Your industry partners and vendors want access to your members, and in-app sponsorship provides new and modern avenues for sponsors to engage with them. As mobile engagement continues to rise, event marketing ad sponsorship packages will reflect that. In-app sponsorships offer value all around: Your members get relevant offers and opportunities from industry partners; the sponsoring vendors are put at your members’ fingertips; your organization has added value to the membership; and new, non-dues revenue increases.
Your app is an invaluable tool for promoting your events, but it can be even more effective during the event. Attendees will use the app to navigate their event experience—they’ll use it to check schedules, register for education sessions, purchase social event tickets, connect and message with colleagues, review sessions, access presentations and a host of other possible uses. This guaranteed engagement makes enticing partners to sponsor events with in-app sponsorship packages a fairly easy pitch.
Not only can you pinpoint exactly how many users will be engaged, you can use the app analytics to measure impressions and click-through rates to give your partners assurance on their ROI. You can also help sponsors target their audience by making some ads and notifications available to a desired segment of your users. Using the app’s data analytics after the event to measure the success will help you tailor sponsorship packages in the future.
The most popular in-app sponsorships provide an array of exposure and you can offer a variety of digital packages at varying price points to appeal to all budgets:
Banner Ads—Whether it’s meant to drive traffic to their website or attendees to a session during your event, a banner ad in members’ news feeds is a subtle but effective option.
Sponsored Content—Educational and promotional videos, pictures, links, articles or PDFs can be placed in the app’s news feed as well. Members can react to the content by liking it, sharing it, and bookmarking it. It’s a great way to distribute content to a highly targeted audience.
Sponsored Polls—Your industry partners want to better understand their audience and want a better read on the market. Sponsoring an interactive poll can give them immediate insight into the attitudes and needs of their audience.
Sponsored Push Notifications—Push notifications advertising, for example, a booth give-away or asking users to register for a specific session will pop up on member’s phones even when they aren’t in the app. (Don’t worry, you can allow only attendees to receive them.) These use prime real estate to direct members to take immediate action.
Sponsored Forums—Sponsors can use forums to initiate discussions among and with users that relate to their industry niche and services. Forums can not only promote a sponsor’s product or service but can provide valuable insight from their potential customers.
Sponsored Resources—An app’s resource center is where users access data, articles, industry-specific solutions, marketing kits, reports, and other relevant materials. Sponsors can provide a folder with their material in the resource center where members can easily access it.
Marketing through in-app sponsorships is an exciting feature of your app because the possibilities are endless, the execution is simple and the opportunities can be lucrative.
