Intuit Measures Engaged Audience At It’s Quickbooks Connect Conferences

Being responsible for product launching for a Global company I have seen first hand over the years how important it is for attendee engagement. In the past we measured success of a corporate event by the number of attendees along with feedback from a post conference survey. Today attendee engagement is measured at every contact point from registration, pre-conference event, and conference day and post conference and experiential is critical in ensuring an engaged attendee.

AgencyEA, a global full-service brand experience agency release results of a research study on the state of experiential. The study surveyed nearly 1,000 event industry professionals across Fortune 500 companies, agencies and vendors, assessing their perspective on industry spending, the impact of data and emerging technology, and the trends impacting experiential success.

Notable Findings

• 38% of respondents chose experiential as the most successful tactic in their marketing strategy.
• 62% of respondents are using experiential to drive both brand awareness and lead generation.
• 94%t agree technology has a positive impact on an event, but less than 50% have seen success using emerging technologies.
• More than 80% of respondents gain valuable insights from data collected at events.

Intuit is recognized as as one of Canada’s Best Work, as ranked by the Great Place to Work® Canada Institute, Intuit is home to more than 400 employees dedicated to Intuit’s mission of improving our customers’ financial lives so profoundly they can’t imagine going back to the old way.

Their flagship products, TurboTax®, QuickBooks® and ProFile®, make it easier for consumers to file their taxes, small businesses to manage their finances and accountants to help them do both.

Each year it holds its Intuit’s Quickbooks Connect Conference. They understand that an engaged attendee is a happy attendee and have deployed a number of engagement strategies into their recent Conference held in California. They worked with AgencyEA to produce a number of key strategies to engage the conference’s 4,200 attendees.

Dynamic Event Spaces

The conference had designated areas—and programming—for attendee networking, including designing inviting atmospheres that made connecting fun. Themed lounges and ancillary networking events provided opportunities for attendees to connect outside of conference programming. The meet-up lounges designed to look like a music lounge and quaint park replicated common places where people meet, allowing attendees to connect organically with their peers in a less-structured atmosphere. Another space, the Pavilion, was a networking hub with a central location and scheduled activities. It held an array of mini-sessions titled Millennial Mimosas, Females Entrepreneur Meetup, Makers’ Bazaar, Bookkeeping Buds, and more.

Use of Technology

While attendees today expect networking and education opportunities, there’s also an expectation they will experience cutting-edge technology. QuickBooks Connect provided breakthrough tech tools—including virtual-reality art and “emotion detection” and introduced a new setting, the Emerging Tech Showcase, with tech experts to guide attendees. The design was inspired by the clean and simplistic design of museum spaces, and each vignette included descriptions of devices and invited attendees to interact with technologies and ask questions.

Spotlighted technologies included: Google Tilt Brush, a VR art experience; Google Earth VR; emotion detection using Microsoft Cognitive Services API; a “smart mirror” that would talk to the user and provide financial analysis and forecasting; and a Microsoft HoloLens to demonstrate mixed reality.

Focus on First-Time Attendees

Each year, QuickBooks Connect incorporates “improvement actions” based on feedback from the previous year. The most recent edition focused on improving the experience for first-time attendees. They found the most success with the orientation dedicated to first-time attendees and newcomer guided tours. First time attendees enjoyed separate breakfasts and lunches that were intended to facilitate connections. The tours for newcomers were led by Intuit representatives who were able to both educate attendees on the conference space and answer any product questions. The tours were so popular that all time slots sold out.

Measurement

The Intuit Quickbooks Conference was a complete success with not only being sold out but:

Over 190 Million Social Impressions

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100 Million Facebook Views

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QuickBooks Net-Promoter Score Increased

Lessons for Others

• Conference attendees expect to be engaged at conferences.
• Important for companies to incorporate technology into the conference experience.
• Act on feedback given at previous conferences.
• Attendees expect to experience cutting edge technologies
• Be sure to track engagement for future conferences.

 

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