Survey 10 September 2018
Engagement and technology the greatest challenges
The Association of Association Executives( AAE) researched 71 UK members on their events ' approaches. AAE’ s executive director, Damian Hutt, shares some of the findings released at the Association Events Strategy Conference in London in July.
From our recent AAE research with members, it was clear that events remain an important way of delivering member benefits such as education, professional development, personal profile for speakers and chairs, access to exclusive content and networking. Developing impactful and successful events are an important element of most associations’ membership strategies.
The research focused on events challenges in the areas of: marketing, programme development, sponsorship, pricing and technology.
Making events more engaging, offering more in the conferences and inspiring delegates, were the greatest challenges associations raised. These were reflected in the 25 % of members that were finding it hard to attract delegates, 50 % static in attendance, with only 25 % reporting event attendance growth this year.
Interestingly, only 7 % of associations researched telephone their members to investigate the programme content for their events, which could reflect the reasons many associations are struggling.
As an association of association executives, we spend a lot of time communicating the importance of understanding members, including the primary engagement channel of talking to them.
Some of the most effective associations have great relationships with their members. Fifty-two per cent said they survey their members when putting
“ Making events more engaging, offering more in the conferences and inspiring delegates, were the greatest challenges associations raised.”
together the programme, 30 % research other associations ' events for ideas and 19 % research commercial competitors.
Event technology was another interesting area. Surprisingly, only 29 % said they found event technology to be very important and were using it on most of their events.
Twenty-three per cent said they are not using event technology regularly and 13 % said it was no use at all.
In today’ s tech-savvy world it is surprising more associations aren’ t embracing the technology available on the market to improve their events, especially in audience engagement.
In pricing events, 31 % of those surveyed said they had not reviewed their pricing this last year; 30 % said they had reviewed with no change and 30 % said, following a review, they had changed their pricing.