The event industry witnessed some unprecedented changes over the last few years. One of the most noticeable changes has been the shift of events from in-person to virtual and hybrid events. However, an event does not serve any purpose if it fails to keep its audience engaged.
The good part is that today the market is flooded with tools to help marketers and event organizers keep audiences engaged. There are tools to cater to specific areas of engagement and then there are some that provide end-to-end solutions. Read on to learn about tools that help you make your events more fun, creative, interactive, and engaging.
Types of Audience Engagement Tools
Interactive Tools
- Crowdpurr: It is a tool that enables event organizers to create interactive mobile-driven experiences for both virtual and live events. The tool also enables participants to compete against each other for prizes, IQ bragging rights with live rankings, dynamic team modes, image/GIF-based questions, and more. Other features such as live polling and multi-question format polling enable the organizer to capture leads and data.
- BuzzMaster: A great tool to stimulate conversation, BuzzMaster is a unique audience interaction app consisting of “BuzzMasters” (real people) to moderate audience responses in real-time. BuzzMasters are usually journalists or experienced event managers. To keep things interactive these masters ask the audiences new and unexpected questions, which helps in facilitating the session and creating a buzz.
- Glisser: An event platform designed and developed by event industry veterans, Glisser does much more than basic video and screen sharing. The platform enables event organizers to create high participation events of any size and enables them to deliver memorable virtual hybrid and in-person events.
- Sparkup: Sparkup, a virtual event platform is designed especially for audience interaction. A user can create and customize their stream, add interactive Q&As, word clouds, live polls, quizzes, and much more to engage their audience.
Polls, Q & A Tools
- Mentimeter: Mentimeter is a mobile voting app with the ability to handle 30,000 votes per minute. The app displays live results with real-time graphs and charts. One can choose from a variety of question/response formats such as multiple-choice, open-ended, rating scale, and word clouds. The bonus, the app can be white-labeled.
- Slido: Slido is a polling and Q&A tool which also enables a user to create and share audience participation reports. An ideal tool to engage participants, capture their views, and make everyone feel more connected.
- QuickMobile: As the name suggests, QuickMobile is a mobile app. A polling and feedback app allows event attendees to vote, rate, or answer multiple-choice questions. Event organizers can create questions ahead of the event, launch a poll, make modifications to an event basis the response received and facilitate interactive sessions.
- Angage: Ideal for in-person events, Angage provides the audience with individual voting keypads, to cast their vote during a Q&A session. Fairly easy-to-use, the tool displays responses in real-time.
- Engagenow: Engagenow enables you to design polls that look attractive and quizzes that empower the audience to interact on a big screen during an event. It can also be used to crowdsource questions or open up chat around the event in order to spark debate and connect audience members. It is a good tool for events that have debates and panel discussions in their events.
- MeetingPulse: Event planners can create an interactive session by integrating live polls, surveys, raffles, quizzes, and Q&A sessions using MeetingPulse. The questionnaires and polls can be customized with your own branding.
- Poll Everywhere: A tool designed for real-time audience polls and results, Poll Everywhere enables participants to respond with their own device. It presents organizers with activities like a word cloud, clickable images, and more. These activities help in breaking the ice, assessing the pulse of the audience, forming a consensus, and facilitating honest discussions with groups of any size.
- Pigeonhole Live: One of the most popular live interactive Q&A, polling, and survey platforms for meetings and events since 2010, Pigeonhole Live has revolutionized the way organizations, and education institutions interact and engage with their live audiences. The tool offers several session formats, like live Q&A, multiple-choice polls, open-ended polls, surveys, quizzes with a leader board, word cloud polls, and more.
Gamification Tools
- LoQuiz: Gaming has gained immense popularity over the years and is a great way to engage your audience at an event. LoQuiz, a gamification tool, enables event organizers to set up games/quizzes with an integrated question library. One can also stage treasure hunts, using photos or written clues to guide players. The app is designed for tablets and uses GPS for outdoor positioning and a special clue system for indoor question mapping.
- Captello: A popular gaming app, Captello features more than 35 customizable and interactive games and leaderboards. It also displays high scores and team information facilitating friendly competition. The built-in gift-rewards platform enables winners to earn real prizes.
- Kahoot: A game-based learning platform, Kahoot! can be accessed on both a browser and through an app. The platform makes use of user-generated data to create multiple-choice quizzes.
- myQuiz: myQuiz is a digital fan engagement cloud-based platform. It has been designed keeping in mind mid-sized to large events. Not only does the platform attract participants using gamification, it captures user data and generates reports too.
Full-suite Hybrid and Virtual Event Platforms
- Nunify: One of the best in the all-in-one event engagement platform, Nunify has the capability to manage events of all formats and can accommodate all the necessities of an event. The Nunify mobile event app enables attendees to connect pre-event, during the event, and post-event. A single app has a myriad of options to engage with the audience. High-quality live stream, on-demand videos, and content post-event, access to data and reports, capability to white-label and customize the app as per your needs, and more.
- Zoho Backstage: One of the most preferred all-in-one event management platforms, Zoho Backstage is the perfect choice to plan and execute end-to-end in-person, virtual, and hybrid event experiences with greater efficiency and impact. From designing an event website to analyzing an event’s performance, and everything in between Zoho Backstage does everything to seamlessly conduct an event.
- Cadence: Cadence is an all-in-one platform for virtual exhibitions and conferences which can be white-labeled. It helps event organizers to engage the audience using tools like Q&A, private chat, push notifications, on-demand content, competitions hub, and more. What’s more, it enables attendees to register for sessions pre-event, integrate interactive live feed to your Twitter feed enabling attendees to post comments, GIFs, and memes. It makes engaging and interacting with attendees across channels a breeze.
- Swapcard: One of the most popular all-in-one virtual event platforms Swapcard consists of a plethora of audience engagement tools. With its AI-powered networking capabilities, it allows attendees to join the conversation with tools such as in-session live discussions, Q&A, polls, surveys, and group chats, as well as sponsor booths. It is a user-friendly and easy-to-navigate platform.
- Cvent: Whether it is an in-person/virtual/hybrid event or a webinar Cvent is an all-in-one engagement platform for all your event needs. Automate communications and promotions pre-event, manage speakers, exhibitors, and sponsors in one place. The check-in and badging tool help streamline the registration process, automated workflows help track spending and savings, data capture throughout the attendee journey gives you valuable insights.
- Hopin: Hopin is an all-in-one event management platform that supports every stage of event planning from start till the end. Be it a virtual, hybrid, in-person, or an organization’s internal event, Hopin does it all. Virtual venues to create bespoke experiences for your digital audience, studios to relay high-quality video streams, attractive landing pages to promote your events, seamless management of online and in-person attendees Hopin enables you to do it all.
With events becoming hybrid, tech-enabled tools are the future to seamlessly manage your events. Whether it is planning an event, engaging your audience, generating leads, or retaining attendees, there is a tool for everything. Make an informed choice and maximize your event ROI and audience engagement with these tools.
