The Imagine DC Venue Vendor Showcase was an outstanding event, held at the historic Carnegie Library at Mt. Vernon Square. The Virtual Event Bags team was in attendance and, as part of the festivities, held a contest for a free Professional Level Virtual Event Bag!

The winner is …

J Street Group, a full-service special event firm specializing in strategic planning, implementation and ongoing support of programs and events. We are excited to see how the use the platform to deliver sponsor and event-related content for one of their upcoming events.

What about you? As an organizer / planner of events, there is no doubt you have suffered through the process of delivering content such as sponsor messages, documents, presentations, exhibitor promotions, and other information to your attendees.  Wouldn’t you like to simplify and *improve* this process?

Take 3 minutes and view our demo tour to see what’s possible with a Virtual Event Bag.  You may think you know how this works, but you’ll be blown away at the possibilities and simplicty.

Eventurously! We recently exhibited at techsytalk live, a most fabulous conference that was built by planners for planners and focused on the many technology platforms available for events. During the conference, we offered attendees the opportunity to win a Premium Virtual Event bag for free!

We are thrilled to introduce you to our winner, Eventurously! Based in New York, the team at Eventurously leverages its background with technology companies to budget, design, market and manage high quality events. We look forward to working with them to see how they use their creativity to engage attendees with all the bells and whistles a Premium Virtual Event bag can provide!

To learn how your event can benefit from a Virtual Event Bag, click here.

Learn more about Eventurously.

We strive to consistently deliver the best experience possible for our customers, organizers of events, and in turn their constituents sponsors, exhibitors, partners and attendees. To do this we will often launch new products, features and pricing plans to learn, grow and adapt. About a year ago, we launched the “Basic” bag. The idea was to provide a less expensive option to smaller events so that they could benefit from the power of the platform; a new, better way to deliver event-related content to attendees. That was the idea.

In order to make the product less expensive, we had to remove some features in order to align the cost structure with the price point, most notably our attendee invitations feature, which enables the organizer to upload or sync their attendee data to schedule automatic “welcome” and “thank you” invitations. This feature provides attendees direct access to the event bag, which in turn drives results for sponsors and exhibitors. After a thorough review of the Basic bag, we discovered it did not live up to our performance expectations, with visit rates (the percentage of attendees who visit the event bag) up to 70% lower than with our Standard or Premium bags. To us, this was unacceptable and unsustainable. Events use our platform to deliver a stellar experience for their sponsors and attendees. If that is not happening, what do we do?

We looked at a bunch of options and kept coming back to the same conclusion. To make the Basic Bag better, we essentially make it a Standard Bag. It was time, in the words of the late Steve Jobs, to “get rid of the crappy stuff.” We are therefore sunsetting the Basic Bag, effective immediately. All customers that signed up for a Basic bag prior to today will automatically be upgraded to a Standard bag, at no additional cost.

We understand that some smaller events my find it hard to justify the cost of a Standard bag, but we believe firmly that organizers looking to deliver high quality events will quickly realize the value because a digital bag is fundamentally more efficient for the Organizer, provides a better return for sponsors and exhibitors and is a better experience for attendees.

We encourage you to take a look at some of the creative uses of our platform by events of all types and sizes. After that, give it a go! You can create an account for free and you don’t have to pay for your bag until 30 days prior to your event, so why not jump in and learn how we can help you on your pursuit of producing the highest quality event possible.

What can Jimmy Fallon teach event organizers about marketing to millenials?  A lot.  Jimmy is the master at marketing to millenials and understands that, in the digital era, marketing is a conversation not a monolgue.

Those of you in the endurance industry who attended the Running USA industry conference earlier this year may remember keynote speaker Jeff Fromm, EVP of Barkley and author of Marketing to Millenials.  His blog post analyzes Jimmy Fallon’s approach to millenial marketing and produces a “top five” list, repurposed below.

1. Make the audience feel like they are in on the joke
2. Use positive humor instead of cynical sarcasm
3. Incorporate stories that Millennials can relate to
4. Don’t be afraid to be silly.  Millennials appreciate brands that don’t put themselves on a pedestal
5. Have fun.  When Millennials see their favorite celebrities laughing and playing with other, it makes them seem more relatable.  This same concept holds true for brands aiming to create a comedic campaign geared towards Millennials.

I am not a millenial, but what I find interesting is that these five principles are appealing to me as well.  I like being in on a joke.  I like “positive humor.” Who doesn’t want to have fun? This approach, therefore, is not just for millenials, but for Gen X, Gen Y and other generations above and below.  It really comes back to the “voice” of your event.

Are you strong enough to be vulnerable?  Confident enough to be honest?

Read the full post from Jeff Fromm here.

Photo credit: NBC’s The Tonight Show