The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution is more than a passing fad. Thanks to the increasing popularity of tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney, more organizations are saving time and money through the wonder that is AI. It’s no wonder why 87.8% of leading businesses are ramping up their investments in AI and data analytics this year. If you’re new to AI for events, we’ve got you covered.
The good news is that robots aren’t out for your job. Human effort is still very much a part of the event planning process. AI makes your job faster and easier — so what’s not to love? In fact, AI is one of the fastest-growing technologies event planners trust to plan, promote, and analyze their events. Check out these five tips to use the combined power of AI and data to make your next event a smash hit.
Using AI and Data To Make Your Next Event a Hit
Build Communities With Intelligent Matchmaking
Whether hosting an in-person event or going 100% online, your event needs to plan for social interactions. Not only will this give attendees more networking opportunities, but it’s also a great way to build a community around your event and brand.
Every event planner wants community, but you need to match the right types of people together to form that community — and that’s no small feat.
The key to networking is matching the right attendees, and AI can assist you with matchmaking. If you use the right event platform, an AI engine can recommend new connections to each attendee based on shared attributes. The algorithm can match folks based on industry, job title, attendance data, and other characteristics.
This doesn’t mean that every AI-generated match will be a hit, but connecting people who share interests and goals can increase the odds of attendees forming real, meaningful connections.
Automate Attendee Help and Communication
Chatbots are all the rage for automated communication, especially for online events. Eighty-eight percent of people interacted with a chatbot in the last year, so chatbot tech is only growing in popularity.
The challenge, though, is that chatbots aren’t always helpful. Most chatbots pull answers from an FAQ bank to answer basic questions, but if your attendees have more complex queries, a traditional chatbot will likely leave them high and dry.
Fortunately, AI makes chatbots much more intelligent and helpful. AI-powered chatbots can help attendees get the answers they need when they need them. Best of all, attendees won’t hound your event planning team with answers that an intelligent chatbot could answer.
AI chatbots also provide more personalized experiences for attendees. They can recommend upcoming sessions, offer proactive help or advice, and usher attendees through the event experience more seamlessly.
Plus, AI chatbots are available around the clock, so if you’re hosting an international event across time zones, this tool can help you be there for attendees 24/7. It’s a win for everyone.
Simplify Event Planning
Events have a lot of moving parts. Even the most seasoned event planners get overwhelmed, especially with global events. Luckily, the one-two punch of AI and data analytics can simplify your event planning. You can use AI to streamline:
- Event logistics: ChatGPT can’t plan everything for you, but it can certainly speed up research. Use this free AI tool to generate event theme ideas, research venues, plan engaging icebreakers, and create an event budget.
- Event marketing: You can use AI to generate lead-nurturing campaigns to entice more attendees to sign up. An AI-powered email marketing tool can pull attendee data from your customer relationship management (CRM) platform to create hyper-personalized emails at scale. This makes your emails much more personalized, increasing the odds that people will open and read them.
- Attendee questions: Your email inbox is probably flooded with messages. Don’t let the influx of emails distract you from your event planning duties. AI can answer these attendee queries while you focus on the important stuff. It can even recommend local hotels and provide directions for attendees without missing a beat. Easy, right?
Create More Content, Faster
Every event needs content, but content requires time and energy. On top of planning a memorable event, you might also need to create:
- Presentation slides
- Speeches
- Scripts
- Panel questions
- Brochures
- Networking surveys
- Event maps
- Marketing emails
- Promotional blogs
- Promotional graphics
That’s a lot of work. The good news is that AI tools simplify content creation for events. For example, you can use ChatGPT for written content and Midjourney for generating custom AI graphics.
You can use ChatGPT to brainstorm content ideas and flesh out the content itself. Ask the AI to brainstorm blog ideas, write a script for your CEO to introduce the event, or develop insightful questions for a panel session.
You can give it prompts like “What type of workshop should I host at my leadership conference event?” or “What goodies should I include in my sustainability event’s goodie bag?” You can also tell ChatGPT, “Write me a 3-minute speech thanking all my guests for attending my event.” While ChatGPT should never replace an event planner, it can certainly help you save time.
If you’re trying to save time and money creating graphics for your next event, give Midjourney a go. This AI image generation platform requires a paid subscription, but if you create a lot of graphics, it could be worth the investment. You just prompt the AI, and it generates a unique image you can use for your event.
For example, you can give Midjourney a prompt like, “CEO posing in front of the Empire State Building,” which will generate a unique image fitting that brief. You can use this tool for everything from graphic design to social media content.
You’ll need to refine how you prompt the AI, though, so getting a production-ready image could take several rounds of prompting.
Pull Better Post-Event Analytics
Was your event successful? Instead of making assumptions, look at the data to determine what you did well and can improve.
If you want to improve your events, checking your post-event analytics is a good idea. Usually, this would require a lot of manual effort and weeks of waiting. But AI helps you quickly pull all of your event metrics into one place so you can make data-driven decisions about future events.
As soon as your event ends, you can use AI to extract and analyze data from multiple sources, like:
- Your website
- Attendee surveys
- Customer feedback forms
- Social media posts
- Event platform engagement data
An integrated platform that tracks all event-related activities and interactions can help your team stay organized and better use AI and data analytics for event success.
For example, at an event, your chatbot might get a lot of questions about parking for that particular venue. This could mean parking could have been more apparent at this location, an area for future improvement. Or one specific session had low attendance. AI can help you find insights like this more quickly, which can help you host better events going forward.
Harness the Power of AI To Make Your Next Event Unforgettable
Your events are already good, but AI can make them even better. Instead of fearing AI, learn how to leverage this technology to plan better, more affordable events that generate a return on investment (ROI) for your business. Of course, it helps to have the right technology in your corner, and that’s where we come in. Endless Events is an event management company that equips event planners with the right technology to plan memorable events. See how Endless Events’ seamless technology and predictive analytics can enhance your next event.
