We’ve rounded up the top event trends in 2020 to keep an eye on so your upcoming events can maximise their growth potential. 2019 was all about bleisure travel, sustainability, GDPR compliance, and the decline of the traditional influencer. This year, we’re seeing 5G networks take off around the world, flight shaming and a global sustainability focus fuelling even greener events and data-powered insights.
Sustainability
This is the word that’s on everybody’s lips this year as 2019 saw massive ecological devastation brought to the Amazon rainforest and Australia due to fires that many are claiming are a direct result of human-induced global warming. But what should we expect from events this year as the industry shifts its focus to sustainability? A reduction in single-use plastics is a given at this stage, but more broadly speaking, sustainability will soon be ingrained in every stage of the event planning process.
Looking at the overall carbon footprint that events have will lead businesses to plan and operate events, thinking about their impact on carbon emissions during each phase of the planning. And, of course, they’ll be engaging with event agencies that take their responsibilities in sustainability seriously, as we do at Davis Events Agency.
Since travel accounts for a significant 73% of an event’s carbon footprint, sourcing and investing in greener travel choices should be one of the biggest concerns for any event organiser. One of the tactics organisations can employ to offset the impact of travel is the utilisation of communication technology to facilitate video chat in the planning and preparation stages where possible.
Another one of the event trends we foresee is a growth in the sourcing of local speakers for events and eventgoers opting to attend local rather than international events. This will allow Irish and EU companies to develop a business strand they may not have considered in the past, or to double down on distance communication technology with live-streaming and webinar technology.
5G Network Technology
Eir is one of Ireland’s first carriers to adopt the ultrawide-band 5G technology which sees mobile data speeds increase tenfold. This jump in bandwidth will allow 5G to compete with fibre power broadband, as the mobile carrier technology can now offer speeds of about 2Gb/s.
With mobile internet connection finally reaching an experience that’s comparable with fibre-powered broadband, eventgoers with the tech will have quicker access to data including audio and video without needing to connect to on-location wifi as frequently.
The range of interactive experiences that will be available in locations without wifi will grow as a result of 5G tech which could mean that unique, remote venues could see a rise in popularity as companies roll it out in more counties.
Personalisation 2.0
As more data points become available for each eventgoer and tech companies embrace the power of personalisation in their offerings, we expect to see more and more event marketers investing resources into this.
Whether you’re providing past attendees hyper-relevant content using email marketing SaaS provider Mailchimp’s segmentation functionality or HubSpot’s Smart Content to show the most relevant landing page based on what you already know about a visitor, we can expect event marketers to adopt personalisation into their workflows even more.
According to HubSpot, personalised content is almost twice as effective at converting customers, with personalised CTAs seeing a performance boost of 178% over generic CTAs. In addition, we foresee even smaller companies beginning to leverage Artificial Intelligence to fuel insights that drive personalisation. For instance, Google’s Analytics Intelligence features present insights based on machine learning that can help provide an even more personalised experience.