Make a good first impression at your next conference

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Make a good first impression at your next conference

May 18, 2018

By MobileUp Software

A fact of life is also true in the conference world: You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

An organized welcome area with a cheery staff and awesome swag bags goes a long way in making your members feel like they belong when they show up at an event.

But did you know a conference app from MobileUp can extend the greeting to the moment your guests reach your state, city, campus, or convention center? And even help them while they move about your conference’s host city?

MobileUp’s geofences functionality provides the technology from your conference app and it’s really easy to create one or more for your next event.

Fun with geofences

Your MobileUp-powered app guides your users through the required steps (agreeing to notifications and enabling location services) during the installation process to receive geo-based information.

Once in place, here are a few ideas for using geofences to welcome attendees to your conference:

Meet attendees at the airport

Imagine your members landing in your city and automatically receiving a welcome message in the form of a notification as their plane taxis to the gate. You could create a similar geofence around your city or campus for those driving to your event.
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Guide attendees at the event

How about a notification that shows them the way to the welcome center as they arrive at the event venue? Note you can link a notification to other information in your app such as a map of the venue.
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Help attendees — and sponsors — around town

You can even surface discount offers as attendees near the locations of local sponsors in area shopping, restaurant, and entertainment districts.
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How to build geofences

These messages and more can automatically be sent to your attendees with just a few minutes of prep time. First, of course, you will want to be sure your members or other guests to your event have your app in the first place. Include mentions of it in your pre-show literature and emails. Include links or search terms where attendees easily can find the app in the app stores. This is also a good time to let them know they can gain access to discounts, conference news, and other special information by accepting push and location-based notifications during installation. The process for creating the actual geofences is contained in a step-by-step wizard inside your MobileUp administrator tools. You can customize each instance by deciding whether an individual person can trigger a geofence notification once or multiple times and whether someone needs to be inside the geofence boundaries for a certain amount of time (aka “dwell setting”) before a notification is executed. You can also set dates for a geofence to begin and end and even exclude a portion of your install base if you desire among the other available options. To establish your geofence boundaries, the administrator tools include maps where you simply draw a circle like this: You can even surface discounts in the area as they near the locations of your event sponsors. Once a geofence is created and active, our system monitors the activity based on the set parameters and provides participation reports for you.

Get the details

So at your next event, roll out the red carpet like you normally do and then extend your welcome just a little further with geofences. They are a standard feature with MobileUp Software apps and can be used for a variety of events regardless of size. (Request a demo to learn more.) For current MobileUp customers, there are detailed geofence instructions in our User Guide, located inside your administrator tools. You can also contact your client services rep at support@mobileupsoftware.com for assistance.