I had a chance to catch my breath during the holidays in The Hamptons last week thanks to Bloomspot(a Groupon competitor). Well sort of, since I had my brand new iPhone 4S(I had a 4 year old Blackberry), and my world has been opened with Apps the Blackberry can only dream of.
So what? I realize now the true power of mobile technology and how it might make Inbound Marketing much more likely opportunity for those captured audiences that have already registered(opted in) to your event. Is mobile just an audience experience vehicle? I am interested to see if there is a demand for push type messaging from event prospects, does anyone have an examples. What I do know that, like social media before it, you can spend hours efficiently or wastefully using a mobile phone-so I continue to wonder if the ‘promise’ of mobile on the non-registered attendee will reveal itself.
As always, I feel that the ‘serving’ of communities(or members or intended audiences) again raises its pleasant head. I’m finding that virtual(or hybrid or digital) technologies as a solution for content delivery is still relevant, if you know your audience and how they want information delivered to them.
The issue still is, that many event companies still don’t really ‘know’ their audiences and what keeps them up at night, despite large databases and analytics software and strategic plans and such. I am shocked at how many of us, given all the technology advances, don’t pick up the phone and call customers from time to time. I remember having a sales manager who was working for me, not consider picking up the phone to contact a hard to reach previous customer when they didn’t return emails. I remember when it was the other way round….
In short, I think the issues in the business are going to be the same as in the past, how to build programming and events which connect, inform and offer value given(some may say in spite of) the available technology- mobile or otherwise.
If I figure every angle of it out, I hope to spend more time in the Hamptons in the warmer weather!