6 Strategies for Engaging Association Event Attendees

Research has shown that in-person events like conferences drive connection and build community, which is why for many associations, events are a make-or-break aspect of their overall member engagement strategy. 

While getting all of your members together will organically create a memorable experience, intentionally shaping your event to facilitate positive engagement can strengthen the connection members form to your organization. In this article, we’ll explore several strategies you can implement to keep attendees engaged from registration to the closing keynote. 

1. Be detailed with your backstage planning

Attendees will never see the many spreadsheets, documents, meetings agendas, and scribbled notes to yourself that go into putting an event together. But they will see the effects of that work, which lay the foundation for a highly engaging event.

Meticulously plotting out the conference or event schedule, including everything down to the lighting cues, will allow attendees to fully immerse themselves in the experience. Missed cues for speaker slides or an unexpected technical issue without the proper response plan in place can distract or frustrate your association members, disturbing the momentum you’ve built throughout the day. 

To make sure you and your team are on the same page, create an event run of show. Clowder’s guide to run of show documents explains that this resource is “a planning document that outlines the actions that your team will take during a live event in chronological order and explains how they should be executed.”

Your run of show should include operational instructions, WiFi networks and passwords, which team members are responsible for which tasks, and audience engagement prompts. Following this document will ensure you’re prepared for a seamless event, enabling your engagement efforts to succeed.

2. Create a sensory experience

At an in-person conference, you have a unique opportunity to capture members’ attention and imagination in ways that would be impossible to achieve with an email or a recorded webinar. When they walk in the door to your event, think about what elements you can introduce to engage all of their senses. 

Here are a few ideas for creating a sensory experience:

• Station a beverage cart near the entrance so the smell of freshly brewed coffee energizes attendees as they head to their first session
• Compile an upbeat, cheerful playlist for a happy hour to encourage networking
• Ensure sound quality and volume is optimal during sessions, and that you have prepared accommodations for any attendees who need them
• Encourage trade show booths to include interactive, tactile elements 

By paying attention to sensory factors, you’ll create the right atmosphere for engagement at your conference.

3. Build an appealing schedule

Great speakers can energize an audience, leaving them excited about the topic and to take learnings back home to implement. On the flip side, subpar speakers can tank an event just as quickly, which is why getting the right presenters for your event is critical. 

Finding the best presenters starts with issuing a call for abstracts many months before anyone takes the stage at your event. Being clear about what you’re looking for from the start will pay off when you put together a schedule that resonates strongly with your audience. OpenWater recommends including the following information in your call for submissions:

• Event overview
• Submission guidelines
• Options for presentation types
• Review timelines
• Event registration deadlines and fees
• Contact information
• Additional terms and conditions that might apply to speakers

Outlining these details in your call for abstracts makes it more likely that submissions will align with your session content goals. Specifically, having applicants go ahead and identify what presentation type they’d like to do allows you to cover a range of different types of sessions, and the variety will help engage attendees. 

4. Personalize session recommendations

After you’ve prepared a full schedule that features top-notch speakers for your conference, you want to make sure that attendees find the sessions that they’ll find most useful and engaging. AI tools can help you create personalized agenda recommendations for individual members . 

Especially if you’re planning a large conference with multiple sessions going on simultaneously, you don’t want anyone to feel like they missed out on a presentation they really wanted to see or be paralyzed by decision fatigue. With tailored sessions based on your members’ preferences and engagement segmentation data you’ve have in your AMS, you’ll engage them with speakers they’re excited about and takeaways to implement when they get back home. 

5. Encourage session participation

During sessions, introduce audience interaction to engage attendees. A few participation examples that can be easily implemented into most sessions include:

• Voting and polls
• Gamified quizzes
• Q&As at the end of sessions

Instead of asking attendees to download a new conference app or access a new website link for every session’s interactive element, you can host these activities and other conference information in your association’s existing mobile app. This reduces the friction of finding and swapping between other platforms that could diminish audience engagement.  

6. Facilitate discussions 

Getting your members talking and sharing their thoughts is another way to boost member engagement. Providing opportunities for discussion and reflection can enhance knowledge retention and share valuable perspectives among your members.

Here are a few ideas to foster discussions at your conference:

• • Break-out groups: Assign members to smaller groups to connect at the end of the day or after a keynote speaker. This is also an opportunity for networking and for members to make lasting connections.
  • Virtual discussion forums: On your event app, enable discussion forums so members can share what they’ve learned, questions that come up, or helpful suggestions for getting the most out of the event. 

• • Reflection questions: Include two or three questions per session to keep attendees thinking about the content. You could include these in your app’s event schedule or include a few general reflection questions as prompts for happy hour networking events to break the ice. 

A core purpose of conferences is to get members together to spark new ideas and connections, and facilitating energized discussions creates the environment for them to do just that. 

Events are an important part of the association member journey. By intentionally crafting the right conditions for high levels of engagement, you’ll support your member engagement goals not only for the event, but for members’ entire experience with your organization.