-like tasks and activities into the app in order to capitalize on this powerful behavioral trend. When designed properly, gamification can help meeting organizers accomplish several objectives. First, it can motivate people to get out and participate in the event: visit certain booths, connect with certain people, create and share content, attend key sessions, etc. Second, it can help draw in younger audiences who more naturally gravitate to gamified activities. Third (and where appropriate), it can drive new revenue streams through sponsorship of activities, prizes, etc.
In 2014, mobile event apps will need to work harder to earn
the attention of attendees and other stakeholders
“Jive World was a classic example of how to apply game mechanic to specific objectives. The game series was beautifully designed with so many missions focusing on different objectives and suiting such a diverse variety of attendees. There was something in it for
everyone and many got into it thanks to the game series. It was not just about points, badges and leaderboard, but really about engaging all the attendees into the conference”
Read the full post here.
Gamification
YOUNG
In 2014, real-time polling and Q&A will become common practice, forever replacing the microphone and a show of hands or a paper-based survey as a means of involving the audience in a discussion. App-based surveys will offer more timely and more specific ways of gathering meaningful feedback, taking advantage of the immediacy that only an app can offer. Meeting organizers will actively leverage the power, knowledge and expertise of the assembled audience to gain better understanding of the event participants.
Mobile event apps will offer opportunities to deliver highly engaging and entertaining content in ways that no other medium can match. Whatever the core purpose of the event, there will always be a place for amusement and personality to shine through.
When properly embedded into the event lifecycle, mobile apps provide a unique platform for engaging with audiences before, during and after an event. Organizers will begin to tap into the app as quickly as possible, blurring the lines between launch, opening and closing. They will enable ongoing conversations with and between
attendees, speakers and organizers, deepening the value of both the app and the event it serves.
Insight
Video and rich media
Before, during and after
Mobile Event Apps Get Personal
As mobile event apps go mainstream, event organizers must strive to deliver an intensely personalized and meaningful experience for attendees. This means enabling the app to respond intelligently and effectively to the evolving needs of the attendee before, during and after the event. To accomplish this, the app must recognize the user through an established login, and then connect the user to her relevant online profiles such as LinkedIn and Twitter (we stress the need for relevance here, as defined in
Prediction #2).
Once the desired profile is fully established, the app will help the attendee achieve her objectives while at the event. This might involve facilitating meaningful connections with like-minded
peers and colleagues; identifying and mapping relevant exhibitors as she walks the show floor; and registering her for appropriate continuing education courses. All this is accomplished in the background by the platform while the attendee checks in to the event and downloads her digital badge that she will use to access the various services and facilities at the event.
Much of the functionality implied above is readily enabled through integration with existing technologies such as social networking, registration, and location-based services including Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), Indoor Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Near-Field Communication (NFC), and Bluetooth Wi-Fi. These
integrations, while still at an early stage of adoption, will begin to gain in popularity as more events learn how to deliver a more personal – and hence more valuable – event experience for attendees.
In 2014, mobile event apps will need to deliver a more
personalized and relevant experience to attendees
Event Owners Will Leverage
Analytics to Deepen Business
Intelligence and Validate ROI
By their very nature as digital solutions, mobile event apps have the potential for
generating reams of invaluable data points on attendee behavior. We already mentioned how they can be used as a platform to run polls and surveys, but that is just the
beginning. Every time an attendee opens the app, views a piece of content or uses one of the app’s components (messaging, personalizing a schedule, tweeting, checking in, etc.), they create a data point. Multiply this across every attendee, and we begin to paint a detailed and very valuable picture of what people are doing with their app. The app becomes a proxy for their likes and dislikes, through which event organizers and owners can extrapolate where and how an event is succeeding or failing. For example, by using a QR code or PIN for session check-in – or geo-fencing for a more subtle and advanced tabulation – event organizers can determine which sessions, booths or locations are popular and which ones are not.
The first order of business is seeing the right data points. In 2013, event organizers were largely interested in seeing how many attendees downloaded the app, as a measure of adoption. They also looked at downloads by mobile platform, comparing Apple to Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone. More experienced users began to delve deeper, looking at which app components were used most and when, and tracking how much time people spent in the app, how many documents were opened, and how many messages were sent between attendees. In 2014, event organizers and owners will demand more sophisticated data dashboards and views that help
provide the insight and data-driven intelligence they have
dreamed of
“
In 2014, event
organizers and
owners will
demand more
sophisticated
data views that
help demonstrate
real ROI. Analytics
will need to be
baked right into
the CMS”
Examples include a better understanding of social behavior; statistics on in-app advertising similar to what is available through Google Adwords analytics; and
benchmark performance against their previous events, and those of their peer group.
Much like how a robust content management system (CMS) helps event organizers manage an app and its content, an enterprise-grade analytics platform will help event organizers and owners access data easily and quickly. To develop an intimate and quantifiable understanding of an event or series of events, it isn’t enough to be able to export data for offline analysis in Excel; in order to provide measurable value, the information must be instantly accessible and presented in an intelligent format, right inside the CMS.
Furthermore, organizations that run multiple meetings will benefit significantly from analytics that aggregate results from all meetings managed through their multi-event app platform - the more multi-events you can access, the more valid and useful the data. In fact, when it comes to business intelligence, comparing an event to a set of global benchmark statistics for the relevant meeting type and industry is the ultimate yardstick. This information will prove useful in new and inventive ways such as understanding broad scale attendee preferences, corporate social influencers, hot topics, trending mobile behaviors, component usage, content consumption, device adoption, long-term polling and survey results, social pursuits, business activities and a myriad of other important business intelligence data required to derive more value out of an event and assess its true ROI. Only large-scale mobile app vendors will be able to offer this level of insight.
The Proliferation of Mobile Event
App Vendors Will Continue
2013 witnessed an influx of over 100 new vendors serving the event app market, and this influx will likely continue through 2014. Some will be familiar with the event space or segments within it, but most will not, relying instead on primarily technical capabilities. But even as demand increases, the needs of the market and technology will continue to shift. Customers get more sophisticated, and as they do, their
requirements rise. Most new vendors entering the market this year and next will
underestimate the real complexity of designing, delivering and supporting mobile event apps. Their point solutions will offer limited functionality that may or may not address the needs of the defined niche, let alone the broader market.
In 2014, as the industry grows, the market will begin to
identify – and reward – those vendors that truly understand
how mobile event apps provide value
We already discussed the need for a powerful yet easy to use platform and CMS so event organizers can maintain direct control over their apps and content. We also discussed the need for better and more insightful analytics to prove ROI and drive better business decisions.
Elements such as flexible component configuration, multi-platform compatibility, real-time content management, integration (with registration systems and more
complex web services), advanced networking features, monetization, video, attendee personalization, social media, document management, etc. are not as easy to embed as their ease of use might imply. On the back end, there are infrastructure, security and privacy requirements to contend with, as well as evolving mobile technology, which is out of the sphere of influence of even today’s largest mobile app vendors. As mobile event apps go ‘enterprise’ across all segments of the market, small vendors will find it difficult to compete in a complex and demanding ecosystem with more experienced and more resourceful vendors.
The Emergence of Genuine
“Connected Communities”
This is perhaps our boldest prediction for 2014: For a growing number of
organizations, mobile event apps will evolve from being event-centric to connecting an organization to its audience year-round. Solutions that are truly enterprise-ready as outlined above will emerge as ‘Mobile Engagement Platforms’, embedded deeply into the day-to-day lives of users and the organizations behind them. The mobile app will succeed as a powerful connector where other solutions have failed, because the value that can be delivered through a mobile app extends further than that of any other medium or platform. When users can accomplish everything they need through a single master app – communication, education, collaboration, and productive social networking – they will be highly motivated to consolidate their interactions accordingly.
In 2014, mobile event apps will be about more
than just the event.
This technology will empower users to connect, create ad-hoc networks, access resources, join conversations, stay up to date, and join what is
effectively a ‘connected community’ of peers and like-minded individuals and groups. Email cannot do this, web sites cannot do this, and social networking sites on their own cannot do this. Only a mobile app that is always on and always
at the user’s fingertips has the unifying capacity to address the full range of an audience’s needs, particularly with respect to ongoing, year-round engagement.
From management’s perspective, when an organization can establish and nurture connections quickly, easily and efficiently, all through a single framework – namely a powerful mobile app supported by a comprehensive Mobile Engagement Platform
– they will be highly motivated to do so. This is particularly compelling to larger, geographically diverse organizations challenged by their physical structure to
maintain cohesion and community. It will be equally compelling to membership-based associations and other institutions striving to maintain meaningful connections with their stakeholders. And it will find value for conferences and trade shows as well, providing exhibitors, sponsors, and buyers greater long-term value than what can ever be offered from a two- or three-day event.
The Mobile Engagement Platform is the future of mobile event apps,
dovetailing with the longer-term strategy of all kinds of organizations and
communities. Those at the leading edge are already advancing in this direction, and demanding that mobile event app vendors keep pace. Vendors that are able will reap the greatest reward.
Conclusion
Healthy organic growth will continue to fuel development of the mobile event app market in 2014. The transition from being a nice-to-have into a more sophisticated and value-added must-have for events of all types and sizes will continue. Event organizers will require more from their apps, pushed along in equal measure by their own
experience and by increasingly sophisticated mobile audiences. Vendors will come and go, with their success dependent on their ability to meet the needs of more demanding and educated buyers. Finally, mobile event apps will begin to deliver value before an event occurs, and long after it ends, morphing into a powerful enabler of a year-round connected community.
Humans are born to connect, they long for meaningful, relevant exchange, and whenever an enabler comes along that helps fulfill this fundamental sociological
need, it receives broad adoption and usage. As for the organizations that offer natural opportunities for creating and empowering these communities – both deliberate and spontaneous – they will learn to capitalize on the mobile revolution to build and sustain their brands and achieve their unique objectives in ways previously unimagined.
2006: Founded by Patrick Payne and Jim Udall
2008: Develops the first mobile event app solution for the iPhone
2009: Hires employee no. 6
2009: Develops a comprehensive, multi-device app development platform and content management system
2010: Focuses exclusively on mobile event apps and develops the first sophisticated iPad event app.
2010: First to offer a self-serve Content Management System for event apps, enabling event organizers to manage and control their apps on their own.
2011: Hires employee no. 58 (130% year-over-year growth)
2011: Develops the first mobile event app for all five major mobile platforms – iPhone & iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Mobile Web (for the World Economic Forum).
2011: Develops the first gamified mobile event app for the Green Meetings Industry Council.
2012: Hires employee no. 116 (100% year-over-year growth)
2012: Surpasses more than 1 million downloads annually
2012: Successfully launches the first multi-event mobile app solution, deployed by more than 100 clients in the first year. Releases more than 1,000 mobile event apps.
2013: Hires employee no. 194 (67% year-over-year growth)
2013: Launches MobilePlanner, the first enterprise-grade mobile event planning app, and MobileVenue, the first dual-purpose app that helps destinations deliver more meaningful guest experiences and grow their on-site meeting business.
2013: Chosen as the “Emerging Company of the Year” by the BC Technology Industry Association.
2013: Named to the “Ready to Rocket” list of top BC tech companies.
2013: Wins the Professional Convention Management Association’s Technology Innovation Award.
2013: Ranked #1 on Deloitte’s “Tech Fast 50” (Canada), and #21 on Deloitte’s Tech Fast 500” (North America), growing by more than 100% annually for more than five consecutive years.
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