By Nancy Mann Jackson
Each year, the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) draws about 1,000 educators in the fields of technology, innovation, design and engineering to its annual conference. These professionals value the opportunity to get together and network on a face-to-face basis, as well as learn from the highly-acclaimed speakers ITEA always hosts. But as a rule, attendees aren’t early registrants. In fact, until 2007 about half of them usually waited to register until they arrived on site.
“Every year, we would have long, lone lines of people waiting to register on opening day,” says Susan Perry, President of The Perry Group, the Alexandria, VA-based planning company that helps produce ITEA’s annual conference. “It was difficult to plan without having a more firm number in advance.”
To encourage more members of the group to pre-register, Perry and ITEA staffers decided to offer an incentive. “We told everybody if they would register by the pre-conference deadline, we would put their names in a drawing to win an iPod nano,” Perry says. “This was like a $99 item, but suddenly 80% of attendees decided to pre-register.”
After success with this initial giveaway in 2007, Perry has continued to offer a registration incentive each year. “Now we give away $100 VISA gift cards,” she says. “You would think we were giving away a car or a million dollars. People get that excited about it.”
In addition, the almost-100-page conference program – including detailed information about all sessions, speakers and events – used to be distributed as a digital PDF to all association members or anyone considering attending the conference. While the printed version of the program is distributed on-site, most attendees want it in advance to plan ahead for their time at the conference. But in another stroke of pre-registration-incentive genius, “the only way to get the PDF program in advance is to pre-register for the meeting,” says Perry. “[It] has worked like a miracle!”
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Driving Attendance in a Recession
Based on the success of the iPod and VISA gift card giveaways and the preliminary program distribution to encourage pre-registration, ITEA also used giveaways in 2009 to stimulate attendance in a year when economic conditions are driving down attendee numbers and even leading to cancellation of some association meetings. The ITEA annual meeting, held March 26-28 in Louisville, KY, will likely to post some decrease in attendance (final numbers aren’t in yet), but planners don’t expect it to be significant.
“A lot of our people won’t get funding [to attend] this year, but it’s nowhere near as many as I thought it would be,” Perry says. “I think we’ll be down, but I’m not sure how much. It could be as much as 10%-20%, but it absolutely won’t be the 40%-50% that some of my meeting planner friends have seen at their conferences.”
Perry attributes the steady attendance in part to what she calls “free stuff” offered to attendees. For instance, planners negotiated with the conference hotels to provide free Internet access for attendees who book their rooms inside the block. “If they’re charged the regular $10 per day or whatever to use the Internet during their stay, when they check out the front desk literally erases those charges right then, and that’s a huge deal for our attendees,” Perry explains. “Again, you’d think we were giving away a million dollars.”
Also, ITEA organizers have negotiated with the Marriott headquarters hotel to sponsor a prize drawing for one free room night and a free dinner for two at the hotel restaurant. Every attendee at the conference will be automatically entered into the drawing, and one lucky attendee won’t have to pay for one night’s stay and dinner during the conference. The association is also providing a proprietary report that normally sells for $30 to each attendee at no cost. And at least one general session will include free gifts and prize drawings.
In fact, the free giveaways have been a centerpiece of the marketing campaign for the conference. “We sent one e-mail message that basically said, ‘Look at all this free stuff you’ll get if you come this year,’” Perry says.
And that e-mail was part of a larger-than-usual marketing campaign. “We’ve been blasting them with e-mails like you’ve never seen before,” Perry continues. “And we’re constantly sending people to the website.” The e-mail campaign has dug deeper, highlighting every part of the conference that might draw a potential attendee. For instance, Perry says the organization normally doesn’t promote the speakers at the breakfasts, but this year those speakers have been included in e-mail marketing as well, with links to more information about them online.
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Creating a Desirable Program
While targeted marketing and free giveaways might spark the interest of potential attendees, Perry says that offering an amazing program is really what will bring attendees this year – and what makes the conference a success every year. “We don’t have continuing education credits, so this is really a meeting about someone wanting to continue their own education and learning and to develop professionally,” notes Perry, adding, “We have to have an interesting program so they’ll want to come.”
And ITEA is known for recruiting in-demand speakers. Last year, the group heard from the modern-day explorer who discovered the Titanic. Other speakers have included astronauts and other top professionals in the fields of science, engineering and mathematics.
This year, Perry is particularly excited about Nate Ball, a 25-year-old engineer who has invented a military contraption “that allows you to raise yourself into the air like Batman, to get into windows and things,” she says. “And he’ll be demonstrating it in the exhibit hall. That’s one thing we’ve never had before: a keynote speaker who’s an inventor and will demonstrate his invention in the exhibition.”
Sounds like just the sort of thing that will thrill ITEA attendees.
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