Designing Event Experiences Customers Remember (Even After the Swag Is Gone)

Are you planning a conference for the coming year? Make sure you don’t spend more time on swag than you do on designing your event experiences for customers.

It’s not that swag doesn’t matter. It does. Event attendees expect swag, and a recent survey showed that people especially like to receive physical planners and digital gadgets like earbuds when they go to conventions, summits, and similar gatherings. (Hint: Give out the hottest productivity books and calendars; your attendees will love them as well as be able to better manage their schedules.)

But most event swag isn’t destined to stick around forever. Eventually, it’ll end up in a drawer or an office “white elephant” gift exchange. Alternatively, it may end up being sold for big bucks in a thrift store.

Event experiences, on the other hand, are more likely to have staying power. That’s why you should always invest far more energy in discussions about how to wow your attendees in memorable ways beyond the branded items they receive.

Event memories with serious stickiness

What makes event experiences so valuable? For one, they differentiate your organization in a way that swag can’t. A stress ball just doesn’t have the lasting power of a dazzling LED digital display storyboard wall or a real-time interactive scoreboard that encourages gamified competition among attendees.

Another consideration is that event experiences are highly personal. Essentially, everyone has a customized experience depending on the way they consume the various parts of your event. For instance, Amy won’t attend the same workshops as Juan. Sure, they’ll get the same swag, but their experiences will be unique and feel more individualized.

Finally, the experiences you offer show attendees that you’ve stayed on the leading edge of event planning. Plus, they allow you to keep making improvements so your attendees want to come back to see what you’ll do next. What could be a better way to generate more registrations than by word of mouth and repeat participants?

Knock off their socks and shoes before they ever see swag

Of course, this brings up an important element: How do you make sure your event experiences are designed to promote recall? Ideally, you’ll want to make them interactive, personalized, immersive, hands-on, or unforgettable in some other way. (Side note: A great keynote can be an event experience, but don’t put all your eggs in a keynote basket. Plan other activations and interactions because keynote speakers can sometimes fall flat.)

To help you streamline your planning process, kick around some of these event experience ideas at your next planning meeting. Having a place to start will ensure that you don’t waste time trying to come up with starting-off points.

1. Scratch the techie itch

It’s no secret that technology is now the norm at most events. If you’ve been to a conference or summit in the past couple of years, you’ve seen a lot of technology. However, there’s ordinary technology and there’s extraordinary technology. You want a lot of the latter.

If you’re starting to get worried because your team isn’t equipped to set up LED video walls, touchscreen kiosks, or data capture and lead engagement tools, don’t fear. Third-party event technology firms are available to be your partner throughout the conference. As event tech provider SmartSource notes, you can maximize your “wow” factor by leveraging the creativity available through high-tech experiences. Best of all, you won’t have to supply technical support; that’ll be your partner’s responsibility.

It’s worth mentioning that you could also introduce your third-party event tech partner to all your exhibitors if you’re having an exhibit hall as part of your event. Many exhibitors aren’t well-versed in how to add a digital side to their displays. Your tech partner could be the right fit for them to create innovative, exciting interactions that get them more leads.

Above all else, go the distance with your tech-related experiences as much as you can. They will absolutely pay off because they’ll give your attendees more to talk about, as well as share on social media. (And everyone knows the power of user-generated content.)

2. Sprinkle low-tech experiences into the recipe

Of course, you don’t have to have only high-tech experiences at your next event. It’s fine to sprinkle some low-tech ones throughout your schedule.

For example, why not host a “speed-dating” style mixer event to promote conversations between attendees? Or a crafting workshop that’s all about constructing vision boards with paper products and glue? These kinds of moments are opportunities for attendees to let their hair down and destress from the buzziness of a jam-packed event. And for introverts, they can be good ways to recharge.

As a final thought on low-tech events, you may want to think about how you could incorporate some movement into your conference. From walking tours of the surrounding area to morning yoga stretch breaks, exercise sessions can present an attractive counterbalance to digital offerings.

3. Support your event experiences with swag

Back to the swag now.

After mapping out some of your event experiences, go back to your swag conversations. Instead of just looking through one of those swag catalogs and picking items at random, think about how your swag can support your experiences.

Let’s say your convention includes a few presentations on ways to maximize human productivity in open office workspaces. In that case, you might want to give out swag like noise-canceling headphones or desk signs that indicate whether or not someone is “open” or “closed” for drop-in colleague talks. These types of swag would make sense given your event layout.

Basically, every giveaway you control should have a point. And when an attendee looks at it years later, the swag should prompt a positive memory of your event and brand.

What about swag that you can’t control, such as the stuff your exhibitors hand out? Obviously, you don’t have much of a say about it. However, make it a practice to ask your exhibitors about their swag games. You might learn more than you expect or get some inspiration for your own swag.

A foolproof plan for an experience-filled event

The takeaway here is that you can’t put the swag cart before the event experience horse. If you do, you’ll miss out on the chance to really make an impact with your audience. Consequently, plan to follow a few steps.

First, reduce any swag talks that happen at the beginning of your event planning meetings. Literally say, “We’ll talk about swag later.” Your decisiveness removes swag from the table and allows you to focus on what will actually make a difference.

Next, map out some event experiences you want your attendees to have. Ask yourself, “What would I want attendees to learn from our event? What do I want them to remember? How can I give them a way to describe the event to someone else?” Answering these questions will enable you and your team to get creative about the event experiences that you could be designing for your customers.

Finally, get help with the technical side of your event. Unless you have the capacity to do all your event technology in-house, get a partner. You’ll have less to worry about and gain more time to put toward other duties like collecting leads and eventually making your way back to that swag debate.

Featured Image credit: Photo by Atlantic Ambience; Pexels; Thanks!