Nearly all corporate event marketers (92 percent) use mobile event apps, according to meetings app developer QuickMobile, which will share that and other findings from its latest research this week at IMEX America in Las Vegas.
Conducted in partnership with the IMEX Group and the Corporate Event Marketing Association (CEMA), the research constitutes part two of an annual study launched this year to identify the perceptions, uses, challenges, and opportunities of mobile event apps.
Released in May at IMEX in Frankfurt, part one of the study focused on mobile app usage and adoption. Part two, meanwhile, focuses on budgeting, app functionality, and the role of apps in planners' overall meetings strategy. Key findings include:
• More than 54 percent of event marketers work on 10 events or more a year.
• Eighty percent of corporate event marketers say their audience expects an app, compared with 63 percent of respondents from the first wave of research, which comprised meeting planners from around the world.
• Sixty-seven percent of event marketers reinvent the app procurement process for each new event.
• Sales conferences (52 percent) and trade shows (50 percent) are the most popular types of events to have an app, followed by annual meetings (44 percent).
• Seventy-eight percent of corporate event marketers spend more than $4,000 on their event apps, recognizing that entry-level apps lack the functionality, service, and support they need.
In addition to its own research, which it will present to IMEX America attendees on Oct. 15 and 16, QuickMobile plans to present findings from other studies on the same topic.
"There has been a glut of research on event tech since we launched our first round in April 2014," QuickMobile CEO Patrick Payne said in a statement. "We know of at least two additional studies that have been released by vendors and partners since that time in addition to media research from trade publications. It can be difficult for event planners and marketers to know what to pay attention to, so after our latest wave with CEMA we're making that task easier by summarizing the general takeaways from all the research."
Those takeaways include the following three points:
• Both the first QuickMobile/IMEX study and a recent Meeting Professionals International (MPI) study showed an app inclusion rate among event planners of 60-63 percent. The second QuickMobile/IMEX study completed with CEMA showed a substantially higher rate of 92 percent.
• The two most important reasons for offering an app are: organizer-to-attendee messaging and reduction/elimination of paper.
• Despite growing usage of mobile event apps, event planners are still learning what apps can do for them, and still have more basic expectations of functionality.
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