Corporate events have the potential to be interactive meetings where industry leaders share new ideas and products with their colleagues, fostering discussions and increasing engagement. From conferences to team building events and quarterly board meetings, a number of simple factors can make a big impact on guests’ engagement and satisfaction. When planning your next corporate event consider repurposing some ideas from the most exciting social events you’ve been to.

Every summer on beautiful Cape Cod our Convention Data Services (CDS) team organizes an advisory group event for our clients. Our annual event gathers people of different backgrounds from all over the country to network, share ideas and build relationships. With 11 years of experience planning and executing this meeting we’ve gained first-hand knowledge of what makes a corporate event successful. Here are a few tips and ideas for creating a memorable event:

Define your objective:

Your title may be meeting planner, event coordinator, event marketing manager or vice president of conferences or some combination of the above. No matter what it is, my goal is that in five years’ time that title will be out of style and the word, ‘strategic’ will be the first word that describes the position you hold. It’s not just a title change that I want to see, it’s an entire industry shift to a strategic mindset.

I recently spoke with a number of procurement representatives and event professionals from large corporations about how the two groups interact. For the sake of keeping to a reasonable length, the article didn’t cover everything I wanted to share.

The following tips are based on those conversations, plus my own personal experience.

1. Formally Define Your Processes

Event attendees don't just want a mobile event app. They expect it. Mobile event apps create a better user experience – making schedule-building, networking, wayfinding, and attendee engagement and interaction more efficient and trackable than ever before.

But what happens once the event is over? Without a plan in place, that time, energy and resources put into developing your corporate event app can quickly be forgotten. Or worse, the app gets the dreaded “delete.”

Corporate events are supposed to bring some joy and refreshment to your workforce - but anyone can agree that a boring and uncomfortable corporate affair is the last thing most people want to go to.

Event planning has faced considerable developments and significant changes in recent years. New event trends bring about fresh opportunities and challenges. These recent trends in corporate events will help yours outshine every work party that came before, and will make your staff eager for the next one.

While there may be no such thing as a stupid question, there is a correlation between the smarter the question, the more in depth and valuable the answer will potentially be. That’s why when someone asks you to plan a meeting, regardless of how large or for whom, your first question needs to be, ‘What’s the goal of the meeting?’

Bizzabo recently surveyed over 400 mid- to senior-level event marketers about the future of the industry. The result is Event Marketing 2018: Benchmarks and Trends.

With contemporary digital marketing practices, brands have the ability to reach more people with more targeted strategies than ever before. Yet at the same time, nothing can quite compare to a face-to-face conversation. This isn’t a nostalgic longing for simpler days. It’s what the data says.

When it comes to building strong connections between a brand and an audience, there’s nothing quite like brand experience.

The medium combines several different elements — physical space, digital technology, interpersonal communication, and community — all to create a powerful and engaging marketing tool. In fact, nearly two-thirds of marketers say brand experience helps creating ongoing relationships with key audiences and make them feel valued.

Does an event like CEMA Summit even need an introduction?

This annual conference by the Corporate Event Marketing Association (CEMA) attracts event marketers of all tenure for learning, networking, and soaking up best practices.