We’ve just released our new smart tickets. Your attendees are going to love them. We’ve updated the design of our tickets but, most importantly, we’ve made a big change in terms of usability.
Why smart tickets? Because buyers can now easily add their event tickets to their mobile wallets, for both Apple and Android. We think it’s the most convenient and secure way for customers to access and manage their electronic tickets. As you already know, our electronic tickets can mean more than just access rights. And ticket addons are also available through the mobile wallet used by your attendees.
Here is how our smart tickets work
Nothing has changed in the registration process. But once customers land on the confirmation page, they’ll see the new option. Two simple clicks and the e-ticket will land in their mobile wallet.
print screen on an iOS device – adding an event ticket into Apple Wallet
Once the e-Ticket is added to the wallet it can be easily accessed through the app. Much simpler and faster than the traditional way. Or any other way for that matter.
Our tickets can hold unlimited perks and extra benefits. And they’re still available through a simple scan of the QR code. Attendees can easily see these addons straight from their wallets. The “info” icon displayed under the ticket will open a new screen, listing all the perks included in that particular ticket.
print screen on an iOS device – checking ticket add-ons in Apple Wallet
While for iOS users the wallet comes preinstalled, Android users have multiple options to choose from. We recommend WalletPasses, but there are multiple wallet apps supporting the .pkpass format.
Changes in the follow-up email
As not all customers will add their tickets to the wallet through the confirmation page, we’ve also updated the confirmation email. It now has the tickets in 3 updated formats:
.pdf for those that want an easy way to print their tickets
.png for those that want to download it to their mobile
.pkpass for those that want to save it to their mobile wallets
Adding the (extra) personal touch
You’ve probably noticed a custom area on the ticket. You can add it to yours as well. The custom image can be uploaded on your tickets and will be available in .png and .pkpass formats. The customization is available through Step 3 – checkout settings.
We’re confident the event-goers will find this option extremely useful. They now have a simpler way to store and access their event tickets. But that’s not all; we’re confident that these smart tickets will also improve check-in times, as most of your attendees know at any given moment where they’ve put their ticket(s).
We’ve seen literally hundreds of conferences registrations and we’ve noticed one thing: no one talks about the best ones. You only hear about the lousy ones. The ones where people couldn’t register. Or didn’t get their confirmation mail. Maybe they couldn’t pay. Perhaps the live stream didn’t start. Do you know of a conference registration where the lines were long and boring? Yeah, we’ve seen some.
It’s easy to get lost in what not to do. But that’s not really useful. The prepared conference planner has to know what exactly to do prior to the event and during the day of the event. She knows what are the best strategies and in what order they should be applied, what are the potential bottlenecks and how to avoid the pitfalls.
We’ve put together a simple, straight forward guide on how to navigate the conference registration process to arrive at a successful event day.
I suppose that until now, we are all familiar with Snapchat and Instagram and how they became an essential tool in event marketing.
Even though Snapchat is losing market share since the launch of Instagram’s stories, it seems that the two are slowly taking different directions regarding the market segmentation and the user’s behavior while using the app. Instagram’s users are mainly over 24 years old and spend around 15 min a day browsing while 60% of Snapchat’s users are under 24 years old and spend an average of 30 min per day creating content. (Read more)
While Instagram is great in bringing awareness of an event within their 600 Million user base, Snapchat is perfect to create content and especially post event marketing material.
In this article I am going to talk about what are the best practices and uses of both Snapchat’s and Instagram’s stories.
How can you make use of the Stories in order to promote your event?
Like any other event we have three main phases: Pre-event marketing, Live marketing and Post-event marketing;
Pre-event marketing
Provide a sneak peak and Teaser – this is a great way to keep your audience intrigued and interested in your event while creating awareness within the possible attendees.
Create behind-the-scenes content – there’s nothing wrong about letting followers know about the hard work you and your team have put in creating this event. From the engineers who helped put everything in place – to the artists doing their rehearsals, this will only make your audience feel more excited and included.
Overtake the Snapchat or Instagram account – it is a common trend that a celebrity takes over a brand’s account for a limited period of time. Their main purpose is to showcase the event from their own perspective while offering valuable insights for their followers.
Incorporate location; based Geofilter and animated graphics that pertain to the event – Geofilters are available only on Snapchat and can be created or customised for your event; but keep in mind that this should be done ahead of time since they need a few days to be approved.
If you’re building live streamed events you can combine what’s happening at the event, Snapchat and Instagram, as well as your own, streamed channel with a live streaming tool such as Streams.live .
Live Marketing
Encourage Attendees to Use Snapchat’s and Instagram’s Stories – this represents the most important step in Live Marketing. It means bringing awareness, motivating and offering incentives to your audience in order to create content.
For both Instagram and Snapchat you should create centralised crowd-sourcing stories and hashtags where your attendees can send all off their photos and videos.
Cross-promote your Snapchat’s and Instagram’s account – don’t forget to create a snapcode!
Create event and location hashtags so that your users can add them to their posts.
Snapchat’s geofilters are a big yes-yes – it is important to have it ready for when the event starts. The geofilter is like a stamp. A stamp which has to say your event’s story at one glance. It’s a stamp that your attendees should want to integrate in all of their Snaps.
Encourage celebrities to post behind-the-scenes content – everybody is curious about what is happening behind the scenes, how everything is organised and how the celebrities are getting prepared. Satisfy this thirst of curiosity by encouraging celebrities to post by themselves.
Respond to individual inquiries – when live streaming, in order to show your audience that you care about them, randomly answer some of their inquires. It is a small thing but it can bring a lot of satisfaction and loyalty.
Post-event marketing
Curate the content sent by participants – the content created by your attendees is Gold. Especially the content created with the use of Snapchat. The photos and videos created through Snapchat, will definitely bring an added value because of the different features the app has to offer; from editing tools, filters, animated filters and Geofilters the outcome of the content created is going to be unique. Receiving so much content from so many people and perspectives will definitely help create fun and entertaining videos for you to share on the Social Media profiles and let your attendees remember what a great time they had.
Send fun facts – another good practice would be to send fun facts and stories about what happened during the event. For example, at a festival: how many beers were drank or how many hotdogs eaten. If you use Oveit’s event management tools and visitor analytics tools, you can create personal, targeted messages to your guests.
How to use and create Snapchat’s Geofilters
Snapchat offers their users the opportunity to create their own Geofilters according to the occasion.
Categories of Snapchat’s Geofilters
Community Geofilters are mainly used for a place that it is meaningful for you and your community (this geofilters are free of charge).
Personal Geofilters are created for important moments which happen in every one’s life, such as birthdays, welcome home parties or any kind of events. (the price for these geofilters starts at $5).
Business Geofilters are dedicated to help any kind of business drive awareness and engagement in one swipe. The event category will fall under this section too. They are more pricey than the Personal Geofilters but still affordable.
Unfortunately, the On-Demand Geofilters (Personal & Business) are only available in the USA, Canada, Australia and UK.
How to create your Geofilters for Snapchat
First of all, the Geofilters have to be original and in order to do that you need to design or have one designed it for you. PicMonkey and Canva are two good example of platforms that can help create wonderful filters.
For those who still prefer creating a Geofilter with a tool that they are more comfortable and familiar with, need to keep in mind a few aspects when designing it:
Include your event name/logo but be careful not to add any logo or design that you don’t own.
Insert creative graphics and text but try to keep it around 2-3 lines tops.
Your text and design should not cover more than 25% of the screen dimensions.
The size of your geofilter should be: 1080 x 1920 pixels and less than 300kb, saved in .PNG format.
Snapchat and Instagram are two amazing tools that should not be ignored while organizing an event. Comparing them with other channels of event marketing, they are cost effective and sometimes free – why not take advantage of their great features? Also, if you are looking for a user-friendly event registration software, you’ve come to the right place!
Do you want to allow your attendees to actually own part of the forever-lasting memories that you create? Use Oveit to mint and sell NFT tickets powered by blockchain technology.
In a world where social distancing is the new normal, touchless technologies begin to gain more and more interest. Before the global pandemic, people didn’t think twice before touching door handles, elevator buttons, or check-in kiosks. But as we speak, high touch surfaces are a hot topic as worries over health and safety are on the rise. As a result, fintech innovators and not only, are looking for ground-breaking alternatives to keep us all safe.
‘Work from home’ is certainly not a permanent alternative, since many businesses require employees to be physically present to get the job done. As you probably heard this before, Coronavirus is not likely to go away anytime soon, so touchless technologies seem like a great opportunity to get things back to normal. In response, some companies started to implement a touchless check-in process for visitors or even Bluetooth access control for employees.
It seems like it’s the perfect time to go touchless. Even if this need is forced by uncontrollable factors, such as a global pandemic, we should look on the bright side of it and become aware that going touchless is in our own good. So, let’s go over some examples of touchless technologies and find out more about it in general.
What are we trying to say by ‘going touchless’?
Well, despite how relevant this topic is as we speak, businesses going touchless is not new. In fact, touchless technology has been around since the late 1980s when motion-sensing faucets and soap dispensers were common within public restrooms. Today, we experience touchless technology several times a day. Just think of how many times you walk through an automated door or think of those moments when you ask Siri to turn on the timer for you.
As you can see, touchless technology is not limited to hygiene and safety. Societies look up to it and treat it as a forward-thinking and modern alternative to complete daily tasks. With that being said, we can define touchless technology as anything that can function without the need to physically touch a device.
Example of touchless technologies
Gesture recognition
This is among the most common types of touchless technology. The way we interact with devices is simply replaced by gestures. For instance, waving your hand to activate an automated door replaces the need to physically touch its knob or button.
Touchless sensing
Similar to gesture recognition, touchless sensing can detect the movement of an individual under a sensor. In our day to day lives, we come across this no-touch technology several times per day. Think of the last time that you went to a gas station, grocery store, or lodging facility. Most likely, there was no one to open the door for you and you didn’t have to do it yourself either. Thanks to touchless sensing, such actions are simplified and become part of our daily routine.
Voice recognition
This form of touchless technology enables users to control a device by speaking to it. Android and Apple devices can be controlled by simply stating some keywords, such as ‘Hey Siri’, replacing the need to touch that device at all. Setting up reminders, timers or other tasks is as quick and simple as ever.
Facial recognition
Not long ago, facial recognition seemed to be far from reality. Now, this touchless technology is available for millions of people, most often utilized to unlock smartphones. However, as more people gained interest in its capabilities, innovators found great use cases and environments where it can be applied. The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines started a test involving ‘biometric boarding’, allowing passengers to board the aircraft without showing their ID’s anymore, recognizing passengers by their faces.
Personal devices
Apple Pay has proved that traditional credit cards can be left behind and that payments can be completed from our own devices. Compared to contactless payments, where users must touch the POS with a card to complete a transaction, personal devices provide a ‘cleaner’ alternative where that ‘touch’ is not necessary to successfully complete a transaction. Modern personal devices can store your credit/debit cards virtually. For safety reasons, upon completing a purchase, users can authenticate by using their own faces or by inputting a personal identification number.
Oveit as a touchless payment solution
At Oveit, we strongly believe
in the power of touchless technologies, especially during the current
situation, that of a global pandemic. Until now, our Economy as a Service
solution was partially touchless since economy members were required to visit an
on-site top-up point to add money onto their digital wallets.
To tackle this challenge and identify ourselves as a complete touchless solution, we started to think the extra mile and concluded that an end-user App is what we need. The purpose of this App is to enhance the experience of our end-users, enabling them to top-up money in a defined economy, from the comfort of their own houses or wherever an internet connection is available.
For economy owners, this alternative should reduce costs, with fewer staff members required. Economy members simply become their own cashiers and upon arrival, their digital wallets should be ready to go. Also, if activated, the auto top-up feature allows users to set a warning limit. As soon as that warning limit is reached, the digital wallet automatically adds up the pre-defined amount from the linked credit/debit card.
Being an event planner during a global pandemic might be the
worst nightmare that you can ever think of. However, these are things that we
have little control over and require us to adapt accordingly. As we get used
with living under imposed government restrictions, we can see several
precautionary measures being removed from our daily lives.
Unfortunately, this new virus is directly related to mass
gatherings, which are at the forefront of hosting events. Among the first precautionary
measures imposed by governments was to restrict and put on pause the world of
live events. During these challenging times, members of the meetings industry
create complicated scenarios and endless debates on what it takes to organize
events in such a global pandemic.
Therefore, this article is going to focus on different measures that can help our beloved world of live events to get back to normal during these unprecedented times. It is important to keep in mind that precautionary measures are extremely important, and we will only succeed by following strict guidelines. As we speak, an increasing number of events are either cancelled or postponed. Those that are postponed will soon have to take place and event organizers should be prepared to host them accordingly.
Pre-event safety measures
Implement attendance policies and restrictions
Stay up to date and determine which countries may experience an upward trend in terms of Coronavirus cases. The John Hopkins live-tracker is a great tool that keeps you updated in real time. Try to impose restrictions and limit potential attendees that visited in the past 60 days countries with a high-risk of infection.
Filter participants based on country of origin
It might be a good idea to require international attendees to bring their passports for an additional layer of safety. Those participants that visited a high-risk country in the past 60 days should not be allowed to enter the event premises. However, make sure to consult local travel restrictions and guidelines before taking such decision.
Provide flexible cancellation policies given the current situation
If for some reason you decide to postpone or cancel your event, show that you care and enable participants to use tickets for future editions or apply refunds if there will be no future editions anytime soon.
Consider hosting a Hybrid event
In our previous posts, we’ve talked about the benefits of hosting hybrid events. Given the current situation that we all deal with, that of a global pandemic, hybrid events might be the answer to deliver events to a broad audience. This way, those failing the screening process can attend the event virtually from all over the world. Streams.live is a streaming solution designed to accommodate the needs of a hybrid event and it can keep your audience engaged with little to no effort.
Public health tracking through data collection waivers
Follow global privacy regulations and collect necessary information from your participants. If any incidents occur during your event, public officials should at least have a name and a contact number from those attending. In the given context of a global pandemic, this information is required to conduct epidemiological investigations. With Oveit, relevant data can be collected through registration forms (GDPR compliant) and attendees are required to fill those details before they receive their electronic tickets.
The form setup. You can choose from text, dropdown lists, email, dates and file uploads
Keep attendees updated with special event rules
Make sure that participants are well-informed and aware of any uncommon precautionary measures implemented. It can take the form of a newsletter and most organizers send these updates two-weeks in advance, one-week prior, three-days prior, one day prior and a small recap during the event day.
Impose day of event precautionary measures
Temperature screenings at the event venue
As you already know, one common Coronavirus symptom is high body temperature. Therefore, before entering the event premises, staff members should screen attendees with thermal scanners to decrease the risk of infection. Those with temperatures higher than 37.8C must be escorted to an isolation room for additional investigations.
Designated isolation holding room
Together with health agencies, event organizers might have to prepare an isolation holding room for suspected cases. This room should follow strict disinfection procedures and medical staff must be present.
Regular deep cleaning throughout the venue
Contract an experienced cleaning team that gets the job done. Make sure that high-touch areas, such as door knobs, stairs handrails, chairs, registration areas and bathrooms are cleaned more often. Appropriate disinfectant substance should be used for deep cleaning.
Display health notices at the venue
Place health notices throughout the venue, especially in areas where attendees tend to crowd. These should include social distancing reminders, frequent hygiene practices, and other relevant precautionary measures.
Safety measures for Food & Beverage providers
Communicate with food vendors well in advance and educate them on best practices on how food should be served during your event. For example, instead of open buffets, advise them to serve individually wrapped food. If your F&B providers insist on using open buffets, make sure that they use splash and sneeze guards or other relevant food safety measures.
Hand sanitization devices around communal areas
Forcing people to use bathrooms for hand hygiene is not a good option since it compromises social distancing rules. Instead, a good backup plan is to place hand sanitizer dispensers in key areas, especially nearby meal, and beverage stations.
Follow-up after the event
Post-event surveys
Use these surveys to analyse your event’s success, but also to find out if any of those who attended are feeling unwell to avoid the spread of the virus.
Prepare attendee data if necessary
If public officials need the attendee data to conduct an epidemiological investigation, make sure that you have it handy and ready to go. Time is extremely important in such investigations.
In summary
Remember, these are general guidelines and before applying
any of them make sure to double check with local authorities. We hope that
events will get back to normal as soon as possible, but before that, better be
safe than sorry.
At Oveit, our mission is to help event organizers accomplish their goals, even during challenging times. We try to find innovative ways in which our technology can be used in force majeure situations. Hopefully, these guidelines will help you get back and running.
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