How Beacons Are Changing the In-Event Experiences

Mobile technology has evolved into new, dynamic formats and no industry is left untouched. Old models and ways are falling away, and event planners are more excited about executing smart and more immersive methods on stage, with the large audience.

Among the various fast-emerging trends in the events industry, bots and beacons are creating the magic. Beacons are giving more creative opportunities to event planners, organizers and hosts so that their audience can interact seamlessly with the events they attend. And it’s not only growing in the US, but beacon app development is taking a toll in other parts including the UK, India, Japan, China.

Top Indian app developers and various other offshore development companies are working together with startups and enterprises to develop solutions that are aligned with improving the live experiences of attendees and planners.

For those who are still unknown- beacons are the small devices like computers – you can call them low-powered devices that transmit and receive Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signals to deliver proximity-based alerts or messages to smart devices including smartphones, tablets, wearable.

Let’s look at some of the effects of beacons in the events landscape- key fronts where near-field communication, beacon and location mapping capitalize on the experience that users expect from the modern events.

More meaningful connections via mobile

Social apps like Twitter, Facebook are already establishing higher touch points in real-time, where the people can exchange all the information about the date, time and venue of the event and if they are interested in attending any. Using beacons, more and more people who have just arrived at the events without any planning or without a group can now make meaningful connections with the right people present at the event.

With a mobile app that’s connected to the beacons installed at the event venue, attendees can now find contacts who all are in the vicinity or make friends with those have similar interests and sessions.

Real-time participation

Beacon app development is inclined to simplifying the massive shows or events like trade shows, car shows, which consist of endless kiosks and several floors to run through. Beacons can be very effortless here as right at the registration desk, the attendee can check-in to the mobile app and then can be navigated well to the floors of their interests. This strengthens the real-time participation of the attendees and brings more relevance to the overall event.

Beacon-enabled wayfinding steers the users to navigate the large indoor spaces and give them turn-by-turn directions, routing them well to the exhibitor areas. This also helps event planners by better managing the crowd and optimizing events making it a grand success.

Location-based tracking in live events

Cutting down the manpower at the registration desk, beacons detect attendees’ mobile devices and push relevant information to their screens, automating the whole process. It assigns them a badge to walk in and also sends them a welcome message. The beacons will detect the various locations that are crowded, which will further help retailers to automatically trigger offers and coupons as per user’s interests. By gathering and unlocking data where people are spending more time, proximity beacons send alerts to the prospects and ask them if they need a follow-up from the exhibitor in the future.

Beacon-driven push notifications become active when a user enters a particular area and enrich their experience by letting them watch a related video, join a live conference or a discussion or read a related news/article.

The data insights into the traffic and the dwell time are immensely helping the event planners to design the layout of the future events, which will provide more value to the key sponsors, to the users, to the exhibitors and the event partners.

Some of the various benefits of beacons to attendees and planners include:

To attendees

• Sessions reminders when walking in specific areas
• Special offers from exhibitors/sponsors
• Suggestions for next related events as per captured interests
• Good networking with other people with similar interests and with sponsors

To event planners

• Capturing data on all activities and kiosks and leveraging the user information for future events or pitching sales
• Storing user’s feedback on digital channels that can be later utilized to improve the events