THE 2016
EVENT PROFESSIONALS
OF TOMORROW STUDY
The Latest Event Planning Trends Organizers Must Know To Take Their Events To The Next Level

#1 Event Marketing #2 Social Media
bizzabo@behance
#3 Budgeting The Event
#5 The Event Planner Timeline
#7 Defining Event Success #9 How Event Planners Keep Up
With Trends
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#4 The State Of Event Technology
#6 Biggest Trends In Event
Planning
#8 Event Planning Pain Points
And Challenges
#10 The Dream Event Planner
Tool
#11 Recommendations And
Conclusion
#12 About Bizzabo
The full survey includes:

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In December 2015, Bizzabo launched a global survey to learn about
upcoming trends within the event planning industry. The “Event
Professionals of Tomorrow” survey sought to gather information
regarding event planning best practices through direct insight from event
professionals.
About

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The “Event Professionals of Tomorrow” survey
shed insight onto three particular facets of the event planning process:
Event Marketing, Event Technology, Event Success.
Here is a sneak peek of our full survey which can be downloaded here.
Defining Event
Success
Budgeting The
Event
Social MediaEvent Marketing
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Our Findings
✦ Email marketing is still king:
85% of survey respondents
chose an email marketing
campaign to promote their
event.
Event Marketing

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Our Findings
✦ Over 45% of respondents said
that email marketing has the
biggest impact on actually
increasing registrations.
Event Marketing

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=
Insights
This statistic indicates that event organizers aren’t up to speed
with new technologies or that they are simply choosing the
easiest promotional tool to reach a wide audience. It also
shows that email marketing actually has a high yield.
Event Marketing

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Event marketing and event success go hand in hand. Without thoughtful
attention to event marketing, your event will simply not receive the
traction needed to obtain registrations.
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What does this mean for event planners?
Event Marketing
Event marketing also provides the mechanism for event
organizers to create a brand and reputation for their event.

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✦ 82% of respondents chose social
media as a component of their event
marketing campaign.
Our Findings
Social Media
✦ Facebook and Twitter are leading
social media marketing tools.

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Our Findings
Social Media
✦ However, Pinterest and Snapchat are heavily underutilized.

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Insights
✦ Instagram is quickly becoming another popular social
media platform. With over 300 million monthly active
users, Instagram is a great platform to market your event
brand.
✦ The data also illuminates that event planners are starting
to choose ways to maximize their event marketing
potential, through email and social media.
Social Media

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Insights
✦ 82% of respondents noted that they use “word of mouth”
as a marketing channel to promote their event, yet only
12% consider “word of mouth” as having the biggest
impact in increasing registrations.
✦ We believe this correlation indicates that event organizers
are hesitant to abandon traditional marketing tactics even
though they realize they aren’t effective.
Social Media

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The ways in which SnapChat and Pinterest could be utilized to promote
events are broad. Two use cases are SnapChat’s “live stories” feature and
Pinterest’s advanced mobile app.
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How can event planners better utilize Social Media?
Social Media

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Customization and the ability to breakdown the different types of
prospects depending on their engagement level, interests, location and so
on, allows organizers to achieve much greater results with content specific
emails.
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How can event planners better utilize Social Media?
Social Media

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Our Findings
✦ 36% of planners spend most of
their budget on the venue, and
34% spend most on catering.
Budgeting The Event

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=
Insights
The high prices of venues and catering takes up a lot of the
budgeting that could be designated for other important facets
of the event planning process.
Budgeting The Event

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One way an event technology platform can help organizers obtain
high quality and high paying sponsors, through features like event
apps that can provide ads and a location for sponsor’s promotional
content. Planners can then designate these funds to acquiring
higher quality speakers, which according to our survey, only about
10% of organizers spend most of their budget on.
How can organizers use event technology
to expand their revenue?
Budgeting The Event

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Our Findings
✦ With 84% of respondents choosing
attendee satisfaction as the measure of
event success, measuring satisfaction is
much more difficult than measuring
other definitions of event success.
Defining Event Success

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=
Insights
Contrary to common belief, attendee satisfaction leads the
way as the determinate of event success, rather than revenue
or ticket sales - by a vast difference of 28%.
Defining Event Success

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=
Insights
This realization seems to clash with the statistics on event
technology. With 58% percent choosing to invest or set aside
a budget of less than 10% for event software solutions, event
planners are not fully aware of the benefits of event
technology.
Defining Event Success

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A major benefit of event technology is that is makes event success
measurable and understandable to event organizers. Event technology
also augments event success for attendees in terms of engagement,
particularly by maximizing networking opportunities through event apps
and social media integration.
How can event planners measure event success better?
Defining Event Success

Social Media Biggest Trends In Event
Planning
Budgeting The Event Defining Event Success
Event Marketing The Event Planner
Timeline
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The State Of Event
Technology
Event Planning Pain
Points And Challenges
The Dream Event
Planner Tool
How Event Planners
Keep Up With Trends
Recommendations And
Conclusion
About Bizzabo
The survey includes:
Want to receive the full survey?

BIZZABO
Brought to you by Bizzabo
Helping organizers around the world plan better events with an
all-in-one event success platform
The study was made possible with the help of our great partners:
www.bizzabo.com
* Based on a 500 event planner survey led by Bizzabo in December 2015