We want to shout it from our rooftop that M&I picked us to be their partner, but we don’t think anyone would hear us. They’ve already used mobile apps successfully for several customer programs, and we couldn’t be more excited to work together.

Thanks for making us feel like we just won a huge award, M&I. It feels awesome to be recognized for our work by long-term professionals in the meeting and event industry. We can’t wait to make your clients’ events more popular.

Image from: http://meetings-incentives.com/

If you didn’t catch yesterday’s webinar on mobile advertising and conference sponsorships, here’s a quick recap.

Mobile Event Marketing: Top 10 Takeaways

1. Mobile advertising is growing faster than you can say Worcestershire sauce (are we the only ones who trip over that word?)

2. How fast exactly? The mobile advertising market tripled last year to 1.6 billion. This year it’s expected to reach over 5 billion.

3. Facebook now has 900 million monthly users. 500 million of them are mobile.

4. People use mobile to access other networking sites: Twitter–13.4 million and LinkedIn–5.5 million.

5. We can’t say it enough—social media is a big deal. Mobile phone users with Internet access average over 700 social connections. Imagine the network of each attendee knowing about your event. Instant popularity.

6. Making your event mobile is a valuable investment. We’re going to be blunt—we want a full commitment. You get out of it what you put in, so make sure websites are mobile optimized and sponsors’ marketing methods have a strong call to action.

7. Strengthen the connection between sponsors and attendees with gamification. Adding an in-app game turns your ordinary event into a fun, social experience. Who’s going to forget that? No one, that’s who. According to experts, offering a gamified service will become as important as Facebook, eBay, or Amazon.

8. A mobile app means new and increased advertising opportunities for sponsors. They can send your attendees special offers, promotions, or other exciting news through a push notification. It’s quick. It’s effective. It’s awesome.

9. Your sponsors want fast, concrete results. Mobile makes it possible. All of your sponsors’ marketing materials (banners, ads, etc.) become measurable within the app. It tracks who looked at what and for how long, making it much easier to improve marketing strategies.

10. Mobile makes it easy to keep your sponsors happy. Happy, successful sponsors stick with you and your event for the long haul.
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Want to learn more? Check out these 2 free webinars coming up!

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc/1824234195/

So how do you gain sponsors and make sure they stick with your event? Give them more ways to become successful. Maybe that means attracting new leads or increasing sales. Maybe it’s about building brand awareness. Whatever their goals are, a mobile app can do it all.

The global market for mobile advertising is growing quickly and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. It tripled to 1.6 billion in 2011 and is expected to reach over 5 billion in 2012. This fast-growing marketing channel means increased advertising opportunities for conference sponsors. Print materials can be powerful, but a mobile app will tell you much more about your marketing methods. Because people are never far from their phones, it’s the easiest and most effective way to reach out to potential customers and develop long-lasting relationships.

Want to know all the ways your sponsors could benefit from an event app? If you want to see what sort of inside secrets a CrowdCompass mobile app can tell you, check out this webinar tomorrow at 10am PST. As an experienced business attorney, Billy McGee is a pro at delivering mobile conference solutions and directing new business opportunities. Registration ends Tuesday, May 15, 10AM.

Image from: http://bit.ly/JwwE4p

The event industry is evolving and we’re here to help you stay on top by kicking off our first webinar this Thursday, May 10th! Join us at 9:00am PST to see how you can adapt your conferences to meet the mobile expectations of your attendees.

Matthew Donegan-Ryan has over 15 years of experience in mobile and social event technology. He’ll break down the biggest mobile trends and explain the benefits of a conference app for you and everyone involved: attendees, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors. If you’ve been searching for new ways to make your event better, bigger, or more popular, you won’t want to miss this webinar!

Ready to sign up?

Register now for this Thursday’s webinar to learn how mobile trends are changing conferences and see first-hand how a CrowdCompas event app works. Registration ends May 10, 9am PST.

Picture from: http://bit.ly/IOLio1

Mobile makes it possible through push notifications—a more personal and direct way for sponsors to notify attendees about an exciting giveaway or special offer. Mobile coupons actually get 10 times the redemption rate compared to traditional coupons. And because 91% of Americans keep their mobile devices within reach 24/7, sending a push notification is a more effective method for sponsors to connect with your attendees.

Every sponsor wants to see how their marketing campaigns perform against their objectives. A great graphic can do a lot for your brand, but there’s no way to tell how many people looked at it or for how long. Sponsors can use mobile to their advantage by including banners, logos, promotions and more—all within one cost-effective app from CrowdCompass. Our conference apps show your sponsors concrete, measurable results by tracking impressions and clicks. This gives your sponsors valuable insight into what interests their customers so they can improve their marketing strategies.

Mobile apps help enhance and expand a company’s brand beyond their booth. It’s an easier and more effective way for exhibitors to connect with your attendees before, during, and after the event. Because mobile is measurable, exhibitors can track how many attendees view their info, look at products, and click on their website. They can put all of their marketing materials in your event app and update it at any moment. The best part? No one’s going to toss their phone in the trash.

Gamification also gives exhibitors a new way to connect with your attendees. Gamification is a growing trend that uses game-like conceps in non-game apps to promote customer engagement.  In 2011, tech research showed that a gamified service will become as important as Facebook, eBay, or Amazon, and more than 70% of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified app.

This is why we created Click—a photo-based scavenger hunt game that promotes friendly competition between attendees and motivates them to visit booths, talk to people, and become more involved. Gabe Zichermann, CEO of Gamification.com, has stated that “long-standing marketing techniques are now failing. People today are seeking more reward and more engagement from experiences than ever before.” Offering an in-app game like Click will set your event apart by turning it into a fun, social activity for your attendees.

Because of mobile apps, attendees can now message others outside the room to come see an amazing speaker. It’s not just about the speaker talking on stage to a one-time audience, though. It’s about each attendees’ own audience—all of the others whom the speaker could potentially reach through the features of a mobile app.

Imagine going to see your favorite band perform live. Whether or not you know it, there’s a connection building between you, the performer, and the audience. Trying to share your experience with someone who wasn’t there used to be impossible until mobile entered the scene. CrowdCompass apps make it possible to share your event through a new feature called My Compass—the event industry’s first real-time activity feed.

My Compass takes social networking hundreds of steps further by making the speaker more visible to the social network of every attendee. Mobile phone users with Internet access average 700 social connections. Mobile apps allow them to upload videos of speakers, tweet about a session, or share every part of their event experience through My Compass. Because of a simple mobile app, a speaker has the opportunity to impact thousands of others and gain a following that goes beyond a one-day event. The more people your speakers reach, the more popular your event becomes.

Conference apps from CrowdCompass make it easy for your attendees to share content, their opinions, and their overall experience through social media. It’s faster. It’s effective. And it’s a lot more meaningful when it comes from your peers and the people you trust. As of December 2011, 64 million smartphone owners in the US accessed social networking sites or blogs through their mobile devices. 38.5 million used mobile apps directly for social networking. The most popular social media site is Facebook with more than 57 million mobile users in August of 2011 (up 50%); 13.4 million used Twitter (up 75%); and 5.5 million used LinkedIn (up 69%).

Because social sharing is on the rise, we created My Compass–the event industry’s first real-time activity feed. Now your attendees have a simpler and faster way to share their event experience with their entire network.  And because CrowdCompass apps give attendees the tools to generate content for you across the platforms people use every day, they can turn your single event into a lasting success.

Today, going mobile is the new trend that’s here to stay. More people are buying smartphones instead of PCs and more people are searching for apps instead of accessing websites. Here’s where CrowdCompass comes in to help event organizers meet the needs of a mobile world.

The idea for CrowdCompass began when I was at an all-day music event in Seattle, WA. There was a lot going on and I thought it’d be so much simpler, more effective, and a lot more fun if I just had an app that would figure it all out for me.  What started out as an exciting idea soon became reality.

Every one of us at CrowdCompass is passionate about what we do, and that’s why we quickly became the leading mobile app developer for the event industry. Just like Edison came in and changed things up, CrowdCompass is setting new standards for mobile apps with a focus on the event industry. We’re excited to share our mobile knowledge and show you the mobile apps we’ve developed to make your events, conferences, and tradeshows more engaging and interactive. Our conference apps focus on accelerating popularity through unique, new features and by making the event experience easy to share through social media.

Stay tuned to see what we’re working on for 2012—including new developments going live this summer! Over 40,000 hours of development time is finally coming together to shake up the industry. We’re setting the bar high and we hope you join us.

–Dave Shanley, CTO, CrowdCompass