 If you're an association meeting planner, you have your work cut out for you every single year. Every year you're under the microscope and your delegates are grading you on how much they learned, how much they networked, and if there's value in coming back to the conference again next year. This week's post, we're talking about ways that you can create an engaging association meeting so that you can retain those delegates and attract new ones to your event. Stick around. Hey everyone, it's Leanne Calderwood from conferencedirectandconferencesource.net and Steven and I work with association meeting planners every single day. In fact, they're really the inspiration of this blog post because we've seen some of the best of the best in the industry when it comes to planning events that create engagement and attract delegates year over year. So we're going to go through some of the tips and best practices that we've seen our association planners use over the years and some of the things that we've even seen in some of the events that we attend in hopes that you can find something new to infuse into your association meeting to keep them engaging and keep your delegates coming back for more. Tip number one, it comes as no surprise, is great programming. Now this could take the form of a keynote speaker or breakout speakers but the key to great programming are topics and things that the delegates are talking about before they even get to your conference. So these are hot topics, things that need to be tackled today or looking into the future. If you start to rely on programming that's happened year over year in the past to kind of drive your content that's where you're going to start to see a lot of attrition in your numbers because people want something new. Tip number two, different formats. Now this could be the format of the conference itself or even the room setup as a format. Gone are the talking heads that stand at the front of the room and teach you something and you take notes feverishly and then leave. It's become a lot more interactive. The rooms themselves have become engaging with AV and lighting setup and you can play around with all these different formats, even have sponsors get involved in creating a setting that's going to energize your delegates and engage them in dialogue when they get into the room. Tip number three, sticking to your budget. All association planners have budgets and they're quite strict as most association meetings are meant to create revenue for them. So when looking at your budget especially when it comes to perhaps decor items start to dig into things like Pinterest and even Amazon to find items and things that you can use that's going to save you some money. You might even also be able to piggyback on some of the decor that's in the venue already. It could be even seasonal decor that a venue has brought in for their overall hotel or destination. You can piggyback on those things and infuse them into your event to save on your budget. Wise use of AV and lighting can also transform a space. I recommend talking to your AV tech about things that fall in your budget but things that might look different than something they experienced last year. Looking at your food and beverage budget there's a ton of ways that you can infuse local and in season products that will save on your budget. In fact over at conference source.net we have a food and beverage checklist that you can download that will allude to some of these budget saving tips. Tip number four keeping an event history. Now you may not think that this lands itself to engaging meetings but this ties into your budget by having some buying power with the hotels when you have a strong event history to take into negotiations with you. Now of course this is something that Steven and I also do with our association clients and if you need more tips on negotiating with the venue and destination regarding your event history certainly reach out to us but have your event history at hand when you start those negotiations with the venue and that will help you save some dollars here and there that you can now put towards your engagement budget and your programming budget and your room format budget. Tip number five partnering with another association. We are seeing this a lot with our association clients but we're also seeing this in our own industry. We're seeing MPI and ILEA chapters pair up to host events and conferences. We're seeing the event which is a collaboration of three MPI chapters in eastern Canada. This is an incredible way to say to share resources. You're sharing financial resources but you're also sharing mental resources. All of you can come together with your expertise and really create an event that is different and innovative when you start to partner. Tip number six one of my favorite is gamification. It's still alive and well and infusing gamification into your association events will have people interacting with each other through social media and of course outside social media. You don't have to do all your gamification through a phone. You can also do it through name badges where you have trivia and tips on the name badge that they have to pick up on. Gamification can take so many different forms and if you have any questions about gamification certainly reach out and I can point you in the right direction. Tip number seven is marketing. So you can also innovate your marketing by doing it in different ways. You've likely come a long way since mailing out brochures in the mail or postcards in the mail. You were likely already on social media. Now if I'm talking to you and you haven't started using social media now is the time to leverage some of those platforms to drive attendance to your events. So marketing looks completely different nowadays than it used to 10 or 20 years ago. Using social media using advocates which are like micro influencers for your industry using those individuals is going to save you a lot of money on your marketing budget and probably reach the audience that you want to reach. So delve into how you can use those the next time you make your marketing strategy. And finally location, location, location. The hotel or the destination can do a lot to create engagement with your delegates. It can be simple as the flow of a well laid out hotel in the middle of nowhere or it can be a busy destination with lots to do outside of the conference venue. So location really goes back to your goals and objectives and I did a post about goals and objectives and you can view that video here but it can really lend itself to creating an engaging meeting for your association delegates. These are some of Stephen and I's best practices when planning association meetings but we've likely missed quite a few of them and we'd love to hear from you association planners about some of the best tips and tricks that you use to create your engaging meetings. Will you please comment below this video and let us know what your tips are. Creating engagement for your delegates need not be onerous but you do need to put some time, some talent and some resources in this area to create the best possible engagement for your delegates. This is what's going to create return engagement and new delegates to your meeting. To learn more about our complimentary services hop on over to conferencesource.net and see if there isn't something that Stephen and I can do to help enhance your next meeting as well. Best of luck on your upcoming meetings this year and we'll see you soon. Bye for now.